The battle of Cenn Abrat forms part of the story known as The Battle of Mag Mucrama and is told in §§ 10-14 of Stokes' edition (RC 13, 440). It is recorded in the Annals of Tigernach (RC 17, 10) and by the Four Masters, A.D. 186. There is, however, a longer account which appears as a separate story and is preserved in two manuscripts, The Book of Lecan (15th century) and RIA C i 2 (15th-16th centuries.) The occasion of the battle is not mentioned here, but according to the tradition of the Battle of Mag Mucrama, a dispute arose between Lugaid Mac Con and his foster brother Éogan son of Oilill Ólom, king of Munster, about a fairy musician they had found, each of them claiming the musician for himself. The king decided in favour of Éogan, and Lugaid said that it was a false judgement.

The reading habits of the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Purity, and Patience remain a fascinating and fruitful field of study. Much has been written about the books the poet read, or may have read, but it is unlikely that the catalogue of books owned or read by him has by any means been completely reconstructed. Of the books he certainly knew, the Vulgate is of first importance for its influence upon the poet's thought and style. Certain, but less important, are the Romance of the Rose and the French text of Mandeville. Of the books very probably read by him the Divine Comedy stands first, followed by the Vita Nuova and the Convivio, Boccaccio's Olympia, and the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius. Less probable is his reading of Tertullian's De Patentia and De Jona et Ninive, the Travels of Marco Polo, Peter Comestor's Historia Scholastica, the Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry, the French lapidaries, and a few others still less certain.

This paper is written on the assumption that Alice Chaucer was the granddaughter of the poet. That she was the daughter of Thomas Chaucer is easily proved and, despite skillful arguments to the contrary, the weight of evidence seems to the present writer to confirm the belief that Thomas was the son of Geoffrey. This paper is also written because of the assumption of Alice's relation to Geoffrey; her connection with the poet has been the chief reason for this study of her life. But such need not have been the case. Chaucer had no personal influence upon his granddaughter, unless by way of heredity, for their lives did not overlap. She was born four years after the poet's death. On the other hand, she lived to be the wife and widow of three successive men, two of whom were of great military and political prominence in English history; she was the friend and confidante of royalty; she became the mother-in-law of a king's sister. She was, in truth, a figure of sufficient social and political importance in the life of her time to merit consideration on her own account.

Recent publications have suggested a considerable number of sources of the cosmological and cosmographical material in John Rastell's Interlude of the Four Elements. M. E. Borish maintains that the source of Rastell's “cosmology, natural history, and geography is Gergor Reisch's Margarita Philosophica.” Elizabeth M. Nugent affirms that Rastell garnered his material not only from Reisch but also from Bartholomaeus Anglicus' De proprietatibus rerum, Caxton's Mirrour of the World, Sacrobosco's Textus de Sphaera, and Martin Waldseemüller's Cosmographiae Introductio (to which was appended Amerigo Vespucci's Quattuor navigationes and Waldseemüller's huge world map of 1507). I wish to add to this list of sources a number of pertinent texts which have been overlooked.

Il existe une tradition theologique—peu connue aujourd'hui—d'après laquelle la lune est un des symboles de l'Eglise Catholique. Nous nous proposons de faire appel à cette tradition pour expliquer certains textes du XVIe siècle qui sont restés généralement obscurs ou qui le sont devenus, car il est probable que les allusions qui s'y trouvent étaient facilement comprises des contemporains.

Given an individual with Du Bellay's reverence for the intellectual and cultural achievements of classical antiquity, but a painful consciousness of the deficiencies of his own education, especially in the field of Hellenic studies; possessing, in addition, an almost religious worship of his native language and a zealous ardor to vindicate its intrinsic capacity for every form of expression,—given conditions which are mutually so discordant—what must result? An adumbration in parvo, and within the limits of a single personality, of the quereile des anciens et modernes. This is what we witness in the writings of Du Beilay, and especially in the pages of the Deffence. We must make an effort, however, to discover whether between the apparently contradictory positions adopted by Du Beilay there is not some central ground upon which he really meant to take his stand.

Since many years of threshing the same old straw have not determined the ancestry of William Shakespeare, investigation in a new direction seems wise. Genealogists, confronted with a gap they cannot cross, examine the history of families known to be related to the subject of their search but not how. Shakespearean students have long known of Thomas Greene, the solicitor, steward, and town clerk of Stratford-on-Avon from 1603 to 1617, who in his private diary called Shakespeare cousin, but they have not known much about him or his exact relationship to the poet. Since the word cousin occurs in such private and personal writing as a diary, it is more likely a term of real kinship than of friendly courtesy. This article presents the data gathered during an investigation—halted by the present war—into the ancestry of Thomas Greene. They do not reveal the ancestry of Shakespeare, but they show a chain of family connections of better economic and social status than some writers have granted the Stratford Shakespeares. Since the matter is genealogical, a fair presentation demands the inclusion of minute details of slight interest to the general reader but of possible great value to a specialist who may undertake to carry the investigation forward after the war, for in genealogy a seemingly insignificant detail may prove to be the clue to the ultimate solution.

The earliest known musical setting for Shakespeare's lyric “Harke Harke ye Larke,” suggests new aspects of the dramatist's craft, and contributes an interesting variant of the song-text. The score, acquired by the Bodleian in 1937 and subsequently printed with modern notation in 1941, is here printed in facsimile by permission of the Bodleian Library Authorities. The following is a transcription of the words:

Harke Harke Harke Harke Harke yo Larke
at heauen gate sings
at heauen gate sings
& Phoebus ‘gins to rise
The winking mary buds begin to ope theire golden eyes wth ev'ry thing yt pretty is my Lady sweet arise
arise arise
my Lady sweet Arise

In the history of the English language in the seventeenth century Milton occupies an anomalous position. In his general outlook on the character and problems of the language and in his efforts for linguistic regularity he suggests the rationalizing and standardizing tendencies of the eighteenth century. But in his actual practice in the matters of vocabulary, sentence structure, and syntax, he displays a versatility and extravagance which is characteristically Elizabethan. It is the purpose of this paper to investigate one of these aspects of Milton's English, namely, the chief features of his prose vocabulary, especially as illustrated in his own lexical innovations, and to draw certain conclusions from them in regard to his position as a great enricher of the English language.

Defoe, on his first arrival in Edinburgh in 1706 to serve his master Harley in the Union cause, selected Mrs. Agnes Campbell Anderson as his main Scottish printer. His choice of Mrs. Anderson should occasion no surprise; for in 1706 she had the largest printing establishment in the city; she was “printer to the good toun and college of the samen,” and she still held the Royal prerogative granted to her deceased husband Andrew Anderson in 1671. So far as I have been able to determine, Mrs. Anderson was Defoe's sole Scottish printer up to 1710 when he began to place some of his work with John Moncur. As is now fairly well known, Defoe's Review was printed in Edinburgh (1709–10) by Mrs. Anderson and off and on, say, to 1713 she probably printed an occasional pamphlet for him. It is certain that as late as 1712 she printed Defoe's A Seasonable Warning against the Insinuations of Papists and Jacobites. Being a Letter from a Gentleman at the Court of Hanover. In addition to the Edinburgh edition of the Review, James Chalmers credited Mrs. Anderson with the printing of ten of Defoe's writings published between 1706 and 1710. Of this number all save one, have been accredited to Defoe by several Defoe scholars including Dr. Henry Clinton Hutchins, the latest and one of the most reliable of Defoe bibliographers.

The phrase “ridicule, the test of truth,” which has long been associated with Lord Shaftesbury, was originally fathered upon him by both his disciples and his adversaries in controversies to determine whether ridicule be test or jest. Both groups expended quantities of forensic ammunition on the assumption that Shaftesbury had advocated the use of ridicule as a test of truth even though the phrase does not appear anywhere in the Characteristics. That Shaftesbury does not propose ridicule as a test of truth has been acknowledged for many years, but not widely enough, for many contemporary authorities repeat this erroneous assumption. Shaftesbury merely began the debate over ridicule by discussing its social utility, and the discussion was continued by Anthony Collins, Berkeley, Warburton, Akenside, John Brown, Allan Ramsay and Lord Karnes. The first of the group to refer to ridicule as a test of truth was Berkeley, and after his use of the phrase, nearly every eighteenth-century writer on ridicule took it up. Collins, who preceded him in discussing the ridiculous, had not even mentioned the relation of ridicule to truth. Brown was the first to state that Shaftesbury had advocated the doctrine, in fact, going even further in misrepresenting Shaftesbury by falsely charging that the latter had maintained that ridicule “may be successfully applied to the investigation of unknown truth.” A thorough analysis of Shaftesbury's real position on ridicule is necessary to show the manner in which he has been variously interpreted and misinterpreted. Furious as the controversy may have been in the eighteeenth century, it did not extend itself into the nineteenth, and today we may even apply to it Shaftesbury's own derogatory question directed against pedantic treatises: “What is already become of those mighty controversies with which some of the most eminent authors amused the world?” The present paper is not intended to perpetuate this mighty controversy, but merely to clarify Shaftesbury's meaning and show how the controversy developed. A subject which occupied famous philosophers, poets, physicians, divines and artists of the eighteenth century is a subject of both historic and esthetic importance.

In 1790 (with approbation 1793) a very quaint novel was published in Naples: Tizio o sia le vicende dell' umanita. The very reading of the table of contents is a most baffling experience. The first chapter speaks of Tizio, the hero of the novel, as a boy. In the second he is a girl. He is the paragon of a husband, but in the next pages he deserts his wife. He is born of rich parents and of poor parents. He is a slave … and a member of the Roman nobility. He is a gentleman—and a criminal, a pauper and fabulously rich. On one page he gives lavishly to the poor and needy, but on the next page he is one of the most antisocial of human beings. He is a scholar and an illiterate: has the most influential public position … and is an outlaw. He dies as an infant and of old age.

Among the changes in the art of fiction between the eighteenth century, when that art began to assume its modern shape, and the present, when it has arrived at what may be the ultimate degree of sophistication, one of the most basic is, doubtless, the increasing degree of particularity in the characterization. The change is perhaps mainly a phenomenon of the novel, which by its conditions is extremely favorable to minute character-studies; nevertheless, the problem of particularity affects all kinds of writing in which character is portrayed at all. The theoretical treatment of the issue in the eighteenth century broadened out beyond the limits of any one art, and a modern treatment may justifiably do the same.

The large collection of Croker papers in The William L. Clements Library of American History includes six bound volumes of holograph letters written by John Gibson Lockhart to John Wilson Croker, and called the Lockhart-Croker Correspondence. These letters have been known to scholars, and a number of extracts have been published as a means of throwing light on specific persons and problems. They have not, however, been systematically consulted for the information which they provide on the authorship of articles in the Quarterly. Since perhaps their chief value lies in such information, we offer here a list of titles and authors upon which Lockhart's testimony serves as useful and often conclusive evidence.

Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag ist Mörikes letzte Novelle und seine letzte vollgültige Dichtung überhaupt. Die künstlerische Eigenart des reifen Mörike hat sich hier zum Standbild verdichtet, zu seinem in jedem Sinn “vollendetsten” Prosawerk, bezaubernd durch die innere Ausgewogenheit von Heiterkeit und Ernst.

Charles Reade had the romancer's fondness for startling and rare, even unparalleled incidents, and heaped up thousands of such incidents in his thoroughly docomented notebooks. Yet throughout his fiction he utilized the same formulas and situations over and over again. Here is an anomaly which demands analysis and explanation.

While investigating the significance of Sordello in Browning's life, I recently traced certain resemblances between that poet's ideas and experiences as revealed in Sordello and Jung's psycho-therapeutic theories concerning the leaders of a culture. In one section of my article I detailed Jung's comments on the inarticulateness of “prophet poets,” such as Browning early aspired to be. Jung's explanations, however, are not entirely satisfactory, for their premises will not bear submitting to present-day laboratory and operational technique. I should like, therefore, to adopt another line of approach to the problem of Browning's inability to express himself clearly about what we may call metaphysical matters.

The sturdiest of historians show Christina of Sweden to have been one of the most gifted and accomplished women of any age. They show, too, that she has been one of the most harshly dealt with among the great women of history. She was a political genius, ruler of Sweden at its heyday, and the equal of the most influential sovereigns of Europe at the middle of the seventeenth century. Her counsel was paramount in shaping the Peace of Westphalia. She attracted to her court many of the most learned men of the century, corresponded with those who could or would not come to her, and was recognized as a savant in her own right. For her times she was exceptionally enlightened, tolerant, and generous. Yet both outrageous columnies and extravagant panegyrics have run riot to her discredit. Clio has shared in these misprisions, to be sure, but her sister Muses of the lyric, the drama, and the romance have been far guiltier in their sadistic severity.

The opinions in regard to certain problems of poetic diction expressed by sixteen English critics during the period extending from the time of the first writings of the Imagists to the start of World War II are the material of this survey. During this period a large number of problems were recognized. This study excludes those that must be solved through a consideration of meter, rime, and sound effects in general, and concentrates on those involving aspects of words that are peculiar to words. A “vertical” examination having been made of the discussions of these problems in the writings of each critic, a “horizontal” summary may now be offered.