In 1932 John H. Birss caused something of a sensation in Keats circles by his discovery of the MS of the letter Keats wrote to Charles Cowden Clarke on October 9, [1816]—one of the two earliest known Keats letters. Although fragments of it had been printed in Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke's Recollections of Writers (1878), and before that in Clarke's reminiscences of Keats published in the Atlantic Monthly (1861) and the Gentleman's Magazine (1874), its full text was not known to Keats scholars until its discoverer printed it in Louis A. Holman's Within the Compass of a Print Shop (Boston: October, 1932) and in Notes and Queries for November 5, 1932. In both periodicals, an editorial note appended to the text of the letter described the circumstances under which the MS had been discovered: Birss, looking through “a little-known catalogue of manuscript letters and documents” in search of letters by Melville, happened to open the volume to K instead of M, and there found “a notation of an early Keats letter.” Following this clue, he succeeded in locating the holograph itself in the collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia.

Much of the richness, as well as the fascination, of Rimbaud's art is due to the incongruities with which it is studded. These incongruities indicate a boyish sense of humor noticeable even in his treatment of serious subjects, imparting to them a certain cocasserie—a tough and sardonic humor indeed for a boy, but still a distinctive quality, savored by many. Like Hamlet, Arthur Rimbaud was given to madness, half feigned, half tragically-true, and his peevish jokes are of the same kind as those of that other embittered youth. These surprises also serve to color his descriptive poems, in verse and in prose, and in fact they may be thought to arise necessarily in the poetic process consciously cultivated by Rimbaud the voyant, who was not afraid to force his senses out of focus as a means of gaining access to the paradise of pure truth.

There are two truths about death: first, it is certain; second, its significance has always been a mystery. Man may think of death in one of two ways. He may consider it the goal of life and dedicate himself to preparation for it; or he may consider it a hostile power that attacks and destroys life. The idea that death is a desirable goal was heightened by many romantics of the early nineteenth century to a fascinated interest in death—a kind of intoxication. For them life existed for the sake of death. But in their philosophy death was merely a phase of “Werden und Vergehen.” They longed for and often sought death because they saw beyond it “absolute life”, life unhampered by the limitations of individual existence. This romantic concept, of course, had nothing in common with the traditional Christian idea of immortality.

In discussing the important English dramatic critics during the first half of the nineteenth century (Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, John Forster, and George Henry Lewes), William Archer concluded that “Lewes alone has anything of note to say upon the principles of dramatic composition, as a living art”, that “Lewes was probably the most highly-trained thinker who ever applied himself to the study of theatrical art in England.” He pointed out that Lewes not only had a “special and personal interest in the art of the playwright which his predecessors lacked” but also had “much more attractive matter for discussion” because the “modern drama, the drama as we know it to-day, was just coming into existence, or rather was just making its existence felt in England.” Consequently it was

With a few exceptions, reviewers in 1851 found little formal unity in George Borrow's Lavengro, but rather thought it a series of slightly interrelated sketches coming to an abrupt, inconclusive end. As they read a work not yet completed, however, their estimate is understandable, for The Romany Rye, comprising about the last third of the entire story, did not appear till 1857. Later critics, even with the complete Lavengro-Romany Rye before them, have paid little or no attention to its form. Their tendency has been to characterize the work, along with Borrow's other books, as generally “episodic” and “picaresque.” Remarks such as these are typical: “[Borrow's] books are planless, as picaresque books are apt to be”; “Borrow … possessed no idea of construction”; and “Lavengro is no more than a collection of incidents and dialogues.” A recent and distinguished literary history describes Borrow's major works as “episodic, inchoate, and inconsequential” and “strange, untidy, racy.” Edd Winfield Parks is unusual among critics in that he recognizes the “creative” and “conscious artist” in Borrow, yet he says: “Here [in Borrow's works] is no structural art, no objectified form; it is not as an artist that Borrow must be judged.”

The two following essays are separate studies joined by a common source. The unpublished Tennyson poems, Hail, Briton! and Tithon, are taken from the Heath MS. at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England.

John Moore Heath was a college friend of Tennyson, a member, like him, of the Cambridge Apostles group. During the years of his closest friendship with Tennyson, 1883–35, Heath was an assistant tutor of Trinity College. The two men met there and corresponded often; at the same time they were both associated with other members of the old Cambridge group. Like most of these literati of the 1830's, Heath kept a Commonplace Book in which he laboriously and faithfully copied out the work of his friends, Arthur Hallam, Richard Trench, William Donne, Frederick, Septimus, Edward, and Alfred Tennyson. The flyleaf of his MS book Heath inscribed with the date September 24, 1832, clearly the } time at which he began to record the poetry. The Tennyson entries, however, he certainly made later, most of them in 1833, probably all within the limit 1835.

Students of Faust have known for many years that Goethe was influenced by Swedenborg when he wrote that tragedy. They have differed only as to the extent and degree of this influence. The list of earlier investigators is too long to thank them individually and, at the same time, to point out why it is necessary once more to scrutinize this influence as far as the last scene of Faust is concerned. In general, it may be said that they have concentrated their investigations mainly on the way the “spirit-seer” of the eighteenth century influenced the spirits in our scene as to appearance, speech, food, abodes, and other incidentals. Since they all started their investigation with the generally accepted assumption that Faust had “saved” himself through his last earthly endeavors in behalf of his fellow-men, they saw no reason to check the way Goethe depicts his salvation against Swedenborg's doctrine of redemption. This investigation starts from the opposite assumption, viz. that the hero at the end of his terrestial journey has reached the lowest and most tragic moment of his life (see my “Julirevolution, St. Simonismus und die Faustpartien von 1831, ”Zeitschrift fuer deutsche Philologie, vol. 60).

Already at an early stage in his life, when the Urfaust was being conceived, did Goethe sense the dynamic essence of the universe. He was deeply aware of the fact that the whole of existence, both in its physical and spiritual manifestations, is in a constant state of flux, with conflicting forces acting upon each other, eventually weaving themselves into a harmonious whole. This vast dynamic urge extends far beyond the biological into the very essence of the entire physical universe to the point where even matter itself is energy. His conviction became strengthened when he later took up the study of the natural sciences, and it played a most basic rôle in his view of life as an old man. Out of this idea of existence as ceaseless activity, which found varied poetic expression in his works, emerged a second concept equally important to an understanding of his philosophy: the concept of the polarity of conflicting antagonistic forces in nature, the name for which he took from the polarity of magnetism. Having accepted the fact that the nature of matter is force, he advanced to the idea that this force never expresses itself in a single phenomenon, but in two diagrammatically opposed entities or forces. Proceeding from the same point of departure they divide, repulse each other, finally to attract and unite again.

Everyone knows that “The Prelude in the Theatre” belongs to Faust; that it has introduced the so-called First Part of the tragedy ever since the earliest publication of the great play in 1808; that nowhere in Goethe's written or oral statements can the slightest indication be detected from which we may infer that this prelude had not been from the very beginning in the very spot where it is found today? All this is unquestionably true; and yet, without any claim to final conclusiveness, I should like to consider the possibility whether or not, within the organic structure of Goethe's works, the Prelude in the Theatre may have grown on a branch which was not the one that produced Faust.

In the year 1798 even an ardent Federalist could be vexed at the grossly inaccurate picture of America to be found in British periodicals. One young Federalist who was more annoyed than most was Elihu Hubbard Smith, a New York physician and literary man and erstwhile Hartford Wit. On his own initiative, Smith wrote a series of brief biographies of the Wits which he sent to John Aikin, editor of the Monthly Magazine and British Register. In an accompanying letter he pointed out to Aikin that his magazine not only ignorantly misrepresented America to the British public but also taught many young Americans to see their country in a false and unfavorable light. He offered the biographical sketches as a step toward correcting the situation and also proposed that he organize his friends into a corps of correspondents to ensure Mr. Aikin's progressive enlightenment. Of these friends he wrote:

If it were critically sound to interpret a verse or lines of verse apart from their context, lines 13–14 of Milton's Sonnet XX, “Lawrence of vertuous Father”, might present an unfortunate ambiguity; for if the verses,

are examined alone, “spare” may seem to mean either “refrain” or “afford.” Both meanings have in fact been urged; Thomas Keightley and David Masson represent the opposed positions. The former wrote, “spare, sc. time.—interpose, i.e. place them in the intervals of his serious occupations.” Masson commented:

Alonso Gerónimo de Salas Barbadillo, keen wit and talented writer, began his literary career in the early years of the seventeenth century and pursued it until his death in 1635. Personal friend of Cervantes and Lope de Vega, he was an esteemed associate of the many writers residing in Madrid. Staunchly individualistic, he was at the same time very much a part of his social and literary milieu. Posterity relegates him to the lesser ranks of those who wrought creatively in the seventeenth century; nevertheless, he has been receiving his due increasingly in the last half-century in studies and editions.

In the Quarto and Folio versions of Hamlet, Act ii, Sc. ii, occurs the following bit of byplay during Hamlet's conversation with Polonius:

The Elizabethans were familiar with scenes in which stage blood was liberally used. The tradition was old. In Cambises (1560's), “Enter Cruelty and Murder with bloody hands.” They grasp their victim:

Burckhardt has remarked that during the Renaissance culture and enlightenment were almost powerless against astrology, kept alive as it was by the ardent imagination of the people, and their passionate wish to penetrate the future. But what he calls the “delusion” of astral influence charmed even the cultured and enlightened, and for rather more complex reasons than he suggests. The modern scholar, in analyzing Renaissance trends, tends to denounce the mind that surrenders to such influences in a rationalist atmosphere. A belief in the occult powers of the stars over Man did not, however, necessarily betray intellectual backwardness, nor was disbelief a proof of great enlightenment. Astrology, though often tolerated by princes of the Church, generally incurred the censure of theologians, and such a fatalistic belief, denying free will and granting powers of revelation to stars named for pagan dieties, appeared to the clerical mind as an incitement to idolatry. In many cases, then, the opponents of the art were conformists, not rebels—nor were they immune to superstition. Even so formidable an enemy of the stars as Pico della Mirandola toyed with magic and the cabala, and often directed his attack at science in general. On the other hand, such a champion of astrology as Mellin de Saint-Gelays argued that Man should remain unhindered in his desire to fathom the mysterious forces of the universe. If man remains earthbound, never lifting eyes or mind heavenward, wrote Mellin, he will sink to a level beneath all earthly creatures instead of becoming their master. For the French poet, prediction by the stars is not the chief purpose of the true astrologer, but a mere accessory of his earthly and heavenly researches. Such a defense of astrology as this stems from a reluctance to forbid any phase of Man's activity in the search for truth, an attitude which, though uncritical, remains consistent with the rationalistic spirit.

There can be no doubt that Raphael Hythloday, like the Utopians, is persuaded that communism is the solution for the social, economic, and political evils of the early sixteenth century. But what is the real attitude of Thomas More himself toward communism? Which of the following does the author of Utopia consider communism to be: a practical remedy? an impossible vision? an unattainable, but desirable, ideal? No definite answer can be given until one has reviewed, at least cursorily, the historical background to the views of the Renaissance toward communism.

The meaning of the two lines in the Prologue that refer to the Shipman's yearly trips to Bordeaux with the wine fleet—

—has long been a source of uneasiness to students of Chaucer, an uneasiness which arises in large part from the tone of the rest of the portrait. Since we are told that this man of Dartmouth who sailed the Maudeleyne was without peer as a seaman and without mercy as a pirate, we expect greater knavery than a purely superficial reading of the lines indicates—that the Shipman drank some of his cargo at night. The desire for an interpretation appropriate to the Shipman's general nature led Skeat so far as to suggest that he was a smuggler as well as a pirate: “Very many a draught of wine had be drawn (stolen or carried off from Bordeaux, cask and all) while the chapman (merchant or supercargo to whom the wines belonged) was asleep.” While most of the more recent editors take it for granted that the Shipman's thieving had to do with the legitimate cargo which he had on board, their uncertainty as to its significance is evident in such a gloss as “The shipman stole much of the wine which he was carrying for a merchant; he extracted, in other words, some of the cargo.” The disparity here between the “much” of the first clause and the “some” of the last one is a nice example of the persistent hesitance about Chaucer's meaning.

Two indispensable prerequisites for successful research in Romance etymology are sustained attention and patience. The worker is at liberty to select problems that suit his personal taste, to assemble a wealth of pertinent data, to examine solutions proposed in earlier inquiries, to cherish the idea of having found the clue to issues previously deemed insoluble. Yet this preparatory work, no matter how meticulously planned and conscientiously carried out, may not yield immediate results: the easily accessible data not infrequently form a vicious circle, the explanations of pioneer workers more often than not serve to confuse rather than to enlighten the present day explorer. With his entire apparatus of research ready for action at a moment's notice, the etymologist, in a state of protracted suspense, must withstand the temptation of prematurely declaring his work concluded. Patiently, humbly, yet with unfailing alertness, he must await the moment of great satisfaction when a chance find (perhaps a passage in a not readily available book or a record in a new dialect glossary) may supply the one unexpected form, usually a precious relic, which helps him to break the vicious circle and step out into the open. This newly discovered form will prove a priceless aid in the reconstruction of the bridge between Latin and Romance; not one of those hazardous suspension bridges on which some nineteenth century etymologists were fond of performing their acrobatics, but a solid, pleasant bridge, allowing for comfortable walking and an enjoyable view of the surrounding landscape. The history of Spanish terco and its cognates is apt to show how radically such a casual find can advance our knowledge.

As Heinrich Zimmer—GGA (1890), p. 818, n. 1—saw correctly, the name Arthur is the regular derivative of the Lat. Artorius in Brythonic. Thurneysen—ZCPh, xx (1933), 136—remarks: “Zimmer hatte gesehen, dass Arthur die regelmässige britannische Entwicklung von lat. (Artor oder) Artorius sein kann”, the long Lat. o becoming u in Celtic.