Of the British ballads not included in Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads one of the most interesting is that which, following the example of Professor Tolman's correspondent, I shall call The Bramble Briar. Altho in poetic quality it is inferior even to that broadside version of Chevy Chase the serious discussion of which in the Spectator provoked the raillery of Wagstaffe, yet I have ventured to deal with it here at some length; for it is interesting not only because of its possible relation to Boccaccio, Hans Sachs, and Keats, but in itself. It is a fairly clear instance of what to some expounders of ballad doctrine is a contradiction in terms: it is a traditional vulgar ballad.

It is my purpose in this paper to consider the quantity of, the syllables in twenty-five lines of Milton's Paradise Lost. The selection, given below, was read by three different men. The first is an instructor in vocal expression, the second is a graduate student in language and phonetics, and the third is a professor in the Department of General Linguistics. All three are connected with the University of Michigan.

It has been generally recognized by students of the mediæval drama, that certain of the moral tales found in collections of exempla and in commonplace books influenced indirectly the morality play. This inference seems to be drawn as much from evidence of the dramatic possibilities inherent in specific exempla as from evidence of their widespread popularity. An example of a didactic story with such dramatic adaptability is offered by the tale of the penitent usurer. Its theme, the struggle between demons and angels for the soul of man, seems to foreshadow the conflict-between-the-vices-and-virtues type of morality. The number of mss., moreover, which have survived, proves that the tale was disseminated throughout England and the Continent, and therefore would be easily accessible to playwrights in search of dramatic material. Furthermore, the same inference may be drawn from the analogy between plays embodying favorite miracles or fabliaux and morality plays probably based upon popular exempla. For, although no scholar has hitherto shown the dependence of any extant morality play upon a specific exemplum, yet it is almost inconceivable that well-known didactic tales, obviously suited to dramatic purposes and extensively circulated in collections of exempla and in commonplace books, should not have been used by the makers of moral plays.

There are few things in literature so beautiful as the endings of Milton's three long poems. Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, the great Puritan poems of sin and righteousness, end, each in its own way, on a quiet note of reconciliation with life. In all three the story tapers off and there is no final climax. In all three the grand style sinks into the simple, the music dies away on the slow chords of a cadence, the mighty pinions on which the poet was lifted in his flight float him gently down to earth again. And in all three, though he does not cry “back into life, back into life” with Groethe, he drops back into it instinctively. Like the skylark, he is true to the kindred points of heaven and home. In Paradise Lost is the finest of these closes, and concerning the meaning of this one there has, of late, arisen some question.

The first extant edition of Tamburlaine bears the date of 1590, but we have evidence of its existence as early as 1588 in the well known reference to “that atheist Tamburlan” found in the address To the Gentlemen Readers, which forms the introduction to Greene's Perimedes the Blacke-Smith. Many authorities give 1587 as the date of the play, but there is no direct evidence for it. The date of the first appearance of Tamburlaine on the stage is of such importance in the history of the English drama that any evidence bearing upon the matter, however slight or however doubtful, should be brought to light for the consideration of students of Elizabethan literature. This is my apology for presenting a matter that seems to me somewhat doubtful; it may turn out to be of no value whatever as evidence; on the other hand, some one of keener insight may see in it strong corroboration of other evidence, or show it to be conclusive in itself.

Among the great English poets of the Romantic period Shelley was the poet of religious as well as of social and political revolt. His mind was preoccupied, especially in the formative years of his life, with the subject of religion, and it is significant that the piece of writing which first attracted any considerable attention to him was the essay The Necessity of Atheism, published in 1811 when he was eighteen and a student of Oxford. The essay not only is revolutionary in spirit, but also reveals a mind precociously occupied with religious problems.

The following paper will give a preliminary statement of a new conjecture as to the origin of the Ancren Biwle. It is proposed to identify the three maidens for whom the treatise was composed with the “tribus puellis, Emmae, videlicet, et Gunildae et Cristinae,” to whom, according to the charter printed by Dugdale, the hermitage of Kilburn, with its appurtenances, was granted by the Abbot and convent of Westminster sometime between the years 1127 and 1135. The hermitage was endowed permanently with money, land and beneficia, in return for which the inmates were to be the beadsmen of the abbey and of its confederate, the Abbey of Fécamp. The house at Kilburn was to be under the protection of St. Peter's, but it was to have complete independence in regard to its internal affairs. The establishment thus made had a continuous existence till the Reformation, under the title, which it seems to have acquired very early, of “Kilburn Priory.”