In the autumn of 1940 Ernest Hemingway published his novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls. The book had been eagerly awaited. We knew well in advance that the setting of the story was the civil war in Spain, that event so rich in meaning for the recent history of the world. We knew also that Mr. Hemingway was writing, perhaps more than ever before, out of passionate concern over the apathy of mankind towards a growing menace to all western civilization. Few, however, had any clue to the enigmatic title. Then came publication day.

In 1923, the Parisian Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale invited Miguel de Unamuno to contribute to a special issue then being prepared in commemoration of the tercentenary of the birth of Pascal. Accordingly Unamuno wrote a short essay, “La Foi pascalienne”, seventh and last of the commemorative Etudes sur Pascal, as the volume was entitled. The following year, Unamuno, exiled in Paris, doubled the length of the essay and incorporated it as Chapter ix of his Agonie du christianisme, a book which, like the absorbed essay, had been composed for a French-reading public; for it was a cahier requested by P. L. Couchoud for inclusion in a series of monographs on Christianity. Both the essay and the book were translated into French by Unamuno's close friend, the hispanist Jean Cassou.

Ces lignes de Valéry Larbaud proposent à la critique une tâche considérable, utile assurément, mais des plus délicates. Nulle question en effet n'a soulevé plus de controverses que la notion d'influence en littérature. Or, de tous les noms que cite Larbaud, celui de Baudelaire est l'un des plus fréquemment mentionnés par Proust, qui a également consacré un article à l'auteur des Fleurs du Mal. Il est donc légitime de penser qu'une étude de cette nature pourrait jeter un jour supplémentaire, non seulement sur la personnalité et sur l'œuvre de Proust, mais encore sur celles de Baudelaire lui-même. De nombreuses questions se présentent immédiatement à l'esprit: Proust a-t-il fait à Baudelaire des emprunts directs? A-t-il trouvé chez lui des vues sur le monde et sur l'art semblables à ses propres conceptions? Baudelaire est-il à l'origine de l'esthétique proustienne? L'auteur du Temps retrouvé n'a-t-il au contraire tiré de l'œuvre de son prédécesseur qu'un encouragement à la dépasser et à affirmer son originalité propre? S'est-il borné notamment à juger que certaines audaces de Baudelaire justifiaient les siennes? Sans prétendre apporter une solution à tous ces problèmes, l'on peut examiner les analogies existant entre la vie et le caractère des deux hommes et étudier, d'après les textes, ce qui, dans l'œuvre de Baudelaire, semble avoir plus particulièrement attiré l'attention de Proust. Peut-être alors sera-t-on mieux en mesure de préciser la nature de l'influence du poète sur le romancier.

William Dean Howells became the first great champion of realism in American fiction, not by setting out to reach this goal, but as the logical culmination of his own development as a writer. He began to write about his own experiences and observations in the natural course of his job as a newspaper reporter. Later as American consul in Venice he continued to record and comment on his experience. Fiction entered his writing in a mild way in Their Wedding Journey (1871), when he combined experiences from two trips, created the characters of Basil and Isabel March, and invented little episodes to enliven the travelogue. In succeeding novels plot superseded geography as the unifying element, and characters were more fully drawn, but his own experiences continued to provide the raw material out of which his stories were formed.

Until 1876 Nietzsche paid Luther very high compliments. The works and letters of his first creative period abound with praise for the German reformer. The youthful Nietzsche, professor of Greek and philosopher of culture, more than once expressed his intellectual indebtedness to the spirit of Wittenberg. In those early years he felt himself the heir of the Lutheran Reformation and the inveterate foe of Roman Catholicism. Though anything but an orthodox Protestant, he was nevertheless firmly convinced of the intellectual and moral superiority of Protestantism to the Church of Rome. As late as 1876 he looked upon Protestantism as a source of light and freedom and upon Roman Catholicism as the embodiment of darkness and intellectual bondage. However, all his complimentary utterances on Luther and the Reformation are scarcely based on an intimate knowledge of the man and the movement he inspired. They rather express little more than the idea of Luther held by most educated Protestants of that day. What he said reflects the general, favorable attitude characteristic of Protestant Germany: Luther the great hero of the Reformation, the first representative of modern culture, without whom the world in which we live would be quite unthinkable. In other words, Nietzsche identified himself as late as Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (1876) with the then prevalent Protestant opinion of the Reformation: “Halten wir an dem … Geiste fest, der sich in der deutschen Reformation … offenbart hat …” (IV, 54).

From “Head's” in New York, on August 23, 1844, James Fenimore Cooper wrote Mrs. Cooper: “Charles Wilkes is in this house superintending the publication of his work. It will be a very magnificent book, and I make no doubt will do him credit.” This book is the handsome and profusely illustrated Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition During the Years 1838-1842, a record prepared by Lieutenant Wilkes, commander of the expedition sent out by the United States Navy. In the preface to The Sea Lions (1849) and several times in the novel itself Cooper refers to Wilkes, but the extent of his indebtedness to the Narrative seems not to have been pointed out.

The Lyric, it has been generally thought, is of all poetic genres the most spontaneous and artless, which may explain why relatively little attention has been paid to its art. Unity, it is agreed, is essential; yet, aside from references to the unifying function of the refrain, attention has been centered almost exclusively upon unity of idea or prose sense. As to the part played by style, diction, prosody, imagery, and rhetorical devices in achieving unity and conveying what the writer had to express, little is said in discussions of this or, indeed, of other kinds of poetry. It may, therefore, be illuminating to examine a number of well-known lyrics to see if all are formless cris du cœur or if some reveal structure as well as emotion, and if repetition, parallelism, correspondences in meter or language, and other devices, prosodie or rhetorical, seem to be used for the sake of unifying the piece and of expressing its “meaning.” Shelley's songs are admirably suited to this purpose since they are numerous, varied, and familiar, and since they are generally regarded, by admirers and detractors alike, as approaching the beau ideal of the lyric: spontaneous, formless, and vague.

John Nichols, as printer of the Works of the English Poets, was frequently asked by Samuel Johnson to supply material while the biographical prefaces were being composed. Boswell (friend of Nichols and fellow member with him of Johnson's Essex-Head Club) recorded the fact that Nichols did supply Johnson with material for the Lives. Boswell introduced, with the following statement, a few of the thirty-one letters from Johnson to Nichols: “That he, however, had a good deal of trouble, and some anxiety in carrying on the work, we see from a series of letters to Mr. Nichols the printer, whose variety of literary inquiry and obliging disposition, rendered him very useful to Johnson.”

Theobald, thus weak and ignorant, thus mean and faithless, thus petulant and ostentatious, by the good luck of having Pope for his enemy, has escaped, and escaped alone, with reputation, from this undertaking“ of editing Shakespeare. In these words Johnson touched on one of the more troublesome ironies of literary history, the fact that such highly gifted men as Pope and Warburton had failed to achieve Shakespearean texts that their contemporaries and scholarly posterity could praise. Pope's Shakespeare, printed but twice, had been buried by Theobald; and Warburton's Shakespeare, printed but once, had been interred by Edwards. The question for Johnson was whether his own forthcoming edition would suffer a similar fate.

Joseph Addison's Cato is the most important English verse drama of the eighteenth century; Allardyce Nicoll calls it “a landmark in the history of tragedy.” In addition, it is of great political interest, for its production in the turbulent year before the death of Queen Anne made it the rallying piece for Whigs and Tories, both of whom enrolled its propaganda on their side. Hence any document which throws new light on its composition is significant for that reason alone. That Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote a critique of Cato before it was produced, and that Addison followed several of her suggestions for improving his tragedy add to the importance of such a discovery. As a letter-writer Lady Mary has a secure reputation, but her brilliant, aggressive intellect impelled her to take a far more active and varied part in the literary scene of her time than has previously been realized. In her serving as play-doctor for such an influential drama as Cato we have further evidence of her versatility.

During his own lifetime Bishop Joseph Hall was nicknamed “our spiritual Seneca” by Henry Wotton and later called “our English Seneca” by Thomas Fuller; as a result it has recently become fashionable to associate him with seventeenth-century English Neo-Stoicism. A seventeenth-century Neo-Stoic is of interest presumably because he points in the direction of eighteenth-century Neo-Stoicism, away from a revealed religion toward a natural religion, away from faith toward reason. In a recent article Philip A. Smith calls Hall “the leading Neo-Stoic of the seventeenth century” and says that he enthusiastically preached the “Neo-Stoic brand of theology” to which Sir Thomas Browne objected. This theology maintained that “to follow ‘right reason’ was to follow nature, which was the same thing as following God.” Smith goes on to say that “what most attracted seventeenth-century Christian humanists like Bishop Hall was the fact that Stoicism attempted to frame a theory of the universe and of the individual man which would approximate a rule of life in conformity with an ‘immanent cosmic reason‘”—though in the same paragraph he also mentions the point “that Neo-Stoic divines of the seventeenth century were interested in Stoicism almost exclusively from the ethical point of view.” He cites Lipsius to show how a Christian might reach an approximation between the Stoic Fate and Christian Providence, leaving the reader to assume that Hall might also have made this approximation. He says that “the natural light of reason, as expounded by the Stoic philosophers, became, for seventeenth-century Neo-Stoics, the accepted guide to conduct” and that “religious and moral writers endeavored to trace a relationship between moral and natural law which in effect resulted in the practical code of ethical behavior commonly associated with Neo-Stoicism.”

One of the main characteristics of the Renaissance was its break with the attitude towards life of mediaeval society. The new Hellenistic, classical, humanistic spirit taught the Renaissance man that, far from being a groveling worm, he was a glorious creature capable of infinite individual development in a world which was his to interrogate, explore, and enjoy. The Renaissance exalted the human element, stressed the importance of human interests, and asserted the dignity of man—a trend which may be noted in most authors of the period. Rabelais portrays his heroes as giants, to whom nothing seems impossible, and places no limitations on their actions. Shakespeare writes: “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel, in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!” Viewed from the standpoint of a social behaviorist, the Renaissance teaches mediaeval man, whose interests as an individual were completely subordinated to his function as an element in a feudalistic social unit, that it is possible and right for him to assert and realize self. Social conformity is no longer the only possible relation between man and the world about him. Therefore, the Renaissance man, more energetic and enthusiastic than his mediasval forefather, takes pleasure in a certain spirit of opposition to supposed human and known social limitations; he glories in nonconformity, he rejoices in isolation and in standing up against society and in consciously not doing that which he knows the society he lives in expects him to do. “To brave the disapproval of men is tonic. … Conflict is a necessity of the active soul.” In Spain, as elsewhere, the Renaissance exerted the same influence and a like need for self-expression was felt. Let us then examine the state of mind of Calderonian characters, who, living in the seventeenth century, should by then be well imbued with Renaissance thought, in an effort to determine the fundamental psychological needs underlying their urge towards self-realization.

Dr. Johnson said of The Two Gentlemen of Verona: “When 1 read this play I cannot but think that I discover both in the serious and ludicrous scenes, the language and sentiments of Shakespear.” But this play has since fared ill with the critics. Ignored by Coleridge, it was passed off noncommitally by Hazlitt with a few quotations from Speed and Julia. The depreciation of the play for various kinds and degrees of ineptness and obtuseness by such observers as Dowden, Chambers, G. P. Baker, Quiller-Couch, Dover Wilson, Tannenbaum, Charlton, and Van Doren, has tended to obscure its true import. Even the well-intentioned defenses of W. W. Lawrence, Alvin Shaler, and S. A. Small have not been able to reinstate Two Gentlemen into a position of genuine significance in Shakespeare's development.

Francesco Sansovino (1521-83), prolific translator, publisher, editor, and polygraph, deserves a place in the history of Renaissance culture, not because he can lay any real claim to originality but because he played a significant rôle in the dissemination of Italian literature. Of his many works one of the most popular and most important was without doubt his Concetti politici, a collection of maxims which first appeared in 1578, but which was subsequently republished in modified form in 1583, 1588, 1598, and 1608, together with Guicciardini's Av-vertimenti and Lottini's Avvedimenti civili. More important still, the original text of 1578 was translated into English in 1590 by Robert Hitchcock under the title of Quintessence of Wit, and as such was to make its contribution to the development of the English maxim and the English essay, as Elbert N. S. Thompson pointed out some years ago. In the preface to the 1578 edition, Sansovino states that he drew his 805 maxims from two histories and thirty-four authors, whom he lists by name. Among these authorities are Aristotle, Bembo, Cicero, Comines, Giovio, Guevara, Guicciardini, Livy, Plato, Polybius, Sallust, Tacitus, and Thucydides. The list, however, lacks one name, that of Machiavelli, the one writer that Sansovino consulted perhaps more than any other.

The Corpus Christi play in sixteenth-century Spain evolved as it did because poets were consciously searching for a dramatic formula which should be appropriate to a sacramental play. The idea of a sacramental play, an auto sacramental, was new at that time. A sacramental drama had never before been attempted, either in Spain or elsewhere. Corpus Christi was celebrated, in. Spain as in Europe at large, with performances of mystery-type plays derived from the tropes of the liturgy. The earliest Corpus plays in Spain were Nativity plays which dramatists scarcely troubled to adapt. As the problem of making the Christmas play appropriate to Corpus Christi forced itself on the attention of dramatists a new idea of religious drama emerged.

French musical art during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries found one of its highest forms of expression in the chanson, in musical settings of poems of a popular nature, much closer to the heart of the people than the complicated and refined poetry of the grands rhétori-queurs. With composers of the Burgundian School—Binchois (d. 1467), Dufay (d. 1474), and other musicians connected with the Burgundian Court—the chanson, usually in one of the formes fixes (rondeau, virelai, ballade), reached a height hardly surpassed since: simple, elegant settings for one or two voices with instrumental accompaniment, in marked on‐trast to the complex and recondite ars nova of the preceding century. Even in their sacred music, composers of the Burgundian School made frequent use of the secular song, building their motets and masses upon popular melodies as cantus firmi (tenor melodies upon which a polyphonic structure was erected). With the rise of the Netherlandish School in the latter half of the fifteenth century and with its trend toward a more vocal style, chiefly under the influence of Ockeghem, Buynois, and Obrecht, polyphonic settings of the chanson became popular. In these, music and poetry alike were characterized by greater flexibility in composition: the formes fixes gradually gave way to free forms, generally light, graceful, and spirited in tone; and the music, although adhering to the imitative style of the motet, achieved a similar lightness and grace through the use of quick rhythmic patterns, short phrases with many repeated sections, and a leaning toward homophonic techniques. Most of the great Flemish composers, headed by Josquin des Prés, included music of this type among their productions; but it is perhaps Clément Janequin who best exemplifies the chanson at its gayest, its lightest, and its most frivolous. The popularity of the chanson is witnessed, further, not only by many chansonniers in MS from the late fifteenth century but also by the publication of nearly 600 chansons during the short space of twenty years (1529-49) by two editors alone—Pierre Attaingnant at Paris and Jacques Moderne at Lyons.

Definite Progress in Ancrene Riwle studies has been achieved in recent years. Work on the diplomatic editions of the ME MSS. has been steadily proceeding and these texts will shortly begin to appear in print. The year 1944 was marked by the appearance of the Latin version edited by Charlotte D'Evelyn, and also by the publication of the late J. A- Herbert's edition of the French version preserved in British Museum MS. Cotton Vitellius F vii. This edition, the product of patient and exacting labor devoted to deciphering a MS. long considered hopelessly illegible through damage in the Cottonian fire, a labor carried to completion despite failing health, amidst the dislocation, privation, and distress of total war, constitutes for those who knew Herbert a fitting memorial to his long career of expert and meticulous scholarship. A second French version of the Ancrene Riwle, forming part of the collection of religious tracts contained in Trinity College Cambridge MS. 883 (R.14.7), had been discovered by Miss Hope Emily Allen in 1936, and described by her in relation to its general characteristics in 1940, when she conjectured that it would prove to be distinct from the Vitellius French version and an independent translation from an English original. The text of the Ancrene Riwle portion of this version is still unprinted except for the short passages cited for illustration by-Miss Allen, and consequently most scholars of Middle English have had little opportunity to form an opinion of the nature and interest of its text. Since the diplomatic editions of all the Ancrene Riwle MSS under way for the EETS naturally proceed slowly, although a promising start has already been made, it seems advisable to offer now some evidence as to the textual problems raised by this second French version whose text, although cut up and expanded for use in the “Compilation”, appears likely to prove very valuable for the study of the interrelationships of the various Ancrene Riwle texts. It is here proposed to offer for the consideration of Ancrene Riwle scholars a representative specimen of the Trinity French Text in order to prepare the way for the diplomatic edition to follow later. The passage chosen corresponds to that printed in 1920 by Joseph Hall from two Cambridge MSS., Corpus Christi College 402 and Caius College 234, with textual comments and accompanied by variants from all the MSS then known. This is the passage in which the Seven Deadly Sins are represented allegorically as animals, and in which is described the Devil's Court where each type of sinner is assigned his appropriate position and function.

Critics and scholars have for years been aware that one of the characteristic devices of the author of the Chanson de Roland is his use of a three-fold rhythm in the development of the story. By this term they have meant that the usual practice of coincidence of episode with strophe, or laisse, is not observed. Instead of using one laisse for one incident or unit of an incident, as was customary in epic style, the author employs occasionally what is called laisses similaires, or strophes where the action or incident is repeated in a second or sometimes a third strophe with a slightly different wording. Anyone who has read the Chanson de Roland will have noticed these repetitive stanzas and most commentators of the poem have called attention to them. Not a few scholars have gone into the history of this device, but its aesthetic purpose has been glossed over in rather general terms.

Four leaves of the Skeireins (I, II, V, VII) are preserved in the Bibli-oteca Ambrosiana, Milan, under Sig. E 147 parte superiore. VI, which also belongs to this group, has been missing since 1943. In August of that year Milan underwent heavy bombing, in which thirteen halls of the Ambrosiana were wrecked, ten others hit, and some 80,000 volumes reduced to ashes. Though the Gothic palimpsests of the Ambrosian collection were moved to insure their safety, the sixth leaf of the Skeireins disappeared unaccountably, and all attempts to find it have been unavailing.