The pages that follow embody an attempt to present the verse forms of the Poema as transmitted in the manuscript in greater completeness than was possible in the study recently published in the “Revue Hispanique,” and to invite a more detailed and serious investigation of this subject than is usually bestowed upon it. It is only on the basis of a strictly critical discussion of all the questions involved in the elucidation of the text of our epic, in its relation to other contemporary narrative documents and poetic works, that the difficult problem of its verse structure can be brought nearer to a satisfactory solution. Nothing can be more contrary to the spirit of science than to judge an admittedly anomalous and doubtful form without the light shed upon it by the organic whole to which it belongs, or to explain the fissures between hemistichs of three and twelve syllables with the supposition of the equalizing effect of musical rendition when there is no evidence of such rendition and the sense has suffered as much as the metrical symmetry.

By way of caution a sub-title should be added: “A Set of Questions”—questions, that is, to which I do not presume to return a positive answer.

The classical parallels (Vergil, Homer) of Beowulf's obsequies as well as the Jordanes parallel are well known to students of Old English literature (cf. Klaeber's edition, pp. 209, 213, 216). It is especially the latter which has commonly been considered of very great value as illustrating the authentic character of the notable closing scene of Beowulf. “The accuracy [of the Beowulfian funeral],” says Chadwick1—to cite an English authority—“is confirmed in every point by archeological or contemporary literary evidence. We may refer especially to the account of Attila's funeral given by Jordanes.” Again, “the agreement between the two versions could not possibly be greater; here [i.e., in the recital of Attila's obsequies] everything is Germanic”—this was the verdict of Kögel,2 who regarded that 49th chapter of Jordanes' history3 as a most precious source of information on ancient Germanic poetry. It is true, certain differences between the sixth century and the eighth century version did not escape observation, as may be seen from Chambers' Introduction to Beowulf, p. 124, or from Klaeber's Edition, p. 216. But it remained for Edward Schröder's incisive article (ZfdA. LIX, 240-44) to aim a deadly blow at the famous account of Attila's funeral as currently interpreted.

Since the preparation of “Some Notes on the Pearl,” a new edition of the poem by Gollancz has appeared, issued in 1921 but too late for use in my former article. Besides, some new notes have been accumulating from further study of the poem, and another article seems warranted.

It is a widely accepted commonplace in Marlowe criticism that the character of Tamburlaine was essentially created by Marlowe himself. From this assumption it was easy to advance a step further and declare that in creating this character the dramatist was actually drawing his own spiritual portrait, so that we may accept the figure of the Tartar conqueror as a faithful expression of Marlowe's own personality. Indeed, from this point of view Tamburlaine, being free from the hampering restrictions of flesh and blood, might be regarded perhaps as more genuinely Marlowe than Marlowe in the flesh.

Two minor characters in Beowulf are Hreðric and Hroðmund, the young sons of the aged Danish king Hroðgar. The English poet represents the two princes as mere boys, too young to do anything. Yet they are not introduced simply to complete the picture of the royal household. On the contrary, they are the central and unifying figures in an episode so fraught with pity and terror that even now, after twelve centuries, we read and are deeply moved. Let us examine this episode, and see, if we can, what the poet was about.

The night before, Beowulf had put Grendel to flight, and all day the Danes have been celebrating his victory. The celebration ends with a feast in Heorot. The poet exclaims over the feasters: “I never heard of a people with a greater band of men, a finer array around their lord” (1011 f.). But the picture of such peace and happiness has for the poet and his hearers a tragic irony, for they know it will be short-lived.

Professor Gerould's interesting paper on the Passio S. Margaritæ suggested to me that it might be of advantage to render accessible another Latin version of the same Passio which has existed up till the present time in manuscript form only. This version came under my notice in the course of an examination of the Latin sources of the Legend of St. Margaret, made in connection with a study of the interdependence of the Anglo-Norman versions. It is clearly the source of two XIIIth century French poems, and appears also to have been drawn upon by compilers who took the bulk of their material from other versions. It was used by the Norman chronicler Wace, by the anonymous author of a third XIIIth century French poem (Brit. Mus. MS. Addit. 38664), by the author of the “Scotch version” and by the author of the prose account in Mirk's Festial.

Numerous parallels, culled from Middle-English metrical romances to illustrate the style and the diction of Chaucer's Rime of Sir Thopas, have shown how successfully Chaucer burlesqued the verses of certain of his less gifted predecessors and contemporaries. More recently the parodistic character of Sir Thopas has been emphasized by Mr. J. M. Manly, who, in the same connection, adduced interesting evidence as to political satire latent in the poem. These studies of the style and the diction of Sir Thopas have contributed largely to our appreciation of the humorous character of the work itself and, more important still, to our knowledge of the poet; for a parody or a burlesque implies the special imitation of a model, and thus we conclude that Chaucer enjoyed an easy familiarity with at least one type of his native vernacular literature. Supplementing this rather imposing body of internal, stylistic evidence, comes a short but enlightening catalogue of metrical romances which the poet introduces towards the end of his own rollicking contribution to this genre:

Men speke of romances of prys,
Of Horn child and of Ypotis,
Of Bevis and sir Gy, Of sir Libeus and Pleyn-damour. (C.T., B 2087–90)

No doubt you have noticed that the forms of literary production which show the most life today are lyric poetry, drama, and the novel;—and of these three, the greatest by far is the novel. Truly, the production in this field is now prodigious. A recent estimate was that the present winter season would see the publication in English of some three thousand works of fiction. The French critic, Georges Duhamel, acting recently as reviewer for the Mercure de France, says that for several years he was compelled to read between six and seven hundred novels annually; and this, he adds, required not only a stout heart and a good deal of patience, but even a good constitution, a certain physical resistance. A French publisher, announcing a new collection of novels, states that in France the novel is now the most “acute” (aigu) and the most “taking” (prenant) form of literary activity; that it dominates, at the present hour, the whole of modern literature.

Let me tell an old British tale in my own plain way; for I am unversed in ornaments of style. This is all that the Franklin's prologue means on its surface. The connotation beneath is inviting. Are “aventures,” “layes,” “rymeyed,” “instruments” intended precisely? How much grasp they suggest of early medieval poetic is perhaps beyond our determination. But the term “colours of rethoryk” occurs also in the Hous of Fame. The interlude before the Clerk's Tale has a sarcasm of the Host against these same “colours” in the same connection. The Squire's disclaimer has the same significant terms as the Franklin's, and the same point as the Clerk's reply to the Host. The satire in the Tale of the Nun's Priest on Geoffrey of Vinsauf confirms the suspicion that in all these passages Chaucer implies specific criticism of a certain later medieval poetic, the poetic current in the Latin manuals entitled poetria. For the language of the Franklin's prologue, in spite of his disclaimer, is literary. Chaucer knew as well as Shakspere that he who announces “a plain, unvarnished tale” may command a better art than the rhetoric that he disclaims. It is worth while to explore, therefore, the mention of rhetoric in connection with story-telling, the conjunction of Cicero and Parnassus. As Sir Thopas parodies not only the conventional motives of romance, but also particular faults in its conventional technic, so Chaucer's references to “colours of rethoryk,” instead of being taken as general disparagement of grandiloquence, may well be sounded for their particular significance. In any age, indeed, the man of letters contemplating the rules of his art laid down by the pedagogues is moved to sarcasm; but Chaucer's sarcasms may suggest specifically wherein the pedagogues that he knew went wide of the narrative art that he came to comprehend as artist and as critic. His reference in the House of Fame merely glances at “prolixitee.” The passages in the four Canterbury tales, ampler and more specific, together suggest that the application of “colours of rethoryk” to narrative is a perversion, that Cicero is out of place on Parnassus.

Lyly's authorship of the songs in his plays was challenged two decades ago by Dr. Greg, who presented apparently decisive evidence that they are post-Lylian. Since then, however, the question has been re-opened by Mr. Lawrence's interesting discussion—recently accepted as convincing by Dr. Reed—which casts doubt on Dr. Greg's implied attribution of some or all of the songs to Dekker, and re-affirms Lyly's claims.

Homily VIII of the Vercelli Codex CXVII, is a brief dramatic sermon on penance and the Last Judgment, intended for the first Sunday after Epiphany. It opens with an admonition to the faithful to remember the Lord's warning of the tribulation attending the end of this world. Let us never think our sins too grievous or too shameful for confession: for it is better to confess our sins here before one man, than to confess them at the Day of Judgment, before God and the whole host of Heaven, when all our deeds shall be revealed. The homilist briefly outlines the advent of the Judgment: the coming of the Son of Man in power and great glory, God's mercy to the righteous, the angels blowing their trumpets to the four ends of the world, the resurrection of the dead, and the raging fire. All this, however, is introductory to the central feature of the homily—the address of the Judge to the guilty souls. From His throne of Judgment, God the Son reviews His dealings with man: the Creation, the establishment of man in the joys of Paradise, the Fall, God's mercy to fallen man in His Incarnation, Passion, and Death. The Savior dramatically calls the sinner to behold the wounds in His hands and feet and side; then, charging man with indifference and ingratitude, He sentences him to dwell forever with Satan and his host in Hell. After a brief description of the torments of Hell, the homilist closes with an exhortation to be worthy of the Lord's welcome to the righteous, and of the bliss of Heaven.

Metrical interpretation of the important group of Middle English alliterative poems, of which Piers Plowman may be considered the type, has long been a subject of controversy. The present study aims, too hopefully perhaps, not at an entirely new hypothesis, but at harmonizing the two old theories in the light of recent general study of English metrics. As with so many efforts at peace-making, this may result merely in a three-cornered fight in place of a duel, so that the end may be only confusion worse confounded. We can, however, but try.

Henry porter and his one extant play, The Two Angrie Women of Abingdon, are included in nearly all the catalogues of dramatists since 1600, but none of them give us any information about the man, although Francis Meres in 1598 mentioned him along with Shakespeare as “the best for comedy amongst us,” and critics since that time have compared the Two Angrie Women not unfavorably with Shakespeare's early comedies. The popularity of Porter's plays may be inferred from the fact that he appears no less than twenty-four times between 1596 and 1599 in Henslowe's accounts with the Admiral's Men. The extent of his dramatic work is not accurately determined, but five plays are credited to him alone or to him in collaboration with Chettle or Ben Jonson.

Modern criticism has renounced the notion that Chaucer is naïf, whether as man or poet. It has not, however, been so ready to acknowledge him, especially in respect to style, a fully conscious artist. “Splendour and artifice of style,” says Legouis, “whether the latter be personal or conventional, were unknown to Chaucer,—the wiles of rhetoric are absent.” Splendour of style, I agree, is rare in Chaucer, but not artifice. It is the object of this paper to point out that certain “wiles of rhetoric,” conventional and personal, were familiar to Chaucer. The particular artifice of balance, indeed, appears in Chaucer's poetry to such an extent and is used with such increasing effect that I am obliged to dissent from the statement of a second modern critic that Chaucer's sentences are “free from any studied balance or antithesis.”

1. Sievers' Law of Syncopation of middle vowels has laid the foundation for our present understanding of the forms of the preterite and past participle of the first class of weak verbs: The medial vowel disappears before the period of mutation if the stem syllable is long, and is preserved if it is short. While Sievers had stated the law for West Germanic only, its somewhat modified application to Norse was obvious, so that chaos was apparently reduced to order. Irregular forms like leƷde, sœƷde were termed “anormal” by Sievers, and he adds the objective statement that several short stems in k, t, d, l form their preterite “nach Art der langsilbigen,” e.g., OE. reahte, sette, tredde, tealde. Two years later, Paul added the hypothesis that these preterites had had no medial vowel since Germanic times, supporting his view by certain criteria of such Germanic origin. He remarks: “Das Angelsächsische repräsentiert für uns im grossen und ganzen noch die eigentümlichste Stufe, und zwar liegt das offenbar daran, dass hier im Gegensatz zum Althochdeutschen und Altsächsischen der Umlaut der Synkopierung vorausgegangen ist.” It seems that Sievers never quite agreed with Paul's generalization of the scope of these preterites. As late as 1898, he postulates only a West Germanic basis for the “Rückumlaut” in verbs of the type cwellan-cwealde, sēceansōhte. But otherwise the view has been fairly generally accepted.