Any attempt to define the romance must necessarily undertake to determine the differentia that separate this species of narrative art from that to which it is most closely related, viz. the epic.

So far as formal or material tests are concerned, it is impossible to discover any infallible criterion by means of which the two species may be distinguished. In form both are metrical narratives and in subject-matter fictions dealing with heroic adventure and achievement. Such are the Iliad, the Beowulf, the Nibelungenlied, and the Chanson de Roland as representing the epic and the Fierebras, the metrical Morte d'Arthur, the Roman de Troie, and the Roman de Thèbes as representing the romance. Again, while both may under certain conditions vary from this norm, both will be found, when they do so vary, to pass through much the same range of variation. Both the epic and the romance may, particularly when embodied in works of an alien character, be short. Short, for example, is the epic recital of the Battle of Brunanburh embedded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Short likewise are those passages of romance sometimes incorporated in the epic or drama, as the story of the lotus-eaters in the Odyssey and the stories of “the three caskets” and of “the pound of flesh” in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Similarly both the epic and the romance may, in the later stages of their development, be written in prose instead of verse. This is true of the Younger Edda as exemplifying the epic and the Huon de Bordeaux, the Merlin, and the Recueil des Histoires de Troie as exemplifying the romance. In prose is written likewise the large body of relatively late Greek romance from the Cyropedeia of Xenophon to the Heroicus of the Younger Philostratus.

In his “Dante as a Religious Teacher” Dr. Edward Moore makes the following significant remarks with regard to Dante's teaching on the subject of Purgatory: “Dante's conception of the nature and purpose of the pains of Purgatory stands in very marked contrast to the popular ideas of the Middle Ages, and not only to the popular ideas, but also to the teaching and practice of the Roman Church both then and in later times… This difference of attitude on the part of Dante applies not only to the general conception of Purgatory itself, but still more strikingly to the practical consequences flowing from it, in teaching respecting indulgences, transference of merits, and means of remission of, or escape from, Purgatorial penalties.” However, the eminent Dantist minimizes the significance of this difference of attitude and applies to it what he said in a preceding page concerning Dante's conception of the relation of Church and State, namely, that “it may be held to be contumacious, but scarcely heretical, to criticize and oppose what has been authoritatively declared to be essential as a practical condition for the exercise of the Church's mission.”

The libary of John H. Wrenn, acquired by The University of Texas, contains an editio princeps which would seem to be of some importance to students of the history of French literature. The work in question is listed in the Catalogue of the Wrenn library, as follows:

Scholars are not agreed as to the identity of the person addressed by Chaucer in his Envoy a Bukton. Tyrwhitt was the first to suggest that the individual warned in regard to the risks of matrimony was Sir Peter (de) Bukton of Yorkshire. Professor J. S. P. Tatlock in 1907 questioned this identification, suggesting instead a Robert Bukton of Suffolk. Professor J. R. Hulbert, independently of Tatlock, attempted to show that Robert of Suffolk was the more likely person. Inasmuch as considerable evidence, not observed hitherto, makes Peter the more probable candidate, a review of the arguments of Tatlock and Hulbert becomes necessary.

Although Jeremy Collier's attack on the drama of his time and the subsequent “reform” of the stage in the direction of propriety and dullness have been regarded ever since as commonplaces of literary history, the relation between them has never been adequately investigated, and about this the greatest difference of opinion still exists. Ward declares: “In truth the position in which he [Collier] stood … had been proved impregnable. From this time forward a marked change became visible in the attitude of the Court, the Government, and a section at least of the ruling classes, towards the stage, and its own consciousness of the purposes and restrictions proper to the exercise of its art.” On the other hand, Mr. Whibley asserts: “The poets bowed their knee not an inch in obedience to Collier. They replied to him, they abused him, and they went their way… . The pages of Genest … make evidence the complete failure of Collier's attack.”

It has been repeatedly pointed out that Shaftesbury derived many, if not the most, of his philosophical ideas from his immediate and more remote predecessors. Nevertheless, the recognition of this fact does not detract from the originality and power of Shaftesbury himself. The ideas gleaned from a wide reading and companionship passed through the medium of his keen and generous mind and emerged a new intellectual compound.

Readers of Shelley's poetry must regret the lack of a biography of the poet by his gifted second wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. More keenly than any other of those among whom his life was lived, she apprehended the presence of the “divine fire” in his work. For it she endured public ignominy, poverty, exile, and more—the occasional wavering of his affections toward her—with unexampled patience. For it she set aside her own literary aspirations, themselves neither slight nor groundless, until that blow which stilled forever the voice of her beloved numbed also her genius and left her desolate. Afterwards, when that which the sea gave up had vanished in mist or been resolved to dust on the sands of Spezzia, and when that dust had been laid away near the pyramid of Caius Cestius at Rome, there remained the memory of him to be cherished, and his fame to be kept pure to succeeding ages.