Members of the Association are requested to see that copies of monographs, studies or dissertations in the field of the Modern Languages which may appear in University series during the current year be sent to the editor of the appropriate section of the American Bibliography.

All students of Chaucerian chronology are agreed that Troilus and Criseyde was written not earlier than the poet's first Italian journey of 1373, and not later than 1386. The second of these terminal dates is fixed by the fact that the earlier, so-called B, version of the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, which refers to Troilus as already in circulation, is assigned with a good deal of confidence to 1386 or 1387. It is further corroborated by the fact that Thomas Usk's Testament of Love, which shows extensive acquaintance with Troilus, seems to have been written in 1387, the year before its author's death.

On the 28th of December 1384, John Wyclif died of apoplexy while hearing mass in his own church at Lutterworth. He had braved papal displeasure and had survived the hatred of his enemies among local ecclesiastics. Supported by public approval, defended by noble friends—notable among them being John of Gaunt—he had passed through life serenely until his death. His body remained buried in consecrated ground for forty-four years. On May 4, 1415 the Council of Constance decreed that his bones should be disinterred, burned, and the ashes cast into Swift Creek. This sentence was delayed, however, until 1428. Up to 1413, at least, the world had heard relatively little about Wyclif's heresy. By this time papal vengeance was aroused by the alleged dissent of Wyclif's disciple in Bohemia. Perhaps Wyclif became the victim of the circumstance that required authority for action against John Huss. Until Huss' sources were condemned, his enemies had very little evidence upon which to bring him into prominence at Rome as a dangerous man.

“His studie was but litel on the Bible,” Chaucer's remark concerning the Physician, has been applied by critics to Chaucer himself. The prevailing view is doubtless that expressed by Tatlock: “The more one investigates Chaucer's reading, the more convinced one becomes that his familiarity with the Bible (and other quotable literature, like Cato and Seneca) was largely at second-hand.” Up to this time, however, investigation of Chaucer's biblical material has been slight, as a glance at Miss Hammond's Manual will prove.

Though we are particularly fortunate in knowing a good deal about the life of Chaucer, nevertheless some of the facts are not wholly intelligible. More and more, however, as “men observingly distil them out,” various cruxes are being disposed of. One of the most important of these perplexing problems, which if solved will clear up much besides, is the poet's sudden loss of Aldgate in 1386. This year was a crucial one in the poet's career: for the political happenings at that time—not only were national issues at stake, but London was passing through its most critical period in history—seriously affected Chaucer's welfare. There is, also, a possibility that the poet's sudden misfortune at that time is reflected in some of his poems.

If Chaucer knew nothing at all of the Decameron, his failure to get hold of it has every aspect of mystery. If Chaucer was acquainted with that rich human document, the use which he made of it is to many of us a still greater mystery. Accordingly we are led to inquire how much the England of Chaucer's time, or even of the century after his death, may have known concerning Boccaccio's hundred tales, aside from the story of Griselda's persecution told at second- or third-hand. The facts concerning England's discovery of the Decameron are of course not summed up in what we know about Painter.

“Cain's jaw-bone, that did the first murther!” Is there anything more in this phrase than meets the casual eye? Though the skull and jaw-bone of Hamlet's brooding comment are without doubt human, it has been suggested by no less an authority than the late Professor Skeat that here is an allusion to an old tradition according to which Cain killed Abel with the jaw-bone of an ass. The suggestion might seem almost fantastic were it not for several corroborative circumstances: namely, that the tradition was English; that it was wide-spread and familiar; that it found a place in the mystery plays; and that Shakspere was not unaccustomed to making allusions to the primitive and cruder art of the religious drama.

The romantic career of that unhappy favorite of Queen Elizabeth, Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, like the histories of Mary Stuart and of the Maréchal de Biron, has been often used as a subject for tragedy in Spanish, French, Italian, German, and English. Several of these plays have been studied more or less carefully at different times, so that I shall not do more than summarize those versions briefly before passing on to my main subject, the relation between Niccolo Biancolelli's Regina Statista d'Inghilterra and its commedia dell'Arte variants, of which the one presented here is hitherto unpublished.

That the discussion of the problem of divorce in The Beaux' Stratagem, is unique in Restoration Drama, both in its tone and in the arguments employed, has long been recognized by students of Farquhar. Strauss finds in the play a growing thoughtfulness regarding manners and institutions, and a perceptible alteration of moral tone. He is inclined to question, however, whether we are to conclude from the single instance presented, that Farquhar actually meant to countenance divorce by mutual consent. William Archer, in a considerable discussion of the divorce phenomenon, is inclined to treat the matter more seriously. He finds in the comedy Farquhar's firm belief that a breach of the marriage vow is by no means the only immorality possible in the marital relationship. “The scenes are,” he says, “in fact, a plea for what Farquhar regarded, rightly or wrongly, as a more rational law of divorce … He admitted a moral standard, and subjected social conventions, not to mere cynical persiflage, but to the criticism of reason.”

To Professor Ward the divorce motive is equally puzzling. “Some of the incidents are dubious, including one at the close—a separation by mutual consent, which throws a glaring light on the view taken by the author and his age on the sanctity of the marriage tie.”

William Hazlitt is read to-day as an essayist and a critic of literature. His art-criticism, except for a few papers preserved in his best known books, is familiar to few readers, and to them it will probably remain a matter of curious interest rather than of serious concern. Before Hazlitt's day even, the foundations had been laid, in the works of Wincklemann and Lessing, of a more precise study of aesthetic principles, which was destined to make obsolete most of the eighteenth-century treatises on art; with their works Hazlitt was, like most other English writers of his day, unacquainted. He was thus so far removed from the best thought of his time that his opinions on art have, for the student of aesthetic theory, little historical importance. The archaeological discoveries of the nineteenth century, the rise of impressionism in painting, the spread in all quarters of art and criticism of what may be somewhat roughly termed the naturalistic movement, and especially the development of a more strict and comprehensive study of aesthetic principles, have combined to make large sections of Hazlitt's theoretic discussions unacceptable to-day.

Henry James tells us in his preface to the revised edition of his novels, with what interest and emotion he renewed acquaintance with his book, Roderick Hudson, after a quarter of a century had elapsed since its first appearance, in 1875. He takes up its failings and its defects, of which he is fully conscious and which he sees with very keen perspicacity. He writes: