What the Widsith-poet's profession was, and what his purpose in writing, have long been matters of conjecture. Without stopping just here to scrutinize previous proposals, I wish to bring forward another in which some of the items inconvenient and rebellious to other theories may find a place.

Farman's Mercian glosses to certain parts of the Rushworth Gospels have occupied the attention of scholars for more than a century. It would be difficult to find an aspect of the priest or his work which has not, at some time, been investigated. Yet there remain numerous controversial questions, some of them of a very fundamental nature. One of the most difficult concerns Farman's apparently irrational uses of the symbols e and æ. It will be found that many of the larger conflicts over the position of Rushworth in the general scheme of English phonology are essentially disagreements as to just what values these two letters had in Farman's orthography.

Du Bellay had a very fair grasp of the significance of choreography in ancient Greek poetry. In his Hymne de la Santé,“ addressed to Robert de La Haye upon the latter's recovery from a severe illness, he tells us that when Death had beckoned to his friend with her pale hand, the laurel had bowed her tresses by the riverside, and the fountain of Hippocrene had ceased to flow—

N'oyant plus la voix sacree, Qui agree
Aux boys, qui sont tousjours verds,
Et la nombreuse cadance De la danse
Qui s'animoit soubs tes vers.

The theory that in Book II of the Fairie Queene Spenser represents Mary Stuart allegorically in the character of Acrasia has never been presented with sufficient evidence to raise it above a level of general probability, and although the further cumulation of proof that I have gathered together here hardly seems enough to establish it as a fact of literary history, it may help to recapture some of the mental associations of his original readers and the figurative medium in which they were expressed. It is my purpose here to show that when the Faerie Queene was published Elizabethan courtiers had for a considerable time looked upon Mary Stuart as the epitome of intemperance and had characterized her as a Circean enchantress, a rather striking parallel to Book II with its political study of temperance and its major evil character—the Circean witch Acrasia.

Richard the third has long been one of the most popular of Shakespeare's plays. In its own day six quarto editions appeared before the Folio, and two more quartos before 1635. While our record of its early history in the theatre is not so clear as that of its printing, numerous contemporary references testify to its popularity. In the later seventeenth century it temporarily disappeared from the stage, but in July, 1700, it was revived with certain changes by Colley Cibber, and was later played by Garrick, Kemble, Kean, J. B. Booth, Edwin Booth, Macready, Sir Henry Irving, Richard Mansfield, and John Barrymore. No one to-day would acclaim Richard as a great tragedy rather than a melodrama, but historically it has probably led all other dramas of Shakespeare in frequency of presentation, and is still an effective stage play. Critics generally unite in dating its composition about 1593, two or three years before Romeo and Juliet. In this paper I propose to analyze anew certain aspects of its relation to its source material, and to show that its composition resembles that of Romeo. Thereby it is possible, I believe, to learn something about Shakespeare's method of writing at least two earlier plays.

In “To the great Variety of Readers” in the First Folio of Shakespeare, Heminge and Condell wrote:

While Bacon's Essays have enjoyed popularity for centuries, it does not appear that Essay xliii, “of Beauty,” has received the attention it deserves, to determine, if possible, its proper interpretation. The aim of this paper is to clarify its meaning through close examination of the sources.

The Essay, “Of Beauty,” was not contained in the first version of the Essays published in 1597, and it appeared originally in the second, of 1612; the third and final English edition of 1625 included several important additions which will be discussed below. After the publication of 1612, spurious editions by Jaggard in 1612, 1613, and 1624 included “Of Beauty,” while the Italian translations of 1618 and 1621, the French of 1619 and 1621, made it available to continental readers before the Rawley Latin publication of 1638. Although Rawley's edition omitted two of the Essays, De Pulchritudine was number xli in that issue.

In almost all the plays of the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists one finds an abundance of astrological jargon used metaphorically and as sheer literary garnish, showing no particular knowledge of the complex technicalities of astrology. Occasionally, however, a Jacobean dramatist's delineation of a horoscope involves such astrological technicalities that he and his audience must have fully appreciated the various manifestations of horoscopy. Such is the case in John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi. My purpose in this paper is to present an adequate explanation of the horoscope employed at one of the critical moments in this play.

I propose the hypothesis that this shift in primary modification which took place a little more than two hundred years ago represents, in connection with objects modified and specific contexts, a fundamental change in poetic reference, a new idea of the poetic medium which is still very close to us, and which has strongly pervaded the poetry of our ‘Romantic’ and ‘Victorian’ predecessors. I propose, then, to demonstrate the representative nature of this primary modification by tracing more closely, and qualitatively as well as quantitatively, the developing relation of the standards epithets good and bad to the qualities epithets bright and dark through the work and the concordance listings of four or five poets on either side of 1740.

In the rich but little known manuscript collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania are six letters by or to the David Garricks which, as far as I have been able to discover, have not been published. Three are signed-autograph letters of David Garrick; one is written by Mrs. Garrick to her friend Hannah More; and two are addressed to Garrick by acquaintances. While the group adds little to the Garrick biography, the letters themselves are interesting and should find their proper place in the Correspondence. The original spelling and punctuation are reproduced, with due allowance for typographical limitations.

Interpretations of Coleridge's Kubla Khan have varied widely. The commonest view has always been that the poem is a beautiful meaningless vision, “delicious nonsense” to be read or heard as pure music. Many ingenious and some over-ingenious explanations have however been published, the most extraordinary being that of Mr. Robert Graves, which Professor Lowes demolished with obvious gusto. According to this theory Mrs. Coleridge is represented in the “Abyssinian maid” whose music the poet could not remember; the “caves of ice” are Dorothy Wordsworth, whose love for Coleridge is thus shown to be purely intellectual; and the closing lines of the poem describe Coleridge's own superego getting after him about his opium. After this pseudo-Freudian flight, a mere literal interpretation will no doubt come as an anti-climax. It seems necessary now, however, to revise certain traditions, most of them outgrowths of Coleridge's own note prefixed to the poem upon its publication in the Christabel volume of 1816. The note is too familiar to require full quotation. The poet says that he had been prescribed an “anodyne, … from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair” while reading Purchas. “The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort.” “On awaking,” Coleridge continues, with what seemed a complete recollection of the whole, he “instantly and eagerly” wrote down the lines that are preserved. After an interruption by a man from Porlock on business, he was unable to recall the rest.

Shortly after 1800 S. T. Coleridge gradually developed a set of personal symbols which he used thereafter in poetry and prose, sometimes consciously, to symbolize great turnings in his life and great, steady longings. The number of symbols seems rather limited; the referents lead mainly toward his love for Sara Hutchinson. It is possible that symbols for other important elements of Coleridge's experience will yet come to light. So far as I have been able to discover, there is nothing “universal” in the symbols which I have identified: they are specifically, and of course connotatively, allusive to events in his past life.

In his correspondence, Keats refers more than once to the difference between himself and Byron. In a letter to Charles Wentworth Dilke, dated September 21, 1818, he distinguishes jokingly between: “1. superfine rich or noble poets—ut Byron. 2. common ut egomet—.” A few months later, on February 18th, 1819, he tells George and Georgiana Keats: “Lord Byron cuts a figure—but he is not figurative—Shakspeare led a life of Allegory: his works are the comments on it—.” Perhaps one might better read “Keats,” or at least “Keats as he liked to picture himself,” instead of “Shakespeare.” Just seven months later, in a letter written on September 18th of the same year to the same recipients, there occurs the celebrated, and utterly unconvincing, axiom: “You speak of Lord Byron and me—There is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees—I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task. You see the immense difference.”

For more than a century Thomas De Quincey has been regarded as one of the greatest fantasy writers among English authors. Critics list his works as the highest possible flights of imagination. He himself gave them the title of “dreams.” That there was a connection between his writing and his use of drugs has always been recognized, but always with the idea that the opium set him free to exercise his imagination. No one has pointed out that instead of being an imaginist he should be considered a clinical reporter of facts.

Pour se défendre des attaques dont il était l'objet, tantôt Baudelaire invoquait le témoignage de critiques comme Barbey d'Aurevilly et assurait que les Fleurs du mal étaient une æuvre morale, tantôt il affirmait qu'il avait fait “un livre d'art pur”: il avait voulu, disait-il, se divertir et exercer son “goût passionné de l'obstacle.” Barbey d'Aurevilly, pourtant, avait su discerner l'originalité de Baudelaire: Par “la langue et le faire,” Baudelaire se rattachait à l’école de Gautier; mais il s'en distinguait à d'autres égards: “par l'inspiration,” précisait Barbey, “il est bien plus profond que son école et il est descendu si avant dans la sensation dont cette école ne sort jamais, qu'il a fini par s'y trouver seul comme un lion d'originalité.” Quant à E. Reynaud, il voyait “un abîme entre la théorie de Gautier de l'Art pour l'Art et celle de Baudelaire.” Mais ce n'est pas Baudelaire seulement qu'on a classé parmi les précurseurs des Parnassiens; on a, en outre, considéré Poe comme un pionnier de l’école de l'art pour l'art. Nous proposons d'analyser les théories du poète américain. Nous chercherons ensuite à rendre compte de l'impression de déjà vu qu'avait Baudelaire au contact de l’æuvre de Poe, et nous serons ainsi à même de mieux comprendre ce que l'on appelle l'influence de ce dernier poète sur Baudelaire.

In the account of his method of poetic (actually, dramatic) production entitled Mein Verfahren beim poetischen Schaffen, Otto Ludwig tells us that what he begins with is a mood, specifically a musical one; this changes to a color; then he sees figures, one or several, in some attitude or gesture singly or in relation to each other, like an engraving on paper of that color, or, more exactly, like sculpture seen in light of that color. He observes parenthetically that he has this color-sensation also when he is deeply moved by a work of literature: thus Goethe gives him a rich golden-yellow or golden-brown, Schiller, a radiant crimson; each of Shakespeare's plays has for him a color of its own, of which each scene is a nuance.

James Joyce's debt to the past has been repeatedly and sometimes indiscriminately acknowledged. I wish to show that there is an undefined debt to the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen which it is fruitful to recognize and to elucidate. It is a debt far more inclusive than that of a merely literary influence. It is rather that of a fiery and consuming ideal, adopted freely and with love in adolescence, and warmly invading James Joyce's conduct both as man and as artist. Indeed, the first three decades (roughly) of Joyce's life were subtly and pervasively, consciously and unconsciously, modeled along the central lines of Ibsen's own biography.

Der Vorgang, wie in Deutschland die neue Richtung in unserer Disziplin und in den anderen Geisteswissenschaften sich gegen den Positivismus durchgesetzt hat, ist zu bekannt, um hier noch einmal erzählt werden zu müssen. Er ist ein Stück der Geschichte des modernen Geisteslebens … ein, wie ich glaube, im Ganzen abgeschlossenes Stück. Ich darf nur daran erinnern, wie es begann. Im Kampf gegen die Vorherrschaft der Naturwissenschaften und ihre Methoden wurde der Begriff der Geisteswissenschaft bestimmter als zuvor herausgebildet. Seit Wilhelm Dilthey versteht man unter Geisteswissenschaften das Ensemble der Disziplinen, welche “die geschichtlich-gesellschaftliche Wirklichkeit zu ihrem Gegenstand haben,” die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. Man kann diese Entwicklung als Teil eines neuen Idealismus begreifen, wie er allgemein um die Jahrhundertwende in den Künsten und Wissenschaften hervortrat. Aber man muß betonen, daß der “Geist,” von dem hier die Rede war, keine metaphysischen Qualitäten besaß und nichts zu tun hatte mit der objektiven Weltvernunft, dem absoluten Geist Hegels. Die Denkweise, die jetzt herrschte, war eine Philosophie des Lebens. Der Begriff des Lebens war hier der oberste, der fundamentale Begriff. Der Geist schafft kein Leben, er gestaltet und reflektiert, versteht es nur. “Aus dem, was gelebt, geschaut wird, stammen alle Auslegungen” (Dilthey, Schriften, viii, 229). Dichtung, lehrte Dilthey, ist ein Organ des Lebensverständnisses … eines Verstehens, das tiefer, der Unergründlichkeit des Lebens angemessener ist als rationales Forschen und Erklären. Den einzelnen Akt, in dem das geschieht, nannte Dilthey “Erlebnis”—ein konzentrierter Akt, der von der “Totalität des Seelenlebens,” vom “ganzen Gemüt” (v, 172) getragen wird. Diltheys Lehre war ein Protest gegen die Versuche einer neuen Aufklärung, das individuelle Leben und seine geistigen Schöpfungen als gesetzmäßigen Ablauf aufzufassen. Das menschliche Individuum erscheint als zu komplex und zu geheimnisvoll in seiner Totalität. Hier handelt es sich nicht um Gleichförmigkeit und regelmäßige Wiederkehr, sondern um konkrete Besonderheit, um ein unerschöpflich Neues. Eben darin hat das Individuum seinen eigentümlichen Wert. “Individuum est ineffabile.” Die Geisteswissenschaften, welche die Werke und Aeußerungen des Menschen zum Gegenstand haben, müssen andere Kategorien der Interpretation anwenden, als die Naturwissenschaften. Seelisch-geistige Zusammenhänge und Einheiten kann man nur verstehen, nicht kausal erklären und analytisch auseinanderlegen. Das gilt auch für die Phaenomene der Kunst. Das Interesse verschiebt sich nun vom psychologischen Prozess der Entstehung auf den weltanschaulichen Gehalt des Werkes und auf seinen Charakter als Ausdruck einer individuellen Erfahrung. Die alte Wahrheit trat wieder hervor, daß ein Dichtwerk kein Kompositum ist. Man sah, daß es sich nicht ableiten ließ aus einzelnen Eindrücken und Erinnerungen, aus der Bekanntschaft mit Büchern und fremden Dichtungen. An die Stelle des kausalen Zusammenhangs setzte Dilthey den Begriff der Struktur. Darunter verstand er die innere “Gliederung eines Ganzen,” eine im Wechsel der Gehalte “permanente Form.” Dieser unter der Wirkung der Erfahrungen “erworbene Zusammenhang” des inneren Lebens gibt der individuellen Seele und ihren künstlerischen Aeußerungen ihre charakteristische Einheit.