The Program for the Chicago meetings of the MLA in 1925 announced a paper of mine, to be read by title, on the “discovery” of the metre of the Cid. To academic friends who had urged a more tentative phrasing (as “Modest Proposals for a New Theory,” etc.), I had replied briskly that, as a scholar, nothing should deter me from proclaiming the exact truth—not even academic decorum. But this blatant and cantankerous pride suffered forthwith at the hands of Divine Providence a chastisement that continues to this present. Providence, using mortal instruments of course, at once altered my armorial family name in the Bulletin to a meagre and humiliating “Jones”; and prevented my attendance at the sessions, and all discussion of the “discovery” by my accredited representatives Professors Solalinde and Berkowitz, except a few pleading words incidental to a discussion of a paper by Professor Hills. Providence then saw to it that I spent six painful months in preparing a long monograph on the “discovery” and a year more in laboring in company with devoted Spanish friends of both sexes on a revised version in Spanish, which, after devious misadventures in the Iberian Peninsula, finally reached the composing-room of the Revista de Archivos, in Madrid. The first installment appeared in March, 1929 (pages 334–352), under date of Octubre a Diciembre de 1928. I corrected proof on the second last summer (1929): it too concludes with the editor's optimistic “Continuará.” Perhaps some Hispanistas over there are impatiently awaiting the rest; but, as this erudite journal is apparently not as widely consulted in America as it should be, I am inclined to suspect that perhaps the only member of the MLA who is engaged in watchful waiting is the petulant author. Meantime, those among us who have only hearsay knowledge of the “discovery” doubtless think me a swindler. Such has been my chastisement for committing the chief of those seven deadly sins that heretofore have been so frequently discussed in the PMLA … only in a theoretical manner.

The general history of minstrel life in the Middle Ages has been several times very adequately treated, but the relation of the jongleurs to the classes outside the courts has, owing to a natural scarcity of documentation, been more or less neglected. The so-called “biographies” of the troubadours seem to me, however, to throw considerable light on this subject and on the relation between the jongleur, who was professionally an entertainer, and the troubadour, who was technically an inventor or composer of poetry and song. It was not until about the middle of the twelfth century that the new idea of trobar, of individual composition with the copyright of one's name attached to it, came to Provence. The new troubadour craft came to demand certain fine qualities; its honor and its promise of high patronage attracted numbers of the more gifted jongleurs, some of the best of whom, we learn, were of the lower classes.

The purpose of this study is to trace the history of the word goz and to attempt to solve the mooted problem concerning the authorship of Philomena. It will be recalled that Gaston Paris discovered the poem buried in the Ovide moralisé, which is dedicated to Jeanne de Bourgogne, who died in 1329. G. Paris considered Philomena one of the works enumerated by Chrétien de Troyes in the introductory lines of Cligès, all of which, with the exception of Erec, had been thought lost. The author's name is given in verse 734 of Philomena, riming with bois:

Through an annotator's error, this name was long interpreted as Chrétien Legouais de Sainte-More vers Troyes. This identification was accepted in the 14th century by Eustache Deschamps and as recently as 1893 by L. Sudre. But in the same year, Professor A. Thomas revealed the paleographical error involved. By doing so, he precipitated a battle royal, the smoke of which has not yet cleared away. Many theories have been advanced to determine whether Crestiiens li Gois and Chrétien de Troyes were one and the same person. C. de Boer boldly entitled his edition: Philomena, Conte raconté d'après Ovide, par Chrétien de Troyes (P., 1909). However, as K. Voretzsch has pointed out, while there are similarities in the literary conception and style of Chrétien de Troyes and Crestiiens li Gois, nevertheless the linguistic differences in their works point to two distinct authors.

The allegorical poem which forms the subject of the present paper has not hitherto been printed. Le Songe du Castel is preserved in a single manuscript, Bibliothéque Nationale fonds français 25566, which has been described in detail more than once. The most satisfactory brief account of this MS is that by A. Jeanroy in his recent edition of Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas:

C'est un volume de moyen format, de 283 feuillets de parchemin, très soigneusement écrit aux alentours de l'an 1300: il contient une ample anthologie d'œuvres picardes de l'époque immédiatement antérieure, et notamment, tous les ouvrages d' Adam de la Halle.

The material available for picturing to us the performances of the popular religious plays of mediæval France is so meagre that any possible addition to it seems worth investigating. Some valuable plates, reproducing the miniatures that accompany the Passion plays of Arras and Valenciennes, have been published by G. Cohen in his Théâtre en France au moyen âge, I (Paris: Rieder, 1928). The same author had previously given us a comprehensive treatment of the whole subject, with a full bibliography and a few other plates, in his Histoire de la mise en scène dans le théâtre religieux (2nd ed., Paris: Champion, 1926). Many suggestive hypotheses regarding the possible contributions of the mediæval stage to the art of the middle ages have been advanced by Émile Mâle in the two beautifully illustrated volumes, L'Art religieux du xiie siècle (3rd ed., Paris: Colin, 1928), chap. IV and L'Art religieux de la fin du moyen âge (3rd ed., Paris: Colin, 1925), chap. II. In both of these, various iconographical innovations are plausibly traced to the influence of the liturgical and vernacular plays. Except for the works just mentioned, however, we are largely left to descriptive material and conjecture for our ideas about the costuming, staging, and other conventions of the mediæval religious drama. This is the more to be regretted in view of M. Mâle's important conclusions, and it would therefore seem that any illustrations that may give us a conception of the popular iconography of the Passion in the middle ages possess a dual claim upon our attention.

In a singular ignorance of mediæval cabalistic writings and even of much that is Rabbinical, faint and far commerce only with Rabanus Maurus, and a little closer with Averroës and Avicenna, I was reminded lately in a somewhat retarded grand tour in the more Latin countries of Europe of Disraeli's famous declaration of being on the side of the angels. Like our French interpreter friend, M. Maurois, I began to wonder what he really meant: in general it seemed to me that a good many of Disraeli's race and countrymen, not at all because they were markedly of progressive politics, were less faithful to him than one might have looked to see or even have wished, in any obvious sense of his phrase. They led to bad punning even on the relative attractions in Italy of two cheeses at dinner known as bel paese and Gorgonzola, the Laborite and Conservative of it. I began to think that the cleavage could not be staged for my own party's exclusive enjoyment, and bearing in mind those things of verbal abstention I saw engraved “For the Honor of Italy,” I began to consult the ancient worthies of the joint heirs of the antique honneur des hommes à la longue robe, Tasso's antico onor and antico esempio, again.

The first dramatic treatment of the story of Dido and Aeneas on the Spanish stage, preceded in world-literature only by Alessandro Pazzi's Dido in Cartagine (1524), is the anonymous Tragedia de los amores de Eneas y de la Reyna Dido, preserved in what seems to be a unique copy, formerly belonging to the library of D. Francisco Manoel da Câmara, now in the National Library at Lisbon, under the signature: Varios reservados 177. Although described by Gallardo, Cañete, and, more recently, by Proença and Anselmo, this copy has remained practically inaccessible to Hispanists.

Throughout his life Ronsard continued the practice of taking his dedications away from those whom the years had estranged or whom he had forgotten, offering them to others who stood higher in his affections at the moment of publishing each successive edition of his works. Considering his poems his own property, of which he alone had the right to dispose, and feeling, with a certain amount of reason, that it was within his power to render immortal those whose names he included in his works, Ronsard's poetic pride could easily justify any change in dedication. He even went so far as to dedicate to Cassandre, in the edition of 1578, fifteen sonnets which had formerly been addressed to Marie. This practice, we may be sure, led him into more than one ticklish situation, but probably on no such occasion was he himself more embarrassed nor his friends more amused than by his recall of the Hymne de la Mort.

A curious use of the word Romant by Mario Equicola, a sixteenth century writer in Italy, in his ponderous Libro de Natura de Amore (“Stampato in Venetia per Lorenzo Lorio da Portes: Adi. 23. Zugno. 1525 …”) has caused some perplexity to two recent students of Renaissance Italy, neither of whom has been able to offer any valid explanation.

In 1621 Lope de Vega published his El Perseo, and Calderon followed in 1653 with Las Fortunas de Perseo y Andrómeda on the same subject. Both dramatists so embellished the narrative of Ovid, their common source, with their own inventions for the most part and to a lesser degree with accretions gathered during centuries of transmission as to make those features the subject of pertinent inquiry. A statement of the main incidents of the myth will facilitate our study. Danäe, having been exposed after the birth of her son, Perseus, in the tower, was cast on the island of Seriphus. There she became the wife of its king, Polydectes, who, finding Perseus an obstacle to his designs, induced him to undertake the slaugher of Medusa. Perseus accomplished the feat with the aid of a magic wand (sandals) and a sword, both the gift of Mercury, and a shield from Pallas. He also secured the Gorgon's head. While returning from Africa he rescued Andromeda, who was exposed on a cliff in Ethiopia to the visitation of a sea monster.

Quoique l'influence de Pierre Bayle sur l'esprit philosophique et critique de Voltaire soit généralement reconnue et consacrée par la critique, elle n'a pas encore subi l'examen qu'elle comporte, et il reste à la démontrer et à la préciser. Sans doute, au premier abord, l'atmosphère baylienne règne suprême dans les œuvres de Voltaire. Voltaire lui-même, tout le premier, dans de nombreux passages, rend hommage à celui qu'il nomme complaisamment “son père spirituel.” Les épithètes élogieuses que Voltaire adresse au philosophe de Rotterdam abondent, mais elles ne sont souvent qu'un mot d'ordre et de ralliement et ne doivent être acceptées qu'avec réserve et caution. De plus, il se peut que la ressemblance de pensée et de méthode entre deux auteurs tels que Pierre Bayle et Voltaire soit purement accidentelle et ne relève d'aucune influence directe. Un écrivain du caractère de Voltaire, toujours en éveil, curieux de tout savoir, doué d'une mémoire remarquable, prêt à assimiler et à transformer tout ce qui l'intéresse, se joue à dérouter l‘étude la plus minutieuse. Les influences françaises ou anglaises qui ont pu agir sur le développement intellectuel de Voltaire sont multiples et complexes: elles s'entremêlent et s'entrecroisent. Comment donc les définir et en tracer la source? Si Voltaire loue Pierre Bayle jusqu’ aux nues, il ne loue pas moins l'Angleterre, “l‘île barbare des Cassitérides, ”Locke et Newton. La part exacte de l'influence du milieu français et de celle de l'Angleterre sur Voltaire est encore à établir d'une façon définitive. La présente étude ne s'intéresse qu‘à la période de Voltaire qui précède la publication des Lettres philosophiques. Elle se borne à préciser la pensée philosophique et critique de Voltaire à cette époque et à en suggérer les sources probables; elle cherche surtout à découvrir quelques indices de l'influence de Pierre Bayle sur l'esprit du jeune Voltaire et à indiquer certains rapports de pensée et de méthode entre ces deux écrivains.

When, in 1697, the actors of the Comédie Italienne announced their intention of producing Fatouville's La finta matrigna ou la belle-mère supposée, readily associated with La fausse prude, a novel published in Holland againt Mme de Maintenon, the machinery of the law-moved swiftly. On May 14th of that year M. d'Argenson, head of the police, closed the theater, thereby terminating the activities of the Italian troupe in the seventeenth century. For so long a time did Mme de Maintenon deprive the court of amusements that, as soon as the period of mourning for Louis XIV was ended, the regent Philippe d'Orléans hastened to re-establish in France the theater which had previously supplied an abundant source of entertainment. In 1716 he succeeded in bringing to Paris, under the leadership of Luigi Riccoboni, a troupe which began performances on May 18 at the Palais-Royal but removed on June 1 to the repaired and redecorated Hôtel de Bourgogne.

Dans un article précédent, nous avons déjà signalé quelques influences probables sur le Zadig de Voltaire. Le hasard des lectures nous a permis d'en découvrir d'autres qui paraissent avoir échappé aux recherches des commentateurs et à la sagacité des critiques. Nous les donnons ci-après en suivant l'ordre chronologique des sources.

The almost complete centralization of power in the monarch, which became an accomplished fact in France during the reign of Louis XIV and continued to be the national policy under his successor, had the inevitable result of destroying all semblance of political life in the country. Cut off from participation in their government, the French people gradually lost interest in the affairs of the nation. During this period, until the Seven Years' War, the manifestations of a genuine spirit of patriotism are few. Faguet is essentially right when he states that one of the salient characteristics of the eighteenth century is the progressive diminution of the spirit of patriotism. For want of opportunities to express itself this spirit had become dormant, but it was far from being dead, as later events showed.

L'histoire littéraire fait son gibier de tout, et il y a déjà longtemps que critiques et commentateurs ont considéré la géographie comme une province de leur domaine, fertile à l'occasion encore qu'éloignée. Lorsque Taine, dans une lettre à Havet datée du 29 Avril 1864, parle, entre autres, de l'influence du sol et du climat sur le génie d'une littérature ou d'un art, il ajoute modestement, ou en guise de justification: “Mon idée traîne par terre depuis Montesquieu. … Je l'ai ramassée, voilà tout.” Il aurait pu remonter plus haut, et invoquer l'abbé Dubos, ou Fontenelle, voire Jean Bodin. Mais est-il rien de plus vain que de rechercher dans le passé le moment précis où telle ou telle idée a pris naissance? L'humanité n'avait pas attendu Bodin pour se douter qu'entre le milieu et l'homme se noue tout un réseau de correspondances subtiles. Les épithètes dont le vieil Homère se sert pour caractériser ses héros et leurs pays d'origine en sont une preuve entre mille. Il arrive un moment où l'idée qui flottait vague et presque inconsciente dans l'esprit des hommes se cristallise, devient une théorie, puis une doctrine. C'est le moment que les historiens notent avec soin comme celui de son action et de sa puissance. C'est, bien plus souvent, l'heure où elle perd de sa justesse: combattue par la critique, elle s'exagère, et l'intelligence qui l'adopte en arrive à des conclusions logiques peut-être, mais trop dédaigneuses de l'infinie variété des choses pour retenir longtemps l'adhésion.

The fact that Jonson's Volpone is the source of Les Héritiers Rabourdin is known, but the precise relationship of the French play to the English original and to the German adaptation, Herr von Fuchs, has not been examined. A comparative study of these three plays reveals some interesting similarities and contrasts.

The writers with whom Marcel Proust is most commonly compared are probably Balzac, Flaubert, La Bruyère, and principally, of course, Saint-Simon. I have chosen the latter for particular comparison with Proust because these two present many obvious and interesting similarities. It may be noted first of all that Proust had studied Saint-Simon so attentively that he had attained a certain “saturation” in his style and method.

A man's friends sometimes do him a great injustice by their very eagerness to explain him to others. Such has been Proust's fate. Since his death enthusiastic friends, lacking a certain sense of discrimination, have surrounded him with a legend which the world too readily accepted. Many stories and reminiscences about him have been published, but the real man is still hidden behind the legendary one. From the thousands of his letters said to exist, only about two or three hundred are thus far accessible, and these have made their appearance piece-meal during the last three years. Most of his correspondence remains in the care of his brother, who apparently is reticent about giving it to the public.