In Breuddwyd Rhonabwy we read: “Behold, bards came and recited verses before Arthur, and no man understood those verses … save that they were in Arthur's praise.” These words fittingly describe a poem (No. xxx) in the thirteenth-century Book of Taliesin, entitled Preiddeu Annwn, which would seem to mean “The Spoils (i.e. plunder) of the Other World.” Sharon Turner, who was the first to offer a translation, frankly confessed that the Welsh scholars of his day did not profess to understand above one half of any of the Taliesin poems. He asserted—not without reason—that in the particular verses under discussion “all connection of thought seems to have been studiously avoided”; and in conclusion he exclaimed, “Could Lycophron or the Sybils, or any ancient oracle, be more elaborately incomprehensible?”

The account of Conall Corc's exile from Ireland to Scotland and of his adventures in that country until his return home to become, eventually, king of Munster about 400 a.d. is here edited for the first time from the Book of Leinster. Unfortunately, the loss of one or more folios of the MS at this point renders the text acephalous so that the surviving portion commences abruptly in the middle of a sentence with his departure by sea from Dublin. As the title has also not been preserved, this fragment is arbitrarily called Longes Chonaill Chuirc, “The Exile of Conall Corc” for purposes of convenient reference. But what the actual heading in the MS was, will never be ascertainable, unless a happy chance leads to the discovery of the missing leaf or leaves.

Arecent study of the manuscripts of the works of Chrétien de Troyes contains an appendix which purports to survey the published fragments of the various romances. In point of fact, so far as Erec is concerned, it omits all reference to the. three fragments we now possess. Those to which the author refers are not properly speaking manuscript fragments, but rather early publications of excerpts from complete manuscripts which have now been collated by Foerster in his large edition and by myself in a forthcoming edition of the same romance. Therefore, despite the fact that Foerster's collation was careless and incomplete, these early fragmentary publications are of slight interest. However, in an extensive work dealing with the ensemble of the manuscript tradition of Chrétien, some mention should have been made of the three real fragments which we possess, even though, as the editors of the two published ones have remarked, they are not extensive enough to be of great importance in the classification of the manuscripts.

Exactly what was the influence of the liturgical drama, and how did it show itself? A continuous tradition from the Latin church plays through the vernacular religious plays of the later middle ages has been generally recognized since the middle of the nineteenth century, and especially since the publication of Chambers' Mediaeval Stage. The only basic attack upon the accepted historical explanation is too insubstantial to be at all convincing; and our knowledge of the liturgical plays and of their relation to individual vernacular plays or groups of plays has been much increased of late, through Professor Young's presentation of the corpus of the liturgical drama, and through many special studies of French and German texts. At the same time, we must reckon with the cumulatively impressive evidence, offered by such scholars as Emile Roy, Grace Frank, Frances A. Foster, and G. R. Owst, of the use of vernacular narrative and homiletic sources in the vernacular religious plays of the middle ages. With our present fuller knowledge both of the liturgical drama and of the rich non-dramatic material which was utilized in the later plays, we need to distinguish and redefine the specifically dramatic tradition which sprang from the liturgical plays, and the manner in which it persisted.

Dal Montaigne in poi si è spesso accusato il Guicciardini di avere attribuito le azioni umane solo a moventi d'interesse e perciò di aver considerato gli uomini malvagi, simulatori, cupidi, ed ingrati. Queste imputazioni non sono del tutto infondate; tuttavia il Fiorentino non giudicò per mero gusto di dir del male, ma per sincero convincimento di chi è deluso per troppo contatto coll'uomo politico. La sua critica non ha risparmiato né il Papato né la Francia né Venezia né gli altri stati italiani. Non deve quindi meravigliarci che ne abbia fatta a danno della Spagna e degli Spagnoli. Questi non tardarono a tacciarlo di passione; eppure furono essi i primi ad insegnargli gli intrighi e i raggiri della politica europea. Non fu alla scuola di Ferdinando il Cattolico ch'egli imparò a diffidare oltremisura dell'uman genere?

The opinion of scholars who have dealt with this question reveals an interesting, if somewhat reluctant, evolution. This opinion has held that Du Bellay did not know Pindar, that if one or two of his odes are cast into Pindaric form, the resemblance does not go beyond externals, and that if a reminiscence of Pindar may occasionally be found in a metaphor or in a poetic movement, this is merely a reflection of the profound influence of Ronsard upon Du Bellay.

Emotion, according to scientific writers of the Renaissance, is a physiological as well as a psychological phenomenon. A passion provokes muscular activity in the heart and movements of humors to or from the heart. It is accompanied, moreover, by intensification of two of the four primary physical qualities: heat, cold, moisture, and dryness. Heat and dryness, for instance, are concomitants of anger; an angry man is a hot, dry man. A sorrowful or fearful man is a cold, dry man. A desirous, hopeful, or joyful man is a hot, moist man. Since choler is a hot, dry humor, men of choleric complexion, or temperament, are physically predisposed to anger, and anger is the passion most characteristic of them. Since melancholy is a cold, dry humor, melancholy men are naturally prone to fear and sorrow. Since blood is hot and moist, sanguine persons are naturally inclined to desire, hope, and joy. Phlegmatic men are relatively passionless, for phlegm is cold and moist and there are no cold and moist passions.

“‘There's some herb that's good for everybody except for them J. that thinks they're sick when they ain't,’ announced Mrs. Todd, with a truly professional air of finality. ‘Come, William, let's have Sweet Home, an’ then mother'll sing Cupid an' the Bee for us.'” Accuracy in detail is a merit that no one would deny to the work of Sarah Orne Jewett and hence some time ago, on reading the words just quoted from The Country of the Pointed Firs, the present writer was puzzled at finding Cupid and the Bee linked with Sweet Home in a setting meant to call up nothing but the homely reality of Maine. The title suggested Theocritus (pseudo-Theocritus) or an Anacreon (pseudo-Anacreon) unlikely to be much on the mind of Mrs. Todd or her aged mother. Sweet Home is duly sung, but we hear no more of Cupid and the Bee. One only gathers that to Miss Jewett in 1896 it had the color of an old song suitable to the age of the singer. As I had long been noting down occurrences of the theme,

As Cupid midst the roses played,
Transporting in the damask shade,
A bee stepped unseen among
The silken leaves' his finger stung.

His beauteous cheeks with tears were drowned;
He stormed, he blew the burning wound,
Then nimbly running through the grove
Thus plaintive to the Queen of Love:

“I'm killed, Mamma; alas, I die!
A little serpent winged to fly
That's called the bee in yonder plain,
Has stung me, and I die with pain.”

When Venus smiling thus rejoining:
“My dear, if you such anguish find
From the resentment of a bee,
Think what they feel that's stung by thee.”

Benjamin Franklin was always, to quote Carl Van Doren, “an avid, powerful reader of many books. There were always books in his inner life, books in his business, books in his friendships.” His effective initiative in the organization and development of the Junto's subscription library, later the Philadelphia Library, is one conspicuous illustration of this life-long habit of his mind and heart; but every reader of the Autobiography knows that, besides providing books for others, Franklin used them in his own writing, early and late. Witness the memorable passages in which he recalls his self-imposed “exercises” in “improving my language”—not to mention Alexander Pope's—by “imitating” The Spectator or the Essay on Criticism, and digesting Locke, Shaftesbury, and others. In this note I wish to call particular attention to a hitherto unnoticed by-product of Franklin's “bookish inclination,” a recollection from a notable Elizabethan poet.

When the asterisks in the following passage of Byron's diary are replaced by the correct name, light is shed on the practically unexplored problem of Byron's political connections and ambitions during his life in London—and on the question, crucial to an understanding of the later Byron, of what was going on in the poet's mind in his twenty-fifth year.

Le problème fondamental que les réalistes se sont efforcés de résoudre, c'est celui de l'imitation dans les arts. Dès le début du dix-neuvième siècle, tout un groupe d'artistes s‘éloignent résolument des procédés de l'esthétique classique. Au lieu de prendrepour modèle un idéal abstrait, universel, ils se bornent à imiter un être individuel et concret. C'est ce qu'on a appelé l‘école du modèle. En 1805, Emeric David publie son fameux mémoire intitulé Recherches sur l'art statuaire. Ce mémoire, couronné par l'Institut, non seulement prône l'imitation de la nature, mais recommande aux artistes de ne copier que ce qu'ils voient. “Peut-être vous a-t-on dit qu'il ne faut pas copier servilement la Nature, qu'il faut l'ennoblir. Copiez, au contraire, ce que vous voyez; ne faites maintenant rien de plus.”

Suggestions for the primary source of Poe's Tamerlane have been either indefinite or improbable. Killis Campbell suggested that while Poe was at school in London he may have learned something of the part played by Tamerlane in history, and that either then or after his return to Richmond in 1820 he may have become acquainted with some of the literary versions of the story. He considered the possibility of Poe's having seen one of the Tamerlane plays on the stage, and noted that Timour the Tartar was acted in Baltimore as late as 1829. Mary E. Phillips advanced the possibility that Poe may have come across a copy of the play Tamerlane in the library of Rector Bransby, since the rôle of Dervish in Tamerlane at Drury Lane was taken by a Mr. Bransby who might have been a relative of Rector Bransby.

Felix Holt, A Radical is today cursorily dismissed by students of George Eliot's works as her one unsuccessful venture in fiction on the position of the laborer in society. Actually, although the novel is somewhat dull in plot, it was by no means unsuccessful in its own time, nor was it George Eliot's only novelistic attempt to discuss industrial issues.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the controversy over the possibility and desirability of a national American literature had diminished to a somewhat feeble reiteration of old pros and cons. Moreover, Whitman's vigorous renewal of the demand for a distinctly national literature in his 1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass went virtually unnoticed by reason of his own obscurity and the disruption of national unity by sectional disputes. In the upsurge of nationalistic optimism following the Civil War, however, in the promises afforded by a strong and humanitarian Union, the sentiment for a literature distinct through its expression of the new national idealism was both widespread and ardent. But this post-war literary nationalism was short-lived. Before the skeptical attacks of many literary critics and the rising materialism of the Gilded Age, hope for a national literature once more gave way to indifference or despair. If the controversy was to be revived, some new literary stimulus, some new mode or approach toward the achievement of an American literature would have to be forthcoming. Such a stimulus was provided in the rise of realism. The conflict between the new realism and the old romanticism in the 1870's and 1880's is a well-known chapter in the history of American criticism, but the relationship of this new realism to the production of a national literature as it was viewed in the two decades before Whitman's death has not received adequate attention.

Trop personnel! Bon Dieu! On ne saurait être trop personnel … Ce que nous cherchons dans une œuvre, c'est un homme.“ So, in 1864, did young Émile Zola first justify the intensely personal note that he was later to strike so often in his novels. Many of his characters—Sandoz, Claude, Pascal Rougon, Mathieu Froment—testify that the doctrine of impersonality in art was not for him, that he did not hesitate to call upon his own memories in the composition of his figures. In the present study I shall attempt to show that Lazare Chanteau of La Joie de vivre also may claim a place in this gallery of self-portraits, that Zola consciously formed him in his own image and likeness.

Mlerch a traité de l'inversion absolue (c'est à dire de celle qui n'est pas conditionnée par un adverbe en tête de phrase) en français moderne dans sa Historische Syntax des Französischen,iii, 427 seq. et dans son article sur l'inversion paru dans Mélanges Bally (1939), p. 364 seq. Je résume en les combinant les deux rédactions. Le type arriva le général (sans pronom personnel il, “voilant” l'inversion, et sans adverbe: alors arriva le général) est similaire au type de phrase optative périsse le traître. La phrase enunciative ne connaît ce type-là en français moderne qu'avec des verbes de mouvement, alors que l'ancien et le moyen français étendaient la construction à beaucoup d'autres verbes. Exemples: … venait ensuite une façon de sac dans la célèbre description, par Flaubert, de la casquette de l'ignoble mari de Mme Bovary; entre Henri, sort Germaine, sonne l'Angélus dans des indications de scène de pièces de théâtre; arriva le général, survient une difficulté, s'approche un confrère, vint à passer un canot …, me vint tout de suite à l'esprit l'idée que …, les précédait immédiatement un monsieur en redingote, reste à savoir si …, n'importe; dans le style judiciaire: seront punis d'une amende … ceux qui …, et, par extension, ont collaboré à ce volume (suivent les noms); dans les proverbes: rira bien qui rira le dernier. Du même ordre est l'inversion après des conjonctions ne l'entraînant pas d'ordinaire, comme et et mais: et suivait le récit d'un accident;… mais voyage avec nous “le fils Mélèze,” et celle qui se trouve depuis le symbolisme dans les incidentes sitôt que s'accentue la diction: si plonge … Dans l'onde … Ta jubilation nue; enfin après seul prédicatif: seuls peuvent coexister avec lui mon travail et ton amitié. M.Lerchnote que le français moderne connaît ce type d'expression seulement avec un nom (arriva le général, non *arriva-t-il), alors que l'allemand peut dire dans la langue “écrite” aussi bien Kam einmal ein Bäuerlein que Lief er schnell es nah zu seh'n, et que le tour français en question est “archaïque” et “limité à la langue écrite.”

In seiner Auswahl aus den hochdeutschen Dichtern des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1820) hat Lachmann die methodische Textkritik deutscher Werke des Mittelalters begründet. Er forderte, von Benecke angeregt und durch textkritische Arbeit an klassischen Autoren geschult, daβ man zuerst auf Grund des gesamten erhaltenen Materials die echteste Überlieferung bestimme (recensio) und darauf dann eine systematische, nach dem Wert der einzelnen Handschriften abwägende Konjekturalkritik aufbaue (emendatio). Die sprachliche Form aber suchte er durch eingehende Reimstudien zu regeln,—doch war es bedenklich, daβ er sich dabei fast ausschlieβlich auf oberdeutsche, speziell alemannische Handschriften berief und auf eine möglichst altertümliche Rechtschreibung ausging.

In seinem Vortrag über “Passion” und “Gefühl” (Arch. Rom.,xxii, 320 ff.) hat E. Lerch versucht die vielfältig geschichtete Bedeutungsentwicklung von passio im Ganzen darzustellen. Das Bild, das er entwirft, ist das Folgende.