In a now famous article published in 1920, “Comment on est passé de ce suis je à c'est moi”, Lucien Foulet described the evolution by which the neuter pronoun ce, once representing the predicative in the pronominal formula of identification, came, by a complicated system of analogies, to be felt as subject, thereby necessitating a change of construction from ce suis je, ce es tu, etc., to c'est moi, c'est toi, etc.

In an article published in this periodical Professor James G. Southworth has reopened the question of the pronunciation or non-pronunciation of Chaucer's unstressed -e in rhyme, and has come to the conclusion that this -e was not sounded in Chaucer's time, and should not now be sounded by readers of his poetry. With Professor Southworth's conclusion many students of Chaucer will undoubtedly sympathize. The modern ear is trained to hear poetry read for the sense as dictated by the syntax, and without regard for any claims that the individual line may have to being treated as a vocal unit distinct from its neighbors. Such a reading is often made difficult by the sounding of the final -e, which tends to prolong the pause. Yet despite the attractiveness of Professor Southworth's argument there are several aspects of it that should, in view of the importance of the subject, be examined in detail before we altogether abandon the -e in rhyme. To make such an examination is the purpose of this paper.

There are as many defenses of poetry in the Renaissance as there are literary critics but the one name that comes most frequently to mind is that of Sidney. The reason is clear. Most critics embodied what they had to say in defense of poetry in formal, critical treatises. Sidney, with a better sense of drama, wrote his as a separate manifesto. It is known that Julius Caesar Scaliger devoted considerable energy in his Poetices Libri Septem to replying to the charges against poetry. What is less well known is that he, too, tried his hand at a separate defense of poetry which he called Contra Poetices Calumniatores Declamatio. This interesting composition is buried in the seldom read edition of his letters and orations first published in 1600, forty-two years after his death. This work deserves to be known because it puts into brief form, and in emotional language, several of the leading ideas of Poetices Libri Septem. Since it breathes defiance of the unpolished slanderers of literature who surrounded him in Agen and hints at the difficulties which he faced there, it is, also, of considerable biographical interest.

It has long been recognized that La prudencia en la mujer, with its powerful portrait of the Queen, Maria de Molina, represented something of a special effort in Tirso's theatre. Not only is it greatly superior to the dramatist's other plays of similar genre, but it is usually conceded to be “the best historical drama of the Spanish classical theatre.” Some of the critics have been struck by its profoundly serious tone, as compared with that prevailing in other plays of the Mercedarian; others have pointed to the loving care with which Tirso has portrayed his noble protagonist and the powerful contrasts that he has worked out between the Queen and the disloyal vassals who surrounded her. Still others have stressed Tirso's success in recreating the anarchic atmosphere that surrounded her regency.

Joseph Hall, whom Fuller designated “our English Seneca”, is chiefly remembered as a satirist, character-writer, and indefatigable champion of the Anglican faith against the onslaughts of “Smectymnuus” and Milton. But Fuller's phrase suggests a further claim on our attention. Bishop Hall was the leading Neo-Stoic of the seventeenth century, a notable practitioner of the so-called “Baroque” or “curt” style (stile coupé) of the Attic writers. It was to the Neo-Stoic brand of theology which Hall so enthusiastically preached that Sir Thomas Browne had reference when he observed in his Religio Medici that “truely there are singular pieces in the Philosophy of Zeno, and doctrine of the Stoicks, which I perceive, delivered in a pulpit, pass for current Divinity.”

Trotz einer umfangreichen, kritischen Literatur bedarf die Ent-stehungsgeschichte von G. E. Lessings beiden letzten und zugleich reifsten Prosaschriften, der Freimaurergespräche und der Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts, noch immer in wesentlichen Einzelheiten der Klarung. Dies trifft auch auf die jüngste zusammenfassende Darstellung der vorliegenden Problème zu, wie sie W. v. Olshausen in den Einleitungen zu seiner Ausgabe sowie in den Anmerkungsbänden zu Lessings Werken (bei Bong) geboten hat. Gerade die dort zu Tage tretenden Unzuläng-lichkeiten und Irrtümer geben Anlaß, den einzelnen Ueberlieferungen über den Werdegang beider Werke erneut nachzugehen, ohne jedoch dabei zu übersehen, daß manches jetzt für die hier folgenden Untersuchungen benutzte Material zur Zeit der Abfassung oder beim Ab-schluß von Olshausens Erläuterungen vielleicht noch unbekannt war, während anderes zweifellos erst später veröffentlicht wurde. Andrerseits wird ein fur aile Mal auf Olshausens leicht zugänglichen und teil-weise sehr wertvollen Kommentàr zu verweisen sein, dessen Kenntnis schon darum auch für unsere Erörterungen vorausgesetzt wird, um unnotige Wiederholungen zu vermeiden. Außerdem ist gleich zu Beginn noch einmal an die oft betonten äußerlichen Gemeinsamkeiten der zwei Bekenntnisschriften zu erinnern: beide wurden iiber mehrere Jahre (1777 bezw. 1778–80) als Fragmente und anonym herausgegeben.

Although the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher had been revived in great numbers after the reopening of the London theaters in 1660, their popularity declined so steadily during the eighteenth century that by the time of Garrick's retirement from the stage in June, 1776, only two plays, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife and The Chances, both comedies, were still being presented as stock pieces at Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and the Haymarket. Shortly after Garrick's retirement, however, several of the neglected plays were revived, and, in spite of the competition of intensified Shakespearean revival and the unquestioned predominance of assorted spectacle and melodrama, a varying degree of interest in the Elizabethan twin playwrights continued until the retirement of Edmund Kean from the stage in March, 1833. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to determine the extent to which the neglect of Beaumont and Fletcher was amended during the years 1776–1833 and to ascertain the significance of the revivals as related to various contemporary interests as well as to the generally favorable or unfavorable circumstances for production.

Although Emile Montégut's work on American writers has been given some attention, there has been little attempt to assess the validity and significance of his criticism. It is an interesting fact that American literature received its first extensive treatment in France not from an admirer of American democracy, but from a political conservative, an opponent of the French Revolution. A modest and retiring person, who saw only grounds for pessimism in the political trends of the nineteenth century, who felt a nostalgic longing for a supposedly more stable and well-ordered past, who feared the progress and consequences of industrialism, Montégut might seem the least likely of critics to judge American literature rightly and with sympathetic understanding. Yet his writing on English literature is of recognized merit, he has been highly praised by men like Victor Giraud and George Saintsbury, and his complete Shakespeare is one of the major French translations of the poet. When such a writer devotes more than a score of articles to American literature and life (1847–76), his contribution can scarcely be overlooked.

Browning's “ring” metaphor has remained for seventy-nine years one of the most baffling figures of speech in English poetry His critics do not differ concerning either the formation of a gold ring or the poet's intention in his metaphor, but they differ greatly on the applicability of the metaphor. One group believes Browning to have said that the contribution made by his fancy disappeared at the completion of the poem. Its members therefore insist that Browning, in The Ring and the Book, reproduced faithfully the facts of the Old Yellow Book. They have attempted to explain that he was at once a scientific historian in his treatment of fact and a poet in his treatment of truth. They have been unwilling to discredit his historical accuracy or to admit that he was not first of all a poet.

In Classical Latin a small number of past participles had the ending -utus, e. g., argutus (arguo), locutus (loquor), secutus (sequor), solutus (solvo), volutus (volvo). In Vulgar Latin there is a proliferation of the -utus form, encroaching not only on -itus, but also on -atus. This verb form, so fecund in other parts of Romance territory, was common in Old Spanish but disappeared soon after the thirteenth century. The modern Spanish suffix -udo is an adjectival form which seems to spring rather from -utus forms which were already adjectives in Classical Latin, e.g., canutus, cornutus, nasutus. Meyer-Lubke says that -utus “jouit … en roman d'une vogue extraordinaire”, that “il indique très souvent … non la possession en général, mais une propriété extraordinaire, qui frappe: nasutus ne signifie pas simplement ‘pourvu d'un nez,’ mais ‘pourvu d'un grand nez’ etc.”

In den Jahren 1891–97 veröffentlichte Hofmannsthal in Wiener Zeitungen und Zeitschriften eine Reine von Essays über die Literatur, die Kunst, und das Theater seiner Zeit. Erst 1930, ein Jahr nach dem Tode des Dichters, erschienen diese Aufsätze gesammelt unter dem Titel Loris, dem Pseudonym des jungen Hofmannsthal. Die meisten von ihnen beschäftigen sich mit einzelnen Persönlichkeiten—Barres, Amiel, Pater, Swinburne, Ibsen, Bahr, Stefan George, Eleonora Duse—aber es sind auch solche darunter, die allgemeine Problème zum Thema haben, wie der Vortrag über Poésie und Leben, order der Bericht über die Mozartfeier in Salzburg.

One of the greatest difficulties which faced the dramatists of the Irish Renaissance was how to write heroic plays in peasant dialect. Although the language of the Irish countryman was ideal for the little farces which mirrored the living Ireland, it turned out to be the severest of limitations when used to exploit the ancient Ireland of the sagas. “But Grania is a King's daughter”, protested George Moore when Yeats insisted that Diarmuid and Grania be written in peasant dialect. And if we are to believe the story that Moore tells in Hail and Farewell, Yeats even went so far as to ask Moore, who knew not a word of dialect, to write the play in French. Lady Gregory would then turn it into English, an Irish translator would render it in Irish, and Lady Gregory would then turn the Irish literally into English. Although Yeats never got a peasant Grania from Moore, he very nearly realized his ideal when he induced Synge, the acknowledged master of peasant dialect, to attempt a peasant Deirdre. Synge, like Moore, might well have protested against the difficult task his master had set him. “I am not sure whether I shall be able to make a satisfactory play out of it”, he wrote to an American friend. But he plunged on, creating his Deirdre in the image of a Wicklow peasant girl. We can surmise that she gave him considerable trouble, for he rewrote the play more than fifteen times, working on it more energetically than on any other of his plays. We have Moore's testimony that Synge finally began to feel that peasant speech was impossible and started to weed it out of his play. However, the mass of MSS which represent Synge's work on the play up to his death indicate that no such weeding process had begun.

A première vue, les romans de Giono peuvent nous sembler remplis de provençalismes et devoir être rattachés à la littérature régionaliste. Mais on s'aperçoit vite que les provençalismes authentiques y sont plutôt clairsemés et qu'ils deviennent de plus en plus rares à mesure qu'on avance dans son œuvre. On se rend compte aussi que le régionalisme n'occupe dans cette œuvre qu'une place relative et en somme de peu d'importance, malgré l'influence provençale qui s'y manifeste à chaque page. Il reste cependant qu'une étude de ces deux questions, inséparables l'une de l'autre, comporte un certain intérêt pour l'intelligence de la langue et du style de Giono romancier.