The description of the seven planets in the Testament of Cresseid by the Scottish Chaucerian, Robert Henryson (c. 1425–c. 1500), is perhaps the most lively and arresting in English literature. Approximately one-third of the poem is devoted to the planets, and they play an essential role in the trial and punishment of Cresseid, who becomes a leper here and hereafter in the Troilus-Criseyde story. This note is an attempt to clear the way for the study of the origins and sources of the planet portraits and to shed some light on the competence of the poet.

By substituting astrological qualities for the mythological qualities of the ancient gods, Chaucer had pioneered and had made poetic capital of the astrological magic in which his age had come to believe. Henryson took full advantage of this fact. The Testament of Cresseid contains many elements of astrology: in the opening lines, the poet dates the poem by means of an astronomical periphrase in which he describes the Sun and Venus in opposition, a combination which signifies “A barren time … the Native impudent and bold in his wantonnesse and Lust, wholly occupied in scurvy and sordid actions, whereby he incurres great Infamy, Scandall and Disgrace,” and which sets the tone for the burden of the poem; the planets are ranked according to their astrological order, and Mercury is chosen speaker, a choice which accords with his influence over logic and debate; the choice of Saturn and Cynthia to deliver the verdict of leprosy is fitting, according to the astrological qualities of the humours, and the poet's treatment of the disease shows a detailed knowledge of astrological medicine.

Argumento. La viuda del Intendente del Ejército, Don Antonio María Zapata, Doña Francisca Juárez, a causa de su despilfarro e incapacidad administrativa cae en la mayor miseria, y si puede continuar viviendo es gracias a su antigua criada Benigna, que pidiendo limosna mantiene a su señora. Pero después de unos años de terrible pobreza, ella y sus hijos Antonio y Obdulia heredan una fortuna, la cual no podrán malgastar, porque Juliana, la mjuer de Antonio, persona muy decidida, de mucho carácter y muy capaz, se encarga de dirigir todos los asuntos familares. Entre los numerosos personajes de la novela, conviene nombrar todavía a dos: el ciego Almudena, mendigo y amigo de la criada Benigna, y el cura D. Romualdo, que es uno de los que dan la noticia de la herencia a Doña Francisca.

The identification of the writers employed by the bishops in their counterattack against Martin Marprelate is almost as difficult as is that of Martin himself. Most prominent of those suspected is Thomas Nashe; indeed, at one time or another every one of the anti-Martinist pamphlets has been ascribed to him. Since in his own day his name was frequently associated with Martin's, shortly after his death the legend sprang up that he was chiefly responsible for downing Martin. Until 1903, when McKerrow began his edition, it was taken for granted that Nashe was the leading anti-Martinist writer.

Possibly none of the “dark conceits” woven into the fabric of Spenser's allegory appear so impenetrable to modern eyes as the topical allusions. They were obscure in the sixteenth century, but served in consequence to catch immediate attention and interest. Today, when clues are difficult to recognize, when modern readers lack the easy familiarity with everyday events and personalities which Spenser took for granted in his public, much of the topical meaning of the Faerie Queene has been lost. Occasionally, however, some of the allusions are recognized and the range of meaning in the poem is thereby extended. It has been observed recently that the Mutability cantos may refer to the problem of the succession. If a fairly convincing case could be made for this suggestion, it would be possible to appreciate anew how Spenser delighted his readers by adroit reference to topics forbidden in open debate. The following discussion is offered not as proof, but rather as a suggestion with enough likelihood to call for consideration.

In Romania, xxxix (1910), 451, Salvioni bitterly attacked Bàrtoli because the latter had dared to assert that Italian giorno is of French origin. One of Bàrtoli's arguments—and precisely that very one which aroused Salvioni's wrath—was that some regions of Southern Italy have the form yuornu (with a uo) which is not what one would expect should the word represent there Lat. diurnum. Entirely misunderstanding Bàrtoli's neolinguistic theories, Salvioni writes with the typical dogmatic style of the Neogrammarians:

Può parere veramente strano—deve però insieme rallegrare come una prova che la verità s'impone malgrado tutto e tutti [!]—può parere strano, dico, che si chedano delle armi alia fonetica in uno scritto nel quale ostentatamente s'afferma non esservi “esempi normali,” cioè non esservi norme fonetiche. Ma colla dialettica sua il Bàrtoli se la veda lui. Qui si vuol solo objettare, poiché il Bàrtoli ricorre per juorno [that is yuorno] alla Francia settentrionale, che si dovrebbe pur dire perché l'antico francese jρr(n) non sia stato adottato con quella vocale che quasi s'imponeva, cioè coll'ρ, che poi, per effetto della metafonesi, diveniva u.

For his work on the Bible in English and for his translations from Erasmus, Richard Taverner has had a modest importance in early Tudor literature. In other respects, he has been an easy man to disregard. He misses the pioneer's distinction in both his fields; he obscures the interest of his own utterances by offering them in the guise of translation; even what we know of his life suggests no highly individual achievement. In summary, his biography traces a path well worn by his generation of humanists—scholars trained at Renaissance Oxford and Cambridge, men matured in the dramatic, dangerous school of experience that was England between the fall of Wolsey and the death of Henry VIII. The times welcomed such a useful scholarship as Taverner devoted to education, politics, and religion. We, in turn, may increase our understanding of those times by recognizing, not simply the work he did, but also his methods and some of his results. For such a study, his little book preserved in exemplars of six editions, Proverbes or Adagies … gathered out of the Chiliades of Erasmus, has the double interest of revealing more of Taverner's thought than we should expect to find in it and of helping to color the fame of Erasmus in England.

Karl Viëtors Studie in PMLA, LIX, 142–183 hat unter anderem überzeugend dargetan, daβ der Zusatz Ist fortzusetzen zu Goethes Gedicht auf Schillers Schädel weder eine Wiederaufnahme des Wilhelm Meister im Sinn hat, noch besagen will, daβ das Gedicht als solches fortgesetzt, gewiβermaβen verlängert hätte werden sollen. Goethe habe vielmehr an ein zweites oder eine Reihe weiterer Gedichte gedacht, die sich mit Problemen der Naturphilosophie befaβt hätten, wie sie im Gedicht angedeutet sind.

Matthew Arnold's prose style has been praised in the past by innumerable critics and by writers of today as different as T. S. Eliot and Somerset Maugham. His ideas about prose style still live; and, as the infatuation with eccentricity in art dies and the concern for sanity grows stronger, it may become more apparent that many of Arnold's comments on the art of prose lead to principles that have endured because they are sound. This paper is an analysis of Arnold's comments on the meaning and relationships of prose style and his formulation of the qualities of an “Attic” prose to express a sane national intelligence. Part one of this study examines the significance, part two the qualities that Arnold gave to prose style.

Most of the scant attention paid by critics to the poetry of Thomas Campion has been sidetracked by two considerations which, however interesting in themselves, have little to do with his real poetic accomplishments. One of these considerations is that he was a musician and almost alone among his contemporaries composed settings for his own poems; the other is that he played some part in the guerilla warfare waged by a few Elizabethan writers against rhyme. Before we can make a fresh adjustment to his poetry, we must dispose of the first and reckon with the second.

When in the summer of 1881 Sidney Colvin settled back to enjoy the praise of friends and reviewers for his short biography of Walter Savage Landor, his pleasure was rudely interrupted by a letter to the Athenaeum from a correspondent in Italy, headed “A Protest.” The correspondent, Mrs. Eliza Lynn Linton, objected (quite unjustly, as Colvin's pained reply pointed out) to his “curiously grudging spirit” in nelgecting her part in Landor's later life, and insisted on the “one honour which I regard as the most precious in my whole history, and the public recognition of which, when occasion offers, I claim as my right. I mean my long and close friendship with Walter Savage Landor.” Twelve years previously, when Forster had first published his biography of Landor, he too found himself beset for the same reason with a series of ill-tempered reviews by the same hand, one of them beginning, “The Life of Walter Savage Landor has yet to be written.” One can only guess how Mr. Malcolm Elwin's recent volume, Savage Landor, would have pleased her. Certain it is that Landor's friendship with her is worth tracing in detail, especially since his letters to her, for the most part unpublished, provide an important source of information about the last years of his life, and one which not even this most recent biographer has touched.

The Saracens in Italian popular literature are exotic. They are of French origin and came with the French epic into Italy, where this epic material found a second fatherland. For the Franco-Italian versions which served as a connecting link between the French poems and the court epics of Pulci, Boiardo, Ariosto, Ciecco da Ferrara, Tasso and the rest, one may consult the magistral work of Pio Rajna Le fonti dell' Orlando Furioso (Firenze, 1876), the same author's Ricerche intorno ai Reali di Francia (Bologna, 1872), and the Introduction of Johannes Hübscher's edition of “Orlando” in Stengel's Ausgaben und Abhandlungen. No. lx, (Marburg, 1886). The following works may also be profitably consulted: F. Castets, Recherches sur les rapports des chansons de geste et de l‘épopée chevaleresque italienne. (Paris, 1887); Vincenzo Crescini, “Orlando nella chanson de Roland i nei poemi del Bojardo e dell’ Ariosto,” Il Propugnatore, xiii, Pt. 1, 2 (Bologna, 1880).

Grimm's Deutsches Wörterbuch treats this word under Bosse, m. (ii, 261–263) and Posse, Posz, Possen, m. (vii, 2013 f.). There is also a long article by Biltz, “Über das Wort und den Begriff Posse,” in Herrigs Archiv, lxxiii, 33–46 (1885), and a brief résumé in Kluge-Götze, 11th ed. (1932), p. 453, under Posse, f. Grimm (ii, 261 ff.) says of the word:

Bosse, m. jocus, nugae, ineptiae, astutia, gestus. es ist schwer, die gestalt und abkunft dieses worts zu sichern, dessen anlaut zwischen B und P schwankt, dessen nom. oft in einsilbiges bosz, botz gekürzt erscheint (wie blicze in blitz, bisse in biß, bitz, böse in bosz), zuletzt gar in possen (wie viele schwache m.) gedehnt. so häufig seit dem 16.jh. der ausdruck wird, nirgends erscheint er früher.