It was Milton's habit in his controversial prose to write at considerable length about himself. This habit has been cited often enough as proof of his arrogance, his pride, his self-concern. No doubt it is. There is a great deal of self-concern, and some arrogance, in Milton. But if he liked to write of himself, he made good use of the liking—a use which he explains among other places in the Apology for Smectymnuus:

. . . I conceav'd my selfe to be now not as mine own person, but as a member incorporate into that truth whereof I was perswaded, and whereof I had declar'd openly to be a partaker. Whereupon I thought it my duty, if not to my selfe, yet to the religious cause I had in hand, not to leave on my garment the least spot, or blemish in good name so long as God should give me to say that which might wipe it off.1

From 1477 when Caxton, in his little Westminster shop, published the first book printed in England, the history of English book production is richly documented. Even before the invention of printing, the story of monastic books, in England and elsewhere, can be fairly well traced. A good deal is now known about the output of medieval university books. But there is a notable gap, even in our theorizing, about the early production of vernacular works in England, especially about the very large amount of secular verse that was composed before 1350 by anonymous authors. We know practically nothing about either the authors or the transcribers of those works, or about the circumstances under which manuscripts of contemporary date were compiled.

The verse preface which Chapman addressed “To the Reader” in 1609 when he brought out the first twelve books of the Iliads contains a succinct statement of his doctrine of translation. This preface is fairly well known as one of the significant critical essays of the English renaissance, but his translation of the Iliad itself has not been fully explored in the light of his doctrine. When the poem is measured against the precepts, it can be observed that nearly all of the stylistic idiosyncrasies of Chapman's translation, as distinct from the conceptual divergencies of his rendering, accord with his stated principles. In fact, the pertinent passage from the epistle makes the best possible introduction to a study of the poetic style of the translation.

Professor E. M. Clark in his edition of The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, and the present writer in a previous article have incidentally called attention to Milton's employment of the principle of the mixed or balanced state in his venture in commonwealth construction. I wish now to develop the thesis that this principle was a basic one in the poet's political thought, and that a study of its relationship to the development of his ideas yields significant results, not only for his attitude toward episcopacy, monarchy, and dictatorship, but for an understanding of the point at which he finally arrived in The Ready and Easy Way.

Among the treasures in the Henry E. Huntington Library is a copy of Robert de Gretham's Le miroir, ou les évangiles des domnées, which has some importance for the Anglo-Norman original, and more for the relationship of the Miroir to the Middle English translation, known as the Mirrur. The manuscript (now HM 903) has been known for some time, but it was not listed by Vising or Russell nor employed by Miss Aitken in her extracts from the Miroir. It is bound with a copy of the Manuel des Pechiez, so that it occupies folios 68-205 of the present manuscript book. The copy is fragmentary at the beginning and accordingly was misbound, with a rubric and an illumination at the top of what appeared to be the first folio; the proper sequence of folios is 140-205, 68-139.

Es gibt meines Wissens noch keine zusammenfassende historische oder theoretische Untersuchung über die dichterische Namengebung. Mir sind ausser kleineren Aufsätzen, die das Thema mehr plaudernd und feuilletonistisch behandeln, nur wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen über die Namen bei einzelnen Dichtern bekannt, z.B. bei Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Dickens, Raabe, Fontane. Gelegentliche Bemerkungen und Beobachtungen zu dem Thema finden sich natürlich überall verstreut. Es wäre sicher eine dankbare, wenn auch schwierige Aufgabe, die Frage, nach welchen Rücksichten und Prinzipien die Dichter ihre erfundenen Personen getauft haben, einmal im weitesten zeitlichen und räumlichen Umfange zu beantworten; die Unterschiede der Zeiten, der Völker, der Sprachen würden sich in diesem Spiegel klar auffangen lassen.

It has long been recognized that the fundamental ideas of Johann Gottfried Herder's thought are few and consistent, in spite of the fact that their author frequently expressed his deep-seated aversion to metaphysical systematics. Herder's principle of regarding the individual experience as primordial and the abstract statement as derivative has been labeled by his biographers and commentators as “irrationalism,” when, as a matter of fact, his aversion to systematics was merely the result of a sincere concern with the discoveries of empirical science. Though Herder very often gave voice to his belief that all philosophical systems are “fictions” or “poems,” he was unwilling to go as far as do the radical positivists of our own day—Wittgenstein, Carnap, et al., who deny validity to all metaphysics. In fact, certain conceptions frequently used by Herder are admitted by him to be genuinely metaphysical. At the same time, in his use of the conception of “Kraft,” which definitely belongs among these, Herder will be seen to stand in much the same position as the Kant of the first Kritik, i.e., in that of having to reconcile inherited metaphysics and the results of the scientific experimentation of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. An examination of Herder's attempted reconciliation has long been overdue; it has been neglected in the past because of the outspokenly pro-Kantian attitude of Herder's biographers, among whom Rudolf Haym and Eugen Kühnemann stand unquestionably preëminent. It is the purpose of the following to sketch the conception of “Kraft” inherited by Herder and to indicate the synthesis he attained between the older idea and the scientific conceptions of his age. In addition, the rôle played by the final development of the idea in the break between Herder and Weimar classicism will be brought forward as a better explanation than the purely personal (and hence unfairly derogatory) motives hitherto adduced to explain it.

The early Elizabethan conception of a line of poetry is best illustrated by Puttenham, who compares it to a day's journey in which the traveler rests twice, at noon and at night.” The end-stopped line which results from this conception gives increased importance to the rime; indeed, Puttenham considers it the equivalent of classical “currantnesse”of foot, which “passed the whole verse throughout, whereas our concordes keepe but the latter end of every verse.” Rime is even placed above meter: “your concordes containe the chief part of Musicke in your meetre.” The preference is clearly for rich heavy rimes, with an echo. For this reason monosyllables are most desirable; since “in them, if they finish the verse, resteth the shrill accent of necessitie, and so doth it not in the last of every bissilable, nor of every polisillable word.” Rime is not merely good or bad; it has its own decorum: some words an i figures are suitable for one style but not for others, and the same is true of “concord and measure.?” Thus rimes which fall on the last syllable are “sweetest and most commendable”; those falling on the penultimate syllable are “more light and not so pleasant”; and those upon the antepenultimate syllable are “most unpleasant of all, because they make your meeter to light and triviall, and are fitter for the Epigrammatist or Comicall Poet.” ? Light endings are for light verse; even Daniel seems to agree with this opinion when he says that feminine rimes are “fittest for Ditties.”

It has long been known that the distinction between sl and tl, which existed in Old Norse, has been lost in the modern dialects of Norway. In his Norsk Grammatik of 1864 Ivar Aasen wrote:

One of the most interesting chapters in the literary career of Leopoldo Alas (Clarín) deals with his advocacy of naturalism and the creation and defense of his most famous original work, La Regenta. Early in his literary life Alas placed himself in the forefront of the Spanish followers of Emile Zola and for many years was one of the most vigorous advocates of naturalism in Spain. He came to the movement with abundant enthusiasm, defended it in many fiery polemics, but maintained throughout his life very definite reservations which reveal a Leopoldo Alas scarcely ever recognized by his contemporaries.

The present essay embodies a continuation of some previously published studies of the Middle English Seege (or Batayle) of Troye; it is therefore hardly necessary or advisable to present here a full summary of the large body of scholarly comment which this poem has aroused. Briefly, it has been established that the Seege of Troye is dependent on two principal sources: De Excidio Troiae of Dares Phrygius and the Roman de Troie of Benoit de Sainte-Maure; and that details from these two accounts are pretty thoroughly blended together in the English poem. There have been noted, however, a number of episodes—mostly concerned with the early lives of Paris and Achilles—which are not traceable either to Dares or to Benoit. At least one other source of some kind has therefore been regarded as a necessary postulate in order to account for the presence of these episodes in the Seege of Troye.

The phenomenon of synaesthesia has been much studied in recent years, both on its psychological and on its literary side. In the strict scientific sense, it consists in the arousing, by the stimulation of one sense, a concomitant sensation in another. Thus the man who always felt a pain in a certain tooth when a soprano sang off-key was a genuine synaesthetic. In such simple forms, modern investigators have shown, synaesthesia is a psychological “Urphänomen” and can be traced back to prehistoric times, though it became an object of scientific attention only with Newton's Opticks in 1704.

Poesia Espanhola, a manuscript of sixty-seven folio pages, which forms part of the Gayangos Collection in the National Library at Madrid, was, as its title implies, compiled by a Portuguese. Further evidence of the nationality of the collector is furnished by two poems in Portuguese as well as the Portuguese captions added to several other compositions. From the authors included in it, it may be assumed that the manuscript belongs to the first quarter of the seventeenth century. It has come down to us virtually intact except for a single folio page (45r) containing one complete sonnet and the initial five verses of another. However, some notion of the contents of the missing poem may be gained from the caption at the bottom of folio 44v-Soneto de Diego de Mendoca a la muerte de su muger, while the last nine verses of the other composition (given on folio 45v fortunately make it possible for us to retrace them and the missing lines that go with them to a sonnet by Góngora beginning “Mientras por competir con tu cabello,” Obras Poeticas, I (New York, 1921), p. 30.

It is curious, in view of the strange fascination which the seventeenth Earl of Oxford has exercised on a whole school of modern critics, that perhaps the most crucial episode in his life has been glossed over or ignored completely. Yet this episode, however discreditable to the Earl, is of some literary interest.

The Executive Council met in the Hotel Pennsylvania, New York, N. Y., on March 28–29 in three sessions: 2:30–6:00 p.m., 8:00–10:00 p.m., and 9:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. There were present throughout the sessions all officers and members except Professor Schevill (proxy Professor Horatio Smith) and Dean Gauss (proxy Professor Ira Wade). Informal reports of the Secretary and Treasurer and various committee reports were presented. An extended discussion was held on Association activities in war time. The following actions were taken.