In this paper I shall trace Spenser's career in Ireland during the uncertain years, 1584–89, We know that the poet during this period was clerk of the Council of Munster, that he acted as secretary to the president of the province, and that he almost certainly, like his successor Richard Boyle, the Earl of Cork, “attended the Lord President in all his employments.”

Friedrich Hebbel, nächst Ibsen der grösste Dramatiker der germanischen Welt im 19. Jahrhundert, ist oft der Dramatiker des Realismus genannt worden. Nun ist es bezeichnend, dass Edna Purdie in ihrem Buch über Hebbel sich jeder geistesgeschichtlichen oder stilgeschichtlichen Einordnung von Hebbels Werk enthält und vor allem Wort und Begriff des Realismus meidet. Vielleicht mit Recht, wenn man bedenkt, wie sehr das Wort missbraucht und wie schillernd der Begriff geworden ist. Aber gerade bei Hebbel Hesse sich zu einer Vertiefung des Begriffes durchstossen, wenn man nämlich Realismus nicht als einen äusserlich-stilistischen Terminus fasst, der ein Mehr oder Minder an Tatsachenfreude, an Detail der Umweltschilderung bezeichnet, sondern unter Realismus eine prinzipiell bejahende Haltung zu den Realitäten des Lebens versteht.

François Beslay observes in le Correspondant, in 1863:

In dem literarischen Nachlaß des im Jahre 1894 in Stuttgart verstorbenen Romandichters Otto Müller befinden sich zahlreiche unveröffentlichte Briefe von zum Teil hervorragenden deutschen Schriftstellern des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Es sind im ganzen 2664 Briefe, die von Gustav Müller, dem im Jahre 1918 in Genf verstorbenen Sohne Otto Müllers, auf das sorgfältigste gesichtet und chronologisch zusammengestellt wurden. In der Sammlung befinden sich Briefe von Th. Mügge, F. W. Hackländer, Hermann Hettner, Paul Heyse, Carl Emil Franzos, J. G. Fischer, Carl Gutzkow und Wilhelm Raabe, um nur einige zu nennen. Dieser Nachlaß, eine wahre Fundgrube für den Literarhistoriker, ist gegenwärtig im Besitz des Verfassers dieser Seiten, eines Enkels Otto Müllers.

Inviting the reader to exercise his own imagination with the aid of hints and cues rather than putting his meaning in prosaic terms, the meditative author of Piers Plowman takes one of the well-known roads of poetical composition. He stands with the poets who find it more to their liking to hint than to assert. On this account their work becomes relatively difficult to interpret. Time further adds to the obstacles implicit in their technique. Hence many of the controversies of scholars and the justification for what may at first glance seem a wasteful commentary. One cannot expect to leap suddenly to an understanding of so subtle and complex an allegory as Piers Plowman. Only through honest controversy and repeated effort is marked progress to be made.

Students of poetry have long regretted that John Livingston Lowes did not include in his remarkable The Road to Xanadu a study of Christabel. It would have been only fitting for the story of the origin of this poem to have appeared side by side with those of Kubla Khan and The Ancient Mariner. Professor Lowes thus explained the omission:

There is a belief current among Irish people but not accepted by critics that William Blake was of immediate Irish descent. This belief may explain the special appeal of Blake to Irishmen. A more probable explanation of Blake's appeal to the Irish lies in the interest of Irish people in symbolic and philosophical writing. In any event both George William Russell, or A E as he was known, and William Butler Yeats discovered in Blake a kindred spirit.

Zwischen Runenforschung und germanischer Religionsgeschichte besteht—trotz der grossen sachlichen Verschiedenheit der beiden Forschungsgebiete—eine ziemlich enge Interessengemeinschaft, die sich keineswegs nur auf magische Inschriften in Runencharakteren, ihre Lesung, Deutung und Datierung erstreckt. Eine sozusagen organische Verbindung, die über das rein Inhaltliche weit hinausgeht, wird dadurch hergestellt, dass das Rätsel der Entstehung der Runenschrift von zwei Hauptproblemen der germanischen Religionsgeschichte nicht getrennt werden kann, nämlich (1) der Geschichte des Wodan-Odinkultes, und (2) der Frage der Beeinflussung des germanischen Runenzaubers durch fremdländische magische Systeme.

Re-enforcement of negation by the application of words or phrases denoting small value or amount was not unknown in Latin, and was a practice that naturally carried over into the Romance languages. In referring to terms thus employed in Romania, grammarians do not always quote sources or cite the earliest text in which a term appears; to remedy this deficiency for early Italian, where necessary and possible, is the purpose of the present discussion, as well as to list additional terms that previous investigators have overlooked.

Von allen Gebilden dichterischer Phantasie, denen wir in Kleists Werken begegnen, ist wohl Penthesileas Amazonenstaat das sonderbarste. Ein eingeschlechtlicher Staat, mit künstlich geregelter Fortpflanzung, Frauen, die von Jugend auf für das Kriegshandwerk erzogen werden und ihr ganzes Leben lang Kriegerinnen bleiben—dies alles ist so phantastisch, so unglaublich, so von der Wirklichkeit entfernt, dass es fast unerklärlich scheint, wie der Dichter seinen Zuschauern ein solches Staatsgebilde mit dem Anspruch auf dichterische Wahrscheinlichkeit vorsetzen konnte. Tatsächlich ist aber der Amazonenstaat in keiner Weise so phantastisch-bizarr, wie er auf den ersten Blick zu sein scheint, denn trotz aller seiner Eigenarten ist er im Grunde nichts als ein getreues, wenn auch zum Extrem getriebenes Abbild führender rechtlicher, sozialer und pädagogischer Ideen des 18. Jahrhunderts, und insbesondere eine genaue Ausführung der Ideen Rousseaus.

The collection of poems in MS. Harley 7392 (article 2) has proved to be a unique source for verses by Raleigh, Dyer, the Earl of Oxford, and other lesser poets writing during the period of 1570–90. The most distinguished name among them, however, and the poet with the largest number of poems, is Sir Philip Sidney. Of the thirteen pieces by him, two do not appear elsewhere; and one, though familiar from its appearance in The Phoenix Nest (1593), has not before been attributed to him. These three are reprinted below.

In PMLA for September, 1935, I proposed a new and later date than customary for the flourishing of the author of the Secunda Pastorum in the Towneley cycle of mystery plays. It seemed to me then, as it seems to me now, that the evidence of the costume allusions in his plays and the evidence of local history both pointed to the years 1425–50 as encompassing the years of his major work. At the close of that article I quoted W. W. Greg and Miss Marie C. Lyle as bibliographical authorities, the one as believing that the York Passion Group could “hardly be earlier than 1400” and the other as placing the influence of the Gospel of Nicodemus upon that group as after 1415 when Roger Burton, city clerk of York, set down in the official York Memorandum Book a description of the plays as he knew them at that time. Miss Lyle, it is true, was immediately replied to by Miss Grace Clark and partly dislodged from her position. After reviewing Miss Clark's argument as it bore on the point at issue, however, I concluded that “my case would stand.” I propose now to bring the bibliographical evidence under the review of Burton's two “lists”—the first set down, as I have said, in 1415, and the second a few years later—and also under the review of entries in the York Memorandum Book (Surlees Society, cxx and cxxv).

Coleridge's disciples fall into two classes: those who, like J. H. Green, felt themselves to be the appointed custodians of Coleridge's teachings and who set about the scholarly business of collecting, completing, systematizing, editing, interpreting, and preserving Coleridge's writings and sayings; and those who, like J. C. Hare and Frederick Denison Maurice, were interested chiefly in extracting from Coleridge's teaching what would be food for their own minds, and truth confirmed by their own experience. The first group of disciples sought to make Coleridge accessible and understandable; the second group attempted to apply and test what he had taught. The comments of both groups upon their teacher may be of value. Of special importance, however, are the comments of Maurice, who, a devoted but discriminating student of Coleridge and a disciple whose whole life gave testimony as to both the worth and the shortcomings of Coleridge's message, was in his own day, a prolific writer and influential teacher.

One of the many treasures of the Newberry Library in Chicago is the valuable philological library of Prince Louis-Lucien Bonaparte. In this large collection is a German translation of Thomas a Kempis's famous devotional work, Imitatio Christi. This volume (Incunabulum 1699) Ein ware nachuolgung Cristi was printed by Anthonius Sorg in Augsburg in 1486, and according to Victor Collins in An Attempt at a Catalogue (London 1894), 478, is the first known German translation. At the end of the book are 66 pages of German manuscript to which the attention of the editors was called by Professor James Taft Hatfield. They are indebted also to Dr. Pierce Butler, formerly of Newberry Library, who has kindly put the manuscript at their disposal for further examination.

During a recent re-examination of The Return of the Native I stumbled upon a feature in the construction of that story to which I had been for years totally blind. Turning for similar investigation to others of the Wessex novels, I was startled at the hitherto unsuspected evidence of a special kind of careful workmanship.