In the preface of the collective edition of his poems published the year before his death, Lowell laments the fact that there is no escaping responsibility for the printed page. “Ilka mon maun dree his weird,” he reminds his reader; and he goes on to say that, but for the “avenging litera scripta manet,” he “would gladly suppress or put into the Coventry of smaller print in an appendix” a good many things that he had with much reluctance admitted into this edition. There can be no doubt that Lowell was sincere in this avowal; but it would be a mistake to infer from what he says that he made no attempt to escape the avenging fate which he declares to be inevitable. For from this final edition he took pains to exclude not only all his juvenilia, but likewise a goodly number of his verses published after he had attained to manhood, and some, even, that he had written in his mature old age. By my count, he omitted from this final collective edition a total of 181 poems that had hitherto been published. He retained in this edition a total of 260 poems (I count the “Biglow Papers” as a single poem and each of the sonnets or sonnet groups as single items); so that out of a grand total of 441 poems published up to the time of the preparation of his final edition he sacrificed a little more than forty percent.

The conjunction of the centenary of Shelley's death with the present interest in things pertaining to Spain and Spanish literature makes opportune an examination of the question: to what extent did Spain interest Shelley? For that this country did interest him will be borne out by even a superficial scanning of the titles in the older editions of his poems, while a perusal of his correspondence will disclose the fact that for at least the last three years of his life Shelley was a devoted student of certain phases of Spain's history and literature.

Matthew Arnold is in general so confidently clear as to the nature of his own poetry that the reader is apt to credit him when he insists upon the contemporary sources of its melancholy. But those contemporary sources will appear much dimmer when the second or third centenary of his birth (December 24, 1822) shall come round. The “two worlds” that the poet wandered between will doubtless be rather nebular on the rear horizon, and the carefully wrought stanzas concerning them may seem the “stretched metre of an antique song.” The cursory commemorating reader, when he reaches the poem on Growing Old, may toss the volume aside with the remark that “this old fellow carefully architectured his gloom, but added here too obvious a gable.” The discerning reader, however, will be in a better position than now to find, flowing beneath Arnold's verse, a profounder melancholy than the clear Arnoldian eye itself could fathom.

The publication and distribution of books possessing a scholarly rather than a mercantile value present problems that are particularly adapted as subjects of consideration by the Modern Language Association and upon the solution of which the academic investigator and the educational publisher may quite properly take counsel with each other. The entire question is also of more than timely importance not only for the advancement of pure scholarship but by reason of the fact that the unprecedented increase in our College and University enrollment and the interest manifested by students in the pursuit of Modern Languages have brought the teacher face to face with the opportunity of expanding his advanced and graduate classes and, consequently, with the need of supplying his courses with adequate and attractive tools of instruction. What is the actual state of affairs? Where does the scholar at present obtain serious books of this character? Where can he arrange for the publication of such books? What are the difficulties that confront the publishers? What remedies may be applied to conditions now prevailing? These questions can best be answered by means of a frank interchange of ideas.

A new interest of late has awakened in Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, through the realization that he is the fountain-head of much of the æsthetics and ethics prevalent in the last century and in our own time. While it has been generally recognized that the background of Shaftesbury's thought is classical, as was to be expected of any student and thinker of his period, deriving both from Stoicism and from Platonism and neo-Platonism, attention and interest have chiefly been concentrated upon those aspects of his thought which look toward the coming romantic movement. Also, such classical influences as have been recognized are usually interpreted from the post-renaissance point-of-view, as agreeing in the main with such modifications of Platonic and neo-Platonic thought as are referred to in discussing “Platonism” of Shelley. Thus C. W. Weiser enlarges upon Shaftesbury's indebtedness to the Platonic and neo-Platonic traditions—terms which he uses, as he explains, in a very general sense, as pertaining to the life of the feeling (the Platonic way) in opposition to the life of the reason (the Aristotelian way).

The subject of prose rhythms is an ancient one. Even without going back of English usage, we find prose rhythms consciously developed, and consequently suggesting some sort of mature theory, as early as the time of Elizabeth. The rhythms of Bacon may be Ciceronian, and those of the King James Bible the habits of the translators, many of whom for the better part of a lifetime had been chanting, or half chanting, the Scriptures in their pulpits. But Lyly's rhythms are a deliberate thing, one is tempted to say, in his case, a premeditated crime. Sir Thomas Browne's rhythms a little later are plainly conscious. With De Quincey the usage has become an art with rules and classified practices.

Few poets typify Elizabethan patriotism so completely as Michael Drayton. His most ambitious poem, Polyolbion, is a fond effort to record the chorographic intricacies of his beloved isle. But he does more than that: he often transfers his interest from landscape to human beings. Thus in the Nineteenth Song he passes easily from rivers to men, paying his homage to those responsible for English prestige at sea. The rivers Orwell and Stour reach an agreement:

(156-162) And lastly they agree
That since the Britans hence their first discoveries made,
And that into the East they first were taught to trade,
Besides, of all the Roads, and Havens of the East,
This Harbour where they meet is reckoned for the best.
Our voyages by sea and brave discoveries known,
Their argument they make, and thus they sing their own.

The Shepheards Sirena, together with the Quest of Cynthia and the Nymphidia, was published in 1627. It is a conventional pastoral, in which is described the rueful condition of the shepherd Dorilus, who is pining over the separation from his beloved nymph, Sirena. While musing upon her absence, he reads a letter of Sirena's, in which she counsels him not to come to her, despite her sore affliction, because the ‘wilde waters’ which separate them would make it extremely hazardous. After reading the letter, Dorilus soliloquizes on his future course of action. While thus occupied, his fellow-shepherds gather round him and sing him one of the songs which he had once sent Sirena, when she lived near the Trent. Instead of driving his care away, the song makes him even more wretched, and he thereupon upbraids his companions for thus mocking his woe. At this juncture, a boisterous swain soundly reproves him for wasting his energies in lamenting the absence of his love, when the call of duty demands that he devote himself to more worthy pursuits. His companion reminds him that it is high time to withstand the inroads of the swineherds. In response to this stirring appeal, Dorilus joins his fellow-shepherds.

The legend of Don Juan with all its wonderful possibilities could not fail sooner or later to reach Russia on its triumphant march through Europe from its home in Spain. In truth we find that as early as the reign of Peter the Great (the first quarter of the eighteenth century) there was produced a Don-Yan. Only the fifth act of this is preserved, but it seems to be a Russian translation of a Polish version of Villiers' Le Festin de Pierre. For a century more there is no Russian version and it is not until the time of Pushkin that we find a really valuable contribution to the development of the legend.

None of the numerous studies devoted to the Don Juan tradition mention a French play of 1630 which contains certain of its elements and is earlier in date than any other extant French or Italian version, as early, indeed, as the printed Burlador itself. This striking fact deserves, I think, some consideration. Let us see first what is the prevailing opinion with regard to the origin and early history of the Don Juan legend, then what place in the list of versions should be assigned to this French play, and finally what confirmation or modification of the present theory may be deduced from the fact of its existence.

In Laʒjanion's poem commonly called Brut there is an extraordinary profusion of epic formulas, full of flavor and charm, contributing as much as anything to the marked individuality of the poem. The same or similar phrases are used again and again, as a rule in the same or similar circumstances, or to describe the same person or action. The degree of similarity which makes a phrase a formula is impossible to define, but in the first list in each case given below is meant to be essentially close. A phrase is considered a formula when it occurs three times or more in this poem; two occurrences may be accidental, but three are becoming habitual. Other occurrences could doubtless be found, and also other formulas, but we have meant to exclude mere stock-rimes, and in general phrases so inevitable that they would not have been felt as formulas by Laʒamon or his auditors, however often repeated. Some of our items might be combined, others subdivided, for they often merge with each other; the whole matter is fluid. The most frequent form is generally taken as standard. Hundreds of less frequent or important variants are disregarded. Each formula is nicknamed by a striking word in it.

When Abraham Cowley died in 1667, he was mourned by practically the whole English literary world with such eulogies as the following:

Several years ago, while pursuing certain studies in the Harvard Library, there came into my hands, quite by accident, a certain “square old yellow book” of quarto size bearing on its first title-page the inscription: “Della Piacevole/ Storia/ dello ‘nvitto, e valoroso Principe/ Don Florismondo/ Libro Primo.” The second page gives the fuller title: “Istoria/ dello ‘nvitto, e valoroso Principe/ Don Florismondo/ E d'altri famosi cavallieri erranti di quel tempo; o-/ve si raccontano le loro maravigliose/ imprese, e piacevoli/ amori./ Composta da Anton Vincenzio/ Magnani./ In Trevi.” Between the words “Magnani” and “In Trevi,” below the former and above the latter, is inserted the drawing of a lily; at the top and bottom of the same are the words: “Sicut lilium inter/ spinas”; on the left-hand side: “Manibus da-/te lilia plenis”; on the right-hand side: “Sola/ fides.” On the following page is a “Tavola delle cose notabile non appartenenti alla storia nel presente primo libro di Florismondo contenute.” Among the “cose notabile” figure Alessandro Magno, Antipatro, Balena mostruosa, Cavalleria a chi obblighi, Diaspro e sua virtù, Superbia odiosa, etc., etc. Following the Tavola comes the text of Book I in twenty chapters and 216 pages, to which is appended a “Tavola dei Capi del Primo Libro della Storia di Don Florismondo”; this is followed by the Registro and the colophon. In the center of the latter is the drawing of a lily with the same quotations as on the title-page; at the bottom the author's name has been ingeniously worked into the design. Book II, which remains unfinished, is numbered to 109 pages and is in seven chapters; pages 65 to 80 inclusive have been lost.

In a study of Chateaubriand's La Maison de France (PMLA XXXVIII, No. 1, pp. 99-114), the present writer, after examining and placing in their respective parts, books, and chapters a series of excerpts from the Génie du Christianisme, declared himself baffled by the fifth excerpt, which reads: “Je remarque qu'Horace, Virgile, Tibulle, Tite-Live, moururent tous avant Auguste, qui est en cela le sort de Louis XIV; notre grand prince survécut un peu à son siécle et il se coucha le dernier dans la tombe, comme pour s'assurer qu'il ne restait rien après lui.” This passage, which looked as though it might belong to Part III, Book 4, Chapter 5 of the Génie, was not to be found either there or elsewhere in the work, and so the writer concluded that it must have been one of Chateaubriand's London notes to his manuscript of the Génie and that it had been inserted, somewhat at random, among the excerpts from that work in the Maison de France.

The Borderers does not, and cannot, rank high among Wordsworth's poems. It is curiously lacking in the glamor, the color, the atmosphere of a remote and picturesque past by which the romantic poets are wont to impart a persuasive verisimilitude to their pictures of the Middle Ages. The characters of the play have slight individuality, and in spite of the calamities that befall them, they evoke no sympathy. Although the poem exhibits intellectual power in the handling of a philosophical problem and a finely whittled precision in the statement of ideas, yet these robust merits are unhappily wedded to the mawkish ineptitude of contemporary literature. The hero, Marmaduke, is the humanitarian freebooter of Schiller's Robbers; however, to do him justice, he does not, like Karl Moor, support young men at college with his tainted money. Herbert and Idonea present a lachrymose picture of virtue in distress; the blind old man is a sentimentalized Oedipus, and his daughter is a Greuze maiden, a girl with a broken pitcher, who has stepped out of her frame to go a-wandering; her angelic perfection only exasperates. Even the “little dog, tied by a woollen cord,” that guides the wandering Herbert, has a sentimental pedigree; he is the faithful animal of current novels—the descendant, for example, of virtuous, old Trusty, the “shag house-dog” of The Man of Feeling.