what surmounts the reach
Of human sense, I shall delineate so,
By lik'ning spiritual to corporal forms,
As may express them best, though what if Earth
Be but the shadow of Heav'n, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on Earth is thought?
—Paradise Lost, v. 571-576

In prefacing his account of the war in heaven with these words, Raphael is saying that it will be not allegorical or merely metaphoric, but analogical; that although he will have to use the language of accommodation in order to convey his meaning at all, still there may be (he puts the statement in a subordinate clause and in the interrogative mood) a relationship between earth and heaven, between the physical and the spiritual, which is inherent in the nature of things. After Raphael finishes his narrative, Adam denies that earth is the shadow of heaven:

Great things, and full of wonder in our ears,
Far differing from this World, thou hast revcal'd
Divine Interpreter… (VII. 70-72)

One of the most crucial periods in Friedrich Schlegel's life was his first stayin Paris in the years 1802–04. In these almost two years his views underwent a remarkable transformation—the radical analyst of a preponderantly literary persuasion changed into the conservative synthesist of a more decidedly philosophical-religious cast. The glories of the past were more thoroughly explored: the German and Romance Middle Ages, Sanskrit and comparative philology, European thought and its roots in the Orient. As for the present and future, the clarion call for nationalism was sounded and the road to Catholicism sketched.

Although L'Avare is by no means lacking in originality, borrowings from literary sources are particularly heavy. Nearly every important scene, from the farcical intrigues of Frosine to Harpagon's famous monologue, has been traced back to Plautus, Ariosto, Larivey, Boisrobert or even to the commedia dell'arte. Moreover, Molière remains faithful to one of the oldest traditions in comedy: the eternal triumph of youth over age.

Most readers of the account of Raphael's visit to Eden in Book v of Paradise Lost center their interest on the exchange of greetings between Raphael and Adam, which illustrates the sense of order and hierarchy so significant in the poem. The importance for both theme and structure of the angel's address to Eve, which immediately follows, has, however, been overlooked. Eve rises to greet her heavenly guest, and the narration continues:

On whom the Angel Haile
Bestowd, the holy salutation us'd
Long after to blest Marie, second Eve.
(Paradise Lost v.385-387)

Durch die geschichte der deutschen Literatur im hochsten ihrer Augenblicke geistert die Gestalt der Bettina Brentano, Frankfurterin italienischer Abkunft, ein Licht das sich als Irrlicht gab, eine ewig unruhige Flamme, nicht weit strahlend, aber unauslöschbar, auftauchend hier und dann wieder dort, lästig in seiner zitternden Unruhe, aber mit der Stetigkeit eines Naturgesetzes wiederkehrend, so füllt sie die erste Hälfte des vorigen Jahrhunderts aus. Man braucht sie nur für einen Augenblick wegzudenken und man fühlt sofort, was alles fehlen würde, wenn sie nicht da gewesen wäre. So viel Leichtes, Sprudelndes, Spontanes und Beschwingtes, das in der Literatur der Welt kaum eine Parallele besitzt, wurde uns nur in ihr geschenkt, so viel Seelensprache Dinge zu benennen, die noch ungenannt waren. Eine Virtuosin der Liebe, so scheint es, aber soviel sie von Liebe spricht, es ist nichts Lüsternes in ihr, nichts von Ungesundem, Falsch-Mondänem, nichts was an Elinor Glyn erinnern konnte. Wollte man nach einer Verwandtschaft in neuerer Zeit suchen, so wäre es die zur Grafin Fanny Reventlow, dieser ewig liebenden Sucherin nach dem Geistigen im Manne. Bettina war mehr, sehr viel mehr gegeben als der armen durchgegangenen Komtesse. Sie hatte kein Vaterhaus dem man zu entlaufen gezwungen war. Sie war relativ glücklich geboren, in ahnlichen Kreisen unter ahnlichen Verhaltnissen in derselben Stadt wie Goethe, sechsunddreissig Jahre nach ihm. Sie war Erbin alles dessen was er geschaffen hatte. Nicht gebunden in die patrizischen Sitten der alten Familien, der Gunderodes, Stallburgs, Adlerflychts und Lersners, auch nicht zugehorig zur Klasse der Ratsfamilien, die unter sich die hochsten Amter teilten und denen unter Grossvater Textors Regierung ein merkbarer Miasmus entströmte, aber wohl geboren genug um überall Zutritt zu haben. Wenn Peter Anton Brentano noch kleinburgerliche Zuge geblieben waren, seine Kinder waren Leute von Welt und Bettina war so sehr Dame, dass sie aus alien Regeln schlagen, ein freier Mensch und ganz sie selbst sein konnte, seit ihrer Heirat mit Achim von Arnim auch “bien aparantée,” so sehr, dass ihre jüngste Tochter ihre Heirat mit Herman Grimm der Familie gegenuber zunachst geheim hielt—ein Burgerlicher!

Probably never in our national history has there been such a positive interest in the study of foreign languages. I use the word positive deliberately, for I am sure all of us can identify points of negative interest in this matter, even in our recent past, to the extent that, in some quarters, the disappearance of foreign language study in this country was actually considered inevitable and desirable.

This sixth revision of statistics on foreign language entrance and degree requirements for the B.A. degree shows that out of 899 colleges which grant such a degree, a foreign language is required for entrance by 284 or 31.6%, and for the B.A. by 772 or 85.9%. Since 12 schools not having a foreign language degree requirement have a foreign language entrance requirement, this brings the total number with some sort of language requirement to 784 or 87.2%.

Occasionally, critics have noted in passing the resemblance both in content and form between certain passages in Diderot's Salon de 1767 and Edmund Burke's influential treatise on aesthetics, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, the first edition of which appeared in 1757, and a French translation in 1765. Curiously enough, Diderot, who usually did not hide his sources, this time omitted even mentioning the name of Burke or acknowledging his debt, although there can be no doubt that the Salon contains many direct borrowings from the Enquiry. If one cannot find any allusion to Burke's work in Diderot's signed writings, a brief but revealing review of its French translation appeared in the March 1765 issue of Friedrich Melchior Grimm's Correspondance littéraire? This notice, penned either by Grimm or by Diderot himself, reprimands the translator, a certain abbé Desfrançois, but praises the author: “On s'aperçoit à chaque page que le traducteur n'a pas bien saisi l'esprit de son original, ou du moins qu'il n'a pas eu le talent de le rendre avec la netteté et la précision nécessaires. L'ouvrage de M. Burke est estimé en Angleterre, et l'on y trouve, en effet, des vues fines et neuves, quelquefois aussi des paradoxes qu'on ne saurait adopter.” Two years later Diderot was sufficiently convinced of the merits of the book to accept even its boldest “paradoxes.”

Scholars who deal with Italian letters generally recognize, although they may deplore, the overriding importance of literary academies in the intellectual life of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy, just as students of French literature know that the salons and academies of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France had much to do with the refinement of taste and manners, with the evolution of critical standards, and with the vogue of the pastoral novel or of the vast historical romance such as Mile de Scudéry's Clélie. Students of Spanish seventeenth-century literature, however, have been remarkably incurious about literary academies, knowing at most, perhaps, that there was an Academia de los Nocturnos functioning in Valencia from 1591 to 1594, or that Lope wrote his much-debated Arte nuevo for an “Academia de Madrid,” and have seemed to regard them as no more than idle games through which the participants passed untouched. Few have asked how widespread the academies were, and even fewer have speculated on their connections with the literature of the time.

On 26 December 1958, at its meeting in the Hotel Statler in New York City, the Executive Council, realizing the need to keep the Constitution in line with the expanding interests of the Association and the changing needs of its membership, appointed a subcommittee (Council members Morris Bishop, Henry C. Hatfield, and Albert H. Marckwardt) to review the present Constitution and to make suggestions for rewording, additions, or deletions. All suggested changes were thoroughly discussed by the Council at its meetings on 11 and 12 April and 26 December 1959; then at its meetings on 1 and 2 April 1960, the Council voted to present the suggested revisions, as detailed below, to the membership for vote.

Wie die anderen großen Klassiker seiner und früherer Zeiten, hat auch Goethe nie Deutschunterricht im heutigen Sinne genossen. Es mag dahingestellt bleiben, ob er trotzdem oder deswegen ein—Goethe geworden ist. Tatsache ist jedoch, daß er seit etwa einem Jahrhundert im Deutschunterricht gelesen wird und daß es trotzdem noch keine größere, das Thema auch nur annähernd erschöpfende Arbeit gibt über die Behandlung, die sein Werk und seine Persönlichkeit auf der deutschen Schule erfahren haben. Eine seltsame Unterlassung in Anbetracht der sonst schon längst ins Unermeßliche angewachsenen Goetheliteratur ! War und ist die Schule denn nicht der Ort auf dem Goethes großen Nachfolgern, seinen Widersachern, und auch uns, seinem Publikum im allgemeinen, eine erste Kenntnis seiner Art und Eigenart vermittelt wurde? Mogen die Umstânde dieser ersten Bekanntschaft nicht oft genug fürs ganze Leben ausschlaggebend gewesen sein? Und hat Goethe selber die Wichtigkeit gerade des dichterischen Schulerlebnisses nicht hoch genug angesetzt als er in den Wahlverwandtschaften schrieb, daß “ein Lehrer, der das Gefühl… an einem einzigen guten Gedicht erwecken kann,” mehr leistet als einer, “der uns ganze Reihen untergeordneter Naturbildungen der Gestalt und dem Namen nach überliefert?”—Diesen Worten können freilich andere entgegengesetzt werden, etwa diejenigen, mit denen der um den Deutschunterricht besonders verdiente Rudolf Hildebrand in seinem Buche Vom deutschen Sprachunterricht (1867) den damaligen Schulbetrieb charakterisierte: “Der Unterricht im Deutschen gilt den Lehrern… nicht als der leichteste und angenehmste, ja vielen wohl als der schwerste und lästigste, und lästig, nicht selten geradezu langweilig, selbst sterbenslangweilig, nicht den Lehrern bloß, auch den Schülern, und nicht an Volks- und Bürgerschulen bloß, ebensogut, ja besonders an Gymnasien.”

The restoration theatrical audience was dominantly skeptical and naturalistic in temper. Yet for over ten years this audience patronized the heroic plays of Dryden and contributed to their popularity. This anomaly has long puzzled scholars; and typically, Allardyce Nicoll remarks: “This heroic tragedy is obviously a thing entirely apart from the comedy of gay licentious manners. With its flaunting honour and its impossibly idealistic love passions it seems indeed so far away both from that comedy and from social life as we have seen it displayed in the theatre that it would appear impossible to find any link between them.” Like most other critics, Nicoll offers an unsatisfactory explanation of this anomaly:

The audiences were no longer noble in temper, and consequently the heroic tragedy, removed a further stage from the actual, may be regarded as the true child of the enervation that had come over England. The age was debilitated: it was distinctly unheroic: and yet it was not so cynical as to throw over entirely the inculcation of heroism. To present, however, heroism in real-life plays would have raised too sharp a distinction between what was and what might have been, and accordingly in the heroic tragedy heroism is cast out of the world altogether and carried to an Eastern or an antique realm of exaggerated emotions, mythical and hopelessly ideal. The heroic play is like a Tale of a Land of No-where. (p. 88)

Wordsworth, said Arnold, “is one of the very chief glories of English Poetry.” From the beginning his has been a “divine vitality.” He himself was persuaded that he derived his light from heaven; and like Piccarda, who, though humbly placed, found her peace in God's will, Wordsworth, though not “pre-eminent in magnitude,” was assured that the light which came to him was, for that reason, of no less divine origin. With this persuasion some of his contemporaries and some of ours are not in accord. Their reasons, of course, are greatly various. Yet it is noteworthy that certain of those characteristics which in his own time made him slow to be accepted, in our time tend to make him poorly read or not read at all. Hence it would seem that one might say something about the characteristics in question.

Unlike the other countries of northern Europe, Finland has two official languages, Finnish and Swedish, a fact which is reflected in the emphasis placed on languages in the high-school curriculum. In the coastal communities from Lovisa to Turku (Åbo) on the southern shore, as well as in the towns from Pori (Björneborg) to Pietarsaari (Jakobstad), Swedish influence is stronger than anywhere else in Finland, and in many of these towns and villages only Swedish is spoken. In these communities and in the national capital itself, therefore, government workers and employees of business and industry are required to be fluent in both official languages. As in other bilingual countries, the use of two languages can be observed not only in official government documents, currency, postagestamps, and the like, but also in such things as signposts, advertisements, menus in restaurants, and time-tables. There are radio and television programs in both languages, and foreign films appear with two sets of subtitles on the same film, one in Finnish and one in Swedish. Thus whatever one's first language is, there is always ample opportunity to hear and see the other official language written. It should be mentioned, however, that ninety per cent of the population speaks Finnish as the first language and that very little Swedish can be heard in northern and in eastern Finland (except, of course, on the radio), but even in those Finnish-language areas, people are exposed to written Swedish on the label of virtually every product they buy, if nowhere else.

In his edition of The Letters of Samuel Johnson Dr. R. W. Chapman gives Samuel Richardson as the addressee of nine letters (Nos. 31, 48, 49, 49.1, 49.2, 51.1, 58.1, 90, and 94), and in his “Further Addenda” (i, 430) he mentions another recorded letter to Richardson (36.1) as “not traced.” Chapman says in a footnote to 31 that he is “far from satisfied” with his elucidations of these letters; I believe that I can clarify some of the points which were doubtful to him, date one of the letters (49.2) more nearly accurately, show that one of the letters (49.1) is not to Richardson, and identify the untraced letter (36.1) as most likely 36, which Chapman prints as to the Earl of Orrery.

Speaking of the “plan of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’” in Chapter 14 of his Biographia Literaria, Coleridge pointed out that while Wordsworth was to deal with “the wonders of the world before us,” he himself was to try to connect the human truth of “our inward nature” with the “shadows of imagination.” The fruitfulness of this connection is evidenced by “The Ancient Mariner”; its aesthetic basis was analyzed by Coleridge at a later date: “The romantic poetry,” he decided, appeals “to the imagination rather than to the senses and to the reason as contemplating our inward nature, the working of the passions in their most retired recesses.” By “exciting our internal emotions,” the poet “acquires the right and privilege of using time and space as they exist in the imagination, obedient only to the laws which the imagination acts by.” Philosophically, Coleridge's transcendentalism is obviously responsible for this assertion of the superiority of the mind over nature; he had remarked its psychological basis as early as 1805:

In looking at objects of Nature while I am thinking, as at yonder moon dim-glimmering through the dewy window-pane, I seem rather to be seeking, as it were asking for, a symbolical language, for something within me that already and for ever exists, than observing anything new. Even when that latter is the case, yet still I have always an obscure feeling as if that new phenomenon were the dim awakening of a forgotten or hidden truth of my inner nature. (Anima Poetae, p. 136).

In his rather sketchy notes on Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons dangereuses, Baudelaire observes that this novel is a “livre de moraliste aussi haut que les plus élevés, aussi profond que les plus profonds.” Laclos himself seems to have had a similar view of his purpose in writing; at least in one of his letters to Mme Riccoboni he speaks confidently of having sought to create “l'impression d'horreur que le vice doit toujours exciter” (O.C., p. 712). But if no one, and least of all Mme Riccoboni, who had written to protest as a Frenchwoman against what she could not believe was a true picture of contemporary French life, has ever denied Laclos the power of horrifying his readers, seldom since the publication of the work has this power been granted quite the moralistic face-value ascribed to it by the novelist. Even Baudelaire apparently felt its value was relative, Les Liaisons dangereuses, like other “livres libertins,” having gained in usefulness from the passage of time and the progressive degeneration of standards: “Le mal se connaissant,” he remarks in the same notes, “était moins affreux et plus près de la guérison que le mal s'ignorant. G. Sand inférieur à de Sade” (O.C., p. 738).

Although several studies exist dealing with specific disagreements between Rousseau and d'Alembert, particularly in regard to the Lettre à M. d'Alembert sur les spectacles and the Rousseau-Hume quarrel, they are concerned primarily with Rousseau, leaving a sketchy and rather stereotyped image of d'Alembert as his hypocritical enemy pretending friendship but secretly working against him. Max Förster, in his Beiträge zur Kenntnis des Characters und der Philosophie d'Alemberts (Hamburg, 1892, pp. 10–36), reacts against this picture, going to the other extreme, but he does not attempt a full coverage of the relations between these two great figures of the eighteenth century: his chief aim is the defense of d'Alembert against specific accusations by Musset-Pathay. As a result, his presentation is incomplete and his conclusions sometimes questionable. There remains a need for a more complete and detached treatment of the subject, particularly as concerns the events preceding and following the above quarrels—a phase overlooked thus far but which is essential to an understanding of the reactions of the disputants during their disagreements. The present study seeks to offer this more balanced, over-all picture.