I have recently expressed the opinion that the story of Androcles and the Lion, a tour de force by Apion the Egyptian, was suggested to its author by an actual occurrence in the amphitheatre at Rome; and that Apion supplied both motivation and decorative incident out of his own fertile fancy, much as a journalist of our own time would elaborate a column sensation out of a small nucleus of fact.

Members of the Association are requested to see that copies of monographs, studies or dissertations in the field of the Modern Languages which may appear in University series during the current year be sent to the editor of the appropriate section of the American Bibliography.

One of the preliminary problems that confronts the textual investigator of the Canterbury Tales is to determine which if any of the early prints can claim to rank with the manuscripts as independent authorities. It seems to be generally agreed that no account need be taken of any edition later than that which Thynne included in his collection of the Chaucer's works printed by Godfray in 1532, but of the six prints of the Tales of which that was the latest no complete investigation seems yet to have been attempted. My object in this paper is to make a beginning by subjecting to critical analysis the first 116 lines of the Knight's Tale as they stand in these six editions.

We approach a centenary not, perhaps, wholly undeserving of notice on the part of this learned company. It was apparently in 1824 that those respected citizens of La-Ferté-sous-Jouarre, MM. Dupuis and Cotonet, began an enterprise which was to cause them, as is recorded, “twelve years of suffering,” and to end in disillusionment—the enterprise of discovering what Romanticism is, by collecting definitions and characterizations of it given by eminent authorities. I conjecture, therefore, that one of the purposes of the Committee in inviting me to speak on this subject was perhaps to promote a Dupuis and Cotonet Centennial Exhibition, in which the later varieties of definitions of Romanticism, the fruit of a hundred years' industry on the part of literary critics and professors of modern literature, might be at least in part displayed. Certainly there is no lack of material; the contemporary collector of such articles, while paying tribute to the assiduity and the sufferings of those worthy pioneers of a century ago, will chiefly feel an envious sense of the relative simplicity of their task. He will find, also, that the apparent incongruity of the senses in which the term is employed has fairly kept pace with their increase in number; and that the singular potency which the subject has from the first possessed to excite controversy and breed divisions has in no degree diminished with the lapse of years.

“Geoffrey Chaucer,” says Professor Kittredge, “is nearer to us than Alexander Pope.” This is true, not only of the spirit of his times, but also of the man. Chaucer is more like us than Pope is: we feel more mental, moral, and spiritual kinship with the writer of the Nun's Priest's Tale than with the author of the Essay on Man. But, though this is true, we are not to think that therefore we understand him more thoroughly. In reality, we comprehend nearly all of Pope, and some of him we don't like; per contra, we like all of Chaucer that we comprehend: yet there are moods and meanings in him hard to fathom.

All students of Chaucerian chronology are agreed that Troilus and Criseyde was written not earlier than the poet's first Italian journey of 1373, and not later than 1386. The second of these terminal dates is fixed by the fact that the earlier, so-called B, version of the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, which refers to Troilus as already in circulation, is assigned with a good deal of confidence to 1386 or 1387. It is further corroborated by the fact that Thomas Usk's Testament of Love, which shows extensive acquaintance with Troilus, seems to have been written in 1387, the year before its author's death.

There came to my attention, in 1921, through the kindness of my colleague, Professor Frank Jewett Mather Jr., a manuscript of a Latin Life of St. Margaret, which he had recently purchased. Through his further kindness, I was permitted to examine and to transcribe the text of the manuscript, which was formerly in the possession of Sir Thomas Brooke, Bart., of Armitage Bridge. The manuscript is of vellum and measures × inches, being what we should now call a pocket volume. Indeed, the condition of the last leaf indicates that the book may have been some devout reader's constant companion before it was put into its present comparatively modern binding. It contains twenty-two leaves, of which nineteen are in a hand of the later fourteenth century, and the last three in a hand of the fifteenth century. Unless I am mistaken, both scribes were Englishmen. One may conjecture—though this is no more than a guess—that the second scribe was employed to complete the text because of some accident that had befallen the book. His work was crude in comparison with that of the first scribe, who wrote neatly, while he or a co-worker embellished the book with no less than nineteen boldly drawn and very interesting miniatures. The four pictures on the appended leaves are as rough as the script.

It is doubtful whether any other great literary reputation of the Renaissance has survived in so ambiguous and confused a state as that of Marc-Antoine Muret, recognized in his own time and ever since as the best writer of Latin prose in the second half of the sixteenth century. The most important event in the history of literary ideas during that period was the controversy concerning the imitation of Cicero; and in that controversy and the various conflicts connected with it Muret was more or less engaged at all periods of his career. Yet modern literary history tells us nothing intelligible of his part in it; or, to speak more exactly, it records two conflicting statements. On the one hand, he appears as the associate of Bembo, Sadoleto, Longueil in the stricter sect of the Ciceronians, a more accomplished, and not less devoted, imitator of the master. This is certainly the commoner view among those who have any acquaintance with his name; for generations he has been held up to the admiration even of school-children as the modern Cicero. How confusing it is then to find that he also holds a conspicuous place in the sketches—few and inadequate—of the movement of opposition that finally triumphed at the end of his century over the great rhetorical scheme of education. From his letters and orations one or two passages have been cited which outdo the sarcasm of Erasmus' Ciceronianas and display a latitude of classical taste which even a modern critic cannot regard without dubiety.

On the 28th of December 1384, John Wyclif died of apoplexy while hearing mass in his own church at Lutterworth. He had braved papal displeasure and had survived the hatred of his enemies among local ecclesiastics. Supported by public approval, defended by noble friends—notable among them being John of Gaunt—he had passed through life serenely until his death. His body remained buried in consecrated ground for forty-four years. On May 4, 1415 the Council of Constance decreed that his bones should be disinterred, burned, and the ashes cast into Swift Creek. This sentence was delayed, however, until 1428. Up to 1413, at least, the world had heard relatively little about Wyclif's heresy. By this time papal vengeance was aroused by the alleged dissent of Wyclif's disciple in Bohemia. Perhaps Wyclif became the victim of the circumstance that required authority for action against John Huss. Until Huss' sources were condemned, his enemies had very little evidence upon which to bring him into prominence at Rome as a dangerous man.

Although to the casual reader, and indeed to some serious critics, the Faerie Queene seems to consist only of an unsystematized accumulation of episodes bound together merely by the rich glamor of Romantic atmosphere, yet there can be no doubt that Spenser had a rather definite theory of narrative art, and that, at least along general lines, he developed his material according to a preconceived plan. He had already showed himself a literary theorist by his experiments in diction and style in the Shepheardes Calender; and the Faerie Queene itself has a certain symmetry in the arrangement of its episodes: in most of the books, a knight and a lady engage upon a quest; the knight falls into sin, usually the antithesis of the particular virtue portrayed in that book; he is saved by a sort of deus ex machina, usually in the person of Arthur; he is taught the virtue that corresponds to his sin; and he proceeds upon his quest and conquers.

Until within a few years past, as all students of Shakespeare are aware, it was generally believed that the punctuation of his text in the early quartos and the First Folio was negligent, erratic, and wholly unauthoritative; the corollary being that modern editors must practically repunctuate the plays in accordance with modern usage, though avoiding scrupulously all other unnecessary alterations of the old texts. Even the late Dr. Furness, editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare, whose veneration for the text of the Folio showed some tendency to become an obsession in his later years, did not permit this veneration to extend to punctuation, but commonly spoke of that element of the text as the negligible work of Elizabethan printers. Recently, however, there has been observable a disposition to claim no little authority for the punctuation of the old texts, and, on the part of certain scholars indubitably worthy of respectful attention, to draw inferences as to their significance of a remarkable, not to say revolutionary, character. The time would seem to be ripe for a careful consideration of the evidence which has been adduced.

It is my intention to demonstrate that Chaucer, far from attacking alchemy in his Chanouns Yemannes Tale, was probably not only in sympathy with it, but possibly knew (and if so, respected) the famous secret. The common opinion, of course, is just the reverse: virtually all the critics follow Tyrwhitt in thinking that Chaucer's satire may have been inspired by personal resentment and that it may in its turn have inspired the statutes against “multiplying” passed in 1403. Both these assumptions are possible; yet there seems to be another side to the story, as Professor Kittredge has already hinted.

In the 1801 edition of Goldsmith's Miscellaneous Works were collected for the first time seven essays republished from the British Magazine (July 1761-January 1763) where they appeared under the general heading, “On the Study of the Belles Lettres.” Grouped under this title these essays have been included in all subsequent editions of Goldsmith's Works and, so far as I know, only one editor—Peter Cunningham, whose opinion will be discussed presently—has decided against their authenticity.

“His studie was but litel on the Bible,” Chaucer's remark concerning the Physician, has been applied by critics to Chaucer himself. The prevailing view is doubtless that expressed by Tatlock: “The more one investigates Chaucer's reading, the more convinced one becomes that his familiarity with the Bible (and other quotable literature, like Cato and Seneca) was largely at second-hand.” Up to this time, however, investigation of Chaucer's biblical material has been slight, as a glance at Miss Hammond's Manual will prove.

The lost morality, the Paternoster Play, has been a subject for speculation among many writers upon early English drama. Although no finding can lay claim to the last word upon the question, each additional bit of evidence helps toward a more accurate definition of the play. It is the purpose of this paper to call attention to the possible relation of this play to sermons upon the Oratio Domini among the treatises of Hugo of Saint Victor. Before embarking upon this discussion, it seems desirable to summarize briefly the facts and theories concerning the play now current. The material is of two sorts: information in regard to the morality to be derived from documents contemporaneous with it, and speculations as to its origin and nature which have been put forward by various scholars.

[In the following paper, for reasons of brevity, a working hypothesis has been presented in narrative form: wherever a definite statement of historical fact has been made in support of a literary theory, the authority has been given in the footnotes. The article aims at elucidating certain problems in Love's Labour's Lost by correlating them with certain matters of historical fact which took place in and about the year 1591. The following points constitute problems in Love's Labour's Lost: (a) date of composition and first performance; (b) The unexpected dénoûment in the postponed marriages; (c) The choice of names for the leading male characters, Navarre, Berowne, etc.; (d) The curious emphasis laid upon the killing of the deer by the Princess; (e) The similarity of the Pageant scene at the close of the play to the Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe in The Midsummer Night's Dream; (f) The satire on Euphuism and Sonnets and other courtly affectations; (g) The unique observance by Shakespeare of the unities of time and place. The ensuing narrative has been evolved by applying to these problems the following matters of historical fact: (a) Burleigh's attempts, 1589–94, to force Southampton into marriage with his grand-daughter, Elizabeth de Vere, and Southampton's successful evasion of his betrothal; (b) Southampton's flight to France, 1591, to take part in the war in Normandy; (c) The Royal Progress, 1591, to Portsmouth and certain incidents in the entertainment of the Queen at Cowdray House.]