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.

One of the most important literary manifestations of that direct interest in the Near East which travellers and travel books created, appears in English prose fiction of the early nineteenth century. The prose fiction thus supplements the Near East poetry of Byron, Moore, Southey, and numerous minor versifiers as well as the travel books themselves, which may be considered a kind of minor literature. Throughout the first half of the eighteenth century English readers had shown considerable interest in the Near East, particularly in the oriental tale; yet this interest was almost wholly indirect—the product of French accounts or French translations of the Arabian Nights. It was not until the last quarter of the century that new developments brought “the Orient much nearer to England than ever before … In letters, this modern spirit was first expressed by the increased number of travelers' accounts.”

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.

In a previous article I showed that James Thomson's juvenile poem, “The Works and Wonders of Almighty Power,” was for the most part a paraphrase of certain passages in the Moralists, a philosophical rhapsody, by the Earl of Shaftesbury. Another one of Thomson's juvenile poems, “Upon Happiness,” contributed to The Edinburgh Miscellany in 1720, was inspired by a letter John Norris wrote at All-Souls College, April 18, 1683, entitled “An Idea of Happiness: Enquiring wherein the greatest Happiness Attainable by Man in this Life does consist.” In addition, Thomson was perhaps indebted to John Norris for some of the general treatment of theme found in his “Preface” to the second edition of Winter (1726).

In the Intermédiaire des chercheurs et des curieux for April 10, 1876 (ix, cols. 196, 197) we read the following query by “Comte de Noverba” under the heading Réalisme:

François Beslay observes in le Correspondant, in 1863:

Events in the life of Edmund Burke from his birth in Dublin in 1729, his schooldays at Ballitore, his undergraduate career at Trinity College, and his venture into pamphleteering during the Lucas controversy, have been reconstructed in much detail. That he came to London to read law and keep his terms in the Middle Temple at some time shortly before May 2, 1750—the date of his bond—is also readily inferred. And then, after a lapse of years, when he contracted with Dodsley in 1758 to publish The Annual Register; when he began to meet Garrick, Johnson, Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, and other distinguished people at about the same time; and finally when he began his political apprenticeship under William Gerard Hamilton in 1759 —Burke's life is increasingly illuminated by well-known names, until within a few years the young Irishman is a celebrity in his own right. But between these dates lies almost a decade which the historians of Burke's career, such as Bisset, MacKnight, and Prior, have passed over with vague conjecture. Lord Morley, in the best-known of all Burke's biographies, refers to these years as “enveloped in nearly complete obscurity,” while the Dictionary of National Biography observes that “we scarcely know anything of this period of his life.” Such lack of knowledge has helped to keep alive various canards which even in Burke's lifetime were circulated about this interlude of his youth—that he went to St. Omer's and became a convert to Popery, that he visited America under mysterious circumstances, and that he was the lover of Peg Woffington. Indeed, the life of such a forthright person as Edmund Burke, who once declared “that he had no secrets with regard to the public,” appears often to attract dark and mysterious legends—perhaps on the principle of lucus a non lucendo.

The literary, critical, historical, and biographical importance of Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads of 1800 gives added attraction and significance to the intrinsically interesting bibliographical features of the two volumes. The following notes on cancel leaves and variant readings in the books will perhaps be welcomed not only by bibliographers, collectors, and persons curious in the solving of problems, but also by critics professing larger concerns. The notes are based on a personal study of forty-five copies of Volume i (six in original boards) and fifty-two copies of Volume ii (seven in original boards).

Victorian society, however emphatic its hostility to French Naturalism, was not unanimous in its disapproval. Indeed, many of the bitterest critics softened their reproaches as the century advanced. Robert Buchanan, for example, not only modified his earlier position in later years, but became a staunch defender of Zola. In 1877 he had aligned himself with the forces of virtue and goodness as embodied in the Society for the Suppression of Vice, the aim of which was to save the land from the blasphemers Rabelais, Boccaccio, Baudelaire, Swinburne, Rossetti, Meredith, Zola, Ibsen, Wagner, George Moore, and many others.

Nietzsche und Heine sind eins in der Kritik an der Dekadenz des 19. Jahrhunderts und in der Liebe zur grossen Persönlichkeit:

Der Gleiche erkennt den Gleichen. Es ist nachzuweisen, wie alie grosse literarische Einsicht wieder auf die grossen verwandten Ingenien zurückgeht: was einen schönen Beweis für die Erbärmlichkeit des gemeinen Intellekts abgabe. Er kann keine grossen Werke schaffen, ja, er kann sie nicht einmal herauskennen. Der grosse Kanon der Klassiker ist von den Klassikern gebildet.—Nietzsche, Jugendschriften, S. 245.

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.

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.

La critique à l'égard de Th. Gautier est loin d'avoir été toujours bienveillante. Son génie ou du moins son originalité a souvent été méconnue. Plusieurs études de mise au point ont paru, ces derniers années, restituant à Gautier sa part de gloire dans le grand mouvement littéraire du 19e siècle. On s'est occupé du poète, du romancier et du critique, mais, quand on s'est aventuré à toucher à l'œuvre dramatique, c'est pour la considérer comme étant presque une erreur, en tous cas, comme quantité négligeable. C'est pour combler cette lacune que nous avons entrepris cette étude. Th. Gautier a toujours aimé le théâtre et cela de très bonne heure. Il a eu sur l'art dramatique des idées très précises. Et en dépit des assertions des contemporains qui lui refusent en général le don du théâtre, l'étude de ses productions dramatiques révèle une originalité, qu'à moins de préventions, on ne saurait nier. On a même voulu faire croire que celles de ses pièces, qui avaient vu le feu de la rampe, n'avaient remporté qu'un succès douteux. Rien n'est plus faux. Le succès sans être bruyant a couronné ses efforts et eût pu flatter de plus ambitieux dramaturges.

The purpose of this paper is to correlate George Meredith's theory of literature with his philosophy of evolution. At the present time, Meredith's fame rests primarily upon his conception of the Comic Spirit, brilliantly elaborated in the Essay on Comedy and exemplified in many of the novels. His acceptance of natural evolution, and his extension of its principles into a threefold hierarchy of physical, mental, and spiritual attainment, are apparent in his philosophy and poetry, but are often obscured by the very brilliance of the comic social analysis in the novels. The influence is there none the less; it is readily observed in the psychological springs that move the more important characters, and it helps to shape Meredith's attitude toward fiction as a whole. The present study pertains chiefly to this second aspect—the relation between Meredith's evolutionary doctrine and the theory of literature by which he approached his own and his contemporaries' writing.

The purpose of this paper is to add another chapter to the constantly growing account of Melville as a writer who, in calculating his effects, often had recourse to travel diaries and guidebooks to furnish him with factual information and with dramatic episodes, which appear as the authentic experiences of his characters. In this instance the book is Redburn, the novel which he regarded as one of the least of his works, but which many besides John Masefield have admired as a spirited and sometimes harrowing narrative of a boy's running away to sea.