The medieval version of the Four Daughters of God which exerted a wider influence than any other recension of Saint Bernard's famous allegory has been overlooked in literary investigations of the theme. For the sake of convenience one might refer to this work in Latin prose as the Rex et Famulus. At the end of the volume containing one of its manuscripts, an ascription in a hand of the fourteenth century assigns the authorship of the entire collection to one Peter of Poitiers, whom Hauréau identifies as a monk living at Saint-Victor at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Since three contemporary medieval writers are known to have borne this name, I shall refer to the supposed author as Peter of Saint-Victor.

That strange dramatic compound of “gross corruption, constant mutilation, meaningless inversion, and clumsy transposition,” the 1602 quarto of The Merry Wives of Windsor, has furnished Shakespearean scholars with one of their best puzzles. The garbled condition of the text has long been considered as being the result of the “stolne and surreptitious” method of obtaining the copy. But there are fundamental conditions in the quarto which are hardly to be accounted for thus. The material and the manner of treatment continually suggest some special influence, some distinctive and integrated molding force other than the effort to obtain the play by oblique devices.

It is curious, in view of the strange fascination which the seventeenth Earl of Oxford has exercised on a whole school of modern critics, that perhaps the most crucial episode in his life has been glossed over or ignored completely. Yet this episode, however discreditable to the Earl, is of some literary interest.

In that section of his “tale” which treats the deadly sin of Ire, Chaucer's Parson observes that from this sin come various “stynkynge engendrures,” including manslaughter, or homicide.

Though Gil Vicente was court dramatist for Manuel the Fortunate and for John III of Portugal and wrote his short dramatic pieces primarily for performance at court festivals, he recognized the worth of reproducing in his dialogue the rich and racy speech of the common people, and whenever possible he availed himself of all sorts of folk-lore material. Thus, we find him weaving ballads into his dialogue, ornamenting his plays with lyrical passages inspired by traditional songs and dances, and making use of games, superstitions, incantations, terms of abuse, and other popular elements. Gil Vicente, then, antedates Juan de la Cueva in his employment of ballad verses in the dialogue, and so becomes the first to essay a practice which later, under the genius of Lope de Vega, made popular poetry an integral part of the Spanish comedia.

The verse preface which Chapman addressed “To the Reader” in 1609 when he brought out the first twelve books of the Iliads contains a succinct statement of his doctrine of translation. This preface is fairly well known as one of the significant critical essays of the English renaissance, but his translation of the Iliad itself has not been fully explored in the light of his doctrine. When the poem is measured against the precepts, it can be observed that nearly all of the stylistic idiosyncrasies of Chapman's translation, as distinct from the conceptual divergencies of his rendering, accord with his stated principles. In fact, the pertinent passage from the epistle makes the best possible introduction to a study of the poetic style of the translation.

One of the things that most surprises the student of the sixteenth century is the place held by religious literature even in the realm of vernacular publication. The product of the early English presses is religious to an extent that the modern reader finds quite outside his experience. It has been estimated that more than forty per cent of all English books published between the beginning of printing in England and 1640 belong to the various types of religious literature. That preponderance is easy to explain in the light of the ecclesiastical traditions of learning, and there is no doubt that certain aspects of the earlier body of publication as compared with that of more recent times are to be explained in terms of those origins, but the fact is that even when the machinery of religious life had been gravely disturbed, the relative predominance of the genre persisted.

Poesia Espanhola, a manuscript of sixty-seven folio pages, which forms part of the Gayangos Collection in the National Library at Madrid, was, as its title implies, compiled by a Portuguese. Further evidence of the nationality of the collector is furnished by two poems in Portuguese as well as the Portuguese captions added to several other compositions. From the authors included in it, it may be assumed that the manuscript belongs to the first quarter of the seventeenth century. It has come down to us virtually intact except for a single folio page (45r) containing one complete sonnet and the initial five verses of another. However, some notion of the contents of the missing poem may be gained from the caption at the bottom of folio 44v-Soneto de Diego de Mendoca a la muerte de su muger, while the last nine verses of the other composition (given on folio 45v fortunately make it possible for us to retrace them and the missing lines that go with them to a sonnet by Góngora beginning “Mientras por competir con tu cabello,” Obras Poeticas, I (New York, 1921), p. 30.

In the first edition of the Faerie Queene appeared a woodcut of the Red Cross Knight in combat with the Dragon. The Knight is clad in armor of the sixteenth-century type. In particular the iron skirt, or tonnlets, of the rider are like those in a suit of armor given by the Emperor Maximilian to Henry VIII in 1515. The artist, however, may not have been very familiar with armor, for the plates over the knees and elbows are not accurate. The plumes of knight and horse are suitable for pageantry rather than for serious combat. The knight's shield, with its red cross, is wholly unfitting, since shields were not worn with such armor in service, and shields such as were used in some types of jousting were of different shape. The horse wears armor on the head and neck, but not on the body, though the body is covered with cloth housing.

The early Elizabethan conception of a line of poetry is best illustrated by Puttenham, who compares it to a day's journey in which the traveler rests twice, at noon and at night.” The end-stopped line which results from this conception gives increased importance to the rime; indeed, Puttenham considers it the equivalent of classical “currantnesse” of foot, which “passed the whole verse throughout, whereas our concordes keepe but the latter end of every verse.” Rime is even placed above meter: “your concordes containe the chief part of Musicke in your meetre.” The preference is clearly for rich heavy rimes, with an echo. For this reason monosyllables are most desirable; since “in them, if they finish the verse, resteth the shrill accent of necessitie, and so doth it not in the last of every bissilable, nor of every polisillable word.” Rime is not merely good or bad; it has its own decorum: some words an i figures are suitable for one style but not for others, and the same is true of “concord and measure.?” Thus rimes which fall on the last syllable are “sweetest and most commendable”; those falling on the penultimate syllable are “more light and not so pleasant”; and those upon the antepenultimate syllable are “most unpleasant of all, because they make your meeter to light and triviall, and are fitter for the Epigrammatist or Comicall Poet.” ? Light endings are for light verse; even Daniel seems to agree with this opinion when he says that feminine rimes are “fittest for Ditties.”

Two of the dominant motives in pastoral literature are the “come-live-with-me” theme, which offers to the loved one as inducements gifts generally of a pastoral nature, and the ideal of the “golden age,” which is based upon a personal desire for a patterned idyllic life. The former has been carefully traced by R. S. Forsythe, but the latter has lain neglected in spite of the fact that two of the best known lyrics in the language, Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, utilize this theme. It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate that the description of the ideal day is a significant and deeply rooted theme which developed gradually during the whole course of the pastoral tradition. Milton's two days derive from this evolution rather than from a few scattered lyrics which immediately preceded his work, as is generally stated.

What “connyng Laten bokys” provided the scientific data for John Rastell's The Nature of the Four Elements? There were many books to choose from, in fact, so many Rastell claims, that if translators would busy themselves turning them into English, “All subtell sciens in Englysche myght be lernyd.”

It is generally conceded that what differentiates the best work of Alarcón from that of his contemporaries in Spain is the serious moral purpose and the very practical code of morality that he develops. His best plays are also marked by realism of plot and characterization. They are, moreover, remarkably clean and free from objectionable elements. This is the spirit of his best plays and this is the spirit, too, of sixteenth-century Mexico as he knew it.

Edward Capell in his Notes and Various Readings (1781) pointed out a parallel between Montaigne's essay “Of the Caniballes” (Florio's translation) and The Tempest, II, 1, 148, ff., where Shakespeare follows the wording of Florio so closely that his indebtedness is unmistakable. Since this discovery various attempts have been made to prove further the influence of Montaigne upon Shakespeare. In 1871, G. F. Stedefeld published the first extended study of the relationship between the two writers, and from that time on there have appeared from time to time books and articles on the subject, some of which make extravagant assertions in regard to the extent of Montaigne's influence upon the dramatist. For example, J. M. Robertson in Montaigne and Shakespeare (1897), after gathering numerous parallels from the Essays and from Shakespeare, made the sweeping claim that much of the growth of Shakespeare's mind was due to the influence of Montaigne. G. C. Taylor in Shakespeare's Debt to Montaigne (1925) makes almost as large claims as this. He “proposes to demonstrate” by means of parallel passages “that Shakespeare was beyond any doubt, profoundly and extensively influenced by Montaigne; definitely influenced in regard to vocabulary, phrases, short and long passages, and, after a fashion, influenced also in thought.” In an article published shortly after Robertson's book appeared, Miss Elizabeth Hooker, after citing numerous parallels, comes to the more guarded conclusion that Shakespeare used the Essays as a store-house of material only. Conservative students of the literature of the Renaissance have questioned the soundness of assigning definite sources, especially for material of common knowledge, on the basis of parallel passages. A. Brandl, in his review of Robertson's Montaigne and Shakespeare, warns against assigning to Montaigne sources which were common to both writers, such as Plutarch, and C. R. Baskervill, in his review of Taylor's Shakespeare's Debt to Montaigne, states the same objection, and says that most of the parallels cited by Taylor may be due to a common inheritance of Renaissance thought shared by the two writers. Pierre Villey believes the passage in The Tempest is the only instance of Shakespeare's borrowing from Montaigne. After reading the exhaustive parallels cited by Robertson and others, he concludes that “cent zéros additionnés ensemble ne font toujours que zéro.” Yet, in spite of the skepticism of the more conservative scholars, parallels are still cited to prove a direct relation between the two writers. Miss Suzanne Türck has brought together numerous passages which she believes show unmistakable influence of the Essais on Hamlet. J. Dover Wilson cites Montaigne frequently in his notes to his recent edition of Hamlet. And Joseph E. Baker, in his essay “The Philosophy of Hamlet,” says that in Hamlet “direct echoing [of Montaigne] seems very probable.”

The etymologists of the various modern languages are practically agreed in tracing back the word for dragoon, usually through the medium of the French dragon, to Latin draco, draconem. The Deutsches Wörterbuch of the Grimms has the following definition of Dragoner:

leichter reiter, der ein feuergewehr hat und auch zu fuß fechten muß: ursprünglich ein fußsoldat der sich des pferds bloß zum schnellen fortkommen bedient. franz. dragon, ital. dragone, dän. dragon, böhm. dragon dragaun. ohne zweifel findet eine beziehung auf drache statt, die aber nicht bekannt ist. die draconarii des Vegetius, auf deren standarte sich ein drache befand, sollen anlaß zu der benennung gegeben haben ... als die ersten dragoner betrachtet man die landsknechte und fußsoldaten, welche der prinz von Parma, als er 1582 die schlacht bei Gent liefern wollte, auf packpferden mit der reiterei voraus gehen ließ, um die nachhut des feindes anzugreifen. andere glauben graf Ernst von Mansfeld habe sie im dreißigjährigen krieg erfunden . . .

It was Milton's habit in his controversial prose to write at considerable length about himself. This habit has been cited often enough as proof of his arrogance, his pride, his self-concern. No doubt it is. There is a great deal of self-concern, and some arrogance, in Milton. But if he liked to write of himself, he made good use of the liking—a use which he explains among other places in the Apology for Smectymnuus:

. . . I conceav'd my selfe to be now not as mine own person, but as a member incorporate into that truth whereof I was perswaded, and whereof I had declar'd openly to be a partaker. Whereupon I thought it my duty, if not to my selfe, yet to the religious cause I had in hand, not to leave on my garment the least spot, or blemish in good name so long as God should give me to say that which might wipe it off.1