A small manuscript of only five leaves in Paris, Bibl. Nat. N. A. franç. 10176, which receives a brief notice in the catalogue, contains an early, and so far as known a unique, medieval translation into French of the article from Suidas's Lexicon and of a part of the Testamenta XII Patriarcharum. Both of these works were translated from Greek into Latin by Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln 1235–1253. A description of the manuscript follows.

In Dr. Carleton Brown's admirable study of the narrative which supplied the basis for The Prioresses Tale he pointed out that Chaucer made use of a thirteenth-century exemplum of a Miracle of our Lady. Although the earliest extant versions are of the thirteenth century, the story had its origin before 1200. There is, however, a striking similarity between the details of Chaucer's poem and the Latin exemplum C vi, which Dr. Brown has printed from a collection of Miracles of the Virgin in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, MS. A.5.10, Lib. ii, Cap 87, written in the fifteenth century. This post-Chaucerian version offers a number of points for comparison: a little boy passed twice a day through the Jewry singing his antiphon. So in Chaucer: Twies a day it passed thurgh his throte, As I have seyd, thurghout the Juerie, This litel child, as he cam to and fro, Ful murily than wolde he synge and crie O alma redemptoris everemo.

In 1538 John Barlowe, an adherent of Surrey's enemies, exclaimed, “[Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey!] It ys the most folish prowde boye that ys in Englande.” Although Barlowe's companion, George Constantyne, was at one with him in his hostility to the political and religious conservatism of the Howards, he retorted ironically, “What, man, he hath a wife & childe, & ye call hym boye?” and continuing, he ridiculed Barlowe's use of the phrase “folish prowde” as equally inept. Soon after Surrey was executed, however, unfounded traditions began to modify the point of view exemplified by Constantyne's refusal to take Barlow's remark seriously. The repetition of these misleading traditions for more than three centuries has so distorted the conception of Surrey's character and the interpretation of his actions that the justice of Barlowe's remark has come to be accepted without question.

The first Portuguese grammar was that of Fernāo de Oliveira, which appeared in 1536, and the first linguistic discussion in dialogue form in Portuguese was the Dialogo em louvor da nossa linguagem of Joāo de Barros, which was published with his grammar in 1540. Though Fernāo de Oliveira mentioned Nebrija, there is no evidence that Joāo de Barros knew anything about Juan de Valdés or his Dialogo de las linguas. The Dialogo of Joāo de Barros is a dialogue between a father and son, in which the son merely asks questions; it is, therefore, more expository than argumentative.

The anonymous plays, The Tragical Reign of King John, Arden of Feversham, Soliman and Perseda, The First Part of the Contention between the Houses of York and Lancaster, and The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, contain numerous parallels to Marlowe's Edward II and The Massacre at Paris, which have frequently been urged as proof either that he wrote some of these anonymous plays or that he borrowed from them. When all such parallels are brought together, however, acceptance of them as proof of Marlowe's borrowing would prove him to have been a greater borrower than previously supposed or than his admirers will admit.

Sir Edmund Chambers writes that “Peele's hand has been sought in nearly every masterless play of his epoch.” The evidence advanced for such attributions has usually consisted mainly of parallel passages and verbal tests, with the result that plays as different in structure as The Troublesome Reign of King John and King Leir have been fathered upon Peele by the same critic. Most scholars have been inclined to overlook the importance of structure as a means of determining authorship, though the dramas of Jonson and Shakespeare structure appears to be as much a constant as style or characterization. It is the purpose of this paper to show that Peele's known plays reveal a fairly constant type of structure, and that this type can be used as a determinant in considering the authorship of anonymous plays.

The question of priority of the Folio and Quarto plays concerning Henry VI has long beena moot one. Miss Madeleine Doran (“‘Henry VI, Parts II and III,‘” University of Iowa Humanistic Studies, iv, 188, August 15, 1928) and Mr. Peter Alexander (Shakespeare's Henry VI and Richard III, 1929) have contributed the most comprehensive recent discussion on the matter; but no one has yet investigated the question from the standpoint of sources. That is the purpose of this paper. Since in most instances the relation of the two different texts of the dramas to the histories is practically identical, it is worth while to notice only the passages in which the similarity of one text to Hall or to Holinshed is closer than that of the other text.

Adoctrine of Nature constitutes the core of the view of life held by Shakespeare. Whether or not the sonneteer unlocked his heart, it is clear that if the works of Shakespeare are considered as an integrable whole, he laid bare many results of his probings amid the secrets of Nature. The present intent is to learn by this approach something about his philosophy of ethics, art, and politics. Indications are that, like Spenser in the Cantos of Mutabilitie, he had more than an intelligent gentleman's interest in the theme.

In the following passage from bis Epitaphium Damonis (lines 181–197) Milton refers to two cups which he is supposed to have received from Manso, and which he describes as follows: … tum quae mihi pocula Mansus, Mansus, Chalcidicae non ultima gloria ripae Bina dedit, mirum artis opus, mirandus et ipse, Et circum gemino caelaverat argumento: In medio Rubri Maris unda, et odoriferum ver. Littora longa Arabum, et sudantes balsama silvae; Has inter Phoenix, divina avis, unica terris, Caeruleum fulgens diversicoloribus alis, Auroram vitreis surgentem respicit undis. Parte alia polus omnipatens, et magnus Olympus: Quis putet? hic quoque Amor pictaeque in nube pharetrae, Arma corusca faces, et spicula tincta pyropo; Nec tenues animas pectusque ignobile vulgi Hinc ferit; at circum flammantia lumina torquens Semper in erectum spargit sua tela per orbes Impiger, et pronos nunquam collimat ad ictus: Hinc mentes ardere sacrae, formaeque deorum.

The discussion of Shakespearean punctuation begun by Percy Simpson has brought out two theories of seventeenth-century punctuation—one that it is based upon principles of elocution and the other that it is based upon the grammatical structure of sentences. No one seems to have argued that the two principles must have been active simultaneously, that rules of punctuation (even those formulated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which Professor Fries cites) regard both the structure and the pause.

The Romantic Period has generally been regarded as one of enthusiasm for the pre-Augustan poets as well as for the writers of Jacobean and Caroline prose. We recall the ardors of Charles Lamb for the Elizabethan dramatists, and of Lamb and Coleridge for Browne, Burton, and Taylor; we recall, too, the interest of Scott in the ballads, and of Keats in Spenser and Milton.

Although most of Dryden's plays can be dated approximately, if not precisely, two have eluded efforts to fix even a good conjectural date: Marriage à la Mode and Amboyna. Both, it is certain, appeared after The Conquest of Granada. The first acting of Marriage à la Mode is usually placed in May or June, 1672. The basis for May rests upon the assumption, made first by Malone, that the following lines from the Prologue “seem to allude to the equipment of the fleet, which afterwards engaged the Dutch off Southwold Bay, May 28, 1672.”

In The Monthly Mirror are some writings of Jonathan Swift which appear to have been overlooked by all of his commentators— a satirical essay, a letter to Mrs. Pendarves, and a soliloquy attributed to him. The most significant of these is the satirical essay, entitled Directions to Players and printed, it is stated, “from an unpublished MS. by Dean Swift, preserved by Mr. O'Nick.”

The usual criticism of Tristram Shandy denies that there is in this great novel plan, form, or method. Sterne himself supplied the text which criticism has tirelessly amplified, “I begin writing the first sentence … trusting to God Almighty for the second.” A popular history of English literature, to take one of a great many possible examples, speaks of Tristram Shandy as having “an indefinite theme, worked out by a verve that has not the slightest concern for order, unity or logic. … The work is a series of mental and verbal pirouettings.” Governor Cross, almost alone among critics, has given the book its proper place in the history of the novel by elaborating what Sterne himself repeatedly said, that Tristram Shandy is Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding in a novelized form.

“The affair of love, which, out of conformity with the Stoic philosophy, we shall here treat as a disease.”—Fielding's Tom Jones. IT has been pointed out that a motif or idea which plays an outstanding part in a poet's imagination and recurs frequently in his invention, is likely also to manifest itself in the form of his linguistic expression. It will crop up wherever the poet embellishes his discourse with simile, wherever emotional tension drives him to metaphoric expression, i.e., to the substitution of a word which carries more feeling than the word of common usage, or to an effort to express an idea which cannot properly be conveyed by the vocables at his disposal. This principle, it appears to me, becomes particularly significant from an æsthetic point of view when it manifests itself, as it sometimes does, with unusual strength within the scope of a single work. It may then give a very decided color and tone to the language of the whole work, producing metaphor after metaphor, simile after simile, all harping on one dominant theme throughout the book and so playing a continuous accompaniment, as it were, which keeps a major theme of the composition ringing in our ears as the story progresses through other motifs. This theme then becomes a style determinant, shaping the linguistic expression throughout a work of considerable length and making for a uniformity of tone.

Die Bewertung der deutschen Novelle als eigengesetzliche Kunstform ist noch immer umstritten, da die Fülle von Theorien, die ihren Entwicklungsgang begleiten, bei manchem Forscher den Eindruck hinterlassen haben, als sei sie nur eine kürzere und individuell wandelbare Spielart der hohen Epik. Sie übersehen dabei, daß die Kernsätze jener theoretischen Erörterungen bei allen scheinbaren Widersprüchen nur verschiedene Seiten der Novellenkomposition beleuchten und für die Scheidung der Novelle von andern epischen Formen ihre Gültigkeit bewahren, wenn man ihren persönlichen und zeitbedingten Gehalt mit berücksichtigt. Goethes betrachtendes Auge ruht auf dem Inhalt, wenn er die Novelle nichts anderes “als eine sich ereignete unerhörte Begebenheit” nennt. Tiecks romantisch-ironische Vielseitigkeit fügt den “überraschenden Wendepunkt” als Wesensmerkmal des Ablaufs einer solchen mehr oder weniger wunderbaren Begebenheit hinzu. Heyses technische Virtuosität prägt den Begriff der “Silhouette” für ihren äußeren Umriß und entlehnt von Boccaccios Novelle den “Falken” als Symbol für ihren kompositorischen Kern. Wenn der nachdenklichgrübelnde Storm die Novelle als “die Schwester des Dramas und die strengste Form der Prosadichtung” bezeichnet, die “gleich dem Drama die tiefsten Probleme des Menschenlebens behandelt,” so erfaßt er ihre kunstphilosophische Bedeutung und stellt eine These auf, die erst in jüngster Zeit von Bruch und Pongs durchgefochten wurde, von Bruch als Analytiker der absoluten, von der Einzelerscheinung losgelösten Form, von Pongs als Synthetiker, der die Kausalität im Schaffen des Dichters gleichzeitig mit den Forderungen der formalen Werte sieht.

Biographers and commentators are still at variance over so elementary a problem as the elements of actual experience that have gone into Sudermann's first important work, Frau Sorge. Jung, Axelrod, Soergel, and Mahrholz subscribe to the opinion that in this work Sudermann has given us something enduring and representative because he here fashioned a work “aus eigenem Erleben, aus der Stimmung seiner ostpreussischen Heimat.” This is the view held by the majority of literary critics though it has never been substantiated in detail.

The present article is in part a corollary to an earlier one on Populism and a further chapter in an exploration into that complex movement in the contemporary French novel which is in revolt against nineteenth-century individualism and all the involved subjectivisms, the affected preciosity and even the dishevelled formlessness of the “littérature snob.” The branch of the movement I propose to discuss is sometimes referred to by critics as a new classicism, and though the term is misleading it can stand. Jules Romains himself expresses the sense of cleavage between two literatures when he says: Je crois … qu'un peu partout une certaine période de littérature coupée du réel, tournée avec trop de complaisance vers l‘étude d‘états dâmes fragiles, infiniment particuliers et périssables est en train de se clore.

There have been sporadic attempts to determine the number of situations which artists may exploit in literature, especially dramatic literature; but, so far as I know, there has been no signal effort on the part of scholars to come to grips with the subject. Apart from determining the exact number of situations, it is of importance that we come to some agreement regarding the term situation and its function in literary art. I shall attempt here to discuss: earlier efforts at definition and analysis, the nature of situation, the exact number of situations, and examples in literature.