Wīdsīð maðolade, wordhord onlēac—“Wīdsīð spoke, unlocked his word-hoard:” and the things he said have caused many modern scholars to unlock theirs. This curious Old English poem purports to be an account, told in the first person, of a minstrel's wanderings far and wide over the earth; yet it is full of chronological impossibilities. When the singer claims to have visited not only Eormanrīc, King of the Goths, and Offa, King of the Angles, but also Caesar and Alexander, he justifies his name of Far-Wanderer, but he likewise makes his tale impossible to believe.

Finnur Jónsson says in commenting on the rímur derived from SigurÐar saga fóts ok Ásmundar Húnakongs that the theme is a beautiful love romance. Not only is this little 15th-century lygisaga, now edited for the first time, one of the most readable of its kind, often reminiscent of the older sagas in language and scene and manner; but its literary relations give it unusual interest and importance. Jonsson further observes that it uses well-known motives; and Eugen Mogk that it makes many contacts with the MHG Kudrun, besides being enacted in the same milieu.

The purpose of this paper is to present certain facts relating to the historical and political conditions during a definite period of Chaucer's life, to demonstrate his intimate connection with events during this time, and to endeavor on the basis of these to fix the occasion of the contemporary allusions in the allegory of the Parlement of Foules.

The original text of the first part of the ballad “Kinge: Arthurs Death” as it appears in the Percy Folio Manuscript, and as it appears in Percy's Reliques with the title “The Legend of King Arthur,” is found with the title “The Historieof The/ conquests of the noble conquerour/ Arthvr,” and with the running title “The Historie of King Arthvr,” in the following Elizabethan account of the Nine Worthies:

The present paper offers the text of a hitherto unknown manuscript version of the ballad, “King John and the Abbot of Canterbury,” which was discovered a number of years ago by Professor Carleton Brown in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. MS. 255, in which the ballad is preserved, forms the second of the four volumes of Collectanea gathered by Brian Twyne, fellow of Corpus Christi College, who died in 1644. In the printed Catalogue of Manuscripts MS. 255 is described as “sæc. xvi exeuntis et xvii.” The date could hardly be given in more definite terms since the compiler has bound up in this volume separate articles and even single leaves from many MSS.

What would an epic be without simile? Its tone and landscape would be too often austere and bleak but for these fleeting views of an earth we know, these apt reminders of things men have done, endured, or imagined. Homer would diminish by a thousand lines, Paradise Lost by some four hundred; and what lines! Without them how could we picture Satan, his infernal host, his punishment, his revenge, or the actors in Paradise?

Since the appearance of Professor Berdan's edition of Cleveland's poems little has been added to our knowledge concerning the poet's biography. The purpose of this paper is to present certain biographical data which supplement those given by Professor Berdan.

The term “moral sense” is generally credited to Shaftesbury; in any case he is the one who gave it currency. At the time he introduced it the reigning authorities in ethical theory were, on the one hand, Hobbes, who declared: “Justice is the keeping of valid convenants; injustice the non-performance of them;” and, on the other, Locke and the orthodox party, generally, who held that “the true ground of morality can only be the Will and Law of God.”

In discussing “Shaftesbury and the Ethical Poets in England, 1700–1760,” Professor C. A. Moore introduces Henry Needier (1690–1718) primarily to show that Shaftesbury had a few followers before the period of Thomson in which, according to his thesis, literary and ethical discipleship of the moralist and rhapsodist became common. That is to say, the “obscure poet” Needier affords a kind of running-start before the great leap is made, that of establishing a Shaftesburian influence, ethical, theological, and literary, on Thomson, and the oftentimes-designated imitators who sprang up after the Seasons was published. The purpose of the following discussion is to question Professor Moore's interpretation of Needler's indebtedness to Shaftesbury for his theology and his “poetical treatment of nature,” and to show what seem instead to have been the real sources of the poet's thinking and his stylistic achievements.

Much of Fielding's amusing literary and social satire in his plays of 1736 and 1737 was in a popular vein, if we may judge from the abundance of similar satire in the newspapers of the time. Elsewhere I have shown why Fielding's hits were sure to have been met by the laughing approval of his audiences. His attack on pantomime was somewhat different, however, for pantomime was at the height of its popularity. Critics of it, like Fielding and Aaron Hill, were running counter to popular taste.

The characteristic virtues of his noble patroness, James Thomson sang in the opening lines of his Spring,

O Hartford, fitted or to shine in courts

With unaffected grace, or walk the plains

With innocence and meditation joined.

Other poets of country life besides the author of the Seasons enjoyed the patronage of the benevolent Countess of Hertford with her taste for rural landscapes, rural solitudes, and rural verses. Stephen Duck, the “Thresher Poet,” doubtless owed much of his court-favor to the good offices of the Countess, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Caroline. Her country residence he describes familiarly in his poem, A Description of a Journey to Marlborough, etc.; and an unpublished poem by him (preserved among the Alnwick manuscripts) specifically recognizes her aid and beseeches its continuance. John Dyer she may also have known; his Grongar Hill in an early version she transcribed in her commonplace-book. He was one of Aaron Hill's circle, which included Thomson and also Richard Savage, who, according to Dr. Johnson, owed his life to her intercession with the Queen. These young poets were the protegés of Lady Hertford's youth;1 another poet of country life, however, claimed her interest some twenty years after Thomson's fruitful visits to Marlborough and St. Leonard's Hill.

In a valuable article on “The Dating of Shenstone's Letters,” published some years ago, Professor John Edwin Wells succeeded in verifying or correcting the dates of eighty-nine of the one hundred eleven letters collected in volume iii of the poet's Works. Unfortunately, as Professor Wells noted in the introduction of his article, the dates assigned to these letters by the editor are not trustworthy:

The most casual reading of the studies of any of the persons connected with the Shenstone circle ever so slightly, causes one to realize that the earlier letters at least have been and are used considerably as bases for dating facts and events of minor literary and personal history of the time. The dating given by Dodsley in his edition of the Letters is the dating generally accepted without further consideration. Study of the letters, however, indicates that the year given in the dating of many of the letters, is evidently not Shenstone's but has been inserted by the editor ... The dating of many of the letters is incorrect.

No student of Moses Mendelssohn can read far into his works without being struck by the frequency and variety of his references to the English. Aside from constant references to Shakespeare, Shaftesbury, Locke, Burke, and the outstanding poets of his own time, the student finds such diverse matters as Amory's Life of John Buncle, Harris's Hermes, Edward Clarke's Letters concerning the State of Spain, Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, the tragedies of Moore, the criticism of Roscommon, the Monthly Review, quotations from English plays, translations from English poems, and imitations of the Spectator articles dealing with the Fear of May. These references begin at the earliest period of Mendelssohn's literary career and continue to the end of his life; they show that he was a lifelong student of every important phase of English literature.

The revival of interest in the picturesque past made the decade following 1760 a period of notable importance. The Ossianic poems, from 1760 to 1763, Evans's Specimens, 1764, Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance, 1762, the second edition of Warton's Observations, 1762, the Castle of Otranto, 1764, and Percy's Reliques, 1765, form a rather imposing array as documents of the romantic revival. Anything, therefore, which casts light on this movement during these years may be not without value, and it is to serve this purpose that the group of Percy-Warton letters is here offered to the reader. Some extracts from them were included in footnotes in Dr. Rinaker's study of Thomas Warton, but the correspondence has never been printed entire. The three Percy letters in the Huntington library, which are here added, have not previously appeared in print.

Among the collected letters of Ritson, the first mention to be found of the volume the fortunes of which we shall follow is under date of March 5, 1794, where Ritson writes to Paton of Edinburgh:

The impression of another little volume, of which I believe I showed you a fragment, entitled The Caledonian Muse, which had engaged my attention for a great many years, and was at last got nearly ready for publication, has been lately destroyed by a fire in the printers house; so that I neither possess, nor can procure, one single complete copy. Sic transit gloria mundi!

The old and long prevalent idea of the importance of Teresa Guiccioli's influence upon Byron was virtually exploded by Miss Mayne in her biography of the poet, but there has never been an adequate or truly sympathetic criticism of this relation. With the earlier biographers intent on defending or attacking Byron's character, there could be no hope of intelligent comment, and while Miss Mayne's treatment of this subject is remarkable for its freedom from prejudice, it is nevertheless too much influenced by her woman's point of view to be really satisfactory. By far the most helpful observations upon Byron's feeling towards the Guiccioli will be found in a set of letters written by him to Alexander Scott during the summer of 1819, and now published for the first time. These letters are of interest, not only in casting light upon the poet's affair with the Countess, but because they describe as none of his other writings do, his typical attitude toward the women he loved.

When Keats was at Naples, on his way to Rome, in November, 1820, he became irritated at evidences of aristocratic government and determined to leave the place at once. “We will go to Rome,” he said;“ I know my end approaches, and the continued visible tyranny of this government prevents me from having any peace of mind. I could not lie quietly here. I will not leave even my bones in the midst of this despotism.” Keats was ill at the time and inclined to peevish moods: the immediate cause of this outburst seems, indeed, to have been no more than the sight of sentinels posted on the stage at the opera. Yet these were words he might under similar circumstances have spoken at any time in his life. There are, scattered throughout Keats's writings, many anti-aristocratic passages which reveal a deeply-rooted, often fervid republicanism, comparable to that of his more generally recognized liberal contemporaries. These passages show, moreover, that contrary to an impression which once prevailed and is in some quarters still current, he was an unusually close observer of men and affairs, intently alert to the social, economic, and political conditions of his day, and capable on occasion of expressing pungent and wise opinions about them. The evidence for this, to be found in part in his poetry, but to a larger extent in his letters, is corroborated by the testimony of his friends and others in a position to furnish first-hand information. It is my purpose in this paper to present this evidence in a more complete and systematic way than has heretofore been attempted, though the exigencies of space will prevent my using the full volume of available material.

After the death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1834, while Hazlitt, DeQuincey, Cottle, and Allsop were publishing unwise and sometimes unfounded accounts of his life, Henry Nelson Coleridge, the poet's nephew and Sara Coleridge's husband, thought that some effort should be made to prepare an authentic biography. His additions to the Biographia Literaria and his Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge show how well he succeeded.

According to entries in his Note Books which have often been pointed out, Hawthorne in 1843 was reading a “tale of Tieck”; and it has been conjectured that this tale was Die Vogelscheuche, which thus served as the source of Feathertop. On the other hand, the resemblance of Feathertop to the following entry of 1840 in the Note Books has also been frequently noted: “To make a story out of a scarecrow, giving it odd attributes. From different points of view it should appear to change—now an old man, now an old woman—a gunner, a farmer, or the Old Nick.” And it has been suggested that if this note of 1840 be accepted as the source of Feathertop, the probability of Hawthorne's indebtedness to Tieck is thereby lessened.

One of the commonest headings in the notebooks on which Charles Reade founded his novels is fœmina vera. He considered himself an authority on woman. In a letter to the Pall Mall Gazette he calls himself “a patient drudge, who has studied that sex profoundly in various walks of life.” Certainly his women are more memorable, and the subject of more comment and criticism, than his men. To them W. D. Howells devoted a long essay in his Heroines of Fiction. Though, like his men, they fall into easily recognizable, frequently repeated types, they are more alive, more real, less subordinate to the demands of story structure. The result of more study and more enthusiasm, they are less romanticized, less melodramatized than his heroes and villains.