It is increasingly the tendency of Beowulf students to stress the importance of the historical passages of the poem. Since Grundtvig established the date of Hygelac's last raid, one is inclined to expect corroboration of other parts of the narrative. But the extent to which one may reasonably accept the poet's statements is a matter for dispute. When he says that Beowulf was present at the last raid of Hygelac, there is no reason for doubt. Not so when he says that the hero swam off with thirty suits of armor. When the swimming match with Breca is mentioned, one may reasonably suppose that the hero distinguished himself in a swimming contest in his youth. But when he swims for days and fights off all manner of uncouth beasts, there seems to be sufficient grounds for skepticism. Or when Beowulf, filled with years dies fighting the dragon, we may feel sure that he died a violent death, without accepting the existence of dragons in the sixth century. Thus in general, we may limit confidence to simple facts simply asserted.

Probably the chief reason for many of the linguistic irregularities of Old Northumbrian is the fact that the great bulk (about 98 per cent) of its literary remains exist in the form of glosses, in which a scribe is often so intent upon conveying the general meaning of a concept in the Latin parallel that he lets the outer dressing of the vernacular—the grammatical or syntactic form, even the spelling, of a word—take care of itself. The fact, however, that these glosses may be in consequence entirely untrustworthy as a basis for an acceptance or a rejection of linguistic rules need not detract from the interest that their anomalies may happen to afford us. Thus, in a recent survey of Northumbrian relics to observe the treatment therein of the instrumental case, there appeared no fewer than ten constructions which have not as yet been recorded in any systematic study of Old English case-syntax as a whole.

There exist in Old English a number of compilations in which an address of the soul to its body is a conspicuous feature. The best known is the poem in the Vercelli and the Exeter Books, in which the soul returns to its body once a week and communes with it, the sinful soul reproaching it vituperatively, the righteous comforting it lovingly and joyously. The fourth Vercelli homily has a remarkable scene, an elaborated account of the judgement of the soul at Doomsday, in which the souls address their bodies as they stand in the presence of the Judge. The Last Judgement is again the scene of an address, and that in one of the homilies presented by Assmann. There is, finally, the Old English vision, printed by Thorpe and Napier, of the bringing forth of the soul, wherein the newly-released soul of a sinner vituperates the body it has just left. To this literature, I wish to add passages from two unpublished Old English homilies, in which the address is made, not at the moment of death, as in Thorpe and Napier, nor at the Last Judgement, as in Vercelli Homily iv and in Assmann, but at some intermediate time, when the soul returns intermittently to its body for that purpose, as in the Old English poem. These two texts are Homilies ii and iv of MS. Junius 85 of the Bodleian Library, and Homily xl of MS. Ii. 1.33 of the Cambridge University Library.

No definite agreement concerning the probable date of the Eneas exists in the studies devoted to this mediæval romance. Its editor, M. Salverda de Grave, originally placed the Eneas at about 1150, M. Faral believes it was composed about 1160, and one of its most recent critics, Mr. F. Guyer, considers it somewhat anterior to the year 1174. The last date can hardly be accepted, however, since the major part of Heinrich von Veldeke's translation of the Eneas into German was completed by 1175, and it seems reasonable to assume that the poem's dissemination and translation would require more than one year.

Some ten years ago I pointed out (MLN, XL, 282–284) that the poem, “An Holy Medytacion,” first printed by Dr. MacCracken, was based directly on a thirteenth-century Latin poem, “De Humana Miseria Tractatus.” The English poem opens with a lively description of Spring which irresistibly recalls the beginning of the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. No doubt Dr. MacCracken was impressed by the apparent reminiscences of Chaucer in this section of the poem, and it was very natural that these should have influenced him in assigning the “Holy Medytacion” to Lydgate. This Spring description, however, instead of being reminiscent of Chaucer, follows closely the phrases of its Latin original. Accordingly, the most plausible reason for assigning the poem to the monk of Bury at once disappears.

In the past two years, partly to supplement in special fields the collections of the Middle English Dictionary, I have been searching the catalogues of manuscripts of English libraries for mediæval curiosities. Of these, early grammatical writings in English are not the least interesting. I have now four Latin grammatical pieces written in English in the fifteenth century: I, an anonymous grammar in St. John's College (Cambridge) MS. 163, f. 1a, printed below; II, another from Trinity College (Cambridge) MS. 0.5.4, f. 5a, printed in Essays and Studies in Eng. and Comp. Lit. in the series in Language and Literature, University of Michigan, xiii (1935), pp. 81–125; III, another in Douce MS. 103, f. 53a, printed below; and IV, a disquisition by a schoolmaster of Beccles (Suffolk), one John Drury, on the comparison of adjectives and adverbs in Cambridge Additional MS. 2830, f. 54a, printed in Speculum, ix (1934), 70–83. (I shall usually refer to them herein as I, II, III, and IV.)

During the period covered by the Early Modern English Dictionary, witchcraft occupied the mind of the average man, and became the subject-matter of literature (dramatic, theological, philosophical, legal) to an extent probably not known in any other epoch. It is natural that such a predominating interest should have its effect on the vocabulary. There can now be described, with more detail than has hitherto been available, one instance in which the beliefs and practices of contemporary charlatans, pretending to supernatural connections, made an interesting development of meaning for a common word. This instance will be illustrated at length, for the sake of the analogies which it suggests as to possible starting points for studying other words. The discussion seems to indicate that elements in the problem go back to learned tradition and at the same time to primitive Teutonic folk-lore.

In his Reference Guide to Edmund Spenser (1923) Carpenter remarked (p. 101) that the “Spenserian place-names in Ireland have been but slightly studied.” The statement still holds. Although materials for the study of Irish place-names have been made accessible, editors and critics since 1923 have persisted in keeping alive fictions and interpretations which are no longer tenable.

The conviction of Miss Helen Darbishire, to which she has given expression in the Appendix to The Manuscript of Paradise Lost, Book I, and later in Early Lives of Milton (xvi-xxvii), that the anonymous Life of Milton was the work of John Phillips, the poet's nephew, is so strong that, after having stated it and given her reasons therefore, she uses the suggested authorship as a certainty in the title she gives to the Life and elsewhere throughout the Early Lives of Milton. Her argument is two-fold:

1. In a manuscript of John Phillips's poem, “A Satyr against Hypocrites,” is “a page and a half of Dedication signed by John Phillips. This dedication “written in a formal Italian hand,” she believes to be his. She also believes that certain marginal notes and textual corrections are in his hand. Comparing these specimens of what she believes to be John Phillips's handwriting with the handwriting of the anonymous Life, she “was struck at once by the similarity of the handwriting” in the two manuscripts.

The manuscript Dedication for the music of Purcell's opera, The Prophetess, has curiously remained unprinted and apparently unobserved by the editors and biographers of Dryden since its first notice in a report of the Historical Manuscript Commission, 1881. Its almost unique interest to any treatment of the poet's literary relations, his canon, and technique is barely indicated by a contemporary notation at the bottom of the second folio: “This Epistle is the handwriting of John Dryden Esq Poet Laureat to Ch: 2, and James 2. it was the first draught of an Epistle Dedicatory to some Opera's of Mr. Purcell, and writ at his Request & for his use.” Of an accompanying manuscript, the original for an unsigned Advertisement to the printed score, it is added that: “The other is a letter from Jacob Tonson the Famous Bookseller in London.” Both pieces were published, though with extensive deletions in the case of the Dedication, in a folio volume of 1691. This work, whatever the authorship of its parts, with its Dedication and Advertisement, assumes therefore a new importance to bibliographers and students of the poet.

As many have learned to their dismay, the materials upon which Sterne's biography is at present based offer problems of unusual complexity, problems that are due in part to the man's intricate and elusive nature and in part to his daughter and to his swarm of imitators. Sterne, it is evident, was too great a humorist ever to be quite honest either with his own or with future generations. He amused himself in his letters by deceiving his contemporaries and mystifying posterity. For many years now his devices have been familiar matter: he rewrote his letters with his eye upon the press; sometimes he made portions of a letter serve more than one correspondent; and, though lately we have known it, he readdressed a letter much after the manner of Pope in the expectation that the substituted name of Eliza Draper would make a better impression than that of an unidentified countess.

If we render to the word philosophy its true meaning of “love of wisdom,” and inject into the word wisdom a few of the qualities suggested by the French word “sagesse,” we shall find Voltaire and Diderot at the very heart of eighteenth-century philosophy. Since they were by no means wholly in agreement, a study of their personal and intellectual reactions should clarify many of the main issues and bring us a step nearer to an understanding of deism and materialism, of decadent classicism and renascent romanticism, and of the nobler eighteenth-century conceptions of reason and nature. This study will be centered around certain comments in Voltaire's hand in the margins of Diderot's works now in the Public Library of Leningrad. Voltaire's reactions, however, are so often essentially personal that it will be necessary to consider the general relations between the two men. Certain letters of Diderot recently published have thrown new light on this rather unusual friendship, in which Voltaire appears the more tolerant and forbearing. An attempt will be made also to relate the essential ideas of the two philosophers to trends in modern thought.

Allenthalben begnügt man sich noch mit dem Begriff vom Jungen Goethe, wie ihn Ludwig Tieck faszte, der diesen nur bis auf den Vorweimarer Goethe angewandt wissen wollte. Ihm folgte Max Morris, dessen kritische Stoffsammlung mit dem Reisetagebuch Goethes vom 30. Oktober 1775 abschlieszt. So hält auch Karl Alt an der Auffassung Tiecks fest. Das glänzend geschriebene synthetische Werkchen von Karl Viëtor greift ebenfalls über Goethes letzte Frankfurter Tage nicht hinaus. Korff schlieszt den Jungen Goethe, ohne sichere Daten zu geben, mit dem Urfaust ab. Selbst Gundolf macht kaum eine Ausnahme, doch unterscheidet er schärfer zwischen einem Frühweimarer und dem mit der Rückkehr aus Italien wirklich gereiften Goethe. Das trefflichste Beispiel bietet jedoch Eugen Wolffs Untersuchung über die geschichtliche Entwicklung junggoethescher Gedichte, die mit Anfang November 1775 abschlieszt, allerdings schon 1907 erschien. Aber noch Hermann Baumgart in seinem Werk Goethes lyrische Dichtung in ihrer Entwicklung und Bedeutung, Band i, S. 186 f. (Heidelberg, 1931) hält die nachfrankfurter Jahre “zur entscheidenden Epoche” von Goethes Leben, in denen sich “die bleibende Richtung seines Lebens” gebildet habe. Und so könnte man die Liste bewährter Forscher weiter verfolgen, ohne dasz sich das herkömmliche Bild nennenswert ändern würde.

The study of the reception and the rejection of Goethe in America has attracted many investigators and has yielded a wealth of factual and significant material—the gist of which has recently been set forth in comprehensive perspective by Camillo von Klenze. However, the well has not been exhausted. So far the history of what may be called the integration of Goethean literature and thought in America has been told largely in terms of individual leadership. To be sure, in the first half of the nineteenth century, perhaps up to the appearance of Taylor's Faust (1870), the attitude of a few score outstanding personages tells the better part of the story of Goethe in America. But as time advances the leadership of individuals becomes more and more involved in a complexity of forces, an expansion of fields, and a ramification and crossing of lines of influence and tradition. Toward the close of the century the material—in the American popular magazines, for instance—presents such endlessly involved cross-considerations and such masses of detail that it would seem as if nothing short of the much overstrained statistical method could lead to any desirable perspicuity.

L'autobus de Rouen à Beauvais s'arrêta dans une longue plainte de freins fatigués, et les deux voyageurs qu'il transportait ouvrirent à grand peine sa porte étroite et piquée de rouille.

—Pour aller & à, madame? demanda le plus vieux à une paysanne en tablier bleu qui, dans l'ombre d'une porte entre-bâillée, épiait les arrivants.

In any explanation of the sources for the doctrine of physical determinism, as expressed in modern French literature, the book of Jean-Philibert Dessaignes (1762–1832), Etudes de l'homme moral, fondées sur les rapports de ses facultés avec son organisation, deserves a place. This is because its author was the teacher of Honoré de Balzac at the Collège de Vendôme, and because Balzac later became one of the chief creators of the doctrine in question.

In the course of his essay on Paul Verlaine, Anatole France, in speaking of the early Parnassians, makes the very shrewd observation:

Das Gebiet der Sprachforschung des letzten Jahrhunderts hat, allgemein gesprochen, sein Bestes darin geleistet, Spracherscheinungen in ihrem Zusammenhange zu erkennen und in ihrer Regelmässigkeit darzustellen. Parallel dazu lief allerdings eine vorsichtiger gehaltene Bewegung, welche die gefundenen Erscheinungen auf die Frage des “Warum” hin zu prüfen und auf Grund ihrer inneren Notwendigkeit darzustellen sich bemühte. So kam es, dass schon seit den Zeiten eines Zeuss, Bopp und Grimm ernste Versuche von Deutungen wichtiger Lautgesetze gemacht wurden, die sich allerdings über den Radius eines “wohl” und “vielleicht” selten hinausbewegen konnten. Zu Ende des vergangenen Jahrhunderts mehrten sich auch jene Theorien, die wohlbekannte Lautgesetze, wie Umlaut, Ablaut und Lautverschiebung nach ihrer inneren Notwendigkeit zu erklären versuchten. Bei dem Emporkommen so vieler neuer Hilfswissenschaften ist es nur natürlich, dass wir bald ein “Sich Jagen” von Theorien beobachten können, was manchen Gelehrten vorsichtig, vielleicht auch skeptisch stimmte und damit von der Lösung der schönsten und schwierigsten Frage “Warum ändern sich Laute?” ferne hielt. Um so mehr muss man es dem Mut, vielleicht Opfermut einzelner Männer danken, trotzdem Lösungsmöglichkeiten angedeutet zu haben, die doch wenigstens die Forschung wach und rege erhielten.

It has long been suspected that melody plays a more important part in the structure of a poem than the broken and irregular contours of verbal pitch-patterns would seem to indicate. The fact that the voice almost never settles for more than one-twentieth of a second on one pitch, the constant and rapid movements of the melody of speech, the impossibility of representing a verbal melody in musical notation—all have tended to obscure the relation of melody to rhythmical structure. It has been observed, however, that poetic melodies tend to arrange themselves roughly in patterns which coincide with the line or the phrase, and that these patterns are often repetitive. It has also been noticed that the comma-rise and period-fall tend to emphasize the rhythm and to prepare a sort of cadence for the end of a poetic passage. To these functions of melody in verse form may now be added a third: riming words tend to be pronounced on the same pitch.