Die germanische Mythologie, die als Lehre von den Mythen begründet wurde, hat sich seit den Tagen Jacob Grimms langsam zu einer Wissenschaft von der Religion der Germanen entwickelt, die sich nicht mehr auf die literarisch fixierten Göttersagen (in den Edden, bei Saxo Grammaticus usw.) beschränkt, sondern alle Äusserungen des Glaubens an das Übersinnliche auf germanischem Volksboden sammelt, einordnet, erklärt.

(Other words treated here are Old French (Norman) a voiz, avois, voi, aei; English avoy, hoy, ahey, hey; Provençal aei; Portuguese eoi; Italian voi.) THE recent systematic analysis of the Chanson de Roland with reference to the exact positions of the word aoi in the Oxford manuscript seems definitely to reveal that that puzzling word is almost exclusively used only when there is some sort of shift in the narrative or a distinct pause or a break in the story.

The similarity in structure and content between the South English Legendary and the Legenda Aurea was recognized more than fifty years ago by Horstmann, although he ruled out as wholly impossible the idea that the English author could have made use of the Latin collection.

The most complete and detailed study of a specific medical case in Chaucer is the account, in The Knight's Tale, of Arcite's injury, his gradually developing symptoms, the diagnosis of their underlying causes, the treatment applied, and the patient's eventual death. Boccaccio's Teseide describes the youth's accident but does not record the attempts of the physicians to save his life: the entire passage is an interpolation by Chaucer. The probable source of the poet's remarkably accurate knowledge of medicine is revealed by an examination of the medical chapters of the greatest of mediæval encyclopedias, the Speculum Majus of Vincent of Beauvais.

Several years ago Professor Gray of Bryn Mawr discovered, on the Exchequer Rolls for 1455–56, record of payments to four Greek visitors to England. Having noticed that discussions of English humanism were inclined to run thin for the third quarter of the century, he presented his findings concerning these Greeks as a contribution toward a new and more detailed telling of the story. He established that one of the beneficiaries, Emanuel of Constantinople, was the scribe of the famous Leicester Codex of the New Testament, and discussed the learned character of the King's Council in these years. Nevertheless, he concluded on so modest a note that one was not yet confident of the continuity of English humanism after the death of Humphrey in 1447. Previous writers give us a full and glowing account of the stir of men's minds under the influence of Humphrey, and a hasty sketch of travellers to and from Italy after Humphrey's death, not swinging into another full and vivid narrative until they reach the later years of Henry VII.

Passages from Colin Clout, Speak, Parrot, and Why Come Ye Not To Court sprinkle the pages of every account of England in the time of Henry VIII. As illustrative material for historical texts these satires of Skelton are unsurpassed. They are not vaguely general, condemnatory of times and manners in the all-inclusive fashion that must have rendered so many medieval diatribes innocuous reading even to those evil ones to whom they were primarily addressed. Colin Clout, indeed, masquerades as a member of this type: “It is wronge with eche degre. …” But the disguise is thin. Prelates who build noble mansions royally, adorn their walls with unseemly tapestries, give evil counsel, rule both king and kaiser, ride on gaily caparisoned mules—these are “prelates,” but the plural is transparently a singular. It is this singleness of objective, together with the acute danger in which that singleness must have placed the satirist, that provides the historian of politics with contemporary comment with which to annotate his discussion, and the historian of letters with a character of consuming interest.

All critics of Thomas Deloney's novels have commented on the frequent passages in which, dropping his ordinary colloquial style, he indulges in euphuistic references to alleged wonders of natural history. His editor, Mr. F. O. Mann, explains many of the references by citing a probable source like Stephen Batman's Batman vppon Bartholome (1582) and highly improbable sources like Pliny, Sextus Empiricus, Cornelius Nepos, Belleforest, and the Nuremberg Chronicle. As I have recently shown, a large number of Deloney's “facts” about natural history and of his erudite-looking anecdotes were lifted directly from Thomas Fortescue's translation, The Forest or Collection of Historyes (1571, 1576). Many others (as well as a few that I supposed to have come from The Forest) were taken from Stephen Batman's The Doome warning all men to the Iudgemente (1581) and Thomas Johnson's Cornucopiæ, Or diuers secrets … Newlie drawen out of diuers Latine Authors into English (1595).

The second English treatise on tobacco, as well as the first to oppose it, was Work for Chimny-sweepers: or A warning for Tabacconists. Describing the pernicious vse of Tabacco, no lesse pleasant then profitable for all sorts to reade. [quotation] … Imprinted at London by T. Este, for Thomas Bushell, & are to be sould at the great North dore of Powles. 1602.

He pronounced the letter R (littera canina) very hard—a certaine signe of a satyricall witt—from John Dreyden. Extreme pleasant in his conversation, and at dinner, supper, etc.; but satyricall. MANY people still picture John Milton as a forbidding Puritan, dividing his time about equally between hounding his poor daughters and lifting his soul in ecstatic, mystic raptures to the tremendously imposing Jehovah of his poems. They remember with some disdain his pride in his studiousness, his temperance, his chastity, and other not so popular virtues. Hence they are unfair and myopic. We have no right to belittle Milton's essential humanity. His soul was not always like a star and dwelt apart; on the contrary, he led an unusually busy social and political career, coming in habitual contact with people of many types, and usually making a very favorable impression on them. He could laugh and jest and talk well; and above all he had an astonishing command of satire, begun early and developed by years of hard and constant training. If satire had held the place in the mid-seventeenth century that it occupied in the 1590's or the post-Restoration years, Milton might have been in quality what Bishop Hall pretended to be in chronology—the first English satirist. Even during a period when satire as a type was suffering a depression, his achievements are more striking than we often realize.

Unquestionably, early references to Milton and his work are valuable. Doubly valuable is the following hitherto unnoticed reply to his Of Prelatical Episcopacy; for it not only proves that Milton's pamphlet, on its merits and not because of personalities, was deemed worthy of a rejoinder, but it also serves to fix the date of Of Prelatical Episcopacy, and, incidentally, of his first pamphlet, Of Reformation Touching Church Discipline in England. The full title of the reply is A Compendious Discourse, Proving Episcopacy To Be Of Apostolicall, And Consequently Of Divine Institution: By A cleare and weighty testimony of St. Irenœus a glorious Martyr, and renowned Bishop of Lyons in France, upon the yeere of our Lord, 184. The said Testimony being so declared, pressed, and vindicated from all exceptions, that thereby an intelligent, and conscionable Reader may receive abundant satisfaction in this behalfe. Isaiah 39. 8. Let there be peace and truth in my daies. By Peloni Almoni, Cosmopolites. London, Printed by E. G. for Richard Whitaker at the Kings Armes in Pauls Church-yeard, 1641.

This article is an attempt to clear up the curious hodge-podge of fact and fiction in Voltaire's play Zaïre. From his facile use of famous names and historical events one receives the impression that the play is at least based on facts. But Voltaire tells us in a letter to M. La Roque (1732): “Je n'ai pris dans l'histoire que l'époque de saint Louis; tout le reste est entierèment d'invention.” Is his statement to be believed? The editors of Zaïre have done nothing to help solve this question.

There has been uncertainty about the authorship of L'Homme plus que Machine, a reply to la Mettrie's Homme-Machine, from the time of its anonymous publication in 1748. It has been most commonly considered an attempt at self-defense on the part of la Mettrie's publisher, Elie Luzac, who was prosecuted for the publication of L'Homme-Machine, and who, it has been supposed, states his personal disagreement with the materialism and atheism of the French philosopher in the Homme plus que Machine. On the other hand, some of la Mettrie's contemporaries and three modern scholars have looked upon this work as an ironic pretended attack upon himself by la Mettrie, wherein he actually pleads more in his favor than against himself. No conclusive evidence can be presented.

The recent notes by Mr. Churchill on the Percy-Warton correspondence are as valuable as they are concise. However, some points raised by him stimulate further consideration. These are: (1) the projected edition of Buckingham's Works, (2) Percy's initial plans for the Reliques, and (3) his introductory relations with the Northumberland family.

Since long before the middle of the nineteenth century, F. D. Maurice, Tennyson's friend and a leader of the Broad-Church movement in England, has been considered Coleridge's disciple. Maurice himself frequently admitted his indebtedness to Coleridge. Its exact nature however, has been left uninvestigated. False conceptions of it have arisen, such as the belief that Maurice felt the spell of Coleridge's talk and took the impress of his personality directly, or the belief that Coleridge's “moonshine,” as Carlyle called it, without ever assuming the form of definite ideas, somehow or other had an influence upon the disciple. The first notion is shown to be untrue by the simple fact that Maurice never met Coleridge or listened to his conversation—that he knew Coleridge almost exclusively through his published writings. The second is more difficult to combat, since to do so requires a careful study of the writings of both men. Certain groups of organically related ideas do exist, however, in a very definite form in the writings of both Coleridge and Maurice, and possess a vitality and a substantial character hardly to be associated with moonshine. Such a powerful group of ideas is that concerning Coleridge's distinction between the reason and the understanding.

Protégé of the Duke of Bedford, tutor of the Queen of Prussia, minister of the Gospel in Moscow, and professor of English in Berlin—such are the more striking phases of the varied career ascribed to the Reverend Benjamin Beresford by his commentators, for whom the full measure of the man has remained obscured. Even recent recognition of his sterling service as pioneer literary intermediary between Germany and England has been vitiated by insufficient knowledge not only of the man himself but also of the publications by which he initiated and sustained for a quarter of a century English acquaintance with German lyric poetry. His translations of popular German songs accompanied by their original melodies have long since become rarities. Even during his lifetime the compiler of a musical lexicon expressed regret that he did not have Beresford's first collection at hand so that he might inform a future generation precisely which of various current compositions had been selected for the songs. As a matter of fact, this particular publication seems to have reached posterity in a unique copy. Succeeding publications suffered similar fortunes, many of them surviving in extremely scarce if not actually single copies.

The influence of Taylor, the Platonist, on Shelley has been suspected by A. Koszul but left for further investigation. A study of Shelley in this context is important for the light it throws on his Platonism, and upon the meaning of several prose fragments found among his manuscripts. It is an influence which Shelley assimilated for the most part unconsciously in his early youth, and outgrew. The traces of it, therefore, are dim and the means of it indirect, but they are of significance not only for Shelley but for Platonism as an influence in the Romantic movement.

When Jane Eyre first appeared (Oct. 16, 1847) the publishers, Smith, Elder & Co., sent a complimentary copy to a young journalist named George Henry Lewes. The compliment had unexpected results. Lewes afterwards wrote Mrs. Gaskell: The enthusiasm with which I read it made me go down to Mr. Parker, and propose to write a review of it for Fraser's Magazine. He would not consent to an unknown novel—for the papers had not yet declared themselves—receiving such importance, but thought it might make one on “Recent Novels: English and French”—which appeared in Fraser, December 1847. Meanwhile I had written to Miss Brontë to tell her the delight with which her book filled me; and seemed to have “sermonized” her, to judge from her reply.

Hawthorne was uncommunicative as to the sources on which he drew for the materials underlying his writings. That he had read widely is shown by an examination of the list of books that he borrowed from the Athenæum Library at Salem during his residence of some twenty years in that town. It is perhaps because of Hawthorne's reticence as to his origins that we have as yet learned very little about his literary borrowings; but from time to time articles have appeared touching the specific sources on which Hawthorne relied.

Die 1934 im Schlussband von Georges Gesamt-Ausgabe der Werke veröffentlichten fremdsprachigen Gedichte enthalten außer den beiden in der von George selbst gebildeten “lingua romana” verfaßten Gedichten und zwei englischen Sonetten auch drei französische Gedichte, “Frauenlob,” “Proverbes” und “D'Une Veillée,” die hier einer näheren Betrachtung unterzogen werden sollen. Das einzige von diesen Gedichten, das vor dem Herauskommen des Schlussbandes schon im Druck erschienen war, ist “Proverbes,” während die von George selbst verfaßten deutschen Übertragungen bereits in den Blättern für die Kunst veröffentlicht worden waren. Daß George aber mehr, als auch im Schlussband zum Abdruck kam, in französischer Sprache dichtete, kann aus der Bemerkung im Anhang zu den Büchern in der Gesamt-Ausgabe geschlossen werden: “Beim ersten druck aus den ‘Sagen’ in den Bl.f.d.K.I.F.4 B. fand sich die Bemerkung 'zuerst französisch gedichtet, dann vom Verfasser selbst übertragen.' Die im nachtrag des 'Jahr der Seele' erwähnten: Pendant que ta mère sind indessen die einzig gedruckten französischen verse.” Die Annahme wird noch bestärkt durch C. A. Klein, der im Anschluß an Georges Dichtungen in der “lingua romana” berichtet: “Auch dichtete er vorläufig in anderen Sprachen, besonders der französischen, wie nach ihm Rainer Maria Rilke.” Da George die deutschen Übertragungen seiner französischen Gedichte auch in seine Werke aufnahm, den “Frauenlob” in die Sagen und Sänge, die “Sprüche an die Geladenen in T …” und die “Nachtwachen” in Das Jahr der Seele, die französischen Originale aber erst jetzt alle durch das Erscheinen des Schlussbandes der Gesamt-Ausgabe allgemein bekannt wurden, so ist es erst jetzt in vollem Umfang möglich, die französischen und deutschen Fassungen miteinander zu vergleichen.

It has been stated repeatedly by Professor James L. Barker of the University of Utah that in French the breath stream is interrupted in certain cases after the production of a sound and that the position for the following sound is taken in silence during the interruption. The cases mentioned specifically in which such interruptions occur are the transitions from consonant to vowel, from vowel to consonant, and from consonant to consonant.