Nothing in connection with Arthurian legend is more familiarly referred to than Arthur's Round Table. From 1155 when Wace first mentioned it down to the present day the Round Table has symbolized the idea of fraternal fellowship, whether as of old in chivalrous deeds of arms or as today in the asperities of political discussion. It has become perhaps the most famous piece of furniture ever invented by the mind of man and the concept of it, at once simple and profound, has kept curiously enough even in our own day the idea of a real table around which real men gather and of the symbolic value of their association.

So many things about the Middle Ages seem strange to the modern reader that it is easy to over-emphasize the differences between the points of view and the methods of medieval and of modern writers. Especially is this true of the writers of fiction. We seldom get more than a brief glimpse of the medieval fiction-writer, specifically the author of medieval romances, actually at work; for example, when we find Chrétien de Troyes using the old book from the cathedral library at Beauvais in the composition of Cligès. Generally we have only the finished product on the one hand, and on the other hand, “sources” of various kinds, folk-tale or saga or classical story. Where the relation between the finished product and the source is close and obvious, as in such romances as Sir Amadas and Sir Isumbras, the mere identification of the source reveals the method of the writer: he found an attractive old story and retold it, adding such embellishments as his audience would probably like. Nothing could be simpler. But the writers of the more courtly and sophisticated romances were not mere redactors; they were authors, in very much the same sense as the modern novelist is an author. And like most modern novelists, they showed their inventive powers, not often in finding new material, but usually in making recombinations of old material. They sometimes had the advantage over the present would-be producer of “best sellers” in writing for specific courtly groups presided over by single leaders of taste. It was therefore relatively easy to discover what their public wanted. Thus Chrétien wrote his Chevalier de la Charrette to satisfy Marie de Champagne, though it seems not to have been exactly in accordance with his own ethical standards.

“It is good to love the unknown,” wrote Charles Lamb, and we should perhaps hesitate to try to pierce the obscurity which surrounds the bright genius who, in the Secunda Pastorum, gave to the English drama its first native characters and its first true plot. But such obscurity ill becomes genius, and this man was not only our first dramatist, but also—as I shall try to demonstrate—one of our first literary rebels, holding more definite theories of poetic art than many a free-verse poet of the present day.

Of the six English miracle plays' dealing with the Sacrifice of Isaac, no two bear such marked resemblance as do the Chester and Brome plays. The close verbal agreements between these two have long been recognized and the problem which they present has been the subject of much discussion. To explain this special relationship two theories have heen advanced: first, that the plays are derived from a common source (either of French or early English origin), second, that one play is based directly on the other.

The three scholars, J. M. Hart, F. S. Boas, and L. R. Merrill, who have in recent years done most to call the Christus Redivivus to the attention of general readers and scholars have without exception emphasized especially the element of the Miles Gloriosus utilized in the early drama by Grimald with astonishing elaborateness and effectiveness. The four soldiers stationed by Pilate to guard the sepulchre of Christ are used by Grimald in apparently a more original manner than in any other single situation in the religious drama of the sixteenth century in England. Hart merely calls attention to the presence of the Miles Gloriosus elements in the play. Boas makes a great deal of it, emphasizing Grimald's ability to vary his style to suit the changing speakers and occasions. He gives an elaborate description of the most interesting scenes of the play in which the four bragging soldiers appear. “It would be interesting,” he says, “to know whether Grimald confided to Airy that he had later models than Plautus, and that in his tragi-comic treatment of a Biblical theme he had been influenced by at least one of the continental humanist playwrights, Barptholomaeus Lochiensis, whose Christus Xylonicus, first published at Paris in 1529, had been re-issued at Antwerp in 1537, and by Johan Gymnicus at Cologne in 1541. . . . . The action of Christus Xylonicus ends with the burial in the garden tomb, . . . .” Merrill in his very valuable contribution to the Grimald field of scholarship lays considerable emphasis upon the element of the bragging soldiers around the grave of Christ, and points out convincing evidence of the indebtedness of one of Sebastian Wilde's plays to this portion of the Christus Redivivus.

This play was unknown to Moratín. When it was examined by Ticknor, it was part of a volume belonging to M. Ternaux-Compans, which contained, besides, the anonymous Farça a manera de tragedia, Güete's Tesorina and Vidriana, the Radiana of Ortiz, Villalón's Tragedia de Mirrha (Medina del Campo, 1536) and the anonymous Jacinta. La Barrera's notice, probably borrowed from Ticknor, states—I believe wrongly, if I have correctly understood Ticknor—that the play was in a collection with other farces, “dos de ellas impresas en 1536.”

Taken together, the descriptions of Salvá, who has given a summary of the play and reproduced 146 lines, and of Heredia, who gave an exact reproduction of the title-page, are satisfactory. Kohler, who does not seem to have known of Salvá's extracts, speaks of the piece as though it were lost and reproduces La Barrera's notice. From Ternaux-Compans the only known copy passed, now separately bound, through Salva to the Madrid Biblioteca Nacional, where it is now preserved under the signature R.3658.

That Milton's theology is remarkable for its independence has often been noted. Although he has something in common with the Fathers, with the Greek philosophers, with the Renaissance metaphysicians, with the Protestant reformers, and with the chief heretical sects of the Reformation, nevertheless, among them all we can nowhere find a parallel for his system; we cannot even find all the elements of which it is composed, nor, indeed, its chief conceptions.

Among the early literary journals which appeared in Europe toward the end of the seventeenth century was Vincent Minutoli's Dépêches du Parnasse, ou la Gazette des Savants, the first number of which was published at Geneva on September 1, 1693. It was the plan of the editor to put out a number every fortnight, but plagiarism on the part of some editors of Lyons, who copied each gazette shortly after its appearance, caused him to abandon his plan after a few issues. Because of the part which it played in the famous Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, and of the light which it casts on literary men and matters of its day, this short-lived periodical has an interest and an importance which have been quite overlooked.

The philosophical poems that Haller wrote during the years 1729-1734 helped to mark a turning toward a better way in German poetry. In the preface to the fourth edition of these poems (1748) he wrote:

The eighteenth century is the century of parody. Its critical attitude of mind accorded with the ungenerous and censorious irreverence of these farces. The wise and witty petit-maître was entirely too frigid and too supercilious not to sneer at the sublime attitudes of tragic stage-heroes, at the tearful Men of Feeling of budding Romanticism, at the dry seriousness of the savant or the metrical enthusiasm of the poet. Moreover, as the number of literates increased and furnished a steadily growing group of readers and theater-goers, the number of the æsthetically obtuse who came into contact with books or the stage, increased proportionally. And, in all times, they form the predestined public of the parodist. Unimaginative and pedestrian, gifted with a sturdy sense of reality, they are not easily beguiled by the illusions created in us by a work of art; they steadily perceive the abyss that gapes between Dream and Fact. From these two groups, the half-lettered bourgeois and the shallow fops, the parodist recruited the main body of his followers: he catered to the æsthetically mediocre. His public was large. As long as he kept his burlesques within the bounds of a rough and ready buffoonery, analogous to the modern Revue de fin d'année or to slap-stick comedy, he could count upon success.

Daniel Mornet vient de nous donner son édition monumentale de La Nouvelle Héloïse, en quatre volumes, dans la collection des ‘Grands Écrivains de la France’ (Paris, 1925): c'est un travail de Bénédictins, résultat de longues années d'études, et accompli au milieu d'un nombre prodigieux d'autres occupations.

The years 1799 to 1801 in Kleist's life may, with certain reservations, be characterized as Lehrjahre. In the early spring of 1799, at latest, his resolve to leave the army was definitely established. Before the end of the year 1801 the Wanderjahre had begun with work on Die Familie Schroffenstein. The period includes Kleist's betrothal with Wilhelmine von Zenge, his time of study in Frankfurt an der Oder and in Berlin up to and including his Zusammenbruch über Kant—or Fichte, the much discussed trip to Würzburg, the poet's conflict within himself and with his family concerning his right to reject a civil office, and the more or less voluntary trip with his sister Ulrike to Paris. Then came his final break with the past, and the synchronous break with Wilhelmine, when Kleist fled, we may say without exaggeration, to Switzerland, ostensibly to become a peasant. He became a poet.

Of all German romanticists few have been so widely read and none so extensively imitated as E. Th. A. Hoffmann. He was in France the most popular of all foreign novelists, and exerted a strong and lasting influence upon French writers of the nineteenth century. His popularity and influence in his fatherland has been by no means so steady as in France. To be sure, at the time of his death in 1822, his books were the best sellers in Germany. But he soon lost favor with German readers, partly because the majority of literary men were hostile to him. Still worse did he fare in England, where he became known much earlier than in France, but never succeeded in gaining the favor of critics or public.

The history of rime reveals an interesting coincidence. Rime was practically unknown to the ancients. It probably originated in the early mediaeval Latin of the age of Tertullian (155-222) in connection with the choral singing in the Christian churches, and came to prominence in the poetry of troubadours, precisely at the time when the modern European music came into existence. It is well known that the troubadours produced the first learned musicians in Europe. In the thirteenth century Adam de la Halle wrote his celebrated play, “Jeu de Robin et Marion,” which is considered as the first example of pastoral play and comic opera in France, and is—according to Suchier—the oldest musical play in Europe. At the same time it is one of the first dramatic experiments in which rime is extensively used. It was not before the fifteenth century, however, that rime was universally accepted throughout Northern Europe as a powerful device of literary expression. And at the same time, i.e., in the first half of the fifteenth century, John Dunsdale, an Englishman, invented counterpoint, and through his musical compositions acquired an international reputation. Thus our European sense for rime appears to have been trained in the great school of music. The origin of rime coincides with the origin of modern harmony.

If I were optimistically inclined, I might call this paper “A Ready and Easy Way to Establish Harmony among Metricians.” Being aware, however, that the establishing of such harmony is about as probable as was the establishment of a republic in England on the eve of the Restoration, I shall be content with the more modest course of pointing out certain confusions which mark current controversy, and proposing certain simple remedies for them. Like most compromises suggested by onlookers, this one will doubtless fail to win the approval of extreme partisans on either side; but I hope that it is not wholly destitute of features which may commend it to those of more moderate leanings.