By a remarkable coincidence, three scholars of different nationalities, working, one may suppose, in entire independence, have almost simultaneously declared against the existence in Spanish of any so-called “ametric versification.” G. J. Geers of Holland asserts (p. 179) that the distinction between “poesía amétrica” and “poesía ritmica acentual” is “absolutamente voluntariosa.” Prof. Juan Cano of Toronto uses almost identical language: “No estamos de acuerdo con el Sr. Ureña en distinguir entre la poesía amétrica y la ritmica; creemos que toda la poesía es rítmica.” Professor Cano does not mention the Poema del Cid specifically, but because he is occupied with later verse; it is clear that his conception of Spanish meter requires him to find regularity of rhythm in the Cid, since it is neither ametric nor syllabic. And Prof. W. E. Leonard of Wisconsin, skilled metrist and distinguished poet, has devoted an article in English and a longer one in Spanish to showing, or attempting to show, that the Poema del Cid was written in accentual or rhythmic verse. Professor Leonard did not, like the other two, make an assertion covering all Spanish verse, but the Cid is, of course, the chief exemplar of “ametric” verse; if it is to be removed from that category, the other alleged cases can certainly be made to follow it.

The close relations existing at times between two great types of medieval fiction, the romance and the saint's legend, have been pointed out by a number of scholars. Studies have been made of the development of individual saints' legends into romances or near romances, of the borrowing by legends of romantic material. One peculiar type of legend has romantic embellishments attached only to the origin or childhood of the saint, leaving to the rest of the narrative the character of sober history with probably some contamination from non-romantic folk-beliefs. Of this one of the most interesting and conspicuous examples is the story of the Syrian princess who was said to have become the mother of St. Thomas of Canterbury. Less well known, indeed largely ignored, is the confused tale of the romantic origin of St. Cuthbert as found in the Libellus de ortu (vel nativitate) Sancii Cuthberti, which is the acknowledged source of the first part of the Northern English Metrical Life of St. Cuthbert. It is the purpose of the present paper to examine the contents of this little book, to point out some of its resemblances to the Horn-Saga and other romances, and to throw some light on the methods of composition of the medieval hagiographer.

Discussion of the Homeric question, the Carolingian epic, the ballads, and Arthurian romance remains, and seems destined to remain for some time a conflict between two hypotheses. One may be called the traditionalist hypothesis; for it emphasizes the origins of narrative themes in oral traditions more or less remote from the first recorded versions, and attempts to trace genetic relations between the surviving versions and to explain differences between them on the assumption that originals or intermediate stages or both are lost. The second hypothesis may be called that of literary craftsmanship, for it minimizes or denies the existence of any oral tradition, finds the source of our surviving texts either in other written texts or in the creative imagination of the author, and attempts to explain the differences between one version and another by some artistic or rational motive controlling the later author. A classic of the traditionalist school is Professor Gilbert Murray's Rise of the Greek Epic; a classic of the contrary school is M. Bédier's Légendes Épiques. The traditionalist hypothesis emphasizes the genetic relationship of story-patterns to their sources; the hypothesis of literary craftsmanship emphasizes the intellectual and artistic processes which create or modify story-patterns.

The explanation of Middle English run presents many difficulties. These could easily be solved if one succeeded in proving, or at least in making probable, the existence of an Old English runnan.

The information gained from a detailed study of the MSS of the Canterbury Tales throws light not merely on the operations of the scribes but also in some cases enables us to perceive successive stages in Chaucer's arrangement of the Tales. One of the clearest illustrations of this is presented by the conclusion of the Clerk's Tale. The variations of the MSS at this point seem to afford unmistakable evidence of revision by the poet himself, and they carry with them, I think, some larger implications.

The orator in petticoats often launched her plays with such audacity that she eclipsed the glory of the Prologue-monsieur and established the vogue of a particular kind of stage-oration which the poets called “She-Prologues” or “Female Prologues and Epilogues.” For her, Lyly, Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Suckling, Dryden, Congreve, and many lesser playwrights wrote feminine orations; and as she pleaded her customary theme, “for my sake,” she made herself mistress of an art that won applause for As You Like It, Love for Love, The Way of the World, Cato, and more than two hundred other plays before 1714. A tall woman of her tongue was the She-Prologue; yet no one, I believe, has told the history of her addresses, the history of a particular type of playhouse-discourse with a vogue that touches upon the great change in the theatre resulting from the employment of actresses. Witty, saucy, beautiful, she and her playhouse-sisters with a gift for oratory harangued the pit and gallery for more than half a century: Nell 'neath a big hat, like a bug under a leaf; Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Bracegirdle, true friends to Betterton; yes, more than twenty other women—prattling sometimes, sometimes discoursing—circumscribed the matter and manner of the female prologue or epilogue, an address by a female orator of the stage.

Students of Elizabethan literature are well acquainted with the fact that Sir William Cornwallis had part of Montaigne's essays available in translation before the composition of the first volume of his own essays, which was published in 1600, and probably written soon after he returned from Ireland where he had been knighted by Essex on August 5, 1599. Unfortunately, no one has been able to determine whether or not the translation which Cornwallis saw was Florio's. While Florio's Montaigne was not published until 1603, a large part of it may have been completed much earlier, and Cornwallis may have seen all or part of Florio's work; but it is just as possible that he saw a translation which is not now extant. Florio, himself, says, “Seven or eight of great wit and worth have assayed, but found these Essayes no attempt for French apprentises or Littletonians.” Cornwallis does not help us to decide the question. Although he is frequently indebted to Montaigne, I can find no passage which approaches a quotation closely enough to make comparison with Florio's version illuminating. Neither is Cornwallis's tribute to Montaigne's translator very helpful.

William Drummond of Hawthornden is as much a translator as an original poet. This Mr. Kastner has shown in detail in the copious notes to his edition of the poet and in several special articles. He translated and adapted from a large number of Italian and French poets, as well as some Spanish and some neo-Latin writers. Yet his work, read as a whole, has a very individual note and charm of personality that unify it and give it distinction. This was not due to similarity in his sources. The poets whom he translated were widely varied in tempers and styles—so much so that some of them have made their idiosyncrasies felt in the work of other English poets and have started particular streams of influence. It is of interest to draw together all the translations and adaptations from each of the French and Italian poets, Drummond's principal sources, and make a detailed comparison of style, to see what particular contribution each made to Drummond's style, and how far we find in him Petrarchism, Marinism, and so forth. By this series of contrasts we shall be able first to define these influences more exactly. And this definition is of interest, incidentally, not only for Drummond, but for other poets such as Donne and Crashaw. Second, we shall see the particular style of Drummond emerging from among the various source poets and taking on its integral character.

In any conclusive consideration of Henry Vaughan's work, how much weight should be given to the presence of Hermetic fragments? It has frequently been recognized that the truer mysticism of Henry Vaughan sets him somewhat apart from the so-called school of metaphysical poets, as something more than a disciple of Donne and Herbert. This note in Vaughan has led some students to examine more closely his contacts with that body of thought loosely labelled Hermetic philosophy, and its corollary, alchemical science. The suggestion has been given body by the presence of two or three pertinent facts: phrases and ideas in Vaughan which were common to the Hermetists; the fact that Vaughan translated at least one passage from a sixteenth-century Hermetical writer; and, chiefly, the fact that the poet's brother, Thomas Vaughan, was known to have been a dabbler in transcendental alchemy. This paper examines in further detail how far these facts enter into the total body of work of Henry Vaughan.

Raymond Toinet states that seventeenth-century France produced close to one hundred and twenty-five heroic poems. In reality, however, not quite half of this number may be classified as such, the others having strayed too far even from the loosest definition of the genre. The proverbial dullness of these works has earned for them their merited oblivion, and to resurrect them for the purpose of examining their allegorical element would be quite unnecessary were it not for the fact that an adequate treatment of the question will tend to correct a common misunderstanding in the mind of most students of French literature regarding the attitude of the seventeenth century toward allegory in general.

The present writer pointed out that many of the themes of satire which constitute Swift's attack on the Puritan, Jack, had been used by earlier seventeenth-century satirists; and the statement was made that part of his real contribution was to be found in his analysis of the zeal and fervor which made all men irrational. This paper will endeavor to show that many of the observations on enthusiasm and zeal which are found in A Tale of a Tub and the Discourse on the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit were not new or original. Some effort will be made to show that Swift knew the principal satirists mentioned, but more to ascertain how Swift's remarks on enthusiasm would have been understood by those Englishmen of the early eighteenth century who were thoroughly conversant with the earlier satires of enthusiasts.

James Buchanan was an eighteenth-century schoolmaster, grammarian, and maker of pronouncing dictionaries who played an important part in the contemporary movement to “fix” the English language. The significance of this movement is recognized in several recent books. The latter half of the century was more prolific than the earlier half. The third quarter in particular, the period of Buchanan's activity, produced many significant works, among which are Harris's Hermes, Johnson's Dictionary, Priestley's Rudiments, Lowth's Grammar, Karnes's Elements, Sheridan's Elocution, A. Campbell's anonymous Lexiphanes, Baker's Reflections, Kenrick's Dictionary, Buchanan's Essay, to name but a few of the books which illustrate pioneer tendencies.

Two popular conceptions of Goldsmith stand out in sharp opposition. To many readers and to a few students The Deserted Village and The Vicar of Wakefield are masterpieces in the sentimental vein, books tinged with a kindly sympathy and with a longing for a bygone and a better day. To a portion of this group The Traveler bears a similar message that happiness is a creation of the individual heart independent of governments and of geographies. In contrast to this view of Goldsmith as the most charming of the sentimentalists, there is current another view which is rooted in Goldsmith's attack on sentimental comedy, in the gay humor of his own plays, and in his connection with Dr. Johnson—a view that reveals Goldsmith as a classicist out of touch with the tendencies of the future—wit not dreamer, apostle of common sense rather than disciple of Rousseau. The disagreement does not arise concerning Goldsmith the man, for as to his personality there is substantial unity of opinion, but concerning Goldsmith the author. Here the two positions seem to be irreconcilable, and even a minute study of the sentimental trends in the whole of Goldsmith's work is not likely to resolve the antinomy. Sentiment and sensibility are in turn praised and condemned, luxury justified and attacked, prudence and generosity alternately exalted, so that the final position of the critic as to Goldsmith's sentimentalism will perhaps always depend on the nature of his definitions. It should be possible, however, to reach a clearer understanding of Goldsmith's sentimentalism and a more solid basis for the appreciation of his literary productions by an analysis of the sentimental aspects of his work in the light of a definition sufficiently broad to permit of a somewhat inclusive treatment.

To be perfectly accurate, this title should be considerably longer; for the late eighteenth century will be represented by only its last decade and its hero-worshippers by those remarkably misguided bards who gained an immortality of sorts by publishing their verses in the poets' corners of contemporary magazines. Apparently the desire to write poetry had then become quite uncontrollable in the breasts of most literate Englishmen, and practically everything so written could be sent off to certain acceptance by obliging periodicals. Yet some poets were still timorous enough to feel the need of authority and wise enough to find it by writing either tributary stanzas to generally admired authors or acknowledged imitations of their more familiar compositions. Others, more generous, did the same thing to express their unbounded enthusiasm; and a few even wrote in reproach and bitterness of spirit when certain contemporary authors failed to satisfy them. Whatever their motive, their poetry remains valuable as evidence of the taste of the time. And, because the process of making over the gods in one's own image, or rather in the image of what one would like to be, is always instructive, and because at this particular time the image was so distinctly that of the average man, become more or less articulate, the opportunity for research and generalization becomes irresistibly alluring.

In voller konkreter Wirklichkeit, jedem ungefähr in gleicher Weise vor Augen tretend, stehen im Gegensatz zu Tiecks Runenbergfrau und Hoffmanns Serpentina, Fouqués Elementargeister im Verkehr mit den Menschen. Allerdings macht auch Fouqué einen sehr wesentlichen Unterschied in der metaphorischen Behandlung der beiden Gestalten, der Undine und des Kühleborn. Kühleborn, in jeder seiner Erscheinungen an das Wasser gemahnend und an das Wasser gebunden, ewig beweglich und sich verwandelnd, halb Wasser, halb Geist, steht der Natur näher und erinnert durch falschen Schein und Irrtum an die illusorischen Gestalten Tiecks und Hoffmanns. Dagegen steht Undine selbst in ihrer engen Verwandtschaft mit Melusine der Stufe der Volksmärchengestalt näher und erinnert mehr an Musäus' Schwanenjungfern und Nymphe des Brunnens. Sie ist fast vollständig vermenschlicht und verwandelt sich nur am Anfang und am Ende der Erzählung. Aus dem Wasser geht sie hervor, ins Wasser kehrt sie zurück, dazwischen aber liegt ein Menschenleben, welches nur in der Macht, die sie auf Kühleborn ausübt, und durch einen zarten metaphorischen Schleier den Zusammenhang mit dem Element erkennen lässt.