Of late the common belief in the subjectivity of the ghosts in Shakspere has received fresh currency from the sanction of scholars who belong unquestionably to the newer school—Professors C. H. Herford and A. C. Bradley and a gentleman named F. C. Moorman who writes in the Modern Language Review. The first and the last may for the time being speak for all:—

One of the less widely known episodes connected with the enchanter Merlin in romantic material is the Story of Grisandole, which is contained in the French and in the English prose Merlin, and also in the Livre d'Artus, P. It is apparently so trivial in character, and contains such unattractive elements that it would scarcely merit careful study, were it not that a detailed examination brings to light an early and important form of the Merlin legend, which otherwise would remain unknown, and which as yet has not attracted attention.

I cannot begin this discussion more appropriately than by quoting a well known paragraph from Ellis's Early English Pronunciation. In Part I, page 19, he says:—

“The results of emigration and immigration are curious and important. By emigration is here specially meant the separation of a considerable body of the inhabitants of a country from the main mass, without incorporating itself with another nation. Thus the English in America have not mixed with the natives, and the Norse in Iceland had no natives to mix with. In this case there is a kind of arrest of development, the language of the emigrants remains for a long time in the stage at which it was when emigration took place, and alters more slowly than the mother tongue, and in a different direction. Practically the speech of the American English is archaic with respect to that of the British English, and while the Icelandic scarcely differs from the old Norse, the latter has, since the colonization of Iceland, split up on the mainland into two distinct literary tongues, the Danish and Swedish. Nay, even the Irish English exhibits in many points the peculiarities of the pronunciation of the xviith century.”

To the average reader, even in Italy, the name Anton-francesco Doni suggests nothing. There is no collected edition of his works, nor, aside from the 1863 edition of the Marmi and the sporadic and limited publication of occasional pieces, are there even reprints of single works. To the average student he is but one of many writers of novelle that, altho by comparison with some of the others are only mildly filthy, are not distinguished by either sweetness or light. Of his other works, the Libreria is the earliest Italian bibliographical work; the Marmi, a series of conversations between Cinquecento Florentines sitting on the steps of the Duomo, is photographic in its realism; the Mondi, a socialistic fantasy, shows the influence of More's Utopia; the Zucca is a collection of proverbs, etc., yet nothing very significant. Nor are the facts of his life (1513–1569) more interesting. Altho associated somewhat mysteriously with the Accademia Ortolana of Piacenza and with the still more mysterious I Pelegrini at Venice, his roving life is tarred with the same brush as that of the “infame” Aretino. And to the English reader his direct claim is even more slender, as it consists only of a translation, made by Sir Thomas North in 1570, of his translation of the fables of Bidpai. In life he was of “vivissimo ingegno;” to-day the “ghiribizzoso” Doni is remembered as an erotic author.

Early in 1659, when the poet was twenty-seven years old, appeared Dryden's first serious contribution to English literature, the Heroic Stanzas consecrated to the Memory of His Highness, Oliver, late Lord Protector of this Commonwealth. In the very next year, he hailed the restoration of Charles as a return of the Golden Age in the poem entitled Astræa Redux, and in the year following published a Panegyric on his Coronation. In November, 1682, he published Religio Laici, a carefully reasoned defense of the English Church. Less than five years later, in April, 1687, in the Hind and the Panther, we find him ardently espousing the cause of Rome; and during these five years a Roman Catholic sovereign had succeeded to the throne of England. James II had become king in February, 1685; and, if we may trust an entry in Evelyn's Diary, Dryden was already a Roman Catholic in the following January.

Considered with regard to the author's intention, nearly all of Schiller's dramas have established their right to be ranked among the most successful achievements in German literature. They were written for representation on the stage before a popular audience; and throughout the nineteenth century, in spite of the vagaries of literary fashion and the frequent hostility of literary men, the German people as such remained true to its admiration of Wallenstein, and Wilhelm Tell. No student of the drama can fail to perceive that Schiller is an indispensable presupposition to all dramatic production in Germany since his time; or can underestimate the value of his example in all that pertains to the architectonics of the drama; or ought to suppose that Schiller will not continue to speak from the stage to the twentieth century and beyond.

One or two generations ago, when every novel was in two volumes and serious works filled a shelf or so, our fathers or grandfathers may have read Chateaubriand. To-day the Americans who read French works usually confine themselves to writers earlier or later than he. Yet Chateaubriand was the first European author to make America the scene, and the Indian the subject of his romances. Moreover, he claims to have seen a large part of the territory east of the Mississippi; he asserts that he lived in the huts of the savages; and he describes the aborigines, flora, and fauna of the country from Niagara to Natchez.