The account of Joseph in Genesis makes no mention of his precocity as a boy and deals but briefly with the beauty of his person. Indeed, it is not until he has become a man that he is described at all: Potiphar's wife cast her eyes upon him for “Joseph was a goodly person, and well favored.” But at a very early date commentators felt that this was altogether inadequate. A body of Hebrew and Mohammedan legend about Joseph's boyhood soon developed: he was credited with an almost preternatural beauty and wisdom, a beauty and wisdom befitting one who was the favorite of Yahweh.

The modern reader of The Pearl, like the poet himself, would fain call the little maid of the vision by her own name, for this, he feels, wouId supply the key to the whole poem. The manifold allegory of The Pearl is designed, after all, to enhance its central figure, as are the multiple colors against which her little person is thrown into relief. We propose in this article, not only to call the maiden by her name, but also to suggest a name for the author of this masterly elegy and of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

In his recent paper, “The Authorship of the Secunda Pastorum” Mr. Oscar Cargill brings forward an entirely new suggestion. Observing that the same bob-wheel stanza is used in the burlesque poem known as the Turnament of Totenham, he makes a detailed comparison with the Towneley Play which discloses a series of striking similarities in humor and in characterization as well as in metre and language. The reader's surprise when these resemblances are called to his attention is quickly succeeded by astonishment that they had not been observed previously. On the basis of these similarities Mr. Cargill very plausibly concludes that the Turnament is also the work of the Wakefield playwright. And whatever difficulties one may find in following the further steps in Mr. Cargill's argument, he deserves the thanks of all students of the early drama for throwing this new light on the activities of the author of the Secunda Pastorum.

The purchase in 1922 by the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington of the unique manuscript of the Towneley plays has given permanent domicile in the beautiful Huntington Library and Art Gallery at San Marino, California, to an invaluable document that has passed through many hands during the past century and a quarter. In its new home this document has become accessible for fresh study to many American scholars who had never before been privileged to see it.

In her study of the relationship of the York and Towneley Plays, Dr. Marie C. Lyle directed special attention to a series of discrepancies which she found between the description of the York plays given by Burton in his list in 1415 and the extant text of these plays. Noting the fact that these discrepancies occurred in plays which incorporated material from the Gospel of Nichodemus, she undertook to account for them by supposing that these plays as we have them represent a revision, made subsequent to Burton's list, under the influence of the Middle English metrical Gospel of Nichodemus.

Toone who has followed the growth of the scientific movement in England toward the middle of the seventeenth century and the organization of the Royal Society in 1661, Edmund Waller's appearance as a charter member of the Society is no surprise. His association, while still a young man, with Lucius Cary and his philosophical friends at Great Tew placed him early in the main current of liberal thought in religion and politics which, interrupted by the outbreak of civil war, was turned aside into scientific channels. Though less intelligent and courageous than Cary and Edward Hyde, for example, Waller ran a parliamentary course which, with all his vacillation, was roughly parallel to theirs. Expelled from the House of Commons, fined and banished from England, though he was reconciled to Parliament, was made a commissioner of trade and wrote his “Panegyric to my Lord Protector” on Cromwell's death in 1658, he was taken as a sincere enough royalist when he greeted the King with a similar ode on his return two years later. That Waller was a royalist counted in his favor when it came to choosing members of the Society who were not particularly interested in science; for the scientific movement itself, carried on under the Commonwealth in informal meetings largely by mild parliamentarians and a few equally mild royalists who had managed to remain in England, became royalist in its temper so far as the honorary membership was concerned upon its incorporation as the Royal Society. At that time, problems of organization and administration were paramount, while science itself was far from technical, embracing the arts and touching language and literature themselves. The founders of the Society, therefore, solicited members from all “Religions, Countries, and Professions of Life” that they might not fall short of the “largeness of their own declarations.” That Waller was a poet in some favor at court, then, was reason enough in itself for his becoming a member of the Royal Society.

From the accession of Charles II, English drama manifested a continuous strain of political satire, most of it in favor of the Court party. The Roundheads, the citizens, the Presbyterians, the opposers of the Crown, above all the foremost Liberal of the day, Anthony Ashley Cooper, later the Earl of Shaftesbury, were fair game to be attacked in a prologue, an epilogue, and even at times in a full-length character portrayal or an entire play.

The victory of neo-classicism in England was won only after a struggle against forces which are sometimes called romantic but which are more accurately described as anti-classical. These forces were partly survivals of the past and partly tendencies that pointed forward to nineteenth century romanticism. The latter, so far as they were merely germinal, fall outside the scope of the present discussion, which deals with actual obstacles interfering with the complete dominance of the neo-classical movement after 1660.

After science in the modern sense of the term began to infiltrate the public consciousness in the second half of the seventeenth century, and men were stirred by the new concept of the universe revealed by Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, the lesser poets seized joyfully on this inexhaustible source of fresh material and combined pedestrian exposition with ecstatic praise in setting forth the new vision of God's handiwork afforded by the discoveries of science. Among those who thus undertook to interpret the results of science in verse were Young, Akenside, Thomson, and Richard Savage, as well as many lesser writes.

In the first chapter of L'Influence Allemande en France, M. Reynaud states that Germany, in the early eighteenth century, being dissatisfied with the indifference with which France viewed her literature, determined to send out propagandists to take up the campaign. In his opinion the instigator of this battle for recognition was Gottsched.

In the Journal Étranger, December, 1761, appeared an anonymous review of Lessing's Miss Sara Sampson which, since the middle of the last century, has been the subject of recurrent conjectures. Discussion has confined itself for the most part to the question whether or not this review was written by Diderot, to whom, in turn, it has been categorically assigned, tentatively imputed, categorically denied, and re-imputed. However, although the question has attracted, more or less incidentally, the attention of various prominent critics, no one, as far as I have been able to determine, has undertaken to investigate the available evidence. Following is a brief bibliographical survey of the discussion.

In searching for the source of Sheridan's Rivals, a critic ventures upon literary quicksand. Professor Nettleton in his edition of the comedies is inclined to minimize the persistent charges of plagiarism made against Sheridan by his biographers.

Ritson in a letter to Scott, dated July 2, 1803, writes: “I have put into Mr. Longman's hands at his own request, for the opinion of some critic he is used to consult, my ‘Life of King Arthur.’” Again, in a letter of August 16, 1803 to his nephew, Joseph Frank, editor of his correspondence, he says: “I will give you .... all of my late publications, if you have not got them already; then, such as are to come: ‘the Life of King Arthur,’ which I have finished, etc.”. (Letters, II, 247 f.). Ritson died September 23, 1803. From the editor's advertisement to King Arthur we learn: “The curious work now offered to the world was prepared for the press by Mr. Ritson, with a view to immediate publication, a short time before his death.” Thus, the date of composition is clearly 1803. The book marks the culmination of Ritson's researches into the history and literature of the middle ages; it was the fruit of mature experience in a life devoted to scholarly investigation.

Avant même la publication des Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe un problème assez inquiétant s'est posé à propos de René. Sainte-Beuve n'a eu garde de l‘éviter et, tout en prenant des mines effarouchées, il n'a pas manqué de signaler que si René n'est évidemment autre que Chateaubriand, Amélie ne peut être que sa douce et mélancolique soeur Lucile qui, dans le parc de Combourg, engagea l'adolescent à se consacrer à la Muse. Tout ce que nous savons de la vie de Lucile de Chateaubriand indique cependant que l'histoire d'Amélie comporte une grosse part de fiction. Même si à l'origine l'amitié très vive qu'elle a toujours ressentie pour ce frère ténébreux a été teintée d'un sentiment plus trouble, elle n'est point entrée au couvent, si ce n'est fort tard et comme pensionnaire, non comme religieuse. Elle semble avoir ébauché a Combourg même un roman d'amour avec un gentilhomme Breton, parent éloigné de Malfilâtre, elle accepta en fin de compte le vieux M. de Caud et, après un court veuvage, fut sur le point d'épouser en secondes noces le poète Chênedollé. Avec cette superbe inconscience qui paraît si souvent chez lui, Chateaubriand aurait mêlé à des souvenirs d'enfance une passion romantique perverse, mais complètement imaginaire. II semble avoir trop aisément pensé que des lecteurs et des critiques moins informés de la réalité des choses et quelquefois plus malveillants, feraient d'eux-mêmes le départ de la vérité' et de l'embellissement dans son roman-poème autobiographique.

The student of Anglo-American literary relations in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is continually impressed by the number and kind of American books printed or reprinted in Great Britain. A full knowledge of the facts of such publication would almost certainly throw light on the whole matter of the reception of American writings in England. From what market did the publisher receive, or hope to receive, his return? What sorts of English readers bought the different classes of works? Or were the reprints sometimes sent back to compete with the American issues? Do periods in which there were many such reprints indicate waves of interest in things American, or merely that more American works offered themselves for republication at certain times?

No foreigner learning French fails to remark the use of jeunes gens as the plural of jeune homme. The French, for whom this plural is a part of their linguistic inheritance, usually accept it unquestioningly, but in the Mélanges Antoine Thomas Professor Oscar Bloch of the Lycée Buffon at Paris notes the abnormality of the expression and seeks to explain its origin. The cause of the disappearance of a plural jeunes hommes is, he thinks, to be found in a hesitation to employ, in a combination of the two words where the separate value of each is still in evidence, the linked s. In other combinations where such a linking to hommes occurs, such as les bonshommes, les gentilshommes, we have, says Mr. Bloch, true compound words in which the separate value of the elements has been lost.

A foot in English verse is that portion which is spoken as an undivided unit. It may comprise a whole line with many words or it may consist of a single vowel spoken alone. In measuring and analyzing graphic records of English verse I find that it contains many feet on the same rhythmic plan as those in Greek verse. This is what should be expected. Greek verse probably developed from an ancient form—the enoplios—which had four long vowels while the number of weak vowels before, between, and after the strong ones might vary from 0 to 2 at each spot. This is practically the same as the rhythmical structure of most lines of Beowulf except that this latter has greater liberty in the number of weak vowels. The later forms that have developed in each language are much alike. One of the commonest of these is the choriambus.