In an article on “Perceptual Sense in Gothic,” JEGPxxxiii, [1934], 205, ff. Professor Allen W. Porterfield propounds a number of theses, the most important of which, when stripped of their sometimes elegant, sometimes confusing phrasing, may be restated as follows: To render the idea of observing an optic phenomenon, Wulfila, irrespective of Greek usage, employs some form of saian or some compound of it with amazing regularity (p. 205). Possibly Wulfila followed the Latin, with its rather consistent use of videre, more closely than the Greek (p. 206). The Gothic prefixes add no semantic increment to the verb, but represent mere verbal nuances (pp. 209, 218). There must have been, in folk-Gothic, an appreciable number of verbs expressing the same general idea (pp. 214 f., 217). It was in all likelihood Wulfila's Arianism that influenced him in the use of saian, as “confining himself to a realistic, ocular verb, one that admits of nothing supernatural, would be in keeping with Arian doctrine.” It is my unenviable task to enter into these propositions at some length, in order to reexamine the use of gasaian and other ga-compounds.

The purpose of this paper is to indicate that the clear and definite tendency of popular Latin speech of all periods to force out unaccented vocalic phonemes, particularly in the interior of words, had a continued existence from earliest times up to the separate development of the Romance languages, and that the divarication of Eastern and Western Romance rests on obstructions interposed in greater part after Latin had ceased to be a living language. While some Latin and Romance scholars have observed elements that call into question the exactness of the orthodox statement of conditions, we nevertheless have been confronted with no clear, unequivocal exposition of the actual situation and no accumulation of evidence that would challenge the correctness of the accepted account.

The four prophecies studied in this article are known as aljamiado texts because they are in the Spanish language transcribed in Arabic characters. They foretell the dire calamities that are to be visited on the “isla de España” for her neglect of the Koran and of other teachings of Islam. Written by Moriscoes, they were intended to arouse religious fervor, and hence political strength, in Moslem Spain, and they show a marked contrast to the Christian Spanish feeling of the familiar Merlin prophecies.

William Cliff Martin in his paper “The Date and Purpose of Spenser's Veue” interprets Spenser's View of the Present State of Ireland as intended to be a subtle and timely compliment to that newest and most powerful of Elizabeth's favorites, the Earl of Essex.

For the past thirty years the ingenuity of Shakespeare scholars has been challenged by a series of libellous publications, the principal contribution to which is a book called Willobie his Avisa, or the true picture of a modest Maid and of a chaste and constant wife. It was published in 1594 and contains the first mention of Shakespeare:

Wenn O. Schade (Weimarisches Jb., v, 242) im Vorwort zum Weimarer Puppenspiel vom Dr. Faust den Stoff “im allgemeinen deutsches, im besonderen protestantisches Eigentum” nennt und betont, dass “kein Tropfen katholisches Blut” in seinen Adern ist, so trifft er damit den Kern des Faustproblems. Aber Faust wäre nicht das Problem des deutschen Menschen, wäre er nur aus einem Ast unserer Entwicklung erwachsen, wäre er nicht zugleich ein Spiel aus den Spannungen protestantischer und katholischer Atmosphäre. Und gerade das Puppenspiel rollt die Entwicklung des Stoffes auf, die dem ganzen Volk gehört, an der die lebendige Theatertradition vieler Jahrhunderte mitgearbeitet hat. Und in diesem Spielkreis stellt uns die komische Figur vor Fragen, die auf dem Boden der rein protestantischen Faustproblematik nicht gelöst werden können.

Basta Callar es una de las comedias de Calderón que no ha sido objeto de estudio especial a pesar de la existencia de un manuscrito que se cree autógrafo en su mayor parte. La comedia no se imprimió autorizadamente durante la vida del poeta y la edición mas antigua que de ella conocemos es la de Vera Tassis de 1682. El objeto de este estudio es dar a conocer unos quinientos noventa versos que se hallan en el manuscrito considerado autógrafo, pero que faltan tanto en la edición príncipe como en las de Apontes, Keil, y Hartzen busch.

Scholars have sometimes assumed that the version of Comus in the Trinity Manuscript is Milton's original draft of the poem. Miss Lockwood, for example, in her study of the corrections in the manuscript, comments upon its extreme neatness—upon the neatness of the lines and upon the even margins; but in spite of this comment, and in spite of her disagreement with Masson's statement that the manuscript is very much revised, it does not occur to her that the manuscript may not be composition at all but transcription.

In a recent series of studies I developed at some length the general background of cosmological thought which gave rise to and in large measure explains both the astronomy and the astronomical comment of Paradise Lost. The present essay continues this investigation of Milton's cosmological beliefs, but restricts discussion to the Raphael-Adam dialogue of Book VIII, interpreted in the light of its immediate sources. In brief, these sources consist of a number of related passages from three English books contemporary with Milton.

The Jesuit father Ignace-Gaston Pardies, mathematician and physicist of some renown in his time, published in 1672 a Discours de la Connoissance des Bestes, famous then, but little known today. Amidst the mass of material on the general controversy of the souls of beasts, this work is outstanding for its brilliance, literary charm, and degree of originality. It is well worth examination, for its own merits and its bearings on the dispute in which it proved an influential contribution, and because of the curious fate to which the book was destined. For the Discourse, which went through numerous editions and caused considerable stir in the Republic of Letters was, although purporting to be a refutation of the Cartesian mechanistic view, reputed to be intended as a defense of that system. From Pardies' own day to the present age, uncertainty has existed as to how the treatise is to be classified.

The Lettres Persanes, on which Montesquieu worked in leisurely fashion for perhaps ten years, reflect to a large extent the voluminous reading he must have done during this time. Their great variety of subjects implies numerous possible sources of inspiration, not all as yet indicated by Montesquieu scholars. It is my purpose to consider as possible sources of some ideas in the Lettres Persanes three authors of Montesquieu's epoch—Malebranche, Leibniz, and Shaftesbury. By the expression “possible sources” I mean that there are between Montesquieu and these three writers some relationships of ideas which may imply influence, since Montesquieu esteemed these writers and knew, or could have known, their works before 1721, the date of the publication of the Lettres Persanes. Two of these authors, Malebranche and Shaftesbury, were in fact greatly admired by Montesquieu. Ranking them as highly as Plato and Montaigne, he even calls these four writers “the four great poets.”

Perusal of some Voltairian conte material not long ago elicited two cursory observations which have since seemed to be confirmed by more detailed reading. They concern the evident interest which the seventeenth-century Spanish moralist, Gracián, appears to have evoked in Voltaire. The observations, as first made, were these: that in a list of Voltaire's library, works of Gracián stand out prominently, in both Spanish and French; that El Criticón, a moralistic tale of a traveling naïf and his realist-tutor, presents not only an interesting link in the adventure genre, but seemingly a hint of the Candide-Martin relationship of the conte philosophique} The suggestion of a connection, conscious or not, between El Criticón and Candide was, on first observation, based upon superficial comparison. The present brief inquiry will attempt to confirm the point that a reasonably close connection does exist—one which receives attention neither in editions of the contes nor in other critical works on the period.

Johnson's reference to oats in England and Scotland has aroused more, or broader, smiles than are warranted, at least among persons who have not consulted his book, and who may have heard it misquoted. Many know little more of the great Dictionary than what they suppose Johnson said of this grain on the spur of the moment (in a reference that is not a definition) along with his definition of network, which they commonly take at second hand. He does not say that oats never furnish human beings with food in England; like Boswell, he had himself eaten dry oatmeal when a boy; and his statement about oats and people and horses is strictly true. “Very true,” Lord Elibank declared.

Jean Jacques Rousseau's famous sentimental novel, the Nouvelle Héloïse (1760), had a wide and immediate diffusion in England. Although the date usually ascribed to the first edition is 1761, it was in circulation in England during the later part of 1760. Translation was accomplished as speedily as possible; after three months of preliminary announcements by Becket and DeHondt, booksellers, the first two volumes were placed on sale April 7, 1761.

Although Richard Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762) is a well-known document in the history of English criticism, there is, curiously enough, only one modern edition of this work, and there exists as yet no study of Hurd's total accomplishment as a critic. Miss Morley's Introduction to her edition of the Letters has been described as “valuable,” but she has done little more than summarize the contents of the book and reprint Hurd's own notes uncritically.

The troubled spirit of Mary Campbell (Highland Mary) has plagued all the biographers of Robert Burns. Fascinated and yet baffled, they have produced a wide variety of hypotheses, but no one of them has been able to write a wholly satisfactory account of her romance with Burns. The lack of information about her has led some critics to question her existence. It is, therefore, of considerable interest that facts have recently come to light which demonstrate her living presence conclusively and which enable a biographer for the first time to present a clear-cut account of her relations with Burns.

For Wordsworth imagination is the link between the visible and the invisible world. Esthetic enjoyment of things visible seems at times to bring the very life of the invisible before us. The more freely we plunge into the beauty of Nature, the more palpable becomes the Spirit of Nature. The grounds for such a belief are mystical and sheerly intuitive: we may not hope to reproduce them in argument. We can trace, however, the ways by which Wordsworth tried to describe such experience and to make it communicable. Throughout, he seems certain that in the apprehension of beauty, the human soul is never isolated, but is in contact with a spiritual urgency, which is the origin of beauty. On the other hand, the agony of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, his utter loneliness of spirit, is in diametric opposition to any love or enjoyment of Nature. Here the mind is closed to any communion or inspiration. It is also without imaginative enjoyment. The Mariner's release from such isolation depends upon the reawakening of his esthetic sensitiveness. In this essay, we shall consider the relation which seems to pertain in Wordsworth's thought between imagination and our awareness of Nature as a mind or spirit. We shall find that for Wordsworth, the boundaries of the finite soul are not final but seem to expand or almost to disappear in the perception of beauty.

No literary quarrel in European annals surpasses for rancor the American one which involved the Peabodys, the Channings, the Hawthornes, and Margaret Fuller in the second quarter of the nineteenth century.

We may search Henry D. Thoreau's writings in vain for the name of Voltaire, or for a hint of influence by him. However, it is impossible to make a parallel study of the lives and works of these men without seeing many similarities. Thoreau was not accustomed to naming the source of his ideas. His writings are full of quotations, and he seldom takes the trouble of telling his readers where he found them. If we consider these two men side by side, we find, in spite of striking divergence, that the points of contact or likeness are more prevailing than are the points of difference.

From the standpoint of his literary criticism, we may say that Swinburne's mature period began in the year 1867, after his defense of the Poems and Ballads, when he turned to an absorbing interest in the freedom of Italy, and began to write poems of fervent patriotism. This inevitably led him away from his intransigeant defense of art for art's sake, which had played so large a part in the Blake, and had helped to shape all his main criticism through Poems and Reviews, in 1866.