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.

The early reactions of Englishmen to the famous works of Jean Jacques Rousseau have never been adequately studied. Jacques Pons, Louis J. Courtois, and Margaret Hill have been the only writers to present well-documented studies of any large phase of the subject; but their attention has been confined to the impact of Rousseau's pedagogical theories and to various aspects of his visit in England during the years 1766–67. Even the bibliography of Théophile A. Dufour is very incomplete in its citations of English editions. Under these circumstances, authors have generally taken refuge in assertions of tremendous and universal influence emanating from Rousseau, or they have surmised as to the effect of his works in England. The present work undertakes to provide a basis for more definite conclusions. The numerous assertions of the impetus which Rousseau is alleged to have given to the “romantic” revival of the late eighteenth century are familiar, and we know already that the diffusion of his works in England was wide. Furthermore, the first production of the French writer to excite attention there was the Discours sur les sciences et les arts (1750); and, although several works intervened, including the Devin du village (1752), Narcisse (1752), and the Lettre sur la musique française (1753), the next writing to excite comment was the Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité (1755). Thus, although Rousseau's diffusion and popularity in England were due chiefly to La nouvelle Héloïse, the two Discours mark the beginning of his reputation in that country. Furthermore, the theses of these two productions have been closely associated with Rousseau. The insistence in the first Discours upon the baneful effect of modern civilization was also closely allied with the praise of primitive life in the second, and the designation of private property as the source of human inequality. Moreover, both of these productions questioned the justice of existing institutions; and Roussean himself maintained that, with Émile, they form a single entity.

Among the autograph letters in the collection of Fernando Palha, now in the Harvard Library, is one by George Ticknor to Francisque Michel. The letter is in French in Ticknor's own handwriting, on note paper 4½ by 7 inches. The letter is interesting as showing Michel's appreciation of Ticknor's recently published History of Spanish Literature, as well as Ticknor's eagerness to see the Cancionero de Baena as soon as it should appear, and his kindly interest in Francis J. Child, then a young student in Europe.

In an interesting article on the ending of Shakespeare's comedies, Alwin Thaler tries to refute the opinion of the majority of critics that the last scene in The Two Gentlemen of Verona is “blind or incomprehensible.” Granted that Shakespeare purposely subordinated everything to the highly convention theme of friendship, before final judgment can be passed on the general fitness of the ending of the Two Gentlemen, one ought to consider carefully the requirements of romantic love in the play. The friendship theme, though greatly emphasised, is, after all, only a strong framework to motivate the love story.

What was Shakespeare's conception of Hamlet? That is the question. It is one which inevitably resolves itself into a reconstruction of the materials at his disposal, the dramatic problems with which he had to deal, and the means whereby he sought to satisfy contemporary dramatic taste. For such a reconstruction modern scholarship provides abundant information about both the theatrical practices and intellectual interests of the time and Shakespeare's habits as a craftsman. In particular should be noted his exceptional preoccupation with character portrayal and the scrupulous motivation of action; his conformity with changing theatrical fashion, yet at the same time his reluctance to pioneer in experiment; his sensitive, if sketchy, acquaintance with matters of contemporary interest; and his success as a skilled and inspired adapter rather than as an innovator. In the application of this knowledge two principles are fundamental. First, Hamlet must not be viewed in isolation, but in close conjunction with the theatrical environment which produced it. Second, Shakespeare must be recognized as primarily a practical playwright, a business man of the theater with obligations to fulfill, specific theatrical conditions to meet, and an audience to divert. For the rest, it is a pleasant exercise for the recreative imagination to try to think oneself into Shakespeare's mind, to face the problem of Hamlet as he faced it, and to trace the solution as he must have found it.

Le 10 Avril 1853, dans une lettre à Louise Colet récemment publiée, Flaubert écrivait:

La seule chance que j'aie de me faire reconnaître, ce sera quand Bovary sera publiée; et mes compatriotes rugiront, car la couleur normande du livre sera si vraie qu'elle les scandalisera.

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.

Den Märchengestalten eine tiefere Bedeutung zu verleihen, wie es Goethe mit seinen Königsgestalten tat, wie man sie deshalb auch gern hinter den andern Gestalten des Goetheschen Märchens sucht oder ahnt—das wird für Novalis das Mittel zur Hebung des Märchens auf ein höheres Niveau: Ein höheres Märchen, sagt er in einem Fragment, wird es nun, wenn, ohne den Geist des Märchens zu verscheuchen, irgend ein Verstand (Zusammenhang, Bedeutung usw.) hineingebracht wird. Sogar nützlich könnte vielleicht ein Märchen werden (iii, 20). So bewegt sich sein Märchen der Allegorie zu.

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.

For over thirty years students of the drama have apparently accepted Miss P. G. Wiggin's monograph, An Inquiry into the Middleton-Rowley Plays, as a statement of the individual shares of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley in writing A Fair Quarrel, The Changeling, and The Spanish Gipsy. Though Miss Wiggin considered styles and methods of writing, she differentiated between the contributions of the two authors, whose names appear on the title pages, principally by means of verse tests. In each of the plays Miss Wiggin assigns the opening and closing scenes to both authors, the main plot to Middleton, and the minor action to Rowley. Curiously enough, however, the minor action of each play seems to me to present striking similarities to Middleton's dramatic method in his comedies of London life.

Joseph Fawcett was one of the English revolutionary radicals who provided the intellectual milieu in which the youthful Wordsworth and Coleridge moved and wrote. His name has fallen for several reasons into an undeserved obscurity. He had no biographer among his contemporaries who might have collected pertinent material while it was most readily available. But, at any rate, his ideas could have won only a very small audience in the years immediately following his death in 1804, even before which his reputation was mercilessly dealt with like that of other radicals. Besides, his personal eccentricities threw into shadow the more solid portions of his fame. In spite of the fact that he was the intellectual godfather of two of the leading thinkers of his age, William Godwin and William Hazlitt, the bulk of the literary memorials which they have left of him is slight. We have, therefore, an exasperatingly small body of facts about Fawcett's life, but enough is known about his opinions to give us a fairly distinct portrait of his mind.

Als Hauptcharakterzug des Impressionismus gilt fast unbestritten, dass er im wesentlichen Oberflächenkunst sei, dass er spiegele, ohne Wertungen zu versuchen, dass er die Unterscheidung von Gut und Schlecht grundsätzlich unterdrücke. Namentlich der Wiener Impressionismus streite dem Menschen alles höher gestimmte Fühlen ab und führe sein ganzes Handeln auf niedrigste Triebe zurück; das sei zum wenigsten der Gesamteindruck.

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.

The l-sound, which we may consider to be without any special timbre, be it light or dark, is the alveolar or dental l, in the formation of which the tip of the tongue, resting at or near the teeth, plays an important part. For all nations, even those which otherwise show colored variations of it, apply this l at the beginning of words in order to introduce the vowel. This l cannot be affected by any preceding vowel. It is also the same colorless l which elocutionists (in England, D. Jones of Oxford; in America, W. Tilly of Columbia University, New York) recommend for use in all cases. According to their opinion, the dark semivelar sound, heard so frequently in English, is looked upon as vulgar. It may, however, be an open question whether such a procedure is not a strongly artificial interference with a natural, long-drawn-out development in the course of many centuries.

Dr. Robert Stanley Forsythe in his The Relation of Shirley's Plays to the Elizabethan Drama, has shown the debt of Shirley to the plays of 1590–1648 for typical scenes and characters; but the various sources from which Shirley drew his plots have remained comparatively uninvestigated, and his habits of work have, consequently, not been sufficiently revealed. Since a union of the knowledge of the analogues already possessed with that of the actual sources would explain to a great degree Shirley's mechanics of composition, it is the purpose of this paper to examine the sources for St. Patrick for Ireland (published 1640) and the uses which the poet made of them.

There is abundant evidence for the assertion that Shelley at one time thought of devoting all his talents to the study of metaphysics. On August 1, 1811, in a letter to Stockdale, Shelley writes:

My studies have been, since my writing it [St. Irvyne], of a more serious nature. I am at present engaged in completing a series of moral and metaphysical essays.

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.

Tracing originals for the characters of fiction is unquestionably one of the most dangerous of scholarly undertakings, and should not be attempted without copious insistences that no good novelist is likely to have derived a prominent character entirely from one individual. On the other hand, if a particular character stands out in a novelist's work as exceptionally vivid and human—indeed, as exceeding in plausibility any previous fictitious character of the same general type; and if the novelist is known to have used living prototypes for some of the other characters in the same book; and finally, if it is demonstrable that the novelist was well acquainted with the traits of the person who is suggested as his original, then the imputation deserves some attention. On these premises, I venture to propose a living model for Thackeray's most famous character, Becky Sharp.

The history of the early eighteenth-century stage, although recently favored by the attention of numerous scholars, still suffers from lack of contemporary data of a reliable nature. The period is a difficult one; for it is a period where uncertainty and intricacy abound. Everything seems in an uncrystallized condition; and drama, court, and society present varied and varying modes. In many ways it is a pioneer age; in many ways it mirrors the brilliance of future achievement. No attempt is made here, however, either to explain, criticize, or defend the early years of the century, but merely to offer certain facts taken from indisputable sources. As the newspaper is the medium of this information, a brief account of contemporary journalism is prefaced.