Friar Rush appears in all the versions of his printed history (Danish, Swedish, German, English) as a malignant fiend who, under the disguise of a friar, brought a religious house to dire confusion. Yet it seems to be the received opinion that he was also known to the English (either under his full name or simply as “the Friar”) in quite another character,—that of harmless and serviceable house-spirit. In this rôle he was, it is held, to all intents and purposes identical with the domestic manifestation of Robin Goodfellow: that is, he worked at night for the servants, expecting no other payment than #x201C;the cream bowl duly set,” but, if that were denied him, showing his displeasure by all manner of petty mischief. The sole foundation for this opinion is a famous passage in Harsnet's Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures, 1603, in which “the Frier” is mentioned in some sort of connection with Robin Goodfellow

Of the several abridgments of the Havelok story in the chronicles of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, that which is interpolated in the Lambeth ms. of Robert Mannyng of Brunne's translation of Peter de Langtoft, is the longest and in many respects the most noteworthy. It has, however, not received the attention it merits. Madden attributes it to the scribe, who, he says, has made other changes in the ms. He describes it as “an abridged outline of the story itself, copied apparently from the French chronicle of Gaimar,” but presents no arguments to support his contention. Skeat simply copies Madden. Kupferschmidt, in his extremely valuable discussion of the relations of the various versions of Havelok one to another, accepts without investigation Madden's statement that the Interpolation is based on Gaimar. In view of the great interest attaching to the romance of Havelok a more careful investigation of this Interpolation may be of some service.

The comedy which appears in the following pages is reprinted from “the second impression,” as it is called on the title page, made by Francis Kirkman in the year 1661: the first edition is apparently no longer extant. Francis Kirkman occupies an interesting position in the history of the English drama as the first man to interest himself in the collection and preservation of old English plays. To him we owe the reprint of Lust's Dominion, which has been attributed to Marlowe, of The Thracian Wonder, of Gammer Gurton's Nedle, and of other plays; and from Kirkman we have the first attempt at a catalogue of English dramas, the foundation on which Langbaine, Baker, Reed, and others were later to build. The earlier form of Kirkman's “an exact Catalogue of all the playes that were ever yet printed” appeared as a supplement to the present play, and included six hundred and ninety items. A few years later Kirkman had increased his list to eight hundred and six. He tells us that he had seen and read all these plays and that he possesses most of them, which he is willing to sell or lend upon reasonable consideration.

In the Tristan of Gottfried von Strassburg, the hero comes all unknowing and unknown to the court of his uncle, King Mark, and charms the company there assembled by the melody of the music he makes on a harp.

Thise olde gentil Britons in hir dayes
Of diverse aventures maden layes,
Rymeyed in hir firste Briton tonge;
Which layes with hir instruments they songe,
Or elles redden hem for hir plesaunce;
And oon of hem have I in remembraunee,
Which I shal seyn with good wil as I can.
Chaucer: Prologue to the Frankeleyn's Tale.

The literary history of the legend of St. Catherine of Alexandria, although it has already been more or less elaborately studied in various quarters, notably in the Geschichte der heiligen Katharina von Alexandrien of the late Hermann Knust (Halle, 1890), still awaits the accurate and thoroughgoing treatment it deserves. My attention was called to the hitherto unpublished version which follows, by the account given of it by M. Paul Meyer, in the Notices et Extraits des mss. de la Bibliothèque Nationale, tome 33, 1re partie (Paris, 1888), in his study Sur deux anciens manuscrits français ayant appartenu au marquis de la Clayette (tirage à part, pp. 61-64). Several years ago I made a copy of this unique version in the National Library at Paris. Having since been unable to control the widely scattered material essential to a proper discussion of the problems involved in the St. Catherine legend, I have decided to publish, without further delay, the text of the Clayette version, offering it to scholars for further utilization, as a not uninteresting literary and linguistic document.

The present paper is drawn from a number of notes gradually collected and is intended to be one of a series of studies upon those plays of Shakespeare belonging to his earliest dramatic period. It is a period of vital interest in Shakespeare's work, because artistically it is his formative one and historically it connects our greatest dramatist with his predecessors and with characteristic contemporary fashions and productions.

The subject of the gender of substantives has in recent years occupied the attention of many scholars, and various theories dealing mostly with the origin of gender have been proposed. Benjamin Ide Wheeler in the Journal of Germanic Philology, Vol. II, 4, states plainly the fundamental points of the leading theories. The literature on the subject is also to be found there. A reference to this article will suffice. Victor Michels [Zum Wechsel des Nominalgeschlechts im Deutschen, Strassburg, 1889) discusses the main principles which are at work in bringing about gender-change in German. C. Bojunga in a Leipzig dissertation, in developing the principles which underly the shiftings in the substantive declension, reaches about the same results as Michel's, however in not so full or concise a manner. These treatises deal with the changes from the OHG. and MHG. to the NHG. period. Only occasional references are made to Luther's language.

Dr. Johnson said of Pope's Imitations of the Satires and Epistles of Horace that they “cannot give pleasure to common readers; the man of learning may be sometimes surprised and delighted by an unexpected parallel; but the comparison requires knowledge of the original, which will likewise often detect strained applications. Between Roman images and English manners there will be an irreconcileable dissimilitude, and the works will be generally uncouth and party-coloured; neither original nor translated, neither ancient nor modern.” It is not necessary to refute, what no one now maintains, that these Imitations cannot give pleasure to common readers, that they appeal only to men of learning by their unexpected parallels to the original, or that they are generally uncouth. It remains, then, to discover how far the rest of this criticism holds good as well as to investigate Pope's methods in rendering his original.

At Hageby, two Swedish miles from Upsala, there is preserved a runic stone originally standing at Møjebro in Hageby Socken and Hagunda Hærad. It is of the hardest red quartz and feldspar, 8 1/2 Swedish feet high and 5 Swedish feet at broadest. Cut into one side is the figure of a man mounted on a horse, with rein and saddle cloth. He has on a sort of corselet and is brandishing a sword in his right hand—not the left, as sometimes stated. The face is turned slightly away from the observer, who sees the left side and the back of the horseman. On the inside of the arm, just above the elbow, is a peculiar round protuberance. Above the figure is the inscription, running from edge to edge of the stone. All the letters but the lowest one at the right are distinct, and all are normal with the exception of the dotted cross. Stephens gives (Runic Monuments, i, p. 179, 180, and Handbook, p. 11, 12) both the old inferior cut, drawn about the middle of the 17th century and publisht in Göransson's Bautil in 1750, and the superior reproduction, drawn by Prof. Carl Säve, of Upsala, in 1862. My cut is after the latter, with the correction of the first letter, as explained below.

Few of the Germanic suffixes have recently been discussed so often as the suffix -ar-ja, the most widespread and extensively used suffix of the Germanic dialects. Grimm's theory that this suffix is identical with the suffix -ja plus an additional -r, which, in a modified form, was adopted by Kluge in the first edition of his Stammbildungslehre, has been given up and most scholars seem now to agree with Sütterlin-Möller's explanation, according to which -ar-ja was borrowed from the Latin ārius. This borrowing, as Orthoff suggests, must have been done at two different periods, because it would explain the twofold form -ari and -āri in O.H.G.

Whatever our definition of philology may be, whether we limit the term in accordance with the prevailing English acceptation of the word to the study of language, or regard, with Boeckh, as its proper object the study of the whole range of human culture, of all the products of the human mind, we probably all agree that the chief task of philology is to record and to explain, not to prophesy or to legislate. In this sense the function of the philologist is distinct from that of the grammarian, the rhetorician, and the literary critic. It must indeed be admitted that these different functions have often been confused, that they have often been exercised by the same person and that in fact the work of the philologist has to some extent been the outgrowth of that of the practical teacher of language. The work of Jacob Grimm was preceded by that of a long line of men whose primary aim was to purify, regulate, and in general improve the German language, though incidentally they became interested in its history and began to investigate the origin of its living forms. The history of our science differs not in this respect from that of other sciences; mathematics and astronomy are distinct from surveying and navigation, and botany from horticulture, though the first astronomer was probably a sailor and the first botanist a gardener.

The following edition of the Vita Meriadoci is based on an exact transcript of the Cottonian ms. made for me by Mr. F. B. Bickley, of the Department of Manuscripts of the British Museum, during the months of June and July, 1899, and shortly after collated by me with the original ms. The edition is similar in character to that of the other Latin romance, De Ortu Waluuanii, contained in the same ms. which appeared in these Publications (vol. xiii, No. 3) two years ago. The only particular in which I have departed from the plan of that edition is in regard to the abstract of the story printed at the end, which in this instance can no longer be termed a paraphrase. Further experience in the comparative study of stories of this kind has convinced me that translations and paraphrases are less useful to the student than briefer summaries and I should indeed reproach myself for the length of the present abstract but for the fact that the barbarous character of the language in which it is composed renders a perusal of the Latin text rather tedious to the reader and it accordingly seemed advisable to render the original with a certain amount of detail.