The central argument of this essay, concerning what for want of a better name I shall, adapting the terminology of Hegel, call the “concrete universal,” proceeds from the observation that literary theorists have from early times to the present persisted in making statements which in their contexts seem to mean that a work of literary art is in some peculiar sense a very individual thing or a very universal thing or both. What that paradox can mean, or what important fact behind the paradox has been discerned by such various critics as Aristotle, Plotinus, Hegel, Whitehead and Ransom, it will be the purpose of the essay to inquire, and by the inquiry to discuss not only a significant feature of metaphysical poetics from Aristotle to the present day but the relation between metaphysical poetics and more practical and specific rhetorical analysis. In the brief historical survey which forms one part of this essay it will not be my purpose to suggest that any of these writers meant exactly what I shall mean in later parts where I describe the structure of poetry. Yet throughout the essay I shall proceed on the theory not only that men have at different times used the same terms and have meant differently, but that they have sometimes used different terms and have meant the same or somewhat the same. In other words, I assume that there is continuity in the problems of criticism, and that a person who studies poetry today has interest in what Plato said about poetry.

That Robert Browning, the poet, possessed wide and multifarious learning is evident to a casual reader of his poems. The careful reader is impressed by the range and extent of his learning which includes much of what is called hole-in-the-corner knowledge, a familiarity with out-of-the-way topics and incidents that few readers possess. The scholarship of the past two decades has begun to give us a good deal of knowledge upon the nature of Browning's learning, and we are in a fair position now to estimate how much of the poet's knowledge was systematic and well-ordered, and how much of it was haphazard and based upon a following-up of this or that temporary interest. The letter which is the heart of this paper and which is published for the first time below will shed light upon this problem in an area in which Browning's training was probably most systematic.

Emerson's and Thoreau's individualistic, anti-government writings, it is said, developed out of an American background. Our land of liberty, out of fear that government might come to concern itself too familiarly with matters pertaining to the personal thinking and behavior of individuals, has nurtured from its beginning a lively suspicion for concentrations of political power. This suspicion is everywhere in American letters, which have been ever eager to slap government's fingers when it became over-forward. Each individual, as our thinkers and writers repeatedly tell us, should insist on solving his own problems without dictation from external forces, whether from the laws of a too aggressive legislature or from a next-door neighbor who considers himself an arbiter of behavior and taste. Of seekers for political office, Emerson predicted: “Wake them, and they shall quit the false good and leap to the true and leave government to clerks and desks.” A recent article on the American individualist maintained, “His political ideal will, of course, be Jefferson, his prophets will be Emerson and Thoreau; his poet, Whitman.”

In a tantalizing footnote to The Name and Nature of Poetry (1933), A. E. Housman lists a number of prosodic matters which, in his opinion, constitute an important part of the Artifice of Versification—the “natural laws by which all versification is conditioned.” Unfortunately, Housman did not elaborate or publish his prosodic observations, but the range and penetration of the hints in his footnote suggest that at least one corner of the usually sterile field of metrics can be made to bring forth good fruit. Housman also noted the lack of serious efforts to discover the “latent base … by which all versification is conditioned.” The “natural laws” are unknown to most writers of verse, who succeed, when they do succeed, by virtue of “instinctive tact and a natural goodness of ear.” And in Housman's opinion, little of value has been written on such matters, and literary critics seldom explore the field.

When, in 1879, W. S. Gilbert had his Pirate King of Penzance advise the unhappy hero, “Frederic, if you conscientiously feel that it is your duty to destroy us, we cannot blame you for acting on that conviction. Always act in accordance with the dictates of your conscience, my boy, and chance the consequences,” the Pirate Apprentice who expected soon to be out of his indentures found himself in a world as generally obsessed with the sense of duty as he was himself. It is true that only with considerable difficulty did he find “one maiden breast” which felt the moral beauty “Of making worldly interest/Subordinate to sense of duty,” but the Pirate King had plenty of other support for his conscientious philosophy. Not only was he joined by the somewhat weathered Ruth, but even the Sergeant of Police, remembering his own obligations when constabulary duty's to be done, forgave Frederic his tergiversation when reminded that the undependable young man, however queerly he behaved, had always been actuated by his sense of duty. And even Mabel, faced with the loss of her lover, announced proudly to the police force, “Dearly as I loved him before, his heroic sacrifice to his sense of duty has endeared him to me tenfold. He has done his duty. I will do mine. Go ye and do yours.” Nevertheless, poor Frederic remained the victim rather than the master of his convictions; he suffered ceaseless spiritual tortures under the admonitions of the Stern Daughter of the Voice of God, and at one critical point exclaimed:

Oh joy unbounded !
Oh sweet relief ! oh rapture unexampled !
At last I may atone, in some slight measure,
For the repeated acts of theft and pillage
Of which, at a sense of duty's stern dictation,
I, circumstances' victim, have been guilty.

L'histoire intellectuelle de la Troisième République naîtra gradu ellement de l‘étude patiente et minutieuse des divers problèmes d'ordre politique, philosophique, littéraire et social qui ont occupé une période qui comptera parmi les plus mouvementées et les plus complexes, les plus riches et fécondes aussi, qu'ait connues la vie française. Sans doute est-il prématuré de porter sur les hommes et les œuvres dont l'action se prolonge autour de nous le jugement équitable et nuancé qui sera celui de la postérité. Mais pour la génération dont la naissance précéda ou suivit de près l‘établissement de la République, et dont la jeunesse et la maturité coïncidèrent avec la période troublée de l'affaire Dreyfus et de la Grande Guerre, il n'est peut-être pas top tôt, maintenant que la première moitié du vingtième siècle touche à son terme, de faire les sondages préliminaires et de retracer à tout le moins les débuts littéraires d'une des figures les plus représentatives de la période qui vient de se clore.

Das Problem der religiösen Anschauungen, die dem Irdischen Vergnügen von Barthold Heinrich Brockes zugrunde liegen, hat in der Forschung keineswegs die Beachtung gefunden, die es in Anbetracht der Tatsache verdient, daß dieses Werk vom ersten bis zum letzten Gedicht religiöse Bedeutung hat und ohne eine genaue Kenntnis der Religion seines Verfassers schlechthin unverständlich bleibt. Die bedeutsamste Spezialuntersuchung, die diesem Problem gewidmet ist, ist der bekannte Aufsatz von David Friedrich Strauß (1861),1 und die Schlußfolgerungen zu denen dieser große Streiter für religiose Aufklärung gelangte, werden auch heute noch häufig ohne weitere Untersuchung angenommen.2 Strauß sieht in Brockes einen entscheidenden Wegbereiter des Deismus und charakterisiert ihn als einen Denker, in dessen Werk sich der Sturm vorbereitete, “der das Gebäude des positiv christlichen Religionssystems so schonungslos wegzufegen Anstalt machte.” Daß dieses Resultat einigermaßen überraschend ist und jedenfalls nicht dem ersten Eindruck des Werkes entspricht, dessen ist sich Strauß sehr wohl bewußt, doch fühlt er sich seiner Sache auf Grund der folgenden fünf Beweise sicher. “Die ganze Brockes'sche Naturpoesie ist ein gereimter physico-theologischer Beweis,”3 und wenn auch Brockes die Offenbarung nicht völlig aufgibt, so ist sie doch tatsächlich überwunden, denn “wer die gesamte Natur als Offenbarung Gottes begreift, der braucht nur den Muth zu haben, sich zu gestehen was er denkt, um jede besondere Offenbarung als überflüßig zu erkennen … ”4 Als zweiten Grund führt Strauß die Toleranz des Dichters an, die ihn selbst gegenüber Atheïsten nicht verläßt;6 seine scharfe Kritik an Christen und ihrem Wandel6 wie seine Charakterisierung Gottes als “Weltgeistes”7 stellen zwei weitere Bekräftigungen seiner These dar, und die Tatsache, daß Reimarus den Dichter in seine sonst so ängstlich gehüteten theologischen Geheimnisse einweihte,8 setzt dem Ganzen gewißermaßen die Krone auf.

The large volume of literature on foreign elements in English has not been matched so far by enquiries on a comparable scale into the history of English words abroad. The disproportion is indeed so great that it is apt to give an erroneous idea of the balance sheet of linguistic debit and credit. Studies of lexicological expansion are still in their infancy; and in this particular case, the chronology and character of the process may have acted as a deterrent. England's prestige and influence began to make themselves felt at the very end of the seventeenth century and quickly reached a climax in the eighteenth. By that time, however, all Western languages had developed too far, and their speakers had become too language conscious, for the newcomer to make any lasting and decisive impression. Most Anglicisms would seem at first sight superficial, easy to detect, and without any serious problems for the student of diachronistic linguistics. Nevertheless, a synthesis is urgently required, for the late inception of the process does not lessen in any way its paramount significance in the political and cultural history of Europe, and the most tangible and accurate method devised so far for a structural analysis of such influences consists in careful scrutiny of their linguistic deposit. The general framework of such a comprehensive survey has been outlined by L. P. Smith,1 while a good deal of valuable spadework has been accomplished in French and German, and to some extent in Dutch and Italian.2 To undertake a synthesis would be therefore distinctly premature; but in French at least, sufficient data are available to attempt a piecing together of the picture.