Among the many curious episodes in the Grail Romance, Perlesvaus, that of the Coward Knight has received comparatively little attention. It is mentioned by Birch-Hirschfeld and by Brugger and a few pages are devoted to it by Professor Nitze in his dissertation. The most recent, as well as the fullest, treatment which it has received thus far is that given to it by Miss Jessie Weston. Professor Nitze and Miss Weston make the story of the Coward Knight the basis of their argument as to the relative date of Perlesvaus and Manessier's continuation of Chrétien, since this happens to be the only episode common to these two texts. But though they deal with precisely the same evidence they arrive at opposite conclusions. The question, therefore, appears to be one which invites further discussion. Before considering their arguments, however, it will be convenient to have before us an outline of those portions of the romance which deal with the Coward Knight and his lady, the Damsel of the Car.

The charming collection of legends, anecdotes and fables known as the Récits d'un ménestrel de Reims is one of the gems of Old French literature,comparable,in its naïveté and grace, to the prose parts of Aucassin et Nicolette. It has been published three times under different names. The latest, and the only critical edition is that by N. de Wailly, entitled Récits d'un m. mestrel de Reims au treizième siècle.

In casting about for a subject suited to this audience with its diverse if fundamentally related interests I regretted at first that I was not, like some of my distinguished predecessors, inspired with a message on some general educational, literary, or linguistic topic. A technical paper from my field of study was, of course, barred. But I thought of the warning of Faust that to reach human hearts one must speak from the heart:

And I iisked myself what in all my study of Goethe had given me the most heartfelt joy, that innre Wrme, Seelenwrme, Mittelpunkt which he prized so highly; and in that respect I had to place the appreciation of Goethe the man even above that of Goethe the poet. Moreover, human interest has a universal appeal. So I chose for my subject the human Goethe, his personality as it appears net so much in his works as rather in the details of his life.

Das schwache Priteritum ist hinsichtlich seines Ursprungs und seiner Entwicklung in vorhistorischer Zeit vielleicht die am heissesten umstrittene Formengruppe der gennanischen Grammatik. Dass es den Forschern schwer fällt sich vollig miteinander zu verstandigen, daran sind wir ja auch sonst gewohnt. Aber beim schwachen Prateritum scheint der Gegensatz der Ansichten grösser und die Einigung demgemass schwieriger als bei anderen Problemen. Was hilft es, hier von einem dentalen Präteritum zu sprechen, wenn der eine in dem Dental eine idg. Tenuis, der andere darin eine idg. Aspirate oder Spirans sieht? Und wie konnen wir auf Einigung hoffen, wenn wir die Wahl haben, dieses Präteritum mit dem griechischen Passiv-Aorist, dem idg. PassivPartizipium, dem idg. Aktiv-Aorist oder medialen Aorist, dem idg. medialen Perfekt oder gar dem Prasens lateinischer Factitiva zu verbinden? Es wird nicht notig sein, diese Vorschläge bier des Nilhcren vorzuführen und zu priifen. Man findet die Erklärungsversuche, welche bis dahin gemacbt waren, einigermassen vollständig in meiner Monographic Das schwache. Präteritum und seine Berkunft aufgezählt. Das Verzeichnis ist bis auf die Gegenwart weitergeführt von A. W. M. O&t in der Abhandlung “Das schwache Präteritum in den Genmanischen; Sprachen.” Ich kann mir Odé's Urteil über die neueren Theorien in vielen Fallen zu eigen machen. Auch trifft der neue Erklärungsversuch, den er vorlegt, meiner Meinung nach wenigstens bis zu elnem gewissen Grade das Richtige. Aber es bleibt doch ein beträchtlicher Rest von Meinungsverschiedenheit, der zu dem Versuche weiterer Verständigung cintädt.

Among the incunabula in the John Hay Library of Brown University are two quarto editions of Horace's Opera, with comment by Cristoforo Landino, one published in Florence in 1482 “per Antonium Miscominum,” the other in 1483 in Venice “per Joannem de Forlivio et socios,” the latter edition probably pirated from the former. Both volumes contain holograph annotations by Pomponio Leto, by Bernardo Tasso and by Torquato Tasso; and both volumes, so far as I can ascertain, have been overlooked by scholars both in Italy and in this country. I have, therefore, undertaken to study part, at least, of this material.

Douce MS 189 in the Bodleian library consists at present of 78 parchment leaves, measuring Om310 × Om210, of which the first 64 contain the Mort Artu, and the last fourteen a fragment of the Prose Romance of Tristan the only manuscript of the prose Tristan preserved in the libraries of Oxford.

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.

In his prose writings Dante refers to the Politics of Aristotle in such a way as to make natural the assumption that he was well-acquainted with the work. Further examination, however, suggests that this opinion has but a slight foundation; in fact, it is not impossible that Dante never saw a manuscript of the Politics.

Of this little play two editions have been recorded. Moratin alone, as far as I know, has seen a copy of the earliest known edition, Madrid, 1561. He reproduced the initial stagedirections and gave a short summary of the text, and upon this are apparently based whatever accounts of the play have appeared in later works on the Spanish stage. The second edition, Madrid, 1606, which is here reprinted, has been briefly described by Salvá (nr. 1426), Heredia (nr. 2349) and Gallardo (nr. 3993). When the latter examined it, it was a part of Böhl de Faber's library.

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 a chapter of my Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance I attempted to prove that the repeated correspondence between the adventures of Cuchulinn in Irish saga and those of Gawain in Arthurian romance could be accounted for only on the hypothesis that the intermediate Welsh figure was Gwri; and that this hypothesis was the key to many things in Arthurian nomenclature. My statement of the case, though it has convinced a number of the most competent judges, suffered from the fact that the interpretation of one Welsh name was questionable, and of another erroneous, that it involved the inconclusive and unessential derivation of the name Cuchulinn from a hypocoristic form of Curoi, and that the argument did not start from the most advantageous point of departure. In the following article I endeavor to remedy those defects.

Montemayor, the illustrious author of Diana, has not until recently been accorded a place among Spanish dramatists. His name does not appear in the catalogue of La Barrera nor in the Orígenes del Teatro Espanol of Moratín. The only mention of his dramatic activity, so far as I know, is the brief description of the autos here printed in the history of the early Spanish drama by Professor J. P. W. Crawford. These quin-tillas, it is true, afford little promise of the matchless beauty of diction which distinguishes the Diana but, quite apart from the later fame of the author, the autos possess the interest inherent in all early drama.

The romantic tale of Gul o Sanaubar ‘Rose and Cypress’ is one of the traductions de l'Hindoustani which Garcin de Tassy printed in 1876. In his avertissement the translator explains :

j'ai réuni dans ce volume quelques-unes de mes traductions .... de récits .... publiés anciennement et depuis longtemps épuisés.... Je n'ai reproduit ni les textes, ni les préfaces, ni les notes d'érudition qui accompagnaient les premières éditions de quelques-unes de ces traductions.....

On the 15th of December, 1778, about six months after the death of Voltaire, his private library at Ferney was bought by Catherine the Great of Russia for 30,000 rubles plus a certain number of valuable presents to Mme Denis, Voltaire's niece. This library consiste of about 7500 volumes comprising, because of the number of large sets, about 2500 to 3000 titles. Catherine received her purchase at St. Petersburg on July 30, 1779. Wagnière, the secretary of Voltaire, had been engaged to arrange the books in the same order as at Ferney and to prepare the manuscripts for binding. He arrived in St. Petersburg, as he tells us, “le 8 auguste 1779” and remained in Russia at the execution of the task set him by Catherine until probably January or February, 1780. The library was installed in the Hermitage and remained there until about 1862, when it was transferred to the Imperial Library of St. Petersburg, now the Public Library of Leningrad. There in the Fine Arts Division of the Philosophy Section these books are still to be found, carefully stored in their locked cases behind glass doors and supposed still to stand in the order in which they were arranged by Wagnifere after that used by Voltaire himself at Ferney. Most of his books are contained in two large double-faced cases, each case about twenty feet long and ten shelves high, giving a total book space of some eight hundred feet. The bottom shelves are reserved for folio volumes, the second shelves for quartos and the smaller volumes appear on the higher shelves. A somewhat smaller case in the gallery above contains the rest of Voltaire's books. Under the former government of Russia no one was allowed to consult more than five books of this collection a day. This limit is no longer imposed and during the summer of 1927 the authors of this article were permitted to have before them on their tables any number of volumes that they wished.

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.

It seems incredible that the analogues and sources for the “gentle bird” of reconciliation between Timias and Belphebe in the Faerie Queene (Bk. IV, 8, 3-12)—one of the loveliest guiding beasts in literature—should have escaped investigation. But, though a few scattered notes have been published on the passage in question, no one, so far as I am aware, has yet pointed out a satisfactory source or parallel.