Guernsey, in shape a triangle and sloping toward the North, is divided into twenty parishes. The Lower or Northern Parishes are those most frequently visited by strangers; here the scenery is quiet, the bays are large, with beautiful white sand-beaches, varied, here and there, by some bold projection. The Southern coast, on the contrary, is beautiful in its very ruggedness; here, cliffs a hundred feet in height, wild and fierce, sea gulls and crows with their piercing shrieks, waves dashing against the rocks and into the caverns, all contribute to produce a peculiar fascination on the visitor.

I began my work upon this subject with a study of the Anglo-Saxon year; but this, I was soon convinced, meant nothing less than a study of medieval astronomical science, and required far more leisure and aptitude than I possessed. I have, therefore, chosen to limit myself to particular portions of this broad subject.

Schnörkel in Modern German designates a twisted ornament, a ‘scroll’ or ‘flourish.’ In some of the earlier dictionaries, e. g. in Steinbach's Vollständiges Deutsches Wörter-Buch (Breslau, 1734) and in Frisch's Teutsch-Lateinisches Wörter-Buch (Berlin, 1741), the word occurs as Schnerkel, and this, no doubt, is the more original form; the change of e into ö being due to the influence of the neighboring sch, as in löschen, Schöffe, schöpfen, Schöpfer, schröpfen, schwören, which originated from Middle High German leschen, scheffe, schepfen, schepfere, schrepfen, swern? It is well known that in such cases the vowels ö and e are found interchangeably from a time earlier than the beginning of the sixteenth century. E. g. Luther in his later works clings to the e (in spelling schepffen, schweren, etc.), while in his earlier writings the ö is found at least in a few cases. On the whole the vowel ö is gaining ground; but in some instances the uncertainty between e and ö is not settled before the end of the eighteenth century. It is in accordance with these facts that, although Schnerkel is still used in the first half of the eighteenth century, yet the word is spelled Schnörchel, e. g. in Kramer's Wort-Buch in Teutsch-Italiänischer Sprach (Nürnberg, 1678).

This Rime-Index of the “Parent Cycle” of the York Mystery Plays and the Woodkirk Play, Conspirado et Capito (from Cayphas to Tunc dicet Sanctus Johannes), was compiled with the intention of contributing a mite toward a fuller scientific study of the period in which the plays were written,—about 1340. If it is of any assistance toward that end it will have served my purpose.

The Middle English poem Patience, it will be remembered, is in the main a paraphrase of the book of Jonah. In the main also, the medieval writer has followed the biblical narrative, as he has in Clannesse when narrating the fall of the angels, the flood, the destruction of Sodom, and the capture of Babylon. But just as in these latter stories the English poet has taken considerable freedom with the biblical account, both in vividness at the expense of a literal rendering and in the use of medieval scripture interpretation, so in recounting the life of Jonah there are passages which have no close connection with the book of the prophet. The most remarkable of these is the extension of two sentences in the book of Jonah into some thirty-nine lines, describing vividly and picturesquely the storm at sea which overtook Jonah and his companions. Of this striking extension, and of certain additions which also occur in it, no source has ever been pointed out so far as I am aware. Nor has attention been called to a close parallelism between this portion of Patience, and a similar extension of the same story in the poem De Jona et Nineve, formerly attributed to Tertullian.

In the history of the human mind, there have been few more striking proofs of the organic unity in which the varied manifestations of national life are bound together than that afforded by the social causes and effects of German Romanticism. Few literary movements have demonstrated more impressively the futility of individual culture if it lacks a large sense of common responsibility. The predominance, in modern German society, of fact over theory, of common sense over genius, of practical tasks over ideal aspirations, may, to a large extent at least, be explained as a wholesome reaction against the excesses of Romantic wilfulness.

My reason for offering the present contribution to a subject no longer considered as affording opportunities for remarkable discoveries is the following: Among the characteristic terms employed by students of Old French philology there are two which, consecrated by long usage, occur more frequently, probably, than any others. These two are “free “(frei, libre) and “checked” (gedeckt, entravé); they are used to refer to the position of vowels in Popular Latin, the vowel being called “free” when standing before a single consonant or certain consonant combinations, “checked” in other circumstances. Now I dare say that there is no definition of such fundamental importance which betrays more inconsistencies and difficulties to the careful scholar than does this one as stated in its present form in the various manuals on Old French. After seeking in vain either to find any single definition that seemed satisfactory or to combine the statements of different scholars into one comprehensive presentation of the point in question, I concluded that there must be something radically wrong with the traditional method of expressing the definition, and determined to make an independent investigation of the whole matter.

The study of Indirect Discourse in Anglo-Saxon has hitherto received comparatively little attention. We occasionally meet with discussions of this construction in grammatical studies of selected Anglo-Saxon writings. Kühn and Wohlfarht, in their treatments of the syntax of the works of Ælfric, have done little more than to mention Indirect Discourse; Nader, however, has furnished a far more satisfactory account of it as found in the Beowulf. Such studies are as a rule of a sketchy character and are also extremely unsatisfactory owing to the restricted field within which the work has been done.

All readers of the Elizabethan drama must have noticed the profound influence of the Italian literature of the Renaissance upon the poets of that time. Some of the playwrights, like Greene and Munday, were men of travel, “Italianated” Englishmen, who returned home with their heads full of the ideas and culture of the South. Ford and Marston do not hesitate to introduce Italian dialogue into their plays, for many of the dramatists were University men, and the Italian language was studied at Oxford and Cambridge along with Latin and Greek. The scholarly Ascham, inveighing against the Italian leanings of his countrymen, in The Schoolmaster, yet confesses,—” not because I do contemne either the knowledge of strange and diverse tonges, and namelie the Italian tonge, which nexte the Greeke and Latin tonge I like and love above all others.”

Perhaps no part of Shakespeare has proved harder of interpretation and appreciation than the closet scene which ends Act III of Hamlet. Every reader, every spectator of the play has at some time felt regret, perhaps dismay, that so brilliant and capable a hero should, in such an unadvised and erratic way, reproach and revile his mother. It is a scene at no point pleasing, and in many points perplexing. And, particularly, what of the Ghost's reappearance ? We find it hard to believe, even dramatically, in the inconsequential return of the same vindictive, impassioned spirit that is made so much of at the opening of the play. “It is surely a subjective ghost,” says White. “It is not a subjective ghost,” says another; “but the audience does not see it.” “It is certainly not a subjective ghost,” says yet another; “everybody sees it but the Queen.” And so it goes. What did Shakespeare mean ?