Scholars are not agreed as to the identity of the person addressed by Chaucer in his Envoy a Bukton. Tyrwhitt was the first to suggest that the individual warned in regard to the risks of matrimony was Sir Peter (de) Bukton of Yorkshire. Professor J. S. P. Tatlock in 1907 questioned this identification, suggesting instead a Robert Bukton of Suffolk. Professor J. R. Hulbert, independently of Tatlock, attempted to show that Robert of Suffolk was the more likely person. Inasmuch as considerable evidence, not observed hitherto, makes Peter the more probable candidate, a review of the arguments of Tatlock and Hulbert becomes necessary.

Few poets typify Elizabethan patriotism so completely as Michael Drayton. His most ambitious poem, Polyolbion, is a fond effort to record the chorographic intricacies of his beloved isle. But he does more than that: he often transfers his interest from landscape to human beings. Thus in the Nineteenth Song he passes easily from rivers to men, paying his homage to those responsible for English prestige at sea. The rivers Orwell and Stour reach an agreement:

(156-162) And lastly they agree
That since the Britans hence their first discoveries made,
And that into the East they first were taught to trade,
Besides, of all the Roads, and Havens of the East,
This Harbour where they meet is reckoned for the best.
Our voyages by sea and brave discoveries known,
Their argument they make, and thus they sing their own.

To live in a day when conceptions of poetry were undergoing rapid change was for Samuel Taylor Coleridge both an advantage and a misfortune. Perhaps his own work, which greatly advanced the change, gained a significance it could not have had in any other period. Yet by the same token, it was generally unappreciated by his contemporaries, inclined as they were to the old, narrow views of what constituted poetic merit. Lack of adequate criticism throughout almost the whole of Coleridge's lifetime is thus not difficult to explain. Nor is it a matter of mystery that two of his young disciples, John Sterling and Henry Nelson Coleridge, appear to have been, before his death in 1834, the only critics who approached his poetry with the same sympathetic effort at understanding that Coleridge himself employed when he criticised the work of others.

On the evening of September 20, 1709, at about the hour when we are accustomed in our own theatres to see the curtain rising on the first act, an old man dressed in black clothes sat in a chair of state on the stage of the London Haymarket, and whispered for the last time, “The rest is silence.” Within the sound of his beautiful voice the wit and fashion of the capital were congregated, their customary laughter and chatter awed into stillness by the “divinity [that] hung round that man.” He had played the Prince for forty-eight years, and though he was now more than seventy, and occasionally younger men essayed the rôle, the “town” still preferred their old favorite.

On December 7, 1920 there was sold at the Anderson Galleries in New York an interesting collection of Milton documents hitherto entirely unknown to the poet's biographers. These documents, which contain the record to two financial transactions in which Milton was concerned in the years 1657/58 and 1665, were submitted to me for examination by their purchaser, Mr. Rosenbach of Philadelphia, and it is through his courtesy that I am enabled to present an analysis of their contents. Their history previous to their sale in America has not been divulged, but it is to be presumed that they have been preserved as a part of the evidence of title to certain properties described in them, and there is not the slightest question as to their genuineness.

Editors of Hamlet have, in general, paid but little attention to the readings of Q1; they have in a few cases adopted them, or made them the basis of emendation, but in their critical notes they have recorded comparatively few of them, and have overlooked many that are better than the generally accepted readings (from Q2 F1), even where these accepted readings are plainly wrong and the readings of Q1 as plainly right.

The Shepheards Sirena, together with the Quest of Cynthia and the Nymphidia, was published in 1627. It is a conventional pastoral, in which is described the rueful condition of the shepherd Dorilus, who is pining over the separation from his beloved nymph, Sirena. While musing upon her absence, he reads a letter of Sirena's, in which she counsels him not to come to her, despite her sore affliction, because the ‘wilde waters’ which separate them would make it extremely hazardous. After reading the letter, Dorilus soliloquizes on his future course of action. While thus occupied, his fellow-shepherds gather round him and sing him one of the songs which he had once sent Sirena, when she lived near the Trent. Instead of driving his care away, the song makes him even more wretched, and he thereupon upbraids his companions for thus mocking his woe. At this juncture, a boisterous swain soundly reproves him for wasting his energies in lamenting the absence of his love, when the call of duty demands that he devote himself to more worthy pursuits. His companion reminds him that it is high time to withstand the inroads of the swineherds. In response to this stirring appeal, Dorilus joins his fellow-shepherds.

When Abraham Cowley died in 1667, he was mourned by practically the whole English literary world with such eulogies as the following:

In choosing this text from my favorite Old French poet, I have no designs on my audience. Be undisturbed; the Red Knight of Arthurian romance shall not obtrude his countenance here and it is indifferent to me—on this occasion—whether there are fairy-mistresses or not. Nor am I, as some of you might think, making the ambitious attempt of defending anew the Pierian Spring. Poetry today needs no defence, unless it be the défense d'imprimer, which applies to us all, poets and philologs alike, when our knowledge and inspiration lag, and the product is not worthy of the producer. My task is at once more prosaic and more definite. I propose merely to stand my ground, as a Modern Language teacher and scholar; to state, in my own way, what I think we are about, as one convinced of the value of our profession in itself and to others—despite the blight of misgivings and protests, from one quarter and another, which periodically threatens us with ruin. This, then, is the Spring which your Chairman—like so many Chairmen before him—would defend and, if possible, protect against contamination.

Although Jeremy Collier's attack on the drama of his time and the subsequent “reform” of the stage in the direction of propriety and dullness have been regarded ever since as commonplaces of literary history, the relation between them has never been adequately investigated, and about this the greatest difference of opinion still exists. Ward declares: “In truth the position in which he [Collier] stood … had been proved impregnable. From this time forward a marked change became visible in the attitude of the Court, the Government, and a section at least of the ruling classes, towards the stage, and its own consciousness of the purposes and restrictions proper to the exercise of its art.” On the other hand, Mr. Whibley asserts: “The poets bowed their knee not an inch in obedience to Collier. They replied to him, they abused him, and they went their way… . The pages of Genest … make evidence the complete failure of Collier's attack.”

Since Desnoiresterres, Voltaire's biographer, remarked that Pierre Bayle's works had fallen into complete oblivion, there has been a decided change among literary critics in their attitude toward this great French critic and philosopher. Not so very long ago Brunetière in one of his characteristic essays lamented the ingratitude and injustice shown by posterity to the refugee of Rotterdam. In recent histories of French literature, a more searching and a more sympathetic appraisal of his works is to be found, and Bayle shares an equal place with his younger contemporary, Fontenelle. Due recognition is invariably rendered Bayle for his prodigious scholarship, his unimpeachable logic, and his critical power and acumen—qualities which caused Sainte-Beuve to style him “le plus accompli critique qui se soit rencontré dans son genre,” and Brunetière “un maître des esprits.” Yet, while granting Bayle high critical and reasoning qualities, critics with only a few exceptions have regarded him as lacking in literary taste and appreciation and have found fault with his loose style and careless composition. It is the object of this essay to determine the extent and value of these criticisms and to examine Bayle's literary characteristics. An attempt is made to show that literary critics have been too severe in completely denying Pierre Bayle a qualification which he possessed in no mean degree, though it was greatly overshadowed by his all-absorbing passion for pure thought and ideas.

In his tractate Of Education Milton gives astronomy as one of the subjects that the properly educated boy should study. He would first have his pupils “learn in any modern author the use of the globes,” and then having mastered the elements of the subject, proceed to the reading not only of poems abounding in astronomy, but also of those wholly astronomical, such as the Astronomicon of Manilius and the Phaenomena of Aratus.

A new interest of late has awakened in Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, through the realization that he is the fountain-head of much of the æsthetics and ethics prevalent in the last century and in our own time. While it has been generally recognized that the background of Shaftesbury's thought is classical, as was to be expected of any student and thinker of his period, deriving both from Stoicism and from Platonism and neo-Platonism, attention and interest have chiefly been concentrated upon those aspects of his thought which look toward the coming romantic movement. Also, such classical influences as have been recognized are usually interpreted from the post-renaissance point-of-view, as agreeing in the main with such modifications of Platonic and neo-Platonic thought as are referred to in discussing “Platonism” of Shelley. Thus C. W. Weiser enlarges upon Shaftesbury's indebtedness to the Platonic and neo-Platonic traditions—terms which he uses, as he explains, in a very general sense, as pertaining to the life of the feeling (the Platonic way) in opposition to the life of the reason (the Aristotelian way).

The publication and distribution of books possessing a scholarly rather than a mercantile value present problems that are particularly adapted as subjects of consideration by the Modern Language Association and upon the solution of which the academic investigator and the educational publisher may quite properly take counsel with each other. The entire question is also of more than timely importance not only for the advancement of pure scholarship but by reason of the fact that the unprecedented increase in our College and University enrollment and the interest manifested by students in the pursuit of Modern Languages have brought the teacher face to face with the opportunity of expanding his advanced and graduate classes and, consequently, with the need of supplying his courses with adequate and attractive tools of instruction. What is the actual state of affairs? Where does the scholar at present obtain serious books of this character? Where can he arrange for the publication of such books? What are the difficulties that confront the publishers? What remedies may be applied to conditions now prevailing? These questions can best be answered by means of a frank interchange of ideas.

It has been repeatedly pointed out that Shaftesbury derived many, if not the most, of his philosophical ideas from his immediate and more remote predecessors. Nevertheless, the recognition of this fact does not detract from the originality and power of Shaftesbury himself. The ideas gleaned from a wide reading and companionship passed through the medium of his keen and generous mind and emerged a new intellectual compound.

Voltaire's tragedy Eryphile was performed first in the private theater of Madame de Fontaine-Martel, and on Friday, March 7, 1732, in the Theâtre Royal. Although announced as a masterpiece, it was not a success. Only seven representations were given before Easter and five after. In vain did Voltaire make hasty changes in his text between the performances; he could not save it, and the original verdict of the public proved fatal. As he had already done with Artémire (1720), Voltaire withdrew the play and never allowed it to be printed. However, in 1779, just after his death, it was published for the first time with the note: “Pièce que l'auteur s'était oposée qu'elle fut imprimée de son vivant.”

In the following pages are presented hitherto unprinted texts of the Miracles of Our Lady in Middle English Verse, together with some discussion of the groups in which they appear, with particular regard to their relationship to the principal Latin collections of Miracles of the B. V. In considering the antecedents and the existing relationships of the Middle English versions, one must take as a starting point the results achieved by Mussafia and Ward in their monumental studies of the Legends of the Virgin, which deal especially with the Latin collections, from which presumably the English texts derive, either directly or indirectly. Though the researches of these scholars have been constantly drawn upon in discussing the materials here assembled, it has not seemed necessary in every case to trouble the reader by citing page references to their works, since the material contained in them is so systematically arranged that it is easily accessible. In citing MSS. containing English texts of the Miracles, I have availed myself of the MS descriptions contained in Carleton Brown's Register of Middle English Religious and Didactic Verse.