When William Hazlitt died, in 1830, his literary fame was obscured by his political views. The man who admired Napoleon and wrote a biography of him and who championed the radical creed of the French Revolution could hardly have been expected to be popular among Englishmen of the early nineteenth century. During the past twenty-five years, however, several volumes containing selections from his essays have been issued; and most editions of Shakespeare enrich themselves by quoting his opinions. His Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, printed in 1817, is still very much alive. Heine, in his volume Shakespeare's Mädchen und Frauen (1838), declared: “With the exception of William Hazlitt, England has given us no Shakespearean commentator of any consequence.” And this verdict, though decidedly exaggerated, gains new interest when we append the Teutonic explosion: “It takes the very heart out of me when I remember that Shakespeare is an Englishman, and belongs to the most repulsive race which God in his wrath ever created.”

Among the P. A. Taylor papers in the British Museum, there is a small manuscript verse-book which contains poems written or collected by William Taylor “of South Weald.” In this book are a prologue and an epilogue for Tamerlane, ascribed to Sir Richard Steele. No comment is made in the manuscript as to the circumstances under which they were written; but it is clear that they were meant for a performance of Rowe's play by schoolboys. These poems are not to be found in the printed works of Steele. There is no allusion to them in his letters, and they are not mentioned in the Steele tradition as recorded by John Nichols, his eighteenth-century editor, or by G. A. Aitken, his biographer. But even in the absence of any direct evidence of their authenticity, we can be reasonably sure not only that they are from Steele's pen but that they were written, probably in the early 1720's, for use at Dr. Newcome's School in Clapton, Hackney. Circumstantial evidence leading to this conclusion is to be found in the contents of the verse-book and of other manuscripts among the Taylor papers; in the somewhat scanty information we have of William Taylor's interests and friends; and also, of course, in Steele's pursuits.

Aureate terms are defined by J. C. Mendenhall in his thesis of that name as “those new words, chiefly Romance or Latinical in origin, continually sought under authority of criticism and the best writers, for a rich and expressive style in English, from about 1350 to about 1530.” Mendenhall sketches the history of “flourished words” before Chaucer's day but reminds the reader that “All this development was in a sense merely preliminary. It was Chaucer, who, according to the universal opinion of his age, really gave us a stylistic vocabulary.” In other words, he admits that whatever may have been the ultimate background of the fifteenth century's enthusiasm for ornate diction, its actual inception is traceable directly to Chaucer. His most essential assertion is that Chaucer followed the accepted rules and traditions of rhetorical art, but that his vocabulary was, nevertheless, distinctly choice and unusual.

In an attempt to determine the place of issue of the first edition of the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy the biographer of Laurence Sterne, Governor Wilbur Cross, has denied the traditional belief that the book was printed at York and has written as follows:

One of the chapters of M. Maurice Souriau's Histoire du Parnasse is entitled “la Question Déroulède.” In this chapter, M. Souriau describes the popularity of Paul Déroulède's Chants du soldat (1872) and of its sequels, such as Nouveaux chants du soldat (1875), as well as the hostility of Flaubert, Leconte de Lisle, and most of the Parnassians to this type of poetry. Insinuating that this hostility was due, in part at least, to the huge sales of Déroulède's volumes, Souriau attacks this attitude bitterly, praises Déroulède's modesty, and allows his critical judgment to be so completely warped by his own chauvinism as to find in Déroulède both an important writer and a great thinker, even greater, perhaps, than Leconte de Lisle because his work “a communiqué à ses' auditeurs le plus vivifiant patriotisme” while that of Leconte de Lisle “a développé trop souvent, trop longtemps, devant ses lecteurs, le plus noir pessimisme.” He calls attention to Calmettes' criticism of Leconte de Lisle as “un adversaire déclaré des Muses patriotiques” and adds: “Il l'était pendant le siège.” He concludes his chapter with the words: “Il [Déroulède] a comblé la lacune du Parnasse.”

For almost one hundred years an anonymous novel, or rather romance, bearing the title Mephistophiles in England; or, The Confessions of a Prime Minister, has been resting on the shelves of many libraries, unnoticed by students of comparative literature. The title itself is sufficient to attract the attention and to arouse the curiosity of any who have become acquainted with one of Goethe's most celebrated dramatic characters; an appreciative dedication in verse to “the immortal spirit of the illustrious Goëthe” indicates clearly the influence which the German poet had already exercised upon the writer; and even a superficial reading of the work, particularly of the first part, reveals the inspiration as well as the indebtedness which its author owed to the Faust.

Among the historical events of the nineteenth century, the struggle of the Italian people for liberty and unity occupies an outstanding place. But, while this movement, known as the Risorgimento, was so important in the development of European politics and, consequently, could not fail to attract the attention of English writers, Americans were naturally much less exposed to its influence. The United States was not a world power in those days; with existing means of communication it seemed remote from Europe, and its policy was to remain aloof from the problems and complications of the Old World. In these circumstances it would not be surprising if the stirring events of the Risorgimento awoke few echoes across the Atlantic.

Si La renommée de Ramuz a dépassé les frontières de sa petite terre, le Pays de Vaud (Suisse), dont il nous donne une description si typique dans sa Lettre à Grasset; si tant d'articles de journaux, en France, en Belgique, en Suisse, ont été publiés sur l‘œuvre de cet auteur; si, sous la direction de Marcel Péguy, les Cahiers de la Quinzaine lui ont consacré un cahier tout entier; si plusieurs de ses romans ont été traduits en allemand, en anglais, en tchèque, en suédois; si la critique littéraire parle d'un style ramuzien; si enfin il y a un cas Ramuz, c'est que le poète dont nous traitons a réussi à intéresser un public d‘élite par l'originalité de sa conception esthéthique, par la vigueur et le pittoresque de son style et surtout par l'intensité de la vie qui anime les personnages et les choses de ses romans.

William Roper, son-in-law of Sir Thomas More, is one of those people who seem overshadowed by associates. He is usually mentioned as the son-in-law of the Lord Chancellor, or as the husband of More's brilliant daughter, Margaret. The origin of his connection with the More family is dismissed in the DNB by the statement: “His legal duties apparently brought him to the notice of Sir Thomas More, and about 1525 he married More's accomplished daughter, Margaret.” But in fact the Ropers were people of some financial and professional importance in their own right; and according to documents of the period, the Ropers and the Mores had legal and other business relations for many years before the intermarriage between the two families.

Although some two hundred years separate the reigns of Catherine II (1762–1796) of Russia and Elizabeth (1558–1603) of England, both periods have much in common. Russia had so lagged behind the rest of Europe that in the eighteenth century her social life and intellectual radius were not much farther advanced than those of sixteenth century England. Her prolonged lethargy had been dissipated by Peter the Great (1672–1725) who, like Henry VIII, had succeeded in injecting new life into his kingdom at the expense of offending nearly the whole country; but it was Catherine who realized Peter's great vision of advancing Russia to a leading place among the nations, a service which Elizabeth had performed for England.

From Homer on, certain images have been part of the epic poet's inheritance and equipment. Not only has he felt obliged to introduce them somewhere into his work, but to distribute them in the very proportion observed by his predecessors. Beasts, plants, any phenomena used in previous epic simile belonged to him, too, if he could make them at home in a new context. Of course he was free to originate novel images from contemporary events or his own personal experience; but Homer's high precedent, or Vergil's, prescribed the old images as well. Milton's choice of imagery, however, is distinguished from that of other important epic poets of Western Europe by an iron control over, a virtual renunciation of, animal similes.

The years from 1885 to 1898 have been correctly termed by Mr. G. K. Chesterton “an epoch of real pessimism.” Not that pessimists were common at this time, but the question of the value of life was on the horizon of every educated man, and developed like a storm cloud whenever the air of speculation chilled. In England the literary men in particular were given to pessimistic questionings; and a great volume of Continental literature, of a quality to reënforce the idea of the world's tedium and pain, began to appear in translation. FitzGerald's translation of the Rubaiyat sprang into public attention in 1885 and maintained an immense popularity for the next fifteen years. Inasmuch as it has often been confidently affirmed that the cause of the pessimism of this period is to be found in the teachings of Schopenhauer, I have undertaken to examine the nature and extent of Schopenhauer's influence. No evidence appears, however, that Schopenhauer had more than a contributory influence; and the task has necessarily broadened into a study of the history of literary pessimism. Because of the extent of the subject, the present paper offers little more than a summary of methods and results. I hope later to publish the proofs in greater detail.

In the present article I hope to show that Lessing's Der Freigeist (1749) and Die Juden (1749) were influenced by early English sentimental comedy, and that about 1753 the German dramatist studied the work of Edward Moore, author of the chief English sentimental comedy of the second quarter of the eighteenth century—The Foundling (1748).

AT THE death of Joseph Spence, the companion and intended biographer of Pope, Spence's executors discovered certain manuscripts relating to a burlesque poem, The Charliad. Although the work was apparently ready for the press, the author had taken no steps toward publication, and for sundry reasons the executors decided upon suppression of the poem as the proper course to follow—at least for a time. After more than a century and a half, The Charliad still remains undisturbed in manuscript form, known only to scholars and to them chiefly by name. Because of its intimate connection with The Dunciad, however, as well as because of lesser considerations, Spence's peculiar production deserves some belated attention.

On July 5, 1838, Victor Hugo began to write Ruy Blas. Having virtually completed two scenes of the first act, he became dissatisfied, and made a fresh start on July 8.

IN a recently-published volume, Anatole France: critique littéraire,1 Mlle. Annette Antoniu gives a very closely-documented and, in the main, trustworthy, account of the intellectual and critical development of the great novelist. This work, however, confines itself to the consideration of Anatole France's pronouncements in his works of criticism and is, by the very nature of its subject, somewhat diffuse in its treatment. It may, therefore, be of some interest to study France's attitude towards poetry and poets as expressed in his novels and short-stories, in his volumes of essays and in his reminiscences of childhood, as well as in his conversations with some of the numerous “literary reporters” who, during the past decade, have been basking in the glory of the deceased master. Such an examination is of importance in view of the many bitter attacks that have been leveled at France by critics who are not content with attempting to expose what they consider to be the dangers inherent in his skepticism, and have left no stone unturned in the effort to prove that, both as man and as thinker, he was totally devoid of the moral sense. Thus, for example, in his Historie du Parnasse,2 M. Maurice Souriau would have us believe that France dealt treacherously by his erstwhile comrades, the Parnassians, and, more especially, by their principal leader, Leconte de Lisle.

I am prompted to enter again upon this subject by two considerations, which hang together. One is that opinions I had previously expressed upon it have, in a respectable quarter, been treated with greater condescension than a man not wholly in error can well be expected to ignore; the other is that similar opinions, as I have lately noticed, have (independently) appeared in recent reputable criticism, particularly the foreign. I had said that it is not justifiable to treat literary or other art as a document, a record of the time, on the one hand, or of the author's life, on the other; that, rather, art reflects the taste of the time, and the taste of the author; and that while much of the life of the period may be reflected, and of the author, too, it is only with the greatest difficulty and uncertainty that this can be isolated and recognized. Imaginative literature is not only not history or unconscious autobiography but not even raw material for it; big allowances must be made both for the limitations and conventions of the art and also for the character of the artists. Some of these, to be sure, are realists, intent on the external object; some also are egoists, concerned, directly or indirectly, with their own nature and experience: but good art, and the greatest, is not limited or determined either by the artist's person or his day. And rather similar are the opinions of the critics Mm. Rémy de Gourmont, Paul Valéry, and Henri Bremond; and of recent notable novelists such as Proust and Gide. Like writers of their nation and of England whom I have cited in discussing the subject before, they are all of one accord against the biographical or historical attitude as unfruitful and irrelevant; and nearly all of them have much to say of Racine as one who did not recognizably reflect his time or his own life within it, and is, because of that, all the more significant as a poet.

After Professor Lowes' monumental study of the Ancient Mariner as a work of pure imagination, it may seem futile to search the poem for any didactic meaning or philosophical message. Professor Lowes has written that “to interpret the drift of the Ancient Mariner as didactic in its intention is to stultify both Coleridge and one's self!” But I trust that this essay will not result in verification of Professor Lowes' dictum. We must not be too quick to class even slightly obscure poems of Coleridge's as works of pure imagination. When we recall his philosophical disposition and the great fame which his somewhat murky speculation brought him during his own lifetime, the danger involved in such procedure should seem obvious.