The story of the Passion, Resurrection, and Descent of Christ is treated at length in one of the most interesting of the apocryphal gospels. While it is based upon the narrative as given in the canonical books of the New Testament, many additions have been made of a purely fictitious character,—especially that of Christ's descent into Hell and his releasing the souls of the patriarchs and saints who had for centuries been in bondage to Satan. The real origin of this legendary story, which was one of the most productive literary sources in the Middle Ages, is clouded in obscurity. When or how it came into existence has never been definitely determined. In the prologue to both the Greek and the Latin versions of the story we are informed that the Emperor Theodosius found the book among the public records in the Hall of Pilate in Jerusalem (a. d. 380): “In nomine sanctae trinitatis incipiunt gesta salvatoris domini nostri Iesu Christi, inventa Theodosio Magno imperatore in Ierusalem in praetorio Pontii Pilati in codicibus publicis ” (Tischendorf, p. 312). Moreover, we are told at the conclusion of Cap. xxvii that Pilate himself wrote all the transactions from the relation of Nicodemus and Joseph: “Haec audiens Pilatus tulit exempla dicti Leucii et Carini a Nicodemo et Iosepe tradita et posuit ea in publicis codicibus praetorii sui ” (Tischendorf, p. 388). We are further informed by Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia in Cyprus, who flourished at the close of the fourth century, that the Quartodecimans, a sect which originated near the close of the third century, appealed to this story to confirm their opinions as to the proper time of keeping Easter. At this time and throughout the early centuries of the Christian era the story was known by the title, The Acts of Pilate (Acta Pilati). These Acts of Pilate appear in fact to have been known much earlier than the fourth century. The ancient Christian apologists, Justin Martyr and Tertullian, both appeal to the Acts of Pilate in confirmation of the miracles and crucifixion of Christ (cf. J. Martyr, Apol., pp. 76, 84; Tertullius, Apol., c. 21). Epiphanius (Opera, pp. 259-275) also gives a version of the story which “ agrees in many points with” the Acts of Pilate (cf. Kirkland, p. 17). The cause of Christ's Descent is there stated (p. 268) to be, “ut educat eos qui a saeculo vincti sunt.”

The chief source of information concerning Nicholas Breton's early life is the will of his father, written in 1557-8, probated in 1558-9. This will, a lengthy document, provides liberally for the wife and the five children, devises generous legacies to a number of household servants, remembers various hospitals, the “poorest creatures” in several parishes, “poorest Skoolers of the university of Cambrydge,” and even sets apart a sum of money for “repayringe the hyghe wayes brydges and other most needful and necessary thinges.” There are mentions of “jewelles” and plate and valuable furniture and clothes, and the whole tone of the will indicates that its maker was a man who had wealth and was accustomed to use it freely and generously. That he was as liberal in thought as in money-matters, that he had due regard to the preferences of others, may be fairly inferred from a bequest to one Henry Knighte, “so that he continew to study at the Lawe, or use any other honest exereyse of Lyvinge.” That the wife was a woman of and this association takes the reader away from the atmosphere of Early English poetry.“

The problem of the nature of free and checked vowels in the gallo-roman popular speech has recently been made the subject of an article published by Dr. L. E. Menger, in Publications of the Modern Language Association, x, pp. 306-341. His conclusions are that vowels are free when ' they develop: a > e, ẉ > oi, e > ie, ọ > ou, o > ue;' that they are checked when 'they retain their original forms,' and that those cases which cannot be included in either category are neither free nor checked, and are to be grouped under the general term of 'secondary developments.' It is evident that such a division begs the question at issue. The solution offered must be rejected in toto and has already received a categorical answer by Behrens in Z. f. R. Ph., xxi, p. 304. The question is however of sufficient importance to merit new consideration, and I shall try to outline in the following pages the direction in which its solution must be sought. The history of the terms free and checked and of their grammatical signification will serve as a suitable basis for the argument.

“Verily, given a printing-press upon German soil,” says Dr. Furness, “and lo! an essay on Hamlet.” England and the United States, as might be expected, vie with Germany in contributing to the literature of this play. All the sister-nations of Europe, too, have their own essays on Hamlet. Numberless are those who confidently take up the task enjoined on Horatio by the dying Prince:—

“Report me and my cause aright.”

It behooves one therefore who would put forth another paper upon Hamlet to show cause at the outset why he should not be looked upon as a public enemy.

Perhaps no reproach is oftener addressed to those who call themselves philologists than that they are unconcerned with that beauty which has furnished a distinctive epithet for the word ‘literature’ in the phrase belles lettres, that they lack imagination and insight, and that they are quite unfitted to impart to others a sense of the spiritual values which inhere in the productions that form the subject-matter of their studies. An eloquent writer, who is himself a capable investigator, has recently presented this view in an essay which deserves the attention of every teacher of literature, and especially of every teacher of English literature.

The work in which his Defence of Poetry occurs, the De Genealogia Deorum, was first suggested to Boccaccio while he was yet a young man, by Hugo, king of Cyprus. Hugo sent to the young poet, asking him to write a work upon the mythology of antiquity, there being no such book then in existence. Boccaccio seems to have been by no means eager for so tremendous a task, but urged on by his royal patron he at last began it, and continued to work on it at intervals, though the king who had originally set him the undertaking did not live to see its completion. Completed, indeed, it never really was, and it was without the author's knowledge and against his wishes that the manuscript passed out of his hands before it had undergone revision. This accounts in part for the desultory character of the work, its diffuseness, its repetitions, its lack of arrangement and subordination; only in part, of course, for something of all this—that, namely, which corresponds with the essentially undiscriminating, non-selective mind of the author himself—could not have been eliminated by any amount of revision.

The whole bibliography of Elizabethan translations from the Italian, as far as my researches have gone up to the present time, consists of 404 separate titles. Of these, I have already published 70 numbers in Part I, “Romances in Prose” (Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, Vol. x, No. 2, June, 1895), and 82 numbers in Part II, “ Poetry, Plays, and Metrical Romances” (Ibid., Vol. xi, No. 4, December, 1896). The “ Miscellanea,” Part III, comprise 252 numbers, so many that I have found it convenient to divide them; The present paper contains 111 titles, classified under the general heads, religion and theology, science and the arts, grammars and dictionaries, and proverbs. It will be followed by a second section dealing with history and politics, voyages and discovery, manners and morals, and Italian and Latin publications in England. I need hardly add that this is merely a working classification. Many of the titles are obvious enough, but as is well known the Elizabethans exercised a lively fancy in the naming of books. To one uninstructed in the Elizabethan love of color and melody in phraseology, A Joyfull Jewell does not at once suggest a treatise on the plague, nor A Divine Herball a sermon, nor the Enimie of Idlenesse a complete letter-writer. I have no doubt but that with a wider acquaintance with the subject I should reclassify to a certain extent.

Ich habe für den inhalt der folgenden seiten eine allgemeine überschrift gewählt, obwohl es sich nur um die beschreibung einer einzelnen hs., Cod. Holm. membr. 6, 4°, handelt, weil nicht nur für mehrere romantische sagas neues textkritisches material beigebracht werden soll, sondern auch die grundsätze mehrfach berührt werden, die für die herstellung kritischer ausgaben dieser prosaversionen romantischer stoffe massgebend sein müssen.

Of the poems ascribed to Chiaro Davanzati, a Florentine of the thirteenth century, one of the most interesting is the following sonnet:

Di penne di paone e d' altre assai

Vestita la corniglia a corte andau;

Ma già no lasciava per ciò lo crai

E a riguardo sempre cornigliau.

5 Gli augelli, che la sguardar, molto splai

Dele lor penne ch' essa li furau;

Lo furto le ritorna scheme e guai,

Che ciascun di sua penna la spogliau.

9 Per te lo dico, novo canzonero,

Che t' avesti le penne del Notaro

E vai furando lo detto stranero;

12 Si co' gli augei la corniglia spogliaro,

Spoglieriati per falso menzonero

Se fosse vivo Jacopo Notaro.

Norway regained her political independence in 1814. Since then efforts have been made to establish a language-standard, truly national and Norwegian. The different theories set forth, the arguments advanced, the practical plans submitted, the struggle still going on between the opposing factions, present a linguistic condition, in many ways similar to the one existing in modern Greece, so well described by Prof. Wheeler in a recent issue of the American Journal of Philology. In this short paper it is possible only to state, in the briefest way, the facts as I have found them, regarding this question of language in Norway.

“The words, classical and romantic, although, like many-other critical expressions, sometimes abused by those who have understood them vaguely or too absolutely, yet define two real tendencies in the history of art and literature. The ‘classic’ comes to us out of the cool and quiet of other times, as the measure of what a long experience has shown will at least never displease us. And in the classical literature of Greece and Rome, as in the classics of the last century, the essentially classical element is that quality of order in beauty, which they possess, indeed, to a pre-eminent degree. It is the addition of strangeness to beauty, that constitutes the romantic character in art; and the desire of beauty being a fixed element in every artistic organisation, it is the addition of curiosity to this desire of beauty that constitutes the romantic temper.”