It is well known that the performance in August, 1624 of Thomas Middleton's allegorical play A Game at Chesse, dealing with the Spanish marriage, caused a furore in London theatrical circles, and that the king (then on a progress), learning of it through the Spanish ambassador, ordered its suppression. No attempt, however, has been made to collect the references which this public satire would naturally occasion in the news-letters and private correspondence of the day. Of the allusions given below from these sources, five (nos. 1, 5, 8, 13, 14) have not been noticed before by students of the drama and two (nos. 3, 7), although previously known, are given accurately for the first time. Nos. 2, 6, 9-12, although they have already been correctly printed, are here summarized (within brackets) for the convenience of the reader and included in the series, in proper chronological sequence.

Parmi les romans philosophiques de Voltaire, l'Ingénu est intéressant à plus d'un titre. Il exprime les idées de l'auteur, mais, et sauf erreur de notre part, il éclaire aussi d'une vive lueur l'état d'esprit de l'écrivain. Puisqu'il est admis de nos jours que le succès de la Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard inspira le Sermon des Cinquante, pourquoi l'Ingénu ne serait-il pas une conséquence nécessaire du triomphe de la doctrine naturiste de J. J. Rousseau? La renommée grandissante de ce dernier ne blessait-elle pas l'ombrageux patriarche qui voyait, avec douleur, l'influence de son rival contrebalancer fortement la sienne? En effet, d'une discussion plutôt académique et littéraire sur la nature du sauvage et du civilisé, Rousseau sut tirer des conclusions aussi pratiques qu'angoissantes pour l'humanité. Entraîné par l'éloquence enflammée du philosophe, le public s'enthousiasma et discuta cette question avec passion. Voltaire, dont le génie a surtout été d'expliquer et de suivre son siècle alors même qu'il paraissait le précéder, se rendit compte de ce nouveau désir créé par l'intérêt général. La mode en étant à l'homme de la nature, il écrivit l'Ingénu, livre d'actualité s'il en fût. Le civilisé qu'était Voltaire ne pouvait guère prendre ce sujet bien au sérieux, mais enfin, et c'est ce qui lui importait, il restait dans le goût du jour.

Gröber, in his history of Romance philology, recognizes Fauchet as the man who founded the study of mediaeval French literature “soweit es die ihm zugänglichen Hss. gestatteten.” England had to wait another two hundred years till Sharon Turner did her a like service with his History of England from the Earliest Period to the Norman Conquest (1795-1805). Fauchet was also a political historian of the mediaeval period, but in this field he had an illustrious predecessor, in the person of Jean Dutillet (d. 1570), lawyer and secretary to Henry II of France. This able man was commissioned by his king to investigate the trésor des chartres; the result was a six-volume report, La France ancienne, du gouvernement des trois estats en l'ordre de la justice de France avec les changements qui sont arrivés. This is the first modern history of a mediaeval period (the Capetian dynasty), and Dutillet followed it with treatises on the Albigensian Crusade and the Gallican Church, which were published after his death. Fauchet, following in Dutillet's footsteps, but on his own initiative, took as his province the first two dynasties of France. Before taking up the subject of his library it may be well to summarize what is known of Fauchet's life and work.

The circumstances which caused Frances Anna Dunlop to cease corresponding with Robert Burns during the final year and a half of the latter's life have always been a puzzle to biographers. Even Wallace's publication, in 1898, of the Lochryan MSS shed little additional light on the affair, though it may be remarked in passing that Wallace—perhaps from timidity, perhaps from reluctance to express any but favorable opinions of the ancestress of the family by whom the manuscripts had been preserved—hardly made full use of such evidence as was available. Unfortunately some vital links were missing.

Fleay's suggestion that Look About You, acted by the Admiral's Men at the Rose, was written in 1599, April 17—May 26, must be rejected. He advances but two plausible arguments: (1) the title-page (1600) states that the play was “lately” acted; (2) Wadeson's comedy of The Honourable Life of the Humorous Earl of Gloucester (1601)—possibly but not necessarily a sequel to Look About You—would seem to indicate a date of 1599 or 1600 for the latter play. But “lately acted” on a title-page means little; and even if in this case it was correctly used, it may indicate only a revival of the play. Fleay's opinion must be discounted on much weightier evidence.

La selva confusa was made readily accessible to students of the Spanish drama twenty years ago by Professor Northup, who edited it from the Madrid MS. As the editor was well aware, the play had long been listed as having been printed in Barcelona in 1633 in a Parte XXVII of Lope de Vega (commonly referred to as one of the “extravagantes”), though no copy either complete or fragmentary of such a volume could be located at the time he prepared his edition. Doubting whether the reported inclusion of the play in the aforesaid parte of 1633 could be regarded as having any authority, Northup attributed La selva confusa to Calderon on the ground that “it is so characteristically Calderonian from beginning to end that no other author could have written it”—an opinion in which he was supported by Schack and Rennert. His most important argument, however, lay in his conviction, shared by other experts, that the Madrid MS, to which Calderon's name is signed, was written by the dramatist's own hand.

Ever since the Chevalier de Rohan met Voltaire at the Comédie Française and asked: “M. de Voltaire, M. Arouet, comment vous appelez-vous?” his name has been the subject of much dispute. Lately, the discussion was reopened when a certain M. P., having read in Excelsior that Voltaire was the name of a house in Saint-Loup, addressed a query to the Intermédiaire des chercheurs et des curieux in an effort to verify the statement. Students, admirers, or compatriots of Voltaire immediately gave their views, but other than a restatement of several of the old theories no positive result was gained. Somewhat previously Mr. G. B. Watts published a short article upon “Voltaire's Change of Name,” but this article did not aim to throw light upon the general problem. At the present writing, Desnoiresterres' treatment of the subject and that of Maynard remain the most satisfactory. Nevertheless, neither critic pretended to have solved the question. They merely endeavored to collect in compact form the various theories previously proposed. Even in this modest endeavor, their presentations are defective, for, although they were prevented by circumstances from uniting all the theories, they have not always been careful to weigh their testimony. Moreover, the origin of the name is only one of three questions confronting the investigator. We are not only interested in how Voltaire chose his name, we are further curious to know why and when he did so. In the discussion which follows I do not claim to have solved these three questions; I shall be satisfied if I succeed in offering suggestions which may contribute to their solution.

Among nineteenth century critics it was the fashion to consider Oliver Goldsmith one of the most original of writers; and The Vicar and She Stoops to Conquer were always cited as examples of that originality. Modern scholarship, which has destroyed so many of the traditions concerning Goldsmith, has thus far left these two works intact.

“If fielding had superior taste,” declared Sir Walter Scott, “the palm of more brilliancy of genius, more inexhaustible riches of invention, must in justice be awarded to Smollett. In comparison with his sphere, that in which Fielding walked was limited; and compared with the wealthy profusion of varied character and incident which Smollett has scattered through his works, there is a poverty of composition about his rival. . . . It is chiefly in his profusion, which amounts almost to prodigality, that we recognize the superior richness of Smollett's fancy. He never shows the least desire to make the most either of a character, or a situation, or an adventure, but throws them together with a carelessness which argues unlimited confidence in his own powers.” Few critical verdicts have been received with more general dissent. Apart from what most readers feel to be the injustice done to Fielding, the affirmations respecting Smollett have not gone unchallenged. Thackeray, although perhaps without having Scott in mind, has expressed an opinion almost diametrically opposite:

His [Smollett's] novels are recollections of his own adventures, his characters drawn, as I should think, from personages with whom he became acquainted in his own career of life. Strange companions he must have had; queer acquaintances he made in the Glasgow college, in the country apothecary's shop, in the gun-room of the man-of-war where he served as a surgeon, and in the hard life on shore where the sturdy adventurer struggled for fortune. He did not invent much, as I fancy, but had the keenest perceptive faculty, and described what he saw with wonderful relish and delightful broad humor.

As a philosopher and social thinker, Pierre Leroux has been the object of considerable attention in recent years, and his works on political, religious and sociological subjects have been studied by scholars of distinction. Since he was also a writer and critic not without a certain fame in his own day, it seems a little curious that his literary activities and influence have yet to receive full treatment.

Suggestions Concerning the Source of the Poet's Doctrines and the Nature of His Mystical Experience

“. . . . his eyes

Have read the book of wisdom in the sun,

And after dark deciphered it on earth“—E. A. Robinson

To Call Wordsworth a great philosopher would, I suppose, if we put the word to its customary use, be extravagant. For he left the world no synthesis of doctrine that could be called his own. And yet his philosophy is a fascinating study, for although many may have understood with greater acuteness the numerous doctrines that appear in his poems, none could feel with an intensity greater than his, their human significance and value. Wordsworth's interests led him to demand more of philosophy than do most reflective men ; besides seeking a criterion of the good and probing into the problem of human freedom, he looked for an explanation of his own strange communion with Nature. Thus his philosophical life, proving as it did the source of some of the finest metaphysical and religious poetry in literature, was a deep and a rich one. It led him to absorb the teachings of many thinkers and to incorporate their doctrines in his poems.

The chief difficulty in tracing the origin of the secular drama in Germany is the lack of texts to prove the performance of other than religious plays. Nevertheless a sufficient number of secular texts have been brought to light to contradict the old belief that expansion of the comic scenes in the religious dramas resulted in the early Carnival play. M. J. Rudwin, in his notable study, proved the Carnival play to have been “the natural outgrowth of the Carnival customs themselves.” Modern historians of literature agree with him on this point but discuss the development of the Fastnachtspiel in Nuremberg no further than to declare its origin to have been in the most important masque of the time, the Schembartlauf. Yet in the recent special work on the history of the German drama, Das deutsche Drama, F. Michael disclaims any immediate connection between the Schembartlauf and the plays. Up to the present no detailed examination of the manuscripts in which the Schembartlauf was recorded, the so-called Schembartbücher, has appeared. It will be of advantage to study the actual content of the manuscripts in order to estimate their importance for the history of German literature. Conclusions may then be drawn as to the possible relation of the Schembartlauf to the Fastnachtspiele.

Mari Magno, by Arthur Hugh Clough, is a series of six narratives in verse related by voyagers across the Atlantic. Clough wrote these tales during his travels for health through southern Europe in the final year of his life—the last tale, indeed, on his very deathbed—and he left them unrevised at the end. Though in themselves deficient in narrative power, these tales present to the literary investigator two distinct problems, neither of which has as yet been satisfactorily solved. The first of these relates to the extent to which Clough in his narrative drew upon the events of his own life; the second is the question of the nature and the importance of the influence exerted upon him by the works of other authors, particularly Chaucer and Crabbe.

In the summer of 1790 William Wordsworth and his friend, Robert Jones, spent their summer vacation in France and Switzerland. The record of this memorable journey has been left to us in two of Wordsworth's poems: Descriptive Sketches written in 1792 and The Prelude, Book VI, written probably in 1804. The journey described in each is, of course, the same, yet variations in the accounts are quite marked. The immediate reaction as to the causes of the differences, no doubt, is that Wordsworth had forgotten many of the details of the journey. Yet this explanation cannot be true, as a careful analysis shows. Garrod, in his paragraph concerning Wordsworth's poetical theory that poetry “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity,” hints at the real reason for the discrepancies:

The question [he says] is interesting, not only in connection with Descriptive Sketches, but also as affecting the problem of the essential truthfulness of large parts of The Prelude.

Dans la riche floraison d'articles et d'ouvrages qu'a fait naître, en 1923, la célébration du centenaire de Renan, il semble qu'on ait pu discerner un effort tenté enfin par la plupart des critiques français pour étudier Ernest Renan d'un point de vue plus littéraire et ne plus se borner aux partiales et stériles discussions sur son attitude philosophique et religieuse. La critique française accorde ainsi à Renan la place qui lui revient, celle non seulement d'un historien, d'un philosophe, ou d'un “apôtre de la tolérance,” comme se plaisent à l'appeler les pompeux discours officiels-mais aussi d'un écrivain, dont le style et les procédés littéraires méritent d'être analysés d'aussi près que le sont ceux de Flaubert ou de Michelet. Nous voudrions ici nous attacher à l'un de ces aspects de Renan, négligé jusqu'ici, qui intéresse cependant la littérature française en général, en étudiant Renan dans sa critique littéraire.

There are four volumes of Balzac's letters: two volumes of miscellaneous letters known as the Correspondance and two very substantial octave volumes containing the master's messages to Madame Hanska during the seventeen years they were engaged. The latter collection has been poetically entitled Lettres à l'Etrangère. All four volumes have always been considered a rich store of biographical information. The Correspondance has been twice edited: in the two-volume edition published by Calmann-Lévy in 1877, and in an octave volume which forms part of what is known as the édition définitive of the Œuvres Complètes (Calmann-Lévy, 1876). The Lettres à l'Etrangère were published by Calmann-Lévy in 1906. None of these volumes contains information as to its editors or their method of procedure.

Concerning Ludwig Tieck's relations to Americans, Köpke, in his biography of Tieck, merely says: “Von Nordamerikanern lernte er [sc. Tieck] den Theologen Robinson und den Literarhistoriker Ticknor kennen.” Viewed in the light of other sources, however, the relations of Tieck to George Ticknor, the American historian and student of literature, deserve more than this passing comment and indeed form an interesting chapter in the history of German-American literary contacts.

Amid the shifting cross currents of religious controversy in England during the middle years of the nineteenth century, there are few points of view equal in freshness and interest to that of Browning. Nor among his brother poets of the Victorian age is there one whose work throws more light on the typical attitude of the English mind in relation to philosophy and religion. Individualism, subjectivity, lack of systematic development, absence of radicalism,—attributes which have been singled out as eminently characteristic of English speculative thought in the nineteenth century—are strikingly illustrated in Browning's representation of the religious problems of the mid-Victorian era.

The writer of the present paper, while engaged recently in editing Tartarin sur les Alpes, was particularly struck by the recurrence of rain, the continual drip from sky and mountainside that accompanies Tartarin in all his adventures. The dampness in the book seemed almost an obsession, as if Daudet had deliberately let loose floods that gushed and gurgled through his pages. Through what a wealth of humid detail, what sprinkles and splashes, wettings and soakings, the author delights in dragging his hero! Upon reflection, Daudet's other works somehow began to seem reminiscently full of weather. Pages resplendent with Midi sunshine mingled in memory with northern damp and fog. The writer was thereupon moved to re-examine the works of Daudet from this point of view. The results of that study, set forth in the following pages, seem to justify fully the impression with which it began; namely, that it is not so much as an author full of meridional sunlight that Daudet should be known, but rather as worker in moisture, a dabbler in damp, a keen observer of the vagaries of mist and rain.