There seem many strong reasons for deeming the unhappy love-story in Chaucer's Anelida and Arcite the invention of the poet's own day and hour. Unlike its seventy-line prelude of Theseus and Ipolita and desolate Thebes, which as everybody knows, is a blending of Statius and Boccaccio—anticipating the riper treatment of the same theme in the beginning of The Knight's Tale—the story owes nothing to any known source. Indeed Chaucer implicitly disclaims any originals of his narrative, even when explicitly professing them, for, “when speaking of his finding an old story in Latin, he is actually translating from an Italian poem which treats of a story not found in Latin,” and his solemn appeal to the misty authority of that nominis umbra, “Corinne,” of whom more anon, seems devised to blur the credulous reader's vision. Moreover, he runs directly counter to a dominant motive of the Teseide, the unswerving loyalty of that paragon among lovers, the Theban Arcite, by making him, in this little poem, the weakest of philanderers. For that violent reversal of character there must have been indeed some strong provocation from without, but certainly not from any books that we know. The precedent, too, of The Complaint of Mars suggests strongly some contemporary court-scandal, cloaked in the protecting garb of the antique. Our poem rises far above the conventional “complaint” in its leitmotif—a distinctive situation, concrete and personal, unfolded with an abiding sense of reality and in the glow of a righteous indignation.

That Keats in The Eve of St. Agnes was possibly indebted to Mrs. Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho was suggested to me by my colleague, Professor Margaret Sherwood, who pointed out several signs of relationship between the two works. Since that time I have made some study of the problem, and record the following observations. No attempt is here made to discuss the question raised by President MacCracken of Keats's obligation to Boccaccio's Filocolo, since it is not possible to reach final conclusions in regard to the matter without making a systematic study of the relationship of the Eve of St. Agnes to Floris and Blancheflur, Filocolo, Romeus and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet, The Mysteries of Udolpho, and Christabel.

Of the many disputed terms in the Poetics, “imitation,” has always been one of the most fruitful of discussion and of misconception; and these misconceptions are particularly significant because, for whole periods, they were potent in moulding creative activity not only in literature, but also in painting and in music. When “ imitation ” is considered in the light of its technical use in Plato and in Aristotle, its real meaning emerges with some distinctness. Far from the naturalistic theory of a direct and slavish copy of objects and actions, Aristotle's is a distinctly idealistic conception, and signifies “ creating according to a true idea.” Thus, when we are told that Art imitates Nature, “ Nature ” is not a particular thing or act, but is the creative force of the universe. With this conception, we can justify Aristotle's declaration that music is the most imitative of all the arts: it is the most fluid; and its flux is governed most completely by the universal laws of unity, proportion, and symmetry. The conception is almost Platonic; and it makes Aristotelian appear in a sense almost diametrically opposed to the common meaning of the Latin imitatio and the English “ imitation.”

Walter Savage Landor's professions, found everywhere in his letters, that he is writing for the few, and his rather studied contempt of the aura popularis are best illustrated by his epic poem, Gebir, first published in 1798. For this extraordinary poem the guests are, indeed, few and select. Southey's admiration for the epic was unbounded; Lamb refers to its creator as “Gebir Landor” ; and Shelley read and re-read the poem. Yet so unknown was Gebir to the general reader that De Quincey remarked that Gebir had “the sublime distinction, for some time, of having enjoyed only two readers, Southey and myself.” And Miss Seward wrote Todd, the editor of Spenser and Milton, that Gebir was “the most unintelligible fustian that ever bore the name of an epic poem.”

“Tess of the D'Urbervilles” was greeted with a storm of criticism, which did not abate on the appearance, four years later, of “Jude the Obscure.” Mr. Hardy seems rightly to have anticipated, in the preface to “Tess,” the feelings of the “too genteel reader who cannot endure to have said what everybody nowadays thinks and feels.” And it is true that he does exhibit in these novels a frankness of tone on all that pertains to sex somewhat unusual in England in the early nineties. But Hardy was by no means the kind of writer to disregard the predilections of his public on this or any other point of taste. There are but too many evidences of his willingness to meet them half way. And there is nothing which shows more strikingly his respect for the public taste, especially in the earlier stories, than his great delicacy, according to present standards—not to say his conventionality—in regard to matters of sex.

Athelston is one of the most vigorous and independent of Middle English romances, yet it is one about which least is known. Various writers have commented on this “strange neglect,” but in the years since 1829 when Hartshorne first published the text in his Ancient Metrical Tales, it has only twice been made the subject of serious study. Zupitza's edition in Englische Studien XIII-XIV (1889–1890) was primarily textual in character and devoted less than two pages to questions of origin. In Englische Studien XXXVI (1906), Prof. Gerould discussed “Social and Historical Reminiscences in Athelston.” Frankly accepting Zupitza's brief conjectures as to the original personages and events of the story, he concerned himself with the study of sworn brotherhood, a custom prominently referred to in the romance, and with the interesting possibility that the characterization of king and bishop in the romance had been influenced by the vivid personalities of Henry II and Thomas Becket. Certainly their memory was as living for the fourteenth century as it had been for the twelfth since it was continually renewed by the pilgrim hosts at Becket's shrine. A story which had to tell of the quarrel between a king and a churchman might well borrow something from the traditional violence of King Henry and the fearless courage of Becket, but such influence in Athelston, if it existed at all, must have affected simply the characterization of the two dominant personalities; in other respects, in motive, detail and incident, there is no real correspondence between history and the romance. In a story so closely knit as Athelston it is unprofitable to believe that it had absorbed unrelated incidents or that it had varied very much from whatever was its basic type. From the false accusation brought by the king's friend against his sworn brother, through the king's quarrel with the archbishop who hurries to the defense of the king's sister and her husband, to the great climax when the accused pass through the ordeal by fire, the story pursues an almost inevitable course which allows for hardly one of the haphazard accretions usual in mediaeval romance.

The orthodox view regarding the introduction of end rime into English verse is succinctly set forth in the following quotations : “ Endrime, being a stranger to the early Germanic languages, its appearance in any of them may commonly be taken as a sign of foreign influence. In general, of course, rime and the stanza were introduced together into English verse, under the influence of Latin hymns and French lyrics.” “ Die alliterierende Langzeile war die einzige in der ags. Poesie bekannte Versart und blieb in derselben bis zu ende der ersten ags. oder altenglischen Sprachperiode in Gebrauch.” “ The transformation of the O. E. alliterative line into rhyme verse did not take place before the Middle English period. It was due to the influence of the rhymed French and Latin verse.” “ Alliterative verse was remodelled on Latin and French verse—or foreign verses were directly imitated.” The implication is that there never existed in Anglo-Saxon any verse of a form different from that of the five-type alliterative verse which prevails in the corpus of extant Anglo-Saxon poetry.

The original manuscript of this poem is preserved in Hanover, and over it is written, in Goethe's hand: “For the 17th of September, 1826.” This date Goethe crossed out, writing in its place: “ September 25, 1826.” It was printed during his lifetime, without title, at the end of Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, published in 1829, and is followed by the words in parenthesis, “ Ist fortzusetzen.” Only after Goethe's death, in the Cotta edition of 1833, appears the usual title, “Bei Betrachtung von Schillers Schädel,” doubtless added by Eckermann. Nearly all texts, with the notable exception of the Weimar edition, repeat this title. The Jubilee edition has the heading, “Schillers Reliquien.”

Theatrical records tend to prove that The Careless Husband, doubtless the best of Cibber's comedies, enjoyed a warm reception when it was first presented before London audiences. Produced for the first time at Drury-Lane on Thursday, December 7, 1704, it held the boards of that theatre for nightly performances during the remainder of that week, and, with the customary exception of Sunday, during the whole of the following week, which ended Saturday, December 16. The initial cast was: Sir Charles Easy — Wilks; Lord Foppington — Cibber; Lord. Morelove—Powell; Lady Betty Modish—Mrs. Oldfield; Lady Easy—Mrs. Knight; Lady Graveairs—Mrs. Moore; Edging—Mrs. Lucas. Along with the announcement for Friday, December 15, there appears the following: “With a piece of Instrumental Musick to be performed by Mr. Paisible, Mr. Banister, and others. And several Entertainments of Dancing by Monsieur Cherrier, and others.” For the next evening the managers promise a change in the bill: “Several Italian Sonata's on the Violin by Signior Gasparini. And several Entertainments of Dancing by Mrs. du Ruel.” Such extradramatic features attend the production of the play rather frequently throughout its stage career.

The hardest thing to do with a child, sometimes, is to name it. The same is often true of a type of literature. To find a name which shall adequately express the tendencies and purposes of certain literary work is a difficult and perplexing task. It often happens, too, that a name is given carelessly, because of some application either incidental or actually mistaken, and remains fixed, although its appropriateness is only superficial.

When Matthew Arnold called Goethe “ the clearest, the largest, the most helpful thinker of modern times,” he paid tribute to one of the most significant and enduring influences of his life. In him without doubt Arnold found one of those few best things that he held it the critic's function to know and to make known. Yet it was not as a poet, even though he never failed to accord to Goethe the first place after Shakespeare, that he hailed him as the greatest of the moderns, but as the thinker who more than any other had achieved the great task of modern literature, the task of interpreting the modern world to itself. “ People joke about and take fright at the problems of life; few trouble themselves about the words that would solve them ;” so Goethe once wrote to Schiller. Matthew Arnold was preeminently one of the few. His special business was the criticism of literature, but he brought to it the indispensable profound and persistent reflection upon the world which literature is designed to interpret. So he came to his famous campaign to quicken intellectually and spiritually the lives of his people. To that end he drew the main lines of his program, the endeavor to foster and disseminate the critical spirit (which he made the basis of what he called the modern element), the gospel of culture, and the setting up of that ideal of literature that he found most perfectly realized in the classics.

“People joke about and take fright at the problems of life; few trouble themselves about the words that would solve them;” so Goethe once wrote to Schiller. Matthew Arnold was preeminently one of the few. His special business was the criticism of literature, but he brought to it the indispensable profound and persistent reflection upon the world which literature is designed to interpret. So he came to his famous campaign to quicken intellectually and spiritually the lives of his people. To that end he drew the main lines of his program, the endeavor to foster and disseminate the critical spirit (which he made the basis of what he called the modern element), the gospel of culture, and the setting up of that ideal of literature that he found most perfectly realized in the classics.

The remarkable autograph manuscript discovered in 1874 by A. J. Horwood among the papers of Sir Frederick Graham of Netherby is one of the basic documents for the study of Milton. It furnishes a list of some ninety authors, many of them by no means obvious, whom Milton knew; it indicates a large number of specific passages which he found interesting; and, finally, it contains, either explicitly or by implication, a host of opinions and ideas, consideration of which affords a new insight into the working of his mind. The Commonplace Book is, indeed, an important key to Milton's intellectual activity, and as such it merits a more careful critical consideration and a wider application than it has yet received. The facsimile published by the Royal Society of Literature in 1876 rendered the document accessible in its original form, and Horwood's edition for the Camden Society attempted a solution of some of the fundamental problems which must be dealt with before the note book can be put to fruitful use. But Horwood unfortunately did his work with little care and left it incomplete in many particulars. His text in the revised edition is reasonably accurate, but the editorial work is in the highest degree unsatisfactory. The editor did not undertake the necessary labor of identifying all the works and authors cited, nor did he always distinguish between those quoted by Milton at first and at second hand. His list of parallels from Milton's published writings is scanty, and he has failed to supply other obvious apparatus.

In Florence, in the Uffizi Gallery, is the famous painting by Botticelli entitled La Calumnia d'Apelle. The picture shows several allegorical figures dramatically grouped and exquisitely colored against a background of classical arcades looking upon a distant sea. The exact date of this picture is not known, but Horne, the greatest authority on the life and works of Botticelli, places it about 1494. It is the object of this paper to trace the theme of the Calumny of Apelles from its origin in classical antiquity to the time of Botticelli, noting particularly the literary manifestations to which it gave rise in Florence in the Quattrocento.

The chief source of information concerning the legal attitude toward woman in the thirteenth century is the Código de las Siete Partidas, compiled during the reign of Alfonso X, and representing an attempt to bring order out of the legal chaos then existent and to substitute a general code for the local fueros. The few generalities to be made about the compilation itself can be summed up briefly.

As to the sources, Martínez Marina states that Roman laws—Decretals, Digest, Code, Pandects—were used, and complains that in the first and fourth Partidas the laws of the Gothic codes and the municipal fueros were omitted, and Castilian customs were disregarded. The identity of the authors is open to question, although they were undoubtedly selected from the leading jurisconsults of the day. Ureña calls attention to the marked development in the use of a legal terminology in Spanish which is substituted for Latin, previously the language of the law.