It is rather surprising that the subject of Scott's influence on the English vocabulary, a subject which has excited the interest of many students of language, has not heretofore been carefully examined. That such an influence existed became apparent soon after Scott achieved popularity. Francis Jeffrey, in his review of Marmion in the Edinburgh Review of April 1808, remarks: “His genius, seconded by the omnipotence of fashion, has brought chivalry again into temporary favor. Fine ladies and gentlemen now talk indeed of donjons, keeps, tabards, scutcheons, tressures, caps of maintenance, portcullises, wimples, and we know not what besides … ” This faintly petulant tone pervades the early remarks on Scott's contributions to the language. When the Waverley Novels appeared there seems to have been in the reviews considerable displeasure at the abundant intermixture of Lowland Scottish dialect, whence some words now very current have come to us. When The Monastery was published, a word-minded reviewer used one of Scott's innovations to solve to his own satisfaction the mystery of the Author of Waverley: “I believe that the author of ‘The Monastery’ and ‘Waverley’ has hitherto kept himself concealed, although these Works and several others … are attributed … to Sir Walter Scott, an opinion which is strengthened by the liberal employment in them of that feeble expression ‘he undid,‘ which so frequently disgraces the most beautiful passages in the Poems he avows.”

“The poem of Beowulf,” Klaeber tells un, “consists of two distinct parts joined in a very loose manner and held together only by the person of the hero.” Like W. P. Ker, Klaeber finds some reason to regard the second part as s late-conceived sequel to the first, rather than as integral with it in the poet's original plan.

The study of foreign languages in the schools and colleges has in the past been justified in many different ways, and without question many reasons can be adduced to support their place in modern education. One argument in their favor which has been advanced more and more frequently is the assertion that foreign languages are not only useful but necessary for an understanding of other peoples and other cultures. This point of view is by no means limited to professional teachers of foreign languages but is to be found among men in public life and in organizations deeply concerned with contemporary educational problems. Despite their variety of source, the statements which have been cited demonstrate a surprising unanimity of attitude in their insistence that a fundamental aim of foreign language instruction is the transmission of what, for lack of a better name, we may call cultural insights.

The Nightingale ode has been judiciously dealt with from inside the tradition of Keats scholarship by such experts as Sir Sidney Colvin, Ernest de Sélincourt, Douglas Bush, and H. W. Garrod. Recent reinterpretations by Brooks and Warren, by Thomas and Brown, by Allen Tate, F. R. Leavis, Marshall McLuhan, G. Wilson Knight, Albert Guérard, Jr., and others, have brought the Ode into contact with current critical theories. In following them here I can, I believe, be most useful by steering something of a middle course between the modern and traditional: with, however, an unusual emphasis upon general English Romanticism. My explication, then, will consider the Ode to a Nightingale as a Romantic poem, and will venture some exposition of its Romantic principles. I shall also try to bear in mind the implications of recent criticism.

The Posthumous Works of William Wycherley, Esq; in Prose and Verse. Vol. II (1729), is an important and neglected document for the study of the canon and the poetical abilities not only of its author but also of its editor, Alexander Pope. It consists of a preface, a carefully annotated reprint of the table of contents to the first volume, a collection of letters between Pope and Wycherley, and a series of poems or parts of poems by the two men. It is extremely rare—the Bodleian copy seems to be the only one in an institutional library—and while large portions have been separately reproduced, no one has pointed out the significant relationships between them and the rest of the volume.

So much ink has already been spilt in discussing the relationship between Alexander Pope and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu that one may very well hesitate before adding his jot. Yet the interaction of these two uncomfortably brilliant personalities is of exceptional interest both for their psychological drama and for the literature they wrote because of each other. As drama their relationship may be divided into three acts: friendship, estrangement, and enmity. Unfortunately, with the sparse documentation that survives, the action must be patiently reconstructed from fragmentary clues. Since both chief actors had complex, if not crafty minds, their motives are not simple, and must be carefully and sceptically determined. To favor either Lady Mary or Pope is to distort their drama; one must try instead to judge impartially on the basis of the facts that remain. At present, with valuable new data added to a fresh appraisal of the old, an account may be given which is less equivocal and more credible.

Dryden's prologues and epilogues have always been much admired, but, on the whole, rather negligently studied by scholars. The editors of the William Andrews Clark Edition of Dryden's Works, now in preparation, hope that it will provide for these poems, as well as for Dryden's more important works, better texts and notes than those presently available. The possibility that an edition may add substantially to the findings of its predecessors will perhaps appear from the case of the prologue and epilogue to Nathaniel Lee's Mithridates, as revived by the King's Company in 1681.