In any examination of Titus Andronicus the student is immediately confronted with the questions: “Are we really to regard Shakspere as the author ?” “How did he happen to choose such repulsive material ?” Or, again, if we assume that he but touched up an old play, there is still the question: “Just how great was this revision ?” In other words, Titus Andronicus interests most readers not for its real worth as a drama, but only for what it may or may not represent in the history of Shakspere's dramatic career. For this reason it seems essential to give, first of all, a brief account of previous opinions as to the authorship of this tragedy, so that we may better understand the importance of determining its sources.

The entries in Henslowe's Diary as to “tittus and Vespacia” and “titus and Ondronicus” seem to me, if they be carefully considered, to support Mr. Fuller's conclusions in regard to the origin of Shakspere's Titus Andronicus. I believe, with him, that we have in the entries which he has quoted in his article the two plays he names as the sources for Shakspere's play—the original of G in “tittus and Vespacia”; the original of D in the “titus and Ondronicus” entered as “ne” Jan. 23, 1593–4, when the Sussex men were playing at the Rose./Note that the title-page of the first extant quarto (1600) says that the play was given by Pembroke's, Derby's, Sussex' and the Chamberlain's companies, and that—this is important—the order of the last two companies on this title-page is the order of their control of the play as shown in Henslowe's Diary. May it not be, then, that the assignment is correct and that the Pembroke and the Derby company, in the order named, used the play before the Sussex and the Chamberlain men ? I think if we assume, for the moment, that whoever put the statement on the title-page was thinking simply of a Titus Andronicus play and not of the special play before him, it may be shown that the statement was entirely correct, and that a Titus Andronicus play passed successively from Pembroke's company to Derby's, Sussex', and the Chamberlain's men. The fact that on this first quarto no author was named for the play may have helped in 'the treatment of two successive Andronicus plays as one.

As teachers of the modern languages, in our survey of our own Association and of the American university system, we must all feel a certain warmth of exhilaration. The progress that our favorite studies have been making is so splendid. Within that period of forty years which the memory of older men among us can now cover, and, for the younger men, in each of the periods into which those forty years could be divided, there has been, in a steady current of progress, so vast an improvement in our methods of instruction, so vast an increase in the magnitude of our work, in the number of our pupils, in the size and qualification of our professorial force. In the national movement of thought and theory in education, we have shared, indeed, with the physical sciences in popular favour; and even as compared with the physical sciences themselves, the growth of instruction in the modern languages has been, I think, the more rapid and the more impressive. Excluded at first, or hardly recognized, as a factor in liberal education, they have now made good their position, in all grades of instruction, in school and college and university. In generous proportion with the financial means of each academic body, the work has from year to year been more highly specialised. Almost everywhere, we have witnessed the establishment of the natural division between Romance and Teutonic philology, and between linguistics and literature; and almost everywhere we have witnessed, in logical connexion with the same movement, the study of English placed in its worthy position, as connecting link between those great forces of literary culture that have formed our speech and our literature. There is not, I think, in the world a country where the boy or the girl, born into the use of one of the great modern languages, can move onward more easily and more surely into the knowledge and enjoyment of two or three others.

Among Goethe's Sprüche in Prosa we find the following maxim: “Es giebt Problematische Naturen, die keiner Lage gewachsen sind, in der sie sich befinden, und denen keine genug thut. Darum entsteht der ungeheure Widerstreit, der das Leben ohne Genuss verzehrt.”

In Westermann's Monatshefte for January, 1891, and later in his ‘Life of Lessing,‘ Professor Erich Schmidt has outlined the chief features of the history and transformations of the story of the three rings in Europe. On examination it will be found that all the versions of the story belong to one or the other of two types, which are represented by the two earliest forms of the story preserved to us. The oldest version, that of the Spanish Jew Salomo ben Verga, tells of two rings or jewels only, which were in outward appearance exactly alike, and there is no question of one being genuine and the other false, but only of the relative value of the two. In the absence of the father it is found impossible to decide the question, and thus the decision between Christianity and Judaism is simply avoided. In Li Dis dou vrai aniel, a French poem of the end of the twelfth century, three rings appear, and to the original or genuine ring is attributed a marvelous healing power by which it may be recognized, and following which a decision is arrived at among the three religions, in this case in favor of Christianity, although ther were not wanting later narrators so bold as to hint that the true ring was possessed by Judaism. The version of Etienne de Bourbon, the versions of the Cento Novelle, the three versions of the Gesta Romanorum, all belong to one or the other of two types. We may refer to these two types as the Spanish type and the French type. Those of the first type, to which belongs also the version of Boccaccio, the one from which Lessing took his point of departure, avoid a decision, implying that all religions are equally authoritative, but without inherent or inner evidence of their quality. Those of the second type, to which in many of its features Lessing's final version of the story is allied, lead to a decision, making religion of divine origin indeed, but supplying a test, that of good works, whereby the true religion may be recognized.

In the Göchhausen manuscript of Faust Margarethe concludes the vision of her own execution as follows: “Es zuckt in iedem Nacken die Schärfe die nach meinem zuckt!” . . . Motley's description of the execution of Egmont contains the words: “A moment of shuddering silence succeeded the stroke. The whole vast assembly seemed to have felt it in their own hearts.” The source of this statement was found, after some search, in Hooft's Neederlandsche Histoorien, Amsterdam, 1642.

The Heliand is generally called an Old Saxon epic. Its language, however, is not a pure Saxon dialect but presents a peculiar mixture of Saxon with Frisian and Low Franconian forms, for which as yet no sufficient explanation has been offered.