Certain writings of antiquity, certain documents of early Celtic ecclesiastical history, and certain of the oldest Irish sagas reveal that the composition of poetry was practiced by the Irish pagans. The stylistic character of the pagan poetry has been rather generally ignored. Not that there is an abundance of specimens incontestably pagan in provenance; nevertheless, a number of poems have survived from Irish paganism, and though few are sufficient to establish the character of at least one style of pagan Irish verse.

MSS CCCC 190 and 265, Bodley 718 (2632), Junius 121 (5232), Nero A 1, and Bibl. Paris MS Fonds Latin 3182, all from the end of the tenth or beginning of the eleventh century, contain a great many common entries relating to the affairs of a bishop and have been studied with some care by several scholars. Miss Mary Bateson nearly fifty years ago made it clear that the theological and legal material in these MSS really constituted a sort of bishop's commonplace book, and she identified a number of the random excerpts found here in such bewildering confusion. It is my purpose to present some evidence that Archbishop Wulfstan early in his episcopacy at Worcester made extensive use of the material collected here and perhaps directed its assembling as a part of his attempt to regulate the practices of both bishops and lesser clergy under his supervision. To the list given above must be added two other MSS which contain the same excerpts in somewhat the same order—Copenhagen Royal Library Gl. Kgl. 1595, and Bodleian Barlow 37. It is extremely difficult, if not now impossible, to fix the relationship among these MSS, but it is generally agreed that they represent a collection made at Worcester early in the eleventh century, and in the following discussion I shall deal with what must have been the original collection rather than with the contents of any particular MS.

The Dantean formulas with desiderative se have recently attracted the attention of several reputable scholars and have given occasion to a lively discussion. Nicholson in Romania, LXI (1935), 3 ff., proposed to abandon the traditional etymology Ital. sẹt<Lat. sī, and suggested Ital. sẹt < Lat. sǐt. Among those who accepted Mr. Nicholson's conclusion are: E. C. Armstrong, MLN., LI, 68; K. McKenzie, Italica, XIII, 70, who closely examined the passages of Dante, and finally Miss Lograsso, Italica, XV, 152. He was strongly opposed, on the other hand, by E. B. Place, Hisp. Rev., V, (1937), 259, to whom he replied in the same journal, VI, 250 ff., and finally by L. Spitzer, Romania, LXV (1939), 290 ff., who defended the old etymology Ital. sẹt < Lat. sī. Having read the arguments of both camps, and having arrived at the conclusion that this usage of Dantean sẹt cannot be explained either by Lat. sǐ or by s࿐t, I venture to express my opinion on the subject.

The medieval version of the Four Daughters of God which exerted a wider influence than any other recension of Saint Bernard's famous allegory has been overlooked in literary investigations of the theme. For the sake of convenience one might refer to this work in Latin prose as the Rex et Famulus. At the end of the volume containing one of its manuscripts, an ascription in a hand of the fourteenth century assigns the authorship of the entire collection to one Peter of Poitiers, whom Hauréau identifies as a monk living at Saint-Victor at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Since three contemporary medieval writers are known to have borne this name, I shall refer to the supposed author as Peter of Saint-Victor.

One of the things that most surprises the student of the sixteenth century is the place held by religious literature even in the realm of vernacular publication. The product of the early English presses is religious to an extent that the modern reader finds quite outside his experience. It has been estimated that more than forty per cent of all English books published between the beginning of printing in England and 1640 belong to the various types of religious literature. That preponderance is easy to explain in the light of the ecclesiastical traditions of learning, and there is no doubt that certain aspects of the earlier body of publication as compared with that of more recent times are to be explained in terms of those origins, but the fact is that even when the machinery of religious life had been gravely disturbed, the relative predominance of the genre persisted.

In the first edition of the Faerie Queene appeared a woodcut of the Red Cross Knight in combat with the Dragon. The Knight is clad in armor of the sixteenth-century type. In particular the iron skirt, or tonnlets, of the rider are like those in a suit of armor given by the Emperor Maximilian to Henry VIII in 1515. The artist, however, may not have been very familiar with armor, for the plates over the knees and elbows are not accurate. The plumes of knight and horse are suitable for pageantry rather than for serious combat. The knight's shield, with its red cross, is wholly unfitting, since shields were not worn with such armor in service, and shields such as were used in some types of jousting were of different shape. The horse wears armor on the head and neck, but not on the body, though the body is covered with cloth housing.

Edward Capell in his Notes and Various Readings (1781) pointed out a parallel between Montaigne's essay “Of the Caniballes” (Florio's translation) and The Tempest, II, 1, 148, ff., where Shakespeare follows the wording of Florio so closely that his indebtedness is unmistakable. Since this discovery various attempts have been made to prove further the influence of Montaigne upon Shakespeare. In 1871, G. F. Stedefeld published the first extended study of the relationship between the two writers, and from that time on there have appeared from time to time books and articles on the subject, some of which make extravagant assertions in regard to the extent of Montaigne's influence upon the dramatist. For example, J. M. Robertson in Montaigne and Shakespeare (1897), after gathering numerous parallels from the Essays and from Shakespeare, made the sweeping claim that much of the growth of Shakespeare's mind was due to the influence of Montaigne. G. C. Taylor in Shakespeare's Debt to Montaigne (1925) makes almost as large claims as this. He “proposes to demonstrate” by means of parallel passages “that Shakespeare was beyond any doubt, profoundly and extensively influenced by Montaigne; definitely influenced in regard to vocabulary, phrases, short and long passages, and, after a fashion, influenced also in thought.” In an article published shortly after Robertson's book appeared, Miss Elizabeth Hooker, after citing numerous parallels, comes to the more guarded conclusion that Shakespeare used the Essays as a store-house of material only. Conservative students of the literature of the Renaissance have questioned the soundness of assigning definite sources, especially for material of common knowledge, on the basis of parallel passages. A. Brandl, in his review of Robertson's Montaigne and Shakespeare, warns against assigning to Montaigne sources which were common to both writers, such as Plutarch, and C. R. Baskervill, in his review of Taylor's Shakespeare's Debt to Montaigne, states the same objection, and says that most of the parallels cited by Taylor may be due to a common inheritance of Renaissance thought shared by the two writers. Pierre Villey believes the passage in The Tempest is the only instance of Shakespeare's borrowing from Montaigne. After reading the exhaustive parallels cited by Robertson and others, he concludes that “cent zéros additionnés ensemble ne font toujours que zéro.” Yet, in spite of the skepticism of the more conservative scholars, parallels are still cited to prove a direct relation between the two writers. Miss Suzanne Türck has brought together numerous passages which she believes show unmistakable influence of the Essais on Hamlet. J. Dover Wilson cites Montaigne frequently in his notes to his recent edition of Hamlet. And Joseph E. Baker, in his essay “The Philosophy of Hamlet,” says that in Hamlet “direct echoing [of Montaigne] seems very probable.”

Most Shakespeare scholars have believed that an earlier form of The Taming of the Shrew once existed, whether it was The Taming of a Shrew or some other version. There are scholars also who hold that an earlier form of The Taming of a Shrew must be postulated. Some have suggested a theory of a common source.

So many brilliant critics and scholars have interpreted the metaphysical image that one hesitates to push the analysis farther, but analysis and theory are justified if they throw new light on a subject or show a possible relationship between things that had previously seemed independent. The question is not whether metaphysical poetry can be analyzed more fully, but whether one simple, underlying peculiarity can be found to explain some of the characteristics of this type of verse and to show that these disiecta membra are of a piece. The underlying quality that appears to connect many of the seemingly unrelated features of metaphysical poetry might be called the dynamic image.

Voltaire criticizes the famous motivating principles of the three forms of government more vigorously than any other theory in the Esprit des lois. In general his criticisms of that great work have been too often discounted because of his known hostility to Montesquieu. The aim of this study is to account for his attitude toward the motivating principles as they are set forth in the Esprit des lois. Here the facts reveal that his criticisms are sincere and in keeping with his own established opinions. They show the impatience of a mind thinking in relativist and human terms with the generalizations of legal theory.

On November 28, 1760, when Smollett entered the King's Bench Prison, he must have looked forward with some misgiving to spending a period of three months in the same gaol with his old enemy “Doctor” Shebbeare, who on that day had served two years of his three-year term. These two writers had been at loggerheads ever since Smollett's vitriolic reviews of the “Letters to the People of England” began to appear in the Critical Review. And now Smollett had offended again by putting a caricature of Shebbeare in The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves, the novel that had been running in the 1760 numbers of the British Magazine. Thomas Seccombe's placing of Smollett's imprisonment in the early summer of 1759, which will now have to be given up, encouraged the view that the first part of Sir Launcelot Greaves was written in the King's Bench. Seccombe believed that it was on one of his visits to Smollett in prison that Newbery engaged his services for the British Magazine. That Shebbeare, the model of Ferret in Sir Launcelot Greaves, was at hand to be observed, seemed to strengthen this assumption and to lead one to suppose that perhaps Smollett had let fall a hint about the nature of the novel he was writing and received from his fellow prisoner a response as crabbed as the remarks with which Ferret greeted Sir Launcelot. But these are false assumptions. By putting imaginary objections in the mouth of Ferret, who never spoke well of anything, Smollett merely hoped to forestall criticism of his novel. Only the last installments of the narrative could have been written in prison.

Henrik Ibsen in his Peer Gynt has created a minor figure of absorbing interest—the Button-moulder—who enbodies the poet's ideas regarding immortality. He appears grim and macabre as, with his huge ladle, he comes to fetch Peer's soul, yet there is a sort of Mephistophelian humor in his tone:

The Button-moulder
Your grave is dug ready, your coffin bespoke.
The worms in your body will live at their ease;
But I have orders, without delay,
On Master's behalf to fetch in your soul!

Peer
It can't be! Like this, without any warning—!

The Button-moulder
It's an old tradition at burials and births
To appoint in secret the day of the feast,
With no warning at all to the guest of honor.

Perhaps it would have been hard to find a writer on the continent of Europe during the second and third quarters of the last century who was so eager, so sympathetic, and so persistent a student of American life and letters as the Dutch poet, author, and critic, Everhardus Tan Potgieter (1808–75).

The average man pictures Zola as a writer of brutal novels, the patron-saint of all novelists labelled by present-day critics as naturalistic, vigorous, earthy, bestial, or disgusting. This much is obvious: any reader who scans the Rougon-Macquart cycle for violent effects finds a profusion of them in every one of the twenty novels. Certain readers, however, feel that Zola's violence, no matter how obvious, is not entirely banal and is worthy, even, of careful study. Let us begin, therefore, by jotting down, in correct order and without regard for squeamish tastes, the really brutal moments of the series. A list of them resembles strikingly, at first glance, the programs of old melodrama. Perhaps, like such programs, our list also should be printed in various sensational sizes of type; for, as we shall see later on, Zola's work has distinct affinities with the melodrama. At any rate, here, in tabloid fashion, are the incidents we propose to study.

Gerhart Hauptmann hat in seinem Florian Geyer den groβzügigen Versuch gemacht, eine um vier Jahrhunderte zurückliegende Zeit mit den Mitteln naturalistischer Technik auf der Bühne lebendig zu machen. Dem Drama in seiner Eigenschaft als Wortkunstwerk gegenüber stellte sich der Dichter die Forderung, einen Dialog zu schaffen, der im Leser und Hörer die Illusion erwecken müsse, er vernehme unmittelbar die Sprache von Menschen der deutschen Reformationszeit, genau so, als wäre der Dialog vor vier Jahrhunderten auf Schallplatten aufgenommen und für unsre Zeit aufbewahrt worden. Es galt mithin, den Satzbau, die Wortformen, den Wortschatz und die ganze Fülle jener bildlichen Wendungen, die den charakteristischen Stil einer Epoche ausmachen, mit möglichster Treue nachzubilden. Um dieses Ziel auch nur annähernd zu erreichen, war—von der höheren, eigentlich schöpferischen Befähigung ganz abgesehen—zweierlei vonnöten: erstens eine auβerordentliche Gabe der Einfühlung in das Leben einer vergangenen Zeit und sodann ein gewissenhaftes Studium des aus jener Zeit überlieferten Schrifttums.

That preciosity is only a relative term will be readily endorsed by anyone who has studied the critical literature devoted to Jean Giraudoux. Some critics hurl the word as a reproach and condemnation, while others give themselves pains to plead or explain Giraudoux's case. Each, as well as the author himself, feels certain that preciosity is the word which will label and pigeon-hole him exactly; but alas, each proceeds to suggest a different nuance until the subject becomes quite confusing. The word preciosity itself suffers as many interpretations as classicism or romanticism, so a precise definition is out of the question. Originally associated with the seventeenth century arbiters of taste in language and etiquette, the term has since broadened its scope considerably. Literary historians have found it a convenient label for subtlety and refinement wherever these qualities may appear. Hence they do not mean an isolated phenomenon, but a fundamental characteristic of some minds, adapting and transforming itself according to time and place. Words such as gongorism, euphuism, concettism, conceptualism, or marivaudage are mutations or varieties of preciosity. According to popular usage, however, précieux means only précieux ridicule, synonymous with artificial or affected. In analyzing the preciosity of Jean Giraudoux from our own point of view, we shall find occasion to examine a great variety of critical opinions.