Balaustion's Adventure was first published in 1871. From that time until the present scholars have differed in opinion as to whether the poem misrepresents the Alcestis of Euripides, which it aims to interpret, and, if so, to what extent. The particular criticisms directed against Browning's interpretation have to do almost exclusively with his treatment of the characters of Admetus and Heracles. He makes Admetus selfish and cowardly; Heracles, essentially noble. Did Euripides think of them so? Professor Richard G. Moulton, writing for the Browning Society Papers in 1891, took exception to Browning's treatment of Admetus. He called Balaustion's Adventure “a beautiful misrepresentation of the original.” “Browning,” he said, “has entirely misread and misinterpreted Euripides' play of Alcestis.” … “The character he has read into the actions of Admetus is opposed to the view of him taken by all the personages of the story, gods, heroes, men; is opposed to the author's own intimations through the mouth of the Chorus; is countenanced only by the one personage whom all the rest including Alcestis hold guilty of the selfishness Browning has ascribed to Admetus.“ Verrall criticises Browning's interpretation of Heracles. He insists that the Heracles of Euripides is not the godlike helper of mankind which Browning would have us believe him to be, but a mere ”drunken athlete adventurer,“ a burlesque figure.

It has been the custom of historians of literature to discuss essays as if there were no essential difference between, say the Essays of Bacon and those of Macaulay, or between the Spectator and the Essays in Criticism. In his recent book, The English Essay and Essayists, a work which, however comprehensive, leaves much to be desired on the score of adequacy of treatment, Professor Walker makes a distinction between “essays par excellence” and compositions on scientific, philosophical, historical, or critical subjects, which agree with the former, “only in being comparatively short and in being more or less incomplete.” Lamb's essays he considers the best example of the “literary form;” yet when he comes to discuss the Essays of Elia he does not attempt to show wherein these pieces differ from the compositions of Elia's contemporaries or successors. Every reader is vaguely conscious of a difference of kind between the essays of various writers; for example, between those of Macaulay, Stevenson, Carlyle, etc., and the pieces by Hazlitt or Charles Lamb; and it is part of the intention of the following paper to indicate the nature of this difference. Generally speaking, the secret lies in the fact that Lamb carried on the traditions of the English essay, the tradition that found its first conscious spokesman in Bacon, was afterwards perpetuated in the periodical essays of the eighteenth century, and found its fullest, if not its latest, expressions in the Essays of Elia.

The theme of Milton's epic, we are told at the beginning of the poem, is man's disobedience, which brought death into the world. If there is a central doctrine in Paradise Lost, it would seem to be that death is the inevitable result of sin. The voice of God declares with severe emphasis that man, once become sinful,

To expiate his treason hath naught left,
But to destruction sacred and devote,
He with his whole posterity must die.

Brief narrative, at first thought, connotes the abridged fiction of low grade with which American magazines are now saturated; but as soon as the term is used to cover the whole field in modern literature, it calls to mind a genre which, under various names, has risen to a position of dignity in many places in the world and has worthily engaged the attention of literary historians, particularly in America and in Germany.

The chief features in the development of the form in the United States and England have been discussed at length, and there is now a definitive record, with abundant bibliographical apparatus, of its evolution. Poe is looked upon as the pioneer, and his perpetually quoted definition (1842) has set a standard for the majority of the practitioners of the art in the English language. The form suggests, for America, such experts as Hawthorne, Bret Harte, and Henry James; in England it does not gain the attention of writers of the first magnitude until near the end of the century, in the persons of Stevenson and Kipling.

The relations between the English romance, Sir Perceval, and its counterparts in French, German, and Welsh have been frequently and extensively investigated. Efforts have been made also to show connections between the story of Perceval (especially the boyhood portion) and various other stories—the “Fair Unknown” (Libeaus Desconus) group, the romance of Fergus, the lai of Tyolet, and the Irish tales of Cuchullin.

Another Irish story which has not, it seems to me, received the attention it merits in this connection is The Boyish Exploits of Finn. The resemblances between it and the English romance were first pointed out by Alfred Nutt in 1881. He believed The Boyish Exploits to he a fifteenth-century composition; and he repeated this belief in 1888, 1891, and 1910. This late date was supported in long arguments by Zimmer in 1890 and 1891; and it has been generally accepted by students of the story, including d'Arbois de Jubainville, Newell, Miss Paton, Miss Weston, and Professors Schofield and Griffith.

In determining whether the Lincoln mystery plays were processional like those of York and Chester or were acted on a fixed stage, it is important to know whether the St. Anne's Day Sights, about which there is a considerable amount of information, were merely floats or real plays. They are regarded as plays by Mr. Chambers and by Mr. A. F. Leach. A recently discovered account book of the Lincoln Cordwainers' Company, preserved in the Free Public Library, indicates what part the Cordwainers took in the St. Anne's day celebration and what the nature of the spectacle was. The Cordwainers were to maintain and send forth annually in the procession of St. Anne's day a pageant, called the Pageant of Bethlehem. This was not a play, and there is no evidence to show that they were responsible for a play at any season of the year. Their entries of expenses indicate a very different form of dramatic activity from that of the Weavers of Coventry and other companies in that city where the companies maintained plays.

Many, if not most, of the writers on early pageantry state that the first pageantic “royal-entry” at London took place in 1236, when Queen Eleanor of Provence arrived at her new capital. It is the purpose of this paper to show that there had been elaborate “royal-entries” before that date, and that the first pageantic “royal-entry” did not occur until sixty-two years after this ceremony. The best way to do this, is to make a survey of the “royal-entries” of the thirteenth century.

It was in connection with this method of honoring their rulers that the English people developed pageantry most notably between the early years of the thirteenth century and the reign of Queen Elizabeth; therefore the beginnings of pageantry in connection with the “royal-entry” are not only interesting in themselves, but historically important. The splendor which surrounded all ceremonies involving the king was great, long before 1200; Wendover's account of the coronation of Richard I in 1189 is a clear picture of the kind of thing that took place.