One of the most striking features of the style of Old English poetry is the frequent use of rhetorical understatement. A. H. Tolman was apparently the first to point out this stylistic trait, and more recently passing references to it have been frequent. The following article attempts an investigation of its origin, occurrence, and uses.

Gadow was the first commentator to notice a connection between certain terms in The Owl and the Nightingale and the language of the law courts, and Atkins was the first to make a detailed study of this phase of the poem. The present commentator has added elsewhere a number of significant details. Both Atkins and the present writer have sought an explanation of the use of the diction and procedure of the courts of the twelfth century in the fact that the arbiter of the debate, Nicholas of Guildford, was connected with the judiciary, either secular or ecclesiastical. Since the evidence presented was somewhat fragmentary and inconclusive, the writer has pursued the present study to establish a connection between the judicial usage of the age, including the penalties inflicted upon the guilty and some passages in the poem, which apparently have not hitherto been noted in this connection.

In 1933, while rummaging about in the mediaeval records of Lincoln, I found a whole series of new entries concerning the Church plays of Lincoln Cathedral for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Previously one could survey the few known items concerning them in the appendix to E. K. Chambers' Mediaeval Stage. One could add to these a few more details by going to Chambers' sources, Mr. A. F. Leach and Bishop Christopher Wordsworth, whose Notes on Mediaeval Services in England contains a section devoted to Lincoln customs. The extant records, however, contain a consecutive series of entries which outline with remarkable fullness the drama within the Cathedral Church from 1318 to the accession of Elizabeth.

Il était impossible pour la philologie anglaise de répondre avec exactitude à la question de savoir si Chaucer, pour sa traduction de la Consolation de Boèce, s'était servi de celle de Jean de Meun: on s'y était pris trop tôt—avant d'avoir les matériaux nécessaires. Lorsque Morris, dans son édition de 1868 du Boèce de Chaucer, s'est posé pour la première fois cette question, rien n'avait encore été fait dans ce domaine par la philologie française. Les manuscrits n'étaient pas classés et, par conséquent, étaient inutilisables. Morris fut obligé, faute de mieux, d'avoir recours, pour comparer les deux textes, à une version anonyne de 1477 (réimprimée en 1494) et conclut logiquement, mais à tort, que Chaucer ne s'était pas servi de la traduction de Jean de Meun. Nous disons “à tort,” car nous savons aujourd'hui que, malgré son épître dédicatoire, le texte de l'édition de 1494 n'est pas la traduction de Jean de Meun. L'opinion de Morris fut suivie en 1870 par B. ten Brink.

Francesco Cieco da Ferrara, author of the Mambriano, has been an enigmatic figure in Italian literature. It is strange that so little is known of this important intermediary between Boiardo and Ariosto. Long after his death, it is true, some definite but extravagant things were written about him by literary men who probably felt the need of dressing up the poor poet: he was an eminent jurist, a theologian and philosopher. But we know only Cieco the minstrel, and common sense would question the truth of these assertions. Again, almost a hundred years after his death, the family name of Bello was bestowed upon Cieco by Francesco Buonamici, a philosopher and astronomer whose information about Italian literary matters was scant and inaccurate. Although scholars like Rua have followed the Bello clue without success, this cognomen has come down into our library catalogues and even into Rua's own edition of the Mambriano, Would it not be good sense to dismiss the Bello christening as the tardy and offhand mistake of an astrologer?

In her excellent John Florio, Miss Yates writes (p. 189): “Florio's Worlde of Wordes is an important landmark in the history of Italian scholarship in England.” And, a little further on (p. 190), she continues: “To modern students of the sixteenth century, both Italian and English, it is invaluable…. The number, variety, and picturesqueness of the English equivalents which Florio manages to collect for each Italian word are remarkable.” This is by no means exaggerated praise. A few hours' study of the Italian-English dictionary should indeed convince one of the essential correctness of Miss Yates's evaluation.

The publication of fourteen epigrams by Sir John Harington in Henry Parrot's Springes for Woodcocks (1613) is gaining recognition as a leading case in the study of Elizabethan literary ethics. Doubtless encouraged by the opportunity to pun on Parrot's name, two contemporaries, John Davies of Hereford and Richard Brathwaite, attacked him for this minor outrage. Their blunt charge that Parrot “stole” epigrams contrasts with the usual mild accusation of “borrowing,” and indicates an increasing appreciation of literary rights. Considerable importance is attached to the case in Professor Harold Ogden White's recent study of literary ethics, but he does not examine the underlying facts, and he only briefly cites the documents.

Emanations are the stock in trade of mediums, table-rappers, spiritists, and ghosts; they aid the reasoning of romantic poets and all those whose sensations outstrip their science and philosophy, providing a plausible, if undefined bridge between things apparently unconnected and making at least half-acceptable the inexplicable and the occult. Emanations are a metaphor—an old one. They have progressed through the whole biography of a metaphor from plain work-a-day description to science, to definition in philosophy, to the occult, and to poetry; indeed, they have lived that long biography at least twice in the memory of men. For the use of poetry, religion, and the mystical sciences emanations were discovered in the ancient world, lost, won again in renaissance times, and lost or temporarily abandoned by us.

Dr. Johnson, in discussing the group of poets he dubbed “metaphysical,” defined their “wit” as “a kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images … ” This discordia has been recognized ever since as a distinguishing characteristic of Donne and other poets who resemble him; but by Johnson and most succeeding critics the discordia has been considered almost exclusively as a property of the poet's imagery. It seems to me that the principle involved is much more comprehensive; that in the poetry of Donne in particular discordant imagery is only one part of a general method which involves many other elements in his poetic style, and which is responsible to a considerable degree for his most striking and individual effects.

Graviseth's anonymously published Heutelia, only superficially mentioned in manuals of Swiss literature (except Ermatinger's), deserves a short analytic study both on account of its interest as a state-satire preceding the Age of Enlightenment and on account of the rarity of its editions, which are not accessible to scholars in America.

The book, published in 1658, does not greatly point to the past, although its satirical trends, its realistic and grobianistic elements, and its dislike of monks and women do indeed remind us of the esprit gaulois of Rabelais and the mentality of Fischart and the pamphleteers of the Reformation. More important is the political aspect of this diary of a critical journey through Switzerland; and the whole tenor of Heutelia, the penetrating analyses of men and their institutions, the sharp attacks against the vices of the ancien régime and the bigoted intolerance of the church, make the book an early forerunner of Montesquieu's Lettres persanes. Its style is still baroque and its vocabulary full of foreign words; but in its keen political criticism this book inaugurates an era of greater liberalism. Graviseth, a German aristocrat from the Palatinate who had become citizen of Bern, may well be likened to Albrecht von Haller, because both of them, though aristocrats to the core, tried equally discreetly to work for greater social justice for all. Haller's state-novels attempt it in the realm of pure thought, in carefully worded philosophical and political dialogues; while Graviseth, much more realistic and earthy, mingles jokes and coarseness in his paragraphs, ridiculing the masses for their materialistic viciousness.

Among the shadowy figures that make up the circle of Congreve's most intimate friends, Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, seems to have suffered most from the gossip of her own age and from the more detached but still biassed estimates of later critics. Not one of her contemporaries spoke a really decisive word in her favor; and the biographers of Congreve have preferred to dismiss her as an amusing eccentric. But one critic, Leigh Hunt, has cared to linger over this minor portrait, commenting on “the slow yet sensitive mind” of the Duchess and concluding that she loved Congreve “with all the heart she had, and a great deal of obstinacy.”

Sir Robert Howard, patron of John Dryden, director and playwright of the King's Theatre, Auditor of the Receipt of the Exchequer, and member of Parliament for thirty years, was a very important figure in the court of Charles II. It is surprising, therefore, that so little knowledge of his activities has found its way into print. Even Mr. Montague Summers in his recent extensive study of the Restoration theatre, The Playhouse of Pepys, deplores this scarcity. Moreover, he makes a statement or two which proves the inaccuracy of the little which has been printed. Referring to Howard's appointment as Secretary to the Commissioners of the Treasury, he calls the office “a very lucrative Post,” and in proof quotes Pepys, “Howard hath got, they say, £20,000 since the King came in.” I should like to suggest that the £20,000 came from several sources besides the Secretaryship. Wittingly or not, however, Mr. Summers has indicated the keynote of Howard's career. It was money first, last, and always which interested him.

In his Seconde Lettre à Monsieur de Voltaire sur ses Jugemens Littéraires Clément de Dijon makes the following statements:

J'aime dans Montaigne sa Philosophie douce et riante, sans morgue et sans pédanterie, qui répand l'enjouement sur les choses les plus sérieuses. Cette Philosophie est celle de La Fontaine qui a beaucoup imité Montaigne … Voyez que le ton de Montaigne vous découvre un homme gaiement préparé a faire bonne contenance contre la mort.

When Addison in his essay on the imagination made novelty a source of aesthetic pleasure, along with beauty and grandeur, he was not announcing a discovery. Previous critics had repeatedly noted the efficacy of the varied and strange, the wonderful, and the surprising in achieving desired poetic effects. Addison's idea of novelty includes these elements. The new or uncommon diverts our minds with “the Strangeness of its appearance”; the novel “fills the Soul with an agreeable Surprise”; variety, in the essay on the Imagination and in the criticism of Paradise Lost alike, is a virtual synonym for novelty; and the wonderful, or the marvelous, almost invariably applies to that which possesses both grandeur and novelty—to anything that excites “admiration.”

Behind nearly all English literary criticism, particularly that relating to the Neo-classic drama, lies the Poetics of Aristotle. Some writers have been greatly affected by this epochal work; others have come under its sphere of influence to a lesser degree. However, there are few authors of importance upon whom the Poetics has failed to make some profound and enduring impression. Despite the fact that its influence permeates all English literature, excessive emphasis is laid sometimes upon the effect of Aristotle's teachings, to the detriment of such prominent critics as Horace, Vida, Trissino, Giraldi, Boileau, and Fontenelle. This applies especially to commentators on Hume. Indeed, the Scottish philosopher, historian, and critic subscribed to the majority of Aristotle's tenets, but the doctrines of Tully, Horace, Boileau, and Corneille made an equally impressive and indelible imprint upon his mind.

It has been quite some time since the charge that Schiller's Braut von Messina is a fate-tragedy à la Zacharias Werner was completely dismissed. We can also disregard the mixture of mythologies frowned upon by A. W. Schlegel, since in our day mythologies, like universes, threaten to become relative. The idea that the Braut is a pure imitation of the Greek tragedy, and that its dramatist was following Sophocles particularly, has fallen by implication, since attempts to point out the sources have gone down into ignoble failure.

On the other hand, we may today accept the brilliant critical statement of Wilhelm Dilthey, that the Braut is “das Mittelglied zwischen dem antiken Drama und der neuen Form des musikalischen Drama, die Wagner in den Nibelungen schuf.” This idea has been expanded by Josef Nadler, who does not fail to exclaim against the obstinate misinterpretation to which this drama, together with the Jungfrau von Orleans, has consistently been subjected. Nadler sees in the Braut the culmination of a tendency noticeable in the operatic tones of the Jungfrau, a tendency toward the creation of tragedy out of the spirit of music.

Il y a trois mois s'éteignait Alfred Valette, le directeur du Mercure de France depuis sa fondation, exactement un jour et vingt ans après Remy de Gourmont. Des fondateurs de la vivante revue qui célébrera dans quatre ans ses noces d'or avec la littérature, un seul survit aujourd'hui, M. Ernest Reynaud. On écrira un jour l'histoire de la vie littéraire d'avant-hier; le rôle, joué par le Mercure, revue et maison d'édition, se révélera considérable, non seulement à l'égard des lettres, mais de la pensée. Au centre d'une phalange d'hommes de talent, on verra se détacher deux figures, Valette et Gourmont, l'un le directeur identifié à sa fonction, qui communiqua au Mercure sa propre solidité, l'autre, l'auteur des Promenades littéraires, des Promenades philosophiques, des Epilogues, qui lui passa quelque chose de ses goûts universels; l'un, l'homme de jugement et d'action, l'autre l'homme de réflexion. Valette et Gourmont furent les consuls du Mercure de France des vingt-cinq premières années. Il se trouve que les dernières lignes écrites par Valette furent un témoignage d'amitié, rendu à la mémoire de l'autre consul, à l'occasion du vingtième aniversaire de sa mort. Quand elles sortirent de presse, Valette n'était plus.

The attempts to analyze the significance of Count Leo Tolstoy and to understand the workings of his mind have not yet reached any satisfactory conclusion. The riddle of the man's personality and the sources of his power still defy careful labelling, for the inconsistencies of his thoughts and actions have been swept away from sight by the blasts of his genius. Out of the confusion has emerged a great Tolstoy, but it is difficult to unite this legend with the man as we know him in sober history and in fact. This difficulty is recognized by many modern students. Thus Aldanov frankly calls his small but suggestive volume Zagadka Tolstogo (The Riddle of Tolstoy), and Alexander Nazaroff in Tolstoy, the Inconstant Genius also emphasizes the contradictions in his life and allows them to speak for themselves. The effect is surprising, but not as unkind as it might seem.

The critics and biographers of Edouard Rod have almost without exception failed to mention the emotional experience which inspired his best novels. Beuchat, in describing Rod's sojourn at Geneva from 1886 to 1893, does refer briefly and inadequately to his love for André Gladès. His statement, which suggests only incompletely the influence of André Gladès on the composition of Rod's novels, needs to be amplified and clarified. For, notwithstanding Rod's own confession that she more than any other person influenced his subsequent literary career, other critics have ignored the existence of André Gladès and have consequently failed to give a complete and accurate interpretation of his work and its sources of inspiration.

To the student of writing and literature few inquiries are more interesting and valuable than that into an author's practices in revising his own work. To observe the various stages in the evolution of the final version, to note carefully an artist at his work of pruning the dead wood, adding fresh material, smoothing away harsh phrases, selecting just words, and letting light into obscure places—to do this is to come somewhat nearer to an understanding of what in spite of all analysis will remain essentially a mystery. Especially fascinating and instructive is the study of Conrad's revision, for here one sees a supreme artist at work. In his vigorous hewing and rebuilding there is conclusive proof of the artist's untiring industry and consummate skill. Conrad's revision of Nostromo is of particular interest, for this novel occupies a critical place in the evolution of Conrad's prose. Mr. Richard Curie has justly characterized the change that came over Conrad's prose—a change perceptible in the “Amy Foster” of Typhoon and fully marked in from Under Western Eyes onward. This evolution has smoothed away the cadence, has concentrated the manner, has toned down the style of Conrad's former exuberance. At first glance the later and the earlier Conrad appear two totally different men. The unruly splendor of the one has given way to the subtle and elastic suavity of the other … His earlier prose is sometimes uncertain, sometimes exaggerated, but his later prose has the uniform temper of absolute mastery.