Readers of Wordsworth are aware that the 1790's were years of excitement for the poet —his experiences in France during the Revolution, his love affair with Annette Vallon, his reunion with his sister Dorothy after long separation, and the heady months of talks on poetry with his new friend Coleridge—the only other first-rate poet of his generation. Equally plain is the fact that about 1805 a long decline in Wordsworth's career began: the revolutionary grew conservative, the poet often turned to mere versifying.

Only someone living in the historically burdened holy land can understand what good fortune it is to live in a city free from holy weight. I have long thought how auspicious it was for Ramallah, a city founded only in the fifteenth century, to have escaped mention in the Holy Scriptures.

“Wordsworth, give me leave to introduce you to my only admirer.” Thus one day in 1815 Charles Lamb introduced Thomas Noon Talfourd “to the person whom in all the world I venerated most” Not always, however, had this young lawyer of the Inner Temple held Wordsworth in such high regard. Until he went to London in 1813 and met Barron Field, his opinions had taken their direction from Jeffrey and the Edinburgh Renew. Field, however, induced him to try to read Wordsworth sympathetically and understandingly. As a result, Talfourd declares, “my taste and feeling, as applied to poetry, underwent an entire change.” Aversion to Wordsworth and the “new poetry” gave way to an enthusiastic acceptance of the gospel of Romanticism, and from it he never afterwards swerved.

Goethe's Werther and his Faust respond divergently to the Resurrection. Whereas Werther reclassifies Christ from exclusive mediator to model in order to emulate His death and rebirth, Faust is prevented by an Easter cantata from attempting self-translation. Faust's subsequent words and acts show that, although an unbeliever, he views Jesus as a mediator and has been reminded by the cantata of man's multifaceted dependence on mediation. The rainbow of “Anmutige Gegend” similarly affects a restored and newly hubristic Faust. Mediation underlies Goethe's concept of symbolism, and, like other Goethean mediators (e.g., the “Schleier” of the dedicatory poem to his collected works), the introductory symbols of Redeemer and rainbow in Faust, Parts i and ii, symbolize symbolism itself, man's essential mode of relating to ultimates. Mediation helps explain such puzzling inclusions in Faust as the quarrel between Neptunists and Vulcanists and is the central concept in the finale by the Chorus Mysticus.

Many origins have been suggested for the type of narrative song appearing in the English and Scottish traditional ballads: minstrel genesis, origin in the dance, improvisations of mediaeval peasant communes, or descent from the dance songs of primitive peoples. The hypothesis of minstrel origin was that first to be advanced and it has always retained supporters. There remains a possibility not yet brought forward which deserves to be presented for what it is worth, since the problem, though it may be insoluble, has its attraction for critic and student. We have but meager knowledge of the ballad melodies of pre-Elizabethan days, and we can get but little farther with the study of the ballads by way of research into mediaeval music. Moreover the earliest texts remaining to us seem to have been meant for recital rather than for singing. In general, the melodies of ballads are more shifting, less dependable, than are the texts, in the sense of the plots and the characters which the texts present. This is true of contemporary folk-songs and it was probably true earlier. One text may be sung to a variety of airs or one air may serve for many texts. Nor can we get much farther with the study of ballads by way of the minstrels. They have had much attention already; and nothing has ever been brought out really barring them from major responsibility for ballad creation and diffusion in the earlier periods. Again, we can get but little farther by studying the mediaeval dance, or folk-improvisations, or the dance songs of primitive peoples, all of which have been associated with the Child ballads to an exaggerated degree. It is time to try a new angle of approach—the last remaining—although the hypothesis which it suggests is far removed from the theory of genesis enjoying the greatest acceptance at the present time, and although it—like its predecessors—may not take us very far.

What little critical discussion exists on Harlem Gallery (1965) has focused on the question of whether high modernist verse is appropriate to African American art. But Tolson's work is itself “about” modernism—and modernism's relation to African American culture; it is thus better read for its idea of an African American avant-garde than for the question of whether its technique is recognizably “modernist.” The poem's ideological commitment to modernism eventually involves the delegitimation of separatist populism, and Harlem Gallery achieves its argumentative (ideological) “certainty” largely by refusing to specify the historical and cultural position of the avant-garde it invokes—an avant-garde that had, by 1965, become part of the cultural lingua franca. In critical retrospect, however, Tolson's charged advocacy of modernism places him close and yet opposed to Houston Baker, whose Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance can be read as a postmodern, revisionary redefinition of what Tolson took African American modernism to be.

There is a fascination in the attempt to define the supernatural, although one is aware of the etymological contradiction implied in the effort. The definition of the Century Dictionary, “that which is above or beyond the established course or laws of nature,” does not help us much. This definition is best approached by drawing a distinction between the natural and the supernatural which may be epitomized by stating that the former is comprehended, the latter only apprehended. We know, for example, what Poe means when he speaks of the dual self in William Wilson, but we do not comprehend the methods by which that duality is to be brought about. In this lack of comprehension lies the attraction of the supernatural. It is one phase of the larger appeal of the romantic, which includes it; and it springs from that ever present demand for what is strange and new which is a part of the nature of man. It is of interest to note that in the nineteenth century, which has demanded an ever increasing exactitude in science, and in America, where commercial standards have always been definite, there has been developed to a remarkable degree a literature dealing with that which cannot be proved or understood.

The chief source of information concerning the legal attitude toward woman in the thirteenth century is the Código de las Siete Partidas, compiled during the reign of Alfonso X, and representing an attempt to bring order out of the legal chaos then existent and to substitute a general code for the local fueros. The few generalities to be made about the compilation itself can be summed up briefly.

As to the sources, Martínez Marina states that Roman laws—Decretals, Digest, Code, Pandects—were used, and complains that in the first and fourth Partidas the laws of the Gothic codes and the municipal fueros were omitted, and Castilian customs were disregarded. The identity of the authors is open to question, although they were undoubtedly selected from the leading jurisconsults of the day. Ureña calls attention to the marked development in the use of a legal terminology in Spanish which is substituted for Latin, previously the language of the law.

That John Bunyan had read at least the first book of Spenser's Faerie Queene, and had transformed certain adventures of the Red Cross Knight into the adventures of his own hero in Pilgrim's Progress, is a statement which has been frequently made. And, indeed, the idea has much reason on its side. The parallel between a series of incidents in Spenser's first book and a series in Pilgrim's Progress is fully as close as many another which has been held sufficient to establish a literary relationship. To Spenser's House of Holinesse, with its porter, its four grave damsels, its sober entertainment of the knight, corresponds Bunyan's House Beautiful. To the closing episode of the Red Cross Knight's sojourn at the House of Holinesse, his sight of the pilgrim's road and of Hierusalem from the near-by Mount of Contemplation, corresponds the view which Christian, from the top of the House Beautiful, has of the Delectable Mountains, from which, in the course of the story, he is to see the Celestial City itself. To the immediately succeeding conflict with the dragon, to the monster's fiery breath and horrid shrieks, to the hero's distress and eventual triumph, and particularly to the miraculous restoration of the wounded knight through the agency of the Tree of Life, corresponds Christian's battle with Apollyon, fought in the Valley of Humiliation, just after he has parted from the damsels of the House Beautiful. When to the parallel between these series of incidents in The Faerie Queene and in Pilgrim's Progress is added a certain similarity between the allegorical significances of these incidents, as well as a much more doubtful likeness between Spenser's Despair and the Giant Despair of Bunyan, some sort of relationship between the earlier and the later author appears evident enough.

One of the earliest members of the important Scève family at Lyons was Henri Scève, great-grandfather of Maurice Scève, the leading poet of the Lyonnese renaissance. Henri, who was still living in 1471, seems to have had two sons, François and Léonard. Of François, the younger of these sons, we learn that about 1480 he suffered considerable damage à la barre du pont du Rosne tant pour la mortalité, gens d'armes, que pour les grans eaues.

In 1493, he possessed des prés et des terres labourables in the parish of Vaise. Ten years later (1503), he and his son were proprietors of the inn Ste-Catherine, which, however, was maloustru et mal prouffitant.

The importance of Gawin Douglas' Eneados, the first English translation of the Aeneid, has been acknowledged since the sixteenth century. In 1530 David Lindsay wrote of Douglas' “worthy workis . . . And, speciallye, the trew Translatioun / Off Uirgill,” and forty years later Barnabie Googe ranked the Scots poet's translation above that of his English successor, Surrey,

The Noble H. Hawarde once,
That raught eternall fame, With mighty style did bring a pece
Of Virgil's worke in frame, And Grimaold gave the lyke attempt,
And Douglas wan the Ball, Whose famous wyt in Scottysh ryme
Had made an ende of all.

Although both Wordsworth and Coleridge were strongly influenced by the popular ballad, they were attracted by this form for very different reasons and affected by it in very different ways. The one point in common is that this influence was in both cases mainly for good. Wordsworth was drawn to the ballad by its directness and simplicity of style, and by the fact that it often treats of the lower classes of men in what Rousseau would have called a natural state of society. Coleridge took up the ballad for a nearly opposite reason; i. e., because of its remoteness from modern life, a remoteness that left him free play for his imagination. Thus, oddly, Wordsworth cultivated the ballad because it had once been close to common life; Coleridge because it was now remote from common life and gave him a form remarkably susceptible of that strangeness which the romantic genius habitually adds to beauty. Wordsworth preferred the domestic, or occasionally the sentimental-romantic, ballad; Coleridge markedly adhered to the supernatural ballad.

Gautier de Coincy, ou Quency, ou Comsy, ou Coinsy, ou Coigny, est, on le sait, ce moine bénédictin, Prieur de Vic-sur Aisne, puis de Saint Médard près de Soissons, qui au début de la relativement brillante période littéraire du XIIIe siècle, écrivit en français la collection la plus importante qui nous soit parvenue des Miracles de Notre Dame. Son œuvre entière, dont la plus grande partie de beaucoup consiste en ces contes rimés, comprend 30 à 40,000 vers. Il a été parfois étudié par les savants, mais les hommes de lettres, considérant un poète du point de vue de sa valeur intrinsèque et artistique, n'ont pas encore été tentés fortement. Pourtant son œuvre est importante. Les hommes qui connaissent le mieux leur Moyen-Age s'en rendent compte et appellent de leurs vœux depuis longtemps le Romaniste dévoué qui mettra la main à une édition scientifique de notre auteur. Plusieurs travailleurs, comme Mussafia et Paul Meyer, ont posé les premiers jalons.

One of the earliest evidences of the existence of a legend of Saint George is found in a pronunciamento of Pope Gelasius, made in connection with the first Roman council of the year 494. In the presence of seventy bishops he endeavored to separate the canonical and authentic books of the Church from those which are to be looked upon as apocryphal. After mentioning the books of the Bible, the decisions of the councils, the church fathers, and the decrees of the Popes, he cites the Lives of Saints and Martyrs, and adds that some of these latter writings are justly viewed with suspicion, both because the names of their authors are unknown, and because their contents stamp them as being the compositions of heretics or sectarians; he then cites as examples “cujusdam Quirici et Julittae, sicut Georgii aliorumque hujusmodi passiones, quae ab hereticis perhibentur compositae.”

Although some of Shelley's Victorian critics—notably Forman—believed The Cenci to be an acting play, it now seems to have become a settled dictum of Shelley scholarship that it is a closet drama. Woodberry in his edition of the play and Bates in his study of it both conclude that it is unsuitable for stage production, Bates summarizing his views as follows:

The description of the seven planets in the Testament of Cresseid by the Scottish Chaucerian, Robert Henryson (c. 1425–c. 1500), is perhaps the most lively and arresting in English literature. Approximately one-third of the poem is devoted to the planets, and they play an essential role in the trial and punishment of Cresseid, who becomes a leper here and hereafter in the Troilus-Criseyde story. This note is an attempt to clear the way for the study of the origins and sources of the planet portraits and to shed some light on the competence of the poet.

By substituting astrological qualities for the mythological qualities of the ancient gods, Chaucer had pioneered and had made poetic capital of the astrological magic in which his age had come to believe. Henryson took full advantage of this fact. The Testament of Cresseid contains many elements of astrology: in the opening lines, the poet dates the poem by means of an astronomical periphrase in which he describes the Sun and Venus in opposition, a combination which signifies “A barren time … the Native impudent and bold in his wantonnesse and Lust, wholly occupied in scurvy and sordid actions, whereby he incurres great Infamy, Scandall and Disgrace,” and which sets the tone for the burden of the poem; the planets are ranked according to their astrological order, and Mercury is chosen speaker, a choice which accords with his influence over logic and debate; the choice of Saturn and Cynthia to deliver the verdict of leprosy is fitting, according to the astrological qualities of the humours, and the poet's treatment of the disease shows a detailed knowledge of astrological medicine.

Felix Holt, A Radical is today cursorily dismissed by students of George Eliot's works as her one unsuccessful venture in fiction on the position of the laborer in society. Actually, although the novel is somewhat dull in plot, it was by no means unsuccessful in its own time, nor was it George Eliot's only novelistic attempt to discuss industrial issues.