In the first decade of the twentieth century, Howells wrote three books on England: London Films (1906), Certain Delightful English Towns (1906), and Seven English Cities (1909). As with most of his book publication, nearly all of these three had appeared in magazines, with about forty pages of London Films first coming out in the December 1904 issues of Harper's Monthly and the North American Review and with one essay of Seven English Cities printed in Harper's as late as July 1909. The first two books resulted from Howells' visit to England from March to October 1904, and the last partly from a visit in May and June 1908, though it drew also upon his earlier, longer stay. From the beginning he showed an outward reluctance to return to travel literature, his first extended work in the genre since Tuscan Cities in 1886 and A Little Swiss Sojourn in 1892. In a letter of 12 April 1904 to his wife he complained that Colonel George Harvey, of Harper & Brothers, “in spite of our agreement … has told round that I'm going to do a book,” and he went on to ask her to remember “that I have not yet promised any sort of book on England, though probably I shall do one of some sort.” But in the same letter he reported doing “a tentative impression which could be used in the Spectator and Harper's Weekly” (neither did print it); he had already written letters and sent a “diary” to his wife, from which his daughter, who accompanied him to England, has observed he drew upon for his first two books; and he had begun the first of four notebooks soon after his landing at Plymouth in March. At least as early as February 15, as Robert W. Walts has found, Howells had written to F. A. Duneka of Harper's about a proposed travel book; and as Walts remarks, after quoting more extensively than I have from the April 12 letter to Howells' wife: “Nevertheless, after the indignation had been smothered, two books, London Films and Certain Delightful English Towns, were produced from that trip.”

No systematic study of the parallels in the Orlando Innamorato and the Faerie Queene has hitherto been presented. Random references to analogues were noted by Upton,1 but most of them remain of little value as positive proof of influence.

Recent teaching duties have obliged me to reread the bulk of Unamuno's published writings. In this rereading I have been struck by three or four clusters of images that recur with what seems like obsessive frequency. The purpose of this essay is to exhibit these images and to attempt to discover what function they fulfill in Unamuno's writing.

The meeting of the American Folk-Lore Society with the Modern Language Association of America on the one hand and with the American Anthropological Association on the other in 1938 illustrates very clearly the wide range of interests covered by the term folklore. A century ago no such term existed, but the need for one was greatly felt. Students of the popular ballad, of popular antiquities, and of superstitions all recognized that they had something in common, and, as soon as the word folklore was proposed in the 1840's, it was adopted, not only by the English-speaking public, but by the whole world. It is now as ubiquitous as the Ford car and moves uneasily in Russian or Hungarian texts, not to speak of such familiar literatures as French or German. During the ninety years in which this word has been spreading over the world, it has extended its meaning until no man today can take all folklore for his province.

Mr. R. H. Wilenski protests against the common belief that Ruskin was a kind of Art-Dictator of England in the eighteen-fifties. Ruskin, he says, was not a best-selling author during that decade; nor, on the other hand, was he respected by established artists and architects. So slight was his repute, indeed, that his letters to the Times in May 1851 can have done little to influence either the general or the specialist public in favor of pre-Raphaelitism. This drastic revision of accepted notions has had surprisingly little effect. In Mr. Paul Bloomfield's William Morris, Ruskin appears once more as the critic who gave “status” to the Pre-Raphaelites; and Mr. William Gaunt declares that on May 13, 1851, “an eagle scream was heard, a mighty talon hovered over the correspondence columns of The Times. It was Ruskin to the rescue. The Pre-Raphaelites had found a champion.” Neither of these writers mentions Wilenski's dissent.

It is increasingly the tendency of Beowulf students to stress the importance of the historical passages of the poem. Since Grundtvig established the date of Hygelac's last raid, one is inclined to expect corroboration of other parts of the narrative. But the extent to which one may reasonably accept the poet's statements is a matter for dispute. When he says that Beowulf was present at the last raid of Hygelac, there is no reason for doubt. Not so when he says that the hero swam off with thirty suits of armor. When the swimming match with Breca is mentioned, one may reasonably suppose that the hero distinguished himself in a swimming contest in his youth. But when he swims for days and fights off all manner of uncouth beasts, there seems to be sufficient grounds for skepticism. Or when Beowulf, filled with years dies fighting the dragon, we may feel sure that he died a violent death, without accepting the existence of dragons in the sixth century. Thus in general, we may limit confidence to simple facts simply asserted.

During the summer of 1849, while Melville was in New York writing White Jacket, the New York Herald carried a running story of the arrest and trial of a petty criminal known as the “Confidence Man.” There are several parallels between the Herald's “Confidence Man” and the character that Melville created in his later novel The Confidence-Man. Both the New York “Confidence Man” and Melville's Confidence-Man use the same approach and the same line of reasoning, leading to the same question: “Could you put any confidence in me?” Both men work under several aliases; both men use the former-acquaintance routine to relax their victims. In both the reality and the fiction there is a matter of bail to get out of the Tombs. And in both the novel and a Herald editorial a strong parallel is drawn between petty confidence men and the confidence men of Wall Street. From this correlation there is little doubt that this “Confidence Man” of 1849 was, in fact, the prototype for a major part of Melville's character in 1857.

Through the kindness of Professor R. M. Mitchell, of Brown University, who has sent me his copy of Venus in Rom, I am now able to give an account of Wilibald Alexis's rendering of the story of Venus and the ring. The materal is handled very freely — tant pis. The scene is laid in the Rome of the Renaissance, where (as one of the characters says) “winkt uns das Alterthum lockend in seine Wunderwelt zurück.” The first half— the whole is a novelette of thirty thousand words—is very slow-moving. Hubert von Stein, a German nobleman, has come to Rome to visit his friend, Theodor Savelli; who has, however, mysteriously disappeared. There are glimpses of Roman social life, of a necromancer and hermit named Palumbus, of the beautiful Viola Gritti, of Savelli's half-deserted palace (with a broken statue which has injured the workmen who were removing it), and even of Raphael painting in the Vatican. And there are violent thunder storms, strange meetings, dreams, visions, at night; a manifest attempt to create an atmosphere of the supernatural. The latter half is more lively. Savelli has appeared, half insane; he tells of a ball game on the day of his wedding, of putting the inconvenient ring on a Venus statue, of his consequent marriage with the goddess and fearful visits to the Venusberg. Hubert's wife Mathilde comes from Germany to find her husband … with a Roman mistress, Faustine, and a baby. Enter Martin Luther. There is an attempt on Leo X's life, a street riot, in which Hubert, denounced as a heretic, defends himself for several pages single-handed against the mob, escapes by leaping into the Tiber, is rescued by his mistress (who dies defending him), and counter-rescued by his faithful spouse. At the end Savelli, still insane, regains his ring— not, however, through Palumbus's aid,—returns to his wife Viola, persuades her to drink poison, burns his palace after an elaborate funeral, and becomes a pilgrim. Palumbus dies. Mathilde and Hubert return to Germany, with little Guido, Faustine's son.

[In the following paper, for reasons of brevity, a working hypothesis has been presented in narrative form: wherever a definite statement of historical fact has been made in support of a literary theory, the authority has been given in the footnotes. The article aims at elucidating certain problems in Love's Labour's Lost by correlating them with certain matters of historical fact which took place in and about the year 1591. The following points constitute problems in Love's Labour's Lost: (a) date of composition and first performance; (b) The unexpected dénoûment in the postponed marriages; (c) The choice of names for the leading male characters, Navarre, Berowne, etc.; (d) The curious emphasis laid upon the killing of the deer by the Princess; (e) The similarity of the Pageant scene at the close of the play to the Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe in The Midsummer Night's Dream; (f) The satire on Euphuism and Sonnets and other courtly affectations; (g) The unique observance by Shakespeare of the unities of time and place. The ensuing narrative has been evolved by applying to these problems the following matters of historical fact: (a) Burleigh's attempts, 1589–94, to force Southampton into marriage with his grand-daughter, Elizabeth de Vere, and Southampton's successful evasion of his betrothal; (b) Southampton's flight to France, 1591, to take part in the war in Normandy; (c) The Royal Progress, 1591, to Portsmouth and certain incidents in the entertainment of the Queen at Cowdray House.]

Many people would be mildly surprised to hear that it is possible to discuss a Swinburnian “love affair.” Some, perhaps, would be astonished to learn that Swinburne had a love affair; others, possibly, to hear that he had only one. Still others, no doubt, gripped by recollections of hot bloodbeats pulsating in persistent anapests, would be startled to learn that such a love affair, if there was one, could be discussed in print. But rumor, even of the printable sort, has not been idle. The story of his affair with Adah Menken, the comely and bosomy vaudevillian who provided Dumas père (aged sixty-four) with an Indian summer and (she hoped) Swinburne himself, aged twenty-nine, with a Pierian spring, has always appealed to raconteurs, and, in all conscience, it is a good anecdote. For years it was bruited about that Swinburne was in love with Mathilde Blind, a bluestocking poetess, and this fantasy had scarcely been dealt with before another ghost appeared—the absurd and irresponsible claim that Swinburne was in love and planned to elope with Elizabeth Siddal Rossetti, the wife of his dearest friend. Each of the stories, along with many others, has come, and, after its brief day, gone again, and no great harm has been done. To Mathilde Blind, Swinburne was a friend, an alert and cautious friend, and nothing more. Mrs. Rossetti he adored in life and revered in memory, but not one syllable of evidence supports the assertion, or even the suspicion, that his sentiment had anything in common with romantic love. Swinburne himself pronounced the final word about his relations with the tawdry “Dolores” Menken, and nothing can or need be added or subtracted: she was, he wrote (just after her death) in a private letter to a close friend, “most lovable as a friend as well as a mistress.” But this is not the language of passion. To each of these three women Swinburne was attracted in some way, but by no sophistication of vocabulary could any one of the three attachments be termed a “love affair.”

In the early twentieth century, a period of mass immigration, Jewish assimilation into mainstream American society was largely a theatrical venture. The musical theater, a predominantly Jewish field that portrayed a variety of American experiences, offers powerful illustrations of theatrical strategies of Jewish assimilation. The groundbreaking Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! (1943), created during one of the most anti-Semitic periods in United States history, exemplifies how ethnic outsiders demonized a racial other in an effort to be considered white and thus to be included in the utopian (theatrical) community of America.

In a previous paper, “The Origin of the Ancren Riwle,” I showed that a remarkable series of coincidences would seem to prove that the Ancren Riwle was written for the three “puellae” (Emma, Christina, and Gunhilda), to whom the hermitage of Kilburn, together with land and three corrodies, was granted by the abbot and convent of Westminster c. 1134. Their house was described in the foundation charter as “heremitorium de Cuneburna, quod aedificavit Godwynus,” and it was given to the three young women “concessu tamen, atque precatu illius Godwyni heremitae, quatinus eundem locum qui ad ilium pertinet in elemosina pro redemptione animarum totius praedicti conventus fratrum possideant.” The gift was made, not only to the three maidens in question, but “omnibus illis quae inibi eadem sanctitatis vitae norma fruendi causa futurae sunt.” Godwin, who had evidently instigated the establishment, was to oversee it: “Sit ille praescriptus heremita Godwynus, magister loci, illarumque puellarum quamdiu vixerit custos. Et post ejus obitum eligat conventus puellarum seniorem ydoneum, qui earum ecclesiae praesit, abbatis tamen concilio.” Some further information as to the nucleus of Kilburn Priory is given us by Prior Flete of Westminster in the fifteenth century. He writes of Abbot Herebert: “Iste fundavit cellam canonissarum de Kilborn, ubi prius quidam nomine Godwinus heremiticam multo tempore ducebat vitam. . . . statuit tres virgines Deo sacratas, domicellas videlicet camerae Matildis bonae reginae, consortis regis Henrici primi.”

In a review-article dealing with four recent monographs, all of which were to some extent devoted to problems connected with the genesis of Zola's novels, M. Jean Onimus points out that it is hard to think of another author in whom such problems can be more satisfactorily studied. The survival of the dossiers of each of the novels in the three great cycles makes it possible to elucidate almost the entire process of composition in respect of each component work and hence to generalize about this process with considerably more assurance than is permissible to the student of any other major French novelist. “Ce que nous cherchons avec tant de difficulté chez Balzac, ce que Stendhal nous livre au hasard de ses ‘pilotis’ et des commentaires en marge de ses manuscrits, ce que Gide nous a donné dans le Journal des Faux-Monnayeurs, Zola nous le révèle pour toutes ses œuvres et jusque dans le dernier détail.”

Much has been written about the influence of the early reviewers on Tennyson. Professor Lounsbury, who has made the only real printed effort at a scholarly analysis of the question, believed the influence to be very slight. I shall attempt here to collect and sift the evidence afresh and to determine as clearly as possible the part which the reviewers played in Tennyson's ten-years' silence after the publication of his first two independent volumes (1830, 1833), in his revisions and suppressions of poems in them, and in his choice of subjects and expression of ideas in the new poems of 1842.

In recent years Baudelaire has come to be recognized as one of the greatest of French critics, a critic whose judgments have an almost uncanny sureness, and whose principles of art and of criticism have a lasting validity. He was from the beginning a most independent and original critic. But he was also an avid reader, and his mind was full of ideas which he had read or heard. It is from a tangled skein of other people's ideas that he slowly wove a harmonious and original pattern that is unlike any of its single threads. In much of his early critical work, however, some at least of the strands are easily distinguishable. Among these are the works of Baudelaire's two greatest predecessors in art criticism, Diderot and Stendhal.

It seems incredible that the analogues and sources for the “gentle bird” of reconciliation between Timias and Belphebe in the Faerie Queene (Bk. IV, 8, 3-12)—one of the loveliest guiding beasts in literature—should have escaped investigation. But, though a few scattered notes have been published on the passage in question, no one, so far as I am aware, has yet pointed out a satisfactory source or parallel.

The traditional treatment of the adverb has posed problems of classification in the three languages under consideration. English very has traditionally been classified as an adverb, and the efforts of structural linguists to reclassify it as an intensifier may be extended to French très and Spanish muy as well. However, the three intensifiers do not pattern in the same way, for very patterns with adjectives and adverbs, but not with verbs or nouns; très and muy pattern with adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and with the past participle of verbs. The patterning of très and muy with nouns raises the question of the basis for differentiating adjectives from nouns. While the distinction between these two form classes in English is sometimes arbitrary, the line separating them is even less clear-cut in French and Spanish, languages in which nominalization is more widespread than in English. The unsatisfactory treatment of the three intensifiers in bilingual dictionaries of the French- English and Spanish-English type is due to the failure of lexicographers to link illustrative phrases and sentences to relevant structural features of the languages concerned, a practice all too common in dictionaries not compiled in accordance with scientific principles of lexicography.

Das schwache Priteritum ist hinsichtlich seines Ursprungs und seiner Entwicklung in vorhistorischer Zeit vielleicht die am heissesten umstrittene Formengruppe der gennanischen Grammatik. Dass es den Forschern schwer fällt sich vollig miteinander zu verstandigen, daran sind wir ja auch sonst gewohnt. Aber beim schwachen Prateritum scheint der Gegensatz der Ansichten grösser und die Einigung demgemass schwieriger als bei anderen Problemen. Was hilft es, hier von einem dentalen Präteritum zu sprechen, wenn der eine in dem Dental eine idg. Tenuis, der andere darin eine idg. Aspirate oder Spirans sieht? Und wie konnen wir auf Einigung hoffen, wenn wir die Wahl haben, dieses Präteritum mit dem griechischen Passiv-Aorist, dem idg. PassivPartizipium, dem idg. Aktiv-Aorist oder medialen Aorist, dem idg. medialen Perfekt oder gar dem Prasens lateinischer Factitiva zu verbinden? Es wird nicht notig sein, diese Vorschläge bier des Nilhcren vorzuführen und zu priifen. Man findet die Erklärungsversuche, welche bis dahin gemacbt waren, einigermassen vollständig in meiner Monographic Das schwache. Präteritum und seine Berkunft aufgezählt. Das Verzeichnis ist bis auf die Gegenwart weitergeführt von A. W. M. O&t in der Abhandlung “Das schwache Präteritum in den Genmanischen; Sprachen.” Ich kann mir Odé's Urteil über die neueren Theorien in vielen Fallen zu eigen machen. Auch trifft der neue Erklärungsversuch, den er vorlegt, meiner Meinung nach wenigstens bis zu elnem gewissen Grade das Richtige. Aber es bleibt doch ein beträchtlicher Rest von Meinungsverschiedenheit, der zu dem Versuche weiterer Verständigung cintädt.