Three and a half centuries of criticism confront the student of today who attacks the problem of Spenser's diction. The purpose of the following study is not so much to present new material in the field of Spenserian scholarship as to effect a synthesis of the many theories which have been put forward and thus to present the whole subject more comprehensively.

The three scholars, J. M. Hart, F. S. Boas, and L. R. Merrill, who have in recent years done most to call the Christus Redivivus to the attention of general readers and scholars have without exception emphasized especially the element of the Miles Gloriosus utilized in the early drama by Grimald with astonishing elaborateness and effectiveness. The four soldiers stationed by Pilate to guard the sepulchre of Christ are used by Grimald in apparently a more original manner than in any other single situation in the religious drama of the sixteenth century in England. Hart merely calls attention to the presence of the Miles Gloriosus elements in the play. Boas makes a great deal of it, emphasizing Grimald's ability to vary his style to suit the changing speakers and occasions. He gives an elaborate description of the most interesting scenes of the play in which the four bragging soldiers appear. “It would be interesting,” he says, “to know whether Grimald confided to Airy that he had later models than Plautus, and that in his tragi-comic treatment of a Biblical theme he had been influenced by at least one of the continental humanist playwrights, Barptholomaeus Lochiensis, whose Christus Xylonicus, first published at Paris in 1529, had been re-issued at Antwerp in 1537, and by Johan Gymnicus at Cologne in 1541. . . . . The action of Christus Xylonicus ends with the burial in the garden tomb, . . . .” Merrill in his very valuable contribution to the Grimald field of scholarship lays considerable emphasis upon the element of the bragging soldiers around the grave of Christ, and points out convincing evidence of the indebtedness of one of Sebastian Wilde's plays to this portion of the Christus Redivivus.

The so-called formal dialogue constituted between the years 1640 and 1700 a substantial part of ephemeral as well as serious literature. Like the present-day dialogue of fiction and of the stage, it was only approximately natural, and to a varying degree. In modern novels or in popular “talky” plays it is not hard to find passages which neither advance the plot nor build characterization, and wherein the interest is emphatically centered on the topics discussed. Yet, as every one recognizes, important changes in taste have taken place since the days of the formal dialogue. Disputations no longer hold their former sway in college and university. Other methods are now employed for discussing problems of politics, of religion, of philosophy, of science, which were once commonly argued in the formal dialogue. It is my purpose to show, through the consideration of some of the by-products of the dialogue in the day of its vogue, that its popularity was occasioned by a controversial or dialoguing spirit, and conversely that the form itself was largely responsible for the creation and continuance of this atmosphere of conflict.

Though it is recognized that Beaumont and Fletcher generally followed Jonson's example in inventing their own plots, studies of their plays have led to direct sources elsewhere—largely in Spanish romances. Their plays, instead of attempting to picture real life, are provided with distant settings and filled with improbable situations, unnatural characters, and a sentimental atmosphere, so that it was an easy matter to draw material for them from the romantic tales of such writers as Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Gonzalo de Cespedes, and Mateo Aleman.

Gradually the mists veiling Shakespeare's dramatic production prior to the year 1594 are thinning, and we are enabled with clearer vision to isolate his early steps in play-writing and study his development in artistry. We are becoming more keenly sensible of the fact that his earliest plays in their present form have a false aspect of maturity. On the basis of internal allusions, Professor Charlton would place the Love's Labour's Lost so late as the autumn of 1592; and to the duplications in the text of the same play clearly illustrating Shakespeare's method of amplifying and remodeling, Professor H. D. Gray has added other considerations in an attempt to reconstruct its first form, from which he would entirely eliminate the characters of Sir Nathaniel and Holofernes. Over a decade ago Dr. Tucker Brooke recognized the fact that 1 Henry VI underwent some revision as late as 1599, and pointed out that in 2 and 3 Henry VI the dramatic strength is largely that of Marlowe. Mr. J. M. Robertson has recently renewed the attack upon the problem of Richard III. Professor Pollard's new angle of approach to the history of the texts in the First Folio and the quartos has had fruitful results in the invaluable studies of the editors of the New Cambridge edition, revealing, among other disclosures, an extremely immature Midsummer-night's Dream of 1592 or earlier. Professor Adams, in his new Life of Shakespeare, has discussed the probable significance of the plague years, 1592-93, in the poet's intellectual development. Students of Shakespeare are thus enabled to clarify, and partly to reconstruct, their conceptions of his mentality and professional production in the years 1590-94. We no longer need to assume that Shakespeare came to London in 1586 or 1587 in order to account for his apparent professional maturity in 1591-92; nor do we need to thrust the original form of 1 Henry VI back to 1589 or earlier under the assumption that Shakespeare's connection with a work so immature in parts as the present 1 Henry VI cannot be later than Henslowe's entry of harey the vj in March, 1592.

This play was unknown to Moratín. When it was examined by Ticknor, it was part of a volume belonging to M. Ternaux-Compans, which contained, besides, the anonymous Farça a manera de tragedia, Güete's Tesorina and Vidriana, the Radiana of Ortiz, Villalón's Tragedia de Mirrha (Medina del Campo, 1536) and the anonymous Jacinta. La Barrera's notice, probably borrowed from Ticknor, states—I believe wrongly, if I have correctly understood Ticknor—that the play was in a collection with other farces, “dos de ellas impresas en 1536.”

Taken together, the descriptions of Salvá, who has given a summary of the play and reproduced 146 lines, and of Heredia, who gave an exact reproduction of the title-page, are satisfactory. Kohler, who does not seem to have known of Salvá's extracts, speaks of the piece as though it were lost and reproduces La Barrera's notice. From Ternaux-Compans the only known copy passed, now separately bound, through Salva to the Madrid Biblioteca Nacional, where it is now preserved under the signature R.3658.

Shortly after completing my study of Henry Chettle I chanced to read the anonymous Trial of Chivalry, printed in 1605 by Simon Stafford for Nathaniel Butter, as having “bin lately acted by the right Honourable the Earle of Darby his servants,” and before I had half finished the play I became convinced that of the two dramatists concerned in its composition the chief was Chettle. This conclusion I reached quite independently, for I used the Tudor Facsimile reproduction of the quarto of 1605 and was unaware that Bullen in the introduction to his reprint had remarked: “If I were obliged to make a guess at the authorship, I would name Chettle or Munday, or both.” Nor had I observed that Fleay also had suggested Chettle as one of the authors of this play.

The outstanding history of the Prussian Academy of Sciences has been written by Adolf Harnack in his Geschichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, a monumental work which supersedes the earlier French account of Christian Bartholmèss in every respect. But naturally Harnack, in his voluminous treatise, does not offer a connected narrative of the fortunes of the German language in the Academy throughout the two centuries of the existence of that body. This phase is dealt with continuously and brought nearer to date in an article by Gustav Roethe. Roethe, however, is interested chiefly in the modern Deutsche Kommission and considers the entire question from the point of view of this interest. The present paper aims to direct attention once more to the subject as a whole, in the belief that it constitutes in a sense a chapter in the history of the German language.

That Milton's theology is remarkable for its independence has often been noted. Although he has something in common with the Fathers, with the Greek philosophers, with the Renaissance metaphysicians, with the Protestant reformers, and with the chief heretical sects of the Reformation, nevertheless, among them all we can nowhere find a parallel for his system; we cannot even find all the elements of which it is composed, nor, indeed, its chief conceptions.

It is strange that contemporary criticism of the Hamlet of Romantic psychology has failed to reckon with an important document of Elizabethan psychology. Professor Stoll has invoked Burton and Professor Schücking, Sir Thomas Overbury; but both the Anatomy and Characters are Jacobean, first published in 1621 and 1614, respectively. There was, however, a book of Elizabethan psychology accessible from 1586, written in English, avowedly to win the general reader, and popular enough for two editions in 1586 and a third in 1613. That Shakespeare used Dr. Timothy Bright's A treatise of melancholie was suggested in 1894 by Richard Loening in support of his theory of Hamlet's physiological melancholy; and in 1899, apparently from independent observation, by Dowden in his edition of Hamlet (p. 77). This suggestion, however, seems to have fallen flat. The title of Bright's Treatise—but not the contents—was known to Stoll, to Schücking, and to Dr. G. A. Bieber, though it is not mentioned by J. M. Robertson, and no reference is made to it in the later studies by Stoll and Schücking. To suggest anew that the Treatise influenced Shakespeare and more particularly Hamlet, is the object of this paper.

Many were the sources of Bodmer's Noah and by no means the least of these was Klopstock's Messias. In the present article I propose to consider certain phases of Bodmer's indebtedness to Klopstock's biblical epic, but at the same time I shall have occasion to consider also other aspects of Klopstock's influence.

Hey for honesty, the lively seventeenth century adaptation of the Plutus of Aristophanes, was long attributed without question to the joint authorhip of Thomas Randolph and a certain F. J. whose identity has never been ascertained. The title-page of the first edition reads: “. A Pleasant Comedie, Entituled Hey for Honesty, Down with Knavery. Translated out of Aristophanes his Plutus, by Tho: Randolph. Augmented and Published by F. J.” This unambiguous statement of dual authorship went unchallenged until 1875. Several attempts were then made to prove that Randolph had no part whatever in the translation, and that the whole play was written by F. J. It is the purpose of this article to present new evidence, first, that the play is in truth the result of dual authorship, and second, that Thomas Randolph was the original translator and adapter.

That part of Wieland's Oberon which depicts the life of Hüon and Rezia on the island where they have been shipwrecked differs so essentially in tone, background, motivation, and thought from the rest of the poem as to constitute almost a separate entity. The ideas which the author here expresses may seem inconsistent with the spirit of romantic adventure which characterizes this work in general. Nevertheless, this episode, covering a period of about three years, makes a distinct break in the succession of outward adventures, and turns the reader's attention to the development of the inward qualities of the castaways. This affords the author a fitting opportunity to introduce ideas dealing with man's return to a state of nature, with nature herself, and with the mystic merging of heaven and earth in the soul of man. It is with these ideas and the contrast which they present to the rest of the poem that this paper is concerned.

Among the early literary journals which appeared in Europe toward the end of the seventeenth century was Vincent Minutoli's Dépêches du Parnasse, ou la Gazette des Savants, the first number of which was published at Geneva on September 1, 1693. It was the plan of the editor to put out a number every fortnight, but plagiarism on the part of some editors of Lyons, who copied each gazette shortly after its appearance, caused him to abandon his plan after a few issues. Because of the part which it played in the famous Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, and of the light which it casts on literary men and matters of its day, this short-lived periodical has an interest and an importance which have been quite overlooked.

The mystery in Hamlet is a ghost that has haunted the minds of many a generation of scholars and critics. Perhaps the full secret of this mystery was to be known only by Shakespeare himself, even as that other secret was told only to Hamlet by the ghost on the platform at Elsinore

Like others whose work happens to lie in the classics as much as in English, I have been indebted to Professor F. M. K. Foster's English Translations from the Greek (Columbia University, 1918) and the deeper one sinks into bibliographical quagmires the more one appreciates the labor, as well as the infinite possibilities of error, involved in compiling such a list. I say this because it is a rather easy and ungracious thing to pick holes in one section of a bibliographical manual covering a wide field. An independent survey of Homeric translations, which I undertook in the course of an attempt to trace the history of classical themes in English verse, discloses a number of omissions and some apparent mistakes in Dr. Foster's section on Homer. In presenting this supplement to his work I abide (except in one or two items) by his own principles, and confine myself to literal translations, excluding excerpts, adaptations, paraphrases and the like.

In a letter from William Taylor of Norwich to Robert Southey, is to be found perhaps the earliest trustworthy clue to the date of Borrow's first acquaintance with the German language. Writing on March 12th, 1821, Taylor, whose name will probably survive because of his relation to Borrow, says:

These studies represent an attempt to determine Shakspere's debt to the voyagers in The Tempest. No article or book, to my knowledge, has set out to examine the subject as a whole; and my aim to supply such an article has forced me to review much material published heretofore. Broadly speaking, one-third of my studies contains material substantially as it has appeared elsewhere; one-third presents old material from a new point of view; and one-third presents material completely new. I wish to return the fullest possible acknowledgment to the excellent work of Morton Luce and Charles M. Gayley, on whose studies I have based my own.