Another paper on Keats may be pardoned if by a readjustment of the familiar materials, it makes possible a new interpretation of the poet's mind and work. The present essay ventures to suggest that the literary problem admitted and analyzed by Keats in Sleep and Poetry contains a clue for the study of his verse, which, although recognized in some of its implications by Keats's critics, has not hitherto been understood in its full significance. The following argument attempts to prove that by April, 1819, the poet, having settled, at least for a period, a very difficult question dating back to the autumn of 1816, was so released from his mental bondage that his creative genius, long restrained, broke forth into that glorious series of poems which included the great Odes and Lamia.

Early in the year 1573 there appeared from the press of Richard Smith an anonymous quarto bearing the title: A Hundreth sundrie Flowres bound up in one small Poesie . . . . Yelding sundrie sweet savours of Tragical, Comicall, and Morall Discourses, both pleasaunt and profitable to the well smellyng noses of learned Readers. The third “flower” of this delectable bouquet was called A pleasant discourse of the adventures of master F. J. The reader whose well-smelling nose sampled this offering soon found that its fragrance was highly spiced. The story relates the intrigue between Master F. J. and the daughter-in-law of his host at a summer house-party in the north of England. After a passionate love affair of some weeks, during which the reader is left in no doubt as to the adulterous nature of their relations, his lady is unfaithful to him as well as to her husband, and the disappointed lover departs. This story attracted considerable attention and was thought to shadow forth an actual contemporary scandal, although the only names used were those of Elinor, Fraunces, the Secretary, etc. Outside of the fact that the printer tells us we may expand “F. J.” into Freeman Jones, “for the better understanding of the same,” there are no surnames used in the whole story.

The student of Friedrich Hebbel cannot proceed very far without being impressed by his robustness. To cite a single illustration of his emphatic, indeed violent, language, in his Genoveva (III, 10), Golo, having reached the climax of his illicit intentions, rushes at the heroine and exclaims: “Nun bist du mein.” A struggle ensues. Golo hurls the crucifix from Genoveva and says:

. . . . Und ob der Heiland selbst
Sich stellen wollte zwischen Dich und mich:
Zu seinen sieben Wunden gäb' ich ihm
Die achte. . . .

Stronger language than that can hardly be used; but in such exemplifications of rhetorical virility Hebbel's works abound.

L'Influence de l‘œuvre de l'abbé Prévost dans la littérature secondaire de son siècle ne semble pas avoir été suffisamment reconnue. Cette influence fut considérable bien qu'affaiblie et comme obscurcie plus tard par le roman de mœurs anglais qu'il introduisit lui-même en France, et surtout par la renommée éclatante et plus durable de Jean-Jacques Rousseau qui, tout en coordonnant nombre d'idées éparses dans l‘œuvre de son devancier, sut imposer un système naturiste au monde par la seule force de son génie.

During 1817-1818, Ralph Waldo Emerson furnished himself with lodgings at Harvard College by serving as the president's Freshman. His activities as messenger to President John Thornton Kirkland and to the faculty reached their high point when Emerson, at the close of the college year, formally distributed to his classmates official notices of their class standing and of their honors.

Discussing the contents of La minerva o El revisor general (1805-08; 1817-18), Le Gentil remarks: “Notons enfin un premier essai, visiblement inspiré de Jouy, dans un genre qui devait faire une singulière fortune en Espagne, celui des costumbristas.” The reference is to an article entitled “La ciencia del pretendiente o el arte de obtener empleos,” which appeared in 1817 (X-33). Though the implication that this article is the first costumbrista sketch is open to question, Le Gentil's suggestion that it marks the beginning of Jouy's influence in Spain seems acceptable, for Jouy himself does not speak of translations of his works until 1815, and even then he mentions none in Spanish. After 1817 the costumbrista vogue was apparently well established, as may be gathered from the many articles of the new pattern which appeared in El censor (1820-22). Accordingly when Mesonero, in Mis ratos perdidos, allowed himself to be influenced by Jouy in style, tone, and even content, it would seem that he followed a fairly established vogue.

When Sir Walter Scott, with his friend and publisher John Ballantyne at his shoulder, was adding his chapter-tags to the proofsheets of his third novel, The Antiquary (1816), he came to a halt at one chapter for which he wanted some lines from Beaumont and Fletcher. Ballantyne undertook the task of finding the passage. Awaiting for some time the discovery of the verses he wished, Scott at length exclaimed, “Hang it, Johnnie, I believe I can make a motto sooner than you will find one.” He did so, and thus began his habit of calling upon his invention when memory failed, producing throughout the remainder of the Waverley Novels numerous chapter-headings ascribed “Anonymous,” “Old Play,” etc., which Lockhart calls “some of the most exquisite verses that ever flowed from his pen.” Of “Old Play” captions there are 94; “Old Ballad” 26—mostly Scott's free-hand alterations; “Old Song” 12; “Anonymous” 29; and unsigned mottoes 10. One of the best of the “Old Play” fabrications occurs at the head of chapter xxix of Anne of Geierstein, describing the good king René of Provence;—in reality, it may be called Scott's own epitaph:

A mirthful man he was—the snows of age
Fell, but they did not chill him. Gaiety
Even in life's closing touched his teeming brain
With such wild visions as the setting sun
Raises in front of some hoar glacier,
Painting the bleak ice with a thousand hues.
—Old Play

Les lecteurs de ces passionnants ouvrages publiés périodiquement sous le titre de listes bibliographiques n'ont pu manquer d’être frappés par le nombre des livres qui viennent d’étre consacrés ces dernières années à Racine. Ce poète classique jouirait-il d'un regain de faveur auprès de nos contemporains qu'on nous dépeint tous les jours si matérialistes? Il convient certes d’être prudent en ces matières et de ne point parler trop vite de la popularité d'un poète qui n'a jamais été et ne sera jamais que le régal des délicats; et c'est avec quelque défiance que l'on aborde cette récente littérature racinienne. Que peut-on apporter de nouveau sur un sujet où à chaque pas, nous rencontrons l'inévitable et merveilleux Sainte-Beuve? Le Bidois, dans la première année de ce siècle, dans un livre non sans valeur, mais déjà oublié, plus tard André Suarès, en antiracinien épris de littérature russe et scandivave, Jules Lemaitre et Anatole France qui ont tant aimé leur cher Racine, n'ont pas réussi à renouveler le sujet. Masson-Forestier, qui avait prétendu le faire, n'a pu écrire qu'un livre curieux, mais plein d'hypothèses gratuites, reposant sur de prétendus faits depuis controuvés. N'attendons donc pas de nos contemporains des révélations raciniennes. Recherchons plus humblement ce que notre génération trouve et aime dans Racine. Si ce n'est là un problème proprement racinien, c'est du moins un point curieux de psychologie contemporaine.

From the popularity of Voltaire's Lettres philosophiques, one might infer that 1734 marks approximately the beginning of the English vogue in France. Although interest in English literature was greatly enhanced by Voltaire, a study of French periodicals published during the seventy years preceding 1734 shows that the influence of English science and philosophy was at its height prior to the appearance of Voltaire's Lettres. This study will endeavor to trace the early development of Anglomania, particularly in the fields of science and philosophy, as revealed in the Choix des anciens Mercures et des autres journaux. This collection, published at Paris from 1757 to 1764, drew its material from various periodicals of the seventeenth and the first sixty years of the eighteenth century.

During the year 1818, while Washington Irving was at work on the sketches and stories of The Sketch Book, he wrote to his friend Brevoort: “I have been for some time past engaged in the study of the German language, and have got so far as to be able to read and splutter a little. It is a severe task, and has required hard study; but the rich mine of German literature holds forth abundant reward.” The first of the “abundant rewards” which he won from the “rich mine of German literature” are to be seen in his use of German materials for the four so-called short stories in The Sketch Book (1819–1820). At the end of his Dresden diary, which came to a close on July 11, 1823, he wrote, perhaps with himself in mind:

Solitary miners of literature in Germany—men working hours and hours each day in dull little towns.

García Gutiérrez, because he wrote El Trovador (at the age of twenty-two) is commonly considered a typical Romantic dramatist. It may be affirmed with considerable justice, however, that he upheld the standard of Romanticism for a relatively short time and that he repented at the age of thirty. The record for long service is held by Zorrilla, who died still a Romanticist in 1893.

It is known that the “Lapland song,” quoted at the end of each stanza in Longfellow's poem, My Lost Youth, was first taken down from a native Laplander, Olaus Matthiae Sirma, and printed in the original, together with a Latin prose version, by Professor Johannes Scheffer of Upsala in his exhaustive Latin work Lapponia (Frankfort 1673). The enormous currency of this book, as well as its various translations, and the wide literary interest aroused in different countries by the two primitive Lapland songs which it contained, have been discussed by F. E. Farley and H. Wright. The English translation of Scheffer's work (Oxford, 1674) was so successful as to lead to a second edition in London in 1704. The latter edition was timely for nourishing the flame of enthusiasm for folk-poetry first kindled by Addison's epoch-making essay from the text, Interdum vulgus rectum videt, published in the Spectator of May 21, 1711. On April 30, 1712, there appeared in the Spectator a new rhymed translation of the song under consideration, by an anonymous author, who professed to derive his version from the “original history,” though it is luminously evident that he looked no deeper than into the metrical version given in the English “History of Lapland.” The song printed in the Spectator was widely popular in England during the entire eighteenth century, and led to a number of other English versions, not one of which, however, contained the lines quoted by Longfellow, or went back to the Latin source.

Christine à Fontainebleau (Odéon, October 13, 1829), by Frédéric Soulié, has been called “le premier effort de l‘école romantique.” The statement must of course be taken as referring only to the movement in the theatre, and even then needs qualification; but it contains a certain amount of truth. Christine was a “drame historique en cinq actes et en vers,” written in accordance with the principles of the Romantic school. At the time of its production, Cromwell had not been played; Amy Robsart, besides being merely a dramatic adaptation of a novel of Scott, was in prose; so was Henri III et sa cour; Vigny's translation of Othello, Hernani, and Dumas’ Christine were yet to come. The failure of Soulié's Christine was complete, and the excitement of its stormy first night was effaced by the subsequent and more spectacular première of Hernani. As a consequence this early romantic tragedy is practically forgotten, though it is mentioned, with varying degrees of accuracy, by several of Soulié's contemporaries, notably Dumas père and Jules Janin, and is occasionally referred to by modern scholars.

In various papers published during the past twelve years I have discussed certain aspects and applications of what I call “literary theory.” This piecemeal method of publication inevitably leaves loose ends; and my purpose on the present occasion is to tie up some of them by further discussion of sundry points and by the citing of sundry passages which further illuminate them. Without promising any startling novelties, I hope to be able to straighten out a few matters over which uncertainty or controversy might possibly arise.

In that rich volume, The Decline and Fall of the West, we observe that the color preferences of a given people or age are considered as a part of the accumulated evidence that finally places the cultural stage of the group in the whole vast Spenglerian cycle. The Greeks, we learn, were fond of primitive reds and yellows, while the Christians, partly in revolt against Greek paganism, came to prefer the other end of the color scale, the greens and blues, and the purity of white. Red had become for them a symbol of sin and bloodshed, and yellow a mark of shame. These observations are further tied up with Spengler's time-space theories. The Greeks, whose time-space conceptions are labelled as present, as contrasted with our own efforts to link the dim past and the remote future by the aid of our historical and evolutionary perspective, are said naturally to prefer red and its variants as symbolic of life, love, and splendid action; while the Christians as naturally preferred the more remote greens, blues, and whites as symbolic of meditation and worship, the projection of interest into the mystic, the supernatural, the life yet unrealized. A later romantic development also associated blues and greens with nature and its poetry, while whites, grays and blacks inevitably spell the abstract, the psychic, and the mystery of the unknown.