Some time ago, in a comparative study of European balladries, the problem of the melodies halted me till Professor César Barja told me that my problem had already been solved by Professor Sigurd B. Hustvedt, who sent me a short time later his valuable pamphlet, A Melodic Index of Child's Ballad Tunes (Univ. of California Press, 1936). I have made an extensive use of his system, having introduced a few modifications, and venture to think that my experiments may serve as (so to say) laboratory confirmation. His business has been with English and Scottish ballads; mine has been international.

The banquet scene in Paradise Regained has given trouble to the critics. Long considered an inartistic repetition of the first temptation, it was interpreted by Gilbert and by Hanford as the first step in the second temptation, the most obvious and materialistic aspect of the kingdoms of the world offered by Satan; it was the appeal of luxury, embodied in the æsthetic as well as physical appeal of a sumptuous feast.

So far as is now known, only two comedias from the pen of Tirso de Molina have survived in holographic form; they are the first and the third parts of the Sancta Juanna trilogy. In the study to follow, the two comedias will be investigated in their orthoëpic aspects. The findings may serve as a check on those discovered by previous investigators in texts which are not in holographic form. Some years ago Mr. Morley published a study of the orthoëpy of five of Lope's plays. The present investigation resembles that of Mr. Morley, and the excellent outline which he developed for his compilation is followed below; the deliberate parallelism of our procedure with his facilitates comparison between Tirso and Lope in the matter under discussion. In Part I there will be presented a tabulation which concerns the individual word with its various combinations of vowels, weak and strong, tonic and atonic, in pretonic, tonic or post-tonic syllables, in diphthong, dieresis, syneresis or bisyllabism. In Part II of the compilation there is offered a consideration of the combinations of the words in synalepha or hiatus under varying conditions.

Mary hays was one of that remarkable coterie of women, including Mary Wollstonecraft, Amelia Alderson, Mrs. Reveley, Mrs. Fenwick, and Mrs. Inchbald, who afforded William Godwin a sort of philosophic seraglio. Little is known of her life: no biographical sketch of her exists. As the information left by others is sparse, we must depend much upon her supposedly autobiographical novel, Memoirs of Emma Courtney. She lived to be eighty-three, but the last forty years of her life are without a record. Soon after the decade of the French Revolution she became enveloped in an obscurity which has never lifted. Once the immediate revolutionary impulse had spent itself, she seems to have written nothing more. But in the revival of the fame of Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, to both of whom she was as faithful as their shadows, she perhaps deserves more attention than she has received. In her blind discipleship she innocently reduced many of Godwin's philosophical maxims to absurdities. She thus made herself the laughing-stock of those conservatives whose sympathies were narrowed by mere respectability as well as of certain liberals whose convictions did not give them such reckless courage.

In a day when psychiatry, easy divorce, and the “lie-detector” are integral parts of our civilization, it can hardly be inappropriate to recall to the scholarly public the history of Seleucus, Antiochus, and Stratonice. This story, which affords interesting parallels to our own epoch, has appeared at intervals in most of the theatres of western Europe, and in Spain, at least, its recurrence would seem to form an interesting example of literary Strömungen.

In the merry England of Queen Elizabeth the life of the professional writer was seldom dull—witness the careers of Marlowe, Greene, Peele, and Kyd. Not less varied, though perhaps less appealing, is the career of Barnabe Rych, well known to students as a pamphleteer, romancer, and Shakespearean source. It is the lesser known but more humanly and historically interesting phase of his character which the writer ventures here to present: that of soldier and chronicler of the Irish wars, persecutor of Catholics, and informer to the Crown.

Louis Racine, born in 1692, elder son of Jean Racine, believing, as he says in his preface to De la Grâce, that “plus les objets sont dignes de l'attention des hommes, plus la poésie est digne de les décrire,” wrote in poetry, while still a young man and a pensionnaire at the Oratoire de Notre Dame des Vertus, his views on Grace, that question which was so long the subject of bitter religious controversies. The date of the publication of De la Grâce has never been generally known, some literary historians such as Vapereau and Lanson having given the date as 1720, and others, such as Beuchot in a note to Voltaire's lines A Monsieur Louis Racine, as 1722. This study will establish the fact that, although the poem was printed in 1720 as most historians agree, there was no public distribution of it until two years later. Moreover, little has been known concerning the composition of the poem. The history of the writing of De la Grâce and of its lot during the period between its initial printing in 1720 and its circulation in 1722 is greatly clarified by evidence in four documents which seem to have been overlooked.

Die besondere Eigenart von Gottfried Kellers Erzählungskunst ist die Bildlichkeit und die dadurch bedingte Anschaulichkeit seiner Sprache. Wir finden in seiner Sprache alles, vom einfachen Wortvergleich, wie er uns häufig in der Umgangssprache entgegentritt, bis zum weitausgesponnenen ungewöhnlichen Gleichnis. Das alltägliche stereotype Bild wechselt mit dem eigenartigsten und phantasievollsten, dem derben naturalistischen Vergleich folgt ein feiner poetischer, dem malerisch farbigen ein gehaltvoll symbolischer. Selbst der flüchtige Leser wird immer wieder von der Wahrheit oder Schönheit eines Bildes angezogen oder von der Treffsicherheit eines Vergleiches überrascht. So hat man sich daran gewöhnt, wenn man von Keller spricht, auch seine “sprechenden Bilder” und “schlagenden Vergleiche” zu erwähnen, wie es bereits A. Frey in seinen “Erinnerungen an Gottfried Keller” tut. Erstaunlicherweise hat sich die literarhistorische Forschung bis jetzt damit begnügt, die Metamorphose des Begrifflichen zum Gegenständlichen in Kellers Schaffen zu betonen und allgemein auf die verblüffende Anschaulichkeit und Kühnheit seiner Vergleiche, sowie auf deren symbolischen und weltanschaulichen Gehalt hinzuweisen. Es sei nun hier der Versuch gemacht, auf diese charakteristische Seite des Kellerschen Stils näher einzugehen.

As a supplementary note to the volume of Milton's Letters of State in the Columbia edition of his Works (Volume XIII), as well as an illuminating guide to his reputation immediately subsequent to his death, when Williamson's phrase, “that late Villain Milton,” would have met with nearly unanimous approval, it seems worth while to furnish a summary of information bearing on their publication. The gathering of this material has been in progress now for some time. The principal contributors have been Sumner (in his edition of the Christian Doctrine), Hamilton, Masson, Tanner and Howarth (editors of Pepys), and Hanford. Their contributions being somewhat scattered, I have here brought together the chief items. I am also able to add several new letters which have not previously been published, to correct and clarify certain dates, and, I hope, to arrange the whole in such a way that its story unfolds logically and easily.

That Philip Freneau, “the poet of the American Revolution,” outspokenly devoted to the cause of freedom and the democratic ideal, and plunging into the midst of the political activities of his time with an ardor that forswore all compromise, bears a strong spiritual kinship to the blind poet of the Commonwealth certainly no one familiar with the stormy public careers of the two would for a moment deny. That this extended in Freneau's earlier poetry to an actual literary discipleship has been more than once stated, but illustrated only in the most general terms. The temptation to cite concrete examples of the youthful poet's indebtedness to Paradise Lost, extending from borrowed phrase to actual paraphrase, is difficult to resist; “The Rising Glory of America,” “The History of the Prophet Jonah,” and “The Monument of Phaon” in particular prove rich ground and practically unturned. However, in the interest of exactness, as well as correction of what seems a mistaken attitude, it will be well to restrict the present discussion to one poem. Upon the publication of “The Power of Fancy” (1786) Freneau appended to line 33, “See's this earth a distant star,” the note “Milton's Paradise Lost B. ii, v, 1052.” This allusion to Satan's viewing “this pendant world, in bigness as a star” has been several times cited as evidence of the American's debt, but, strangely enough, with little effort to find substantiation in the matter and manner of the poem itself.

Despite the considerable and valuable critical discussion of Franklin's Poor Richard, certain important points have been too briefly considered, or have been wholly overlooked. In particular, it has not been recognized (1) how extensively Franklin was indebted to Jonathan Swift in his hoaxing of Titan Leeds, the rival almanac-maker; (2) that the source for the characters Richard and Bridget Saunders was almost certainly Swift's Bickerstaff papers; and (3) that there are two Poor Richards—the original comic philomath of 1733 and the final American archetype, the fountain-head of shrewd prudential wisdom. Thus the student of Anglo-American literary relations has been unaware of Swift's part in making a great American figure; and the students of Poor Richard, on the whole regarding him as a static rather than changing character, have been led to make misleading, conflicting, or confused statements concerning him.

It is easy to overlook the comic as a major aspect of Flaubert's novels. A reader may well find that the impression they leave with him is one of tragedy and human frustration, transfigured by an amazingly unfaltering perception of the visual universe, made significant by psychological and philosophical penetration, and conveyed in a style of beauty and finality. Irony is unescapable, but the definitely comic may seem secondary. Some will continue to find this so as their familiarity with Flaubert increases, the more readily in that the conflicting sensations he evokes can be ascribed to his fondness for le grotesque triste. Other readers, however, become aware of a pervasive and profound sense of the comic, of which the grotesque triste is perhaps the climactic manifestation but far from the only one. Whereas most comedy attains its maximum effect at first presentation, Flaubert's depends rather on the thorough acquaintance of the reader with all the details and implications of the material. So closely is it knit to other elements that we often first realize its existence only when the attention we had originally given to the beauty or poignancy of a passage relaxes, permitting a fresh emphasis and a more detached viewpoint. Yet this new comic vision rather reinforces than destroys our original emotions. It is only on the greatest levels of literature that we find this intimate association of comedy with tragedy, and seldom are they as fundamentally united as in Flaubert.

In 1843 when Lord Jeffrey reviewed the critical activity of his early maturity he took pains to explain his unsympathetic treatment of fiction in the columns of The Edinburgh Review:

It may be worth while to inform the present generation that, in my youth, writings of this sort were rated very low with us—scarcely allowed indeed to pass as part of a nation's permanent literature—and generally deemed altogether unworthy of any grave critical notice.

In the DNB the lives of both Coleridge and Coleridge's disciple, F. D. Maurice, are by Sir Leslie Stephen. At first thought it may appear rather curious that Stephen undertook to write these lives, because ostensibly he could have had very little in common with the subject of either. As a matter of fact, however, his interest in both men was unusual; he was almost fascinated by them. The strict rationalist and scientific biographer is likely to find much to challenge him in the mystic philosopher and transcendentalist, particularly in such protean philosophers as Coleridge and Maurice. Confronting them, he feels a special urge to make the crooked straight, to render the unintelligible intelligible, and to provide a clear, hard-headed interpretation of confused, soft-headed thinking. Although Sir Leslie was not quite a strict rationalist or a purely scientific biographer, there was enough of both in him to explain his willingness to write the lives of Coleridge and Maurice. Any effort to evaluate or even understand these lives should therefore be supported by a knowledge of Stephen's real attitude toward his subjects.

“A Heroic Poem, truly such, is undoubtedly the greatest work which the soul of man is capable to perform.” While the solemnity of this pronouncement is certainly more characteristic of Rapin than of Dryden, the reverence for epic poetry is quite typical of the author of An Essay of Heroic Plays. As every reader of Dryden knows, the influence of Renaissance epic theory is all but omnipresent in his critical essays and prefaces. It is equally well known that the epic manner which Dryden often adopted in his verse owes much in a general way to the idea of the heroic poem. But fewer readers, I believe, realize the extent to which Dryden's epic style is directly indebted to his “master,” Virgil.

The rebirth of the Spanish novel in the nineteenth century is commonly identified with Galdós, Valera, Alarcón, and Pereda in the decade 1870–80, while the costumbristas and Fernán Caballero are looked upon as precursors of this rebirth. The purpose of the present study is to present, for some four or five decades and with attention to the novel, a prominent phase of critical tastes in Spain. Some critics looked upon the renaissance of the Spanish novel as fortunately having taken place in the novel which gave emphasis to ideas, or, as they were wont to describe it, the “philosophical” or “transcendental” novel. But the Spanish terms filosofía, trascendencia, and even trascendentalismo were very loosely used. Thus, the novel which dealt with ideas of social, moral, religious, or political significance was commonly called filosófica and trascendental, especially in the 1870's: The novel of thesis, sometimes called novela tendenciosa, was a notable manifestation of this type of “philosophical” novel. The importance attached by critics at this time to ideas of trascendencia in the novel was for the most part in keeping with the critical tastes of the preceding decades; certain novels of Galdós, Valera, Alarcón, and Pereda, praised by contemporary critics for their trascendencia, seemingly were the fulfillment of an aspiration on the part of earlier critics that the novel treat of important ideas underlying society. On the other hand, the attitude toward the propagation of ideas shows a marked change in its development. In this survey of critical writings on the novel, I shall attempt to present a consensus of views on the novel which stressed ideas, to show how the common attitude developed. Much of the criticism under consideration is of little intrinsic value; it is often influenced by religious and political prejudices and shows a level of mediocrity in critical thought, particularly for the reign of Isabel II. But, considered as a whole, it reveals common traits indicative of a trend in literary tastes,—a trend which becomes of interest when viewed in the light of certain tendencies in the novel.