From Langbaine's time it has been usual to consider the play How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad as drawn directly from Cinthio's Hecatommithi, book III, novel 5. But Riche had translated this novel and made it the sixth history of his Farewell to Military Profession some years before the drama appeared, and, as Riche's translation was no doubt easily accessible, the author of the play is more likely to have used his version than the Italian. It would be hard to decide which is the immediate source, however, for the double reason that Riche usually follows his original almost phrase by phrase, occasionally enlarging a compressed Italian expression into what amounts to an explanation or illustration of the original, and that, where the author of How a Man May Choose has followed his source closely, he is so far from copying the language that his phrasing may as well be his own translation as his adaptation of Riche's. But the slight evidence is all in favor of his borrowing from Riche. For instance, where Cinthio reads, “Aselgia … indusse un suo drudo a riuelare a di Agata, che il marito auelenata l'hauena,” we find in Riche:

“Wherefore she reveiled his speeches unto a ribalde of hers, such a one as supplied her want of that which Gonsales alone, nor ten suche as he were able to satisfie her withall, and induced hym to appeache hym for that facte. … This companion accused Gonsales upon his owne wordes unto the freendes of Agatha,” etc.

The Marathon race was undoubtedly a happy thought on the part of the promoters of the first Olympic games of modern times—those held at Athens in 1896. A well-known member of the French Academy, M. Michel Bréal, gave the prize, and the Greeks set their hearts on winning it. A private correspondent wrote from Athens just before the race took place:—

Amongst the many collections of fables which have come down to us from the middle ages none appears to have enjoyed greater popularity or to have been more widely translated than that in Latin elegiac verse nowadays entitled the Walter of England Collection. In addition to an unusually large number of extant manuscript versions of this collection in its original form, more than one hundred being actually listed, there is a host of printed editions, while translations and adaptations are to be found in French, Italian, Provençal, Portuguese, Spanish, German, and Hebrew. Among so many reworkings but a single one occurs in French prose, and it is this collection, not hitherto printed, which forms the subject of the present article.

Among the most characteristic and most positive propositions in Lessing's Laokoon are these from chapter xxi: “Ein anderer Weg, auf welchem die Poesie die Kunst in Schilderung körperlicher Schönheit wiederum einholet, ist dieser, dass sie Schönheit in Reitz verwandelt. Reitz ist Schönheit in Bewegung.” F. T. Vischer said with reference to this chapter, “Lessing hatte zuerst die Anmuth (er sagt: Reiz, wovon nachher) als Schönheit in der Bewegung definiert.” Commenting on the same chapter, G. E. Guhrauer wrote, “Reiz ist Schönheit in Bewegung, und eben darum für den Maler weniger als den Dichter bequem. Dieser Begriff, eine glückliche Bereicherung der Ästhetik, von welcher Schiller späterhin in dem Aufsatz über Anmuth und Würde einen so sinnreichen und fruchtbaren Gebrauch machte, findet sich vor Lessing schon bei Home, welchen er bei seiner Vertrautheit mit den schottischen Philosophen unstreitig gekannt hat. Insofern ist es nicht ganz genau, wenn Vischer … von Lessing sagt, dass der Begriff der Anmuth bei ihm zuerst gefunden werde.” H. Blümner rushed to the defence of Lessing and Vischer. Grace, he admitted, is associated with motion not only by Home, but also by Webb (Inquiry into the Beauties of Painting, 1764), and by Hagedorn (Betrachtungen über die Mahlerey, 1762), —“dennoch durfte Vischer mit vollem Rechte Lessing als den Vater dieses Begriffes bezeichnen, da er durch ihn erst entwickelt und in die Ästhetik eingeführt worden ist.” On a previous page (31) Blümner had pointed out that Webb's idea of grace was not his own, but went back to Home.

During the eighteenth century several attempts were made to translate the whole or parts of Butler's Hudibras into German. Josua Eiselein, who published a translation of Hudibras in 1845, gave in his introduction the only account of these translations yet written, but his record is brief and inaccurate. Hence it may not be without value to re-examine Butler's work in its German forms, and, in addition, to investigate the position of Hudibras among those works which German admiration for English literature sought to introduce into Germany.

The purpose of the following pages is merely to present several unpublished texts of liturgico-dramatic offices. Certain of these texts require no special comment, and will take their places naturally alongside similar texts already published. Certain others will, I hope, be welcomed for the new details they offer to the student of mediæval dramatic origins.

The writers who have given us our best accounts of the liturgical plays for Epiphany seem to have overlooked a complete and charming Officium Stellae found in a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris. To this text my attention was first called by the article of Monsieur A. Gastoué, Un petit drame liturgique parisien pour Pâques, in the course of which he writes,

“En dehors des coutumes décrites par Léon Gautier et qui variaient suivant les localités, il est encore d'autres ‘intéressantes. Tel, dans le ms. 1270 de la Mazarine, le ravissant Offices de l'Étoile, représenté à Nevers, au Xie siècle, le matin de l'Epiphanie, qui, au reste, a attiré déjà l'attention des chercheurs (cf. Catalogue des mss. de la Bibliothèque Mazarine).”

The Rev. Mr. N. J. Halpin in 1843, followed by Professor G. P. Baker in 1894 and Mr. R. Warwick Bond in 1902, have sought to explain Endimion as the vehicle of a personal allegory setting forth a contemporary court intrigue. These commentators have been duly followed in turn, with slight variations, by the historians F. G. Fleay in 1891, A. W. Ward in 1899, and F. E. Schelling in 1908. The existence of this allegory may be regarded, therefore, as generally accepted by authorities on the Elizabethan drama. The exponents of this personal allegory agree in recognizing that Lyly intended to represent the Queen in Cynthia, a point which no one is likely to dispute. They agree further in arguing that Endimion, the lover of Cynthia, represents Leicester, the favorite of Queen Elizabeth. From this basis three varieties of the allegory have been developed, in attempts to identify a third character, Tellus, thè lady deserted by Endimion. Three ladies have been proposed, each of whom played a striking rôle in Leicester's career. Mr. Halpin suggested Lady Sheffield, Leicester's second wife; Professor Baker substituted for her Lady Essex, Leicester's third wife; and Mr. Bond set aside both in favor of Mary, Queen of Scots.

The wheel as an attribute of Fortune is of Roman origin, and, together with the globe which often takes its place, signifies the inconstancy of the goddess. In Roman art the wheel or globe is. represented as being held in the hand of the goddess, or lying at her feet; she is sometimes represented as standing on the globe. Motion of the wheel is not implied in its postures.

In Latin literature previous to the middle ages the references to the globe or wheel as attributes of Fortune are few in number, the earliest of them being seemingly that of Pacuvius (second century B. C.): “Fortunam insanam esse et cæcam et brutam perhibent philosophi saxoque instare in globoso prædicant volubili.” Cicero (first century B. C.) writes in Piso, 10, 22: “cumque ipse nudus in convivio saltaret in quo cum illum saltatorium versaret orbem ne turn quidem fortunæ rotam pertimescebat.”

In the Man of Law's introduction, we are told that anybody who wishes to refer to Chaucer's “Seintes Legende of Cupyde” may see there, among other things,

“The crueltee of thee, queen Medea,
Thy litel children hanging by the hals.“

Now the Legend of Good Women contains nothing that corresponds precisely with these lines. The discrepancy is not startling, but it is sufficient to stimulate conjecture. Professor Lounsbury, in 1892, suggested as a possibility that “when Chaucer wrote the prologue to the Man of Law's Tale he had not written the account of Medea which has come down to us [in the Legend]; and that when it was written it came to be something different from what he had purposed to make it originally.” In a recent article in these Publications Professor Root has attempted to bring evidence in support of Mr. Lounsbury's suggestion.