In 1895 (Acad., Sept. 21, p. 227), Professor Liddell announced that he had in preparation conclusive evidence to show that Chaucer in his translation of Boethius had used (in addition to the Latin text) the French prose translation ascribed to Jean de Meung. In 1897, again (Nation, Feb. 18, pp. 124 f.), Professor Liddell declared his belief that Chaucer, as well as the French translator from whom he borrows, in making their Boethius translations, worked with the Latin commentary wrongly ascribed to Thomas Aquinas. And last year, having occasion to examine the Latin commentary on Boethius by Nicholas Trivet, I found there ample evidence, as I think, to give Trivet's commentary an important place among the sources of Chaucer's Boethius. Two commentaries in addition to the Latin text and a French translation make an equipment which seems extraordinarily elaborate for the circumstances. However, an examination of the two commentaries discovers the fact that Trivet's commentary includes the glosses of the other, in most of the cases in which Chaucer is concerned; and it is the object of this note to furnish evidence which points to Trivet's commentary as the single source of this material in Chaucer's Boethius.

In Gesta Pontificum (A. D. 1125), and also in the first recension of Gesta Regum Anglorum (same year), William of Malmesbury attributed the foundation of Glastonbury to Ini (in his spelling Ina), acting under advice of Aldhelm (patron saint of Malmesbury). By the time of writing a Life of Dunstan (date uncertain), William had obtained further information; he blames Osbern, biographer of Dunstan, for making that saint first abbot of Glastonbury, which, as he says, had passed under ecclesiastical authority long before the time of St. Patrick. From another passage of the same book we perceive that William had in contemplation a work in defence of the antiquity of Glastonbury. By a mention in the second book of the Life of Dunstan it appears that William, at the time resident in Glastonbury, had completed the promised apology. De Antiquitate, therefore, must have been completed in Glastonbury, at a time intermediate between the two books on Dunstan.

From a Middle-English poem narrating the events of the Trojan war, we learn that formerly in England, when folk gathered “at mangeres and at grete festes,” they listened gladly after meat to the “fair romance” of Horn, which “gestours” were then wont to recite; and, having this romance before us, we can readily understand the reason of its popularity: it interests us, as it did our forefathers, not only because it tells a tale of an ever-pleasing type, but also because it purports to record native English tradition.

At the beginning of the Vita Nuova Dante tells us that he proposes to copy into the little book words which he finds written in the book of his memory under the rubric Incipit Vita Nova; thus he brought together lyrics that he had already written, and connected them by a narrative and analysis in prose. The Vita Nuova belongs, then, to the class of writings made up of alternating prose and verse. As in the case of the Convivio, this method of composition was perfectly natural under the circumstances; Dante doubtless intended to do for his own early poems what had been done for certain Troubadours by the compilers of some of the Provençal anthologies, in which a prose biography is interspersed with specimens of the poet's verse. This has been pointed out by Pio Rajna, who further suggests that the analytical divisioni may have been modeled on certain works of St. Thomas. The prose explanations in the Provençal anthologies are called razos, and Dante uses the word ragione with the same meaning. In at least one respect, however, the Vita Nuova differs in form from the other works of this type; for the poems do not simply follow one another chronologically or according to the exigencies of the narrative, but are arranged on a symmetrical plan. The credit for having made this plain belongs to Professor C. E. Norton, who pointed it out in 1859.

It is usually a safe principle to abide by the judgment of time and leave a forgotten writer in the oblivion to which his nation consigns him. With the Spanish playwrights of the seventeenth century, however, the rule may be said to offer an exception by reason of the fact that the merciless excess of dramas forced into neglect, with what was mediocre, much that in itself was excellent and which might, under more favorable circumstances, have stood the test of time. The works of no one have suffered more in this respect than those of Ximénez de Enciso. Though he has from time to time been deemed worthy of honorable mention, it is not possible to say that he has ever been given the just measure of praise to which a closer view of what remains from his pen would entitle him. In his own day he enjoyed considerable fame, as the frequent mention of his achievement by contemporaries would go to show, but for the two and a half centuries which have passed since then, he has shared the fate of the majority of Spanish playwrights whose works have been consigned to an undeserved oblivion.

“Oro ed argento fino, cocco e biacca, Indico legno lucido e sereno, Fresco smeraldo in l'ora che si fiacca“ are the substances Dante cites in Purgatorio, vii, 73–75, as being surpassed in color by the flowers and grass of the Valley of the Princes. The criticism on verse seventy-four divides into two schools according to the punctuation assigned to the passage by commentators. One section, and perhaps the greater, holds that Dante meant the whole line to refer to one substance, some word from India; the other, putting a comma after the first word, has it that the poet had two colors in mind when he wrote the words: the color of indigo and that of some “wood shining and clear,” which latter is however rather dull and obscure of interpretation. Among the substances guessed at by the commentators there is none that fits well the sense of the passage, neither ebony nor “quercia marcia” having colors appropriate to a description of bright flowers. Philalethes joined those who hold that “indico” should be interpreted as meaning indigo rather than Indian, feeling a need of blue among the flower colors. In the meadows of Saxony corn flower, speedwell, lungwort and borage are common on every hand and make generous gift of pure blue to the kaleidoscope of nature; but did Dante have any such association with the color? What place does blue hold in the Divina Commedia? It is surprising to find that there are only five references in the whole poem that surely can be interpreted “blue.” In the Inferno we have two of the purses worn by the usurers described with azure in the blazon (Inf., xvii, 59 and 64). In Purgatory the noonday light turns the heavenly blue to white (Purg., xxvi, 6) and in two passages the heavens have the color of saphire (Purg., i, 13, and Par., xxiii, 101). In one passage we cannot be quite sure that “smalto” may not mean blue—the doubt hinging on an ambiguity of reference to the earthly or the heavenly paradise; the frequent use Dante makes of the word to describe greensward is rather a strong argument for the former interpretation. This scarcity of blue in the coloring of the Divina Commedia is the more striking when we remember how rich in cobalt, ultramarine, and smalt were the illuminations and frescoes that made up the art of Dante's contemporaries, and how strong the visualistic power of the artist was in Dante.

In a paper read before the Modern Language Association of America in 1899 (Americana Germanica, vol. iii, pp. 386–392), Dr. C. W. Eastman presented evidence that seemed to him to warrant the conclusion that Hauff modeled his historical romance Lichtenstein upon Scott's Ivanhoe. His contention is well supported and does not lack plausibility. But inasmuch as I had been accustomed for several years to set my students in the Criticism of the Novel the practice-task of hunting for the similarities in Lichtenstein and Waverley, which seem to me quite obvious, I was not disposed to let the claim of Dr. Eastman pass without closer examination.

The Chronicle of the Monastery of Hales (in Gloucestershire) occupies the first fifty-six folios of ms. Cotton Cleopatra D. iii, a manuscript written in or soon after the year 1301, with which it originally ended. As is the case with scores of other Latin Chronicles of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, its first part, the “Gesta Britonum,” consists essentially of a condensation of Geoffry of Monmouth's Historia, with a few divergences. It has no notable feature before the reign of Arthur.

An inquiry into the texts most in use for the teaching of Old French in the best universities cannot help having a certain pedagogical interest. The value of such an inquiry would be greater, if we possessed a similar investigation made fifteen or twenty years ago. Although no such investigation is recorded, it is nonetheless fitting and important to set down here the results of a recent inquiry into this question.

Ms. Harl. 1960 is thus described by Wanley (“Account of Harl. mss.,” Brit. Mus. Cat.):—“A thin paper book in 12mo. mostly written by one of the Holmes and containing a collection of Riddles with their Solutions; being such as young lads and lasses use to make sport with. At the end is a table to the same.” So closely indeed is the little volume associated with at least one member of the Holme family of Chester—the possessors of the ms. until the early 18th century, when it passed with other writings of that race of antiquaries into the keeping of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford (mss. Harl. 1920–2177 and a few others)—that to understand its history we must first know a little of the lives of the four Holmes and chiefly of the third Randle.

On page 459 of the third volume of his Old Northern Runic Monuments, and on page 245 of his Handbook, Stephens gave a cut of an Anglo-Saxon sword found on the Isle of Wight and now in the British Museum, Of this he wrote the following facts and fancies: “Found about the middle of this century in an Old English grave. But the runes were first seen in 1882 by Aug. W. Franks, Esq., the Director. . . . The runes are on the inner side of the silver scabbard-mount, and were only seen lately when the piece was cleaned. Hence their perfect preservation, tho so slightly cut-in. They have been hidden for some 1300 winters! . . . In this case the owner had cut this spell, singing therewith some chaunt of supernatural power, to overcome the easier his unsuspecting enemy. All such witchcraft and amulet-bearing etc. was strictly forbidden. Whatever the staves mean, this is the only such secret rune-risting yet found.” Stephens' rendering is, as usual, quite worthless: “? Awe (terror, death and destruction) to-the-seve (brynie, armor, weapons, of the foe)!”

These notes embody the result of a study of a Canadian French dialect spoken in Clayton, N. Y. There is in this village a colony of seven or eight hundred French Canadians, most of whom have come from the District of Montreal during the past fifty years. The older generation, as a rule, is illiterate; the younger generation reads and writes English, but not French. These colonists, therefore, have kept their French free from the leveling-down process of the schoolmaster.

The subject of the mediaeval French versions of the Apocalypse or Revelation of Saint John the Divine, which closes the canon of Sacred Scripture, has recently been brought prominently to the attention of scholars by two important publications of the Société des Anciens Textes Français, both appearing in the year 1901. The first of these is entitled L'Apocalypse en français au xiiie esiècle, published by Léopold Delisle and Paul Meyer. The portion contributed by M. Delisle consists of an extensive study of the manuscript and tapestry illustrations to the Apocalypse which were produced with such elaborateness in the Middle Ages, and of a disquisition upon the various mediaeval commentaries on the Apocalypse; while the portion due to Professor Meyer is devoted to a treatise on the French prose versions of the Apocalypse, together with an edition of the prose translation contained in the MS. of the National Library in Paris quoted as fr. 403 (the best MS. of the prose version), accompanied by the Latin version in parallel columns, and by a detailed commentary in Old French.

The terms “symbolist” and “décadent” are often considered synonymous. This has its reason for being; the two directions are related not only empirically, but logically. Symbolism calls forth Decadentism. However, for a study of the contemporary movement in French literature it would be advantageous to separate the two tendencies. This is easy enough, seeing that Symbolism has relation, above all, to the very foundation of the thought of the poets and writers of the group in question, while Decadentism is related to the expression of that thought. Up to this time Decadentism has been studied too much, Symbolism too little. Hence the confusion of criticism, which, itself ignorant of the fundamental side of the problem, has kept in ignorance the public wishing to draw inspiration from it. We are speaking naturally of a particular criticism, the official one in France: Brunetière, Doumic, Lemaître, etc. Men like Mauclair or Beaunier were yet too young to give sufficient value to their authority against these pontiffs, at a time when that would have been necessary for the understanding of the new-comers. However, the two recent books by Kahn (Symbolistes et Décadents, Paris, Vanier, 1902) and by Beaunier (La Poésie nouvelle, éd. du Mercure de France, Paris, 1902) will henceforth render inexcusable, even among the general public, the superficial appreciation of Symbolism which has been the fashion up to now.