In 1779 James Dodsley published a slight piece of fiction entitled Columella; Or, The Distressed Anchoret. The author of that work was the Rev. Richard Graves of Claverton, who kept his name from the title page, preferring to figure there as “the author of The Spiritual Quixote,” a clever satire on the Methodists by which he had won attention six years before. This latter work went through four editions before 1800 and was deservedly revived in a handsome reprint for the modern reader in 1926, but the only edition of Columella was the first. Special interest attaches to Columella today, however, because of its connection with the poet, William Shenstone. Graves and Shenstone had been intimate friends. Their friendship began in 1732 when both were undergraduates of Pembroke College, Oxford, and endured with great warmth of affection until Shenstone's death in 1763, when Graves found himself an executor of his friend's will. During Graves's lifetime (he lived on until 1804, one of the few nonagenarians in the history of English literature) it was apparently known that the character of Columella had been created in the image of Shenstone, for the fact was mentioned in the obituary notice of Graves in the Gentleman's Magazine? That interesting point has been duly remarked by recent writers, but as yet nobody has demonstrated how startlingly close the portrait is. In a like manner identifications of minor characters in Columella have been mentioned, but the suggestions, unsupported by proof, have remained only good intuitions. I propose in the following paragraphs to discuss the origins of certain characters in Columella, devoting special attention to showing that Columella himself is a highly intimate portrait of Shenstone.

Le Manuscrit catalogué sous la cote 612 à la bibliothèque de Besançon est un volume de 498 pages intitulé “Correspondance littéraire de M. Suard avec le margrave de Bareuth, commencée au mois de Janvier 1773, terminée à la fin de 1775.” Aux folios 137–144 de ce manuscrit se trouve un article portant comme titre: “Eloge de Jean Bte Colbert qui n'a point concouru pour le prix de l'Académie françoise.” Ce titre est suivi des deux mots: par Diderot, et, d'autre part, on lit en marge l'annotation: ms. de Diderot. Cette double indication invite à examiner l'authenticité et la signification du morceau, mais, pour éclairer la discussion il semble désirable d'en présenter d'abord le texte, que nous reproduisons, en respectant l'orthographe et la ponctuation de l'original.

Hugo Von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929) und Anton Wildgans (1881–1932), beide geboren zu Wien, gelten in der literarischen Welt als die repräsentativsten österreichischen Dichter der letzten Jahrzehnte. Beide haben auch in ihren Werken wiederholt auf das “spezifisch Österreichische” hingewiesen; Wildgans hat geradezu Wort und Begriff des “österreichischen Menschen” geschaffen, Hofmannsthal wird von Wassermann, offenbar im Anklang an Wildgans' Wortprägung, als solch ein “österreichischer Mensch” geschildert. So nimmt es kein Wunder, dass der Beginn des Briefwechsels und damit auch der Freundschaft zwischen den beiden Dichtern durch die Schicksalsstunde des alten Österreichs, den Beginn des Weltringens 1914, veranlasst war. Die in diesen Kriegsjahren mehr auf dem Dienste am Vaterlande fussende dichterische Zusammenarbeit der beiden gestaltete sich allmählich immer mehr zu edelster freundschaftlicher Bindung, welche die gegenseitigen Pläne und Schöpfungen nicht mit nivellierendem literarischem Kritizismus, wohl aber mit feinstem Einfühlen in die ureigenste Gedanken- und Arbeitswelt des andern begleitete und auch befruchtete. Die bedingungslose Unmittelbarkeit des Ausdrucks, die besonders bei dem in seinen Werken als Meister der Form und Distanzierung bekannten Hofmannsthal bisweilen überrascht, wirft vielfach persönlich wertvolle Schlaglichter auf das geheimste Seelenklingen und die scheinbar unberührbare Innerlichkeit der Dichterfreunde. Gingen die Ansichten und Wege des neu-österreichischen Klassikers, des “zeitlosen,” im christlich-neuplatonischen Schönheitsideal aufgehenden Hofmannsthal und die des schollenverbundenen Lyrikers Wildgans, des Sängers der Menschlichkeit und des Menschlichen, auch oft weit auseinander, so fanden sie sich doch immer wiederum auf dem Boden des Heimatlich-Österreichischen, das sich aber stets in Liebe und Treue zum “grossen” Deutschtum und zum deutschen Geist verbunden fühlte. Der Briefwechsel kommt einige Tage vor dem tragischen Tode Hofmannsthals, 15. Juli 1929, zu einem plötzlichen Ende.

The only occasions on which Burns is known to have kept a regular journal were his tour of the Border in May, 1787, and his visit to the Highlands in the late summer of the same year. Dr. Currie, the poet's first authorized biographer, made some slight use of these documents, but what was alleged to be the complete text was first published by Allan Cunningham in 1834, after being further quoted by Lockhart in his Life of Burns in 1828. When the original of the Highland journal again came to light some years ago it proved to be considerably briefer than Cunningham's printed text. Mr. J. C. Ewing, who in 1927 edited the work in facsimile, believes the additions to have been made by Burns himself in a recension, now lost, of his original penciled notes. Professor Snyder, however, suspects Cunningham himself to be the author of the revisions, and in the absence not only of Burns's enlarged manuscript but of any proof that such a manuscript ever existed, it is difficult not to agree with Snyder. Cunningham's reputation as editor and biographer is so justly suspect that the burden of proof rests upon the defenders of his text.

The friendship between John Keats and Benjamin Robert Haydon is one chapter in the life of the poet which has never been satisfactorily written. A biography, like a novel, must needs have a villain; and in Haydon, Keats's biographers have one ready made. He was an egoist, a fanatic, and—worst of all—a failure; and surely, one is likely to think, whenever Haydon and Keats disagreed, Keats must have been right. The fact is that Keats and Haydon were intimate friends during the greater part of Keats's active creative life, and that each held the other, as an artist, in the highest regard. The purpose of the present study is to examine in some detail the course of this friendship and tentatively evaluate the importance of the influence of the painter on the poet.

The attempts to define and to arrive at a standard of taste lie at the heart of the aesthetic inquiries that were being carried on in eighteenth-century England. That such inquiries, by examining certain fundamental assumptions of traditional æsthetics, exerted an influence on the theory and practice of literary criticism, is a commonplace. But why and how this influence was felt has not been explained. Its importance can be gauged by the fact that within a period of twenty years several of the ablest minds in England and Scotland, including Burke, Hume, Hogarth, Reynolds, Kames, and Gerard—most of them interested in literary criticism—were focussed upon the problem of taste. It was not a coincidence that in the years from 1750 to 1770, when the search for a standard of taste was at its height, the old assumptions of literary criticism were crumbling and the new “romantic” principles were being set forth, sometimes timidly and sometimes boldly, by the Wartons, Young, Hurd, Kames, and many others. The relation between these two phenomena is the subject of this study.

One of the longest established conventions in English literature is that of giving self-interpreting names to characters. Scores of instances might be drawn from morality plays, Elizabethan and Restoration drama, with its Justice Greedys and Lovelesses, and eighteenth-century novels and plays, with their Slipslops and Lydia Languishes. During Scott's day George Colman the Younger, in his The Heir at Law, 1808, entertained audiences with Stedfasts and Homespuns and references to Lawyer Ferret, Lady Littlefigure, Lord Sponge, Mrs. Holdbank, Lady Betty Pillory, the Hon. Mrs. Cheatwell, Lord Spindle, Master Drumstick, Mrs. Sudds, Old Latitat (a lawyer, of course), Lord Loggerhead, Lord Docktail, Twist, and Young Vats (the beau brewer). Later in the century, Dickens peopled his pages with Mr. Glibs, Surgeon Slashers, and Professor Wheezys; but, as most of his names were chosen solely for their comicality, they lack suggestive variety. Thackeray's social satire is at times unreal because of an excessive use of telltale soubriquets; this is particularly true of The Book of Snobs with its infinity of Lord and Lady Snobbingtons. George Eliot exhibits little subtlety in this field; perhaps the most obvious instances are those of Scrag Whale, an explorer, Greenland Grampus, Proteus Merman, and Professor Sperm N. Whale in Theophrastus Such. The convention has even survived to the present day, though with somewhat impaired vitality. Mr. Burthen, a carrier, Mr. Bulge, a wine merchant, Dr. Chestman, Hardman, a blacksmith, Louisa Menlove, Rootle, a dentist, Tipman, a valet, and Parson Billy Toogood appear in Hardy's novels; and the Earl of Frogs, Gosling, an apprentice, Grubb, Lady Hammergallow, Mrs. Jabber, and Mrs. Montague Pangs in those of H. G. Wells.

Though Milton and Mirabeau were devoted to almost identical ideals of civil liberty, their personalities offer a peculiar contrast. Milton was an idealist, a theorist, a poet; he was abstemious in food and drink, inclined to seclusion, religious by nature. Mirabeau, on the other hand, was a soldier, an orator, a political leader. Whereas Milton was thoughtful and reserved, Mirabeau was animated, impulsive, ever seeking the center of action, forever restless and impatient. Sensual and gluttonous, he was as much a slave to his passions as any of the Englishmen Milton condemned for being so; and in his last moments he turned away, more in kindness than in derision, the priest who sought to shrive him. Notwithstanding these essential differences, Mirabeau found in Milton a kindred spirit; he found in him that flaming love of liberty, that passion for essential freedoms, that lofty and unselfish devotion to country to which he himself aspired. Milton's influence on Mirabeau, many times suggested but never evaluated, is one of significant interest to students of Milton's politics. A close study of two Mirabeau tracts, Théorie de la Royauté après la Doctrine de Milton and De la liberté de la Presse, reveals not only that Mirabeau's reading of Milton strikingly verified his own political conclusions: it presents evidence that Milton's voice at a critical period of the Revolution became the weapon of its most powerful leader. French cries for liberty found expression in the tracts of the Puritan poet.

Smollett's use of life and scenes in the British navy in the early 1740's in his first novel has long been recognized as an original and important contribution to the materials of English fiction. Chapters 24–38 of Roderick Random with their abundant detail, revealing so graphically the brutalities, disease, and official incompetence involved in the conduct of naval affairs in the expedition to Carthagena 1740–41, have not only impressed Smollett's critics but have offered a firm point of departure for the conjectures of his biographers. Yet although these chapters are successful as realistic art, and suggestive in their biographical implications, there always arises the difficult question of how much of this vivid writing is historical fact and how much is fiction. This question must be the concern of critics in determining Smollett's method in the selection of his materials, and it is central to his biography.

On New Year's Eve, 1828, Washington Irving, who was stopping in Seville during his first visit to Spain, made this entry in his diary:

Few English poets have been more faithful to their literary loves than Swinburne. His devotion to Landor, his passion for the Elizabethan drama, his adoration of Hugo are well-known illustrations of this truism. Not so familiar, but none the less genuine, was his admiration of the popular ballads. John Addington Symonds reports that Swinburne once purposed to translate them into French for Hugo. The poet cherished the memory of an old gamekeeper's praise of his youthful verses as being worthy of comparison with the ballads. Border minstrelsy was a topic often discussed at The Pines. Pride of ancestry and love of country and its traditions—feelings which swayed both Scott and Swinburne—led the latter to criticize his beloved predecessor for giving to “one of the most valuable books in our language” the “mendacious title” of Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.

On a chilly September morning in 1827 a young man bearing the humble name of Chardon entered a bookshop on the Quai des Augustins. Plucking up his courage, he announced to two busy partners: “I am the author of a French historical novel, in the manner of Walter Scott. Its title is The Archer of Charles the Ninth. I propose that you should handle the work.” But the busy partners were just lamenting that the great popularity of Scott's novels was prejudicial to their own trade. They rejected the proposal of Chardon, who took his wares to a sly full-bodied publisher called Doguereau. To him the budding author described his novel as “dans le genre de Walter Scott” and developed its theme as concerned with the civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. Doguereau made a paltry offer which was declined. L'Archer de Charles IX, after many vicissitudes, after being revised or puffed by various friends of Chardon, was published by a third firm—at a dead loss.

Charles Baudelaire was born April 9, 1821; Gustave Flaubert, December 12 in the same year. Their families belong to a cultivated and wealthy bourgeois class which offers to them all the advantages of such a milieu. They grow up during the time that French Romanticism attains the quintessence of its literary expression; their intelligence is stimulated by their reading of Victor Hugo's dramas, those of Alexandre Dumas, Sr., and of Théophile Gautier's poetry. At school, both are mediocre students who excel each in one scholastic exercise—Flaubert is awarded first prize in history, Baudelaire third prize in Latin poetry. They are too preoccupied with literature, too conscious of the first awakenings of their latent genius. Having no respect for their professors, they spend their time as best suits their fancy. Flaubert writes letters to his cherished friend, Ernest Chevalier: Lundi soir, 15 avril 1839, classe du sire Amyot, théorie des éclipses, lequel a l'esprit bougrement éclipsé.

A Notable contribution to the already imposing mass of critical material on Rubén Darío has recently appeared in the form of Dr. Arturo Torres-Ríoseco's Rubén Darío: casticismo y americanismo de su obra. Its special interest is the author's endeavor to combat two unfortunate tendencies evident in much of the critical material on Darío: (1) that of ascribing an undue share in the poet's artistic novelties to French influence, and (2) that of considering as “innovations” by Darío details of technique which he really resurrected, with little or no change, from earlier Spanish poetry. In cases where excess of zeal has led other critics into the errors above mentioned, Mr. Torres' program of destruction has been a real contribution to truth. It seems to the present writer, however, that a similar excess of zeal for the “castizo” has led the Chilean scholar into errors at least as great as those he ascribes to others. The above remarks apply particularly to Mr. Torres' chapter on “Metrical Resurrections and Innovations,” to the consideration of which the present article is limited.

In a former article, I traced the history of Balzac's literary reputation in England as an example of the persistent change in the Victorian point of view toward moral and literary questions. In spite of the vitriolic attacks of critics and moralists and the general apprehension of the reading public, Balzac ultimately was accepted in England. In the thirties, “… a baser, meaner, filthier scoundrel never polluted society”; in the nineties, he is acclaimed one of those “divine spies, for whom the world has no secrets,” who finds “spirit everywhere,” and who gives “us so much life that we are almost overpowered by it.” The fervor of the moralists in the nineties was no less than in the thirties, but the objects of their concern, and consequently their standards of judgment, had undergone radical modifications.

It is not commonly known that Pierre Lasserre, author of the notorious Romantisme français and long associated with Charles Maurras as leader of the dogmatic, authoritarian reaction against the romantic and liberal philosophies of the nineteenth century, died a liberal. That Lasserre in 1930 was on the threshold of a new life, that he was struggling desperately against time to bring forth the fruit of an intellect that had been slow in ripening, is a conclusion which may readily suggest itself to one who is familiar with the last stages of the critic's thought.