No one really believed in the authenticity of the answers,” complained Poe. “People will not believe I really decipher the puzzles.” But Poe did decipher the puzzles—that is, he really read a good many cryptograms of a certain simple type. Even the most recent biographers of Poe might be surprised to learn how many cryptograms were sent to him from time to time, and how many he solved or nearly solved. Some of the evidence has been published or cited but not much of it ever in one place, and much of it has been left hidden, especially that part which reveals the limitations of Poe as cryptographer. A large part was not available until September 1941, when the American Antiquarian Society acquired a file of the long-sought Alexander's Weekly Messenger for 1840.

L'épisode final de la Tentation de Saint Antoine, dans la version définitive, est celui des monstres.

L'ermite voudrait pénétrer le secret de la substance; il souhaite de voir les archétypes d'où dérive l'infinie variété des corps. Il se souvient vaguement de ces “formes d'esprits” naguère entrevues dans le ciel; et il songe que “ceux qui traversent le désert rencontrent des animaux dépassant toute conception.”

The dating of Shelley's prose essays and fragments is at present very uncertain. Mary Shelley's dates in the preface to Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations, and Fragments, 1840, are, for the most part, conjectures. W. M. Rossetti in A Memoir of Shelley gives briefly, without systematic evidence, the dates of some of the fragments. Forman and the Julian editors follow, with some exceptions, Rossetti's dating in their editions of Shelley's prose. Koszul laid a more secure foundation for the dating of some of Shelley's prose. His study of the external evidence of the MSS in the Bodleian notebook has resulted in considerable progress. The present writer has approached the problem of dating Shelley's prose from a study of the internal evidence which consists, in a large measure, of the study of the relation of Shelley's prose to his reading as found in the Journal of Shelley and Mary, Shelley's letters, and other biographical sources. Shelley's quotations, references, and allusions to his reading supply valuable information for dating. Some of the prose fragments, hitherto undated, are assigned a date, while the date of others is changed, confirmed, or given more precise limits. It should be acknowledged, however, that Shelley's wide variety of reading, and the extraordinary tenacity of his memory make for caution in dating works too confidently on the basis of internal evidence. Until such time as Shelley's prose MSS are studied as minutely, thoroughly, and systematically as the MSS of the Bodleian notebook, the dates of the fragments given in the following notes may serve as tentative points d'appui for a study of the development of Shflley's thought.

Students of Goldsmith have long recognized that in the framing of Tony Lumpkin, hilarious problem-child of Mrs. Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer, he was in some sort indebted to older English comedy. A resemblance to Humphry Gubbin in Steele's The Tender Husband, acted 1705, seems to have been first noticed by John Forster. Following Forster, George A. Aitken, in his Life of Steele (1889) affirmed that Humphry “certainly furnished Goldsmith with suggestions toward the creation of Tony Lumpkin” and cited the point that both are averse to marrying their cousins. He noticed the resemblance again in his edition of Steele's plays for the Mermaid Series, and it has since been a commonplace in histories of the drama.

In his Literati Edgar Allan Poe has left for students of Italian literature and history a very precious contemporary picture of Piero Maroncelli, author of the Addizioni to Pellico's Le mie prigioni, a poet of some merit (especially if judged by American literary taste of the eighteen thirties), a musician of some distinction, and a promising composer whose career as author and musician was interrupted by the more exciting, though often distressing, vicissitudes of a political life. Maroncelli, well known to anyone who has read Pellico's Le mie prigioni, since in reality he is the hero of that book, is probably the most romantic figure—if we exclude Byron—of the early Italian Risorgimento.

Two manuscripts in the Huntington Library—Changes of Aspect and Short Notes, written by Algernon Charles Swinburne—cast light on their author's relations with his contemporaries. One of them shows his sensitiveness to charges of inconsistency; both illustrate the power of his invective.

Students of Rossetti have felt a certain amount of curiosity about the origin of the stanza of “The Blessed Damozel.” The stanza itself is a matter of no great importance, but its study brings up two rather interesting points: (1) it throws some light on the development of one poet's feeling for verse; (2) it suggests the limitations of our ordinary metrical terminology. Described in conventional terms of accents, feet, and rhyme scheme, Rossetti's stanza is the stanza of “The Village Blacksmith” (which has a gratuitous rhyme in stanza 1, line 3), “The Slave's Dream,” and “The Music Grinders.” Yet, so far as I know, no critic has suggested the influence of Longfellow or Holmes, although the three American poems were published respectively in 1839, 1842, and 1836, and “The Blessed Damozel” in 1850. Nor do I think that, quite apart from the subject matter, any critic could mistake a stanza of “The Blessed Damozel” for the work of either Longfellow or Holmes. Waller, rejecting an Italian original suggested by Mégroz, mentions the six-line stanzas of “The Ancient Mariner,” but doesn't seem to think highly of his own suggestion.

Die “Französischen Zustände” gehören zu den weniger gelesenen Werken Heines. Sie sind hauptsächlich bekannt durch die “Vorrede,” die freilich nichts mit dem, worauf der Titel des Buches hinweist, zu tun hat, sondern sich ausschlieβlich mit Deutschland beschäftigt. Die “Vorrede” wurde zuletzt geschrieben und erst im Oktober 1832 an den Verleger gesandt. Da fast die ganze Korrespondenz Heines mit Campe aus dieser Zeit fehlte, bestanden über die sehr verworrenen Umstände der Entstehung und Veröffentlichung der “Vorrede” bisher groβe Miβverständnisse. Erst durch die Verwertung der noch unveröffentlichten Briefe Campes an Heine, welche mir durch die Güte des Bankiers Albert Strauβ zur Verfügung stehen und welche diese Angelegenheit eingehend behandeln, ist es möglich, im Folgenden eine abschlieβende Aufklärung zu geben.

The appointment of Lorenzo Da Ponte in 1825 as professor of Italian in Columbia College failed to arouse any considerable interest among the students of the institution in the study of the language. As was the case with the other modern foreign languages, the study of Italian remained optional. In fact Da Ponte had no chair in the Faculty and no salary, and he received only the fees of the students who chose his courses. Despite his insistent offers to the trustees of the college, all aiming at putting the study of Italian on a firmer basis in the curriculum, he remained, as he humorously styled himself, professor sine exemplo. It is true that during his long residence in New York City, Da Ponte taught his native tongue privately to no less than two thousand students, but he was not satisfied with these sporadic results, for his constant aim was to make the Italian language and literature generally available to an increasing number of American students. When he finally became convinced that the trustees of the college were firm in their unwillingness to change their actual statutes which would have placed Italian as a subject of study in the curriculum, Da Ponte turned his efforts in other directions in the hope that he might thus perpetuate the rich heritage of the Italian language, literature, and culture on American soil. He thought that the next best means by which to accomplish this purpose was to establish a permanent, carefully selected, and ever increasing Italian library. Taking advantage of a celebration held in his honor on the occasion of his seventy-ninth birthday (March 10, 1828), Da Ponte delivered an oration to a select audience of pupils and friends, with the specific object of interesting them in becoming subscribers to the projected Italian library. Though everyone had applauded his plan, his triumph ended in fine words. The oration won for him only one subscriber!

The first purpose of this paper is to review the question of just what sources Conrad Ferdinand Meyer used in writing Der Heilige; the second and more important aim is to interpret in some detail Meyer's use of his material, to show how he adapted it to his purposes and added to it from his creative imagination. Both matters have been discussed by students of Meyer, but usually incidentally, sometimes under mistaken impressions, and never comprehensively. Before proceeding with the actual investigation, it will perhaps serve the purpose of clarity to state my conception of Meyer's purpose in writing the Novelle: it was not primarily to retell or to vivify history, nor to glorify a saint; it was rather to narrate an “unerhörte Begebenheit.” To be sure, Der Heilige is a historical Novelle, but so far as history was concerned Meyer's chief solicitude was to give a vivid background for the characters and events presented, and at the same time to avoid disturbing unduly the preconceived notions of readers with some knowledge of twelfth-century England. This attitude of Meyer's, which he held in general toward history as fictional material, permits many significant deviations from history—deviations which are made for specific artistic purposes. They therefore merit our particular attention.

Despite several assertions to the contrary, Kleist had essentially an unphilosophic mind. He was penetrating and searching, of course, but childlike withal. Consider, for example, his fervent belief in the absolute validity of his rather naïve allegorical interpretations of nature, particularly the image of the vaulted arch which he describes in a letter to Wilhelmine. Or consider again the pedantic and amusing Fragen zu Denkübungen für Wilhelmine von Zenge. They might have been written by a precocious boy, and yet they were actually written in full seriousness by an extremely intelligent man, whose mind, in some respects, remained that of a child, poetic and unsophisticated. It remained absolute and exclusive in its judgments also, pursuing a premise to its last bitter conclusions. What the tension was in this uncompromising personality is generally recognized: in German its two poles are called Gefühl and Verstand. We may call them respectively, feeling and understanding, heart and head, intuitional knowledge and logical deduction, the spontaneous principle and the rational principle. These terms should be understood as simply and naively as Kleist explained the egocentric dilemma in his famous letter to Wilhelmine.

Among Balzac's many devoted admirers and literary friends must be listed a third or fourth-rate novelist, playwright, and poet, de Custine. As is well known, the writer of Le Père Goriot had a weakness for aristocrats and the Marquis could well take his place in the galaxy that included a Princesse de Belgiojoso, a Duc de Fitz-James, and a Comtesse Serafina San Severino, not to mention his future son-in-law, Count Mniszech. The friendship no doubt had firmer foundations since it lasted from the early thirties until Balzac's death.

Es ist bekannt, daβ der ältere Nietzsche mit den schärfsten und bittersten Gegnern Martin Luthers gehört, die bis heute gegen ihn und die deutsche Reformation auf den Plan getreten sind. Weniger bekannt scheint zu sein, daβ der junge Nietzsche, der Verfasser der Geburt der Tragödie, der Bildungsanstaltenvorträge und der unzeitgemäβen Betrachtungen, für den deutschen Reformator und sein Werk warme, ja wärmste Worte der Verehrung gefunden hat. Plötzlich und scheinbar unvermittelt wendet sich dann der Nietzsche des Menschlichen-Allzumenschlichen gegen den eben noch öffentlich gepriesenen Luther und verbrennt, was er, wenn auch nicht angebetet, so doch emphatisch gelobt und gutgeheiβen hatte. Zweifellos ist nun das Sonderproblem des Umschwungs in Nietzsches innerer Einstellung zu Luther nur ein Teil des Allgemeinproblems des groβen Wandels überhaupt, der sich in Nietzsches Denken seit etwa der Mitte der siebziger Jahre bemerkbar macht. Ohne diese wesentlichen Zusammenhänge des hier zu behandelnden Spezialproblems mit der Gesamtwandlung Nietzsches aus den Augen zu verlieren, hat es dennoch etwas ungemein Verlockendes, den Sonderfall ‘Nietzsche-Luther’ aus dem ganzen Problemkomplex einmal behutsam herauszulockern, ohne ihn vollständig herauszulösen. Es wäre sogar nicht ausgeschlossen, daβ bei solch induktivem Vorgehen möglicherweise neues Licht auf die m. E. immer noch nicht befriedigend beantwortete Grundfrage nach den tieferen Ursprüngen des zweiten Nietzsche fiele. Wie konnte es geschehen—so soll das vorliegende Individualproblem formuliert werden–-, daβ aus dem Lutherverehrer in kurzer Zeit ein Lutherfeind wurde? Wie schon angedeutet, ist dies nur ein Teil und zwar ein dem Nichtfachmann wohl kaum in die Augen springender Teil der Gesamtfrage, wie aus Nietzsche dem Metaphysiker und Kunstjünger der wissenschaftlich-theoretische Mensch wurde, aus dem Wagnerverehrer der Wagnerfeind. Was unsere Spezialfrage angeht, so ist vorerst unter Heranziehung aller Tatsachen genau zu untersuchen, wie sich das Lutherbild des jungen Nietzsche eigentlich entwickelt hat und wie umfassend und tiefgehend es wirklich gewesen ist. Mit andern Worten, es soll festgestellt werden, welcher Art der Luther war, den der frühe Nietzsche verehrte und bald darauf verwarf.

In seinem Ringen um einen neuen Stil des historischen Dramas auf naturalistischer Grundlage hat Gerhart Hauptmann die frühneuhochdeutsche Dichtung eifrig studiert. Bei Murner, bei Hans Sachs, beim historischen Volkslied, bei Gryphius hat er nach Wendungen und Redensarten gefahndet, die das Gewebe seines altertümelnden Satzbaus als stilecht und dauerhaft erweisen sollten. In dem bereits erschienenen Stück dieser Untersuchung ist das einschlägige Material zur Vergleichung vorgelegt worden. Daß aber Hauptmanns Belesenheit auf diesem Gebiet noch viel mehr umfaßt als die von mir angezogenen Bücher, wurde schon damals klar ausgesprochen. Inzwischen haben sich ein kleiner und ein großer Fund aus diesem Bereich eingestellt. Die sollen hier mitgeteilt werden, ehe wir den Hauptgegenstand dieser Abhandlung—das historische Schrifttum als sprachliche Quelle des Florian Geyer—in Angriff nehmen.

A Subject that seems destined to cause comment periodically is the similarity between the American poet Whitman and the German philosopher Hegel. Oddly enough, however, the dissimilarity between the two men has received comparatively little mention and still less emphasis. Yet this dissimilarity is not to be taken for granted, like the other side of the moon. Scholars who do so take it fail to do justice either to Hegel, the triad-maker, or to Whitman, his admirer. The purpose here is to point out some of the most conspicuous differences between the two men, which, it is believed, reveal that many of the likenesses cited from time to time are misleading, if not fallacious, or are too general to be of significance.

During the four years preceding Carlyle's commencement of The French Revolution his ideas on history and historiography underwent a gradual but complete change. In 1830–32 the doctrine of natural supernaturalism convinced him that history was not what the Eighteenth Century had thought it: “Philosophy teaching by Examples,” but “the true Poetry,” “the sole Poetry possible,” —that history and poetry were the same thing. By 1833, in spite of certain ethical and aesthetic doublings, he managed to see with considerable clarity that these two were divine and that Poetry, History, and Religion were really fused into one, and wrote “The Diamond Necklace” as an historical experiment which should reflect this fusion.