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.

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.

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.

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.