In Rouge et Noir, Stendhal (Henri Beyle) defines a novel as a miroir: qui se promène sur la grande route. We may apply this figure to his Correspondance which, less open to the suspicion of pose than his other writings, reflects much of la vie littéraire of France during the first four decades of the nineteenth century. Stendhal was brought up on a classicist régime, he saw the passing of pseudo-classicism, he contributed to the triumph of romanticism and was himself a realist, before the term had been: invented. In a letter to Mr. Stritch of London, written in 1823 in the midst of the romanticist ebullition, he declared: Le caractère principal de la nation française est la méfiance (II, p. 296). No one could offer more natural qualifications for recognition as the spokesman of his nation in this regard, than this man, who, French by birth, wrote under a German pseudonym and had himself buried as a citizen of Milan under the Italian inscription which he had composed for his own tombstone.

Possibly no entry in the Stationers' Register has given rise to more discussion than the puzzling “to be staied” entered in the margin beside the titles of four plays on one of the fly-leaves of “Register C.”

A quaint piece of dramatic writing, the Cartel or Monomachie of Antoine Gaillard, is one of the earliest of seventeenth-century French plays in which an author puts his contemporaries on the stage and makes fellow writers the butt of his jests. It clears the way for Desmarest's Visionnaires, Saint-Evremond's Académistes, a half-dozen of Molière's plays, and a number of other pieces by Molière's contemporaries, whose satire is devoted to living individuals or to groups of literary persons; but the work has so little dramatic value that it would remain merely a date, were it not for the fact that by selecting real persons as the object of his satire, Gaillard has criticized from the standpoint of a contemporary a number of writers who flourished with greater or less distinction in 1633. In discussing the work I shall therefore dwell upon its biographical qualities, rather than upon its slender merit as a drama.

Every student of the literature of the Middle Ages is aware that Eichard I was a highly popular figure in medieval England, and that about the historical facts of his career there grew up with rapidity and luxuriance a considerable growth of romantic legend. As his fame challenged the pre-eminence of Arthur among British heroes, so his exploits, like Arthur's, multiplied and grew more marvelous in the imagination of the people, though for obvious reasons the process never went so far. To Richard's prestige among his own people we have abundant testimony in the seven manuscripts of the Middle English romance of Richard Cœur de Lion extant and in the three printed editions of the sixteenth century. As Ellis pointed out, as early as 1805, in introducing his synopsis of the romance, it is a curious texture of narrative mainly historical concerning the Third Crusade, interwoven liberally with bits of this legendary material. It will be profitable, before dealing with illustrations of certain episodes occurring in the romance, to devote some attention to its development and structure. In a review of Dr. Karl Brunner's critical edition of Richard Cœur de Lion, to be published elsewhere, I hope to deal fully with the subject, and merely summarize here the results of my investigations. I owe much to Dr. Brunner's discussion, but more to that of Gaston Paris, whose conclusions in general I adopt.

The Middle English metrical paraphrase of the gospel narrative bearing the title La Estorie del Euangelie has been printed hitherto only from the fragmentary text in the Vernon MS. Indeed, Horstmann was not aware that any other MS. of this poem existed. In the following pages, the Evangelie is printed from two additional MSS.: (1) a fragment of 519 lines in Dulwich Coll. MS. XXII (D), which Sir George Warner dates about 1300, and (2) a complete text from Bodl. MS. Add. C 38 (B), which according to Mr. Madan was written between 1410 and 1420.

If history is to giv us a tru picture of human life in the past, it cannot limit itself to political events. The chief end of man never was to frame, uphold, and overthro governments, stil les to wage war and sign treaties. These ar accidents or epiphenomena. Man's primary concern is and was from the first his daily fight for existence, the necessity of getting food and shelter, the desire of getting them with a minimum of painful exertion. Man does not merely adapt himself to his surroundings: he attempts to alter his surroundings so as to suit himself. Thus he creates new conditions from which new problems arise. Human society groes ever farther away from that brutish state of automatic adaptation which poets call the Erthly Paradise. From the erliest stone implement to the aeroplane, from the first concerted hunt to the elaborate insurance system of the German Empire, we see the progres of this warfare against nature. The result of these efforts is what we understand by civilization.

There are so many, points at issue regarding Shakespeare's Sonnets,—the authenticity of the Quarto arrangement, the question of their autobiographical interest, the date, the identity of W. H., of the Dark Lady, and of the Rival Poet,—there has been so much written on all these problems, and the solution of them is so wholly a matter of conjecture, that I shall be obliged for the most part merely to record my own convictions and refer to rather than repeat the sets of arguments which have led me to one opinion instead of to the contrary view; and even in presenting what I offer as my own contribution to the subject I must omit many if not most of the minor considerations which have influenced me.

In Richer's History of France, written in 996 for Gerbert of Rheims, there is an account of one of Odo's campaigns against the Normans, which critics have uniformly rejected as being too romantic to rest on facts.

In Theodor Fontanes Roman Effi Briest heisst es einmal: “Auf zwanzig Deutsche, die nach Frankreich gehen, kommt noch nicht einer, der nach England geht. Das macht das Wasser… Das Wasser hat eine scheidende Kraft.” Zu dem Wasser, d. h. der geographischen Lage, kommt die Geschichte Englands, um einen Inselgeist auszubilden, den die fremden Besucher Englands während der letzten 300 Jahre alles andere nur nicht entgegenkommend und liebenswürdig nennen. Man lese etwa nur das Buch von Edward Smith: Foreign Visitors in England. Und die Haltung der Engländer dem Ausländer gegenüber ist nur ein Symbol für die geistige Abgeschlossenheit und Unzugänglichkeit ihres Landes, dem das Gefällige und Mitteilsame der französischen Kultur mindestens ebenso fehlt wie Deutschland.