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.

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.

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.

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.

Attention has been called by Prof. A. S. Cook to an interesting parallel between the description of the Day of Judgment in Cynewulf's Elene, vv. 1277–1320, and a passage in Alcuin's De Fide Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis. Prof. Cook believes that the correspondences between these two passages are so complete as to prove the dependence of Cynewulf upon Alcuin. Inasmuch as Alcuin's treatise was not written until 802–4 a. d., Cynewulf's dependence, if established, would oblige us to throw the Elene, and perhaps the rest of the Cynewulfian poetry, into the 9th century. The vital importance of such a conclusion to the whole question of Cynewulf's date and identity is apparent.

Some years ago (in the academic year 1898–99), while reading Aliscans with a few students, I reached an explanation of v. 3053 in Guessard and Montaiglon's edition which still seems to me plausible, even after the recent remarks of M. Gaston Paris on the same subject (Romania, xxxi, 100 ff.). I, therefore, make it public.