A resemblance between Malory's story of Gareth in Book vii of the Morte Darthur and the romances of the “Fair Unknown” group has been noted frequently, and described as “slight,” “undeniable,” or “distant” according to the critic's point of view. It has never been considered in any of the thorough studies of the group, and has more than once been completely ignored in the presentation of similarities between Malory's account and other medieval stories.

Sir Thomas More's History of Richard III has been adequately studied as an historical document, but not as a work of literature; and yet since the time of Ascham it has been praised chiefly and properly for its literary qualities. It is the purpose of this article, therefore, to discuss some of the important literary problems presented by Richard III. An attempt will be made to show how closely More's narrative conforms to classical theory and to what extent it is imitative of classical histories. Of chief concern, however, will be More's use of irony. It will be evident throughout that his approach to history writing was that of a Christian humanist.

The chief purpose of this paper is to describe one phase of the domestication of Latin drama on the Renaissance stage, specifically to show how a conventional type made famous by the Roman comedians, the miles gloriosus, was fashioned by the academic playwrights of sixteenth-century Italy into an instrument of contemporary satire. A secondary aim is to provide a fuller literary background for the study of the braggart in Elizabethan drama. Such analysis requires a summary of themes, situations, and attitudes that have enriched the comic tradition of Europe, and demands also a definition of the comic spirit that exposes and derides the vainglorious folly of the alazon or boaster who struts and brags of his merits in utter disregard of truth. Menander and his disciples in Latin comedy developed a satiric method which the Italians borrowed for the ridicule of modern representatives of the alazon. Any consideration of the commedia erudita must also be prefaced by a review of the political conditions in Italy that brought to prominence such hated types as the Spaniard and other mercenary soldiers. This paper describes the rôle of the Spaniard and traces the evolution of the braggart from the imitations of Plautus and Terence, through the modifications of conventional themes, and finally to the new elements inspired by the changed domestic conditions of the peninsula.

The first pamphlet issued in the Martin Marprelate controversy, the Epistle to the right puissante and terrible priests, represents the earliest experiment in the dissemination of printed matter in colloquial English for the purpose of influencing public opinion. In order to acquaint the common people with the Puritan criticism of the episcopacy, the author, calling himself Martin Marprelate, hit upon the idea of playing the buffoon in print. In a sort of monologue consisting of simple words and short sentences he mingles seemingly good-humored raillery with bits of scandal about various prominent clergymen. With this device to arouse the curiosity of his readers he attacks the basic organization of the Established Church. The Epistle set the pace for the whole fight.

Somewhat more than a century and a quarter past, Dugald Stewart, philosopher and critic second only to Sir William Hamilton, wrote:

The silva is a form of verse which was used by Lope de Vega in increasing quantity from about 1620. Though it never rose to take a place among the most popular meters, Lope used as many as 259 lines of silvas in La Noche de San Juan (Acad. N., VIII), of 1631, and 255 lines in Las bizarrías de Belisa (Acad. N., XI), of 1634. This represents respectively 8.5 and 9.3 per cent of the total number of lines in the play. Among plays of less certain date, La boba para los ostros y discreta para sí has 315 lines of silvas, or 11.1 per cent of the play in that meter, while Más pueden celos que amor has 304 lines of silvas, representing 11.4 per cent of the total number of lines. This trend towards a freer use of silvas in the drama was likewise reflected in the works of other writers.

Investigation has revealed that a number of the minor writers, the decadent writers of neoclassic French tragedies, contributed a comparatively large number of dramas which were accorded wide and enthusiastic acceptance in Spain during the second half of the eighteenth century. The chief reasons for this wide acceptance are that they came at a time when the greatest efforts were being made to introduce the neo-classic tragedy into Spain, and that these same tragedies had been first accepted with applause in Paris. If Crébillon's Rhadamiste et Zénobie seemed so good to Paris audiences that they applauded it thirty-three times during the first year of its appearance, why should Spaniards not feel safe in adapting it to their stage? Paris had been forming a taste for neo-classic tragedy during a period of two hundred years; it was the home of modern tragedy, and what Paris applauded, certainly Madrid could accept with assurance.

These words interrupted a search of the newspaper files for an item about Mary Shelley. Although that search proved futile, the bit of unexpected news about her famous mother was adequate reward for the effort. For the Reverend Joshua Waterhouse, the singular Rector of Stukeley—or more accurately Little Stukeley—was an entirely new character in the drama of Mary Wollstonecraft's life, unmentioned by and apparently unknown to any of her biographers. His identity and his history were soon made clear by other issues of the London newspapers, by the Huntingdon Gazette, and by two little books occasioned by his sudden and sordid death. And knowledge of his existence and of his character throws light on certain passages in Mary Wollstonecraft's writings.

For a century and more Heinrich Heine has had an international vogue unsurpassed by that of any other German poet, unless Goethe. This well-known fact has been established beyond doubt in a series of studies on Heine in America, Heine in France, Heine in Holland, Heine in Rumania, Heine in Scandinavia. Strangely enough, however, Heine's influence in two countries that perhaps felt most strongly the impress of his literary personality has hitherto not been fully explored by scholars. The one country is his own native land, where he was constantly felt as a living, though not necessarily beneficial, force and where his work gave rise to unceasing controversies. The other realm is England.

Much has been written about the influence of the early reviewers on Tennyson. Professor Lounsbury, who has made the only real printed effort at a scholarly analysis of the question, believed the influence to be very slight. I shall attempt here to collect and sift the evidence afresh and to determine as clearly as possible the part which the reviewers played in Tennyson's ten-years' silence after the publication of his first two independent volumes (1830, 1833), in his revisions and suppressions of poems in them, and in his choice of subjects and expression of ideas in the new poems of 1842.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

Der französische Dichter Léon-Paul Fargue (geboren 1878) sagt in einer Unterredung mit Frédéric Lefèvre, daβ er beim Wiederlesen seiner Prosagedichte und bei der Prüfung, welche Aenderungen er jetzt, nach vielen Jahren, vornehmen würde, immer auf die alte Fassung zurückgekommen sei als die beste, um das auszudrücken, was er beschreiben wollte. Diese Aeusserung erstaunt den Leser, der bei der ersten Lektüre Fargue's vieles Bizarre, ja Willkürliche festzustellen meint. Wenn er sich aber nach wiederholter Lektüre ein Verständnis des Dichters verschafft hat, erscheinen ihm seine Gedichte nicht mehr als unbegründet phantastisch, sondern als notwendig. Diese Notwendigkeit, die einen gewiβen sicheren Glanz ausstrahlt,—“splendor veri” sagen die Platoniker—ist die Form des Geschriebenen. Die wirkliche Form, wollen wir sie einmal “innere” Form nennen, hat nichts mit der “äusseren” Form zu tun, die die Sitte verlangt. Ein Sonett, eine Ode kann absolut formlos, mit Leere aufgepumpt sein, während ein Fragment, ja ein Satz vollkommen geformt sein, in sich selbst, ja für sich selbst bestehen können. Ein geformtes Geschriebenes ist erreicht, wenn die Wort-Materie und die Vision des Autors sich absolut decken, wenn die Materie durch und durch verwandelt ist vom Geist, so daβ sich das Geformte vom Autor vollkommen ablöst, in sich selbst ruht, und ein eigenes Leben mit eigener Wirkung beginnt. Aus dieser Ansicht geht hervor, daβ ein Fragment oder ein Prosagedicht ebenso gut eine gültige Form erreichen kann wie ein Sonett oder eine Ode. Ja, den Möglichkeiten der Form des Geschriebenen (und alle geformte Sprache pflegen wir Dichtung zu nennen) ist keine Grenze gesetzt—wobei der durch die Erfahrung bedingte Wert der Konvention ein anderes Kapitel bildet.