bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Rising and Falling Rhythm in English Verse
Authors: Creek Herbert L.
Published: February 2007

The question of rising and falling rhythm in English verse has received such various and confusing treatment in recent metrical discussion that further consideration is evidently necessary. It is my purpose to point out the factors that make verse rhythm rising or falling, and to emphasize the importance of vocabulary as one of these factors.
War Journalism Three Hundred Years Ago
Authors: Thompson Elbert N. S.
Published: February 2007

Of all the agencies involved in the great world-war, the newspapers, at the outbreak of hostilities, were more ready than any other for the demands placed upon them. Regiments had to be raised, munitions and supplies had to be provided, and means of transportation, in the face of dangers never confronted before, had to be assured. But the special correspondents were at once ready to take their posts at the front, and the newspapers at home were equipped to put the news in the most graphic form before the reading public.
IV.—Grammatical and Natural Gender in Middle English
Authors: Moore Samuel
Published: February 2007

The scholars who have investigated the history of gender in Middle English have been unanimous in the conclusion that the loss of grammatical gender was the result of the loss of the gender-distinctive forms of the strong adjective declension, the definite article and demonstrative, and other pronominal words. Körner wrote in 1888 : Die angelsächsische sprache unterschied bekanntlich drei grammatische genera, während das moderne englisch das grammatische geschlecht überhaupt nicht mehr besitzt. Der verlust desselben hängt natürlich mit dem verluste der flexion aufs engste zusammen und findet auch hierin seine alleinige erklärung. Bot doch die flexion allein dem sprechenden einen anhalt für die unterscheidung des grammatischen geschlechts; woran hätte man sich sonst noch halten können, als erstere aufgegeben wurde? Denn der zusammenhang zwischen der bedeutung und dem überkommenen geschlecht der bezeichnungen für leblose wesen wurde längst nicht mehr gefühlt. Als daher durch aufgabe der flexion das äussere erkennungszeichen für das grammatische genus fiel, so musste letzteres überhaupt schwinden. Es ergab sich von selbst, dass an seine stelle das natürliche gechlecht trat.1
Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Rinaldo Rinaldini
Authors: Peck Walter Edwin
Published: February 2007

Late in 1817, while residing at Great Marlow, Shelley wrote out the fragment known as Prince Athanase, presenting the characteristically Shelleyan hero, imbibing “philosophic wisdom, clear and mild” from an old hermit named Zonoras.
V. England's Discovery of the Decameron
Authors: Farnham Willard
Published: February 2007

If Chaucer knew nothing at all of the Decameron, his failure to get hold of it has every aspect of mystery. If Chaucer was acquainted with that rich human document, the use which he made of it is to many of us a still greater mystery. Accordingly we are led to inquire how much the England of Chaucer's time, or even of the century after his death, may have known concerning Boccaccio's hundred tales, aside from the story of Griselda's persecution told at second- or third-hand. The facts concerning England's discovery of the Decameron are of course not summed up in what we know about Painter.
VI. Cain's Jaw Bone
Authors: Kuhl Ernest P. , Bonnell John Kester
Published: February 2007

Hamlet: That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once; how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain's jaw-bone, that did the first murther! It might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o'er-reaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not? (V, i, 83-87).

“Cain's jaw-bone, that did the first murther!” Is there anything more in this phrase than meets the casual eye? Though the skull and jaw-bone of Hamlet's brooding comment are without doubt human, it has been suggested by no less an authority than the late Professor Skeat that here is an allusion to an old tradition according to which Cain killed Abel with the jaw-bone of an ass. The suggestion might seem almost fantastic were it not for several corroborative circumstances: namely, that the tradition was English; that it was wide-spread and familiar; that it found a place in the mystery plays; and that Shakspere was not unaccustomed to making allusions to the primitive and cruder art of the religious drama.
The Latin Epigram of the Middle English Period
Authors: Hessler L. B.
Published: February 2007

Although much has been written of the relation of the Latin classics to English literature, comparatively little interest has been taken by scholars in the actual use of Latin as a practical instrument by English writers. During the Middle Ages it was the universal language for religious and learned works; even at a later date Bacon found it difficult to discard Latin for English, having the Essays translated into Latin on the ground that it was the more durable medium for the transmission of his thoughts to posterity.
Hamlet Under the Restoration
Authors: Spencer Hazelton
Published: February 2007

On the evening of September 20, 1709, at about the hour when we are accustomed in our own theatres to see the curtain rising on the first act, an old man dressed in black clothes sat in a chair of state on the stage of the London Haymarket, and whispered for the last time, “The rest is silence.” Within the sound of his beautiful voice the wit and fashion of the capital were congregated, their customary laughter and chatter awed into stillness by the “divinity [that] hung round that man.” He had played the Prince for forty-eight years, and though he was now more than seventy, and occasionally younger men essayed the rôle, the “town” still preferred their old favorite.
The Arnoldian Lyric Melancholy
Authors: Elliott G. R.
Published: February 2007

Matthew Arnold is in general so confidently clear as to the nature of his own poetry that the reader is apt to credit him when he insists upon the contemporary sources of its melancholy. But those contemporary sources will appear much dimmer when the second or third centenary of his birth (December 24, 1822) shall come round. The “two worlds” that the poet wandered between will doubtless be rather nebular on the rear horizon, and the carefully wrought stanzas concerning them may seem the “stretched metre of an antique song.” The cursory commemorating reader, when he reaches the poem on Growing Old, may toss the volume aside with the remark that “this old fellow carefully architectured his gloom, but added here too obvious a gable.” The discerning reader, however, will be in a better position than now to find, flowing beneath Arnold's verse, a profounder melancholy than the clear Arnoldian eye itself could fathom.
VII.—The Dreams of Charlemagne in the Chanson De Roland
Authors: Krappe Alexander Haggerty
Published: February 2007

The dreams of Charlemagne in Rol. 717–36 and 2525–60 have several times been the subject of critical investigations. Professor Rajna sees in them a direct influence of the Old Teutonic epic; Wilhelm Tavernier, on the other hand, is inclined to consider at least one of them as the literary imitation of a dream occurring in the Waltharius. The fact that some of those dreams are animal dreams appeared also to him as a proof of Teutonic influences due perhaps to the Norman descent of the author. It will, therefore, be the purpose of this paper to examine those dreams and to test the arguments put forward to prove their Teutonic character.
VIII.—Contemporary Opinion of Poe
Authors: Campbell Killis
Published: February 2007

Although Poe is now all but universally acknowledged to be one of the three or four literary geniuses that America has produced, there was a period immediately following his death when few writers in America were willing to concede to him any extraordinary merit beyond that of an exceptionally gifted artist. It has sometimes been held that Poe was similarly neglected even before his death. Thus, so distinguished a scholar as Professor Sir Walter Raleigh, of Oxford, in a letter addressed to the celebrators of the Poe centenary at the University of Virginia (1909), makes the statement that Poe was “barely recognized while he lived.” Baudelaire, who did more than any other to light the flame of Poe's reputation abroad, believed that Poe was cruelly neglected by his fellow-countrymen, and most other Frenchmen have, I believe, adopted much the same view. In America, too, there has long existed a tradition that Poe was but little appreciated during his lifetime,—a tradition that has flourished especially at the South, though it has not been confined to the South. On the other hand, some of the ablest of those who have made a special study of Poe have held that this tradition is without any substantial basis in fact. The lamented Professor Charles F. Richardson, for instance, in one of the most sympathetic and discriminating essays that we have on the Southern poet, asserts that it is “a serious mistake” to assume that Poe was unpopular in his own day. And Professor W. P. Trent, a no less eminent authority on our literary history, has recorded the belief that “Poe is no exception to the rule that the writers who really count began by counting with their contemporaries.”
X—Chaucer's Tale of Ireland
Authors: Tupper Frederick
Published: February 2007

There seem many strong reasons for deeming the unhappy love-story in Chaucer's Anelida and Arcite the invention of the poet's own day and hour. Unlike its seventy-line prelude of Theseus and Ipolita and desolate Thebes, which as everybody knows, is a blending of Statius and Boccaccio—anticipating the riper treatment of the same theme in the beginning of The Knight's Tale—the story owes nothing to any known source. Indeed Chaucer implicitly disclaims any originals of his narrative, even when explicitly professing them, for, “when speaking of his finding an old story in Latin, he is actually translating from an Italian poem which treats of a story not found in Latin,” and his solemn appeal to the misty authority of that nominis umbra, “Corinne,” of whom more anon, seems devised to blur the credulous reader's vision. Moreover, he runs directly counter to a dominant motive of the Teseide, the unswerving loyalty of that paragon among lovers, the Theban Arcite, by making him, in this little poem, the weakest of philanderers. For that violent reversal of character there must have been indeed some strong provocation from without, but certainly not from any books that we know. The precedent, too, of The Complaint of Mars suggests strongly some contemporary court-scandal, cloaked in the protecting garb of the antique. Our poem rises far above the conventional “complaint” in its leitmotif—a distinctive situation, concrete and personal, unfolded with an abiding sense of reality and in the glow of a righteous indignation.
XI.—Athelston, a Westminster Legend
Authors: Hibbard Laura A.
Published: February 2007

Athelston is one of the most vigorous and independent of Middle English romances, yet it is one about which least is known. Various writers have commented on this “strange neglect,” but in the years since 1829 when Hartshorne first published the text in his Ancient Metrical Tales, it has only twice been made the subject of serious study. Zupitza's edition in Englische Studien XIII-XIV (1889–1890) was primarily textual in character and devoted less than two pages to questions of origin. In Englische Studien XXXVI (1906), Prof. Gerould discussed “Social and Historical Reminiscences in Athelston.” Frankly accepting Zupitza's brief conjectures as to the original personages and events of the story, he concerned himself with the study of sworn brotherhood, a custom prominently referred to in the romance, and with the interesting possibility that the characterization of king and bishop in the romance had been influenced by the vivid personalities of Henry II and Thomas Becket. Certainly their memory was as living for the fourteenth century as it had been for the twelfth since it was continually renewed by the pilgrim hosts at Becket's shrine. A story which had to tell of the quarrel between a king and a churchman might well borrow something from the traditional violence of King Henry and the fearless courage of Becket, but such influence in Athelston, if it existed at all, must have affected simply the characterization of the two dominant personalities; in other respects, in motive, detail and incident, there is no real correspondence between history and the romance. In a story so closely knit as Athelston it is unprofitable to believe that it had absorbed unrelated incidents or that it had varied very much from whatever was its basic type. From the false accusation brought by the king's friend against his sworn brother, through the king's quarrel with the archbishop who hurries to the defense of the king's sister and her husband, to the great climax when the accused pass through the ordeal by fire, the story pursues an almost inevitable course which allows for hardly one of the haphazard accretions usual in mediaeval romance.
Russian Versions of Don Juan
Authors: Manning Clarence Augustus
Published: February 2007

The legend of Don Juan with all its wonderful possibilities could not fail sooner or later to reach Russia on its triumphant march through Europe from its home in Spain. In truth we find that as early as the reign of Peter the Great (the first quarter of the eighteenth century) there was produced a Don-Yan. Only the fifth act of this is preserved, but it seems to be a Russian translation of a Polish version of Villiers' Le Festin de Pierre. For a century more there is no Russian version and it is not until the time of Pushkin that we find a really valuable contribution to the development of the legend.
Epic Formulas, Especially In Laʒamon
Authors: Tatlock John S. P.
Published: February 2007

In Laʒjanion's poem commonly called Brut there is an extraordinary profusion of epic formulas, full of flavor and charm, contributing as much as anything to the marked individuality of the poem. The same or similar phrases are used again and again, as a rule in the same or similar circumstances, or to describe the same person or action. The degree of similarity which makes a phrase a formula is impossible to define, but in the first list in each case given below is meant to be essentially close. A phrase is considered a formula when it occurs three times or more in this poem; two occurrences may be accidental, but three are becoming habitual. Other occurrences could doubtless be found, and also other formulas, but we have meant to exclude mere stock-rimes, and in general phrases so inevitable that they would not have been felt as formulas by Laʒamon or his auditors, however often repeated. Some of our items might be combined, others subdivided, for they often merge with each other; the whole matter is fluid. The most frequent form is generally taken as standard. Hundreds of less frequent or important variants are disregarded. Each formula is nicknamed by a striking word in it.
The Reputation of Abraham Cowley (1660-1800)
Authors: Nethercot Arthur H.
Published: February 2007

When Abraham Cowley died in 1667, he was mourned by practically the whole English literary world with such eulogies as the following:

His Body . . . . lies near the Ashes of Chaucer and Spenser, the two most Famous English Poets of Former Times. But whoever would do him right should not only equal him to the Principal Ancient Writers of our own Nation, but should also rank his name amongst the Authors of the true Antiquity, the best of the Greeks and Romans.
XXV.—The Personality of Hippolyte Taine
Authors: Norman Hilda Laura
Published: February 2007

Writers almost always, either consciously or unconsciously, make of their books mirrors of their personalities, eagerly exposing every trait to the public. But occasionally a writer wears a mask before this literary mirror and the public sees him only in disguise save perhaps in the pages of his intimate correspondence. Such a man was Hippolyte Taine, and it is a curious task to study this reserved scholar as he reveals himself in his books, to watch for the rare lines where he has dropped his mask in unguarded moments of secret ambition, of ennui or despair, of sudden mockery or mirth.
XXX.—Were The “Gothic Novels” Gothic?
Authors: McIntyre Clara F.
Published: February 2007

The hardest thing to do with a child, sometimes, is to name it. The same is often true of a type of literature. To find a name which shall adequately express the tendencies and purposes of certain literary work is a difficult and perplexing task. It often happens, too, that a name is given carelessly, because of some application either incidental or actually mistaken, and remains fixed, although its appropriateness is only superficial.
Chaucer's “My Maistre Bukton”
Authors: Kuhl Ernest P.
Published: February 2007

Scholars are not agreed as to the identity of the person addressed by Chaucer in his Envoy a Bukton. Tyrwhitt was the first to suggest that the individual warned in regard to the risks of matrimony was Sir Peter (de) Bukton of Yorkshire. Professor J. S. P. Tatlock in 1907 questioned this identification, suggesting instead a Robert Bukton of Suffolk. Professor J. R. Hulbert, independently of Tatlock, attempted to show that Robert of Suffolk was the more likely person. Inasmuch as considerable evidence, not observed hitherto, makes Peter the more probable candidate, a review of the arguments of Tatlock and Hulbert becomes necessary.
The Biographical Element in the Novels of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Authors: Peck Walter Edwin
Published: February 2007

Readers of Shelley's poetry must regret the lack of a biography of the poet by his gifted second wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. More keenly than any other of those among whom his life was lived, she apprehended the presence of the “divine fire” in his work. For it she endured public ignominy, poverty, exile, and more—the occasional wavering of his affections toward her—with unexampled patience. For it she set aside her own literary aspirations, themselves neither slight nor groundless, until that blow which stilled forever the voice of her beloved numbed also her genius and left her desolate. Afterwards, when that which the sea gave up had vanished in mist or been resolved to dust on the sands of Spezzia, and when that dust had been laid away near the pyramid of Caius Cestius at Rome, there remained the memory of him to be cherished, and his fame to be kept pure to succeeding ages.
Nicholas Grimald, The Judas of the Reformation
Authors: Merrill L. R.
Published: February 2007

Many a man of letters who has been accounted great in his own time and whose work has had no little influence on the world's literature has ceased to be a person of any interest in later years, and his works are no longer read. Few such men have left so little record of themselves, or have inspired in these latter days of research so little interest, so little desire to make inquiry into their lives and personalities as has Nicholas Grimald. Nevertheless, John Bale, the first writer of English literary history, tells how renowned he was in that day, and calls him the foremost alumnus of Cambridge and not the least glory of his time. Indeed, he might well be regarded as such. Next to Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, he was the principal contributor to the first anthology of English poetry, then known as Songes and Sonnettes, now known as Tottel's Miscellany, a book which enjoyed astonishing popularity. A second edition of it appeared within a month of the first, and eight editions appeared within twenty years. His name is here joined to those of two men who are still remembered. Another reason for the interest of posterity is that two of Grimald's poems in this volume, “The Death of Zoroas,” and “Marcus Tullius Ciceroes Death,” were the first compositions in blank verse to be published in the English language. The credit, to be sure, is commonly given to Surrey for having written the first blank verse, for although the translation in that poetic form which he made of the second and the fourth book of the Aeneid was published June 21, 1557, a little over two weeks later than Songes and Sonnettes, it must have been written at least ten years before, as Surrey died in 1547. Nevertheless, it is not improbable that Grimald's compositions in blank verse were done even before Surrey's, for in 1547 he was appointed lecturer in rhetoric at Christ Church, Oxford. Warton suggests that Grimald's verses were “prolusions or illustrative practical specimens for our author's course of lectures in rhetoric.” But he had previously been engaged in literary work for some years. His poetic drama, Christus Redivivus, which was published in 1543, was written about 1539, when, as he says in its dedicatory epistle, he was about twenty. In 1548, he published his Archipropheta, which shows him to be a master of a variety of verse forms.
Southey's Later Radicalism
Authors: Haller William
Published: February 2007

Carlyle tells us in his Reminiscences that, when Wat Tyler made its unlucky appearance in 1817, he with other radicals “cackled and triumphed” over Southey “as over a slashed and well-slain foe to us and mankind.” A few years later, however, he read Joan of Arc, Thalaba, and The Curse of Kehama with kindlier feeling, thought them “full of soft pity, like the wailings of a mother, yet with a clang of chivalrous valor finely audible too.” From that time on he watched for Southey's writings, especially his Quarterly articles, as for things of value; “in spite of my Radicalism, I found very much in these Toryisms which was greatly according to my heart; things rare and worthy, at once pious and true, which were always welcome to me.”
Poetry, Prose, and Rhythm
Authors: Lotspeich C. M.
Published: February 2007

The following study represents an attempt to determine the fundamental difference between poetry and prose and the relation of simple rhythm, or metre, to poetry. The reader should bear in mind that in all branches of science and art distinctions and classifications hold good, as a rule, only in a broad and general way; there are always border-line phenomena that defy classification. For example, we make a general distinction between animal and plant life, and yet of some of the lower forms of life it is difficult to say whether they belong in the one class or in the other. Or again, it is no uncommon thing to hear chemists and physicists dispute regarding the provinces of their respective sciences. And again, rhythm and melody seem to us to be very different things, and yet at bottom they are both rhythm, because differences in pitch depend upon differences in frequency of vibration, and in any melody these vibration frequencies stand in a rhythmical relation to each other. The farther we penetrate into any subject, the more difficult does exact classification become. And so our distinction between poetry and prose must be taken in a rather broad and general way. There are pieces of prose which seem to be highly poetic in nature, and there are poems in which the writer seems to have encroached upon the province of prose. Be this as it may, I believe we can at least say that in this direction lies the field of poetry, in that the field of prose. With this general reservation, then, let us ask the question: What is the essential difference between poetry and prose?
The Metrical Forms of the Poem of the Cid
Authors: Lang Henry R.
Published: February 2007

The pages that follow embody an attempt to present the verse forms of the Poema as transmitted in the manuscript in greater completeness than was possible in the study recently published in the “Revue Hispanique,” and to invite a more detailed and serious investigation of this subject than is usually bestowed upon it. It is only on the basis of a strictly critical discussion of all the questions involved in the elucidation of the text of our epic, in its relation to other contemporary narrative documents and poetic works, that the difficult problem of its verse structure can be brought nearer to a satisfactory solution. Nothing can be more contrary to the spirit of science than to judge an admittedly anomalous and doubtful form without the light shed upon it by the organic whole to which it belongs, or to explain the fissures between hemistichs of three and twelve syllables with the supposition of the equalizing effect of musical rendition when there is no evidence of such rendition and the sense has suffered as much as the metrical symmetry.
Hermus vs. Hormuz
Authors: Magoun F. P.
Published: February 2007

In The Drinking Academy, or the Cheaters' Holiday (ca. 1620?), Act I, Scene 2, occurs the following phrase: “tho Harmus and Pactolus rowle ther golden wandes into thy cofers.” In a footnote (ed. cit., p. 843), Pactolus (mod. Bagouly) is properly explained as the “Lydian river in which King Midas bathed”; cf. Ovid, Met., xi, 85ff., but the equating of Hermus with Hormuz (Ormuz), an island in the Persian Gulf and famous in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as an emporium of commerce can, however, scarcely be correct. Indeed, the figure in question obviously calls for two rivers, not an island and a river. Rather than the Island of Hormuz and the Pactolus River, are meant the river Hermus (, mod. Sarabat, emptying into the Gulf of Smyrna) and its tributary, the Pactolus. It is difficult to imagine how the Island of Hormuz could roll down golden wands (lege sands?).
Robert Armine, the Foole
Authors: Gray Austin K.
Published: February 2007

Readers of the earlier plays of Shakespeare (c. 1590-1600) cannot fail to notice the existence in them of two old cronies, who are forever strolling into the story from outside. Usually, they make their appearance together, and whatever the nature of the play, they, at any rate, abide the same. They are both amiable, honest simpletons, smacking of the village-green. Sometimes they are servants, sometimes minstrels, and sometimes constables and watchmen. If we scan them more closely, we shall find that each has a separate individuality. One is garrulous, complacent and, on occasion, lachrymose; he is brim-full of the wisdom of the ale-house, and loves to lecture and patronize his companion. This old fellow is a mere shadow to his wiser gossip. It is his business to ask simple-minded questions or to listen in simple-minded wonder to the dogmatic wisdom of his friend. In short, his main duty is to be the cause that wit and comicality express themselves through the mouth of his friend.
Thomas Kyd and the First Quarto of Hamlet
Authors: Gray Henry David
Published: February 2007

The belief that we have in the non-Shakespearean verse of the First Quarto of Hamlet an extensive portion of the lost play commonly and I think rightly attributed to Kyd throws discredit upon the originality of Shakespeare, and I hope to show in this paper that it is based upon an impossible theory of composition. So much has been written upon this subject that I must assume familiarity with such matters as the references of Nash and Lodge to the early play, omit mention of many conflicting points of view, and proceed at once to the more recent discussions of the particular problem before us.
Some Marginalia on Shakespeare by S. T. Coleridge
Authors: Raysor Thomas M.
Published: February 2007

The British Museum possesses two sets of Shakespeare's plays which were annotated by S. T. Coleridge. Coleridge's copious marginalia were utilized by his nephew, H. N. Coleridge, for Literary Remains, but with a great deal of rewriting, which was in part, but only in part, necessary. Of the fragments here printed, the first has not, I believe, appeared before; the second has been printed with alterations and large omissions; the third has been altered.
Corrections to the Text of Believe as you List
Authors: Tannenbaum Samuel A.
Published: February 2007

Gifford long ago complained that “the modern editions of Massinger offer a very inadequate representation of his works,” and Dr. Greg recently remarked—and to a considerable extent demonstrated—that this is “unhappily still true.” Having recently read the manuscript facsimile of Massinger's admirable Believe as You List and compared the text with that of Arthur Symons in the “unexpurgated edition” (save the mark!) published in 1889, I am prepared to confirm the opinion of Gifford and Greg and to supply the student of Massinger with a comparatively long list of corrections to errata contained in Mr. Symons' text. They are as follows:

1. In twenty-five instances in which Massinger wrote the aphetic form 'em his modern editor prints the word them. Twenty-three of these follow words ending with a consonantal sound, and only two follow vowel sounds (study, see).
The Text of the Gerusalemme Liberata in the Versions of Carew and Fairfax
Authors: Neil Dodge R. E.
Published: February 2007

When Christopher Hunt took it upon himself, in 1593, to publish the first five “songs” of Godfrey of Bulloigne or the Recoverie of Hierusalem . . . . translated into English by R.C. Esquire (that is, of course, Richard Carew), he reprinted on facing pages the first five cantos of the Italian original. “Thereby,” says Hunt in his prefatory address, “the learned reader shall see to how strict a course the translator hath tyed himselfe in the whole worke, usurping as little liberty as any whatsoever, that ever wrote with any commendation.”
Virgilian Allegory and The Faerie Queene
Authors: Hughes Merritt Y.
Published: February 2007

The suggestion which this paper has to make will remain only a suggestion when the argument is complete. Perhaps I should disarm criticism in advance by admitting that the plausibility of my final and boldest point consists partly in its seductiveness. I should, in short, like to persuade the reader that the character of Belphoebe in The Faerie Queene owes something not only to the Venus of the Æneid but also to the allegorical interpretations of the Virgilian Venus which Spenser inherited from Italy.
Notes On marlowe's Hero and Leander
Authors: Bush Douglas
Published: February 2007

Critics have frequently remarked upon the Ovidian eroticism which Marlowe introduces into his poem, and which is quite lacking in the sober Greek original. A few particular parallels have been noted between Hero and Leander and Marlowe's earlier translation of Ovid's Amores, and this article collects some more. As the two works are commonly placed at the beginning and end of Marlowe's career, the close verbal resemblances suggest that he had a good memory or was rereading his translation when writing Hero and Leander.
The Reviviscence of Georg Büchner
Authors: Hauch Edward Franklin
Published: February 2007

Georg Büchner, poet and scientist, was born at Goddelau in the vicinity of Darmstadt, October 17, 1813. Not long afterwards the family moved to Darmstadt; this accounts for the fact that Darmstadt is frequently spoken of as Georg Büchner's native city. He studied the natural sciences, later also philosophy, at Strassburg and Giessen. While a student at Giessen he became involved in secret revolutionary activities, as a result of which, and particularly as a result of his connection with the composition, publication, and secret distribution of the inflammatory pamphlet, The Hessian Courier, he was forced to flee in March, 1835, to Strassburg. Henceforth he kept himself aloof from political and seditious machinations and devoted himself exclusively to scientific and philosophical studies and to literary work. For his achievements in science and philosophy the University of Zürich granted him the doctorate, and he began giving lectures there on comparative anatomy in October, 1836. He died of typhoid, February 19, 1837, just four months after his removal to Zürich, at the age of twenty-three years and six months, honored and lamented by his colleagues and students, upon whom he had made an unusually deep impression.
Gerhart Hauptmann's Germanen und Römer
Authors: Reichart Walter A.
Published: February 2007

The appearance in 1889 of a drama like Vor Sonnenaufgang as the work of a young genius, practically unknown, was startling. Though it would not be quite accurate to speak of it as the first drama written by Hauptmann, nothing was known of his earlier dramatic efforts. His lyrical works fared better. Both Promethidenloos and Das Bunte Buch had actually reached the public and are still treasured by their fortunate owners. Fasching and Bahnwärter Thiel had also appeared before 1889, as well as two short articles, almost unknown to-day—a review of Hermann Conradi's Lieder eines Sünders and an essay Gedanken über das Bemalen der Statuen.
XIV. The Social Status of Chaucer's Franklin
Authors: Gerould Gordon Hall
Published: February 2007

An uncertainty as to the social position of franklins in general, and of Chaucer's Franklin in particular, has occasionally manifested itself since the early part of the nineteenth century. In 1810, Todd quoted an elaborate note from Waterhous's Commentary on Sir John Fortescue's De Laudibus Legum Angliae, which tended to show that franklins did not belong to the gentry. Todd was unable to square this with the fact that (Chaucer's Franklin was “at sessiouns,” since by a statute of Edward III, which he cited, justices were seigneurs, and that he was “ofte tyme” a knight of the shire, since by another statute members of parliament were “chivalers et serjantz des meulz vaues du paies.”) Todd was thus left in doubt as to the gentility of the Franklin. As a later examination of Fortescue's remarks will show, it is not he but his commentator who must be blamed for lowering the status of Chaucer's sanguine country gentleman. If Todd had been of firmer mind, or if he had studied the subject more deeply, he would not have left the matter in doubt—a trap for unwary feet in later times.
XV. The Sources of Drayton's Battaile of Agincourt
Authors: Jenkins Raymond
Published: February 2007

Holinshed has heretofore been considered the primary source of Drayton's Battaile of Agincourt. “Its faithfulness to Holinshed,” declares Mr. H. H. Child in his article on Drayton, “brings it frequently into touch with Shakespeare's King Henry Fifth.” Similar is the statement made by Garnett in his edition of the poem:

When his historical authority inspires, Drayton is inspired accordingly; when it is dignified, so is he; with it he soars and sings, with it he also sinks and creeps. Happily the subject is usually picturesque, and old Holinshed at his worst was no contemptible writer.
XVI. A Probable Source of Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster
Authors: Harrison T. P.
Published: February 2007

Though it is recognized that Beaumont and Fletcher generally followed Jonson's example in inventing their own plots, studies of their plays have led to direct sources elsewhere—largely in Spanish romances. Their plays, instead of attempting to picture real life, are provided with distant settings and filled with improbable situations, unnatural characters, and a sentimental atmosphere, so that it was an easy matter to draw material for them from the romantic tales of such writers as Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Gonzalo de Cespedes, and Mateo Aleman.
XIX. English Translations of Homer
Authors: Bush J. N. Douglas
Published: February 2007

Like others whose work happens to lie in the classics as much as in English, I have been indebted to Professor F. M. K. Foster's English Translations from the Greek (Columbia University, 1918) and the deeper one sinks into bibliographical quagmires the more one appreciates the labor, as well as the infinite possibilities of error, involved in compiling such a list. I say this because it is a rather easy and ungracious thing to pick holes in one section of a bibliographical manual covering a wide field. An independent survey of Homeric translations, which I undertook in the course of an attempt to trace the history of classical themes in English verse, discloses a number of omissions and some apparent mistakes in Dr. Foster's section on Homer. In presenting this supplement to his work I abide (except in one or two items) by his own principles, and confine myself to literal translations, excluding excerpts, adaptations, paraphrases and the like.
XXII. Points of Contact Between Byron and Socrates
Authors: Atkins Elizabeth
Published: February 2007

Whenever critics have noted an influence of the Platonic dialogues upon Byron, they have assumed that it is practically limited to the passing echo of Shelley's and Wordsworth's Platonism in the third canto of Childe Harold. In this paper I hope to show that, on the contrary, Byron had independent convictions about the Platonic-Socratic philosophy, which underlay most of his mature writing and which were inconsistent with his reflection of Shelley's metaphysics in Childe Harold.
XXV. Further Sources of Victor Hugo's Quatrevingt-Treize
Authors: Moore Olin H.
Published: February 2007

The subject of the present investigation is the relation between Victor Hugo's Quatrevingt-treize and the following earlier works: Sébastian Mercier's Paris pendant la Révolution (1789-1798) ou le Nouveau Paris, and the Mémoires du Comte Joseph de Puisaye. It will be found that numerous details in Quatrevingt-treize are taken from the work of Sébastien Mercier, while Count de Puisaye's Mémoires are an important source for the character Lantenac.
The Authorship of the Secunda Pastorum
Authors: Cargill Oscar
Published: February 2007

“It is good to love the unknown,” wrote Charles Lamb, and we should perhaps hesitate to try to pierce the obscurity which surrounds the bright genius who, in the Secunda Pastorum, gave to the English drama its first native characters and its first true plot. But such obscurity ill becomes genius, and this man was not only our first dramatist, but also—as I shall try to demonstrate—one of our first literary rebels, holding more definite theories of poetic art than many a free-verse poet of the present day.
Vincent Minutoli's Depeches du Parnasse, ou la Gazette des Savants
Authors: Watts George B.
Published: February 2007

Among the early literary journals which appeared in Europe toward the end of the seventeenth century was Vincent Minutoli's Dépêches du Parnasse, ou la Gazette des Savants, the first number of which was published at Geneva on September 1, 1693. It was the plan of the editor to put out a number every fortnight, but plagiarism on the part of some editors of Lyons, who copied each gazette shortly after its appearance, caused him to abandon his plan after a few issues. Because of the part which it played in the famous Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, and of the light which it casts on literary men and matters of its day, this short-lived periodical has an interest and an importance which have been quite overlooked.
Alzirette: An Unpublished Parody of Voltaire's Alzire
Authors: van Roosbroeck Gustave L.
Published: February 2007

The eighteenth century is the century of parody. Its critical attitude of mind accorded with the ungenerous and censorious irreverence of these farces. The wise and witty petit-maître was entirely too frigid and too supercilious not to sneer at the sublime attitudes of tragic stage-heroes, at the tearful Men of Feeling of budding Romanticism, at the dry seriousness of the savant or the metrical enthusiasm of the poet. Moreover, as the number of literates increased and furnished a steadily growing group of readers and theater-goers, the number of the æsthetically obtuse who came into contact with books or the stage, increased proportionally. And, in all times, they form the predestined public of the parodist. Unimaginative and pedestrian, gifted with a sturdy sense of reality, they are not easily beguiled by the illusions created in us by a work of art; they steadily perceive the abyss that gapes between Dream and Fact. From these two groups, the half-lettered bourgeois and the shallow fops, the parodist recruited the main body of his followers: he catered to the æsthetically mediocre. His public was large. As long as he kept his burlesques within the bounds of a rough and ready buffoonery, analogous to the modern Revue de fin d'année or to slap-stick comedy, he could count upon success.
The Physical Basis of Rime
Authors: Lanz Henry
Published: February 2007

The history of rime reveals an interesting coincidence. Rime was practically unknown to the ancients. It probably originated in the early mediaeval Latin of the age of Tertullian (155-222) in connection with the choral singing in the Christian churches, and came to prominence in the poetry of troubadours, precisely at the time when the modern European music came into existence. It is well known that the troubadours produced the first learned musicians in Europe. In the thirteenth century Adam de la Halle wrote his celebrated play, “Jeu de Robin et Marion,” which is considered as the first example of pastoral play and comic opera in France, and is—according to Suchier—the oldest musical play in Europe. At the same time it is one of the first dramatic experiments in which rime is extensively used. It was not before the fifteenth century, however, that rime was universally accepted throughout Northern Europe as a powerful device of literary expression. And at the same time, i.e., in the first half of the fifteenth century, John Dunsdale, an Englishman, invented counterpoint, and through his musical compositions acquired an international reputation. Thus our European sense for rime appears to have been trained in the great school of music. The origin of rime coincides with the origin of modern harmony.
A Source for the Middle English Romance, Athelston
Authors: Baugh Albert C.
Published: February 2007

The Middle English romance of Athelston, preserved in a unique MS of the fourteenth century, has of late received some share of the recognition which its excellence deserves. The poet's narrative and descriptive powers have struck each reader with something of the effect of a discovery. But the full realization of his constructive skill and independent creative gift has only become possible through the light thrown on his sources by the studies of Gerould, Miss Hibbard (Laura Hibbard Loomis), and Beug. Each of these renders more unnecessary Zupitza's assumption of a French original and correspondingly raises our estimate of the English author. It is the purpose of the present paper to call attention to a further source, one that reveals still more clearly the workmanship of the poem.
Conventions of Platonic Drama in the Heroic Plays of Orrery and Dryden
Authors: Lynch Kathleen M.
Published: February 2007

In a recent article on “The Sources of the Restoration Heroic Play,” Mr. William S. Clark discusses Elizabethan and French influences on heroic drama and supports the claim made by Sir Walter Scott, a century ago, that the heroic plays must be regarded as “the legitimate offspring” of the French heroic romances. Concerning the English influence, Mr. Clark observes: “In the face of this extensive dependence upon French suggestions the resemblances between the heroic plays and the English drama of earlier periods come to have much less significance.” Indeed, he regards as erroneous the opinion of scholars who have maintained that earlier English drama influenced “to a large degree” the heroic drama of the Restoration.
Browning and Higher Criticism
Authors: Raymond William O.
Published: February 2007

Amid the shifting cross currents of religious controversy in England during the middle years of the nineteenth century, there are few points of view equal in freshness and interest to that of Browning. Nor among his brother poets of the Victorian age is there one whose work throws more light on the typical attitude of the English mind in relation to philosophy and religion. Individualism, subjectivity, lack of systematic development, absence of radicalism,—attributes which have been singled out as eminently characteristic of English speculative thought in the nineteenth century—are strikingly illustrated in Browning's representation of the religious problems of the mid-Victorian era.
A Recent Theory of Ballad-Making
Authors: Pound Louise
Published: February 2007

Professor Gordon Hall Gerould's article entitled “The Making of Ballads” is an attractive essay, written in the fluent and polished manner that we are accustomed to expect from this scholar. It has charm of style, and its positions, taken as a whole, may be termed accepted positions. Because of its literary quality, because it brings together in one paper what has hitherto been stressed in scattered places, and because of its appreciation of the poetical quality of those English and Scottish ballads sought out by the notable collectors of the earlier nineteenth century and made available in the volumes of Professor Child, the paper has real value for the student. That “The Making of Ballads” is a research article, the product of painstaking investigation, Professor Gerould would not, I think, himself maintain. He is a literary theorist in the realm of traditional song, rather than an experienced field worker or a practical folk-lorist. He brings forward little that has novelty for the special scholar. This circumstance would call for no particular comment except for the fact that the paper has been announced as new and subversive—as something independent of old theories. It has been referred to by several scholars as “The Gerould Theory of Ballad Origins.” The author himself leads us to expect something revolutionary when he asks us to—

dismiss from our minds, for the time being, our preconceived and well-buttressed theories as to the narrative lyrics we call ballads; forget, if we can, our arguments; and . . . . look at certain . . . . indisputable phenomena of the ballad. Oddly enough, though they are perfectly well known, they have been much neglected. Very rarely has their existence been noticed in writings on the ballads, while never, I believe, has their true significance been fully recognized.
Danza del Santissimo Nacimiento, A Sixteenth-Century Play by Pedro Suarez de Robles
Authors: Gillet Joseph E.
Published: February 2007

Of this little play two editions have been recorded. Moratin alone, as far as I know, has seen a copy of the earliest known edition, Madrid, 1561. He reproduced the initial stagedirections and gave a short summary of the text, and upon this are apparently based whatever accounts of the play have appeared in later works on the Spanish stage. The second edition, Madrid, 1606, which is here reprinted, has been briefly described by Salvá (nr. 1426), Heredia (nr. 2349) and Gallardo (nr. 3993). When the latter examined it, it was a part of Böhl de Faber's library.
Spenser and Bruno
Authors: Levinson Ronald B.
Published: February 2007

Recent research into the sources of the philosophical ideas incorporated by Spenser in the Faerie Queene necessitates the re-raising of an old question, never satisfactorily answered: Did Spenser read Bruno? The external evidence—Bruno's residence in England during the years 1583-5, the London publication of his Italian works, the dedication of his Spaccio and his De gl' Heroici Furori to Sir Philip Sidney—has long rendered the supposition initially attractive. Moreover the community of Neoplatonic elements in Bruno and Spenser, together with a certain affinity between the theme of the cantos of Mutability and Bruno's Spaccio, added color to the hypothesis. But in the absence of more specific documentation the suggestion of Bruno's influence upon Spenser has properly retained the status of a mere possibility. It is the primary purpose of this paper to adduce certain further considerations which in my opinion lend a considerable weight of probability to an affirmative answer to the question. Secondarily, my object is to conduct a pacific polemic against Mr. Greenlaw's thesis that certain portions of the Faerie Queene are animated by a spirit of Lucretian scepticism at odds with that Christianized Neoplatonism which has commonly been recognized as Spenser's sole philosophy. My contention is that to a right reading there exists no such antithesis as that which Mr. Greenlaw finds between the main tenor of Spenser's philosophy and the philosophical implications of the passages in question, and that a means of reconciling their apparent incompatibility and saving Spenser from a charge of inconsistency too gross even for poetic license to condone, is the postulate of a Bruno influence.