bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
On The History of Palatal ń In French With Special Reference to o and Open e.
Authors: Matzke John E.
Published: February 2007

The normal sign for ń in Old French is ign. The consonantal portion of this trigraph represents the value of Latin gn as felt or pronounced in the Merovingian period in such words as magnus, agnellus, the sequence of development probably being gn > > > ń thru the fronting influence of n upon the preceding . That the vowel i should have been added to gn with this new palatal value will not appear strange to anyone familiar with the history of palatalized consonants in Old French. It represents the vowel glide which is potentially present whenever a palatalized consonant follows after a vowel. Its appearance in writing must therefore be due to a definite consciousness of its presence as a phonic element in the spoken syllable. In other words, the scribes who invented the trigraph ign must have heard and felt the vowel. And as a matter of fact, the modern pronunciation of this sound in final position and before consonant shows that this assumption is accurate; for gain, coin, juin presuppose an earlier pronunciation gãiń, kõiń, džỹiń, and plaindre and joindre must have passed thru plãindre, džõindre. However, if this evidence may be accepted as conclusive for the presence of the i under these conditions, there is equally strong evidence in the modern language that in medial position (montagne, gagner, besogne) the palatal glide did not develop into a full vowel.
Hudibras in Germany
Authors: Thayer Harvey W.
Published: February 2007

During the eighteenth century several attempts were made to translate the whole or parts of Butler's Hudibras into German. Josua Eiselein, who published a translation of Hudibras in 1845, gave in his introduction the only account of these translations yet written, but his record is brief and inaccurate. Hence it may not be without value to re-examine Butler's work in its German forms, and, in addition, to investigate the position of Hudibras among those works which German admiration for English literature sought to introduce into Germany.
XXIII.—The Young Man Betrothed to a Statue
Authors: Baum Paull Franklin
Published: February 2007

One of the many interesting stories current in the Middle Ages is that of a young man who puts his marriage ring on the finger of a statue of Venus and is surprised to find that the image, taking the matter au sérieux, jealously forbids him the embraces of his earthly bride. Its relation to a large group of miracles of the Virgin has been frequently noticed (for example, by Mussafia and by Ward and Herbert ); it has received some attention from students of Mérimée as the source of his Vénus d'Ille; and Massmann, in his edition of the Kaiserchronik (1849-1854) collected a large number of variants (together with an almost equal number of faulty references). But Graf is the only scholar who has studied it in any detail, and his treatment is far from complete. I propose here to bring together the scattered materials of previous students, both of the story of the ring-betrothal to the Venus statue and of the Virgin miracle. I shall add no new versions of either story, but I shall discuss the former from a point of view radically different from Graf's, and shall endeavour to follow the tale from its obscure beginnings before William of Malmesbury, through its adaptation as a miracle of the Virgin, down to some of its present literary forms.
XXI.—The German Dramatist of the Sixteenth Century and his Bible
Authors: Gillet Joseph E.
Published: February 2007

The range of subject-matter treated in the German drama of the sixteenth century will appear wide and varied only to the scholar who does not think of the vast expanse of the Biblical field as featureless and barren. Beyond the confines of the Bible-drama there are, of course, some religious battle-plays, of the Pammachius type, the morality-plays of the Homulus-Hekastus series, a few dramas built on classical material, sundry “Türkenschauspiele,” some scattered romantic comedies, drawing on foreign or native legend and, exceptionally, plays from contemporary history; the Latin school-drama often mirrors delightfully the color and bustle of everyday life; but, in the end, all this is of secondary interest: and the fact must be recognized that sixteenth-century drama stands in the sign of the Book. It might be fairly said that there is hardly a chapter in the Bible which was not adapted for dramatic use or, at least, dragged upon the stage. As one reads the titles, the conclusion, as Froning remarks, almost inevitably presents itself: either the dramatists of those times must have possessed an extraordinary faculty of dramatic adaptation, or else they had no inkling of the demands of stage-craft.
XII.—Boccaccio, Hans Sachs, and The Bramble Briar
Authors: Belden H. M.
Published: February 2007

Of the British ballads not included in Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads one of the most interesting is that which, following the example of Professor Tolman's correspondent, I shall call The Bramble Briar. Altho in poetic quality it is inferior even to that broadside version of Chevy Chase the serious discussion of which in the Spectator provoked the raillery of Wagstaffe, yet I have ventured to deal with it here at some length; for it is interesting not only because of its possible relation to Boccaccio, Hans Sachs, and Keats, but in itself. It is a fairly clear instance of what to some expounders of ballad doctrine is a contradiction in terms: it is a traditional vulgar ballad.
XIII.—An Objective Study of Syllabic Quantity in English Verse
Authors: Verse Blank , Snell Ada L. F.
Published: February 2007

It is my purpose in this paper to consider the quantity of, the syllables in twenty-five lines of Milton's Paradise Lost. The selection, given below, was read by three different men. The first is an instructor in vocal expression, the second is a graduate student in language and phonetics, and the third is a professor in the Department of General Linguistics. All three are connected with the University of Michigan.
XIV.—The Exemplum of the Penitent Usurer
Authors: Barnicle Mary E.
Published: February 2007

It has been generally recognized by students of the mediæval drama, that certain of the moral tales found in collections of exempla and in commonplace books influenced indirectly the morality play. This inference seems to be drawn as much from evidence of the dramatic possibilities inherent in specific exempla as from evidence of their widespread popularity. An example of a didactic story with such dramatic adaptability is offered by the tale of the penitent usurer. Its theme, the struggle between demons and angels for the soul of man, seems to foreshadow the conflict-between-the-vices-and-virtues type of morality. The number of mss., moreover, which have survived, proves that the tale was disseminated throughout England and the Continent, and therefore would be easily accessible to playwrights in search of dramatic material. Furthermore, the same inference may be drawn from the analogy between plays embodying favorite miracles or fabliaux and morality plays probably based upon popular exempla. For, although no scholar has hitherto shown the dependence of any extant morality play upon a specific exemplum, yet it is almost inconceivable that well-known didactic tales, obviously suited to dramatic purposes and extensively circulated in collections of exempla and in commonplace books, should not have been used by the makers of moral plays.
XXI.—Some Elements in Mediæval Descriptions of the Otherworld
Authors: Patch Howard Rollin
Published: February 2007

My chief business in this article is to study the characteristic details in Otherworld descriptions, to see how widely they are used, and to discover any constant traditions in the use. A great deal of work, already done in this field, has made the material accessible; and since my paper is only by way of being a preliminary sketch, I shall frequently use the summaries offered by previous scholars in the case of particular documents. In general, the material with which I shall work is very well known and scarcely subject to any dispute.
Contributions to German Lexicography from Translations of Heinrich Von Eppendorff
Authors: Kurrelmeyer W.
Published: February 2007

In the introduction to my edition of the pre-Lutheran German Bible I had occasion to refer to the Epistola de Constantinopolitana urbe capta of Leonardus Chiensis, a German translation of which had been described in an auction catalogue of the year 1913.
Liturgical Influence in The Dream of The Rood
Authors: Patch Howard R.
Published: February 2007

Scholars have long made an earnest search for analogues to The Dream of the Rood, but the very remoteness of the parallels thus afforded so far is a unique testimony to the high degree of originality in the poem. Closer in some ways than any of them, in that it gives us a dialogue with the cross, the “Disputation between Mary and the Cross” might have been cited; but here again comparison shows that the Dream is a poem standing apart in the unusually fine quality of its inspiration and in its genuine feeling. The poet seems to have had little to work on for a basis, either as a source or as a guide. Yet we know that he was deeply religious and we can be sure that he must have been thoroughly acquainted with those parts of the ecclesiastical service which were devoted to the celebration of the cross. In writing such a poem he could hardly rid his mind of all the echoes of the hymns and responsive utterances and the liturgical offices which he was accustomed to hear at various times during the church year.
Why DID Shakespeare Create Falstaff?
Authors: Tolman Albert H.
Published: February 2007

We cannot help thinking of certain characters in Shakespeare as real beings. We wonder what this person did before the play opened, and after it closed. What was the girlhood of Portia? Why had Othello never suspected the baseness of lago? What was the fate of Shylock after the scene in court? Of what sort was the married life of Beatrice and Benedick? Such questions are insistent and compelling, irrelevant though they are.
Charles Churchill's Treatment of the Couplet
Authors: Beatty Joseph M.
Published: February 2007

The middle of the eighteenth century was a period of transition, and Charles Churchill, its greatest satirist, was typical of his age. The men whose influence appears most strongly in his works belonged to the classical and the pseudo-classical schools; those whom he influenced were the exponents of some phase of romanticism. In him we find the spirit of revolt against authority that appears in the early romanticists, but we do not find the lofty ideals, the introspective analysis, the spiritual interpretation of nature, that characterized the later poets. The very fact that he was a satirist links him indissolubly with the classicists. In his exaltation of reason as the “Lord Chief-Justice in the court of man,” in his general mode of thought and expression, he is conservative—in revolt, to be sure, against the school of Pope, yet an imitator of it at every turn.
The Influence of Conservatism on the Art of Pereda
Authors: Van Horne John
Published: February 2007

For purposes of discussion it is convenient to divide the literary productions of Pereda into two classes; from 1859 until about 1876 he was occupied chiefly with short sketches known as cuadros de costumbres; from 1877 until the virtual close of his career as an author, in 1895 his attention was centered upon novels. Long sketches that approach the dignity of novels appeared before 1877, and Pereda never ceased entirely the composition of short pieces. The distinction just made, however, is roughly true.
XXX. Pessimism in Raabe's Stuttgart Trilogy
Authors: Silz Walter
Published: February 2007

There has been a great deal of discussion as to whether or not the three novels which Wilhelm Raabe composed during his period of residence in Stuttgart (Der Hunger pastor, 1864; Abu Telfan, 1868; Der Schüdderump, 1870) constitute a genuine trilogy. One may cavil at this transference of a specialized term from the drama to three novels to which it is not wholly applicable. On the other hand, one may defend this term as a convenient, though not entirely accurate designation of the essential unity of these three novels.
XVI.—Music in the Plays of Ludwig Anzengruber
Authors: Morgan B. Q.
Published: February 2007

From time immemorial, it would seem, music and drama have been closely associated, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that music has ever been the handmaid of drama. The import and significance of the choral odes in the Greek theatre, the charming uses of song in Shakespeare's plays, the development of music as a dramatic medium, culminating in the work of Richard Wagner—these phenomena are familiar to all. Yet it may fairly be said that not all the possibilities of the union of music and drama have yet been realized. In musical comedy the dramatic element is negligible; in opera the music is our chief interest. It has remained for a little-known Austrian dramatist to point the way to a new type of play, in which music shall be subordinated, yet indispensable, taking its definite share in the action without usurping the whole stage.
XVII.—William Godwin and the Stage
Authors: Allen B. Sprague
Published: February 2007

In the minds of most students of literature, William Godwin's name is associated with the drama, first, through his own two unsuccessful attempts at playmaking, Antonio (1800) and Faulkener (1807), and, secondly, through Colman's dramatization of Caleb Williams under the title The Iron Chest, and Wordsworth's The Borderers, an exposure of the ethical fallacies of Political Justice. In the present paper, I wish to point out some additional and less familiar facts with respect to Godwin's relation to the stage. I take it that the overshadowing interest in Godwin must always remain his influence upon the great young poets of his time; yet it may not be amiss to specify some of his other less important points of contact with the literary life of his age. I shall not be concerned with the anarchic radicalism of Political Justice, but with the relationship of some of Godwin's novels to certain isolated dramas in England, France, and America; and as connected with these matters I shall, at the same time, give an account of Godwin's intercourse with the American tragedian, Thomas Cooper. These items should be of value in forming a more complete estimate of the nature and extent of Godwin's influence as a whole.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the West Midland
Authors: Menner Robert J.
Published: February 2007

In a recent article Professor J. R. Hulbert has disputed the traditional assignment of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and of the alliterative romances generally, to the West Midland dialect of Middle English. He contends that the lack of sufficient criteria for distinguishing West Midland from East Midland, and the lack of documents from the Northwest Midland area, make it impossible to determine whether Gawain was composed in the East or in the West; we are justified, he says, only in saying that it is a North Midland text. It is the purpose of the present article to refute Professor Hulbert's argument in so far as it concerns Gawain, this and the other poems of the same manuscript being the only alliterative works he discusses in detail, and to show that there is quite sufficient evidence to permit us to assign it to the Northwest rather than to the Northeast Midland dialect.
Touch Images in the Poetry of Robert Browning
Authors: Bonnell John Kester
Published: February 2007

“There's printing a book of ‘Selections from R. B.‘ (Sculptor and poet) which is to popularize my old things; …” Thus wrote Robert Browning to his friend, W. W. Story, in the spring of 1862, humorously alluding to the joyous companionship in Story's studio two years earlier, when he had been spending as much as three hours daily, thumping the wet clay. Nothing but clay did he care for, “poor lost soul,”—so Mrs. Browning had at that time declared, for she grudged a little the time taken from his poetry. And this enthusiasm had been a matter of more than one winter. Very vivid is the memory of it, therefore, in 1862. “I try and see old friends,” the poet writes, in the letter already quoted, “when my true treat would be an evening over the piles of unread books, or a morning with the old coat and wet clay. Oh, the days!” Robert Browning, sculptor and poet; here is a key to unlock,—not, indeed, the heart, but at least some secrets of the brain and hand of the robust craftsman.
Wordsworth's Influence on Thomas Campbell
Authors: Turner Albert Morton
Published: February 2007

Biographical sketches give us Thomas Campbell's opinion of Wordsworth in only a general way. Carruthers, for instance, informs us in a magazine article that he cared little for the Lake Poets, but considered Wordsworth greatly superior to the others. Again, some reminiscences contributed by an acquaintance to Beattie's biography of the poet make very nearly the same statement,—namely that Wordsworth was as much above Southey as some other poets above Wordsworth. These reminiscences, however, may be likewise from Carruthers, and there is no evidence as to the date at which Campbell expressed either opinion. In 1842, on the other hand, at a breakfast to which Campbell invited Rogers and Moore among other guests, Wordsworth was said to be a great poet. Who expressed the view and whether Campbell agreed with it is not made clear, but since we have just seen that he approved of Wordsworth, it seems likely that he concurred in the opinion.
An Acknowledgment
Authors: Schaffer Aaron
Published: February 2007

In a study of Chateaubriand's La Maison de France (PMLA XXXVIII, No. 1, pp. 99-114), the present writer, after examining and placing in their respective parts, books, and chapters a series of excerpts from the Génie du Christianisme, declared himself baffled by the fifth excerpt, which reads: “Je remarque qu'Horace, Virgile, Tibulle, Tite-Live, moururent tous avant Auguste, qui est en cela le sort de Louis XIV; notre grand prince survécut un peu à son siécle et il se coucha le dernier dans la tombe, comme pour s'assurer qu'il ne restait rien après lui.” This passage, which looked as though it might belong to Part III, Book 4, Chapter 5 of the Génie, was not to be found either there or elsewhere in the work, and so the writer concluded that it must have been one of Chateaubriand's London notes to his manuscript of the Génie and that it had been inserted, somewhat at random, among the excerpts from that work in the Maison de France.
XVI. Schiller's Attitude Toward England
Authors: Kelly John Alexander
Published: February 2007

“Of all the great German writers, Wieland's mind is the most French,” remarked Henry Crabb Robinson to Madame de Staël. “I am aware of it,” was her reply, “and therefore I do not think much of him. I like a German to be a German.”1 Had these two hero-worshippers become a bit better acquainted with Schiller than they were, it is easily conceivable that they might have made some such observation concerning him, substituting in the foregoing formula “English” for “French”; for, with all his characteristically German idealism, Schiller, whose “love of freedom, reverence for women, enthusiasm for the fine arts” the same Madame de Staël emphasizes, had much in common with the English temperament.
XVIII. The Sources of Victor Hugo's Quatrevingt-Treize
Authors: Moore Olin H.
Published: February 2007

Probably none of Victor Hugo's works has sources more complicated than Quatrevingt-treize. Accordingly, in order so far as possible to avoid confusion, the following paper has been divided into three parts, of graduated complexity. In the first part, a study is made of minor details in Quatrevingt-treize which Hugo borrowed from Blanc, Duchemin-Descepeaux, Lamartine, Garat, Du Rosel, the official Moniteur, as well as from other sources. The second part is devoted to the principal characters in Quatrevingt-treize, Marat, Robespierre, Danton; Cimourdain, Lantenac, Gauvain; l'Imânus and Michelle Fléchard. An attempt is made to discover the origins of the principal elements of these characters, and to demonstrate, to some extent, how these elements are welded together. The third part deals with the general plan of Quatrevingl-treize.
XIX. Notes on Gilbert Imlay, Early American Writer
Authors: Emerson Oliver Farrar
Published: February 2007

In Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters from Sweden, Norway and Denmark (London, 1796) is a passage connecting two other interesting people, and not hitherto noticed so far as I find. It reads:

This house [where she was living in Altona, a suburb of Hamburg] was particularly recommended to me by an acquaintance of your's, the author of the American Farmer's Letters. I generally dine in company with him, and the gentlemen whom I have already mentioned is often diverted by our declamations against commerce, when we compare notes respecting the characteristics of the hamburgers.1

The passage indicates not only that Mary Wollstonecraft had met in her travels the French-American Crèvecceur, the Hector St. John of the Letters of an American Farmer (1782), but that Crèvecceur and Gilbert Imlay had an acquaintanceship not hitherto suspected. This and other matters concerning Imlay seem to warrant some further notes on his life and works.
XXI. The English Ballad in Jamaica: A Note Upon the Origin of the Ballad Form
Authors: Beckwith Martha W.
Published: February 2007

In collecting stories and songs from the Jamaica negroes during the summer“ of 1919 and the winter of 1921, I was constantly on the lookout for traditional English ballads, some of which I hoped to find handed down in their older forms as a result of two hundred and fifty years of English occupation of the island. A fair number of secondary ballads were easily accessible, some of them preserved with an English intonation which proved them to have been memorized from cultivated English singers. Among these were the Wurlean Woman, and the ballad of Adinah sung to the same tune as the New England ballad of Springfield Mountain. But of traditional ballads of the better class, both words and music, I secured only the widespread song of Little Musgrove. Naturally I asked myself what had become of old ballad forms in Jamaica.
More About Chaucer's Wife of Bath
Authors: Curry Walter Clyde
Published: February 2007

He who would enter upon anything like an adequate explanation of the remarkably complex and contradictory character of Chaucer's Wife of Bath must expect heavenly guidance and receive aid from the stars. Though one may not be quite prepared to accept entirely the pronouncement that she “is one of the most amazing characters … the brain of man has ever conceived,” still she is so vividly feminine and human, so coarse and shameless in her disclosures of the marital relations with five husbands, and yet so imaginative and delicate in her story-telling, that one is fascinated against his will and beset with an irresistible impulse to analyze her dual personality with the view of locating, if possible, definite causes for the coexistence of more incongruent elements than are ordinarily found in living human beings. Some time ago when I proposed casting the horoscope of the Wife of Bath, it was with the supposition that rules of natural astrology might be used exclusively in the interpretation of certain data, concerning planets and their influence, which Chaucer has furnished us; but it is not entirely so. In the full presentation of the Wife's “fortune”—her character, personal appearance, and the significance and location of mysterious “marks” about her body—constant reference must be made to what the mediæval mind believed to be truths found in the “science” of celestial physiognomy and perhaps of geomancy.
Chabham's Penitential and Its Influence in the Thirteenth Century
Authors: Rubel Helen F.
Published: February 2007

Among the penitentials of the middle ages, that by Thomas Chabham is of particular importance on account of its detailed classification of minstrels and players. In distinguishing different classes among these players and entertainers instead of condemning all alike, Chabham affords a notable illustration of the gradual growth in the Church of a tolerant attitude toward innocent amusements. M. Gautier, while recognizing the importance of this passage in Chabham's Penitential, raised the question whether “cette somme n'est qu'une compilation d'oeuvres antérieures, ou s'il y faut voir l'original de plusieurs autres Sommes de pénitence.” In order to decide this question it is necessary to consider such evidence as is available concerning the author and the date of the Penitential.
III.—The Politics Op the Greater Romantic Poets
Authors: Graham Walter
Published: February 2007

Political controversy and partisan feeling were intimately blended with the literature of England during what we call loosely the Romantic Period. The views of individual authors have been treated here and there by their biographers; but little attempt has been made to generalize or draw conclusions from the several political attitudes of the poets, who, tho forming no school in the strict sense of the term, were nevertheless outstanding figures in the same liberal movement in literature. Some simple conclusions, drawn from a study of these men, are presented here; and in the presentation of this material opportunity has been taken to correct a few misunderstandings which exist regarding their political relations. For convenience, the poets may be divided into three groups : the conservative yet individual men, Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge; the Old Tory, Scott; and the more or less radical trio, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. For obvious reasons little need be said of the last-named poet.
Bread Offered to the Child-Christ
Authors: Reinhard John R.
Published: February 2007

The text printed herewith forms one in a series of nine Miracles of the Virgin which is preserved in MS 375 of the Bibliothèque nationale, folios 344r-346v, a manuscript of the late thirteenth century. It was my original intention to publish the collection as a whole, and Professor J. D. M. Ford kindly offered to print it in the Harvard Romance Series. The MS was submitted in August 1922, but it was afterwards discovered that eight of these miracles had already been printed by H. Kjellman in the Appendix to his Deuxième Collection Anglo-Normande des Miracles de la Sainte Vierge, Paris, 1922, pp. 306 ff.
English Manuscripts in the Vatican Library
Authors: Frank Grace
Published: February 2007

For the benefit of scholars who may conceive the idea of examining the Vatican collections in the hope of discovering hitherto unsignalled English manuscripts, it may be well to report upon the slender harvest reaped by those who have preceded them. Unfortunately, although the older Vatican catalogues, often incomplete and unreliable as they are, promise rich gleanings to the bold—and patient—the fruits thus far collected in the field of English literature seem hardly worth the labour expended in gathering them.
Albrecht von Haller and English Philosophy
Authors: Jones Howard Mumford
Published: February 2007

Current assumptions of scholars in the field indicate little argument against the view of Georg Bondi that the philosophy of the poems of Albrecht von Haller is taken from the philosophy of Shaftesbury. My own examination of the evidence convinces me that this opinion is fallacious. In an effort to indicate the sources of Haller's philosophical poems I shall make a fresh survey of the situation.
Peterloo, Shelley and Reform
Authors: Walker A. Stanley
Published: February 2007

In her note appended to Shelley's Mask of Anarchy, Mrs Shelley remarks on the attitude of her husband to the current political theories of the time:

Though Shelley's first eager desire to excite his countrymen to resist openly the oppressions existent during the “good old times” had faded with early youth, still his warmest sympathies were for the people. He was a republican and loved a democracy. He looked on all human beings as inheriting an equal right to possess the dearest privileges of our nature; the necessaries of life when fairly earned by labor, and intellectual instruction. His hatred of any despotism that looked upon the people as not to be consulted, or protected from want and ignorance, was intense … the news of the Manchester Massacre … roused in him violent emotions of indignation and compassion.
I. A Planetary Date for Chaucer's Troilus
Authors: Root Robert Kilburn , Russell Henry Norris
Published: February 2007

All students of Chaucerian chronology are agreed that Troilus and Criseyde was written not earlier than the poet's first Italian journey of 1373, and not later than 1386. The second of these terminal dates is fixed by the fact that the earlier, so-called B, version of the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, which refers to Troilus as already in circulation, is assigned with a good deal of confidence to 1386 or 1387. It is further corroborated by the fact that Thomas Usk's Testament of Love, which shows extensive acquaintance with Troilus, seems to have been written in 1387, the year before its author's death.
The Genesis of the English Sonnet Form
Authors: Bullock Walter L.
Published: February 2007

Professor F. M. Padelford, in his recent edition of the poems of Surrey, states that “As to verse forms, Surrey's claims to distinction rest upon his establishment of the Shaksperian sonnet and his introduction of blank verse. After a variety of experiments he settled upon the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg for the sonnet and thus cast the mold for the most popular Elizabethan form. In the thought division of the sonnet he followed no fixed practice.... ”
Pierre Bayle and His Literary Taste
Authors: Haxo Henry E.
Published: February 2007

Since Desnoiresterres, Voltaire's biographer, remarked that Pierre Bayle's works had fallen into complete oblivion, there has been a decided change among literary critics in their attitude toward this great French critic and philosopher. Not so very long ago Brunetière in one of his characteristic essays lamented the ingratitude and injustice shown by posterity to the refugee of Rotterdam. In recent histories of French literature, a more searching and a more sympathetic appraisal of his works is to be found, and Bayle shares an equal place with his younger contemporary, Fontenelle. Due recognition is invariably rendered Bayle for his prodigious scholarship, his unimpeachable logic, and his critical power and acumen—qualities which caused Sainte-Beuve to style him “le plus accompli critique qui se soit rencontré dans son genre,” and Brunetière “un maître des esprits.” Yet, while granting Bayle high critical and reasoning qualities, critics with only a few exceptions have regarded him as lacking in literary taste and appreciation and have found fault with his loose style and careless composition. It is the object of this essay to determine the extent and value of these criticisms and to examine Bayle's literary characteristics. An attempt is made to show that literary critics have been too severe in completely denying Pierre Bayle a qualification which he possessed in no mean degree, though it was greatly overshadowed by his all-absorbing passion for pure thought and ideas.
An Unpublished Criticism of Voltaire's Eryphile
Authors: Constans Antony
Published: February 2007

Voltaire's tragedy Eryphile was performed first in the private theater of Madame de Fontaine-Martel, and on Friday, March 7, 1732, in the Theâtre Royal. Although announced as a masterpiece, it was not a success. Only seven representations were given before Easter and five after. In vain did Voltaire make hasty changes in his text between the performances; he could not save it, and the original verdict of the public proved fatal. As he had already done with Artémire (1720), Voltaire withdrew the play and never allowed it to be printed. However, in 1779, just after his death, it was published for the first time with the note: “Pièce que l'auteur s'était oposée qu'elle fut imprimée de son vivant.”
Wieland's Teutscher Merkur and Contemporary English Journals
Authors: Kurrelmeyer W.
Published: February 2007

Wieland's first mention of the plan of the Merkur is in a letter to Riedel dated Sept. 17, 1772:

Ich bin entschlossen, eine Art von Journal zu entrepreniren, welches quo ad formam einige Ähnlichkeit mit dem Mercure de france haben soll. Prosaische Original-Aufsätze, Litterarische Nachrichten, Recensionen und Revisionen unrichtiger Urtheile über interessante Schriften, sollen die Haupt-Artikel davon ausmachen.
Lowell's Uncollected Poems
Authors: Campbell Killis
Published: February 2007

In the preface of the collective edition of his poems published the year before his death, Lowell laments the fact that there is no escaping responsibility for the printed page. “Ilka mon maun dree his weird,” he reminds his reader; and he goes on to say that, but for the “avenging litera scripta manet,” he “would gladly suppress or put into the Coventry of smaller print in an appendix” a good many things that he had with much reluctance admitted into this edition. There can be no doubt that Lowell was sincere in this avowal; but it would be a mistake to infer from what he says that he made no attempt to escape the avenging fate which he declares to be inevitable. For from this final edition he took pains to exclude not only all his juvenilia, but likewise a goodly number of his verses published after he had attained to manhood, and some, even, that he had written in his mature old age. By my count, he omitted from this final collective edition a total of 181 poems that had hitherto been published. He retained in this edition a total of 260 poems (I count the “Biglow Papers” as a single poem and each of the sonnets or sonnet groups as single items); so that out of a grand total of 441 poems published up to the time of the preparation of his final edition he sacrificed a little more than forty percent.
VI.—Why Did Ganelon Hate Roland?
Authors: Jenkins T. Atkinson
Published: February 2007

In the words of Dante, “Carlo Magno perdè la santa gesta”; he lost it thru the base treachery of his brother-in-law, Ganelon. Ganelon became a traitor, we have been told, first, because of bribes, and, second, because of his hatred of Roland. As Gaston Paris formulated it, “In the beginning, Ganelon was a traitor only because he was bought by the gold of the pagans; later on, they rendered the situation more interesting and at the same time increased the importance of Roland by adding the motive of the hatred of Ganelon against Roland.” Thus far, nearly all have been agreed; but when we go a step further and ask, What was the cause of this hatred, the answers vary: simply because the two men were step-father and step-son, says one; because Roland nominated Ganelon to a fearfully dangerous mission, says another. The second of these two reasons has the support of Ganelon's own statement at his trial, at least of his second statement, for he makes two, as will be recalled. His first statement, being a riddle, has been generally left out of consideration: it is the purpose of this paper to advance the idea, based upon a new reading of line 3758, that the step-father motive, and the dangerous mission motive, were both secondary in the poet's mind, not primary; that for the poet the primary motive, the real spring of the action, was that Ganelon, being a covetous man and envious of Roland's greater wealth, had hated him on that account before ever Charles had reached the seventh year of the Spanish war.
The English Ballads and the Church
Authors: Pound Louise
Published: February 2007

Many origins have been suggested for the type of narrative song appearing in the English and Scottish traditional ballads: minstrel genesis, origin in the dance, improvisations of mediaeval peasant communes, or descent from the dance songs of primitive peoples. The hypothesis of minstrel origin was that first to be advanced and it has always retained supporters. There remains a possibility not yet brought forward which deserves to be presented for what it is worth, since the problem, though it may be insoluble, has its attraction for critic and student. We have but meager knowledge of the ballad melodies of pre-Elizabethan days, and we can get but little farther with the study of the ballads by way of research into mediaeval music. Moreover the earliest texts remaining to us seem to have been meant for recital rather than for singing. In general, the melodies of ballads are more shifting, less dependable, than are the texts, in the sense of the plots and the characters which the texts present. This is true of contemporary folk-songs and it was probably true earlier. One text may be sung to a variety of airs or one air may serve for many texts. Nor can we get much farther with the study of ballads by way of the minstrels. They have had much attention already; and nothing has ever been brought out really barring them from major responsibility for ballad creation and diffusion in the earlier periods. Again, we can get but little farther by studying the mediaeval dance, or folk-improvisations, or the dance songs of primitive peoples, all of which have been associated with the Child ballads to an exaggerated degree. It is time to try a new angle of approach—the last remaining—although the hypothesis which it suggests is far removed from the theory of genesis enjoying the greatest acceptance at the present time, and although it—like its predecessors—may not take us very far.
Chaucer's Reeve and Miller
Authors: Curry Walter Clyde
Published: February 2007

My recent article, The Secret of Chaucer's Pardoner, was the first of a series of studies advanced in support of the general thesis that Chaucer, in his choice of physical peculiarities that would fittingly correspond to the characters of his Canterbury Pilgrims, made use of, or at least was influenced by, the rules and regulations laid down in the universally popular Physiognomies of his time. More specifically, I attempted to show that the Pardoner is a typical example of what the physiognomists would call a eunuchus ex nativitate. The present article demonstrates that Chaucer's Reeve and Miller, in the exact correspondence of their respective personal appearances and characters, are also “scientifically” correct according to the specifications of physiognomical lore, and that the quarrel between these traditional and professional enemies cannot properly be understood unless scanned from the medieval point of view.
Milton and Plato's Timæus
Authors: Baldwin Edward Chauncey
Published: February 2007

The Platonic origin of certain ideas in the seventh and eighth hooks of Paradise Lost has been ignored by Milton's critics. In Raphael's account of creation (Bk. VII, ll. 621-622), speaking of the stars, he calls them

Numerous, and every star perhaps a worldOf destined habitation …

And again (Bk. VIII, ll. 148-152) :

… and other suns perhapsWith their attendant moons thou wilt descryCommunicating male and female light,Which two great sexes animate the world,Stored in each orb, perhaps with some that live.
Order and Progress in Paradise Lost
Authors: Haller William
Published: February 2007

We do not grow less certain, as time goes on, that Milton's idea of the divine nature fails to satisfy some of our deepest religious feelings. We require of theology that it be logical; we require also that it be humane. It may become mystical; but when reason fails, theology must not become illogical; and when reason demands, it must not become inhumane. Milton's God is either inconsistent or cruel or both, but he is not a mystery. Hence Professor Erskine, desiring to find the poet humane, can well argue that the idea of death in Paradise Lost undergoes a distinct change, but hence on the other hand Professor Stoll, desiring to find him consistent, can just as well argue, falling back upon the convenient notion of predestination, that there is no change where the change was intended from the beginning. Yet however we argue, Milton fails as a theologian by attempting to reduce the whole mystery of human nature to a formula and arriving at a dilemma. Pain is in itself an evil which it is the ineffable hope of mankind to destroy. The experience of pain may be used for its elimination, and the end is good, but pain is none the less evil. Man's supreme experience is not in causing but in destroying it. What spiritual satisfaction we could find without this experience is a mystery, but we arrive only at confusion when we say that evil and the cause of it, without ceasing to be evil, are good because without them we should be without the experience. Man at his best seeks to accomplish bis ends with as little pain as possible; God should be nothing short of infinitely more humane than man. Milton's omnipotent beneficence can not or will not do for man what man would do for himself if he were Milton's God. The trouble is, of course, with the whole Calvinistic system of thought. The asserter of eternal providence proves more than we wish to believe. He sinks the ship to dampen the sails. He starts up a snake in order to gain credit for killing it. He blackens the moral character of God in order to dispose of the problem of evil.
Florismondo: Ex Damnatissima Amadisi Bibliotheca
Authors: Reinhard John R.
Published: February 2007

Several years ago, while pursuing certain studies in the Harvard Library, there came into my hands, quite by accident, a certain “square old yellow book” of quarto size bearing on its first title-page the inscription: “Della Piacevole/ Storia/ dello ‘nvitto, e valoroso Principe/ Don Florismondo/ Libro Primo.” The second page gives the fuller title: “Istoria/ dello ‘nvitto, e valoroso Principe/ Don Florismondo/ E d'altri famosi cavallieri erranti di quel tempo; o-/ve si raccontano le loro maravigliose/ imprese, e piacevoli/ amori./ Composta da Anton Vincenzio/ Magnani./ In Trevi.” Between the words “Magnani” and “In Trevi,” below the former and above the latter, is inserted the drawing of a lily; at the top and bottom of the same are the words: “Sicut lilium inter/ spinas”; on the left-hand side: “Manibus da-/te lilia plenis”; on the right-hand side: “Sola/ fides.” On the following page is a “Tavola delle cose notabile non appartenenti alla storia nel presente primo libro di Florismondo contenute.” Among the “cose notabile” figure Alessandro Magno, Antipatro, Balena mostruosa, Cavalleria a chi obblighi, Diaspro e sua virtù, Superbia odiosa, etc., etc. Following the Tavola comes the text of Book I in twenty chapters and 216 pages, to which is appended a “Tavola dei Capi del Primo Libro della Storia di Don Florismondo”; this is followed by the Registro and the colophon. In the center of the latter is the drawing of a lily with the same quotations as on the title-page; at the bottom the author's name has been ingeniously worked into the design. Book II, which remains unfinished, is numbered to 109 pages and is in seven chapters; pages 65 to 80 inclusive have been lost.
Prose Rhythms
Authors: Routh James
Published: February 2007

The subject of prose rhythms is an ancient one. Even without going back of English usage, we find prose rhythms consciously developed, and consequently suggesting some sort of mature theory, as early as the time of Elizabeth. The rhythms of Bacon may be Ciceronian, and those of the King James Bible the habits of the translators, many of whom for the better part of a lifetime had been chanting, or half chanting, the Scriptures in their pulpits. But Lyly's rhythms are a deliberate thing, one is tempted to say, in his case, a premeditated crime. Sir Thomas Browne's rhythms a little later are plainly conscious. With De Quincey the usage has become an art with rules and classified practices.
XX.—The Novelty of Wordsworth's Michael as a Pastoral
Authors: Knowlton E. C.
Published: February 2007

Scarce ane has tried the shepherd-sangBut wi' miscarriage.Burns's Poem on Pastoral Poetry.

Wordsworth saw common things with “unaccustomed eyes.” When he gazed upon the landscape about him or when be observed the life of people in humble station, he found many a feature which his predecessors had overlooked or neglected. Nature, he perceived, had been ignored or superficially regarded. Yet Nature, to his mind, deserved the best efforts at interpretation. Similarly, country folk of low degree he found had hearts as sensitive as those of -people in high places, and accordingly he undertook to proclaim the truth to the world. He wished to enforce his own doctrine : “Of genius the only proof is, the act of doing well what is worthy to be done, and what was never done before: of genius, in the fine arts, the only infallible sign is the widening the sphere of human sensibility for the delight, honour, and benefit of human nature ! ”
XXI.—John Crowne and America
Authors: White Arthur Franklin
Published: February 2007

To those who look askance when the drama of the last forty years of the seventeenth century is mentioned, it may be a doubtful honor to connect a minor Restoration playwright with the early history of America. But the fact remains that John Crowne, one of the most prolific of the dramatists of this period, was for three years a resident of New England and a student at Harvard College. He is now remembered chiefly as the author of Sir Courtly Nice, a comedy which held the boards for almost a hundred years.
XXVI.—The Field of the Essay
Authors: Whitmore Charles E.
Published: February 2007

Of all the literary terms in common use, the word “essay” has perhaps the widest field and the most indeterminate content. Since the form to which it applies has taken on a fresh character in the hands of almost all its chief exponents, it has become in practice the designation for any piece of prose of moderate length, and has consequently embraced a bewilderingly various subject-matter. Moreover, the essayists themselves are by no means all of a piece. Bacon and Lamb, for instance, have little in common; and the type of ‘essayist’ represented by Macaulay and Carlyle has little in common with either. As a result of this wide extension, studies of the essay either include so much as to be very indefinite, or else are based on partial views, the upshot, in either case, becoming sufficiently vague. At the same time, the word “essay” goes on being used, and collections, of curiously assorted content, go on being made; and it therefore seems worth while to pass in review the different types represented in actual practice, in order to see just how much continuity is discernible among them.
Heterodoxy in Dante's Purgatory
Authors: de Salvio Alfonso
Published: February 2007

In his “Dante as a Religious Teacher” Dr. Edward Moore makes the following significant remarks with regard to Dante's teaching on the subject of Purgatory: “Dante's conception of the nature and purpose of the pains of Purgatory stands in very marked contrast to the popular ideas of the Middle Ages, and not only to the popular ideas, but also to the teaching and practice of the Roman Church both then and in later times… This difference of attitude on the part of Dante applies not only to the general conception of Purgatory itself, but still more strikingly to the practical consequences flowing from it, in teaching respecting indulgences, transference of merits, and means of remission of, or escape from, Purgatorial penalties.” However, the eminent Dantist minimizes the significance of this difference of attitude and applies to it what he said in a preceding page concerning Dante's conception of the relation of Church and State, namely, that “it may be held to be contumacious, but scarcely heretical, to criticize and oppose what has been authoritatively declared to be essential as a practical condition for the exercise of the Church's mission.”