bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
II.—The Sources and Mediæval Versions of the Peace-Fable
Authors: Lancaster H. Carrington
Published: February 2007

Although the Middle Ages usually drew upon Classic tradition in the formation of their fable literature, they at times created new themes whose popularity equalled that of many older rivals. Of no small importance among such stories are those that deal with the false peace declared by a fox in order to deceive a seemingly simple-minded bird. The numerous versions of this fable that have come down to us since the middle of the eleventh century evidence strong interrelation, in spite of individual differences of character, scene, or action. The various forms become so well established by the beginning of the sixteenth century that a history of the fable is sufficiently complete if it comes down to the end of the Middle Ages. It is the object of this article to show what versions of the Peace-Fable existed before the sixteenth century, whence they arose, and what are their relations to one another. The following is a list of the mediaeval versions:—
V.—The Sege of Troye
Authors: Griffin Nathaniel E.
Published: February 2007

The hitherto unpublished English version of the Trojan war entitled The Sege of Troye exists in the unique Oxford ms., Rawlinson D 82. The Sege of Troye occupies second position in the manuscript, being preceded by a brief prose redaction of Statius’Thebaid and followed by an extract from Gower's Confessio Amantis. The version in question is an anonymous prose text of the fifteenth century, written in the Southern dialect. The story, which is told in simple, almost naive, language, and in a brisk, lively fashion, opens with the Argonautic Expedition and ends with the Destruction of Troy.
Relics of Franco-Provençal in Southern Italy
Authors: de Salvio A.
Published: February 2007

On the slopes of the Appenines overlooking the fertile plains of Apulia, and about fifteen miles west of the ancient town of Luceria (the modern Lucera), are found the two small towns of Celle and Faeto. They are only a mile apart and their combined population is about four thousand. Besides Apulian, which is the dialect of that region, the inhabitants of Celle and Faeto still speak a kind of French dialect.
Professor Child and the Ballad
Authors: Hart Walter Morris
Published: February 2007

In the course of his insistence upon the necessity of a continued recognition of the popular ballad as a distinct literary type, Professor Gummere points out the value of a collection of Professor Child's critical remarks on the ballad and an attempt to determine their general drift. Such is the purpose of the present paper. Aside from the article in the Universal Cyclopædia, Professor Child's comments are mere obiter dicta, based upon no underlying principle and forming no part of a set purpose. They are, therefore, not easy to classify; the attempt to reduce them to order can be only partially successful, and any arrangement must appear more or less arbitrary. Yet some arrangement has seemed advisable and they have been roughly grouped under the following headings: (1) Authorship and Transmission; (2) Subject-Matter; (3) Technique; (4) A Comparison of the Ballads of 1857–1859 and The English and Scottish Popular Ballads of 1882–1898; (5) A Collection of General Comments upon Specific Ballads; (6) Summary.
A Definition of Petrarchismo
Authors: Berdan John M.
Published: February 2007

While the origin, sources, and evolution of the drama of the sixteenth century have been elaborately studied, curiously enough the non-dramatic literature of the period has suffered from comparative neglect. Monographs on single authors, studies on English literature alone, in many cases have erred thru false perspective. Thus, altho the time is not yet ripe for the general history of the sonnet, desired by M. Vaganay, it may be profitable briefly to consider English literature, in one of its phases, in relation to the great movement of which it was a part.
VI.—The Objectivity of the Ghosts in Shakspere
Authors: Stoll Elmer Edgar
Published: February 2007

Of late the common belief in the subjectivity of the ghosts in Shakspere has received fresh currency from the sanction of scholars who belong unquestionably to the newer school—Professors C. H. Herford and A. C. Bradley and a gentleman named F. C. Moorman who writes in the Modern Language Review. The first and the last may for the time being speak for all:—
XXII.—Burke Among the Forerunners of Lessing
Authors: Howard William Guild
Published: February 2007

Edmund Burke's Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (London, 1757; second edition, considerably enlarged, 1759) was received in Germany no less hospitably than in England. Lessing wrote about it in 1757 and 1758 to his friends Mendelssohn and Nicolai, planned to translate it, and left Bemerkungen on sundry points in it; Mendelssohn reviewed it; Herder considered, like Lessing, the making of a translation, referred to Burke in letters, in Das vierte kritische Wäldchen, and in conversation with Lessing; Christian Garve published a translation; and Burke's treatise was not without influence on Kant and Schiller.
XIX.—An Objective Study of Syllabic Quantity in English Verse
Authors: Snell Ada L. F.
Published: February 2007

In a previous paper the syllabic quantity of twenty-five lines of Milton's Paradise Lost was discussed. In that paper it was shown that for three different readers approximately 90% of the syllables standing in the metrically stressed position were longer than the other syllables in the same foot in the unstressed position. In the following study it is my purpose to consider syllabic duration in lyric verse of different metres. The first two selections are iambic. They were read by I and Ka respectively, both instructors in vocal expression in western universities. All times are given in tenths and one-hundredths of a second; the times of pauses are in parenthesis.
XVII.—Shelley's Doctrine of Necessity Versus Christianity
Authors: Gingerich S. F.
Published: February 2007

Among the great English poets of the Romantic period Shelley was the poet of religious as well as of social and political revolt. His mind was preoccupied, especially in the formative years of his life, with the subject of religion, and it is significant that the piece of writing which first attracted any considerable attention to him was the essay The Necessity of Atheism, published in 1811 when he was eighteen and a student of Oxford. The essay not only is revolutionary in spirit, but also reveals a mind precociously occupied with religious problems.
Hermann Kirchner's Coriolanus
Authors: Beam Jacob N.
Published: February 2007

Hermann Kirchner, son of Joachim Kirchner, was born November 11, 1562 at Hersfeld in Hessen. As a youth he was sent to Copenhagen to live with his brother, and there in the Ducal Library he began his higher studies. Thence he went to Rostock, and in 1587 to Marburg, supplied with recommendations from Chrytaeus, the historian, to the poet and dramatist, Aegidius Hunnius, who was until 1592 Professor of Theology in Marburg.
XXXII. The Validity of Literary Definitions
Authors: Whitmore Charles E.
Published: February 2007

In an age of questioning like ours, literary definitions can as little as anything else escape being called to the bar to give an account of themselves, and of their right to exist; and some, no doubt, would say that the case has already been decided against them. Personally, after having engaged in framing a few of my own, I do not share that view; and what I wish to do here is to consider briefly what gives literary definitions their validity, and what considerations ought to guide us in framing them. The task will involve some attention to the general speculative background against which purely literary problems are relieved, and may bring together some aspects which will derive at least relative novelty from their juxtaposition.
XVIII.—The Dramatic Structure of Samson Agonistes
Authors: Tupper James Waddell
Published: February 2007

It is a familiar maxim in criticism that the strength of a work of art is measured not by its weakest part, as a chain is by its weakest link, but by its strongest. Marlowe's Doctor Faustus is judged by its magnificent speeches and its awe-inspiring close, not by the fooleries of Mephistopheles. Paradise Lost is supremely great despite the long-winded discourses of the later books. It sometimes happens, however, that the excellence that gives a work its position in literature lifts its actual faults into the category of virtues. The average reader is so carried away by the supreme art of the great passages that he does not notice the blemishes. The critic instead of recognizing faults as spots on the sun refuses even to admit that they exist, contending that what are regarded as faults are really special beauties. Usually in time these matters are adjusted so that the man and the work are set into their proper niches. When a piece of literature has stood the test of time for two hundred and fifty years and only once has a considerable voice been raised in unfavorable criticism, and that over one hundred and fifty years ago, he would seem to be a very daring critic who would say that the lone voice was right and all the others wrong. Especially so when the work so criticized is Milton's Samson Agonistes. One takes courage, however, from the fact that the first critic who presumed to find fault with this play was Dr. Johnson.
The Authorship of Henry the Eighth
Authors: Nicolson Marjorie H.
Published: February 2007

The problems connected with the authorship of Henry the Eighth are in some ways different from those usual in the doubtful plays. In the first place, the external evidence is singularly exact and definite and in no way contradictory. That a play dealing with the reign of Henry the Eighth and bearing either the title or the sub-title All Is True was being acted June 29, 1613 at the Globe Theatre is attested by at least three contemporary documents which tell of the fire which destroyed the theatre that day. The publication of the play in the Folio of 1623 is, however, the only direct attribution to Shakespeare. According to one of the ballads written about the Globe fire, Heminge and Condell, the Folio editors, were both present at the time of the fire; their later inclusion of the play in the Folio must, therefore, have been with full knowledge of its authorship. In the second place, the play is so evidently by two hands that, even as early as 1758, Roderick pointed out peculiarities of metre which did not seem to him Shakespearean. A chance remark of Tennyson's that ‘many passages in Henry the Eighth were very much in the manner of Fletcher,’ combined with his own impressions, led Spedding to investigate the matter more fully, with the result that in 1850 he published his paper, ‘Who wrote Shakespeare's Henry the Eighth?’ As a result of this investigation and of the application of metrical tests, in the results of which his investigations were substantiated by those of Fleay, Furnivall and others, he concluded that more than one half of the play had been written by Fletcher, and pronounced as Shakespearean only the following scenes: Act I, Scenes 1 and 2; Act II, Scenes 3 and 4; Act III Scene 2 (to the exit of the king); Act V Scene 1—with alterations. With this decision, so far as the work of Fletcher is concerned, practically all later critics have been in agreement. The problem, then, has long been one not of the sole authorship of Shakespeare, but of his part in the play.
The Use of the Conditional Perfect for the Conditional Present in Italian
Authors: Goggio Charles
Published: February 2007

Characteristic of the Italian Language is the modern use of the conditional perfect instead of the present. This interchange of tenses is not permitted by either of her two living sister languages, French and Spanish. Nor does English admit such constructions: we are not allowed to say, for example, “He said he should have done it tomorrow,” but must say, “He said he would do it tomorrow.” In Italian on the other hand, there are numerous examples of this construction as the following quotations will illustrate:

“Ma se avessi alcuno luogo di fuori, in nel qual fusse persona che tu fidare te ne potessi, io direi che tu la Pippa quine mandassi, et aresti fuggito il pericolo tuo e quello della tua donna, che la dei piu amare che te.” Sercambi.
An Italian “Imitation” of Shelley's The Cenci
Authors: White Newman I.
Published: February 2007

Among the English Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century, Byron is undoubtedly the foremost in the amount of attention he has attracted from Continental critics and imitators. Shelley, however, has also received a rather generous amount of attention. The German translation of Prometheus Unbound, by Helene Richter, and the French translation of The Cenci, with its introductory appreciation by Swinburne, testify to the fact that Continental readers do not ignore Shelley, and a considerable number of German theses on such subjects as “Shelley und die Frauen,” “Shelley's Belesenheit,” and “Shelley's Quellen” show that he has not escaped his portion of industrious German scholarship. Italians, though not so voluminous in their attentions, have felt a special interest in him on account of his Italian residence and sympathies and his use of Italian material in The Cenci. Italian scholars have added a few minor details to our knowledge of Shelley's last years and have devoted some critical attention to The Cenci.
Wordsworth's Italy
Authors: Shackford Martha Hale
Published: February 2007

Wordsworth's relation to Italy has been a subject rather neglected in the annals of English poets who have known and loved “the land of lands,” and have left us memorial records of the beauty of Italy's blue sky, the golden clarity of her air, the soft greenness of her trees, and the fame of her poets and artists. Biographers of Wordsworth have so emphasized his relation to France that the general reader is hardly aware that the poet had crossed the Alps, both in body and in spirit. He belongs with Chaucer, Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Milton, Gray, Goldsmith, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Landor, Clough, and the Brownings, all of whom will ever be associated with memories of Italy. An attempt to trace the history of his acquaintance with Italy, may, it is hoped, show that he had for things Italian a really life-long sympathy. Moreover, the study may help to dispel some lingering superstitions about Wordsworth's insularity. Wordsworth was one of the most assiduous travellers of all the English poets except Byron. The difficulty of travel in the early nineteenth century should be remembered in considering the distances he traversed. He knew France, Switzerland, Germany, The Netherlands, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the Isle of Man, and various regions of England, including every inch of the Lake Country.
Analogues of Wordsworth's The Borderers
Authors: Allen B. Sprague
Published: February 2007

The Borderers does not, and cannot, rank high among Wordsworth's poems. It is curiously lacking in the glamor, the color, the atmosphere of a remote and picturesque past by which the romantic poets are wont to impart a persuasive verisimilitude to their pictures of the Middle Ages. The characters of the play have slight individuality, and in spite of the calamities that befall them, they evoke no sympathy. Although the poem exhibits intellectual power in the handling of a philosophical problem and a finely whittled precision in the statement of ideas, yet these robust merits are unhappily wedded to the mawkish ineptitude of contemporary literature. The hero, Marmaduke, is the humanitarian freebooter of Schiller's Robbers; however, to do him justice, he does not, like Karl Moor, support young men at college with his tainted money. Herbert and Idonea present a lachrymose picture of virtue in distress; the blind old man is a sentimentalized Oedipus, and his daughter is a Greuze maiden, a girl with a broken pitcher, who has stepped out of her frame to go a-wandering; her angelic perfection only exasperates. Even the “little dog, tied by a woollen cord,” that guides the wandering Herbert, has a sentimental pedigree; he is the faithful animal of current novels—the descendant, for example, of virtuous, old Trusty, the “shag house-dog” of The Man of Feeling.
Milton's Textbook of Astronomy
Authors: Gilbert Allan H.
Published: February 2007

In his tractate Of Education Milton gives astronomy as one of the subjects that the properly educated boy should study. He would first have his pupils “learn in any modern author the use of the globes,” and then having mastered the elements of the subject, proceed to the reading not only of poems abounding in astronomy, but also of those wholly astronomical, such as the Astronomicon of Manilius and the Phaenomena of Aratus.
XI. On the Discrimination of Romanticisms
Authors: Lovejoy Arthur O.
Published: February 2007

We approach a centenary not, perhaps, wholly undeserving of notice on the part of this learned company. It was apparently in 1824 that those respected citizens of La-Ferté-sous-Jouarre, MM. Dupuis and Cotonet, began an enterprise which was to cause them, as is recorded, “twelve years of suffering,” and to end in disillusionment—the enterprise of discovering what Romanticism is, by collecting definitions and characterizations of it given by eminent authorities. I conjecture, therefore, that one of the purposes of the Committee in inviting me to speak on this subject was perhaps to promote a Dupuis and Cotonet Centennial Exhibition, in which the later varieties of definitions of Romanticism, the fruit of a hundred years' industry on the part of literary critics and professors of modern literature, might be at least in part displayed. Certainly there is no lack of material; the contemporary collector of such articles, while paying tribute to the assiduity and the sufferings of those worthy pioneers of a century ago, will chiefly feel an envious sense of the relative simplicity of their task. He will find, also, that the apparent incongruity of the senses in which the term is employed has fairly kept pace with their increase in number; and that the singular potency which the subject has from the first possessed to excite controversy and breed divisions has in no degree diminished with the lapse of years.
XIII. The Narrative-Technique of the Faerie Queene
Authors: Draper John W.
Published: February 2007

Although to the casual reader, and indeed to some serious critics, the Faerie Queene seems to consist only of an unsystematized accumulation of episodes bound together merely by the rich glamor of Romantic atmosphere, yet there can be no doubt that Spenser had a rather definite theory of narrative art, and that, at least along general lines, he developed his material according to a preconceived plan. He had already showed himself a literary theorist by his experiments in diction and style in the Shepheardes Calender; and the Faerie Queene itself has a certain symmetry in the arrangement of its episodes: in most of the books, a knight and a lady engage upon a quest; the knight falls into sin, usually the antithesis of the particular virtue portrayed in that book; he is saved by a sort of deus ex machina, usually in the person of Arthur; he is taught the virtue that corresponds to his sin; and he proceeds upon his quest and conquers.
XVIII.—Aristotelian ‘Mimesis’ in Eighteenth Century England
Authors: Draper John W.
Published: February 2007

Of the many disputed terms in the Poetics, “imitation,” has always been one of the most fruitful of discussion and of misconception; and these misconceptions are particularly significant because, for whole periods, they were potent in moulding creative activity not only in literature, but also in painting and in music. When “ imitation ” is considered in the light of its technical use in Plato and in Aristotle, its real meaning emerges with some distinctness. Far from the naturalistic theory of a direct and slavish copy of objects and actions, Aristotle's is a distinctly idealistic conception, and signifies “ creating according to a true idea.” Thus, when we are told that Art imitates Nature, “ Nature ” is not a particular thing or act, but is the creative force of the universe. With this conception, we can justify Aristotle's declaration that music is the most imitative of all the arts: it is the most fluid; and its flux is governed most completely by the universal laws of unity, proportion, and symmetry. The conception is almost Platonic; and it makes Aristotelian appear in a sense almost diametrically opposed to the common meaning of the Latin imitatio and the English “ imitation.”
XX.—Goethe's Poem “Im Ernsten Beinhaus”
Authors: Hatfield James Taft
Published: February 2007

The original manuscript of this poem is preserved in Hanover, and over it is written, in Goethe's hand: “For the 17th of September, 1826.” This date Goethe crossed out, writing in its place: “ September 25, 1826.” It was printed during his lifetime, without title, at the end of Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, published in 1829, and is followed by the words in parenthesis, “ Ist fortzusetzen.” Only after Goethe's death, in the Cotta edition of 1833, appears the usual title, “Bei Betrachtung von Schillers Schädel,” doubtless added by Eckermann. Nearly all texts, with the notable exception of the Weimar edition, repeat this title. The Jubilee edition has the heading, “Schillers Reliquien.”
XXI.—Matthew Arnold and Goethe
Authors: White Helen C.
Published: February 2007

When Matthew Arnold called Goethe “ the clearest, the largest, the most helpful thinker of modern times,” he paid tribute to one of the most significant and enduring influences of his life. In him without doubt Arnold found one of those few best things that he held it the critic's function to know and to make known. Yet it was not as a poet, even though he never failed to accord to Goethe the first place after Shakespeare, that he hailed him as the greatest of the moderns, but as the thinker who more than any other had achieved the great task of modern literature, the task of interpreting the modern world to itself. “ People joke about and take fright at the problems of life; few trouble themselves about the words that would solve them ;” so Goethe once wrote to Schiller. Matthew Arnold was preeminently one of the few. His special business was the criticism of literature, but he brought to it the indispensable profound and persistent reflection upon the world which literature is designed to interpret. So he came to his famous campaign to quicken intellectually and spiritually the lives of his people. To that end he drew the main lines of his program, the endeavor to foster and disseminate the critical spirit (which he made the basis of what he called the modern element), the gospel of culture, and the setting up of that ideal of literature that he found most perfectly realized in the classics.

“People joke about and take fright at the problems of life; few trouble themselves about the words that would solve them;” so Goethe once wrote to Schiller. Matthew Arnold was preeminently one of the few. His special business was the criticism of literature, but he brought to it the indispensable profound and persistent reflection upon the world which literature is designed to interpret. So he came to his famous campaign to quicken intellectually and spiritually the lives of his people. To that end he drew the main lines of his program, the endeavor to foster and disseminate the critical spirit (which he made the basis of what he called the modern element), the gospel of culture, and the setting up of that ideal of literature that he found most perfectly realized in the classics.
Some Notes on the Pearl
Authors: Emerson Oliver Farrar
Published: February 2007

In spite of all that has been done to elucidate this beautiful poem, there still seems to be room to add some items in textual emendation and explanation. The pioneer work of Morris was excellent for its time, and is still to be reckoned with. Gollancz and Osgood have added much in their editions of the poem, and such commentators as Kölbing and Holthausen have made interesting suggestions. Nor must we neglect the critical studies of Fick and Knigge, Fischer and Schumacker. The comments of all of these and of others who have less fully considered the poem must be read and weighed by any who would understand this nameless poet, who at his best may be ranked with the great ones of the fourteenth century. His language, however, and sometimes his careless indication of sentence union and transition make the closest reading necessary.
The First Visit of Erasmus to England
Authors: Savage Howard J.
Published: February 2007

As hero in the romance of scholarship, Desiderius Erasmus has few peers. His fame rests not alone upon his breaking with Scotism and Ciceronianism, but also upon the vigor and validity of the systems which he was instrumental in substituting. In England especially the effects of his doctrines culminated in far-reaching changes of church, state, and university. Most estimates of his career paint him as a Humanistic hero from the first—a master of disputation, a notable author, a scholar in Greek, an educator with theories full-formed, a torch-bearer of Humanism almost before the torch began to blaze.
An Interview with Jean Jacques Rousseau
Authors: Waterhouse Francis A.
Published: February 2007

The attempt to contribute, however slightly, to the vast volume of writings on Rousseau is a venture which, all will agree, should be undertaken with diffidence. The character, achievements, and influence of the Great Romanticist have been studied, discussed and debated by so many eminent scholars, that, unless one has something new to offer, the careful critic will consider any attempt to reopen the complex subject as tedious as it is presumptuous. In the present instance, however, the writer feels that he has been fortunate enough to discover some material which, though of modest scope, will nevertheless prove of real interest to lovers of Rousseauiana.
Bear Gardens And Bear-Baiting During The Commonwealth
Authors: Hotson J. Leslie
Published: February 2007

The attack of the Puritans and of the city authorities upon the amusements of London under Charles I and the Interregnum was directed primarily against plays and playhouses. The sport of bear-baiting—one of the favorite entertainments of the Londoners—was allowed to continue almost without interruption throughout the Commonwealth.
William Wordsworth And German Literature
Authors: Herzberg Max J.
Published: February 2007

But who shall parcel outHis intellect by geometric rules,Split like a province into round and square?Who knows the individual hour in whichHis habits were first sown, even as a seed?Who that shall point as with a wand and say“That portion of the river of my mindCame from that fountain?“ (The Prelude, II, 203ff).

To what extent, it may profitably be asked, did German literature exert an influence, direct or indirect, upon the life and writings of Wordsworth?
Jane Austen the Critic
Authors: Hopkins Annette B.
Published: February 2007

Miss Austen, in a letter to her sister Cassandra dated December 18, 1798, writes thus of a circulating library about to be opened, presumably at Steventon, on January 14:

As an inducement to subscribe, Mrs. Martin tells me that her collection is not to consist only of hovels, but of every kind of literature, etc. She might have spared this pretension to our family who are great novel readers and not ashamed of being so; but it was necessary, I suppose, to the self-consequence of half her subscribers.
The Landscape of Browning's Childe Roland
Authors: De Vane William C.
Published: February 2007

In his admirable paper upon the sources of Browning's Childe Roland, Mr. Harold Golder shows from what a rich storehouse of nursery tale, poetry, and romance the poet drew for many of the incidents that go to make up that poem. Childe Roland is such a synthetic poem that the problem of finding satisfactory sources for it is not simple. Nor is it made easier by Browning's stubborn insistence that the only true source of the poem is the line from King Lear. But it has been impossible to be content with Browning's statement, and critic after critic has ransacked ballad, fairy tale and legend to find the origin of the simples which the poet has compounded in his poem. In the light of Browning's statement, the problem becomes one of “establishing a subconscious connection between Edgar's maudlin words and the material from which Browning obviously drew”; in other words, we must find for the sources of Childe Roland materials so familiar to Browning at the impressionable time of his life as to have become a part of his own mental character, and further, the materials must be such as would definitely suggest the images which appear in the poem.
The Young Man Betrothed to a Statue: Additional Note
Authors: Baum Paull Franklin
Published: February 2007

Through the kindness of Professor R. M. Mitchell, of Brown University, who has sent me his copy of Venus in Rom, I am now able to give an account of Wilibald Alexis's rendering of the story of Venus and the ring. The materal is handled very freely — tant pis. The scene is laid in the Rome of the Renaissance, where (as one of the characters says) “winkt uns das Alterthum lockend in seine Wunderwelt zurück.” The first half— the whole is a novelette of thirty thousand words—is very slow-moving. Hubert von Stein, a German nobleman, has come to Rome to visit his friend, Theodor Savelli; who has, however, mysteriously disappeared. There are glimpses of Roman social life, of a necromancer and hermit named Palumbus, of the beautiful Viola Gritti, of Savelli's half-deserted palace (with a broken statue which has injured the workmen who were removing it), and even of Raphael painting in the Vatican. And there are violent thunder storms, strange meetings, dreams, visions, at night; a manifest attempt to create an atmosphere of the supernatural. The latter half is more lively. Savelli has appeared, half insane; he tells of a ball game on the day of his wedding, of putting the inconvenient ring on a Venus statue, of his consequent marriage with the goddess and fearful visits to the Venusberg. Hubert's wife Mathilde comes from Germany to find her husband … with a Roman mistress, Faustine, and a baby. Enter Martin Luther. There is an attempt on Leo X's life, a street riot, in which Hubert, denounced as a heretic, defends himself for several pages single-handed against the mob, escapes by leaping into the Tiber, is rescued by his mistress (who dies defending him), and counter-rescued by his faithful spouse. At the end Savelli, still insane, regains his ring— not, however, through Palumbus's aid,—returns to his wife Viola, persuades her to drink poison, burns his palace after an elaborate funeral, and becomes a pilgrim. Palumbus dies. Mathilde and Hubert return to Germany, with little Guido, Faustine's son.
The Elizabethan Dramatic Companies
Authors: Thaler Alwin
Published: February 2007

Of the several agencies whose joint functioning made possible the Elizaibethan theatre, the most neglected, the least understood, and yet in some respects the most important, is the dramatic company. The history and organization of the playhouses have long since attracted the attention of scholars, and the individual fortune of the playwrights and actors has been studied from many points of view. Research on the dramatic companies, on the other hand, has taken but one direction. Fleay, Maas, and Murray have gone far to establish the chronology of the companies, but their real place in the history of the Elizabethan theatre has not been established. General works on the Elizabethan drama and theatre have failed to give them the attention they deserve, and the general student of the period hardly realizes that upon the companies rested a considerable share of the financial responsibility for the drama and the entire burden of producing it. Nor is it difficult to understand why the dramatic companies have been neglected. Writers upon our period have been content to treat of Elizabethan actors in a manner fitting those of all succeeding periods. The function of the modern actor is to act. The theatrical capitalist and the specialized skill of the producer relieve him of all the financial, and a substantial part of the artistic, responsibility which rested upon Elizabethan actors. If, however, the Elizabethan actor had greater responsibilities, he had also greater opportunities. The Elizabethan drama owes far more than has yet been realized to the fact that many of the playwrights and all of the producing managers were great actors, who knew the audience intimately enough to gauge its capacities, who acknowledged no paymaster or employer but that audience, and whose instincts partook alike of the shrewdness of the successful business man and the daring of the artist. This producing and managerial function of the companies justifies a closer investigation than has yet been made of their place in the theatrical activities of the time and of the business organization which enabled them to hold it.
I.—The Conclusion of Paradise Lost
Authors: Moore C. A.
Published: February 2007

The original objection urged against the conclusion of Paradise Lost was its failure to conform strictly to the neo-classic requirement that “an Heroick Poem . . . ought to end happily, and leave the mind of the reader, after having conducted it through many doubts and fears, sorrows and disquietudes, in a state of tranquility and satisfaction.” Milton's subject, according to Dryden, “is not that of an heroick poem, properly so called. His design is the losing of our happiness; his event is not prosperous, like that of all other epic works.” Addison concurred in this opinion; but he considered that the poet's “exquisite judgment” in raising Adam to a state of great happiness through the vision of future events had virtually overcome “the natural defect in his subject.” The author, he says, “leaves the Adversary of Mankind . . . under the lowest state of mortification and disappointment. We see him chewing ashes, grovelling in the dust, and loaden with supernumerary pains and torments. On the contrary, our two first parents are comforted by dreams and visions, cheared with promises of salvation, and, in a manner, raised to a greater happiness than that which they had forfeited. In short, Satan is represented miserable in the height of his triumphs, and Adam triumphant in the height of misery.” With one detail of the conclusion, however, Addison found fault. It would have been better, he declared, to omit entirely the last two lines of the poem (misquoted) :

They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,Through Eden took their solitary way.
II.—“The Devil and the Advocate”
Authors: Taylor Archer
Published: February 2007

Der Stricker, an Austrian poet who is perhaps best known for his Pfaffe Amîs (ca. 1230), is the first (so far as we know) to tell the story of a wicked advocate (or judge) who was more unscrupulous in robbing his neighbors than the Devil himself. This tale, though perhaps a folk-tale originally, and even in its written versions never very far from the spirit of the folk, is interesting chiefly for its literary adaptations, notably Chaucer's Friar's Tale. Its principal forms, which are maintained with remarkable consistency, no doubt because its propagation was rather through books than through oral tradition, seem to have been determined by its use as exemplum, jest, or simple story. The oldest form, as it occurs in the narratives of der Stricker and Caesarius of Heisterbach, is also the most frequent and important. A rather unhappy rearrangement of the same incidents, which have to do with the leveling of a curse at a man or beast, characterizes a second form, of which the earliest example is found in Johannes Pauli's Schimpf und Ernst (1522). A little later (1537) Hans Sachs altered the story by omitting one episode regularly found in the other two types. Into one of these three closely related groups, represented by der Stricker and Caesarius, Pauli, and Hans Sachs respectively, the great majority of the thirty known versions fall. The variations are comparatively insignificant, and the analogous tales which do not follow one of these standard outlines are strikingly few.
V.—The Eve of St. Agnes and The Mysteries of Udolpho
Authors: Shackford Martha Hale
Published: February 2007

That Keats in The Eve of St. Agnes was possibly indebted to Mrs. Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho was suggested to me by my colleague, Professor Margaret Sherwood, who pointed out several signs of relationship between the two works. Since that time I have made some study of the problem, and record the following observations. No attempt is here made to discuss the question raised by President MacCracken of Keats's obligation to Boccaccio's Filocolo, since it is not possible to reach final conclusions in regard to the matter without making a systematic study of the relationship of the Eve of St. Agnes to Floris and Blancheflur, Filocolo, Romeus and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet, The Mysteries of Udolpho, and Christabel.
Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, or Every Man His Own Allegorist
Authors: White Newman I.
Published: February 2007

The respectable number of books and articles about Shelley within recent years have concerned themselves mainly with the review of a puzzling personality and an inspiring, if not altogether acceptable “message.” At one of those times, the aftermath of a centennial, when authors may be assayed anew, we have contented ourselves with reaffirming, somewhat indifferently, the opinions of the last seventy-five years. This fact seems to argue that the poet's reputation has become stabilized. Although scholars and critics will no doubt continue to add minutiae, it is probably true that our main body of information and opinions concerning Shelley is definitely fixed, for some time to come. And yet in the case of Shelley's principal poem, Prometheus Unbound, there are considerations which indicate that the generally accepted view needs to be revised. These considerations hardly affect the value or the essential meaning of the poem, but they do fundamentally affect the method by which it is commonly approached.
III. Chaucer's Use of the Vulgate
Authors: Landrum Grace W.
Published: February 2007

“His studie was but litel on the Bible,” Chaucer's remark concerning the Physician, has been applied by critics to Chaucer himself. The prevailing view is doubtless that expressed by Tatlock: “The more one investigates Chaucer's reading, the more convinced one becomes that his familiarity with the Bible (and other quotable literature, like Cato and Seneca) was largely at second-hand.” Up to this time, however, investigation of Chaucer's biblical material has been slight, as a glance at Miss Hammond's Manual will prove.
VII. The Earl of Essex on the Stage
Authors: Smith Winifred
Published: February 2007

The romantic career of that unhappy favorite of Queen Elizabeth, Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, like the histories of Mary Stuart and of the Maréchal de Biron, has been often used as a subject for tragedy in Spanish, French, Italian, German, and English. Several of these plays have been studied more or less carefully at different times, so that I shall not do more than summarize those versions briefly before passing on to my main subject, the relation between Niccolo Biancolelli's Regina Statista d'Inghilterra and its commedia dell'Arte variants, of which the one presented here is hitherto unpublished.
X. How Henry James Revised Roderick Hudson: A Study in Style
Authors: Harvitt Hélène
Published: February 2007

Henry James tells us in his preface to the revised edition of his novels, with what interest and emotion he renewed acquaintance with his book, Roderick Hudson, after a quarter of a century had elapsed since its first appearance, in 1875. He takes up its failings and its defects, of which he is fully conscious and which he sees with very keen perspicacity. He writes:

I have felt myself then, on looking over past productions, the painter making use again and again of the tentative wet sponge. The sunk surface has here and there, beyond doubt, refused to respond: the buried secrets, the intentions, are buried too deep to rise again, and were indeed, it would appear, not much worth the burying. Not so, however, when the moistened canvas does obscurely flush and when resort to the varnish-bottle is thereby immediately indicated. The simplest figure for my revision of this present array of earlier, later, larger, smaller, canvases, is to say that I have achieved it by the very aid of the varnish-bottle. It is true of them throughout that, in words I have had occasion to use in another connexion (where too I had revised with a view to “possible amendment of form and enhancement of meaning”) I have nowhere scrupled to re-write a sentence or a passage on judging it susceptible of a better turn.
The Present Status of the Bibliography of English Prose Fiction Between 1660 and 1800
Authors: Whicher George F.
Published: February 2007

No student of the development of the novel can doubt the usefulness of a check-list of English prose fiction for the years between the Restoration and the French Revolution. The successive masterpieces of fiction written during this period reveal, as no list of nineteenth century novels could, a wide divergency of type, purpose, and method. Such books as Oroonoko, Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Clarissa Harlowe, Tom Jones, Rasselas, Tristram Shandy, The Adventures of a Guinea, The Castle of Otranto, Humphrey Clinker, Evelina, Vathek, Caleb Williams, and Castle Rackrent clearly do not represent stages in a single line of development, but rather the culmination of various traditions or the combination in varying proportion of obscure tendencies. Behind these outstanding works of genius lies a relatively uncharted hinterland of experimental and contributory forms. When we recall that the fiction of this century and a half ranges from The Grand Cyrus to Goody Two Shoes, from Mrs. Manley's New Atlantis to Miss Edgeworth's Parent's Assistant, the need of some chart for the shifting cross-currents of literary fashion becomes apparent. But were a priori reasons lacking, the attempts made by several scholars during the last few years to compile a bibliography of fiction would afford a sufficient pragmatic sanction for our interest in the field.
XII.—The Stage History of Colley Cibber's the Careless Husband
Authors: Glicksman Harry
Published: February 2007

Theatrical records tend to prove that The Careless Husband, doubtless the best of Cibber's comedies, enjoyed a warm reception when it was first presented before London audiences. Produced for the first time at Drury-Lane on Thursday, December 7, 1704, it held the boards of that theatre for nightly performances during the remainder of that week, and, with the customary exception of Sunday, during the whole of the following week, which ended Saturday, December 16. The initial cast was: Sir Charles Easy — Wilks; Lord Foppington — Cibber; Lord. Morelove—Powell; Lady Betty Modish—Mrs. Oldfield; Lady Easy—Mrs. Knight; Lady Graveairs—Mrs. Moore; Edging—Mrs. Lucas. Along with the announcement for Friday, December 15, there appears the following: “With a piece of Instrumental Musick to be performed by Mr. Paisible, Mr. Banister, and others. And several Entertainments of Dancing by Monsieur Cherrier, and others.” For the next evening the managers promise a change in the bill: “Several Italian Sonata's on the Violin by Signior Gasparini. And several Entertainments of Dancing by Mrs. du Ruel.” Such extradramatic features attend the production of the play rather frequently throughout its stage career.
XIII.—The Chronology of Milton's Private Studies
Authors: Hanford James Holly
Published: February 2007

The remarkable autograph manuscript discovered in 1874 by A. J. Horwood among the papers of Sir Frederick Graham of Netherby is one of the basic documents for the study of Milton. It furnishes a list of some ninety authors, many of them by no means obvious, whom Milton knew; it indicates a large number of specific passages which he found interesting; and, finally, it contains, either explicitly or by implication, a host of opinions and ideas, consideration of which affords a new insight into the working of his mind. The Commonplace Book is, indeed, an important key to Milton's intellectual activity, and as such it merits a more careful critical consideration and a wider application than it has yet received. The facsimile published by the Royal Society of Literature in 1876 rendered the document accessible in its original form, and Horwood's edition for the Camden Society attempted a solution of some of the fundamental problems which must be dealt with before the note book can be put to fruitful use. But Horwood unfortunately did his work with little care and left it incomplete in many particulars. His text in the revised edition is reasonably accurate, but the editorial work is in the highest degree unsatisfactory. The editor did not undertake the necessary labor of identifying all the works and authors cited, nor did he always distinguish between those quoted by Milton at first and at second hand. His list of parallels from Milton's published writings is scanty, and he has failed to supply other obvious apparatus.
Don Juan in a French Play of 1630
Authors: Lancaster H. Carrington
Published: February 2007

None of the numerous studies devoted to the Don Juan tradition mention a French play of 1630 which contains certain of its elements and is earlier in date than any other extant French or Italian version, as early, indeed, as the printed Burlador itself. This striking fact deserves, I think, some consideration. Let us see first what is the prevailing opinion with regard to the origin and early history of the Don Juan legend, then what place in the list of versions should be assigned to this French play, and finally what confirmation or modification of the present theory may be deduced from the fact of its existence.
Drayton's Relation to the School of Donne, as Revealed in the Shepheards Sirena
Authors: Jenkins Raymond
Published: February 2007

The Shepheards Sirena, together with the Quest of Cynthia and the Nymphidia, was published in 1627. It is a conventional pastoral, in which is described the rueful condition of the shepherd Dorilus, who is pining over the separation from his beloved nymph, Sirena. While musing upon her absence, he reads a letter of Sirena's, in which she counsels him not to come to her, despite her sore affliction, because the ‘wilde waters’ which separate them would make it extremely hazardous. After reading the letter, Dorilus soliloquizes on his future course of action. While thus occupied, his fellow-shepherds gather round him and sing him one of the songs which he had once sent Sirena, when she lived near the Trent. Instead of driving his care away, the song makes him even more wretched, and he thereupon upbraids his companions for thus mocking his woe. At this juncture, a boisterous swain soundly reproves him for wasting his energies in lamenting the absence of his love, when the call of duty demands that he devote himself to more worthy pursuits. His companion reminds him that it is high time to withstand the inroads of the swineherds. In response to this stirring appeal, Dorilus joins his fellow-shepherds.
XXVIII.—The Story of Gebir
Authors: Williams Stanley T.
Published: February 2007

Walter Savage Landor's professions, found everywhere in his letters, that he is writing for the few, and his rather studied contempt of the aura popularis are best illustrated by his epic poem, Gebir, first published in 1798. For this extraordinary poem the guests are, indeed, few and select. Southey's admiration for the epic was unbounded; Lamb refers to its creator as “Gebir Landor” ; and Shelley read and re-read the poem. Yet so unknown was Gebir to the general reader that De Quincey remarked that Gebir had “the sublime distinction, for some time, of having enjoyed only two readers, Southey and myself.” And Miss Seward wrote Todd, the editor of Spenser and Milton, that Gebir was “the most unintelligible fustian that ever bore the name of an epic poem.”