Perhaps the most significant phenomenon of modern history is the emancipation of woman—the rise of the submerged half. No more interesting and no more complex problem can be dealt with, and it is well worthy of the attention which scholars have of late years been devoting to it.

The lay of Yonec is composed of 562 lines of eight syllables, riming in couplets. The substance of this charming lay of Marie de France is as follows:—

There lived in Britain an old knight, who was so jealous of his young wife's beauty that he confined her in a tower and placed her under the care of his sister, an aged widow. The knight passed his time in the chase, while his young wife had no solace but in her tears. One morning in April, after he had set off on his usual occupation, the fair lady began her lamentations as she was wont to do. She execrated the hour when she was born, and the avarice of her parents, who had married her to an old jealous tyrant.

French fléchir < Old French fleschir < fleschier, “to bend,” < *flexicare < flexus < flectere, “to bend.”

French fléchir, O. F. fleschir, fleskir has been derived by Förster, Zeitschrift f. rom. Phil., III, p. 262, from a Latin *fleskire < *fiescus < flexus. The assumption of the shift of ks to sk is defended by an appeal to alaskir from laxus, seemingly showing the same metathesis. This phonetic step, which must be assigned to a Latin period, is in both instances certainly unjustifiable, although it has been admitted by excellent authorities. In the Dictionnaire général we find French lâcher derived from a type *lascare < laxare. Here the assumption of metathesis seems to go back to Diez, Etymologisehes Wb., pp. 188 f., who cites as analoga Campanian fisquer for fixer and lusque for luxe; but these forms clearly represent popular deformations of learned words and are accordingly irrelevant.

In the study of the heroic play it has been rather generally assumed that Dryden and his fellow-playwrights went direct to France for their models and established in England a form of drama distinct from anything that had preceded them. The French romance and the French drama, because they had an influence on the Restoration drama, have been regarded as its sole progenitors. The position of D'Avenant as the connecting link between the earlier and the later drama has been recognized; Dryden himself acknowledges his indebtedness to the author of The Siege of Rhodes. But very little has been done to show that a stream of influence percolates from the Jacobean drama through D'Avenant to the heroic play. Of course, it is easy to exaggerate resemblances, to imagine similarities of capital importance, and to proclaim a paramount influence; but, nevertheless, a prion reasons are in favor of an influence, and a comparison of the two types of drama will, it seems to me, undoubtedly show a connection between them which is more than casual.

This treatise, which contains the earliest notice of Arthur, deserves a place in the history of literature as foundation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae.

Among unfinished stories the Squire's Tale holds a prominent place. Milton, in a familiar passage, lamented its fragmentary condition, and all other lovers of good literature have shared his regret. Two persons have attempted to finish the tale “half told.” Spenser's completion is well-known. Well known, and somewhat notorious, too, is the laborious ambition of John Lane. His dull lines, having neither anything in common with Chaucer nor any native worth, can be of only curious interest to students of literature. They but remind us that the story of “Cambuscan” will never be wholly told.

The main object of this study is to call attention to certain characteristics of style that may serve as evidence in determining questions of authorship and relation of plays within the period treated; to develop a small and, perhaps, rather rough instrument of research, which will hardly rise to the dignity of a “test,” but may serve as a useful auxiliary to more significant criteria. No attempt has been made to complete the study on the rhetorical side; attention has been given generally only to such matters as seemed important for the main purpose. A simple but sufficiently precise terminology has been used, and it has not been thought worth while to discuss its relation to the formal terminology of ancient or modern rhetorical treatises. All the forms here discussed are found in contemporary poetry other than the drama, especially in the work of the sonneteers.

Before the history of Italian bestiary literature can be satisfactorily written, considerable preliminary work remains to be done. When Lauchert published his Geschichte des Physiologus (Strassburg, 1889), although he devoted a certain amount of space to the poets from the Sicilian school to Ariosto, he was not aware that any bestiaries earlier than that of Leonardo da Vinci existed in Italian prose. Three years later, Goldstaub and Wendriner, Ein Tosco-Venezianischer Bestiarius (Halle, 1892), published the text of a manuscript belonging to the Biblioteca Comunale at Padua, and also an account of seven other manuscripts, all of which are in Florentine libraries. This book (cited hereafter as G-W) is the most comprehensive study of the Italian bestiaries now available, and may safely be taken as the basis for further investigation. The present paper, based in large part on work done in the libraries of Florence, Naples and Paris, is offered as a contribution to the study of the subject, and will, it is hoped, be of value in indicating a large amount of material, including several important manuscripts, which was entirely unknown to Goldstaub and Wendriner. An important phase of the subject, namely, the use of bestiary material by the Italian poets of the thirteenth century, has been investigated by Dr. M. S. Garver, of Yale University, in a dissertation which he hopes to publish soon.