The influence of the Orlando Furioso on Spenser's Faery Queen has long been recognized. Warton, in his excellent Observations, devoted a section to it, and others have here and there remarked upon the affinity of the two poems. I cannot find, however, that any writer has yet given the subject more than casual attention. The reasons for this neglect are, of course, not far to seek. Men read and study the Faery Queen, and men read and study the Orlando Furioso, but few care to read and study them side by side, with the obligation of going through the Morgante Maggiore, the Orlando Innamorato, Rinaldo, and the Oerusalemme Liberata, for casual reference and general illustration. The Faery Queen, as it stands, is nearly twice as long as the Odyssey, the Orlando Furioso is longer than the Faery Queen, and the others are of varying, but always substantial bulk—a rather formidable array. Moreover, despite vast differences of spirit and method, these poems deal with the same subject-matter, romantic chivalry; and too steady converse with romantic chivalry is, to say the least, not stimulating. In view of such conditions and of the work already done by Warton, critics may very probably have felt that further labor in this field would hardly be worth while.

It is admitted by all critics that the Beowulf is essentially a heathen poem; that its materials are drawn from tales composed before the conversion of the Angles and Saxons to Christianity, and that there was a time when these tales were repeated without the Christian reflections and allusions that are found in the poem that has reached us. But in what form this heathen material existed before it was put into its present shape is a question on which opinions are widely different. In the nature of the case we can look for no entire consensus of opinion and no exact answer to the question; the most that one can expect to establish is at the best only a probability.

The Old Saxon (or Old High German) Hildebrandslied occupies a unique position among the remains of Germanic antiquity. It is the only specimen of the ancient German national epic preserved in the O.H.G. or the O.S. language. Interesting as this noble poem is, when considered by itself, it gains still more in interest when viewed as an older type of the epic poetry developed into perfection, at a later period, in works like the Nibelungenlied. Its orthography and dialect also offer most interesting problems. These considerations will explain why a renewed detailed examination of the manuscript, orthography, and dialect of the poem were deemed justifiable.

Spain, during the fifteenth century, was very prolific in writers of verse, as a glance at the Cancioneros of Baena, Castillo, Estuñiga, and a number of other early collections, both printed and manuscript, will show. That these were not all poets by divine right, no one perhaps will gainsay, nor would the world have suffered any great loss, if much of their verse had disappeared forever. In the time of Don Juan II. (1407-1454), himself a poet, it seemed to have been considered a necessary accomplishment of every courtier to write poetry, and as the Spanish language falls into measure and rhyme at the slightest provocation, the practice of such an accomplishment was fraught with little difficulty. Still, despite what has been said above, there is a charm about much of the poetry in these Cancioneros that is undeniable, and among their poets many names occur that will always occupy an honorable place in the literature of Spain. With perhaps a few exceptions, the best poetry in these collections is found in the short lyrical pieces. They are often delightfully naive, but necessarily suffer from sameness, love being the theme of most of them, and even this may become wearisome. But there were also poets, though in much lesser number, who turned their thoughts to things spiritual. Of these, two of the most famous were the Marquis of Santillana, and his kinsman Fernan Perez de Guzman, some of whose religious poems are here published for the first time. They are among the best verses that he has written, and are very fairly illustrative of his style and ability as a poet.