MS 3390 of the Bibliothèque Ste. Geneviève of Paris contains a number of Middle English religious tracts, followed by Richard Rolle of Hampole's Form of Perfect Living and Ego Dormio. Certain of the religious tracts are found in other manuscripts in English libraries, and are usually ascribed to Wycliffe. The Ste. Geneviève MS is an octavo volume of 109 vellum leaves; it is written in Midland dialect in one hand of the early fifteenth century.

Among the writers who express for all countries and time the thoughts, aspirations, and temper of their age is Rabelais. In his day many fundamental questions were mooted. The sixteenth century debated ever and again these among others: the nature and immortality of the soul, the eternity of the world, miracles, God, Nature, Providence, Destiny. On all these questions Rabelais expressed himself, at times enigmatically, it is true, but in a form that has outlived the treatises of the professional philosophers and theologians of the period, of a Pomponazzi, a Vicomercato, a Cardan, a Bodin, and even a Calvin.

Any attempt to interpret an allegorical pastoral which was written three hundred years ago is a stimulating but precarious undertaking. Particularly is this true when the author deliberately exercises his ingenuity to make his allegory difficult of interpretation even by his contemporaries. This generalization is especially applicable to Drayton's pastoral allegory, The Shepheards Sirena. Any number of hypotheses may be erected; none, I think, can be completely and satisfactorily substantiated. Replying to my former article, Professor J. William Hebel recognizes this limitation of our knowledge when he remarks: “Possibly we are too far away from The Shepheards Sirena, and have too little information, to arrive at a completely satisfactory interpretation of the dark conceit of the poem.”

Animals as theatrical performers before the Restoration have received scanty attention from commentators on English drama. The entertaining quality of performing animals off the stage during the early periods of the drama is well known. Bearwards, ape-leaders, and owners of trick horses and dogs roamed early Tudor and Elizabethan England. Along with minstrels, jugglers, mountebanks, and acrobats they contended with stage-players for popular favor. The Elizabethan love for bear-baiting has been so frequently discussed that it needs no reiteration. The dual use of Henslowe's Hope Theatre for animal shows and regular plays is an indication of the importance of this type of spectacle. Professor Strunk and Dr. Graves have shown that highly trained apes were often employed as entertainers in Elizabethan England; and, as the latter points out, even the histrionic talents of the lowly ass were not neglected.

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

This familiar German proverb first made its appearance during the last quarter of the sixteenth century, soon found its way into the popular collections and spread throughout Germany and also to Holland and Scandinavia. By the end of the seventeenth century it had become popular in all these countries, particularly in the schools where it served as a maxim to encourage diligence. Later it appears in literally identical form even outside Teutonic territory.

One of the points always brought out in a study of the prosody of Milton's later poems is the manner in which he breaks away from the end-stopped lines, and moulds his verse into long majestic periods, like the paragraphs of prose. But while this aspect of his poetry has often been admired, the prosodical devices by which it is made noticeable and effective have never been studied. Accurate knowledge of these devices depends: first, on an analysis of Milton's punctuation, as the number and position of the full stops determine the extent and effect of the verse paragraphs; and second, on an analysis of the rhythms immediately following the full stops, that is, at the opening of the succeeding sentences.

John Hall was born in 1627 at Durham, and was admitted to St. John's College, Cambridge, on February 26, 1645-46. Within a few months after his entry there, he published his first literary work, Horae Vacivae, or Essays. Some Occasional Considerations. But this work was probably the product of three years of reading that the youthful Hall had done in the Durham library before he went to Cambridge.

The fourteen essays fill a duodecimo volume of two hundred pages and average about one thousand words in length. The subjects are those usual in essays of the period. They are: Of Opinions, Of Time, Of Felicity, Of Preaching, Of Fame, Of Studies, Of Company, Of Friends, Of Dissimulation, Of Recreations, Of Warre, Of Religion, Of Rewards, Of Fables. Most of them are subjects used by Bacon.

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

In both his Life of Sir Henry Wotton and The Compleat Angler, Izaac Walton testifies to Wotton's love of angling. Wotton was, says Walton, “a most dear lover, and frequent practiser of the art,” and intended “to write a Discourse of the Art, and in praise of Angling.” Doubtless when Walton went down from London to visit Wotton at Eton, they would turn aside from discussions of letters and the vexatious questions of church and state to talk about fish and the best methods of catching them. It is not improbable that they cast their lines together in convenient brooks and rivers. Was their talk about angling overheard by a lad who later made both a literal and a literary application of their ideas? It is not unlikely; and it would seem that herein lies a kinship between the fourth section of Robert Boyle's Occasional Reflections and the great masterpiece of mid-seventeenth century literature.

A possible source for the opening lines of L'Allegro, apparently unnoted hitherto, is to be found in the opening lines of the last satire in John Marston's Scourge of Villanie:

Sleep grim Reproofe, my iocond Muse doth sing
In other keyes, to nimbler fingering.
Dull sprighted Melancholy, leaue my braine
To hell Cimerian night, in liuely vaine
I striue to paint, then hence all darke intent
And sullen frownes, come sporting meriment,
Cheeke dimpling laughter, crowne my very soule
With iouisance, whilst mirthfull iests controule
The goutie humours of these pride-swolne dayes,
Which I doe long vntill my pen displaies.
0 I am great with mirth, some midwifrie,
Or I shall breake my sides at vanitie.
Roome for a capering mouth, whose lips nere stur,
But in discoursing of the gracefull slur:
Who euer heard spruce skipping Curio
Ere prate of ought, but of the whirle on toe

In spite of Henry Vaughan's widely recognized significance as an early poet of nature, discussion of his nature poetry has almost always been incidental to a general consideration of the man and his work. The feeling that a more systematic examination of his nature poetry would be of value has prompted the present study.

Although unanimously considered a masterpiece, the Lazarillo de Tormes has given some scholars and critics the impression of a poorly sustained or even unfinished piece of work. Chandler says “it seems as if the earlier portion alone had been completed and the rest laid down in a scheme for further elaboration.” Bonilla states that “lo mejor del relato es, sin disputa, la parte contenida en los tres primeros tratados . . . . Lo restante vale mucho menos; a partir del tratado cuarto, la narración se precipita y el interés decae notoriamente.” Chaytor adds: “Lazarillo's story is a series of pictures, between which the only connecting thread is the personality of Lazarillo himself. . . . . . (It) impresses the reader as an unfinished work. Of the seven tratados . . . . only four are elaborated in detail.” Reynier observes that “ce petit roman manque trop évidemment de proportion. Les derniers chapitres sont très écourtés. . . . . On a l'impression que l'auteur n'a suivi que sa fantaisie et qu'il a abandonné son personnage lorsqu'il a cessé de l'amuser.” Finally, Northup writes: “The four final tratados are suspiciously short and betray the hand of the pruner.”

The critics have emphasized the “romantic” aspects of Shakespeare's work to such an extent as almost to ignore any possible connection of his plays with the people of his day and the problems that occupied their minds. His characters are treated as sheer creations who live in a sort of vacuum. But there are numerous indications that Shakespeare was not utterly detached from the life that was going on about him.

The principle of religious freedom is declared by Masson to have been the precious fruit of the successive persecutions which attended the fission of English protestantism into sects more and more removed from Rome. He believes that the more each protesting body suffered from intolerance the more tolerant it became, that the more it was forced to contend for liberty for itself the more nearly it approached the conception of liberty for all, with the result that the implied principle was finally by the ultimate dissenters extricated from all the pain of cumulative persecution and kindled, as it were, “on the top of a light-house, on its own account.” To Milton, briefly anticipated by Roger Williams, Masson gives chief credit for enunciating this ideal of freedom as an end in itself. When other men argued for liberty, it was always a liberty with some limitation, liberty of such kind and degree as would suit some ulterior interest. When Milton spoke, it was to clarion forth a liberty pure, absolute, entire.

Since 1893, when Churton Collins published his biography of Swift, the question as to whether or not Swift was married to Stella has been practically closed. Collins disposed of the matter in the following definitive fashion:

The evidence on which Monck-Berkeley chiefly relied was not that of Mrs. Hearne. “I was,” he says, “informed by the relict of Bishop Berkeley that her husband had assured her of the truth of Swift's marriage, as the Bishop of Clogher who had performed the ceremony had himself communicated the circumstance to him.” If this could be depended upon, it would, of course, settle the question; but unfortunately for Monck-Berkeley, and for Monck-Berkeley's adherents, it can be conclusively proved that no such communication could have taken place. In 1715, a year before the supposed marriage was solemnized, Berkeley was in Italy, where he remained till 1721. Between 1716 and 1717 it is certain that the Bishop of Clogher never left Ireland, and at the end of 1717 he died.1

Scholars have explained why Milton chose Paradise Lost as the subject for his great epic, but they have not directly considered his reasons for giving up his original plan of writing a heroic poem about the half-mythical figures of the Britons who preceded the Germanic tribes in England. Reasons may well be sought. Certainly the selective process consists not only in approving the good characteristics inhering in one alternative; it also recognizes the defects and disadvantages in the alternative which is rejected. It is my aim in the following pages to show that these negative considerations had their share in determining Milton to write “Of Man's first disobedience” rather than of

what resounds
In fable or romance of Uther's son,
Begirt with British and Armoric knights.

Between the years 1761 and 1764, Charles Churchill was the leading figure in English controversial literature; his poems occasioned multitudes of replies, many of them anonymous, most of them of third-rate literary merit. Had these replies come from distinguished writers, it is probable that Churchill would not today be an almost unknown figure in the history of English literature.

The interesting ballad “Mary Hamilton” appears in Child's collection in 22 full versions and six fragments. The heroine is usually represented to be one of the four Maries attending upon Mary Stuart. Hence it was natural to suppose that a certain known case of child-murder at the court of Queen Mary, ending in the execution of the unhappy mother, was the source of this ballad presenting a similar story. On December 21, 1563, Thomas Randolph, an agent of the English government in Scotland, wrote to Cecil as follows: The Queen's apothecary got one of her maidens, a French woman, with child. Thinking to have covered his fault with medicine, the child was slain. They are both in prison, and she [i. e., Queen Mary] is so much offended that it is thought they shall both die.