When the opportunity of visiting a number of libraries in Eastern Europe was offered to me in August and September, 1958, my primary purpose was to add some material from those libraries to my summary list [Iter Italicum, see RN XI, 47] of uncatalogued Renaissance manuscripts in Italian and other libraries, which I hope to begin publishing in 1960. also made an effort to gather additional data for my bibliography of printed catalogues and handwritten inventories of Latin manuscripts. Moreover, I tried to obtain as much information as possible concerning the status of Eastern European manuscript collections, and about their losses and acquisitions during and after the Second World War. The number of libraries which I actually visited was necessarily quite limited, but I was able to supplement the information gathered on the spot through publications and through correspondence, both before and after my journey.

Our obligations to Gantner, keeper of the Woelfflin legacy and lively educator at Basle University, are considerable. Not only has he spotted neglected issues in the thought and work of Leonardo, but the very faults of his recent book tend to give new impetus to our thinking about Leonardo. It is not to lessen but to specify Gantner's merits, if one feels that, as distinct from the dedicated philology and presentation of the relevant materials, which he has handled beautifully, there remain questions of proportion, of adequacy and philosophy in the interpretation of these documents.

Every age, nation, generation, and representative mouthpiece selects from the cultural heritage the materials and viewpoints most nearly like itself. Thus it comes about that we have that many Platos, Shakespeares (especially Hamlets), and now according to Gantner the ‘fourth Leonardo’, his own.

The encounters between Caesar Borgia and Niccolò Machiavelli, and their influence on the latter's thought and writing, are still shrouded in vagueness and uncertainty. This is due not to lack of positive documentation or to scarcity of evidence, but rather to a plethora of interpretations and fancy. Instances of this vagueness and fancy may be found in interpretations of a document written in Niccolò's own hand, which is preserved in the Central National Library of Florence.

On May 3, 1503, a certain Troches or Troccio, until then one of Caesar's most trusted bravos, fled from Rome. Caesar at once despatched a circular letter to his vassals ordering them to seize the fugitive, alleging that he had fled the city without hcense of His Holiness.

The theatrical activities of Thomas Ravenscroft (ca. 1590- ca. 1633), a chorister at St. Paul's under Edward Pearce, have from time to time been commented upon, particularly with respect to some Paul's boys’ plays performed at the turn of the century for which a few stage songs survive in three of his music publications: Pammelia (1609), Deuteromelia (1609), and A Brief Discourse (1614). A songbook heretofore overlooked by stage historians is his Melismata (1611), which includes still another stage song for a Paul's play, and this—hitherto apparently neither identified nor reproduced—is for Thomas Middleton's A Trick to Catch the Old One (Q 1608; S. R. October 7, 1607).

With all the immense learning and imagination we have been taught to expect, William Empson, in Seven Types of Ambiguity, provides more than seven readings of ‘Brightnesse falls from the ayre’, the third line in the third stanza of Thomas Nashe's ‘Song’ from Svmmers Last Will and Testament. Yet only in what appears to be his ninth ambiguity does Mr. Empson even approach Nashe's meaning. Possibly the line is obscure, but it does not present the difficulties that R. B. McKerrow implies nor the indirections that Mr. Empson records. McKerrow suspected ‘that the true reading’ for ayre ‘is “hayre” ‘ and admitted candidly that hair would give ‘a more obvious, but far inferior, sense’. Mr. Empson calls the verse ‘an example of ambiguity by vagueness’ and believes that ‘evidently there are a variety of things the line may be about’.

There is such a paucity of information about Henry Shirley and his one extant play that one hesitates to add anything to the present state of our knowledge lest one be accused of abusing Bullen's confession that ‘Henry Shirley's claim to attention is not a very pressing one’. Bullen's apologia for presenting Henry Shirley's work in that ‘yet there is a certain dignity of language in this old play’ must be my excuse, too, for this attempt to redeem something of the play from ‘utter oblivion’ and my more specific warrant hales from the last words of Bullen's introduction—‘the songs, too, are smoothly written’.

The songs do in fact constitute the major part of the play's quite extensive use of thematic music connected with the supernatural ascent and descent of angels to comfort and exhort the much beleaguered Christians.

In an addition to Chapter VI, Book III of the 1588 edition of his Essais, Montaigne writes: ‘De mon temps, un Gentil-homme, en l'une de nos frontieres, impost de sa personne et ne trouvant cheval capable de son poids, ayant une querelle, marchoit par païs en coche de mesme cette peinture, et s'en trouvoit tres-bien.’ Although it is impossible to date this passage precisely, it is likely that Montaigne wrote it near the end of 1588, since in another addition a few sentences further on he speaks of Catherine de Medicis, who died early in 15 89, as though she were still living.

Oregon was put prominently on the calligraphy map last autumn with the premier showing at the Portland Art Museum of an ambitious exhibition: ‘Calligraphy: The Golden Age and its Modern Revival’. It reopened, with a number of additions and subtractions, at the Grolier Club of New York City in mid-December to a large and appreciative audience. Never before, in this country anyway, has the art of the writing master been seen in so many fine examples written viva mano. It was done to the taste of a Montefeltro duke—not a page of paper or vellum in the whole show had passed through printing press or camera.

The Portland Art Association confessed to an ulterior motive.

It is not ordinarily wise to draw readers’ attention to further developments of Shakespearean themes unless such developments may be said in some sense to throw interesting light on Shakespeare's particular treatment, or because the developments have worth-while intrinsic merits which may owe their very origin to the vogue sustained if not actually created by him. I should like to bring a thematic development before readers so that they may judge for themselves whether or no it fulfills either or both conditions as well as contributing to the variety of the analogues of the ‘bed-trick’ which has already been pointed out by scholars not necessarily claiming a possible source for Shakespeare but indicating the prevalence of such story material.

On Mistress Mary Prideaux: Epitaph 1-8
Happy Grave, thou dost enshrine
That which makes thee a rich mine:
Remember yet, ‘tis but a loane;
And wee must have it back, Her owne,
The very same; Marke mee, the same:
Thou canst not cheat us with a lame
Deformed Carcase; Shee was fayre,
Fresh as Morning, sweete as Ayre.

Bishop Henry King and Canon William Strode seem to have been handled similarly by fate until 1921, when in his essay on the metaphysical poets T. S. Eliot stimulated poetic interest in King by admiring an extended ‘journey’ metaphor that took up only a small portion of ‘The Exequy’. I wonder if something can be done for Strode. In several ways these poets are alike, and for both, their finest work can be found in the elegy.

Dead Man's Fortune, played around 1590 or earlier, survives only as a plot oudine of entrances of the various characters. Although the outline gives the appearance of a scenario of the commedia dell' arte with its indication of entrances and action and therefore would suggest the practice of improvised drama in England, upon comparison with any scenario of the commedia dell' arte, it proves to be inadequate as a story outline; the ordinary scenario is much more comprehensive in its indication of plot and action. Therefore, the outline was probably used as a stage reminder. Also the fact that no exits are indicated suggests that it was probably tacked up offstage somewhere near the entrances to help cue the actors.