Of the origin and composition of the Cantus Beati Godrici and of the life of the author we have fortunately a detailed contemporary account written by one Reginald of Coldingham. As Caedmon's hymn stands at the beginning of Anglo-Saxon poetry, so Godric's “hymns” are usually regarded as standing at the beginning of Middle English poetry. In each case the tradition of poetic gift is the same: the authors were supernaturally inspired in visions. With regard to Godric's song to the Virgin, Reginald tells us “Qualiter beata dei genetrix Maria cum beata Maria Magdalene ei visibiliter apparuit et eum canticum cum cantici ipsius melo edocuit .... Est autem canticum illud idiomatis Anglici ritmiceque compositum.... Precepit quidem, ut, quociens dolori vel tedio vel temptationi succumbere formidaret, hoc se cantico solaretur, et ait: ‘Quando sic me invocabis, meum sencies instanter auxilium.’” This means a rimed vernacular song, a sort of formula, by singing or chanting which Godric would receive immediate help in times of pain, weariness, or temptation. It is short and simple—two four-line stanzas. Zupitza's text reads as follows:

Sainte Marie uirgine,
moder Iesu Cristes Nazarene,
onfo, scild, help þin Godric,
onfang, bring hehlic wiþ þe in godes ric.
Sainte Marie, Cristes bur,
maidenes clenhad, moderes flur,
dilie mine sinne, rixe in min mod,
bring me to winne wiþ self god.

Although much has been written of the relation of the Latin classics to English literature, comparatively little interest has been taken by scholars in the actual use of Latin as a practical instrument by English writers. During the Middle Ages it was the universal language for religious and learned works; even at a later date Bacon found it difficult to discard Latin for English, having the Essays translated into Latin on the ground that it was the more durable medium for the transmission of his thoughts to posterity.

Professor F. M. Padelford, in his recent edition of the poems of Surrey, states that “As to verse forms, Surrey's claims to distinction rest upon his establishment of the Shaksperian sonnet and his introduction of blank verse. After a variety of experiments he settled upon the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg for the sonnet and thus cast the mold for the most popular Elizabethan form. In the thought division of the sonnet he followed no fixed practice.... ”

Philosophical poetry is seldom original; and ever since the assertion by Alexander Dalrymple, in the eighteenth century, that “Sir John Davies' poem on the Immortality of the Soul is chiefly taken from Nemesius,” there has been speculation as to the source of that once popular work. Grosart, in editing Davies' poems, rejected Dalrymple's statement as “absolutely untrue, an utter delusion,” and claimed for his author the merit of “deep and original thought.” But other critics have generally ignored this claim and suggested various sources for the poet's inspiration. Courthope again named Nemesius as the most probable. In a volume devoted exclusively to the study of this poem, Professor E. H. Sneath maintained that Davies was influenced by four thinkers: Aristotle, Cicero, Nemesius and Calvin. A German scholar more recently denies any influence of Nemesius, but thinks Davies derived his ideas from a study of Aristotle's De Anima modified by a reading of religious commentators, notably Thomas Aquinas. The latest and best suggestion, although it has been presented only in a brief and casual manner, is, that Nosce Teipsum is a re-statement of the Neo-Platonic tradition which permeated Christian thought in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

On the evening of September 20, 1709, at about the hour when we are accustomed in our own theatres to see the curtain rising on the first act, an old man dressed in black clothes sat in a chair of state on the stage of the London Haymarket, and whispered for the last time, “The rest is silence.” Within the sound of his beautiful voice the wit and fashion of the capital were congregated, their customary laughter and chatter awed into stillness by the “divinity [that] hung round that man.” He had played the Prince for forty-eight years, and though he was now more than seventy, and occasionally younger men essayed the rôle, the “town” still preferred their old favorite.

Editors of Hamlet have, in general, paid but little attention to the readings of Q1; they have in a few cases adopted them, or made them the basis of emendation, but in their critical notes they have recorded comparatively few of them, and have overlooked many that are better than the generally accepted readings (from Q2 F1), even where these accepted readings are plainly wrong and the readings of Q1 as plainly right.

Since Desnoiresterres, Voltaire's biographer, remarked that Pierre Bayle's works had fallen into complete oblivion, there has been a decided change among literary critics in their attitude toward this great French critic and philosopher. Not so very long ago Brunetière in one of his characteristic essays lamented the ingratitude and injustice shown by posterity to the refugee of Rotterdam. In recent histories of French literature, a more searching and a more sympathetic appraisal of his works is to be found, and Bayle shares an equal place with his younger contemporary, Fontenelle. Due recognition is invariably rendered Bayle for his prodigious scholarship, his unimpeachable logic, and his critical power and acumen—qualities which caused Sainte-Beuve to style him “le plus accompli critique qui se soit rencontré dans son genre,” and Brunetière “un maître des esprits.” Yet, while granting Bayle high critical and reasoning qualities, critics with only a few exceptions have regarded him as lacking in literary taste and appreciation and have found fault with his loose style and careless composition. It is the object of this essay to determine the extent and value of these criticisms and to examine Bayle's literary characteristics. An attempt is made to show that literary critics have been too severe in completely denying Pierre Bayle a qualification which he possessed in no mean degree, though it was greatly overshadowed by his all-absorbing passion for pure thought and ideas.

Voltaire's tragedy Eryphile was performed first in the private theater of Madame de Fontaine-Martel, and on Friday, March 7, 1732, in the Theâtre Royal. Although announced as a masterpiece, it was not a success. Only seven representations were given before Easter and five after. In vain did Voltaire make hasty changes in his text between the performances; he could not save it, and the original verdict of the public proved fatal. As he had already done with Artémire (1720), Voltaire withdrew the play and never allowed it to be printed. However, in 1779, just after his death, it was published for the first time with the note: “Pièce que l'auteur s'était oposée qu'elle fut imprimée de son vivant.”

Wieland's first mention of the plan of the Merkur is in a letter to Riedel dated Sept. 17, 1772:

Ich bin entschlossen, eine Art von Journal zu entrepreniren, welches quo ad formam einige Ähnlichkeit mit dem Mercure de france haben soll. Prosaische Original-Aufsätze, Litterarische Nachrichten, Recensionen und Revisionen unrichtiger Urtheile über interessante Schriften, sollen die Haupt-Artikel davon ausmachen.

The conjunction of the centenary of Shelley's death with the present interest in things pertaining to Spain and Spanish literature makes opportune an examination of the question: to what extent did Spain interest Shelley? For that this country did interest him will be borne out by even a superficial scanning of the titles in the older editions of his poems, while a perusal of his correspondence will disclose the fact that for at least the last three years of his life Shelley was a devoted student of certain phases of Spain's history and literature.

As a critic of literature Walter Savage Landor had ideals but few principles. Such a statement is not another paradox in the life of the old lion. It means simply that we look in vain in Landor's numerous judgments on literature for a method or a body of criteria. He never formulated a system, like Coleridge; or standards, like Arnold; nor even consistent prejudices, like Carlyle. The evolution of English criticism between Dryden and Coleridge he disregarded, as indeed he seemed to disregard all consecutive philosophical thought. He did not look into the new worlds of psychological and social criticism. He was not interested in the relations of things, but rather in the things themselves. Such statements are never truer of Landor than when he studies a piece of literature, or a writer. As a critic he never saw literature in perspective-so marvellously increased in his own day-but as something directly before him,—foreshortened. Thus he judged Pindar and Wordsworth each per se; one would think he was a contemporary of both. In all his criticisms we cannot find a body of guiding principles. Personal ideals are the determinants. It need scarcely be added that these are austere and high.

Matthew Arnold is in general so confidently clear as to the nature of his own poetry that the reader is apt to credit him when he insists upon the contemporary sources of its melancholy. But those contemporary sources will appear much dimmer when the second or third centenary of his birth (December 24, 1822) shall come round. The “two worlds” that the poet wandered between will doubtless be rather nebular on the rear horizon, and the carefully wrought stanzas concerning them may seem the “stretched metre of an antique song.” The cursory commemorating reader, when he reaches the poem on Growing Old, may toss the volume aside with the remark that “this old fellow carefully architectured his gloom, but added here too obvious a gable.” The discerning reader, however, will be in a better position than now to find, flowing beneath Arnold's verse, a profounder melancholy than the clear Arnoldian eye itself could fathom.

In the preface of the collective edition of his poems published the year before his death, Lowell laments the fact that there is no escaping responsibility for the printed page. “Ilka mon maun dree his weird,” he reminds his reader; and he goes on to say that, but for the “avenging litera scripta manet,” he “would gladly suppress or put into the Coventry of smaller print in an appendix” a good many things that he had with much reluctance admitted into this edition. There can be no doubt that Lowell was sincere in this avowal; but it would be a mistake to infer from what he says that he made no attempt to escape the avenging fate which he declares to be inevitable. For from this final edition he took pains to exclude not only all his juvenilia, but likewise a goodly number of his verses published after he had attained to manhood, and some, even, that he had written in his mature old age. By my count, he omitted from this final collective edition a total of 181 poems that had hitherto been published. He retained in this edition a total of 260 poems (I count the “Biglow Papers” as a single poem and each of the sonnets or sonnet groups as single items); so that out of a grand total of 441 poems published up to the time of the preparation of his final edition he sacrificed a little more than forty percent.