The poems called in this study Weaving Songs were in ancient times also known as History Songs, for the first name applied to them was Chansons d'istoire; then, a little later apparently, they were called Chansons de toile or Weaving Songs. By modern critics they have also been termed Romances but this name is not altogether satisfactory. If one glances through the critical edition of these poems published by Karl Bartsch under the title Romanzen und Pastourellen one finds that the Weaving Songs are mixed up with other poems under the loose title of Romanzen. The term Romance, in use since the days of Grimm and Fauriel but first made popular by the collection of old French poems published by Paulin Paris under the title of Le Romancero français, was borrowed from the Spanish towards the end of the eighteenth century and then it designated, as it does still today, poems of historical content like our English Ballads. If the term was suitable enough during the Romantic period when the Romancero appeared, it is a source of dangerous confusion nowadays when the same term is applied to poems so widely different in nature as the Weaving Songs and, to give only one instance, the lament of the young girl in the famous poem of Marcabru, A la fontana del vergier, which is generally termed a Romance.

Many of us remember Matthew Arnold's recommendation in the Essay on the Study of Poetry of the line from Dante's Paradiso, (III. 85)

E la sua voluntate è nostra pace

as a touchstone of poetic value. The independent beauty of this line may be questioned by comparison with some lines that follow near it. The words of Beatrice in the fifth canto, from the first verse through the twelfth, for example, seem to have a tonal sweetness, with a richness of ethical content that might somewhat more justly be cited to illustrate Matthew Arnold's point. Few isolated lines, however, really shine out by themselves from any poet. We read or recall them with the mood induced by their setting. Climaxes they may be, but their sovereign value depends on the sequence, as the ear and the mind are addressed together, perhaps.

The entremes, or passo, for the words were early synonymous, is a short dramatic composition, burlesque or farcical in character, used as a passing-scene for purposes of comic relief. In considering these scenes, especially in the early years of their development before they can be looked upon as forming a well-established literary genre, one of the most important considerations is their essentially parasitic character. Scenes that are in every wise entremeses may be found frequently in Spanish plays of the first half of the sixteenth century. What must first and above all determine whether a given passage is or is not entremes in character, is its intercalation as essentially independent of the plot of the play. Other than this, the delimitations of these scenes are by no means fixed and definite. It must be understood, moreover, that the early writers did not in all probability look upon them as actual entremeses. The earliest known uses of the word with reference to a dramatic composition are found in a composition by Horozco frequently cited, and in the prologue to the Comedia de Sepúlveda where the author seems to show a very excellent understanding of their function: “No os puede dar gusto el sujeto ansi desnudo de aquella gracia con que el proceso dél suelen ornar los recitantes y otros muchos entremeses que intervienen por ornamento de la comedia, que no tienen cuerpo en el sujeto della.” Nevertheless, whether looked upon as such or not, these detached scenes contain in germ the future entremes, and cannot be ignored in a consideration of its origin and development.

“For thogh a widwe hadde noght a sho,
So plesaunt was his In principio,
Yet wolde he have a ferthing er he wente.“
Prologue to Cant. Tales, ll. 253-5.

Exactly what was the Friar's “In principio,” and why did he use it when he went to call on barefoot widows?

These questions evidently suggested themselves to Tyrwhitt, who in his epoch-making edition of the Canterbury Tales (1775), observes: “This phrase is commonly explained to refer to the Beginning of St. John's Gospel. It may also refer to the Beginning of Genesis. In an old French Romance, l'histoire des trois Maries, it seems to signify some passage in the conclusion of the Mass.”

Many a man of letters who has been accounted great in his own time and whose work has had no little influence on the world's literature has ceased to be a person of any interest in later years, and his works are no longer read. Few such men have left so little record of themselves, or have inspired in these latter days of research so little interest, so little desire to make inquiry into their lives and personalities as has Nicholas Grimald. Nevertheless, John Bale, the first writer of English literary history, tells how renowned he was in that day, and calls him the foremost alumnus of Cambridge and not the least glory of his time. Indeed, he might well be regarded as such. Next to Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, he was the principal contributor to the first anthology of English poetry, then known as Songes and Sonnettes, now known as Tottel's Miscellany, a book which enjoyed astonishing popularity. A second edition of it appeared within a month of the first, and eight editions appeared within twenty years. His name is here joined to those of two men who are still remembered. Another reason for the interest of posterity is that two of Grimald's poems in this volume, “The Death of Zoroas,” and “Marcus Tullius Ciceroes Death,” were the first compositions in blank verse to be published in the English language. The credit, to be sure, is commonly given to Surrey for having written the first blank verse, for although the translation in that poetic form which he made of the second and the fourth book of the Aeneid was published June 21, 1557, a little over two weeks later than Songes and Sonnettes, it must have been written at least ten years before, as Surrey died in 1547. Nevertheless, it is not improbable that Grimald's compositions in blank verse were done even before Surrey's, for in 1547 he was appointed lecturer in rhetoric at Christ Church, Oxford. Warton suggests that Grimald's verses were “prolusions or illustrative practical specimens for our author's course of lectures in rhetoric.” But he had previously been engaged in literary work for some years. His poetic drama, Christus Redivivus, which was published in 1543, was written about 1539, when, as he says in its dedicatory epistle, he was about twenty. In 1548, he published his Archipropheta, which shows him to be a master of a variety of verse forms.

Few problems of literary history have tempted the scrutiny of historians more than the earliest influence of Shakespeare in seventeenth century France. In the works of two or three French playwrights of the period, they have caught a few dubious traces of possible inspiration from the great English dramatist; but the similitudes they cite are so vague and general that recent criticism has denied them any significance. Cyrano de Bergerac's Agrippine, for example, contains some philosophical reflexions that are reminiscent of Hamlet and of the Merchant of Venice. Recently, however, M. Jusserand has proved that the similarity between a few expressions in these plays is due to mere verbal coincidence, derived from their common ultimate source, Seneca. On the other hand, as against M. Jusserand's views, the probability of an influence of Shakespeare upon de Schélandre's Tyr et Sidon (1628) has been defended by M. Hankiss. (Mod. Lang. Notes XXXVI, p. 464.)

Elsewhere I have written of the actors who travelled “softly on the hoof” through the length and breadth of Shakspere's England, and I propose here to deal with their successors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They make part—perhaps a more important part than is generally understood—of the history of the drama and theatre in a period that is full of life and interest even though the greater glory had departed. To the student of Elizabethan times the ways and means of these “weather-beaten weary travellers” are significant because the strollers were, and are, the most conservative of all players. They continued the ancient and honorable traditions of the Elizabethans long after the patent theatres, the new scenes out of France, the new comedy of manners, and, finally, the new sentimentalism, had crowded the very memory of the days of the Globe and the Blackfriars and stamped the customs and devices of those great times as subjects for mockery. But the later strollers are worthy of study in and for themselves, or at least in the light of their practical contribution to the stage history of their time. To be sure, their predecessors at Stratford-on-Avon who gave Shakspere his first glimpse of the puppets dallying, came at a more opportune moment; but those who followed made the most of their opportunities. Bright-plumed “birds of passage” were they, and wheresoever they passed most men were glad of their coming. They left long trails of debt behind them, and played more than one rather scurvy trick upon their hosts, but they brought the old plays and the new away from the cramped quarters of London's theatrical monopoly into the furthest corner of the provinces. They kept England merry England still, besides crossing the ocean and establishing the theatre in the colonies—including America.

Carlyle tells us in his Reminiscences that, when Wat Tyler made its unlucky appearance in 1817, he with other radicals “cackled and triumphed” over Southey “as over a slashed and well-slain foe to us and mankind.” A few years later, however, he read Joan of Arc, Thalaba, and The Curse of Kehama with kindlier feeling, thought them “full of soft pity, like the wailings of a mother, yet with a clang of chivalrous valor finely audible too.” From that time on he watched for Southey's writings, especially his Quarterly articles, as for things of value; “in spite of my Radicalism, I found very much in these Toryisms which was greatly according to my heart; things rare and worthy, at once pious and true, which were always welcome to me.”

The following study represents an attempt to determine the fundamental difference between poetry and prose and the relation of simple rhythm, or metre, to poetry. The reader should bear in mind that in all branches of science and art distinctions and classifications hold good, as a rule, only in a broad and general way; there are always border-line phenomena that defy classification. For example, we make a general distinction between animal and plant life, and yet of some of the lower forms of life it is difficult to say whether they belong in the one class or in the other. Or again, it is no uncommon thing to hear chemists and physicists dispute regarding the provinces of their respective sciences. And again, rhythm and melody seem to us to be very different things, and yet at bottom they are both rhythm, because differences in pitch depend upon differences in frequency of vibration, and in any melody these vibration frequencies stand in a rhythmical relation to each other. The farther we penetrate into any subject, the more difficult does exact classification become. And so our distinction between poetry and prose must be taken in a rather broad and general way. There are pieces of prose which seem to be highly poetic in nature, and there are poems in which the writer seems to have encroached upon the province of prose. Be this as it may, I believe we can at least say that in this direction lies the field of poetry, in that the field of prose. With this general reservation, then, let us ask the question: What is the essential difference between poetry and prose?

Poor Shelley's after-fame is now almost as fluctuant as that scene of his ending, just a hundred years ago, when the waves bore him “darkly, fearfully, afar” (July 8, 1822). The centenary of his death finds his status as a poet involved in peculiar uncertainty. Writers who have agreed fairly well on other matters have differed widely in their evaluations of Shelley's style, particularly as compared with the styles of Wordsworth, Byron, and Keats. And almost any company of immediate poetry-lovers—I mean, those who maintain a healthy distrust of professional critics and a warm faith in their own predilections—can wax uncommonly disputatious if one of their number affirms that Shelley was a very real poet, or a very unreal one. Apparently his art is quite singular in its capacity to captivate and to repel. It so repelled Matthew Arnold that it appeared to him a maze which wise men should rather walk around than penetrate. Though he surveyed it tellingly, he never passed right through it with his hand on an unbroken clue; nor have his followers done so. Critics of another type have yielded themselves so fully to the poet's fascinating meanders that eventually they could not emerge, with undimmed vision, into the open country beyond. In short, it has proved very difficult to bring the captivating and the repellent qualities of Shelley's work under a single impartial scrutiny. But at least it should be clear that such a scrutiny should now confine itself to Shelley's poems, submerging all other sources of impression. Extensive enquiry into the poet's life, theories, and affiliations was called for by the singular nature of his case. But this enquiry has become entangled, rather obscuringly, with the question which in the end must stand alone: How poetic is Shelley's poetry?

The purpose of this paper is to trace the influence of Cervantes upon Mark Twain, with particular attention to the supposedly autobiographical tales Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.

A short digression will be necessary at the outset in order to overcome, if possible, an almost universal prejudice. The popular notion is that Mark Twain's genius “just grew,” like Topsy; that he was peculiarly a “self-made” man, the term “self-made” being understood to mean “lacking in book learning.” We like to think that Mark Twain, above all other authors, dug into the virgin soil of his native country, and brought forth rich treasures which could be found nowhere else. We like to say: “What genuine American humor! What a true picture of American boyhood! Nothing of Europe in Mark Twain! Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are real Americans!”

Passing mention was made in English Pageantry of the appearance of civic giants on the Continent—notably in Belgium and the North of France; and the fact that such figures as Saint Christopher of Salisbury and his European colleagues have reappeared since the recent war has been recorded in an article entitled Post-Bellum Giants. Since the publication of that paper, in Studies in Philology for January 1921, additional details concerning French and Belgian giants have come to my attention.

In commemorating the men who fought for “sir Edward” in the battle “of Inglisch men & Normandes in þe Swyn” Laurence Minot praised John Badding “als one of þe best.” Beyond this tribute, however, Badding has remained unknown to the readers of Minot's poems. In editing these poems, Mr. Joseph Hall surmises that, since Badding's name appears in no other account of the fight at Sluys (1340) the poet “has here inserted the name of some comparatively obscure friend of his.” This friend, he thinks, was probably some person connected with the Robert Badding who was M.P. for Winchelsea in 1371, with the John Badding who was M.P. for Rye between 1386 and 1407, or with the John Badding who, according to Rolls of Parliament, I, 413, was involved in the taking of twenty-four livres worth of goods from a vessel belonging to John Houchoun and Thomas Peverell of Sherborne in 1321-22. It is my purpose to show that, whatever his relation to the M.P.'s for Winchelsea and Rye may have been, the John Badding who was involved in the affair of 1321-22 was probably the person to whom Minot paid tribute for his valor in the fight at Sluys. The evidence for this statement is contained in the record mentioned above and in two other records which identify John Badding with the Cinque Ports and show that he was a well known English seaman of the second quarter of the fourteenth century. With these facts established, the justice of Minot's tribute becomes plausible.