The chief source of Shakespeare's tragedy of Richard the Third has long been acknowledged to be either Hall's or Holinshed's prose Chronicle. In addition, some echoes have been discovered in it of the Latin tragedy, Richardus Tertius, of the anonymous English True Tragedie of Richard the Third, and of Marlowe's play, Edward the Second. But for one of the longest and most impressive scenes in Shakespeare's drama, that in which Clarence in prison meets his death at the hands of two ruffians hired for the deed by his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, no source is generally known. For the basis of the entire scene, Hall's Chronicle, which is so close akin to most situations in the play, contains of Clarence's death merely the statement that “attainted was he by parliament and iudged to death, and there vpon hastely drowned in a butte of malmesey within the towre of London.” Mr. P. A. Daniel expresses the common opinion of Shakespearian scholars to-day in saying, “Shakespeare seems to have been indebted to his own imagination only, for the scene of Clarence in prison, his beautiful narrative of his dream, and the less happy dialogue of the murderers.”

To our ideas of classicism we have, as a rule, given point and definiteness by contrasting it with its opposite, romanticism; and to make the contrast stronger we usually take extreme cases. This is a perfectly proper, perhaps necessary, proceeding. It is also proper and convenient to speak of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries as a classical age. The difficulty comes with the next step which our minds and those of our hearers unconsciously, but almost inevitably take, that of assuming that this abstract and extreme classicism was generally held in this classical age. We forget that classicism is one thing and the classicism of the eighteenth century quite a different thing.

The question, as to the source of Chaucer's unfinished poem Anelida and Arcite is an unsolved problem. Professor Skeat points out in his introduction to this poem that the first three stanzas are from Boccaccio's Teseide, as are also stanzas 8, 9, and 10; and that stanzas 4 to 7 are partly from Statius. The origin of the rest of the poem, which is far the greater part, is unknown.

“Victorian” is now commonly used as a depreciatory-epithet, and yet we shall search the history of the last thousand years in vain for a period of more important social, political, and industrial changes than those carried on in the Victorian Era. The changes in the spiritual sphere were no less significant. Professor Henry Sidgwick, a singularly acute and subtle observer, writing to Tennyson's son for the Biography published in 1897, said of the sixties:—

Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace,

and generally the forward movement of the thought.

Among the scholars of Cambridge who essayed the presentation of Thomas Legge's Latin play of Richardus Tertius at St. John's in 1579, perhaps the most ambitious were those three ingenuous and versatile youths, Howland, Henlowe, Kendall, who enacted the “chorus tumultuantium civium.” Surely, “a little o'erparted”! Easier far with three rusty swords to fight over York and Lancaster's long jars than to portray through three, four, six, or even seven or eight persons the many-headed monster in its varying moods. To trace the evolution of mob-mind from the stage of orderly self-possession and personal consciousness through the psychic process of the withering of the individual and the accumulation of collective energy under the stress of exciting causes to its final state of a fiercely emotional and keenly suggestible crowd-self, lay of course far beyond the purpose and powers of Thomas Legge. Far, too, was this above the aim of such controversial playwrights of the Reformation as that Catholic author of Respublica who presented “the people” in the guise of a single smatterer of dialect. Yet this study of multiplied suggestion which has taxed the observation of ancient historian and modern psychologist has always and with reason made large appeal to that analyst of many men's motives, the dramatist. Humanity in the mass exerted its fascination sometimes over Shakspere's fellows and followers; but it cast a far more potent spell upon Shakspere himself—notably in the Jack Cade scenes (2 Henry VI) and in the two Roman plays of Julius Cæsar and Coriolanus.

The Letters of Charlotte was first published in London in 1786, seven years after Goethe's The Sorrows of Werter had been translated by W. Render. My acquaintance with this book was made the other day, when I discovered a copy of it, published in New York in 1797, among some volumes which had belonged to my great-grandfather.

The purpose of this paper is to consider two well-known passages in the Old French epic poem, Godefroi de Bouillon, which have been often cited, and quite frequently used as the strongest support of an accepted statement about customs of the Middle Ages, yet in which, so far as I know, no one has called attention to certain misinterpretations and the consequent very different bearing of the text.

The first collective edition of Poe's works was that of Rufus W. Griswold, published in four volumes, the first three volumes in 1850 and the fourth in 1856. The latest collective edition is that of Professor James A. Harrison, comprising sixteen volumes and published in 1902. The Griswold edition contains 42 poems, 68 tales, and 74 essays and miscellaneous prose articles. The Harrison edition—otherwise known as the “Virginia Poe”—contains 55 poems, 70 tales, and no less than 285 essays and miscellaneous articles. There are listed, also, in the same edition, in an appendix to the sixteenth volume (pp. 355-379), some forty other items, which for various reasons are not reprinted in this edition. And there have been pointed out since the Harrison edition appeared a number of additional items, including eleven poems, two tales, and about fifty brief essays; making in all a total of 66 poems, 72 tales, and nearly four hundred essays of one sort or another that are now attributed to Poe.

The Triumphe of death, a poetical translation of Petrarch's Trionfo della Morte, is found in ms. 538. 43. 1., ff. 286-289, in the Library of the Inner Temple, in London. As may be seen from the title, and from the signatures to each chapter, the translation is accredited to Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. The folios containing the translation form part of a group of miscellaneous pieces—in poetry and prose—preserved among the Petyt mss.

In The Folk-Lore, Record for 1881 (Vol. 4, pp. 1 ff.), Mr. Alfred Nutt published an article entitled “The Aryan Expulsion-And-Return Formula in the Folk- and Hero Tales of the Celts.” In this article, Mr. Nutt advances the theory that the Perceval romances, the English and the Welsh versions especially, are variants of the Expulsion and Return formula. This classification has been accepted by subsequent writers, with the result that the English version, Sir Perceval, is declared to be the most faithful representative of the so-called primitive or original form of the story.

Those who have doubts as to how far Mr. James has travelled from his earlier style will find interesting testimony in a bit of early criticism. Writing of The Passionate Pilgrim and Transatlantic Sketches J. C. Heywood says, “Ambiguities and obscurities', as well as inadequacies of expression, are so uncommon in these books that those which appear are all the more displeasing and inexcusable, since the writer has plainly shown that they might have been avoided.”

When in 1710-11 the Sir Roger de Coverley papers appeared in the Spectator, the art of the novel seemed to have been discovered. The wonder is that people did not sooner awaken to a realization that a new form of art had been created. The faithful description of life and manners was there, the interest of character and incident was also present. The essays needed but to have been thrown into the form of a continuous narrative to have given us at least the germ of the modern novel. As a matter of fact, however, the actual appearance of the novel was delayed for nearly three decades.

The ordinary condition of the mediaeval poet or man of letters who was not connected with the court, but sought patronage among the country gentry or the citizens of provincial towns, was one of more or less complete isolation. If he found a patron he was fortunate, and when he had supplied that patron's needs, or had carried to a conclusion the work upon which he had, by his patron's interest and support, been encouraged to engage, he had little incentive to further literary production unless he could find new patronage. It is perhaps a result of this condition that so many books of the Middle Ages are the work of men who wrote but one book, and that one with the painful care of the amateur, rather than the sure skill of the trained writer. In the majority of cases, or at least in the most typical cases (since generalisations of this kind can be at the best only rough approximations), the provincial writer worked for a single patron, and his “public” consisted of his patron's family and intimates.

Among the literary types which reached their highest development and perfection in the Spanish literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the epic alone offers little of permanent value. While the lyric, the picaresque novel, the short story and drama were cultivated with notable success, the epic poets were content, for the most part, to follow slavishly models which came from abroad. The names of Ariosto and Tasso dominated the epic poetry of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and nowhere was their influence more clearly felt than in Spain.

Le 21 juillet, 1672, Mme. de Sévigné écrivit de Lyon à Mme. de Grignan pour lui annoncer son arrivée et le bon accueil qu'elle avait reçu chez la famille de Coulange. Puis elle dit: “J'étais à Pierre-Encise, voir F * *, prisonnier.”