It is my contention in this paper that Spenser's Muiopotmos is an allegory of the life and death of Sir Philip Sidney much like Astrophel. My reasons, in brief, are the following. The two poems tell fundamentally the same tale. The symbolical meaning of the butterfly is peculiarly suited to Sidney. The episode of Astery favors the supposition that it alludes to Stella. The departures from classical authority noticeable in the episode of Arachne combine to allegorize an important event in Sidney's life.

Few lyric poems of the eighteenth century have aroused as much interest during the past fifty years as Christopher Smart's Song to David. Poets, critics, and scholars have lavished praises upon it ever since Browning so liberally commended it in his Parleyings. It appears—usually only in part—in nearly all the anthologies, and in England the entire text has several times been separately reprinted. So much attention to the poem has led inevitably to a desire for more knowledge about the poet, and various scholars have attempted to satisfy this desire. Nearly all, however, have been baffled by the complications of the poet's periods of insanity, or else have jumped to conclusions that will not fit the facts. The late Sir Edmund Gosse, by the beauty and urbanity of his appreciation of Smart's poetic genius, in Gossip in a Library in 1891, did much to rehabilitate him in the world of letters. Unfortunately, Sir Edmund was seriously wrong in many of his most essential statements concerning the poet's life, and his misconceptions and misinterpretations of the facts have served as the basis of nearly all subsequent accounts, including that by Thomas Seccombe in the Dictionary of National Biography.

It is now more than forty years ago that the first serious attempt was made to classify the several versions of the Pricke of Conscience according to the MSS which were then known. On the basis of three test-passages selected from approximately the beginning, the middle and the end of the poem (vv. 1836-1927, 5126-5204, 9335-9394, according to the line-numbers in Morris's edition) the MSS were divided into four main families, designated respectively by the symbols, Y, X ii, C, and Z, of which the fourth (Z) represents the Northern version which was printed by Morris.

In Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (VIII, ix-xii) occurs the oldest and almost the only known legend about the most famous megalithic monument in Britain. The story accounts for Stonehenge as the funeral monument erected for hundreds of noble Britons slain by the treacherous Hengist and his Saxons, and it was for centuries accepted as the historical explanation of that great structure. Chroniclers repeated the tale and successive generations believed, to borrow Spenser's wording, that they could

“Th'eternall marks of treason . . . at Stonheng vew.” (F. Q., II, x, 66).

In the year 1761 there was published, it is uncertain where, a French play entitled L'Humanité ou le Tableau de l'Indigence, Triste Drame par un Aveugle Tartare. Although of mediocre dramatic or literary merit, it has attracted the attention of various scholars because it forms the center of a “curious problem of literary history.” The mystery that has hitherto surrounded the play may be satisfactorily cleared up, it seems to me, with the aid of a notice furnished by C. H. Schmid in an eighteenth-century German periodical.

For a man of so questionable a reputation, Gadshill in Henry IV, Part 1, has been happy in escaping undue attention. He is, truly, one of Falstaff's “gentlemen of the shade.” His shady presence is of some interest, however, if only because he has kept good company for so long.

In the current texts of the play, Gadshill favors us with his actual person in three scenes. But his existence is amplified elsewhere in the play by the reference of other characters to him, directly and indirectly. Falstaff and Poins both mention him by name in the second scene of Act I; and the number of the robbers (excluding Hal and Poins) is six times given as four by the Prince and Falstaff, in the course of the second Act.

Among the most considerable of M. Bédier's achievements in his study of the Tristan legend was his demonstration by means of proper names that the tradition, in some form or other, must have passed from Pictland through Wales and Brittany into France and England. Although the researches of Miss Schoepperle have shown the influence of Irish aitheda, although the work of M. Loth has made it impossible to ignore the share of Cornwall, and Dr. Brugger's studies of the man Bleheris and of the name Loonois add to our knowledge of the origin and transmission of the story, yet M. Bédier's scheme still stands out as the first reasonably full and acceptable account of the derivation of any Arthurian romance. Now it is noteworthy that so important a result rested in large measure on the origin of the names inbedded in the tradition. Had the onomastic studies of Rhys, Miss Paton, Bruce, and Dr. Brugger been as generally convincing as those of M. Bédier, scholars would not still be so far apart in their interpretation of the development of the Round Table cycle. Thus far the only body of facts, apart from the Tristan branch, to which all parties subscribe is that the personal names Arthur, Kay, Bedivere, Modred, Guinevere, Merlin, Maheloas, Caradoc Briebras, Ider the son of Nu, Ivain son of Urien, Uther, and other proper names such as Escalibour, Pridwen, and Tortain, are derived from the Welsh. But the materials for further study are, as the Index to Sommer's seven volumes of French romance and Miss Blount's unpublished onomasticon show, very rich, and nothing seems to stand in the way of real advance in this field of research if only we can formulate and apply certain criteria which will at the same time fit the somewhat lax conditions of name-development and also be sufficiently rigorous to give assured results.

Few of Milton's lines have called forth more comment and interpretation than lines 130-131 of Lycidas, which form the climax of the denunciation of corruption in the clergy:

But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.

For example, Professor C. G. Osgood has suggested that an allusion to “the iron flail of Talus” was intended—a supposition that would link the “two-handed engine” in an interesting way to Milton's avowed admiration for Spenser and to the uprooting of the hills in the war in heaven. This interpretation, however, while it might enrich the metaphor, would make Milton's words voice only a vague hope that some agency, as yet unknown, would punish the corruption of the clergy. And such vagueness in Milton's mind hardly agrees with his deliberate confidence in the accomplishment of the reforms he advocated—a confidence which he maintained, even in the face of an obviously changing popular attitude, until the Restoration was fully wrought.

In her article “Shakespeare's Richard II and the Essex Conspiracy,” Miss Evelyn May Albright seeks to establish a “vital connection” between Shakespeare's Richard II and John Hayward's Henry IV. Such a connection she thinks would prove Shakespeare's interest in and adherence to the Earl of Essex in his quarrel with the Queen and certain of her counsellors. In presenting her case, however, Miss Albright has failed to give full evidence which, if given in an unprejudiced manner, would destroy the value of her conclusions. It is my purpose in this paper to supply the evidence available concerning both the playing of Shakespeare's Richard II on February 7, 1601, and the publication of Hayward's Henry IV. This account will, I think, show that there is no evidence of any connection between either Hayward and Shakespeare or Shakespeare and Essex.

Among the names of stones in the Alfonsine lapidaries are a number, frequently recurring, which are given in the manuscript as Chaldean names, and are usually followed by their equivalents or definitions in Spanish. Some thirty-seven of these have been listed by M. F. de Mély, who expresses the hope that someone will undertake the task of defining and identifying them. Thus far, however, no one has made any thoroughgoing attempt to investigate these Chaldean stone-names. The only identifications made by Mély himself are the names catu and alfeyru (alfeyxu), feynac. A single identification of bezebekaury as ruby is made by Barrington, who, as others have done, has pointed out the difficulty of identifying these Alfonsine stones. Before undertaking this task it will be necessary to correct and complete the list given by Mély, which really comprises 36 instead of 37 names since one stone is twice counted. Actually, the manuscript mentions no less than forty-five Chaldean stones.

Almost a century and a half ago, on March 3, 1784, a brilliant audience overflowed the Theatre Royal at Edinburgh on the occasion of a performance “For the Benefit of a Lady in Distress.” The proceeds, some three hundred pounds, were later sent to Ann Smollett, then a widow in Leghorn. Since that remote period there has been very little news of the wife of Tobias Smollett. Rather recently, however, certain material has come to hand which contributes to our knowledge of Ann Smollett, and also throws additional light upon the closing years of the author of Roderick Random.

In 1790 a gruesome incident occurred in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, which incidentally affords evidence as to the reputation of Milton in the late eighteenth century. A body, thought to be that of the poet, was disinterred and for two days despoiled outrageously by souvenir-hunters. The question whether the body was or was not that of Milton was much disputed at the time and has remained unsettled ever since. Masson does not so much as allude to the affair and its discreditable and distasteful character has resulted in a glozing suppression of truth.

That John Bunyan had read at least the first book of Spenser's Faerie Queene, and had transformed certain adventures of the Red Cross Knight into the adventures of his own hero in Pilgrim's Progress, is a statement which has been frequently made. And, indeed, the idea has much reason on its side. The parallel between a series of incidents in Spenser's first book and a series in Pilgrim's Progress is fully as close as many another which has been held sufficient to establish a literary relationship. To Spenser's House of Holinesse, with its porter, its four grave damsels, its sober entertainment of the knight, corresponds Bunyan's House Beautiful. To the closing episode of the Red Cross Knight's sojourn at the House of Holinesse, his sight of the pilgrim's road and of Hierusalem from the near-by Mount of Contemplation, corresponds the view which Christian, from the top of the House Beautiful, has of the Delectable Mountains, from which, in the course of the story, he is to see the Celestial City itself. To the immediately succeeding conflict with the dragon, to the monster's fiery breath and horrid shrieks, to the hero's distress and eventual triumph, and particularly to the miraculous restoration of the wounded knight through the agency of the Tree of Life, corresponds Christian's battle with Apollyon, fought in the Valley of Humiliation, just after he has parted from the damsels of the House Beautiful. When to the parallel between these series of incidents in The Faerie Queene and in Pilgrim's Progress is added a certain similarity between the allegorical significances of these incidents, as well as a much more doubtful likeness between Spenser's Despair and the Giant Despair of Bunyan, some sort of relationship between the earlier and the later author appears evident enough.

In a series of discussions of the problem of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, published between 1915 and 1917, Professors Tatlock, Lawrence, and Rollins, applying essentially the same critical method, argued that since the bulk of the material in this play had become fixed by tradition, Shakespeare found himself compelled to treat it as he did. Rollins quotes with approval the following statement by Tatlock:

The treatment accorded by grammarians to the passive reflexive construction as applied to personal subjects in Old Spanish is either incomplete or inexplicit. Diez, for example, gives no indication as to the extent of its use in either early or modern Spanish. Cuervo asserts that the passive reflexive is “arraigado” in the language of the early period, but cites examples with only inanimate subjects. We infer from his remarks that with a personal subject this construction came into general use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. According to Meyer-Lübke, its use with personal subjects was extensive only during these centuries. Hanssen is of the opinion that the passive reflexive was of little use in the early period and that with a personal subject its use was limited to the single verb uencerse. The present study will indicate the status of this construction in Old Spanish: the extent of its use as applied to persons insofar as may be demonstrated by an examination of a representative text of that period. As such a text the Primera crónica general has been chosen, because, with its plurality of authorship and great length, it represents an admirable cross-section of Old Spanish prose.