The usual criticism of Tristram Shandy denies that there is in this great novel plan, form, or method. Sterne himself supplied the text which criticism has tirelessly amplified, “I begin writing the first sentence … trusting to God Almighty for the second.” A popular history of English literature, to take one of a great many possible examples, speaks of Tristram Shandy as having “an indefinite theme, worked out by a verve that has not the slightest concern for order, unity or logic. … The work is a series of mental and verbal pirouettings.” Governor Cross, almost alone among critics, has given the book its proper place in the history of the novel by elaborating what Sterne himself repeatedly said, that Tristram Shandy is Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding in a novelized form.

The young romantic poet, Antoine Fontaney, returned to Paris in August, 1831, after a stay in Madrid as private secretary to Count d'Harcourt, the French ambassador. The fragments of his Journal in-time, which were published in 1925, are dated from the month of his return and continue through December, 1836. There have recently come to light fragments of another journal, as yet unpublished, covering the same period and written by a contemporary of Fontaney, Charles Didier, a young Genevan who arrived in Paris from Switzerland on 20 November, 1830. For the period covered by the journal of Fontaney, there are only extracts from the mémoires of Didier, the original manuscript having been destroyed. These fragments fell into the hands of a certain Mlle Benoît, Genevan, who wrote under the name of Berthe Vadier, and she in turn sold them to the Viscount Spoelberch de Lovenjoul. They are now a part of the valuable collection which the latter left to the Institut de France, housed at Chantilly.

Horace Walpole was never behind in matters of current gossip; he wrote to the Countess of Upper Ossory on July 7, 1775: Pray, Madam, have you read the Correspondents? I never heard of the book till two days ago. I think one cannot doubt the letters being genuine; but who has been so cruel as to publish them? and yet, except a little weakness, and it is very little to have but a little, there is nothing that can reflect but on the publishers … it appears by the letters that the authors were much afraid of their being seen, though more goodness of heart appears than anything else. Merciful! if all the foolish things one writes in confidence were to be recorded!

“The affair of love, which, out of conformity with the Stoic philosophy, we shall here treat as a disease.”—Fielding's Tom Jones. IT has been pointed out that a motif or idea which plays an outstanding part in a poet's imagination and recurs frequently in his invention, is likely also to manifest itself in the form of his linguistic expression. It will crop up wherever the poet embellishes his discourse with simile, wherever emotional tension drives him to metaphoric expression, i.e., to the substitution of a word which carries more feeling than the word of common usage, or to an effort to express an idea which cannot properly be conveyed by the vocables at his disposal. This principle, it appears to me, becomes particularly significant from an æsthetic point of view when it manifests itself, as it sometimes does, with unusual strength within the scope of a single work. It may then give a very decided color and tone to the language of the whole work, producing metaphor after metaphor, simile after simile, all harping on one dominant theme throughout the book and so playing a continuous accompaniment, as it were, which keeps a major theme of the composition ringing in our ears as the story progresses through other motifs. This theme then becomes a style determinant, shaping the linguistic expression throughout a work of considerable length and making for a uniformity of tone.

Protégé of the Duke of Bedford, tutor of the Queen of Prussia, minister of the Gospel in Moscow, and professor of English in Berlin—such are the more striking phases of the varied career ascribed to the Reverend Benjamin Beresford by his commentators, for whom the full measure of the man has remained obscured. Even recent recognition of his sterling service as pioneer literary intermediary between Germany and England has been vitiated by insufficient knowledge not only of the man himself but also of the publications by which he initiated and sustained for a quarter of a century English acquaintance with German lyric poetry. His translations of popular German songs accompanied by their original melodies have long since become rarities. Even during his lifetime the compiler of a musical lexicon expressed regret that he did not have Beresford's first collection at hand so that he might inform a future generation precisely which of various current compositions had been selected for the songs. As a matter of fact, this particular publication seems to have reached posterity in a unique copy. Succeeding publications suffered similar fortunes, many of them surviving in extremely scarce if not actually single copies.

In the early stages of his long residence in England after 1843, Romeo Elton, who had earlier occupied the positions of Baptist pastor and Professor of Latin and Greek at Brown University, corresponded with Longfellow. In a letter of December 28, 1846, he remarked: On a late visit to Ambleside Mr. Wordsworth inquired after you, & mentioned the pleasing interview he had with you at Rydal Mount, & passed a deserved eulogium upon your Poems. The Poet Laureate is still vigorous both in mind & body. He & his good wife walked a mile, in preference to riding, one evening to take tea with their daughter. He observed that he was solicited to accept of the title of Poet Laureate four times before he consented. In a volume of his Poems he has written a few verses commendatory of the Queen, for which in return she has sent him her portrait, Prince Albert's, & their children's.

As a translator of English Ludwig Tieck has been inseparably linked for a hundred years, in the popular mind, with August Wilhelm Schlegel as the co-translator and editor of the most renowned German translation of Shakespeare's dramas. Though scholars have long realized that he did practically none of the translating, widespread misconceptions about his connection with the undertaking still prevail. Moreover, most writers on the literary relations of Germany and England during the period from 1790 to 1850—the “classical” period of these relations—seem to have but a sketchy knowledge of his actual achievements as a translator of English literature. It is the purpose of this paper to examine more closely, and to give at least an exhaustive outline of, his activities in this field. In particular, attention will be paid to those of his translations from English which have hitherto been quite neglected.

The influence of Taylor, the Platonist, on Shelley has been suspected by A. Koszul but left for further investigation. A study of Shelley in this context is important for the light it throws on his Platonism, and upon the meaning of several prose fragments found among his manuscripts. It is an influence which Shelley assimilated for the most part unconsciously in his early youth, and outgrew. The traces of it, therefore, are dim and the means of it indirect, but they are of significance not only for Shelley but for Platonism as an influence in the Romantic movement.

Die Bewertung der deutschen Novelle als eigengesetzliche Kunstform ist noch immer umstritten, da die Fülle von Theorien, die ihren Entwicklungsgang begleiten, bei manchem Forscher den Eindruck hinterlassen haben, als sei sie nur eine kürzere und individuell wandelbare Spielart der hohen Epik. Sie übersehen dabei, daß die Kernsätze jener theoretischen Erörterungen bei allen scheinbaren Widersprüchen nur verschiedene Seiten der Novellenkomposition beleuchten und für die Scheidung der Novelle von andern epischen Formen ihre Gültigkeit bewahren, wenn man ihren persönlichen und zeitbedingten Gehalt mit berücksichtigt. Goethes betrachtendes Auge ruht auf dem Inhalt, wenn er die Novelle nichts anderes “als eine sich ereignete unerhörte Begebenheit” nennt. Tiecks romantisch-ironische Vielseitigkeit fügt den “überraschenden Wendepunkt” als Wesensmerkmal des Ablaufs einer solchen mehr oder weniger wunderbaren Begebenheit hinzu. Heyses technische Virtuosität prägt den Begriff der “Silhouette” für ihren äußeren Umriß und entlehnt von Boccaccios Novelle den “Falken” als Symbol für ihren kompositorischen Kern. Wenn der nachdenklichgrübelnde Storm die Novelle als “die Schwester des Dramas und die strengste Form der Prosadichtung” bezeichnet, die “gleich dem Drama die tiefsten Probleme des Menschenlebens behandelt,” so erfaßt er ihre kunstphilosophische Bedeutung und stellt eine These auf, die erst in jüngster Zeit von Bruch und Pongs durchgefochten wurde, von Bruch als Analytiker der absoluten, von der Einzelerscheinung losgelösten Form, von Pongs als Synthetiker, der die Kausalität im Schaffen des Dichters gleichzeitig mit den Forderungen der formalen Werte sieht.

Two forces are always at work in a language—one licentious, tending towards a disregard of regulation and convention; and the other conservative, tending to hold the language within bounds and to keep it neat and tidy. It is customary to think of English in America as being under the influence of the former, because our exuberant linguistic creations very readily attract attention. Yet there is a strong current in the opposite direction, and the pattern of American speech is not complete unless that is taken into account. Among the evidences of it are the recurring suggestions that an “academy” should be founded, with duties similar to those of the Académie française. Such agitation has been incessant in England since the sixteenth century, and the early suggestions in America reflected opinion in the mother country.

Biographers and commentators are still at variance over so elementary a problem as the elements of actual experience that have gone into Sudermann's first important work, Frau Sorge. Jung, Axelrod, Soergel, and Mahrholz subscribe to the opinion that in this work Sudermann has given us something enduring and representative because he here fashioned a work “aus eigenem Erleben, aus der Stimmung seiner ostpreussischen Heimat.” This is the view held by the majority of literary critics though it has never been substantiated in detail.

Through their reading of English Traits and of the Journals, students of Ralph Waldo Emerson are aware that he visited England on three occasions and that on his second trip he delivered some lectures there. But few, perhaps, realize the extent of his speaking tour in England and Scotland in 1847–48. Emerson was modest concerning his accomplishments, or at least chose not to regard them as feats worthy of ample recording. His references to his lecturing abroad are casual and fragmentary. Cabot, in the authorized biography, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, does little to fill in the details, and his chronological list of Emerson's lectures and addresses, incomplete even where speaking engagements in America are concerned, is still more sketchy in its treatment of the British lecture tour. Only through a detailed chronology can a realization of the magnitude of the undertaking be obtained. The following table of lectures and of places where they were given attempts to supply the means for a fuller appreciation of the scope and importance of the venture.

When Jane Eyre first appeared (Oct. 16, 1847) the publishers, Smith, Elder & Co., sent a complimentary copy to a young journalist named George Henry Lewes. The compliment had unexpected results. Lewes afterwards wrote Mrs. Gaskell: The enthusiasm with which I read it made me go down to Mr. Parker, and propose to write a review of it for Fraser's Magazine. He would not consent to an unknown novel—for the papers had not yet declared themselves—receiving such importance, but thought it might make one on “Recent Novels: English and French”—which appeared in Fraser, December 1847. Meanwhile I had written to Miss Brontë to tell her the delight with which her book filled me; and seemed to have “sermonized” her, to judge from her reply.

Since positivism, with its cut-and-dry concepts of schools and influences has more and more lost its hold on literary criticism, a wide search for new methodological principles has become a distinctive feature of German endeavors. Their name is legion, their enumeration not pertinent. Suffice it to recall Nadler's regional theory, which, when used with discretion, appears as one of the most fruitful contributions. If Nadler bases his groupings on affinities of space, the Generationsprinzip or Altersgruppenprinzip proceeds similarly in terms of time. It has of late claimed increasing attention in Germany, but only very recently begun to attract interest in this country. On the following pages I shall attempt to discuss critically the more important German contributions to this methodological problem.

Examination discloses numerous types of repetition in the volumes of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Such cases include not only the various kinds of deliberate reiteration artfully employed by Proust, but also a number of duplications of material apparently not intended to remain in a definitive text. In some instances there may be doubt as to the author's designs. It is proposed, therefore, to present only those examples of involuntary recurrence providing sufficient verbal conformity to obviate controversy as to Proust's ultimate intentions, and to submit certain conclusions based upon the data.

Hawthorne was uncommunicative as to the sources on which he drew for the materials underlying his writings. That he had read widely is shown by an examination of the list of books that he borrowed from the Athenæum Library at Salem during his residence of some twenty years in that town. It is perhaps because of Hawthorne's reticence as to his origins that we have as yet learned very little about his literary borrowings; but from time to time articles have appeared touching the specific sources on which Hawthorne relied.