French musical art during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries found one of its highest forms of expression in the chanson, in musical settings of poems of a popular nature, much closer to the heart of the people than the complicated and refined poetry of the grands rhétori-queurs. With composers of the Burgundian School—Binchois (d. 1467), Dufay (d. 1474), and other musicians connected with the Burgundian Court—the chanson, usually in one of the formes fixes (rondeau, virelai, ballade), reached a height hardly surpassed since: simple, elegant settings for one or two voices with instrumental accompaniment, in marked on‐trast to the complex and recondite ars nova of the preceding century. Even in their sacred music, composers of the Burgundian School made frequent use of the secular song, building their motets and masses upon popular melodies as cantus firmi (tenor melodies upon which a polyphonic structure was erected). With the rise of the Netherlandish School in the latter half of the fifteenth century and with its trend toward a more vocal style, chiefly under the influence of Ockeghem, Buynois, and Obrecht, polyphonic settings of the chanson became popular. In these, music and poetry alike were characterized by greater flexibility in composition: the formes fixes gradually gave way to free forms, generally light, graceful, and spirited in tone; and the music, although adhering to the imitative style of the motet, achieved a similar lightness and grace through the use of quick rhythmic patterns, short phrases with many repeated sections, and a leaning toward homophonic techniques. Most of the great Flemish composers, headed by Josquin des Prés, included music of this type among their productions; but it is perhaps Clément Janequin who best exemplifies the chanson at its gayest, its lightest, and its most frivolous. The popularity of the chanson is witnessed, further, not only by many chansonniers in MS from the late fifteenth century but also by the publication of nearly 600 chansons during the short space of twenty years (1529-49) by two editors alone—Pierre Attaingnant at Paris and Jacques Moderne at Lyons.

Rotographs or microfilms of the MSS and rare printed materials listed below have been purchased with the proceeds of the Fund for Photographic Reproductions collected by the Modern Language Association, and are now on deposit in the Library of Congress. They will be loaned through the Interlibrary Loan to persons engaged in research. The normal period of such loan is from three to six months, but the loan may be renewed. The first claim to the loan of reproductions belongs to the member who made the request.

One of the most obscure and perplexing passages in the Estoire des Engleis is that in which its author, Gaimar, recounts confusedly some exploits of an otherwise unknown “Danish” king in East Anglia, whom he treats as a contemporary of Cynric and Ceawlin, of Wessex. The story, if such it can be called, shares with the Haveloc story, which precedes it, and with two other allusions, which follow it, a common political idea: that the Danes were settled in England, and held sway in that country, before the arrival of the Saxons. The passage also shares with the Haveloc episode in the Estoire the appearance of interpolation, for without it we have a reasonably smooth narrative based on the entries in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (ASC).

Definite Progress in Ancrene Riwle studies has been achieved in recent years. Work on the diplomatic editions of the ME MSS. has been steadily proceeding and these texts will shortly begin to appear in print. The year 1944 was marked by the appearance of the Latin version edited by Charlotte D'Evelyn, and also by the publication of the late J. A- Herbert's edition of the French version preserved in British Museum MS. Cotton Vitellius F vii. This edition, the product of patient and exacting labor devoted to deciphering a MS. long considered hopelessly illegible through damage in the Cottonian fire, a labor carried to completion despite failing health, amidst the dislocation, privation, and distress of total war, constitutes for those who knew Herbert a fitting memorial to his long career of expert and meticulous scholarship. A second French version of the Ancrene Riwle, forming part of the collection of religious tracts contained in Trinity College Cambridge MS. 883 (R.14.7), had been discovered by Miss Hope Emily Allen in 1936, and described by her in relation to its general characteristics in 1940, when she conjectured that it would prove to be distinct from the Vitellius French version and an independent translation from an English original. The text of the Ancrene Riwle portion of this version is still unprinted except for the short passages cited for illustration by-Miss Allen, and consequently most scholars of Middle English have had little opportunity to form an opinion of the nature and interest of its text. Since the diplomatic editions of all the Ancrene Riwle MSS under way for the EETS naturally proceed slowly, although a promising start has already been made, it seems advisable to offer now some evidence as to the textual problems raised by this second French version whose text, although cut up and expanded for use in the “Compilation”, appears likely to prove very valuable for the study of the interrelationships of the various Ancrene Riwle texts. It is here proposed to offer for the consideration of Ancrene Riwle scholars a representative specimen of the Trinity French Text in order to prepare the way for the diplomatic edition to follow later. The passage chosen corresponds to that printed in 1920 by Joseph Hall from two Cambridge MSS., Corpus Christi College 402 and Caius College 234, with textual comments and accompanied by variants from all the MSS then known. This is the passage in which the Seven Deadly Sins are represented allegorically as animals, and in which is described the Devil's Court where each type of sinner is assigned his appropriate position and function.

Of commentaries upon Donne's prosody there would seem to be no end and of final agreement upon the details of his metrics there would seem to be no hope. Nevertheless, in still another attempt to probe Donne's technical mystery, it may be useful to recall the rather large area of agreement in principle which can now be assumed as undebatable. As opposed to Dryden's implication of a lack of metrical skill the modern student may be certain with Gosse that “what there was to know about prosody was … perfectly known to Donne.” Most careful readers, too, will accept the essential Tightness of Saintsbury's generalization that Donne's poetic manner is not of one piece. Fletcher Melton's thesis-arsis variation principle remains significantly valid despite the injudicious lengths to which it was pushed. Mario Praz has stressed the contrast between the “traditionally poetical and the normally prosiac” in Donne's poetry, and Sir Herbert Grierson has pointed out that historically the “poetic rhetoric” of Donne was continued with characteristic originality by Dryden. Arnold Stein, the most recent contributor to the literature of Donnean prosody, has written with graphic illumination of Donne's use of stress-shift and of his matching of feminine with masculine rime.1Concerning elision in Donne's poetry Stein has commented at some length:

Critics and scholars have for years been aware that one of the characteristic devices of the author of the Chanson de Roland is his use of a three-fold rhythm in the development of the story. By this term they have meant that the usual practice of coincidence of episode with strophe, or laisse, is not observed. Instead of using one laisse for one incident or unit of an incident, as was customary in epic style, the author employs occasionally what is called laisses similaires, or strophes where the action or incident is repeated in a second or sometimes a third strophe with a slightly different wording. Anyone who has read the Chanson de Roland will have noticed these repetitive stanzas and most commentators of the poem have called attention to them. Not a few scholars have gone into the history of this device, but its aesthetic purpose has been glossed over in rather general terms.

Add. 1. London, Lincoln's Inn Library, MS. Hale 135. Gilbert de Thornton, Summa. [1 vol.]

The history of Hellenism in the French Renaissance includes not only the leading intellectual figures of France, but also the record of an heroic and idealistic enterprise, embarked upon with courage and enthusiasm, carried on with tenacity, and brought to a brilliant and successful conclusion in the numerous editions of the Greek classics which appeared from 1507 to the end of the century. Ample testimony is available concerning the modest beginnings from the time when Robert Gaguin and Jacques Lefèvre d'Etaples acquired a smattering of Greek from Gregorio Tifernas during his short stay in France in 1456, to the period of official recognition of Greek studies by the founding of the College royal in 1530.

The poems of Humfrey Newton, printed herewith for the first time from his commonplace book (the Capesthorne MS., now Bodleian MS. Lat. misc. c 66), have lain disregarded for over four hundred years, known only in manuscript to his immediate descendants and to an occasional antiquary. Humfrey Newton is no more than a minor poet, but he is important for three reasons. Any writer about whom there exist biographical data is a welcome addition to the limited roster of known authors of the late fifteenth century. Secondly, Newton uses many Cheshire words, and his texts provide a large secondary source of dialect and provincial words, and examples of usages earlier than those hitherto recorded. Finally, Newton's original poems and those well-known texts he copied are an indication of the literary interests of the provincial reading public of about 1500.

Aberystwyth: National Lib., MS. Peni-arth 42: Add. 9; MS. Peniarth 43: Add. 9.

Four leaves of the Skeireins (I, II, V, VII) are preserved in the Bibli-oteca Ambrosiana, Milan, under Sig. E 147 parte superiore. VI, which also belongs to this group, has been missing since 1943. In August of that year Milan underwent heavy bombing, in which thirteen halls of the Ambrosiana were wrecked, ten others hit, and some 80,000 volumes reduced to ashes. Though the Gothic palimpsests of the Ambrosian collection were moved to insure their safety, the sixth leaf of the Skeireins disappeared unaccountably, and all attempts to find it have been unavailing.

The three poems associated with the name of George Ashby have been readily available to students of Middle English verse for the past half century in the edition prepared for the Early English Text Society by Mary Bateson. It does not appear, however, that any particular inquiry has been undertaken as to the use Ashby made of possible sources. Indeed, in the case of his first poem (A Prisoner's Reflections) such a study holds little promise of being very rewarding, as the poem is, to a considerable extent, frankly autobiographical. The Active Policy of a Prince, in turn, is a collection of moral commonplaces of a more than commonplace nature—doubtless the number of parallels to other poems of this genre would be most impressive, and perhaps equally tedious. The Latin title of the third poem (Dicta opiniones diversorum philosophorum) suggests its own origin and Miss Bateson has correctly pointed out that this poem is based upon that Latin work which, in its English form, constitutes the first dated work to be printed in England—