This is a fourth revision of statistics first published in the Supplement to the September 1953 number of PMLA. The original listing was based on institutions offering the B.A. degree and listed as accredited in the American Council on Education's American Universities and Colleges, 1952. At that time, questionnaires were sent to the registrars of 767 colleges and universities granting the B.A., and replies were received from all.

“Remorse! remorse! It seemed to me that it would eat the very heart out of me!” This is Mark Twain's “trained Presbyterian conscience” at work, its pangs reverberating through most of his mature writings. Indeed, sooner or later almost any study of Twain or his works must deal with this remarkable conscience; for a sense of guilt is one of the bases of his mind—a corrosive guilt that gives intensity to his moralistic pronouncements, deepens his pessimism, and adds a sense of urgency to his deterministic denial of man's responsibilty for his actions.

In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the adjective romantisch was a vague and fashionable word denoting the qualities of the unusual, exotic, adventurous, incredible and fantastic. In the last few years of the century, Friedrich Schlegel made it one of his favorite critical terms, used it to denote the specific character of postclassical literature, and thus raised it to the position of primary importance which it has occupied in literary criticism ever since. Why Schlegel selected this term to describe the kind of poetry he wished to foster, and what he meant by it, are therefore questions of considerable consequence. The two most prominent attempts at answering these questions, those of Rudolf Haym and of Arthur O. Lovejoy, though incompatible with each other and made as long ago as 1870 and 1916, have not been superseded by any later investigation. In the meantime, important new sources of information about Schlegel have become available, and a re-examination seems to be called for.

Throughout his life as teacher, lecturer, and author of numerous articles, as well as in his letters and in his journal, Robert Henri gave vigorous expression to attitudes and ideas which exerted a pervasive and significant influence upon his contemporaries. It will be seen that these ideas were ultimately linked with the great intellectual tradition of American transcendentalism whose leading exponents—Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman—explored, among other problems, the persisting cultural dependence of America on Europe and the individual, social, political, and artistic implications of the new democracy. As one writer has stated in commenting upon the movement, “its vitalizing effect upon American art and literature and, indeed, upon the development of American democracy as a whole, remains unrivaled.”

Tragedy has generally been considered a greater literary achievement than comedy. Aristotle, with his emphasis on seriousness, purgation, and characters better than actual people, has lent authority to this preference, although he does not clearly award tragedy the higher place. More explicit in their choice of tragedy over comedy are Sidney, Milton, Addison, Johnson, and Arnold. A modern critic, Joseph Wood Krutch, has called tragedy “the greatest and the most difficult of arts”; and a modern philosopher, Bertrand Russell, has called it “of all the arts … the proudest, the most triumphant … ”

The Recovery of Professor Child's letters to William Macmath (1844–1921) makes it possible to answer an important question which has not been much investigated: what was the relationship between Child and Macmath with respect to The English and Scottish Popular Ballads?

Swift's Project for the Advancement of Religion and the Reformation of Manners, though clear enough on the surface, has raised various questions as to its subtler meaning and its purpose. In the eighteenth century Thomas Sheridan asserted that this essay was in fact “a very strong, though covert attack, upon the power of the Whigs,” written to encourage Queen Anne to dispense with their services and to form a Tory ministry. That Swift had any such highly contrived political intent seems doubtful. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that he later cited the Project among other works as evidence that, even while associated with the Whigs, he had publicly expressed opposition to their lowchurch position. Another question raised is: to what extent, if at all, was Swift being satiric in the Project? Most contemporary scholars, like Herbert Davis and Ricardo Quintana, have viewed it as an entirely serious production in which little if any irony appears, but William B. Ewald feels that, to some degree, the author composed it with his tongue in his cheek. Finally, did Swift have a personal motive in publishing this work? We know that for some time before its appearance he had been endeavoring to obtain preferment. It also seems pretty clear that one obstacle to his advancement was the fact that he was known as the author of A Tale of a Tub. One may strongly suspect, therefore, that he hoped the Project would help to counteract the damaging effect on his reputation of the earlier work and prove that, besides being a wit who had dared to satirize religious institutions and practices, he was also a clergyman genuinely devoted to the welfare of church and state. If this was his motive, however, did he have any further reason for believing that his anonymously printed pamphlet might serve to advance his fortunes? Some light may be shed upon this point and upon others raised by the Project if we consider 1) certain influences that led Swift to write it, 2) the emphasis in the essay, and 3) his position at the time he composed it.

Emma, justly described by Lord David Cecil as “Jane Austen's profoundest comedy,” has frequently been mistaken for mere “escape literature.” It has been applauded for its “engaging, dear, delicious, idiotic heroine,” moving in “a place of laughter and nonsense,” and excoriated because “it does not instruct … does not teach the modern reader … how to be and move in our world.” At the other extreme, it has lately provoked the sophisticated interpretation of Marvin Mudrick, who sees Emma as a disagreeable, even sinister, creature. A latent Lesbian, unwilling to commit her emotions, and devoid of tenderness, Emma, he believes, attains at the end of the novel simply “relief and temporary awareness.” The transcendent irony of the book for Mudrick is the author's having shown an apparently reformed Emma, whereas actually she remains imperious and ruthless. Joseph M. Duffy, Jr., who describes the novel as concerned with “the awakening of a normal, intelligent young woman to the possibilities of physical love,” has produced the most apposite recent study. But knowledge of physical love is only one aspect of Emma's awakening, and even Duffy is uncertain whether she is truly regenerate.

All his life William Blake was a poor man, earning his living as a professional engraver, transcribing the genius and feeding the avarice of other men. Those who recognized his own genius were rare and unfashionable; their scarcity made Blake at times a bitter man, but their existence kept him alive. The man who most faithfully and consistently nourished Blake with cash and commendation was Thomas Butts.

The earliest authenticated printed version of the Amadís de Gaula, a prose romance of chivalry reworked and expanded into four books (and a subsequently published sequel) by the Spaniard Garcí Rodríguez de Montalvo, appeared at Saragossa in 1508. Between this date and 1492 an earlier edition of Montalvo's work was undoubtedly published, probably in Castile. As we shall see, this may or may not have been partly or wholly identical in content with a MS. Amadis embodying certain changes in the Briolanja episode made at the instigation of a Prince Alfonso of Portugal. Before 1379 there was an Amadis in three books circulating in Castile, and about this same time a version, perhaps the same, by one Vasco Lobeira of Portugal was extant. Moreover, there was an Amadis of unknown proportions, but presumably of one or two books only, as early as 1345–50. I shall show that this version may have been written in 1331. But no version, I repeat, survives except Montalvo's.

Epicene, or The Silent Woman, which Jonson's own century admired perhaps more than any other of his plays, has suffered the fate of becoming more instead of less enigmatic as time passes. Recent critics, more bothered than Jonson's contemporaries over the question of what, finally, the play is all about, have drifted into debates over whether it is a comedy or a farce, whether it is moral or immoral (or amoral), whether its prevailing tone is one of gaiety or harshness. One can lump many of these questions together and rephrase them in terms of Jonson's own dramatic development by asking to what extent Epicene preserves the stern morality of the earlier plays and to what extent it shares the geniality and relaxed moral temper of the later plays as typified by Bartholomew Fair. Probably the answer is that as a transitional play it combines both, and not always in the happiest fashion. The gaiety skates uncomfortably close to sadism; the judicial sternness, rejected in the person of Morose, is rejected with such supererogatory fierceness that it attracts a strong countercurrent of sympathy to it. The victory of Truewit over Morose represents Jonson's attempt to assert the values of the world and the flesh over the consolations of philosophy. But Jonson is still too committed to the philosopher's study to abandon it casually, and still too repelled by the vanity of courts to embrace it without a shudder. The result is that what he attempts to affirm on one level he denies on another. The effort to substitute an indulgent, “realistic” account of the world in place of his more habitual and more deeply felt satirical view produces ambiguities of tone which trouble the whole structure of the play.

The Parlement of foules is a poem in three parts: the prelude before the dream, the scene in the garden of love, and the debate among the birds. Each part differs from the others in its sources, content, mode of treatment, and tone. Because of these differences many-critics have argued that the poem lacks unity. Such arguments would be more convincing if Chaucer seemed unaware of the differences and if the three parts of the poem did not, in some way, serve a common purpose. It is probable, however, that Chaucer created these differences deliberately, for he appears to have worked to heighten and exploit them. A conscious artistic purpose is behind the poem's variety. Moreover, this variety is the agent of the poem's unity; it both contains and creates the poem's ultimate meaning. To make this clear, we shall look first at some of the ways in which Chaucer sharpened the distinctions between the three parts. And then we shall consider the ways in which the parts are unified and the purpose which is served by the tripartite organization.

Forty years ago Tatlock published a short paper on “Puns in Chaucer,” but since then very little has been said on the subject, until just recently appeared Helge Kokeritz' article on “Rhetorical Word Play in Chaucer.” Tatlock pointed out a dozen puns, together with a few “coarse” ones not directly specified. In 1892 Lounsbury had said that Chaucer was “free from these verbal quibbles”; he saw only one, Calkas-calculynge. Before Tatlock, also, Skeat had noted a few, and apropos of style (F 105 f.) commented: “such puns are not common in Chaucer.” Similarly Robinson, apropos of philosophre (A 297) said: “Puns are unusual in Chaucer and it is not always easy to determine whether they are intentional”; but he added as “more or less clear” six of Tatlock's and one of his own, the Latin play on eructavit (D 1934). Preston mentioned six or seven in passing (Chaucer, 1952). Kokeritz conceded that real “double entendres” (significatio, or pun in the modern sense) appear in Chaucer, “though not very often.” He instanced a baker's dozen, along with a few more already noted by others, which he found unacceptable.

A few years ago, when Professor Frederick A. Pottle's exciting edition of Boswell's London Journal was published, many people, stimulated to an unusual reading experience by the intimate glimpses of eighteenth-century life and manners, had their first taste of eighteenth-century English. Other readers refreshed old college memories as they encountered Boswell's “quaint” constructions. Still others—English scholars, subscribers to PMLA —must have been struck once more with the differences between eighteenth-century English and modern English, particularly with the many grammatical constructions which would be unacceptable now even in the most informal language of the educated. No one reading the book could have failed to be interested in Boswell's English.