of the volume [vol. IV, ed. 1793] on a blank page are Hartley's lines beginning

'Brief as the reign of pure poetic Truth ’— and containing these lines which I have copied from the autograph—

'Thus Donne-not first-but greatest of the line-
Of stubborn thoughts a garland thought to twine;
To his fair maid brought cabalistic posies,
And sang quaint ditties of metempsychosis:
"Twists iron pokers into true love knots,'
Coining hard words not found in polyglots.'

You will, therefore, see that the quotation made shows Hartley as including in his own verses a line of his father's- and this bears out your contention.

"S. T. C.'s lines were first published in Literary Remains in 1836, and there in print most probably Hartley saw them for the first time. His lines were, I think, written in 1843. . . ."

Baltimore, Md.

WIGHTMAN F. MELTON.

LONGFELLOW AND THE HEXAMETER.'

To the Editors of Mod. Lang. Notes.

SIRS :-When Longfellow published his Ballads and Other Poems in 1841 he made in the intro

duction to his translation of Tegnér's Children of the Lord's Supper the following statement:

"I have preserved even the measure, that inexorable hexameter, in which, it must be confessed, the motions of the English muse are not unlike those of a prisoner dancing to the music of his chains; and perhaps, as Dr. Johnson said of the dancing dog, the wonder is not that she should do it well, but that she should do it at all." It may occasion some surprise to hear a poet speaking thus of a meter in 1841 and resolving to choose it for an original epic in 1845. Such is, however, the case and the poet's conviction was strong enough to triumph over the fears of his best friends. year later still he declares that same hexameter, which had earlier seemed to him as an oppressor of the language, to be a benefactor in disguise. "The English world," he says, "is not yet alive to the beauties of that meter.

One

What perhaps suggested to Longfellow that he was to accomplish to some extent at least what

Clough and Southey had failed to accomplish? The years 1845, 1846, 1847 abound in instances that show him enthusiastically occupied with the possibilities of the hexameter in English. He talks hexameters with Felton on the street corner;

1 Adapted from a dissertation by the writer of this note, entitled: Longfellow's Wechselbeziehungen zu der deutschen Litteratur, Leipzig, 1907.

he reads a hexameter translation of Homer in Blackwood, and praises it; he ruins an evening with the Vision of Judgement and exclaims (yes, even our mild Longfellow!): "It is enough to damn the author and his hexameters forever!" Where may we look for the initial impulse of these enthusiasms? Perhaps in the reception accorded those first hexameters in the translation of Tegnér (which are by the way crude enough)? Hardly. The deed was not convincing. No one called it out and out a success; many said it was a failure. Allston wrote without enthusiasm ; Prescott even with pessimism. Felton and Sumner had been so little convinced that they advised a different measure for Evangeline. Did an encouraging word come from any important authority? It did. That authority was in Germany, where the admissibility of the hexameter was established by Hermann und Dorothea.

On the seventeenth of September, 1842, Longfellow, then in Marienberg, wrote a short letter to Ferdinand Freiligrath, in which occurs a sentence seemingly without especial bearing, unless one happens to be looking for a solution that makes it significant. "Have you seen," he asks, "the Magazin für ausländische Litteratur? It has a paragraph on English hexameters, in which an extract is given from my translation of Tegnér." Amid his own doubts and those of his friends the poet found in the paragraph here tial magazine. referred to the unqualified approval of an influen

"Better than did Southey and Taylor, a modern American poet has succeeded in his attempts in the English hexameter. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, author of Hyperion, who has been frequently mentioned in these pages, has favored us, in his recently published Ballads and Other Poems, with a translation of the beautiful Swedish poem of Tegnér, the Children of the Lord's Supper. As is well known the Swedish tongue is able to reproduce the ancient measure with greater fidelity and fuller tones than even the German. Longfellow has endeavored to imitate the Swedish, and we consider that he has produced the best English hexameters in existence up to the present."

These words would not have been so significant had not the problem of the English hexameter been so long before the world of critics and poets. The former had asserted what the latter had failed to disprove, the impossibility of good hexameters in our language. Here was an excellent

opportunity to confound the theories of critics and surpass the attempts of former poets. And the resulting hexameters in Evangeline, inevitably tiresome as they are, show a good proportion of the varieties of rhythmic modulation possible to that meter in English.

T. M. CAMPBELL.

Randolph-Macon Woman's College.

VOL. XXIII.

No. 4.

The precision, clearness, completeness, and reasonable length of this latest of French texts for beginners will particularly commend it to the modern teacher.

ELEMENTARY FRENCH is equally well adapted to serve in a secondary school and to constitute the nucleus of the first year's work in a college course that does not require French for entrance. It is essentially a book for beginners, and provides a full course prepared according to the best modern standards of French instruction, and is so planned as easily to be adapted to the varying conditions of teaching the language.

NEW

TEXTS

HEALEY'S LA COMÉDIE CLASSIQUE EN FRANCE

50 cents

A reader designed to stimulate the interest of high school pupils in the study of the masterpieces of French comedy, and to awaken a desire for serious work in this typical department of French literature. The book is not intended to supply all that is required at the college examination, and its selections, therefore, are not complete plays, but extracts illustrating celebrated comedies. There are seven lessons, each of which includes an introduction in French, treating the characteristics of the period and the author, an outline of the comedy, and selected portions of the text. The vocabulary is complete.

KERNS' GERMAN STORIES RETOLD

30 cents

Thirteen of the most delightful of Grimm's Märchen have here been retold in a manner suitable for the young beginner. Two of the less difficult stories have, however, been included unchanged. The reading is carefully graded. As an aid to fix the language more firmly in the memory, and to cultivate conversation and narration, questions are given on each story. The vocabulary is so complete that notes are unnecessary.

Vol. 23.

MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES.

A MONTHLY PUBLICATION

(With intermission from July to October inclusive)

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RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

ENGLISH.

Abernethy, J. W.-Dickens' Tale of Two Cities. New York: C. E. Merrill Company, 1908.

Albright, Victor E.-A typical Shaksperian Stage: The OuterInner Stage. The third chapter of a Study of the Shaksperian Stage. New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1908. Bailey, E. J.-The Novels of George Meredith. win Bros., 1908.

London: Un

Blackburn, Frances A.-Exodus and Daniel. Two Old English poems, preserved in Ms. Junius 11 in the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford, England. [The Belles-Lettres Series.] Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., 1807.

Conant, Martha Pike.-The Oriental Tale in England in the Eighteenth Century. New York: The Columbia University Press, 1908.

Cook, Albert S., and Chauncey B. Tinker.-Select Translations from Old English Prose. Boston: Ginn & Co., 1908.

Curle, R. H. P.-Aspects of George Meredith. London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1908.

Gingerich, S. F.-Wordsworth: A Study in Memory and Mysticism. Elkhart, Ind. : Mennonite Publishing Co., 1908.

Hill, E. B.-Thoreau's Mother. [Collectanea No. 2.] Lakeland, Mich. E. B. Hill, 1908.

Hinckley, Henry Barrett.-Notes on Chaucer. A Commentary on the Prolog and Six Canterbury Tales. Northampton, Mass.: The Nonotuck Press, 1907.

No. 4.

Knight, W.-Letters of the Wordsworth Family from 1787 to 1855. London: Ginn & Co., 1908.

Lounsbury, T. R.-Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908.

Marufke, W.-Der älteste englische Marienhymnus An god ureisun of ure Lefdi [Breslauer Beiträge zur Literaturgeschichte. Neue Folge 3]. Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1908.

Morgan, A. Hamlet and the Ur-Hamlet: Text of the Second Quarto of 1604, with a conjectural Text of the alleged Kyd Hamlet preceding it. New York: The Shakespeare Press, 1908.

Northrup, C. S.-Bacon's Essays. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1908.

Schelling, F. E.-The Elizabethan Drama, 1558-1642. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1908.

Scott, M. A.-The Essays of Francis Bacon. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908.

Shakespeare.-The Baukide-Restoration. Hamlet. Westfield, N. J. Shakespeare Press, 1908.

Coleridge's Biographia Literaria. London:

Shawcross, J. Henry Frowde, 1908.

Smith, C. A.-The Indicative in an Unreal Condition. Chicago: University Press, 1908.

Spencer, S.-Passages from Carlyle. London: A. Constable & Co., 1908.

Stebbing, W.-The Poets-Chaucer to Tennyson. London: Henry Frowde, 1908.

Tennant, George Bremner.-The New Inn or The Light Heart, by Ben Jonson. Edited with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary. [Yale Studies in English, XXIV.] New York: H. Holt & Co., 1908. Traubel, H.-With Walt Whitman in Camden. Vol. II. York: D. Appleton & Co., 1908.

New

Warren, K. M.-A Treasury of English Literature. London: A. Constable & Co., 1908.

Weiss, S. A.-The Home Life of Poe. New York: The Broadway Publishing Co., 1908.

Welsh, C.-Character Portraits from Dickens. Boston: Small Maynard & Co., 1907.

Welghtman, Jane.-The Language and Dialect of the Later Old English Poetry. Diss. Liverpool: University of Liverpool, 1907. Wells, John Edwin.-The Owl and the Nightingale. [BellesLettres Series.] Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., 1907.

Weston, J. L.-The Arthurian Romances. London: D. Nutt,

VOL. XXIII.

No. 4.

THE WORKS OF JEAN RENART, POET, AND THEIR RELATION TO GALERAN DE BRETAGNE. II.

The conviction that Jean Renart is the author of the three poems mentioned above springs from their correspondence of idea and purpose, the similarity of their versification, the close resemblance of some of their sentences, phrases and use of individual words. That is, the conviction rests on what might be termed positive testimony. Such testimony, however, might not be considered as wholly convincing. If any other kind of evidence is available it would be well to adduce it. In the case of Jean Renart this other evidence exists, negative evidence, to be sure, but of such a nature as to strengthen our faith in the positive. The poems of Ombre, Escoufle and Guillaume de Dole are strikingly like one another in essential particulars. But there are two poems which belong to the same kind of literature, are contemporaneous perhaps with Jean Renart's works, yet in one or more of these essential features are clearly unlike them. These poems are Guillaume de Palerne and Galeran de Bretagne.

Guillaume de Palerne has come down to us in a single manuscript. It is one of two poems contained in that manuscript. The other is the poem of Escoufle, which also is not preserved otherwise. Because of this close external union of two romans d'aventure, it was once supposed that they were the work of one author. A superficial examination, however, was sufficient to disprove this notion. A more careful scrutiny reveals their great dissimilarity. Guillaume de Palerne discourses on true love, its physical effects and its trials, quite after the manner of the older romantic school (1150-1180). It delights in monologs and formal speeches. It abounds in dialog. It uses that kind of repetition, by which the last hemistich of one couplet becomes the first hemistich of the next (II. 1708, 1709; 6782, 6783), or by which both hemistiches are repeated in in

verse order (11. 5923, 5924). We have noted the subordination of the psychology of love to sociology in Escoufle. Its author is equally guiltless of the mannerisms of Guillaume de Palerne. Then over against the many allusions of Escoufle (and its fellows) to Medieval literature we can set but one reference in Guillaume de Palernean indefinite citation of Alexander's good sense. The versification of Renart's poems and Guillaume de Palerne is also quite unlike. For the 62% of broken couplets in Escoufle and the 3.5% of threeline sentences which follow the break, Guillaume de Palerne offers 28% and 23 % respectively. In phrase and expression there is no resemblance at all between the two poems.

The negative argument derived from Guillaume de Palerne is clear. He who runs may read. Not so with Galeran de Bretagne. For here we have the idea of Escoufle and a part even of its plot : A girl, bereft of her lover, wanders away alone, reaches the house of a widow, is welcomed there, makes friends with the widow's daughter, and supports herself and her friend by her industry and accomplishments. This episode is This episode is a leading one in both poems. It does not appear in the lai of Marie de France, which Galeran de Bretagne closely imitates-the lai or its original-in other essential respects. There is some reason, therefore, for believing that this digression came to the author of Galeran, a certain Renaut, through the romance of Escoufle.

Why could we not suppose that the author of the two poems is one and the same man and that Renaut is a wrong reading for Renart? The thought and purpose of the romances are similar. Both contain abundant allusions to Medieval literature. Some words, as siècle, for instance, have the same peculiar meaning in both. Nor is their versification widely apart. Galeran offers 48% of broken couplets and 11% of three-line sentences following the break, as contrasted with Escoufle's 62% (but also 58% in Guillaume de Dole) and 3.5% (also 7% in Guillaume de Dole) respectively. Galeran's percentage of feminine

rimes is 48, compared with Escoufle's 45. The overflow verses in Galeran run as high as twentyone in a thousand lines, or about the proportion that we found in Ombre. All these facts clearly point to the same school of poetic art, perhaps to the same period of that art's development, possibly even to the same poet.

But an intensive study of Galeran de Bretagne reveals important differences between it on the one hand and the works of Jean Renart on the other.

Galeran lays especial weight on the love episodes, and makes them quite as prominent as its pictures of manners and society. In the treatment of its material it employs some of the leading characteristics of the older romantic school, particularly in its use of erotic monologs, where hero and heroine carry on mental debates with themselves, with questions and answers. One subtle notion of its author, the force of nature's voice in indicating relationships, is wholly lacking in Jean Renart. Furthermore, when we compare the part of the plot we have summarized with the same episodes in Escoufle, we are struck by the different ways of expressing the same idea. For example, both poems praise the piety of the heroine when thrown on her own resources, yet they are quite unlike in describing it :

Ja son vuel n'eüst esté preu A sainte eglise por ourer.

Escoufle, 5504, 5505. Ne se muet oncques de l'ostel Fors quant elle va au moustier. Galeran, 4303, 4304. So the trades she exercises in self-support are the same, but they are defined in different terms, as :

A laver les chiés as haus homes. Escoufle, 5509. Et des chiez laver pour maaille. Galeran, 3868. Indeed, if we look to Galeran for the repetition of any phrase employed by Jean Renart, we find but one instance, and that instance in a passage which recalls, not the language of Escoufle, but of Ombre:

Il vos venroit mieus estre pris
As Turs et menés el Chaaire!

Ombre, 242, 243.
Mieulx vous vauldroit estre outre mer
Et estre esclaves au Kahaire.

Galeran, 6383, 6384.

There remains, however, an interesting feature

of Galeran which reminds one of Jean Renart, a feature which is absent from Escoufle and Ombre, but which forms the chief characteristic of Guillaume de Dole. The heroine of Galeran is going to the wedding of her recreant lover, and as she rides she sings her sorrows:

Je vois as noces mon ami; Plus dolente de moi n'i va.

Galeran, 6987, 6988.

These lines rime with the verses on either side.

They form the halves of two narrative couplets. Yet their burden, and the material fact that they occur elsewhere in a pastourelle, 20 show that here we have to do with a theme of popular poetry. And this is not the only place where the songs of the people seem to be echoed by the lines of Galeran.21

Now we know that the author of Guillaume de

Dole lays formal claim (11. 8-12) to a poetic invention by which the strophes of lyric poetry are mingled with narrative couplets. And, if we may believe him, Guillaume de Dole is the first poem to benefit by this invention. But what of the lyric strains in Galeran? An easy solution of the problem would be to admit Renart's claim, and date Galeran after Guillaume de Dole. Unfortunately, however, Galeran seems to offer the first draft of the idea, a draft which Guillaume de Dole has only improved upon. Another way of overcoming the difficulty would be to interpret Renart's words in a special sense, that Guillaume de Dole is the first poem in which lyric strophes are bodily introduced, not assimilated to the couplet, as in Galeran. Perhaps this explanation is the right one. It seems quite plausible. Still, whatever be the meaning we assign to the statement of Jean Renart, we cannot consider the fact to be other than significant that Galeran de Bretagne, after paralleling a leading episode of Escoufle, and using a phrase which, so far as we know, is peculiar to itself and Ombre, should proceed to approximate the distinguishing feature of Guillaume de Dole. A consideration of all these points taken together offers us three possible solutions all four poems are the work of one man,

:

20 Bartsch: Altfranzösische Romanzen und Pastourellen, p. 214, no. 100, 11. 11, 12.

21 See Mod. Lang. Notes, XIII, cols. 350, 351.