WHEN a child boasts of his coming deeds as a man, it is forgiven him for his childhood, but not so did Prince Hal treat Sir John Falstaff. It behoves us in England who care for the scholarship of the modern and mediæval tongues to give few promises but those of work and zeal. And in making this effort to produce a review where English thought on modern literature and English investigation into problems of language and pædagogics may find an opportunity for expression, neither the editors nor the contributors are likely to forget to be modest. It is their knowledge of what has already been done in Germany, Scandinavia, France and America, that makes them believe it

No. I.

time to remove a serious hindrance to the progress of scholarship in this country. It is their desire to help teachers and students of modern languages to realise with them how little can be achieved by isolated work, how much is to seek in English methods, what need there is for some means of discussion, some enthusiasm for their profession, that has led them to make this attempt. The outcome of the same movement that brought about the foundation of the Modern Language Association, this Quarterly will serve as the organ of the Society, but it will also, if it fulfils the desires of its friends, be much more than this.

A CONCISE Commentary on the Divina Commedia, embodying the results of the numerous researches which have been made of late years with such good results in Italy and elsewhere, is a want which has been much felt by students of Dante. This want has now, to a large extent, been supplied by the fourth edition of Prof. Tommaso Casini's Commento, who, while judiciously, and with due acknowledgment, availing himself of the labours of his predecessors, has at the same time added a good deal of illustrative matter from his own resources. Prof. Casini has a great advantage, in that, unlike too many Dante commentators, he is not a 'homo

1 La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri, con il Commento di Tommaso Casini, 4ta edizione, Sansoni,

Firenze.

unius libri.' He has a wide and real knowledge of the Italian literature of the thirteenth century, and is well known for his scholarly editions of some of the earliest Italian poems, as well as for his edition of the Vita Nuova. His association with Professors D'Ancona and Comparetti in the publication of the famous Vatican Canzoniere (Cod. Vat. 3793), and with the late Adolfo Bartoli in the publication of that preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale at Florence (Cod. Palat. 418), has enabled him to throw light on several vexed points in the matter of Dante's vocabulary. Not a few words, which were supposed to have originated with Dante, are noted in his commentary as occurring in one or other of the earlier poets. Prof. Casini has effectually broken away