It is admitted by all critics that the Beowulf is essentially a heathen poem; that its materials are drawn from tales composed before the conversion of the Angles and Saxons to Christianity, and that there was a time when these tales were repeated without the Christian reflections and allusions that are found in the poem that has reached us. But in what form this heathen material existed before it was put into its present shape is a question on which opinions are widely different. In the nature of the case we can look for no entire consensus of opinion and no exact answer to the question; the most that one can expect to establish is at the best only a probability.

In the first edition of the Exeter Book, published in 1842, Mr. Thorpe, the editor, divided the contents of the first twentysix leaves (pp. 1-106 of the printed edition), into twenty separate sections or poems, and gave to each a title drawn from the subject treated. He evidently considered the whole a collection of hymns, and failed to see the connection of the separate pieces with one another. Perhaps this failure was the cause of the low estimate of their literary value, which he expresses in his preface and notes. Eleven years later, Dietrich, in an article in the "Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum", put forth the theory that what Thorpe had published as a series of hymns was a single poem, and proposed the name "Christ". Both the theory and the name have been accepted by all critics, anl the two editions that have appeared since Dietrich's article, (Grein's in 1856 and Gollancz's in 1892) treat the work as a single poem. Gollancz even goes so far as to entitle it "an eighth century epic". Dietrich's arguments for the unity of the work are based chiefly on the thread of thought which he finds, as he thinks, running through the whole. Most of this article is therefore devoted to showing the relation of the separate hymns, as Thorpe had published them, to what precedes or follows each. He recognizes, however, the difference of subject-matter in different parts and makes three divisions of the whole, leaving Thorpe's divisions as subordinate to these. He puts in the first part six of Thorpe's sections: in the second, four: in the third, nine: and leaves by itself Thorpe's twentieth piece, the "Poem moral and religious", which is now universally regarded

LITERATURE RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE the verb; (2) syntax, (a) the noun, (b) the verb, (c) negatives, (d) sentence formation, (e) prepositions, (f) particles; and an excursus on the hiatus; chap. 3, special passages. There have been five printed editions of the letters, the last of which edited by Rudolph Herscher, appeared in 1873 and was accompanied by a critical apparatus. This apparatus was, however, meager and defective. For his work Dr. Fritz has used three manuscripts, viz., Parisinus 1039, Monacensis 490, and Monacensis 48I, which he describes somewhat at length, laying most weight on the first. Living in troublous times at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century A. D., Synesius yet found time and desire to cultivate a fine Greek style, and succeeded to such an extent that he has not only been imitated by stylists since, but is the last author considered in the history of Atticism. Some of the letters, which were evidently intended to be handed about among friends, are written with more care than others of a more private character, and yet in all the KOLtrV shines through, and those tendencies to which even the strictest Atticism could not set bounds, and which have resulted in the Greek of today, may here be recognized. Among such tendencies are: in the realm of the verb, confusion of the aorist and perfect, the imperfect as the universal preterite, the perfect for the present, the pluperfect for the imperfect, and increased use of the periphrastic forms both in the indicative and in the dependent moods; in the realm of prepositions, the increasing frequency of certain ones which absorb the functions of others, which latter finally disappear from use. In these studies Dr. Fritz has added a stone to that perfect understanding of the Greek language which all students of that beautiful tongue are striving together to build. HAMILTON FORD ALLEN. LEIPZIG, Germany. KYNEWULF, DER BISCHOF UND DICHTER; Untersuchungen iiber seine Werke und sein Leben. Von DR. MORITZ TRAUTMANN, ord. Professor an der Universitat Bonn. Bonn: P. Hanstein's Verlag, I898. (Heft I of the "Bonner Beitrage zur Anglistik.") Pp. viii+I23. M. 3.60.

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