THE ROMANESQUE LYRIC

By PHILIP SCHUYLEB ALLEN, The University of NorthCarolina Press, Chapel Hill, N. C.

This book is the story of what happened to lyric poetry between the time of Horace and that of Chaucer. Mr. Allen is free from the usual prejudices about the sufficiency of "classical" Latin; he finds in the less wellknown poetry of the Roman Empire and in the secular poetry of the early Middle Ages the same qualities that were later to constitute what we know as romantic poetry. A brilliant although occasionally disorderly style helps to make this book a fascinating (brilliant although occasionally disorderly) introduction to an undeservedly neglected period of literature. Mr. Howard Mumford Jones has provided a large number of good English translations.

Department of Classics.