Note 18 — Chapter I · A Review.

Since the appearance of Hippe’s study no one has treated The Grateful Dead with such scope as to modify his conclusions. Perhaps the most interesting work in the field has been that of Dr. Dutz18 on the relation of George Peele’s Old Wives’ Tale to our theme. He follows Hippe’s scheme, but gives some interesting new variants. Of less importance, but useful within its limits, is the section devoted to the saga by Dr. Heinrich Wilhelmi in his Studien über die Chanson de Lion de Bourges.19 Though he added no new versions, the author studied in detail the relationship of some of the mediaeval forms to one another, basing his results for the most part on careful textual comparison. His gravest fault was the thoroughly artificial way in which he mapped out the field as a whole, a method which could lead only to erroneous conclusions, since he classified according to a couple of superficial traits. An English study by Mr. F. H. Groome on Tobit and Jack the Giant-Killer20 unhappily was written without regard to the previous literature of the subject, and simply rehearses a number of well-known variants.