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mais on sent un peu que la philologie n'est pas son pain quotidien. Que signifie une phrase comme celle-ci: Elle (G. Sand) appréciait beaucoup cependant la phonétique de son pays'? Amitieux, honteux avec le sens de timide n'appartiennent pas exclusivement au patois du Berry ou du Centre; ablette, agasse, aumaille sont attestés en ancien français et sont toujours très vivants ailleurs que dans le Centre. George Sand était persuadée que le berrichon était le français primitif': c'est pourquoi sans doute il lui paraissait indifférent d''emprunter son vocabulaire et sa syntaxe tantôt au patois de son pays, tantôt au vieux et moyen français dont sa mémoire était meublée.' (Rappelons que Montaigne, Rabelais surtout lui étaient très familiers.) Il y a une assez large part de fantaisie dans la langue que George Sand a parlée dans ses romans champêtres, mais elle est arrivée à faire illusion. Le travail de Mile Vincent sera utile surtout comme un catalogue explicatif des particularités qui, dans la langue et le style de l'écrivain, trahissent l'influence du berrichon, réelle ou imaginaire.

Il faut louer le zèle consciencieux de Mlle Vincent et son scrupule extrême d'exactitude. On ne pourra plus s'occuper de George Sand sans recourir à ses études si fouillées, un peu sèches pourtant et sans grâce, comme un procès-verbal.

LONDON.

JULES DECHAMPS.

BENJAMIN CONSTANT. Adolphe. Édition historique et critique. Par GUSTAVE RUDLER. (Modern Language Texts: French Series.) Manchester University Press. 1919. 8vo. lxxxvi + xxi + 168 pp.

78. 6d.

We offer a hearty welcome to Professor Rudler's edition of Constant's Adolphe, which presents us for the first time with a scholarly critical edition of this text, based not merely on the early editions, but also on the manuscript in the possession of the present representative of the Rebecque family, M. Monamy. The care and scientific method with which Professor Rudler has prepared the text is, it need hardly be said, exemplary; his text is, in the best sense, definitive. For us, moreover, Professor Rudler's work is a valuable object-lesson. The editing of French classical literature in this country has been strangely unable to keep pace with the increase of serious French literary studies; we are still complacently turning out 'school' editions of French classics, and even more complacently placing these in the hands of our University students of French. A dozen texts edited with the meticulous care and high ideals which Professor Rudler shows, would, I venture to think, further French studies at our universities more than any other immediately attainable measure of reform. My only regret is that the Marshal Foch Professor of French in Oxford has not added to the debt which French studies in this country already owe him, still another: that he has not paid us the compliment of editing Adolphe with English Introduction

and Notes. In saying this, I am not thinking merely of the language; but also of the point of view. Adolphe is a European work; not intrinsically a very great one, nor even a conspicuously interesting one; but it is in a peculiar degree symptomatic of its time. Now, in editing it with the needs of the English student in view, an editor would naturally put this 'European' aspect of the book in the foreground; would be disposed to treat it less as a particular French work by a particular French author than as a contribution to and an illustration of a literary movement which also had its echo in England. Moreover, there are obviously quite special reasons in the English relations of the book which justify us in wanting to see it in an English framework.

6

With regard to the Introduction, Professor Rudler's discussion of the sources personnelles' seems to give undue weight to the subjectivity of Constant's story. I am inclined to take Constant's disclaimer of portraiture and autobiography more at its face value than Professor Rudler. If the bare bones of personal impressions and experiences peep through, is it not rather due to the author's lack of artistic power to achieve his purpose? Ellénore, the heroine of the novel, is, M. Rudler says, a composite picture of four or five different women; but without being unduly sceptical, one might say that Ellénore is too conventionally conceived, too much of the literary' heroine of a sentimental age, to be a portrait of anybody. Moreover, Constant was not a big enough artist to coalesce into one creation the impressions of five different realities, and if he had been a big enough artist, well, he would not have done it! One of the most valuable aspects of M. Rudler's references to the literature of the time and Constant's literary sources is that it makes the indebtedness of the character of Ellénore to that literature apparent.

To these literary sources I would add one that M. Rudler appears to have overlooked. I refer to a peculiarly interesting English 'Wertheriade' -my colleague Professor Priebsch has given me the opportunity of reading it at leisure-the anonymous story of Eleonora1. The significance of this novel is that it illustrates that shifting of the centre of gravity of the original Werther theme from the hero to the heroine-a process which meant much for France, and in the development of which Adolphe itself represents a stage. Eleonora is an unassuming sentimental story in letters, which the author, or probably authoress, has had some difficulty in padding out with an irrelevant episode, into two little volumes. Like Constant's heroine, the English Eleonora stands between two lovers, a Count Ponthin (Constant's Comte de P (?), but Eleonora being English is not his mistress) and Werther, to whom we are first introduced as the lover of her sister Julia. Julia dies, and the passion of Eleonora and Werther comes to a climax, only to end in misunderstandings, disillusionment and the cooling-off and flight of Werther. Eleonora, like Ellénore, is a heroine who wears the tragic halo of desertion.

Without making too much of these parallels, it seems to me they are not entirely accidental; Constant may have remembered the English

1 Eleonora: from the Sorrows of Werter. A Tale. London, 1785 (two editions).

M. L. R. XV.

22

story, extracts of which also appeared in French1, when he planned his own. There would appear to be no points of contact in matters of detail. Constant's heroine is, however, not called Eléonora, but Ellénore. This, again, points to an English source. In 1796 William Taylor of Norwich published in the Monthly Magazine his famous translation of Bürger's ballad, Lenore. Here, it is true, the name is Eleonora, but in the same year he reissued the poem as a separate publication; and in the revised issue he changed the name to Ellenore?. This is, no doubt, where Constant found it. But neither this source nor the English novel explains why Constant made his heroine a Pole or provides any other hint for the setting of the French story.

On Professor Rudler's notes I have only two criticisms to offer. In the very first note of all, that on the words 'on franchit comme Arsène la cercle magique...' the editor says: 'je ne sais rien d'Arsène.' Arsène is Voltaire's La Bégueule; or possibly Constant was thinking of the popular opera on Voltaire's poem by Favart, La belle Arsène, produced in the early seventies of the eighteenth century. The Italian place-names in Constant's introductory Avis' (see note to p. xx, 3 ff.) present no difficulty. The river Noto, the town of Cerenzia near it and at some distance from the sea, and due east of Cerenzia, almost on the coast, Strongoli will all be found on any large-scale map of Italy.

The following corrections in and additions to the Bibliography might be noted for a second edition: No. 6: Read Adolfo,' desconocido,' 'publicada.' No. 7: Constant surely wrote Wallstein,' which has the advantage of being a little more correct than Schiller's Wallenstein.' No. 8: Read 'Sauerländer.' After No. 13 insert under 1857 a 'Réédition Charpentier.' No. 22: the Hungarian title needs revision. No. 31: Read 'Hendel.' After No. 46 insert Adolphe, edited with Introduction, Notes and Vocabulary by W. M. Dey, New York, Oxford Univ. Press, 1918; and Adolf, übertragen von Elisabeth Schellenberg, Insel-Bücherei, No. 284, Leipzig, 1919. I have also a note of a Danish translation of 1826 and a Dutch one of 1911. F. Gribble's essay cited as No. 56 is hardly important enough; certainly not as important as Brandes' chapter on Adolphe in his Main Currents of European Literature, which is not included.

LONDON.

J. G. ROBERTSON.

1 Extraits d'Eléonore, autre ouvrage anglais, contenant les premiers aventures de Werther, appended to the translation of Lettres de Charlotte pendant sa liaison avec Werther, Londres, 1787.

2 In this form it is also printed in the Historic Survey of German Poetry, London, 1830, ii, pp. 40 ff. Cp. J. W. Robbards, Life of William Taylor of Norwich, London, 1843, i, p. 101.

ATTILIO LEVI, Le palatali piemontesi (Piccola biblioteca di scienze moderne, No. 248). Turin: Bocca. 1918. 8vo. xxii +279 pp. 6 L.

Mr Levi's book is both pleasing and baffling: pleasing because of an attempt to appeal to a wider circle of readers by explaining technical expressions and avoiding excessive dryness; baffling because it contains much more than is promised by the title, but does not provide its readers with that substantial fare they might feel justified in expecting.

Apart from a clear and unassuming introduction, occasional explanatory notes at the beginning of each section, and a few words of conclusion, the book consists of a list of 534 Piedmontese words in which there are palatal consonants. Mr Levi shows that such consonants are a natural development in Piedmontese from Latin cl- gl-, or from groups cons. + cl, cons. + gl (ċamé< clamare; jaira < glarea; kuvérc<cooperculum; sangút = singultus), or derived, when no external causes have intervened, from infantile talk and onomatopeia. Words containing palatals of different derivations, such as endings which are borrowed from neighbouring dialects, or from words having an analogous origin or analogous meanings, but belonging to the ordinary Italian vocabulary, are grouped together. In a second section are enumerated those words which, besides containing a palatal consonant, have been borrowed by Piedmontese from the French, from other Italian dialects or from the language of the learned. Each of the sections is divided into several subsections, not a few of which are further divided.

Merely by looking through the table of contents one sees the redundancies and deficiencies of the book. The student who hopes to find in it a scientific study of the palatals in Piedmontese will be disappointed; as Mr Levi has avoided to draw even quite general inferences or definitely to tabulate his results. In point of fact, a good deal of space has been apportioned to the etymology of the words examined, a matter on which Mr Levi has some useful information.

Piedmontese, Mr Levi explains, is generally understood to mean the dialect spoken in Turin, a dialect on which a considerable influence has been exerted by French domination in Piedmont, long political association with regions, like Savoy, in which French is spoken, the Piedmontese habit of migrating temporarily to France, especially southern France, a habit which was and is still frequent among the working classes, and finally by the continuous contact with neighbouring regions in which Lombard or Genoese dialects are used.

Mr Levi has evidently bestowed much labour on his book, but he seems to have been so much carried away by the interest he takes in the study of Piedmontese words, that he has been led into combining a phonetic and linguistic survey with notes on etymology. We are indebted to him for a good deal of valuable information, but our gain would have been greater if the book had been planned with more regard to customary method.

OXFORD.

C. FOLIGNO.

Kampf und Krieg im deutschen Drama von Gottsched bis Kleist. Zur Form- und Sachgeschichte der dramatischen Dichtung. Von MAX SCHERRER. Zürich: Rascher und Comp. 1919. 8vo. 428 pp. 6 M.

The scope and purpose of Dr Scherrer's book may be seen from the following quotations, the one from his Introduction, the other from the brief summary of Ergebnisse': 'Die folgende Untersuchung unternimmt es,...das dramatische Reich zu mustern und versucht, aus der wechselnden Verfassung der dramatischen Heere und der dramatischen Kriegführung Einblicke in den Wandel der dramatischen Form zu gewinnen.' Die Einzelforschung hat sich höhere Ziele zu setzen als nur die Durchackerung einer bestimmten Materialmasse. Sie darf von ihren Gegenständen nicht lassen, bis sie ihnen jene Einsichten in den Gang der Dinge im ganzen abgewonnen hat, die sich der treuen Auffas sung planvoll begrenzter Phänomene am sichersten zu erschliessen scheinen. Hier sollte in der Darstellung von Kampf und Krieg ein Kapitel dramatischer Geschichte durchschritten werden und die Sonderfrage zum Okular für scharfe Betrachtung ihres allgemeinen Laufes dienen.' It may be added that 'Kampf und Krieg' is a formula used by the author to cover all types of physical combat (whether actually represented on the stage or imagined as occurring behind the scenes) from a frustrated duel or an unresisted arrest to large-scale battle or the storming of a fortress; so that in spite of the restricted scope of the investigation, there is a very large mass of material to be dealt with.

Dr Scherrer has carried out his investigation not only conscientiously but with evident zest; and his book contains much that is valuable, suggestive, and even stimulating. What he has, unfortunately, failed to do, is to present his results in a form that does him justice. His style tends to be affected, and is often unnecessarily involved; and such readableness as the book would have retained, in spite of these failings, is further marred by the necessity of constant reference to foot-notes, and an irritating tendency to repetition arising from the general arrangement. This arrangement is, no doubt, largely due to the fact that the book has grown out of a doctoral thesis which itself forms the first of the four sections into which the book is divided: (i) Von der französischen Form zum nationalen Schlachtfestspiel (i.e., from Gottsched to Klopstock); (ii) Shakespeare und das Kampfstück des Sturm und Drangs; (iii) Die Verfestigung der Form; Stildrama, Kampftheatralik und Theatralsatire (the least homogeneous of the four parts, dealing as it does with Klinger's maturity, Goethe's classical period, the later Ritterstücke,' Kotzebue, the theatre version of Götz von Berlichingen, and Tieck); and (iv) Das deutsche Kriegsdrama in seiner Blüte (Schiller's classical period, Heinrich von Kleist, and, strangely enough, the second part of Faust).

In spite of its faults Dr Scherrer's book deserves to be recommended. He shows a thorough knowledge of his subject and the critical literature bearing on it, and ability to discriminate between what is superficial and