men.

ciently conspicuous as a man of culture to be introduced by Bossuet to the great Condé and to be appointed tutor to his son. He did not dabble in literature; he had in some sort the pretensions of a professional man of letters and so he attached himself, at least nominally, to a classical celebrity and published his writings under the authority of Theophrastus. He was a disappointed man in the sense that he moved in a world in which he could not find his proper place, and, far more than La Rochefoucauld, he had developed a profound insight into the complexity of character which obscurely ramifies beneath the conventionalities of society. He was a student, fully equipped with a knowledge of the past, who reacts from the present, and is yet gifted with a remarkable sympathy for human nature, and with its outcome, the faculty of observing Add to these qualities a mastery of French prose more versatile and less laboured than that of La Rochefoucauld or of Bossuet and you have the potentialities for the greatest of essayists at the greatest period of French literature. Yet La Bruyère never realised these possibilities, except as regards his point of view. He does indeed stand apart from the society which he criticises, and he founds his censure partly on a skilfully concealed familiarity with the Latin authors of the Silver Age, and partly on an amazingly unbiassed sense of fitness. Yet he is an essayist neither in form nor in spirit. His character sketches, for the most part, have nothing in common with the Theophrastan method of generalisation, which La Bruyère rather slightingly dismissed as 'description et énumération,' and (whether or no we accept the clefs) they conform to the fashion, though not the spirit, of the salons and become portraits. In succeeding editions, it was these brilliant and malicious studies of individuals, and not the reflections which were augmented. And yet the meditations and comments are the most significant part of his work, though they have not attracted the most attention. The chapter Des ouvrages de l'esprit' proves how well qualified he was to be an essayist. Here he is discussing a subject in which he had toiled lovingly and in which he could counsel and criticise as a master. Many passages in De l'homme' are charged with the constructive wisdom and the conciliating reproval of a clear-sighted and sympathetic moralist. But the main current of his thought is diverted into the channels which society had already formed. The vice of the age was a disproportionate attention to manners and mannerisms. The beau monde was so interested in the superimposed and artificial character developed by the cult of reason and of refinement, that writers and readers alike mistook the poses of society for life. La Bruyère never belonged to this brilliant

class, and he is far from being blinded by its glitter, but he was absorbed by the same curiosity. Though a careful student of Montaigne, he lost touch with his master's method and point of view. He ceased to meditate and to guide others by the discoveries which he had made in his own soul, and instead he cultivated satire and emphasis of phrase. As he admits in his preface, 'Je rends au public ce qu'il m'a prêté.'

But if certain social conditions deprived France of a succession of essayists, it is instructive to note that the same conditions helped her to surpass her neighbours in some kindred genres. The portrait, which may have been imitated from Holland, or copied from the relazioni in which Venetian ambassadors depicted courtiers, was assiduously cultivated at the Luxembourg and became the envy of Europe. This art is just sufficiently different from English characterwritings to illustrate the divergence of the two civilisations. The portrait consists in a description of the physiognomy, complexion, figure, appearance, and bearing of some individual, then of his intellect and disposition. In such romances as Le Grand Cyrus and Clélie, in the collection formed under the auspices of Mlle de Montpensier, and in Sorel's Description de l'isle de Portraiture, it established the standard of refinement and breeding for all countries which claimed to have emerged from the 'barbarism' of former ages. For the same reason the taste for mémoires, which had flourished in the sixteenth century, increased enormously in the seventeenth and produced in the hands of Sully, Rohan, Richelieu, Tallemant des Réaux, Bassompierre, Mme de la Motteville, Mlle de Montpensier, La Rochefoucauld, Villars and Bussy-Rabutin a literary art of great importance, which studied motives, manners and personalities. The peculiar influence of this age is most unmistakeably demonstrated in its effect on so informal and fugitive a kind of composition as letter-writing. As early as the correspondence of Balzac and of Voiture, we realise that the necessity for social intercourse was beginning to call into existence the graces and refinement of epistolary style. But with Bussy, Saint-Évremond, Mmes de Sévigné, de la Fayette, de Maintenon, de Montausier, de Motteville, de Coulanges, de Scudéry, d'Aligre de Boislandry, conversations committed to paper have become classics. And if these recueils have a felicity of phrase and a delicacy of sentiment which are not found in English or German letters till the latter half of the eighteenth century, it is due to the influence of women who reigned in the salons and almost reigned at Versailles.

According to the foregoing review, certain social and literary con

ditions gave Montaigne the opportunity and the impulse to create the essay, but before the type could take root in the intellectual life of the country, the conditions changed. The most important influence was that of the salons. Succeeding humanists and humourists adapted themselves to the new requirements so successfully that their books became models to their descendants. When Boileau discredited 'la préciosité' and established the ideal of classicism, he only strengthened their influence by substituting the cult of form for the cult of subtlety and of emphasis. Thus the old art of essay-writing was definitely supplanted. When viewed by itself, the decay of this genre awakes no general interest and the study of its causes can be left to specialists in French literature. Its wider significance appears only by comparison with English literature. When the circumstances which eliminated the French essay are compared with those that fostered its British counterpart, the histories of both types acquire a new meaning, and the student has his eyes opened to questions which generally escape notice. His view of literature will not lose in a sense of academic values, but it will become more philosophical and more in touch with life. The present article was written with the intention of attempting some such comparison. As editorial exigencies have rendered it necessary to divide the contribution into two parts, the other half will have to await the next number.

(To be concluded.)

LONDON.

H. V. ROUTH.

LA CHANÇUN DE RAINOART.

MATERIAL FOR A CRITICAL EDITION.

I. TEXTUAL CRITICISM.

EVER since 1903, when Mr G. Dunn brought out anonymously at the Chiswick Press the editio princeps, La Chançun de Willame has been the subject of lively controversies. At first, even the authenticity of the poem was doubted, and the mystery in which Mr Dunn, the owner, chose to shroud the newly discovered epic lent colour to the insinuations of those who suspected some clever mystification or supercherie littéraire in the style of Macpherson'. In the meantime, however, Paul Meyer had convinced himself of the genuineness of the find, and upon his evidence La Chancun de Willame was definitely admitted into the epic literature of ancient France. But critics were by no means agreed as to its intrinsic or relative merits. From enthusiastic admiration to cold disdain, the whole gamut was run through by the numerous scholars who commented upon the poem. Furthermore, those who, like Weeks* and Rechnitz3, investigated the problem more closely came to the conclusion that the text, as preserved in the unique MS., was not homogeneous, but consisted of at least two distinct sections which were of different origin and showed traces of different dialects. Acting upon these suggestions, Suchier subjected the work to a careful examination, and gave a critical edition of the first section (vv. 1-1982), which he called La Chançun de Guillelme, whilst the remaining portion (vv. 19833556) he referred to as La Chançun de Rainoart, intending, presumably,

1 Cf. E. Tron, Trouvaille ou pastiche? Doutes exprimés au sujet de la Chançun de Willame, Bari, 1909; and J. Archer's interesting article in Revue des Langues romanes, 1912, pp. 60 sq.

2 Romania, xxxп (1903), pp. 597 sq.

3 The appreciations have been conveniently summarized by M. Wilmotte, in Romania, XLIV (1915), pp. 55 sq. See also J. Schuwerack, Charakteristik der Personen in der altf. Chancun de Guillelme (Romanische Arbeiten, C. Voretzsch), Halle, 1913.

4 R. Weeks in Mod. Philology, ш, No. 2 (1905), pp. 233 sq.

5 F. Rechnitz, Prolegomena und erster Teil einer kritischen Ausgabe der Chançon de Guillelme, Bonn, 1909.

It should be noted that v. 1982 in Miss Tyler's edition corresponds to v. 1979 in the editio princeps, and to v. 1983 in Suchier's edition.

7 H. Suchier, La Changun de Guillelme, französisches Volksepos des XI. Jahrh. (Bibliotheca Normannica), Halle, 1911.

to edit it on a future occasion. This intention he never realised, and the latter poem remained accessible only in the imperfect edition of the Chiswick Press, and the reprints which Baist gave of it in 1904 and 1908, under the title of L'Archanz. Considering its importance. for the study of the Cycle of William of Orange' and the history of epic poetry generally, the need of a critical edition has long been felt. An American scholar, Miss E. S. Tyler1, has recently attempted, in some measure at least, to supply this need. After carefully collating the manuscript and removing many blunders committed by the first editor, she published once more the poem in its entirety, i.e. La Chançun de Guillelme and La Chançun de Rainoart, adopting for the whole the title which actually appears in the manuscript, viz., La Chancun de Willame. The chief merit of this new edition is to provide a trustworthy transcription of the manuscript, and a reliable basis for further investigations. For this Romance scholars will be grateful, even though they may feel disappointed with some of Miss Tyler's attempts at textual criticism. The extant version is the work of a careless scribe, and numerous corrections are necessary to restore the metre and the sense. For the first section (vv. 1-1982) the task of correcting the manuscript was comparatively easy, and the last editor has adopted, on the whole, the emendations of Suchier (without acknowledgment). In the second part-for which we retain the convenient title of Chancun de Rainoart, proposed by Suchier-she had to walk by her own lights, and she has not been nearly so successful. Her punctuation is apt to be very disconcerting, and as a result, the meaning of several passages has been quite obscured. The changes which she has made in the text are often satisfactory, but many lines could, in my opinion, be further improved, whilst in some cases the manuscript reading has been altered for the worse.

Considering the importance of the poem, and the little attention which has so far been paid to the critical study of the text, I trust it will not be unprofitable to treat the matter in detail.

[N.B. The numbers of the lines are those of Miss Tyler's edition. Her emendations are quoted in brackets and introduced by T.]

1 La Chancun de Willame, an Edition of the unique MS. of the Poem, with Vocabulary and a Table of Proper Nouns, edited by Elizabeth Stearns Tyler (Oxford French Series by American Scholars), New York, 1919.

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2 In the article referred to above, Wilmotte also favours the retention of the form Willame' in preference to Guillelme,' suggested by Rechnitz and Suchier; but he appears to have overlooked the fact that the word, when at the end of the verse, invariably shows an e assonance; cf. laisses v, xv, xix, etc.