La Jeunesse de Charles Nodier: les Philadelphes. Par LÉONCE PINGAUD. Paris: E. Champion. 1919. 8vo. 280 pp. 9 fr. 75.

Everyone is conversant with the kind of title calculated to lead the prospective reader to expect more than the author has to offer; it is comparatively rare for a work-and especially a biography-to cover considerably more ground than that indicated on the cover. Hence we

are agreeably surprised to find that M. Pingaud, far from limiting his purview to Nodier's youth, gives a detailed account of the middle-aged man and even touches upon his last years. Yet the explanation of this is not hard to discover. Was not Nodier one of those fortunate beings whom A. de Vigny would have described as never having seemed other than young1?

The fact that Nodier, considering youth the only age of life worth living, in after years constantly sought refuge from the present by dwelling upon his early recollections only served to make M. Pingaud's task the more complicated, for Nodier's memory is often, as he himself confesses, une causeuse mensongère apostée par son imagination.' Whereas other writers have accepted without question various details to be culled from his semi-autobiographic tales, M. Pingaud has disproved many of these statements by basing his study upon hitherto unpublished documents. The persecuted romantic hero Nodier the Outlaw' no longer exists save as a legendary personage.

The first part of the book deals with the life of Nodier, the second is devoted to determining the historical value of his writings. No reader could remain insensible to the charm of 'ce bon' Nodier as portrayed by his sympathetic biographer-the infant prodigy wearing out' his books (and among them a Montaigne too!) at the age of nine and admitted to an assembly of politicians at the age of twelve, the impetuous youth entangled in various Revolutionary plots, the independent and improvident man of letters, the much-courted librarian of the Arsenal. Among his multifarious interests three ruling passions stand out very prominently-insects, books and academic distinctions: they may well be deemed typical of his scientific, literary and withal intensely human character. Especially interesting are the indications of his favourite authors, since they reveal so clearly a precursor of the Romantic school.

M. Pingaud reminds us that Sainte-Beuve capped his portrait of Nodier by wittily ascribing to him 'le don de l'inexactitude.' In a cursory examination of some of those works which the author would have us believe strictly historical, M. Pingaud points out many discrepancies which bear witness to the great critic's perspicacity. On one point, however, Nodier appears to have been accused wrongly of inaccuracy. In his Souvenirs de la Révolution he says that the public prosecutor, Euloge Schneider, was guillotined on April 1, 1794, and his three accomplices, Edelmann, Jung and Monnet, les jours suivants.' M. Pingaud

1 Journal d'un Poète, 1840.

states (p. 190) that history tells us Schneider met his death on May 31, and the three others on July 17. On what authority is this assertion based? The dates given by the official journal Le Moniteur are April 1 and July 17 respectively1.

Comparatively small space is allotted to the Philadelphians, and although the matter is new, it is questionable whether it is of sufficient importance to have formed the sub-title of the book. We learn that this particular Philadelphia was a secret society founded by Nodier in 1797 and consisted originally of himself and four fellow-students of the École Centrale of Besançon. The members are described as 'brothers united by friendship' for the advancement of virtue: the rules (which are included in the pièces justificatives) distinctly state that no theological or political questions shall be discussed at meetings. From its very nature such a society was not destined to have an eventful history. Later changes were made in the constitution with a view to creating a common moral and political code, and the election of Major Oudet as 'archon' marks the introduction of the military element. By the end of 1803 the society had virtually ceased to exist, and although Philadelphians were to be found in the army right up to 1815, they were unmolested by the police, who expressed themselves satisfied as to their loyalty to the government. Thus M. Pingaud conclusively proves Nodier's Histoire des Sociétés secrètes de l'Armée to be an ingenious hoax, 'une œuvre d'imagination qui semblait une révélation,' so cleverly is truth mingled with fiction.

In addition to being an excellent biography, this scholarly volume forms a valuable contribution to the history of the beginnings of Romanticism in France and throws unexpected side-lights on certain Revolutionary figures connected with Franche-Comté. The material is skilfully handled, the facts presented clearly, the criticism sound, and the book should prove useful alike to students of literature and history. As a work of reference, however, it suffers fatally from the lack of an index. Also, since up to the present it has been found impossible to compile a complete catalogue of Nodier's literary productions, a chronological list of those newspaper articles and other minor writings which M. Pingaud has discovered in the course of his researches would have been very welcome.

LONDON.

F. PAGE.

Epochs of Italian Literature. By CESARE FOLIGNO. 8vo. 94 pp. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1920. 3s.

Cambridge Readings in Italian Literature. Edited by EDWARD BULLOUGH. Cambridge: University Press. 1920. 8vo. xviii+335 pp. 88. net.

here is a familiar sentence of Shelley's denouncing summaries as he moths of just history,' but Professor Foligno, in a small space of 1 For a report of the Tribunal held April 1, see the Moniteur, April 10.

less than a hundred pages, has given us a summary of Italian literary history which is not only of real utility, but even stimulating reading. On broad lines he sketches the growth of Italian literature, in relation with the political conditions of Italy in successive epochs, from the origins of vernacular Italian as a literary language down to the outbreak of the great war. The field is divided into five main periods: the 'Dawn,' the Renaissance,' the Transition to Modern Times' (the period following the later Renaissance being rightly no longer regarded as stagnation or decadence), the Rise of the Nation,' and Modern Italy.' In such a condensed survey, there is an inevitable risk of the individual writers appearing as a mere string of names; but Professor Foligno has skilfully surmounted this difficulty, giving due proportion to the greater figures while indicating the place of the lesser men in the general evolution of the national literature. The account of the earliest period suffers, perhaps, more than the rest from the limited space at the Professor's disposal. A poet, for instance, like Guittone of Árezzo, deserves mention even in the briefest summary, and, in the paragraph on the beginnings of Italian literary prose, we miss any explicit reference to the grammarians or rhetoricians, the exponents of the ars dictandi, whose influence on the vernacular was considerable. The section on Modern Italy' strikes us as admirable. There is an excellent bibliography, which will no doubt be revised and extended in subsequent re-issues. The editions of Lorenzo de' Medici, for instance, have been superseded by Attilio Simioni's two volumes in the Scrittori d'Italia.

Mr Bullough's anthology, conceived on novel lines, aims at presenting a picture of Italian thought in the nineteenth century. It includes selections from almost every branch of Italian literature, with the exception of the theatre, representing more than sixty authors, from Foscolo and Manzoni down to Giovanni Papini and those younger Italian writers of to-day who are, for the most part, almost unknown to English readers. We should have preferred to see the extracts from each author placed together, and the authors themselves arranged in chronological order, rather than the scheme here adopted of grouping beneath such general headings as Dio,' Natura,' 'Italia,' ' Vita,' 'Pensiero'; but it goes without saying that individual taste is the essence of an anthology. The book will admirably fulfil its purpose of giving students a practical guide to modern Italian literature. The editor's introduction to each author is brief and pointed; the extracts are well suited for use in a class; and the form in which the volume has been produced is most attractive.

In his preface, Mr Bullough well insists on the recognition of the uniqueness of Italian, linguistically and culturally,' and the realisation of the unbroken continuity of its spirit which links modern Italy with the Italy of the Middle Ages and the Italy of Rome.' He emphasises the peculiar importance of the dialects of Italy: Her dialects have retained their native vigour not only in speech but in literary expression to an extent unknown elsewhere.' Dialectical literature is represented in this volume by Milanese (Carlo Porta), Venetian (Riccardo Selvatico), Pisan

(Renato Fucini), Romanesco (Augusto Sindici and Cesare Pascarella). It is much to be regretted that it has not been found possible to include examples of Neapolitan and Sicilian, which are of singular interest in themselves, besides being needed for the student of the linguistic problems associated with the beginnings of Italian lyrical poetry.

These two volumes are most welcome evidence of the vitality of the Italian departments at Oxford and Cambridge. They are the kind of publication that gives good promise for the future of Italian studies in England. EDMUND G. GARDNER.

LONDON.

Oergermaansch Handboek. By R. C. BOER. Haarlem H. D. Tjeenk Willing and Zoon. 1918. 8vo. xvii +321 pp.

This work the first of a series of Oudgermaansche Handboeken under the editorship of Professors Boer, Frantzen and te Winkel—is the clearest and most comprehensive survey of Primitive Germanic since the appearance of Streitberg's grammar. From the multiplicity of problems which it discusses, a few may be singled out as indicating the author's independence of view and critical acumen.

Right at the outset the author arrests our attention by his advocacy of a classification of West Germanic into a North Western and South Western group. In subdividing the former he opposes the customary bipartition into Anglo-Frisian on the one hand and Low German-Low Franconian on the other, holding that Frisian occupies an intermediate position between Anglo-Saxon and the Low German-Low Franconian complex, or indeed may be a blend ('mengdialect') made up of Saxon and Franconian ingredients. Thus a closer affinity between Anglo-Saxon and Old Saxon is indicated, and the divergences of the latter are referred to the operation of Franconian influences, which become more pronounced in course of time, drawing continental Saxon ever further from the insular dialects. The term South West Germanic denotes the High German dialects, which are subdivided as heretofore.

Next, the author's treatment of Indogermanic and Germanic musical and dynamic accentuation is worthy of serious attention, in particular his ingenious attempt to account for the apparent anomalies of the laws governing syncope (e.g. occurrence after a long syllable in Primitive Germanic, but after a short syllable in M.H.G.) with the aid of his 'spreekmaat' theory, more fully enunciated in his article on 'Syncope en Consonanten-geminatie' in the Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsche Taalen Letterkunde, XXXVII, pp. 161 ff. Musical accent plays an important part in the explanations of Verner's law offered on pp. 123-130. Whereas it has been customary to account for the voicing of the resultant Germanic spirants by postulating the absence of a main dynamic stress in the syllable immediately preceding the Indogermanic voiceless stops, Boer prefers to emphasise the presence of a high musical

accent in the following syllable, which accent entails a preparatory tension (spanning') of the vocal chords. Evidence is adduced to show that the transference of the dynamic stress to the root syllable in Germanic was not always and necessarily accompanied by a corresponding transference of the high musical tone. The coöperation of root-stress with a varying musical accent is also called in to elucidate the phenomena of the first sound-shift in general (p. 136), but for detailed discussion the reader is referred to the author's articles in Neophilologus, 1, pp. 103 ff., and II, pp. 110 ff. A definite stand is made against all theories based upon 'karaktereigenschappen van het oervolk or assumed historical occurrences (p. 137). If by the latter is meant the theory especially associated with Feist, the judgment is perhaps too summary in view of the 'non liquet' expressed by Braune in a footnote in Paul und Braunes Beiträge, XXXVI, p. 5641.

The sections dealing with Ablaut or 'klankwisseling' (a term now substituted for the misleading mutatie') are closely reasoned and cautiously worded. Objection is taken to Streitberg's and Michel's derivation of the 'Dehnstufe' in *gebum from a hypothetical *gegbum, the author preferring to consider *gebum as displacing *gbum, the 'stretching 'being due to the analogy of *et-etum (p. 99). Other points of special interest are the treatment of the long diphthong series (pp. 99-102) and a well-supported attempt to explain the origin of Germ. 2 in the reduplicating verbs (pp. 115 f.).

In connection with the Indogermanic gutturals' a clear distinction is drawn between k" and ku (pp. 139 f.), and between gh and ghu (p. 142). The use of the labial in the Latin lupus and Germanic wulfaz, etc. side by side with back consonants in other languages is referred to the presence of double forms in Indogermanic (p. 144). The doubling of i and u in Primitive Germanic (represented in Gothic by ddj and ggw, in Norse by ggj and ggv respectively) is stated to be due to rhythmical factors (cf. Tijdschrift, loc. cit., pp. 58 ff.). Rhythm serves also to elucidate the differences of long and short syllabled ia and jo stems.

Much comment might be made on the accidence (pp. 171-274), especially on those portions in which the author develops his views concerning the origin of the Germanic comparative forms (pp. 206-208) and of the weak preterites (opposition to Kluge's theory of second person plural, p. 264, footnote), but enough has been stated to show the importance of Boer's work to all comparative philologists. Further volumes in this series will be eagerly welcomed.

LIVERPOOL.

W. E. COLLINSON.

1 Certain weaknesses of Feist's arguments have, however, been indicated by Frantzen and Boer in the second Neophilologus article (1, pp. 110 ff.), which was called forth by a combative article by Feist in Neophilologus, 11, pp. 20 ff.