very nature, far more susceptible to abuse and perversion than French or, indeed, any other tongue. That it should have no fixed, recognized and authoritative standard, of orthography, etymology, syntax, and definition, is a deplorable anomaly. England has, indeed, the great Oxford Dictionary, which is now practically complete. But it, fine as it is, fails hopelessly to equal the service of the French Academy, in three major respects. One is, that it is exclusively English, and is not acceptable in the other half of the English-speaking world, where material differences in linguistic usage have long been established. Another is that even in England it has no official authority, but may be disregarded by anyone at will without the incurrence of any reproach. The third and perhaps most important is that it offers no continuing, current and incessant authority and guide for the necessary additions which are being made to the language. Work on it was begun, alphabetically, in 1879. In the forty-three years since hundreds, perhaps thousands, of new words have been coined, or new uses have been given to old words, to serve the needs of new inventions and the progress of human thought and knowledge. It is almost certain that many of these came too late for inclusion in alphabetical order in the dictionary, and are not to be found in it; while of course the new words and uses which will be made this year and the next and the next will lack even the shadow of its authority. What is needed, what we need in this country, not only for the sake of literature but also for the convenience, utility and efficiency of business correspondence and social speech, is a commanding authority, constantly at work, to prescribe the making of new words and new uses and the changes which are often necessary in a living, growing language, so as to assure uniformity of usage and unmistakable accuracy of expression. We have a Government Board of Geographic Names, which has done much good work. It ought to be possible to create an academic board of rank so commanding that it would be able to do a similar work for the whole language.

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED

SOME MODERN FRENCH WRITERS. By G. Turquet-Milnes. New York: Robert M. McBride & Company.

In estimating the various writers (some of them little known, except by name, to American readers) that Mr. Turquet-Milnes has presented for our consideration, it is obviously advantageous to adhere to some general point of view. This point of view the author has found in Bergsonism; the influence of Bergson is, as his subtitle indicates, the key which he uses to open up the significance of writers as diverse as Anatole France and Paul Claudel.

Philosophy makes hard criticism; it is not easy to be philosophically profound and critically illuminating at the same time. In this case, the writer labors under the special difficulty that Bergsonism is at once a metaphysics as subtle and as logical as Hegel's and a popular philosophy, a more or less pervasive influence, like Rousseauism or Christian Science. The reader has to know precisely what Bergson means-has to grasp the tenuous distinction between time and pure duration, for example;-but then he has to trace the effect of the Bergsonian doctrines, as these are grasped, or partially grasped, by various minds, filtered through several temperaments, and worked over into diverse literary forms. Part of the time, one is trying to appreciate Jules Romains or Jean Moréas in the light of contemporary ideas, much as one might essay to understand Swift in the light of eighteenth-century thinking; but part of the time, also, one finds oneself constrained to look upon poets or novelists of delicate genius as more or less self-conscious expositors of the Bergsonian views and to criticize them as disciples of Bergson.

In dealing with this more or less unavoidable difficulty, the author has been reasonably successful. He succeeds in being fairly comprehensive and occasionally trenchant. He has helped to explain Bergson, and he has said some good things about the other writers of whom he treats. On the whole, however, he has given us a "popular," though sufficiently learned, setting forth of his theme-a discourse plausible and stimulating, but lacking the clearness which thorough-going criticism possesses. There would seem to be, at times, a little too much bias in favor of what may be called the fashionable philosophical trend. "This man is a Bergsonist," the author seems to say; "therefore he stands at or near the front of the modern movement; he is significant; he is to be accepted." This is not to say that Mr. Turquet-Milnes fails to comment upon personal traits, or to bring forward, now and then, certain distinctive literary qualities.

What one understands by it all is that modern French literature is domi

nated by a tendency partly mystical (or at least anti-intellectual and opposed to the exclusive dominance of science), and partly pragmatic. This is, of course, a condition common to most western nations to-day. One can approach the study of it through the study of Bergson or Maeterlinck (the mystical approach), or through the study of William James (the practical approach). If one is familiar with this general movement, all that he needs to do, in order to obtain a broad understanding of the French literary outlook, is to reckon with the French tendency to cultism.

Obviously, the Bergsonist or Pragmatic point of view does not mean attachment to a rigid philosophic system, but rather release of temperament—temperament backed by skepticism, fortified by faith. Thus there arises the greatest facility in the expression of individual beliefs and in the formation of cults-a process as characteristic of French literature as of French politics. Radical empiricism, in Clemenceau, may work into a bitter cynicism; skepticism in Anatole France may be easily united with a refined and restrained Hellenism; creative evolution may without a pang give birth to the traditionalism of Barrès or to the Unanimisme of Jules Romains.

verse.

Perhaps modern thought-and modern French thought, in particular-is right in its mistrust of reason as man's chief organ of adaptation to the UniIt cannot be denied, however, that reliance upon intuition gives rise to some strange and dreamlike vagaries. On the whole, one prefers the French vagaries. To the Anglo-Saxon mind, the French, if they seem less mature than we are in their abounding faith in a point of view, seem to manifest a maturity greater than ours in the subtle logic, in the unblinking knowledge of life, with which they draw out its particular implications.

ROMAIN ROLLAND. By Stefan Zweig. Translated from the original manuscript by Eden and Cedar Paul. New York: Thomas Seltzer.

Any reasonably adequate book about Romain Rolland could hardly fail to be interesting, and the point of view of a fervent apostle is not, of course, to be excluded. It cannot be said, however, that the recent volume by Stefan Zweig is of much value either as criticism or as literary biography. It does succeed in adumbrating the fact that Rolland is a great human being, a man whose soul is more capacious than the souls of most of us. Rolland, says the author, with quite pardonable exaggeration, is "the voice of Europe in the season of its most poignant agony. He has become the conscience of the world." Of course, rhetorical phrases like this are susceptible of so many meanings that it would be unfair to submit them to definite criticism; but one may suggest that if any one may claim to have been (or to have expressed) "the conscience of the world," that man is Cardinal Mercier rather than the romantic Rolland.

Further, the author brings out the resemblance to Tolstoi and the direct influence of the latter upon Rolland. It is just to say that both these men

were geniuses of the late moral and literary type and that both came somewhat before their time, and were misunderstood by their contemporaries. It is no more than just, moreover, on the part of Stefan Zweig, to write: "Unthinkable would be a Rolland who did not draw fresh faith from all experience, however painful; unthinkable one who failed in his own suffering to be mindful of the sufferings of others." Breadth of intellect, breadth and depth of feeling to match the intellectual capacity, ruthlessness toward these too-human susceptibilities and propensities which one shares with others, profound sadness linked with lofty hope these traits seem characteristic of that type of "world-genius" which Tolstoi possessed and which Ibsen and Nietzsche may claim to share. The truth is that we scarcely know how to estimate these men; the phenomenon is too recent.

In the book under consideration, there is no attempt at estimate. The discourse is simply eulogy cast in an epic form. Mr. Zweig is content to look upon Rolland as a force of nature, and to describe his victory and his influence as inevitable and foreordained. In his enthusiasm, the author writes with a vagueness and with a philosophical naïveté that remind one of an old-time romanticist rather than an apostle of the Bergsonism, or the newer mysticism, with which Romain Rolland's ideas may be more or less affiliated. The saying that "Art has many forms, but the highest form is always that which is most intimately akin to nature in its laws and its manifestations," is a sweeping generalization, born of a priori reasoning, and reminiscent of the time when Taine was dictator.

One cannot help feeling that a propagandist motive has a good deal to do with the spirit of this book. Rolland was misunderstood and bitterly attacked; he therefore needs an eloquent defender. In America, however, where Rolland is regarded rather as a novelist than as a pacifist, we should be grateful for less apology and more criticism.

THE PLEASURES OF IGNORANCE. By Robert Lynd. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Mr. Lynd's essays are entitled to be called by the old term, jeus d'esprit, and they are among the few truly playful writings of the day. Despite a certain obviousness in the choice of themes-a trait that is inherent in the playful mood-they are thoroughly captivating. And this is a rare quality. Many there are who write in the manner of the light essayist, but practically none of them are light essayists. Mr. Chesterton seizes us by the ear and roars terribly amusing phrases at us. Professor Leacock, before he eschewed humor, could not resist the temptation to be funny, and thus seldom succeeded in being politely amusing, as the light essay demands. Mr. Crothers has a lively yet solemn manner and a commendable unction, but his essays are meditative rather than conversational. Mr. Lynd has really attained success in a somewhat difficult literary form.

As has been said, the themes chosen are not such as to pique the curiosity of the blasés. Others have been before Mr. Lynd in making fun of the almanac maker and professional prophet; others have written about cats; innumerable writers have had their fling at hypocrisy or have produced pleasing commentaries in verse or prose upon the several months. Oliver Wendell Holmes seems to have had more first-hand knowledge of horses and of horse-racing than has Mr. Lynd. But the triter the theme, the oftener other people have written upon it, the better Mr. Lynd appears to write upon it. Obviousness seems to excite his subtlety.

In the blandness of his nonsense, in the slyness of his references to truth, and in the well-bred assurance with which he assumes that there are, after all, generally accepted standards of value, of morals, of common sense, Mr. Lynd practices what is almost a lost art. In his avoidance of anything that smacks of the "Hee-Haw School of Humor" he should be highly acceptable to Mr. James L. Ford. Wit flourishes only when there are standards; humor requires little more than contrasts. One feels complimented by Mr. Lynd's assumption that one has standards-is, indeed, civilized. Above all, he, with great skill and great good taste, maintains the right mood and the correct air without a flawthe mood of pleasantry rather than raillery; the air of the modest, self-appreciative, jesting philosopher.

SELECTED POEMS. By William Butler Yeats. New York: The Macmillan Company.

For full appreciation of Mr. Yeats's poems, the Anglo-Saxon reader really needs an introductory acquaintance with Lady Gregory's Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland. At least, such an acquaintance would be somewhat helpful to the not infrequently sluggish Anglo-Saxon fancy. When one has said this, he has said, perhaps, all that need be said in relation to the fact that Mr. Yeats is an Irishman. One need not even take up the objection raised by Mr. Paul Elmer More to Mr. Yeats and his school-the objection that they are not so much Irish as romantic. On the whole, the fact that Mr. Yeats, being a poet, is an Irishman, may be regarded as secondary, and the fact that he is romantic does not necessarily blast him as a poet or as a literary influence.

After all, what the mind persistently returns to in considering Mr. Yeats's poems is Lady Gregory's Visions and Beliefs-the remarkable thing about which is that the stories related therein are vastly less well authenticated than are the stories collected by the Society for Psychical Research and at the same time infinitely easier to believe. This is because, like some religious dogmas discredited by science, they subtly fit in with and satisfy certain permanent susceptibilities of the human mind: in other words they mean something, are in some sense true. Judged by the same pragmatic test the doings of a poltergeist as recounted in the proceedings of the Society are absolutely

untrue.