cause of the Revolution and France against a league of sworn enemies is built upon a sturdy foundation, even though it sometimes rises to extravagant heights. Mr. Guérard has been guilty of enlarging upon this Legend, the creation of neither simple nor childish though over-enthusiastic Napoleonists, and of contradicting it by dwarfing the true Napoleon.

The greater part of the Reflections, however, is less concerned with the Legend itself than with its origin and rise. Here the author deals intimately with French literature of the nineteenth century. He finds Romanticism "not guilty" of the Legend, even though the younger Romantics veered toward Napoleonism about 1830. The creation of the Legend was the work of Napoleon himself, whose Mémoires sought to justify his career; of Louis Philippe, who craved a vicarious glory from the apotheosis of the Emperor; of Béranger, laureate of militant chauvinism in an era of bourgeois peace; of Thiers, defeated statesman turned student of victory; of Hugo, younger Romanticist who beheld a mediæval Charlemagne in an all too modern Napoleon; and of a host of lesser Napoleonists, such as Stendhal, Balzac, and Dumas. The Legend declined with its reincarnation in Napoleon III, but was renewed in the eighties by the flood of memoirs that then found a market; by Taine, whose bitterness against Napoleon the condottiere was equalled only by his admiration of Napoleon the executive; and by Masson, Vandal and Houssaye, whose respective investigations on their subjects were second only to those of Thiers.

And still the Legend and the counter-Legend of the spirit of Napoleon continue. Meanwhile the revelations of historians stalk the imperial ghost and the real Napoleon becomes better known to us every day.

The University of Louisville.

LOUIS R. GOTTSCHALK.

GREEK LIFE AND THOUGHT: A PORTRAYAL OF GREEK CIVILIZATION. By La Rue Van Hook. New York: Columbia University Press. 1923. Pp. xiv, 329.

This book will prove useful, for it has condensed much information gleaned from the larger and less generally accessible

works of reference and from many special articles on Greek life, literature, art, history and the like. But it is also a 'popular account', and this produces a symmetry; for it would be practically impossible to put into one volume anything that might measure up to the implication of the title. To carp at a book for its brevity is far from condemning it. On the contrary, it seems that this portrayal of Athenian life and literature will meet the ends for which it has been designed. Of especial interest are the passages in the book in which the author touches on some debated questions, such as the unity of Homer, the estimation of work at Athens, the treatment of slaves, and the origin of tragedy.

J. B. E.

ROMAN HOME Life and ReliGION. By H. L. Rogers and T. R. Harley New York: Oxford University Press. 1923. Pp. xiii, 243.

Teachers of Latin have long felt the need of a book containing passages that set forth the home life and the religion of the common people of ancient Italy. So far as his Latin reading is concerned, the student's only source of information. on these subjects has been the fortuitous and incomplete references contained in prescribed authors, and it is notorious that these relate almost always to the Roman's public life and to the official state religion. One has little reason to wonder that the average undergraduate regards the fellow-citizen of Cicero and Cæsar as an abnormal being entirely inexperienced in ordinary human relations and attachments and limited in his religious life to faith in such grotesqueries as prodigies and the eating of the sacred chickens. With this new Oxford book available there is no excuse for ignorance of the intimacies of the Roman hearth and of the deeper emotions of the Roman soul. The fact that many of the selections are translated wholly or in part not only bridges many difficulties, but also enables the reader to gain a broader and clearer vision of the subjects to which the book is devoted.

That so timely a book should be marred by a serious fault is regrettable. While the selections are beyond cavil, the translations are, generally speaking, unpleasing. The style of the

prose is awkward and lacking in directness and the poetry is without rhythm and grace. Candidly, it will be very difficult to induce the average American student to read that kind of verbiage. Nevertheless, teachers can make the book useful for their classes by modifying the translations or even, in certain cases, making entirely new translations. W. S. F.

LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF ROMAN RELIGION. BY W. R. Halliday. Liverpool: The University Press; Boston: Small, Maynard & Company. 1923. Pp. 182.

This is a brief, comprehensive account of the history of Roman religion to the death of Augustus. Its plan is indicated by the contents: Lecture I, Introductory; II, The Religion of the Household; III, The Religion of the Farm; IV, The Religion of the State; V, The Religion of Numa and Its Objects of Worship; VI, From the Etruscan Monarchy to the Second Punic War; VII, The Last Century of the Republic; VIII, The Augustan Revival. Although the author calls it a summary and disclaims all aim of making any original contributions to knowledge, his interpretation is of great value; for he has selected and organized in a manner that appeals to all who may be interested in Greek and Roman civilization. This appeal might well go out to a wider circle; for in addition to the few misconceptions with regard to ancient religion among readers of culture to-day which may be corrected by reading these lectures, there are other misconceptions upon which such lectures have a natural claim. Ancient religion and modern folklore are not such distant cousins, after all, and the amateur who wishes to pursue such matters further can do so by following up the references here cited. Parallels between antiquity and the modern world are only too easy to draw, and parallels between the United States. and Rome have been pointed out before now. If the old religion in which the Romans once had trusted with full faith faded and underwent metamorphoses, what is that but the common experience of any age? Sentences like the following stimulate this concern in parallels: "The changed social conditions of the urban poor worked powerfully in the same direction to undermine be

lief in the old religion." Novelists and more serious writers on the problems of American society might discover food for meditation in this paragraph:

The disappearance of family discipline and the sense of family unity both at the top and at the bottom of the social scale abetted the growth of individualism, which was an inevitable product of the development of a more complex civilization. In the upper classes the emancipation of women was a feature of the age, the attendant extravagances of which were accentuated by the suddenness of its accomplishment. This growth of individualism is reflected in the sepulchral inscriptions. For the first time in the first century B.C. a belief in personal immortality is implied by reference to the Manes of an individual and the Laudatio Turiae concludes: "I pray that thy divine Manes (di Manes tui) may keep thee in peace and watch over thee." (p. 151).

That same Laudatio Turiae was founded on fact; and it unfolds a story of adventure and fidelity so moving that one hardly understands why it has not yet been worthily introduced into modern literature.

Wells College.

J. B. EDWARDS.

THE ROVER A STORY OF NAPOLEONIC TIMES. By Joseph Conrad. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company. 1923. Pp. 286.

Joseph Conrad's death leaves but one solitary figure in that unusual English-writing trio of whom one was Polish and one American in origin, and one intensely English in environment, soil-sympathy and folk-sympathy, and all of whom achieved, although how differently, real greatness as novelists: Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Henry James. It was in some ways inevitable that the last two should have formed a real personal friendship, while of Mr. Hardy's work Conrad once expressed to the reviewer enthusiastic admiration. "But," he added, “I find that I do not need Mr. Hardy's novels for myself."

No. The man who could write in The Rover of "that momentary self-forgetfulness which is called gaiety" was in no need of the Hardy astringent. The time-spirit moves here and in The Rescue and Under Western Eyes as it has moved in Tess

and The Return of the Native. Both Hardy and Conrad are malomeliorists; that is, they seem regretfully to recognize the dominant element of evil in the world of the past and of the present, yet hope for growth and betterment, to which the very honesty and courage and intelligence of their attitudes point the way.

The Rover has much of the compelling charm of phrase, mysterious truth of atmosphere, and searching disclosure of character-values through fold on fold, that belong to the masterpieces of Conrad. Absorbing as the tale is, however, it fails of first-rateness, as The Arrow of Gold fails. It falters and recovers, is energetically propelled anew, or falls into a sheer drowsiness. Heretofore repressed weaknesses are assailing the now intermittent strength. There are too many cases of negligent repetition in diction, of careless rhyme-collocations, of inconvenient alliterations, of the misuse of shall and will, of noble phrases marred by sudden tritenesses. Here, too (although this is by no means always a weakness), we find rather too frequent examples of Mr. Conrad's old fondness for privatives beginning with im-, in-, il- and ir-. "Immense" and its inflections occur often, and "immobile" and "immobility” oftener, while compacted examples of this tendency may be found in the following passages:

she was aware of a still remaining confusion in her mind, an indefinite weariness like the strain of an imperfect vision trying to discern shifting outlines, floating shapes, incomprehensible signs. (p. 164).

He could not know that Peyrol, unforeseen, unexpected, inexplicable, had given by his mere appearance at Escampobar a moral and even a physical jolt to all her being, that he was to her an immense figure, like a messenger from the unknown entering the solitude of Escampobar; something immensely strong, with inexhaustible power, unaffected by familiarity and remaining invincible. (p. 219).

But what exquisitely fine work in color and flavor appears in such phrasings as these :

there was the sea of the Hyères roadstead with a lumpy indigo swelling still beyond-which was the island of Porquerolles. (p. 6).