LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE.
FRENCH LITERATURE DURING THE LAST HALF- CENTURY. By Pierre de Bacourt and J. W. Cunliffe. (Macmillan. 10s. 6d. not.) Bewildered readers who are uncertain of picking their way among the crowded talents of this period will find a number of paths mapped out for them here. The authors do not pretend to have exhausted their subject, but there are remarkably few important authors of whom they have not something informative to say. The novelists are well repre- sented with separate chapters on eight of them, including, of course, M.M. France, Bourget and Barris. Among the drama- tists Rostand, Brieux and Maeterlinck are treated at length, :though all of them are worn a trifle thin at present. More -space might have been devoted to Francois de Curel and Georges de Porto-Riche. Criticism is represented with least consideration. The remarkable work of Remy de Gourmont is not mentioned, nor the highly readable Lemaitre. The poets are briefly treated, but on the whole with discernment— Verlaine, Mallarme and Rimbaud in particular and several contemporaries—but rather sketchily. 'Misprints are rare for a book so full of names, but on page 271 we notice Ernest Raymond for Raynaud. We were surprised to find Huysmans 'ignored, and to the younger writers of note we would add M.M. Paul Morand and Valery Larbaud. But with these 'reservations in mind the reader will gain a real insight into -contemporary literature from these pages, and the very full bibliographies will provide a great deal of necessary information.
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