Petrarch by Charles Dennis Fisher; Four Essays by Murray Anthony PotterReview by: H. OelsnerThe Modern Language Review, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Apr., 1919), pp. 225-227Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4623473 .

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Reviews 225

the book in critical passages, and leaves his hearers wanting to know the beginning of the story.

The loyal Pantagruelist will not require from his author any too exact system or proportion: but does not Mr Smith sometimes wander too far into the formless land ? It really does seem superfluous to begin a description of the language of Rabelais with the following alarum:

'The decadence of the pure Latinity observable in the writers of the so-called silver age, as instanced in Juvenal, Persius, Tacitus and others, and its further decline in Ausonius, Sidonius Apollinaris, Apuleius, Marcianus Capella and others of the fourth and fifth centuries is a matter of common knowledge.' It is hard to get over this; after all it turns out to be only a preparation for the announcement of the birth of French: 'the language of the troubadours in their chansons de gestes.' A sadder sentence casts a gloom over the opening of Mr Smith's enquiry (p. 3): 'Fired by the recently developed Humanism, he adopted all too easily the belief so much fostered by Horace that no one who was a water-drinker, who was not devoted to the inspiration from Bacchic enthusiasm, could achieve the distinctive title of poet.' Does Mr Smith mean that his author's worship of wine was a Renaissance pedantry ? that Rabelais picked it up in the classics, as another scholar might select (say) the Dramatic Unities for his inspiration and devotion ?

What is the meaning of Mr Smith's note on 'Giglain and Gawaine' (p. 39)? There is no mention of the French romance Giglan fils de messire Gauvain (Lyon, 1530) though the subject is nothing else than the French books of Chivalry known to Rabelais, beginning, rightly, with Lancelot du Lac. All the others, in a list of sixteen, have their French editions noted; to Giglain there is given merely a note referring to Orlando Furioso, xIx, 38, where the curious investigator will find indeed the name 'Ziliante' to lead him further, but nothing that bears on Pantagruel, c. 30. The reference to Ariosto is an ancient and irrelevant gloss on this passage; it ought to have been ignored. Yet this after all is part of the revels, and the vanity of Scholiasts may serve as pastime, for those who have time to spare. After the inauspicious negative attitude of page 3, which need not be taken too seriously, there is nothing but good fellowship in Mr Smith's interpretation of Rabelais.

W. P. KER.

Petrarch. By CHARLES DENNIS FISHER. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press. 1917. 8vo. 36 pp. 2s. 6d. net.

Four Essays. By MURRAY ANTHONY POTTER. (Harvard Studies in Romance Languages, vol. III.) Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer- sity Press; London: H. Milford. 1917. 8vo. 139 pp. 5s. 6d. net.

These studies on Petrarch have little in common, save that the world of letters has been deprived of the services of both writers by their early death. It is not for us to say anything of the brilliant scholar who fell gloriously in the Battle of Jutland, or to add a word to the brief but

M. L. R. XIV. 15

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226 Reviews

noble memoir set by his brother, Herbert, at the head of this lecture. Par nobile fratrum ! Both brothers represent the very flower of Oxford scholarship. The loss of the younger man will long be felt in the Uni- versity he loved and that returned his affection to the full. Nor is it merely Oxford that mourns him: his loss is felt wherever the loftiest type of Humanistic studies is held in honour. Professor Potter had done admirable work at Harvard. He, too, was held in high esteem by his colleagues; and the present volume is issued by them 'in token of friendship and gratitude.'

Mr Fisher's lecture, 'one of a series of discourses planned by Mr Gordon of Magdalen College, was delivered in the Examination Schools at Oxford during the Summer Term of 1912.' It is a model of what such papers should be. It covers the whole ground, though necessarily without elaboration of detail; it sparkles with flashes of wit and humour; the quotations from Petrarch-whether from the Latin works, the letters or the poems-are as happy as they well could be, and are obviously selected at first-hand by a man who could have written a big book on his subject: so deeply is he versed, not only in the works themselves, but in his author's life and times. There is no need to quote, save for the purpose of criticism, from a lecture occupying 23 pages: everyone interested in the theme, however large his Petrarch library may be, may be trusted to obtain a copy of the little book.

We have referred to the comprehensiveness of the treatment. Well- nigh all the works, the poet's very difficult psychology, his position in relation to his forerunners, contemporaries and posterity, the salient points of his biography, his politics-all these are touched in with a light hand: but it is the hand of a master. One does not necessarily agree with every word. Thus, historians of classical scholarship might demur to the statement that 'he was the first Western-excluding a possible exception at the Court of Naples-to learn Greek.' Or again: 'So the poems were successful, and in favour Petrarch quickly outstripped as a sonneteer his forerunner Dante. They were two very different poets; Dante was philosophic and cold, and required a chair and a lecturer within fifty-three years of his death.... Finally, by sheer weight of numbers Dante was overborne. The sonnets of Dante were just a by- product; three hundred and seventeen stand to the name of Petrarch.' But surely it was the Commedia rather than the lyrics that required a Chair. And was Dante always philosophic and cold ? And is not the fact that Petrarch wrote more love-poetry than Dante rather in the latter's favour ? Still, these are but slight blemishes, if blemishes they be, and mostly matters of opinion. Moreover, they are atoned for by the wisdom to be found on every page. The central portion of the passage on Dante and Petrarch, from which we have just quoted the opening and closing words, is packed with truth. Whether Petrarch was or was not the first Western (or even the first Western but one) to learn Greek, Mr Fisher sums up the position admirably when he says: 'he made his cause fashionable.' To take a final instance: 'After Petrarch's death, the word Petrarchist became in course of time a term of reproach. Trivial

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Reviews 227

persons seized on trivial things, and even a man of power like Ronsard became a second Bembo, a mere transcriber of conceits; in him all the old properties reappear: flowers and precious stones, tigresses and Medusas. It matters not whom he celebrates-Astraea, Cassandra, Marie, Clytem- nestra, Helen: they all ipso facto possess ebony eyebrows, ivory shoulders, imprisoning hair.' Even the warmest admirer of Ronsard must needs admit the truth of much of this. But is it quite fair to Ronsard in his inspired moments, when he was thinking neither of Petrarch nor of aught else save his passion, however transient? All who know the poems of Ronsard and the better men of the Pldiade, as, say, George Wyndham knew them, feel that they had such moments.

Professor Potter works on perfectly different lines. He has obviously read not merely all that Petrarch wrote but much of the vast literature that has gathered round his name. Where opinions differ, he steps in with judgment. His style and method of exposition are less brilliant, more academic, than Mr Fisher's; but they are thoroughly sound. We admire the courage and devotion of a scholar who, after so much has been written on his subject, works through it all afresh, and brings to his treatment not merely what others have said but his own unbiassed and well-grounded views. The three essays in this volume dealing with the great Italian are concerned with Petrarch 'The Author,' ' The Man,' and 'The Critic and Reader.' Though the Professor's sense of humour lies less on the surface than that of Mr Fisher, he, too, sees the weak points in Petrarch's character and work. Any hero-worshipping critic writing of so inconsistent and wayward a genius is bound to fail; and not a few have so failed. Other men of genius, such as Wagner, have suffered from excessive idolatry on the part of their admirers. Scholars of deservedly high repute, in Italy and other countries, have, at times, been dazzled by the magnitude of Petrarch's real achievement, and have failed to see the spots in their sun. But the man is great enough to survive these indiscretions; and the revived study of his works and personality, in Italy, France, England, America and Germany, bears testimony to the fact that he is one of the immortals.

Professor Potter's concluding essay,' The Horse as an Epic Character,' though not by any means complete or pretending to completeness, though omitting some famous steeds that we would gladly have seen included, and though somewhat loosely put together, yet reveals the writer as a man of wide reading and much learning.

H. OELSNER. LONDON.

Torquato Tasso, ein Schauspiel von Goethe. Edited by J. G. ROBERTSON. (Modern Language Texts. German Series. Modern Section.) Manchester: University Press. 1918. Svo. lxxi + 192 pp. 5s. net.

An edition of Goethe's Tasso, based upon independent study of the Italian sources, with a fresh collation of the texts published in Goethe's lifetime, a critical but very impartial digest of the most important Tasso

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