It is not commonly known that Pierre Lasserre, author of the notorious Romantisme français and long associated with Charles Maurras as leader of the dogmatic, authoritarian reaction against the romantic and liberal philosophies of the nineteenth century, died a liberal. That Lasserre in 1930 was on the threshold of a new life, that he was struggling desperately against time to bring forth the fruit of an intellect that had been slow in ripening, is a conclusion which may readily suggest itself to one who is familiar with the last stages of the critic's thought.

Zur Wiedergabe von Worten, Gedanken und Gefühlen seiner Personen bedient sich der moderne Erzähler der direkten Rede (D), der indirekten Rede (I), der erlebten Rede (E) oder des Monologs (M). Während Form und Bedeutung von D und I allgemein bekannt sind, haben die beiden letzten Arten der Rededarstellung, E und M, erst in jüngerer Zeit die Aufmerksamkeit der Grammatiker und Stilisten auf sich gezogen.

To speak a foreign language with a correct accent, one must acquire the ability to produce each sound accurately, but is that all? Are sounds put together differently or are transitions from one sound to another made perhaps in the same way in different languages and, consequently, of little or no importance? Comparatively little attention has been paid to the waysounds are put together, to glides or sons transitoires. The generally accepted opinion is expressed by Jespersen:

Needless to say, it is not with an American agrarian revolt of the end of last century, nor with the fortunes of a German political party that this paper is concerned, but rather with that fruitful and significant grouping of a score or more of contemporary French novelists under the banner of a common conception of the novel, its aims and appropriate media. If the name “Populism” is misleading because of certain political implications, one can at least be thankful that André Thérive and Léon Lemonnier in the consultations that preceded the launching of the new school a little over three years ago rejected labels such as “humilism” and “demotism” which might have proved even more puzzling.

In an exposition of the chief views of art set forth by Oswald Spengler anyone familiar with The Decline of the West will realize at once that a short paper can present only a very brief summary of the material on art scattered throughout the two volumes. Moreover, Spengler's views of art are so completely intertwined with information relative to the other activities of life that an essay may not be wholly restrictive in subject matter. Spengler makes the task doubly uninviting for the investigator by erecting a pons asinorum between himself and the would-be critic. Note, for example, the following sentence:

If, as Peck supposes, “some students of … [Shelley's] poetry” will be surprised “to learn that the theme implied in the title of Alastor was in Shelley's mind as early as 1811,” these students will probably be still more surprised to learn that Shelley had already developed the Alastor idea in a manner strikingly similar to that of the poem, in St. Irvyne, written probably as early as April, 1810 and published in December, 1810. Alastor was written in September, 1815, and published in February, 1816.

The facts presented by Mr. William Templeman in his article Thoreau, Moralist of the Picturesque are undoubtedly correct: many of his deductions from these facts, however, appear to me to be inconclusive. The reason these deductions are inconclusive is, I think, due to a failure on his part to define the terms, or when once defined, to adhere to his definitions. In the development of his material he wavers between two definitions of “picturesque,” although he makes it clear at the outset which definition he has decided upon. The “picturesque,” states Mr. Templeman in the opening paragraph of his article, “may be defined as that particular kind of beauty, especially landscape beauty, which would look well in a picture.” No one would quarrel with this definition. But when he adds that the definition “would be clearer if the type of picture were specified,” Mr. Templeman lays himself open to the charge of not understanding Gilpin's term “picturesque beauty,” a term rightly thought by Gilpin to be a phrase “little understood.” It is quite clear that Gilpin meant any scene “forming, or fitted to form, a picture,” and not the more restricted meaning of the term: “possessing quaint, rugged, or homely charm, or unique or vivid suggestiveness, as distinguished from beauty or sublimity.”