362 THE STUDY OF FRENCH IN FOREIGN UNIVERSITIES. 



mother language and mother herself of all the others. Goethe, 

 who took the keenest interest in Raynouard's work, made an 

 attempt, in 181 8. at persuading a young philologer, Friedrieh 

 Diez, to give it his serious attention. Diez was then on his 

 pilgrimage to Weimar. It did not take him long to learn to 

 admire and to appreciate the beauties of Provencal poetry, and 

 as early as 1826 and 1829 he published his first two books on the 

 life and works of the Troubadours. Some time after, Jacob 

 Grimm, who by that time had laid the foundations of Germanic 

 philology, initiated Diez to the truly scientific method, the only 

 permissible, nay possible one in the pursuance of this kind of 

 study. Diez started work forthwith and applied himself to the 

 study of the Romance languages with a display of inventive 

 genius and power of self-restraint, which were really wonderful. 

 In the course of his long and serenely smooth career as a pro- 

 fessor at the Bonn University, Diez wrote two works, two peren 

 mal monuments of glory to a man whose erudition was second to 

 his modesty only, whose leniency towards others was surpassed 

 only by his severity on himself. These works are the " Gram- 

 maire comparee dcs langues romanes " and the " Dutionnaire 

 etymologique." With these two books the foundation of the 

 philology of the Romance tongues became an accomplished fact. 

 Not only was the course it had henceforth to follow ready- 

 traced, but two admirable gateways had been opened for the 

 workers to enter. 



Since then the number of students that have enthusiastically 

 followed this new, attractive and promising course has been 

 steadily on the increase. In Germany there are nowadays pro- 

 fessors of Romance philology lecturing on Old French to audi- 

 ences of hundreds of students. Some of the so-called " Semi- 

 naires romans " have grown into real linguistic laboratories, 

 issuing every year a considerable number of theses and disserta- 

 tions, in which all the details of literary criticism and historical 

 grammar are more or less felicitously discussed. Periodicals 

 and special reviews have been started in such large numbers as 

 to give rise to unsound and undesirable competition. In France 

 itself, where the history of the language and mediaeval literature 

 have only recently been added to the programmes of " lycees " and 

 "colleges" (secondary schools), the host of romanclsts is less 

 numerous. But the eminent masters, those who are now defunct 

 as well as those who at the present day so gloriously represent 

 Romance philology at the " College de France," at the " Ecole des 

 Chartes," at the " Sorbonne: " Gaston Paris, Arsene Darmesteter, 

 Paul Meyer, Joseph Bedier, Petit de Julleville, Morel -Fatio, 

 Leon Gautier, Victor Henry, F. Brunot are in themselves worth 

 an army. 



* Completed now by that of .Meyer, Ltiske, and by Grobler's " Encyclo- 

 pedic" 



