PRESENT PROBLEMS OF ROMANCE PHILOLOGY 257 



requisite. Provided no such elucidation is required, as is the case 

 for the most part in the study of modern literature, the work of 

 investigation and appreciation may safely be relegated to the literary 

 historian; while, on the other hand, a discussion of the literary 

 origins and relations of an Old French epic poem, for example, 

 is so conditioned by the inherent and antecedent problems and 

 obscurities of its linguistic form, and depends so largely upon the 

 correct apprehension and solution of such difficulties, that a literary 

 investigation of this order is rightly regarded as belonging, to a large 

 extent, in the domain of philology proper. Thus it may be seen how 

 it happens that no practical difficulty arises in the delimitation of 

 the functions of a chair of Romance Philology from those of a chair 

 of Romance literatures, where both are so fortunate as to exist side 

 by side in the same university; and how it comes about that the 

 line of demarcation is substantially the chronological line that divides 

 the literature requiring, by reason of its archaism, linguistic inter- 

 pretation and elucidation, from that embodied in forms current 

 and familiar, and that this chronological line of demarcation will 

 vary from literature to literature with the varying stage of archaism 

 exhibited in the respective languages concerned. The poetry of 

 Dante, to use a conspicuous illustration, will thus belong predominat- 

 ingly to the chair of literature, while the authors of the corresponding 

 period of French literature will as naturally fall distinctly to the 

 province of philology. If so much may serve to suggest the mutual 

 relations of philology and literature, a few words will suffice to indi- 

 cate the nature of the service it is incumbent on philology to render 

 in the practical teaching of language. Here it is interesting to observe 

 that the function of philology is far more constant and pervasive 

 than in the literary field, inasmuch as it concerns itself with the 

 entire doctrine of language as the vehicle of thought. On the side of 

 language as what may be called an artificial acquisition, the philo- 

 logist finds himself at every point the coadjutor of the Sprachmeister 

 or language-master. In the popular mind, indeed, there exists no 

 very clear distinction between philologist and language-master, while 

 even in the curriculum of the higher education there is sometimes 

 found an unfortunate confusion of ideas as to the proper function 

 of sprachmeisterschaft and philology, each in its relation to the other; 

 especially when, as often happens, both orders of instruction must 

 be united in the person of one and the same professor. Let us use 

 an illustration. Given the problem of explaining the French construc- 

 tion II fait cher vivre a Paris. The language-master will proceed by 

 expounding this locution as equivalent to Vivre a Paris fait cher, 

 while the philologist will maintain that, so far as construction is 

 concerned, II fait cher vivre a Paris, historically considered, is the 

 precise analogue of II fait beau temps a Paris, cher vivre being, like 



