268 ROMANCE LANGUAGES 



state of approximate perfection. Its counterpart for the Old Proven- 

 gal, the early Lexique Roman of Raynouard, in six octavo volumes, 

 is now undergoing revision and expansion at the hands of a most 

 competent lexicographer, E. LeVy, but here again, it should be the 

 common aim of all Provencal scholars to furnish helpful contribu- 

 tions. Such an appeal as this is all the more appropriate since in 

 connection with the undertakings here enumerated there unfor- 

 tunately exists no organized corps of readers and helpers such as 

 does such important service for the Oxford Dictionary of English. 

 Particularly should attention be given in all such work to the 

 importance of semantics, to which so great an impulse has been im- 

 parted by the stimulating work of Michel Bre"al. Probably no note 

 of caution is necessary here against the repetition of the subversive 

 and astonishing procedure of a recent extensive dictionary of the 

 English language which consisted in throwing overboard all recog- 

 nition of the logical and historical development of meanings for the 

 purpose, I was about to say of establishing, but must rather say of 

 setting up, an arbitrary arrangement of meanings in the presumed or 

 the imagined order of their prevalence in the language at the present 

 moment. 



Of the culminating function and office of philology in applying 

 the data of linguistics to the elucidation of literature, it remains to say 

 what may appropriately be said in the few allotted moments. I refer 

 to the crowning application of all the results of philological knowledge 

 to the classification of manuscripts and the constitution of texts 

 in accordance with the approved criteria of scientific criticism, and 

 to the adequate presentation, interpretation, and elucidation in 

 published form of the literary production of the past deemed worthy 

 of preservation. Some conception may be formed of the extent of the 

 field when it is pointed out that in Old French manuscripts alone, 

 not to speak of the wealth of Provengal, Italian, and Spanish, there 

 is preserved a greater amount of material than the entire surviving 

 body of Greek and Latin literature combined. While it is not denied 

 that the intrinsic value of much of this material is scarcely demon- 

 strable, it remains true that a considerable part both of that which 

 has been already published, and of that which still awaits public- 

 ation, has a very decided significance either as pure literature or as 

 a manifestation of the development of human thought and of human 

 culture. Some of it, indeed, is destined as pure literature epic, 

 lyric, dramatic, imaginative, narrative to maintain forever a high 

 place in the records of the race. To Romance philology belongs the 

 custodianship and exploitation of this rich heritage. Much that is 

 of permanent value has already been accomplished. Without the 

 faintest soupgon of adulation, but only as a simple statement of the 

 fact, it deserves to be said that the work of Paul Meyer in unearthing, 



