STUDY OF ROMANCE MEDIEVAL LITERATURE 443 



easily recognize the "esprit" and the "gout" which were so dear to 

 the minds and the lips of the French of the eighteenth century. 

 Let us recall that Montesquieu, author of the memorable Esprit des 

 Lois, undertook to write an essay on taste for the Encyclopedic. 

 But the taste of Bouterwek, though not always faultless, is not pre- 

 judiced, like that of the French, whom he blames for taking from the 

 century of Louis XIV the standard of judging all that had been done 

 previously. 1 It is a pity, therefore, that in this work Provencal litera- 

 ture is omitted, and a small share allowed Old French, although the 

 reason for this is easily seen. It is to be found in the insufficiency 

 of preparatory studies, 2 rather than in the circumstance that nomi- 

 nally (only nominally) the work began with the end of the thirteenth 

 century, 3 or in the conviction that others had sufficiently covered the 

 ground in the encyclopedic collection of w r hich this history of litera- 

 ture formed a part. 4 The scarcity of the work done by others, and 

 the difficulty of seeing for himself, did not deter Bouterwek from 

 putting together a history of Spanish literature, that for a long time 

 remained the only one worthy of the name. 5 



He was no German, indeed, he, who, going back to its origin, 

 changed his family name, Sismonde, into "Sismondi." He was 

 from Geneva and was familiar with the German and the English 

 tongues. His abode in different countries, his varying occupations 

 even, had contributed to increase the breadth of thought in a pre- 

 viously well-disposed intellect. And this breadth was increased by the 

 influence of Coppet: wonderful intellectual forge, where French and 

 German hammers, handled by the robust arms of Benjamin Constant, 

 of Wilhelm Schlegel, and of many others, in the presence of and with 

 the incitement of Madame de Stael, the very synthesis of the 

 revivified and of the revivifying France of the eighteenth century, 

 strove with each other in striking sparks from the iron they 

 unceasingly hammered. In 1811, before an audience amongst whom 



1 Vol. v, pp. iv-v. 



2 Ibid. p. vi: " Mochte doch endlich einmal die poetische Litteratur der 

 mittleren Jahrhunderte in ihrem ganzen Umfang " France only is here meant 



- " einen ihrer wiirdigen, also auch der provenzalischen und altfranzosischen 

 Spracho miichtigen und init den alten Handschriften hinlanglich vertrauten 

 Geschichtschreiber finden! " 

 :! See p. 440, note 1. 



4 Vol. i, p. v: "Die Geschichte dieser Morgendammerung hat aber schon Hr. 

 Eichhorn in seiner Allgemeinen Geschichte der Cultur und Litleratur der neueren 

 /?wropaebenso lehrreich, als ausfiihrHch erziihlt." It was Eichhorn, chiefly known 

 as Orientalist, who conceived the plan of the encyclopedic collection. "II ne 

 semhle avoir eu qu'vme connaissance superh'cielle des litteratures des langues 

 moclernes," Hallam will say, relating to this (Jeschichte der Cultur, in the Prpface 

 to the Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seven- 

 teenth Centuries. (Xot having the original text at hand, I am forced to quote from 

 the French translation of Borghers, Paris, 1830.) 



5 It was not by means of a most copious equipment of notes joined to the text 

 in the German translation by J. A. Diexe (Geschichte der spanischen Dichtktinftt, 

 Gottingen. 1769) that the work of Velasquez could become what it had not been 

 in the beginning. 



