Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/180

 164 Obituary.

and humour as distinct as theirs ; a curious product of his age. To create a living personality is the accepted test of the master of fiction, he has amply satisfied it. But Leland was not only a maker, he was a man of science, an observer, a recorder, and as time goes on it is probable that much of his work, personal as it is, will be none the less valued. He is always stimulating, he leaves definitely on his reader's mind the impression facts have made on his, he is not neglectful of small things. The followers of folklore are proud to have numbered him among their little band of pilgrims bound, like Piers Plowman, to seek incessantly and without pretence the far-off shrine of Truth.

F. York Powell.

GASTON PARIS.

August qth, 1839 — March 5TH, 1903.

When in early March the death of M. Gaston Paris was telegraphed from Cannes, such a thrill of sorrow and regret went through the world of learning as, it is safe to say, could hardly have been caused by the loss of any other scholar. Sorrow for the beloved and revered master, the friend, in the truest sense of the word, of every one of his pupils — nay, of every student, however modest, if only he worked with diligence and love of truth in any one of the many fields of study in which Gaston Paris was easily master; regret for all that has died with him — the immense wealth of knowledge, the devotion to his studies as of a saint to his Deity, the power of bringing out what was best in other workers, the capacity for so organising and directing research, that without forfeiting one jot of its strictly scientific character, it might enter into and fertilise general culture.

M. Gaston Paris was one of the earliest members of the Folk- lore Society (his name appears in our first list) ; and throughout the whole of his career as a scholar, from his earliest published (and not yet superseded) history of the Charlemagne Cycle (1865) down to his latest contributions to Rofnania and the Journal des Savants, he was an indefatigable worker in one of the most im- portant and fascinating branches of our study — the romantic and legendary literature of the Middle Ages. It was his life work to