Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/176

 REVIEWS.

Contributions to the Science of Mythology. By the Right Hon. Professor F. Max Muller, K.M., Member of the French Institute. 2 vols. Longmans, Green & Co., 1897.

Students of mythology and folklore by this time quite under- stand what they may expect from a book by that veteran scholar, Professor Max Muller. In his last work, which sums up the results of the studies of a lifetime, they will find the same evidence of wide philological learning, the same grace of style, the same ingenuity in detecting the weak places in the arguments of his opponents, the same deftness in treading lightly over the difficul- ties which surround his own conclusions. Not that the book contains much that is fresh or startling. The discussion of Vedic and Greek myths follows the old famihar lines. But here and there he touches novel ground, as in his remarks on Mordvinian mythology and the influence of riddles on the growth of myth. He makes no apology for his neglect of one vast body of evidence. He need hardly have complacently informed his readers that he does not read the Transactions of all the Folklore Societies. Is there even one German Professor who does? But he shows that he has never realised the value of folktales for the explanation of primi- tive beliefs ; and ritual seems little to interest him, although many myths are obviously aetiological and were framed to account for some ancient ritual practice, so old that its original meaning had been forgotten.

The book, too, strikes us as rambling and ill-arranged. It is in the main a controversial attack on the methods of the Ethnological School, and yet we find nowhere a clear statement of the position which he desires to assail, and no references to the works which he criticises. He mentions Mr. Frazer and Dr. Tylor with respect ; but his readers will regret to notice an acerbity of tone and an almost contemptuous depreciation of Mr. Andrew Lang, which ill become a sober student addressing a scientific audience. Nor are