Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/632

 628 Lessing REVIEWS AND NOTES ROUSSEAU and ROMANTICISM, by Irving Babbitt. Houghton Miffim Company, Boston and New York, 1919. Pp. 426. Price $3.50. Professor Babbitt's new book shares the merits of its pre- decessors. It is a surprisingly honest confesson of faith; it displays the results of a highly respectable reading knowledge; and it is so delightfully archaic in its remoteness from our modern world. Only such readers of the book as have some acquaintance with medieval works like Malleus Maleficarum or Bodin's Demonomania are in the position to appreciate the exquisite fragrance of antiquity this specimen eruditionis scho- lasticae exhales. The reviewer is indeed in doubt as to whether Mr. Babbitt in this case is the actual author of an original work or merely the editor of an hitherto unknown companion volume to Malleus Maleficarum. There were, according to the best authorities, witches of the male species as well as witches of the female species. We may therefore assume that for ecclesia militans a Malleus Maleficorum must have been a weapon no less indispensable than the joint product of the two formidable Dominican friars proved to be. Remembering how cleverly the humanists of Viri Obscuri fame concealed their identity: is it too fantastic a hypothesis for the reviewer to propose that Mr. Babbitt's name and the title of his book are cryptograms for an anonymous medieval author of the Malleus Maleficorum recently discovered? It was in Salem, Mass, where the last American autodafes on record took place. Why should the diligent search of an archeologist of a neighboring town have remained unrewarded? Be that as it may. For the reader's convenience the reviewer drops his hypothesis and proceeds to offer a few sugges- tions for a potential revised edition of this New Malleus Male- ficorum. An esthetic pleasure in antiquarianism does not excuse the reviewer from scrutinizing the scientific aspects of so inter- esting a case of pseudonymity. First of all a word with regard to the title. Rousseau, it must be understood, does not mean the Rousseau of the Social Contract who became the father of the American and French revolutions, of the Declaration of Independence, and consequently of our modern conceptions of humanity, liberty, and democracy. Mr. Babbitt seems to have very little sympathy with the democratic movements of our time. Rousseau to him means exclusively that oscillating compound of sincerity, cynicism, sadic flagellantism, and senti- mentality which we both abhor and admire in the Confessions.