Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/99

 RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 87 neglecfted aspeft of Lamartine's career (1822-58), and of the countryside of France at the time. We are apt to think that the songs and tales of mediaeval or earlier times must always be the result of spontaneous inspiration. Edmond Faral, in his c Recherches sur les sources Latines des contes et romans courtois du moyen age/ shows how such compositions are bound to a literary tradition which has many of its roots in a distant past. They did not arise from the virgin and naive imagination of ignorant e conteurs.' They were matured by educated men who utilised the master- pieces of the classical epoch and the puerile fables of the decadence, and in that way prepared the ground for the Renaissance. The book is a learned contribution to one aspeft of literary evolution. Books dealing with the stage abound. Henry Bordeaux's c La vie au theatre ' (third series, 1911-13) is a chronological record of drama, of course in France. He draws attention to what the stage at its best really is : mouvement, de Faction, pour atteindre les causes sous Taccident, pour pentrer le secret des coeurs, pour appro- fondir les caracteres, pour fixer 1'etat changeant des mceurs.' It is open to question how many contemporary plays accomplish this mission. M. Alfred Capus, himself a distinguished dramatist, has attempted in ' Le Theatre ' to find a reason for the general decadence of the drama at the present time. The essays in the volume are delightful ; they go back
 * Le vrai theatre, le grand theatre celui qui sert du