As we

THE RESURRECTION OF LOUVAIN WORK for the reconstruction of the Library of Louvain University, which was inaugurated in December, 1914, continues to go on with gratifying spirit and success. It has been undertaken and is being pressed forward because of the urgent need of a library for the students of the University, and not to relieve Germany of her obligation to make reparation for her vandalism in the destruction of the Library. long ago pointed out, between 250,000 and 300,000 volumes of printed books and nearly 1,000 manuscripts were totally destroyed when the Germans set fire to the Library on August 25, 1914. Among these were some eight hundred incunabula, the Bull of Pope Martin V founding the University, an autograph volume of sermons of Thomas à Kempis, Professor Delannoy's nearly completed catalogue, and a collection of Bibles considered to be unique. It will be remembered that the scheme for the reconstruction of the Library originated with the generous initiative of the Governors of the John Rylands Library, Manchester, who decided not only to offer a gift of the duplicates in their possession, but to receive and store such books as other libraries and private individuals might be willing to contribute. From an article in the current issue of the Bulletin of the Library, we learn that as a result of the appeal made by the Governors the trustees of several other libraries and other bodies have given their coöperation

- the Classical Association, the Victoria University, Manchester, the British Museum, the Bodleian, the Signet Library, the National Library of Wales, and the Universities of Aberdeen, Cambridge, and Durham. Altogether some 14,000 volumes have been received and registered from two hundred and eighty individuals and institutions, and promises of further help are received almost daily. It is, therefore, hoped that a nucleus of 20,000 volumes will eventually be forthcoming which should form a very substantial beginning for the reconstituted Library.

ROMAIN ROLLAND'S GALLIC MOOD ADMIRERS of M. Rolland's other works will be surprised by his latest book. Colas

Breugnon is not a Beethoven, nor a Michel Angelo, not a Jean-Christophe. He is no genius, laboring, suffering, and creating; no hero to re-inspire by his example a world grown stagnant. Colas Breugnon is none of these things. He is one of the companions of Pantagruel, a lover of song and laughter, a deep drinker, a great devourer of tripe and black pudding and of those Rabelaisian andouilles which the dictionaries translate, incomprehensibly enough, as 'chitterlings.' In his laughing philosophy, in his shrewdness, in his love of the soil and of wine, the soil's blood, he is one of those great Gallic figures who march immortally and triumphantly down the history of French literature. Rabelais, Balzac, Anatole France (to take only three of the great names) have each of them portrayed with zest and appreciative sympathy this Gallic type. And now M. Rolland adds his picture of Colas Breugnon to the gallery.

In his preface M. Rolland gives us an account of the genesis of this book. It is the fruit of his reaction against the constraint of Jean-Christophe 'J'ai senti un besoin invincible de libre gaieté gauloise, oui, jusqu'a l'irrévérence.' A visit to his native Burgundy (this was long ago before the war, woke the old hereditary Pantagruelian Breugnons in his blood; they bade him put aside all other thoughts and write of them; and write he did, 'sous la dictée,' as he puts it. We may be permitted to doubt whether these Gallic ancestors were wise in choosing M. Rolland to be their interpreter. His whole genius and temperament is too profoundly different, or so it seems to us, from the Breugnon genius and temper. M. Rolland is a spiritual water-drinker; Breugnon is full of wine and haggis. M. Rolland has communed with the heroes who do and suffer and are great 'But we in Burgundy,' says Breugnon, nous ne Nous sommes pas des héros de roman. vivons: nous vivons. M. Rolland in this volume paints the glories of sheer living. But somehow we have a feeling all the time that he does not find living enough; that this praise of joyous laughter and wine and tripe is not whole-hearted, and that his real place is among the more tragic aspects of human nature. We are not charmed and

seduced by M. Rolland on the delights of life as we are by Anatole France, or, to quote a lesser name, by Louis Codet in César Capéran. Still in spite of everything, M. Rolland has given us a very pleasant presentment of that philosophy which is as old as Adam: Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die.

The book is made up of extracts from the journal of Colas Breugnon, a citizen of Clamecy, in Burgundy extracts that cover a year of his life in the early seventeenth century. He lives in troubled times; the wars of religion go trampling with iron feet over the fields and vineyards. To Breugnon the fighting seems not merely deplorable, but incredibly stupid too. After all, he argues, we are Burgundians before we are Christians, human beings before we are Catholics or Huguenots. Misfortunes crowd thick upon him; the plague comes within an ace of putting an end to him; no sooner has he recovered than his house is burned and all his worldly possessions destroyed; last, he himself is reduced to impotence by a broken leg. But it is not to religion that he goes for consolation; he finds a cure for all evils in laughter and good humor and wine. He may be depressed, he may despair; but something always happens that is really

irresistibly amusing, and in a flash of laughter he sees that after all the world is very well worth living in, and that life in itself and for itself is a thing of priceless value. That is what Breugnon has to teach; and who teaches better?

M. Rolland makes his hero write in a dubiously seventeenth-century prose, full of jingles and alliterations and plays upon words. One rather trying feature of the style is the frequency with which it relapses into verse rhythms. There must be, literally, thousands of Alexandrines and octosyllables in the book. Here is a passage selected almost at hazard; we have done nothing but divide it up into lines:

Toujours suivant les uns, le conseil décida D'y joindre, pour leur bec, quelques friands gâteaux,

Orgueil de la cité, de gros biscuits glacés, Notre specialité. Mon gendre, pâtissier, Florimond Ravisé, en fit mettre trois

douzaines.

The lines are classical in their observation of the caesura rule! M. Rolland has never paid much attention to the technical perfection of style; but this abandonment of 'that other harmony' is the complete destruction of prose.

BY ALLAN COOPER

BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS

life and power.

A bunch of stars upon the vine of heaven

Grows ripe and falls and passes when complete;