-B COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY ANDRÉ MORIZE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 623.6 HARVARD The Athenæum Press INTRODUCTION A memory and a wish are responsible for this book. The memory is of years, already distant, when the author was privileged to study at the Université de Paris and the École normale supérieure under excellent masters. From these years he has brought away a feeling of special gratitude for the devotion with which these masters strove not only to communicate to their pupils a part of their own learning but also to initiate them into the actual methods of scientific work. He cannot forget the conferences on Saturday afternoons when, grouped about Professor G. Lanson, a few young men were made acquainted with the tools and the practical side of a study still new to them; or those hours when Lanson generously placed at their disposal the material destined to form the Manuel bibliographique; or, above all, the moments of personal contact when, with his wealth of erudition, his keen penetration, his strict but kindly criticism, he guided his students, started them on the right road and kept them in it, pointed out the stumblingblocks, and explained the best way to avoid them and to proceed with safety and success. Those were unforgetable lessons, and their memory, to which the author hopes not to prove faithless, will be found in every chapter of this book. The name of G. Lanson will appear several times, but the echo of his thought and of his very words will be heard on every page. Other teachers gave no less invaluable help to their pupils, guiding them personally through the library stacks, showing them the principal bibliographical implements and illustrat ing their use, thus supplying to the students in a few hours information that, left to their own devices, they could not have picked up in as many years. At other times a student would be asked to report to the professor and his comrades the results of his own researches, and together they would discuss the method, its merits and demerits. Every such occasion offered a fresh incentive to all the members of the class: they learned something more important than pedantic details or ingenious critical opinions—they learned how to work. It is this memory, combined with the experience of several years of teaching in the United States, that roused in the author the wish to do the same good turn, as far as in him lay, to American students. Indeed, there is always a troublesome transition between the end of undergraduate work and the beginning of graduate work. This difficulty is particularly noticeable when students reach the point of choosing the subject for a thesis and of attempting their own researches. Their zeal is, to be sure, unbounded, their diligence and conscientiousness are irreproachable; but it is impossible to deny that obstacles abound. In a word, and quite frankly, our young men do not know definitely enough how to work. They try to patch out this ignorance, for which they are not to blame, by an empiricism that may sometimes succeed, but that guarantees them insufficiently against deception and error. Too often they are seen wandering through the libraries "hunting for information", like a blind man hunting for a house in a strange city. They are satisfied with what they obtain in this way, without knowing that more—the really important-information exists elsewhere. They come up for even advanced examinations with a bibliographical ignorance that is at times disconcerting. Once the material is accumulated they do not always know how to arrange it with dexterity and skill: they feel like masons set to do an architect's task. Therefore, after months of research and exertion, they run the risk of producing a work, no matter how conscientious, that just misses being the definitive, or at any rate important, contribution intended. Loss of time, uncertainty, waste of energy and effort, at the expense of the final results,—such is, if not the usual, it must be confessed the sadly frequent, sight. This book will have realized its purpose if it is able to some extent to remedy this evil and to fill this gap. The subject matter has been given, under the same title, as a course at Harvard University. This course, limited to a small number of pupils, has always been very informal, with conversation and free discussions constantly interrupting an exposition that sought to be clear and vivid rather than literary and eloquent. In arranging the lectures in book form the author has tried to keep the intimate, direct tone, the naturalness and ease, of unconstrained and unpretentious talks. The aim is, first, to give to the novice in literary history a clear idea of the field he is entering-to define its character- / istics and limits, its relations with the two neighboring provinces of literary criticism and history; next, to familiarize him with the indispensable implements and tools; lastly, to introduce him to the principal problems that may arise and to help him to find the solutions. These problems, after all, are not endlessly varied: they fall under a certain number of headings, corresponding to different stages in the creation of a literary work and to its varying fortunes with the public; for instance, questions of linguistic or grammatical commentary and interpretation, questions of sources or of influence, questions of chronology or of authenticity, of biography or of bibliography, of lan |