And rightly. To one who has mastered Latin and French, the verb is the key to a knowledge of Spanish. Every lesson contains either some forms of the regular conjugations or all the forms of one or more irregular verbs, grouped in an excellent manner. It is only fair to state that all rules are not learned by the deductive method. Some peculiarly Spanish difficulties are carefully analyzed. For example, the difference between ser and estar is very clearly explained. It is evident, however, that this book can not be used as a reference text. Its use must be restricted to that of a drill book for graduate students or summer school teachers who wish to acquire a reading knowledge of Spanish. To these two classes of students the Fundamentals of Spanish Grammar can be heartily recommended. There is much danger, however, that the grammar will be used by only too many prospective teachers of Spanish who desire a short cut to that tongue. Most of our teachers who study Spanish at summer schools are not doing so in order to be able to read Cervantes and Calderón. Miss Bushee's Spanish is correct and idiomatic. In the main she uses connected narratives and dialogues which tend to make the student think in Spanish. It seems to me that such meaningless phrases as "Un libro es una gramática española," and such unidiomatic structures as "Es un niño bueno," and “Su lengua es hablada en muchos países" mar the book. Again, why waste time and effort with drill sentences on tú and vosotros, forms which the student will rarely, perhaps never, use? The instructor who uses Miss Bushee's book must be an expert, for when the student finds difficulty in making his deduction the rule must be accurately supplied. It is virtually a teacher's notebook. It is really more an interrogative than a positive textbook. It presupposes a sort of estudiante autodidáctico, a student who is willing to think and investigate for himself. Are there enough superstudents of this kind in the United States to warrant the publication of this unique grammar? The book used by Miss Bushee herself probably gives good results with graduate students. She lays great stress on memory, and insists that words and phrases be memorized. It is a pity that the book cannot be used by the vast multitude of students of Spanish in high schools and colleges who need to be taught to think for themselves, and that in learning a language memory plays the most important part. BOSTON UNIVERSITY SAMUEL M. WAXMAN Manual de Correspondencia, by Ventura Fuentes and Alfredo Elias, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1918. xi + 230 pp. The book does not confine itself to commercial correspondence. Social correspondence has its allotment of space. The introductory part of the text, as in the case of Luria's book, is a dissertation in Spanish upon the composition of a letter. Then follow the Spanish letters, fifty-six in number, twelve of which are purely social. At the end of each letter are copious notes, explaining meanings of words, idioms, and grammatical difficulties. as well as other pertinent information. Forty-one exercises follow, based on the letters. The pupil is called upon, not merely to translate from English into Spanish, but he must compose letters in his own words, the nature of each letter and the data to be contained in it being suggested by the author. This develops more independence and mastery of the subject than mere translation from one language to another. The next chapter in the book is devoted to verbs, regular and irregular, followed by a table of numerals, a Spanish-English vocabulary and a list of abbreviations. No English-Spanish vocabulary is appended; indeed it is unnecessary in view of the thorough-going character of the notes placed after both the Spanish letters and the English exercises. Sometimes in these notes a literal translation of an idiomatic passage is given, accompanied by a good English rendering. I fail to see that the awkward literal translation serves any useful purpose. The material is very idiomatic and interesting. No exercises for drill in grammar and idioms accompany the letters, as in the case of the previous book, but a live teacher will work over the material with the class until it is mastered. A little greater effort might have been made to arrange the difficulties of vocabulary and idioms more progressively. Considerable knowledge of the language is necessary before beginning this book. However, it is obviously not intended for beginners. Correspondencia Comercial, by Max A. Luria. Silver. Burdett & Comparry, Boston, 1917. xii + 305 pp. This book is an unusually thorough treatment of the subject of commercial correspondence. The purpose is to prepare the student for a position in a business house carrying on business with South America. At the beginning of the book are a few pages containing expressions of common use in the class room. After an introduction, explaining in Spanish the parts and formalities of a Spanish letter, over a hundred letters and business forms are given. Each letter is accompanied by extensive material for drill, in idioms and grammar. Particular attention is given to verbs. The letters are divided into groups-letters ordering and acknowledging the receipt of merchandise, letters concerning payment and collection of accounts, etc. Several pages are devoted to such documents as receipts, notes, and consular invoices. A list of abbreviations follows. At the end of the book, before the vocabularies, is an appendix of verbs, giving the form of both regular and irregular verbs. There are both Spanish-English and English-Spanish vocabularies. Three maps are included in the book-one of South America, one of Mexico, Central America, and the Antilles, and the third, a map of Spain. The book is indeed complete. Presumably it is for the teacher who lacks preparation for his work-who has been drafted into the Spanish department, and is unable to improvise exercises to accomplish the mastery of the difficulties. The exercises are all worked out for him. He has but to assign them for the following day and then study them himself. The next day he takes up the subject with the class with the bland attitude of one who knew it all the while. The "expressions of common use in the class" are undoubtedly for the benefit of that same teacher. But why the verbs at the end? Wherefore a grammar? Nevertheless, the book is well made. It is a good deal more than a textbook of commercial correspondence. It is something of a reader, grammar, and conversation book. In the class room, it cannot fail to be supremely useful. HIGH SCHOOL OF COMMERCE MICHAEL S. DONLAN The Neo-Classic Movement in Spain During the XVIII Century, by Robert E. Pellissier, Ph. D. Published by the Leland Stanford Junior University, 1918. 187 pp. We have here a very thorough study of the period in question by the young student and teacher who met his death in August, 1916, while fighting for his country in the battle of the Somme. The author discusses in detail the work of the various neo-classicists. Neo-classicism was an attack against real contemporary evils. The supporters of the movement were, in general, men of superior intellect. They were also intensely patriotic. They did a real service to Spain in showing to how low an intellectual level it had fallen. Their aim was to raise it to a level with the rest of Europe. They tried to do this by showing that, for an author, unbridled genius was not enough, but that this genius should be properly directed. They alienated the sympathies of their contemporaries by their criticisms, severe at times even to harshness, of Spanish authors. criticisms which to these contemporaries seemed unpatriotic. At the same time their own literary output was comparatively insignificant because of their disregard for poetic inspiration and their exaggerated respect for the literary rules. They were, however, by no means responsible for the low state to which Spanish literature had fallen in the eighteenth century. The movement had certain positive results. It gave the Spaniards a renewed interest in their own literature, an interest which soon spread to other countries, especially to Germany. It made for precise scholarship. It led from open-minded criticism of evils in literature to no less open-minded criticisms which to these contemporaries seemed unpatriotic. The work shows thorough, broad-minded scholarship, and brings us to realize, once again, the loss which our studies have suffered in the death of its author. LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY C. G. ALLEN Grandes Escritores de América, by Rufino Blanco-Fombona. Renacimiento, Madrid, 1917. 343 pages. Don Rufino Blanco-Fombona is one of the best known writers of SpanishAmerica. He is a Venezuelan who has lived the best years of his literary life in Madrid and is one of the ablest and most vigorous representatives of the new intellectual life of Spanish-America. He has distinguished himself as a novelist (El Hombre de Oro, El Hombre de Hierro), as a poet (Pequeña Opera Lirica, Cantos de la Prisión y del Destierro), as a literary historian (La Evolución social y política de Hispano-América), and as a literary critic (Letras y Letrados de Hispano-América). He belongs to that group of young Spanish-American intellectuals who work night and day for the betterment of the youth of Spanish-America and for a correct interpretation of the history and culture of new Spain. In resourcefulness, in vigor of style and in his intense patriotism he resembles Manuel Ugarte and Francisco Garcia Calderón. His latest literary production, Grandes Escritores de América, is one of the most interesting and important works that has appeared within recent years on the literary history of Spanish-America. The volume is dedicated to XIXth century writers only, which leads one to suppose that Mr. Fombona has published the first of two or more volumes in preparation. Grandes Escritores de América gives a succinct and complete resumen, up-to-date, and including the latest conclusions in literary research concerning the five writers whom Mr. Fombona considers the most important of the XIXth century in Spanish-America: Andrés Bello, the Venezuelan genius who lived practically all his life in Chile and is known the world over as one of the most distinguished educators, and whose fame rests on his investigations in Spanish literature and philology, his best known work being his Gramática de la Lengua Castellana, revised later by Cuervo; Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, the astute and semi-learned Argentine educator who wrote Facundo, one of the most powerful and realistic novels that SpanishAmerica has produced; Eugenio María de Hostos, the Porto Rican critic and philosopher, whose Shakespearean studies seem to have furnished many of the ideas of the English critic, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, in his work, Thoughts and Afterthoughts; the Ecuadorian writer, Juan Montalvo, author of Los Sicte Tratados and Los Capítulos que se le olvidaron a Cervantes; and Manuel González Prada, the fearless Peruvian philosophic writer who put an end to the apathy in the national life of Peru after the country had been ignominiously defeated by Chile, and whose best work, Páginas Libres, would seem to show that little Peru has also its Renan. Grandes Escritores de América is a volume which forms a most valuable addition to the few good books on the literary history of Spanish-America. It is a book that is absolutely indispensable in a library of Spanish-American literature. LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY AURELIO M. ESPINOSA BIBLIOGRAPHY I. SCHOOL TEXTS Manual de Correspondencia by Ventura Fuentes and Alfredo Elías, both of the College of the City of New York. XI + 230 pages (100 text, 131 exercises, 134 verbs, 51 vocabulary, 12 table of abbreviations). The text consists of fifty-six model letters in Spanish, of which the first eleven are of general nature, the last forty-five of commercial. The short introductory chapter gives in simple Spanish the necessary preliminary information. Each lesson is followed by a set of grammatical notes. The exercises consist of about thirty pages of English letters for translation into Spanish. The letters are given in outline, and the student has to work out the details for himself. Appropriate notes are furnished for each exercise. A good verb section, vocabulary and a table of abbreviations, complete the book. 1918 The Macmillan Co. $1.00. Las Tiendas. Diálogos Humorísticos Por Carlos Frontaura. Edited by Arthur Fisher Whittem of Harvard University. VII 152 pages (84 text, 19 notes, 46 vocabulary). The interesting text fairly bristles with idioms, and is too difficult for any but advanced pupils. The difficulties are well explained in notes and vocabulary. 1918-Holt & Co. 60 cents. All Spanish Method First and Second Books, by Guillermo Hall, of the University of XXIX + 509 pages. A "Manual de Inflexiones" and a "Vocabulario General," which is really an index, as no translations are given, complete the book. 1915-World Book Co. $1.60. Also to be had in two volumes: First Book, xxix + 280 pages, $1.00 ; Second Book, xxix + 307 pages, $1.20. Росо а Росо an Elementary Direct Method for Learning Spanish. By Guillermo Hall, of the University of Texas. VIII + 308 pages. The book is simpler and easier than the same author's "All Spanish Method" and is intended for use with pupils in intermediate |