En el mundo del pensamiento expresado en formas literarias tendríamos que señalar como el hecho más importante la publicación, que está llevando a cabo la "Residencia de estudiantes," de todos los Ensayos de Miguel de Unamuno, el primer ensayista español. Estos Ensayos, escritos durante veinte años, representan en conjunto el esfuerzo más valioso del pensamiento español contemporáneo; están escritos, además, en una lengua rica y expresiva y en un estilo vibrante y original.--Solo en este terreno del pensamiento ofrecen estos últimos años la aparición de una nueva y vigorosa personalidad. José Ortega y Gasset, autor de Meditaciones del Quijote y de Personas, obras, cosas . . ., ha publicado el segundo volumen de su obra El espectador, libro en que no se sabe que apreciar más si el valor de las ideas o el de su expresión literaria. La juventud española que empieza a distinguirse suele apartarse de la pura literatura y se dirige hacia la filosofía, la crítica, la ciencia. Así Ricardo de Orueta pone su ardiente personalidad en el estudio de la escultura española (Berrugüete y su obra), Manuel G. Morente comenta La filosofía de Henri Bergson o La filosofía de Kant, en libros que, a una seriedad científica mayor que la acostumbrada, suman una amplitud de visión y una belleza de exposición que ponen estos temas difíciles al alcance de los grandes públicos.

Hay también en España una literatura de la guerra, que ha producido ya algunas obras de indudable valor estético. Ya hemos citado dos obras de Azorín y de Palacio Valdés; habría que añadir, aparte de la hermosísima novela de Blasco Ibáñez, Los Cuatro jinetes del Apocalipsis, las obras últimamente publicadas por Ramón del Valle-Inclán, La media noche; Visión estelar de un momento de guerra; R. Pérez de Ayala, Hermán encadenado; A. Insúa, Páginas de la guerra; Condesa de Pardo Bazán, Porvenir de la literatura después de la guerra, y Jacinto Benavente, El año germanófilo. FEDERICO DE ONÍS

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

REVIEWS

SPANISH READERS

PRELIMINARY REMARKS

Who, what and "when" is the ideal reviewer? Ideally the reviewer of a school-book should reserve his opinion, at least if committed to cold print, on any text until he has given it an honest test in his own class room. But even if this were desirable, it is obviously impracticable. Fortunately, however, the experienced schoolmaster can detect the essential worth or worthlessness of a given text on careful perusal. Intuitively he looks for one or more features that his experience has convinced him constitute an essential advance over its predecessors or competitors. Often a cursory examination reveals whether or not the new arrival is entitled to his serious consideration. He will not be blind to its excellences. The element of prejudice is quite negligible.

But the more intricate question interjects itself: Whom does the review serve? In every school-book a trinity of interests is involved. In polite society we denote them as author-editor-compiler, publisher and teacher. That the more immediate aims of the two former may converge into a reasonably selfish one does not concern us here. The consumer is that larger community that makes the schools possible and by whom the teacher is deputized to select the books for the pupils to buy or to borrow-in either case to use. To say that the public always gets what it wants in this commodity, the school-book, is a sad reflection on society, let alone the educators. It may get what it deserves, as a reward of its own indifference.

Now the lack of mutual regard and proper co-operation among the three parties here in question has been and still is lamentable and a great hindrance to the best classroom interests. What quantities of school books go into the discard every year! Books, similar in type, have been issued in such quick succession, even by the same house, as to make impossible a fair trial of any one of them and a record of results during a single year, not to say a high school generation. Such haste and overproduction is equally unfair to all parties concerned.

The perplexities caused by the numerous books clamoring for recognition is brought home to those who have served on and labored with textbook committees, and they alone know how difficult it is to select for their fellow-workers the book of fewest regrets, the book of the utmost serviceability to teacher and to pupil.

The final arbiter, then, both of the author's work and the publisher's sagacity, and as such the most important member of this threefold group at interest, is the teacher, and him the reviewer will have primarily in mind.

If what has been said of textbooks in general be at all relevant, it is equally applicable to any one division of instruction, and the modern

languages come in for our particular solicitude. Spanish, on account of the relative recency of its introduction into the public school curriculum is spared much of the censure attached to French and German publications. Teachers of Spanish therefore may learn from the successes and failures of their colleagues in the other foreign languages, for their problems are the same. It is with the view of establishing a better understanding between authors and publishers of Spanish books and the teachers of Spanish that these paragraphs have been written; it is hoped that there may be avoided much of the disappointment, the costly labor and futile effort expended on the other modern language texts; likewise the rebellion and bitterness of spirit which the prescribed employment of unsuitable textbooks produces in teachers with the resultant injustice to the pupils.

The more immediate topic engaging our attention is that of Spanish readers. We have been told that a reading habit is one-third of an education. All systematic language teaching revolves about some sort of text, be it phrase-book, fable, anecdote, tale, classic, or the like. Hence the reading-matter cannot be too carefully selected and edited It must introduce Realien, i. e., impart knowledge about the real things impinging upon our daily life in our homes, in our occupations, in our various social relationships; in short, all the objects and ideas that enter into our workaday experience and the vocabulary to express them. It requires a master to write or to construct a reader that will systematically bring these various elements into play, with naturalness, yet with the proper gradation for the beginner.

Readers are primarily intended as an introduction into the language and not to literature proper. It is my conviction that the "classic," pure and undefiled, has no real place in the high-school course before the third year. We must simply face the fact that the American youth, at this stage of immaturity, cannot properly appreciate a foreign classic. Besides it is an injustice to the author to blame him, or to even expose him to the crude criticism of adolescents for not being understandable. If he amounted to anything in his own country, he wrote for his own people, and not with one eye on a possible future ninth or tenth grader in far off America. A well-arranged reader-and its keynote should be Unity in Diversity-is the sufficient portion of our neophytes. If they do not continue beyond the second year they will have had variety enough in a good reader and a far more useful stock of words than any one strictly literary text can supply, and they will be prepared to read the simple classics by themselves, if interested; if they do go on with their foreign language they will in due season be inducted into the higher reaches of real literature.

That teachers of Spanish have not lacked material in the way of "readers" is evidenced by the twenty-six eclectic, academic readers (exclusive of beginners' books, abridged classics, commercial, scientific, historical, etc.) that have accumulated on my shelves. These are nearly all that have ever been published in the United States, and a number of them are

among the most popular. They have been put out by ten different American publishers within the past twenty years. They have appeared as follows: one each in 1897, 1899, 1900, 1902, 1905, 1909, 1910, 1912 and 1914; two each in 1907 and 1908; five in 1916 and eight in 1917. No two of them are by the same compilers, although one name appears in collaboration. Two books bear the names of women, both in collaboration; one is compiled by two women. With two or three exceptions none of the selections is duplicated and the only things common to all of them are a text and a vocabulary; here and there one observes attempts at grading. None of them makes reference to its fellows. Why should any of these be placed in the pupil's hands in preference to the other?

Are there no criteria, no definite desiderata that may be posited for a "reader" after all these years of experimentation? In order to make the matter clear to my own mind, I had to draft an outline of what a "reader" would mean to me, and what I herewith submit is my estimate of such a thing from the view of hypothetical authorship. It is the result of contact during many years, in and out of the classroom, with a number of modern language readers, more or less satisfactory, and of the greatest variety.

The following observations embody points to be considered in the making of a good modern high-school reader in Spanish:

1. Authorship.-It should be compiled by experienced teachers in actual service, or by those who have recently been such; men or women, thoroughly conversant and sympathetic with the American youth. It would seem that joint-editorship is preferable to one man responsibility. Collaboration invariably means a better product; the interchange of ideas, the mutual inspiration and encouragement in what must be exacting labor, as well as the restraint on each other, so necessary to such an undertaking. 2. Subject-matter. Like any other good textbook a reader should be limited and definite in scope. If the collection is made up of literary pieces there will be a great mass of material to choose from; but the selection must be made with specific aims: first, in regard to the pupil's ability to master it reasonably, with the legitimate aids (see below) usually conceded; secondly, with a view to inherent, purposeful interest, contributing to the intellectual growth of the pupil.

The ques

The first third of the book should be well-graded prose. tion of gradation is the bug-bear of every editor-compiler. It cannot be too painstakingly done. It practically means original authorship, a carefully planned and constructed text by a conscientious and far-sighted writer. He must be able to foresee the succession in which certain difficulties will arise and how to meet them, how to clear them away in as logical an order as the genius of simple, natural discourse will permit.

The subject-matter of such a constructed text should include the everyday happenings in the home, school and politico-social life of the student, so that its vocabulary may comprise at least the names of the parts of the

body, of the clothes, of the household, of the school-room and of the school and local government; of the commoner animals, herbs, flowers, foodstuffs, means of locomotion, neighborhood geography, and kindred matters. A second part may well be built around selected topics on the more important and better known Spanish-American countries their traits, customs, institutions and history, together with brief mention of the more important members of the Pan-American Union and the part of the United States of North America therein. It hardly admits of argument nowadays that the motive of the average American taking up the study of Spanish is his interest in South America rather than in the Iberian Peninsula. A third part may comprise selected complete short stories, carefully edited, typical of the life and characteristics of Old Spain. They should be chosen with particular attention to their vocabulary. Proverbs, simple verse, a few national hymns, and popular songs with musical notation lend added atmosphere.

Somewhere in the book, before or after the regular reading matter, should be inserted a fairly complete classroom word-list, such as directions by the teachers and responses by the pupils, greetings, letter-writing formulas, etc. A prepared list of these would be time-saving to both teacher and pupils and more than compensate for the extra effort of the compilers and the slight added expense of the publishers.

3. Amount of text.-One hundred pages, exclusive of illustrations, would suffice. This would allow the teacher some leeway for personal initiative, for the introduction of other material of his own choice as occasion or desire may dictate.

4. Vocabulary.-Extent: two thousand words is a generous maximum, about half of which ought to become an active vocabulary by the end of the year. Simpler idiomatic locutions (with cross references) may well be relegated to the general vocabulary. Training the pupils to observe the finer shades of meaning, to have them weigh and consider subtleties of phrase, to make them exercise a choice of the proper meaning is splendid pedagogy. The vocabulary ought to contain all forms of the irregular verbs occurring in the text; also the definite article before all nouns for the sake of association. Although the function of the vocabulary is primarily to give definitions, it would seem a useful extension to include under the word concerned whatever brief informational comment may be called for biographical, historical, literary, etc., usually incorporated in the notes. In this way it is bound to come to the pupil's attention at the right time.

5. Notes. The proper office of the notes is to explain. The less explanation there is to make the better, and then only the most unusual syntactic or other unavoidable difficulties and allusions, requiring elucidation. If notes serve any useful purpose at all they should be a help and time-saving to the pupil in his preparation of the day's assignment.

6. Compositional features.-To some teachers questions and exer