of a departed civilization. In general, he favours a dis-
tinctive, national note. He is cursorily informative rather
than critical, and susceptible to few aesthetic values.

FERDINAND WOLF. Le Brésil Littéraire. Histoire de la
littérature brésilienne suivie d'un choix de morceaux tires
des meilleurs auteurs b(r) êsiliens. Berlin, 1863.

The quarto volume is dedicated to the Emperor of
Brazil. Wolf, of course, was a German; the book was
translated into French at the publisher's request, in order
to reach a larger audience. Its author regarded it a, "the
first and only one to appear in Europe on the subject."
Since Denis's treatment forms a sort of appendix to his
Portuguese section, Wolf's statement, understood as re-
ferring to an independent volume upon Brazil, may be
allowed to pass. The book is chiefly one of facts and
analyses of works. Of criticism in the higher sense there
is little, and what there is, is of the conventional sort.
There is a moral, anti-French outlook; a Teutonic pre-
occupation with data; no glimmer of aesthetic criticism.
Wolf's style is far from the amenable style of Denis.

FRANCISCO ADOLPHO DE VARNHAGEN. Florilegio
da Poesia Brasileira. (Vols. I and II, Lisbon, 1850.
Vol. III, Madrid, 1853.)

It is the Introduction preceding the first volume of these
noted selections, together with the prefatory notes to the
selections themselves, that virtually begins the writing of
Brazilian literary history. Without this work Ferdinand
Wolf could hot have written his Le Brésil Littéraire. All
later investigators and critics have really built upon
Varnhagen's foundations, tearing a stone away here and
there and substituting another, but leaving the structure
fundamentally the same,

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