town itself during the last few months having been alternately occupied by the Russians and Austrians. I have attempted to learn the whereabouts of Professor Kellner, but have so far been unsuccessful. When I met him last summer in Vienna, shortly before the outbreak of the war, he spoke, with all the warmth of his enthusiastic nature, of his hope of visiting our country. Since then the fates have interfered with all his plans.

In accordance with Professor Kellner's general views on the subject, as gathered in my talks with him, I have permitted myself to suggest to the publishers of the present work the advisability of omitting the concluding portion of the book, which consisted in the main of a rapid survey of writers not elsewhere treated by the author, and was supposed to bring out the characteristics of the various states. In doing so, I have felt that I was but carrying out Doctor Kellner's intentions, since he expressed to me his earnest wish to make any changes in proof which were in the direction of greater accuracy in detail, and also requested me to indicate what, in my opinion, had better be omitted. It may likewise be proper to mention that Kellner's vivid characterizations of New England life have

been left untouched, even where the reader must make allowance for the fact that the conditions upon which the author comments are rather those of a bygone time than of the present day.

It will be seen that Professor Kellner's volume is not a history of American literature in any exhaustive sense. This he could not have written within the limits which he set himself, but he has succeeded in doing what no German writer before him has ever attempted-that is to say, in tracing briefly the main currents of our literature, in placing before the reader vivid sketches of our great literary figures outlined against an ample historical and philosophical background, and in introducing a mass of minor writers the characterization of whom, if only in a few rapid strokes, gives color and animation to the whole picture. American letters have hitherto received but scant justice at the hands of German scholars. Only a very few literary historians, such as Brunnemann, Knortz, and Engel, have aimed at giving a survey of the general aspects of the subject, while scholars like Hermann Grimm and Anton Schönbach have contented themselves with describing to their countrymen some one outstanding literary figure, such as Emerson and Hawthorne.

Narrow as is the compass of Professor Kellner's work, we find in his pages characterizations of our literary celebrities whose substantial accuracy will not be questioned. They disclose remarkable familiarity not only with our literature but with our historic past. In accordance with what seems to be a wise plan, Emerson, Lowell, Whittier, above all Holmes, among the New England writers; Cooper, Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Henry James, among different surroundings, are singled out for full, adequate, and picturesque treatment; the foreign note here and there observable but emphasizes the writer's individual point of view. Lesser authors appear in becoming perspective, though by no means in shadowy outlines. Even where his judgment is at variance with current criticism there is a refreshing outspokenness, as in his plea for greater justice to the literary ability of Harriet Beecher Stowe than is commonly accorded to it. Throughout, we have the feeling that the author must be ranked with those writers who, as Lessing says, "write not merely to show their wit and scholarship, but who have in mind the best and most enlightened of their time and their country, and consider only that worthy of being

put down which pleases and appeals to them." The German reader for whom Professor Kellner indited his appreciations of our great writers has through him learned to know in Holmes and Emerson true classics-those who, in SainteBeuve's phrase, have enriched the human mind and really added to its treasures.

The attention which Professor Kellner bestowed on these writers is the outgrowth of a deeply rooted interest in New England life. He understands every intellectual and emotional phase of the New England character, widely as his temperament differs from that of the Puritan. In a letter now before me he says: "The strongest impression of my youth was an almost ascetic simplicity of life practised by my parents and all my relatives. And this way of living was not forced upon us by necessity, but was the result of conviction. From childhood I had acquired, through precept and example, puritanic habits of thought and puritanic conduct. You may perhaps learn, from my little book on North American literature, how deeply I sympathize with the Scottish and New England nature."

A few data concerning Professor Kellner's past will not be out of place here. Born of Jewish

parents at Tarnow, Galicia, in 1859, he was early initiated into Hebraic studies, and he has retained his interest in Jewish history and the critical interpretation of the Bible throughout life. After attending lectures on the classics in the University of Vienna, he devoted himself to the comparative study of languages, taking courses in Gothic and Old-High German under Richard Heinzel, and in Anglo-Saxon under Schipper and Brandl. These preparatory steps led to a journey, in 1888, to England, where he spent a year in arduous and fruitful work. He published for the Early English Text Society Caxton's "Blanchardyn and Eglantine," with an introduction on the syntactic peculiarities of the text which attracted the attention of scholars. In 1890 he became Privat-Dozent in English philology in the University of Vienna, a position which he subsequently exchanged for the full professorship at Czernowitz. Asked by the firm of Macmillan to furnish a history of English syntax, Kellner produced his "Historical Outlines of English Syntax" (1892), which has passed through many editions, and is still used as a textbook in English and American universities. In 1905 Doctor Kellner edited, together with Henry Bradley, the standard