Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/175

RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 163 dodrine d'emancipation de toutes les chatnes, est une doctrine d'absolue soumission au bien gnral. Alors que les anarchistes modernes accordent a 1'mdividu tous les droits, Godwin les lui retire tous, pour lui imposer tous les devoirs. Cette obligation de se soumettre a la raison et de devouer ses moindres actes a la collectivite donne au godwinisme sa marque propre. C'est a sa nature, impregne de rationalisme et de puritanisme calvinistes que Godwin doit d'avoir construit une doctrine aussi severe. Mais cette moral est trop austere et trop hostile a la vie pour plaire aux hommes. C'est pourquoi nous pensons que Godwin est destine a demeurer un solitaire dans la famille des anarchistes/ c Christopher Anstey and the New Bath Guide ' forms the subject of a useful study, or as he calls it, c ein Beitrag zur Entwickelung der englischen Satire in 18 Jahrhundert,' by Walter Maier, in the c Anglistische Forschungen.' He declares, and quite rightly, that any history of the development of satire in the eighteenth century must deal not only with the great accredited pieces of satire, but also with the lighter and minor pieces not so decisively stamped as satire. He points out how the c New Bath Guide ' reached its effects with simple, light, humorous, realistic touches, and so fell away from the classical satire rooted in stereo- typed custom, and thus paved the way for the work of such writers as Praed and Hood. Matthew Prior, however, may have gone for something in their making. Maier also shows how Smollett in ' Humphrey Clinker/ how Goldsmith, Moore, Byron all owe something to Anstey. The book is, in fact, an exhaustive treatise of the subject with which it deals.