Bulletin of Spanish Studies

IIHe had failed as a man of action, for, though his achievement had been
as great as any in history, he had thrown away his conquest. . .. During
his lifetime, the country he had created was being developed by other
hands than his. New Spain was taking shape under a Viceroy, while
he wandered, sad and idle, in the train of an ever-distracted monarch."
In a wider sense, too, he had failed-or, shall we not rather say, had
begun a work which is not yet perfected? Mexico, a graft of one race
It

upon the stem and root of another," does not yet know its true meaning
It

and destiny and lives an agitated life in a perpetual struggle between the
two bloods, so that Motecucuma dies and Cuauhtemoc is hanged every
day, and every day the white man conquers and humiliates the Indian
within the soul of every Mexican."
This is the deepest failure of all." But is it? For the history of the
It

race is not yet ended and the greatest triumph of Hernan Cortes may yet
be to come. N. YOUNG.

A Bibliographical Guide to Materials on American Spanish. Edited by

Madaline W. Nichols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press (Oxford University Press), 1941. Pp. xii+ 144. $1.50
(8s. 6d.).
This more than ordinarily useful bibliographical work has been
prepared under the auspices of the Committee on Latin American Studies
of the American Council of Learned Societies, a body which describes itself
as a national group of specialists representing the principal fields of
II

the humanities and the social sciences." Miss Nichols, the Committee's
research assistant, has been aided in her task by three advisory editors,
Professors Amado Alonso, Hayward Keniston and Tomas Navarro Tomas.
The particular merit of the Guide, which deals, though in a broad
sense, with language only, is that it is highly selective. In a field where
so much is being produced by so many (and incidentally, at present,
for so few) some degree of selectivity is becoming almost an essential
to usefulness. Here, not only is the total list a comparatively short one,
of twelve hundred titles, but the advisory editors have starred the items
which they consider more useful. Notes in small type below each title
give some idea of the scope or argument of the work to which it refers and
sometimes add a critical estimate of it or quote that of another writer.
The first section of the book enumerates
•
the chief American academies
and the philological institutes connected with university faculties, giving
some particulars of their history, activities and publications. This is
followed by a bibliography of bibliographies" and a list of seven
II

learned journals considered of particular utility to the student of Hispano-

America. Finally comes the bibliography of American Spanish as a
whole and of each of the countries in turn. Subsections under each head-

Copyright (c) 2004 ProQuest Information and Learning Company

Copyright (c) Liverpool University Press
 Bulletin of Spanish Studies
ing are: Dictionaries and vocabularies; Individual words; Influence of
other languages; Toponimia; Flora and fauna. The United States is
included among the individual countries treated. The work is completed
by a list of abbreviations and an index.
N. YOUNG.

BRIEFER NOTICES
DR. F. SANCHEZ y ESCRIBANO'S Juan de Mal Lara, su vida y sus obras
(New York, Hispanic Institute, 1941, pp. 22.2, price not stated) originated
in a doctoral thesis begun twelve years ago and based upon the Filosofia
vulgar. Since the completion of the thesis, the author has spent two
periods of investigation in Spain and now produces a mature study of the
Sevilian humanist, largely biographical and bibliographical, and, from
both these standpoints, a sure foundation for future research. One has
been rather apt to look upon Mal Lara as a somewhat shadowy Vives and
upon his genius as a blending of mild Erasmism with a strong native
tradition. Dr. Sanchez y Escribano presents him as a more robust
personality, finely applying to him the lines of Antonio Machado:
Sentia los cuatro vientos
en la encrucij ada
de su pensamiento.
Without suggesting that he was in the first rank of Renaissance ,
Humanists, he makes of him an eager, questing spirit; no rebel but an
eager lover of freedom, with an enthusiasm readily communicable to
others; an anima naturaliter Christiana, temperamentally both student
and artist-a personality about whom we should like to know more. To
have created such an impression in a work so largely devoted to factual
investigation is no mean achievement.
In an interesting and timely new series entitled The World To-day"
I'

the Oxford University Press has published (down to the time of writing)
five volumes, three of which deal with the United States while one treats
of Canada. The fifth, South America, with Mexico and Central America
(1941, pp. 1Ig, 2S. 6d.), is the work of Professor J. B. Trend, who, faced
with the impossible task of giving an adequate account of so vast a region
in so small a space, has made a valiant attempt to deal with all the twenty
Hispano-American republics, under the headings of history, literature,
arts, social conditions and politics. It would be ungenerous to make
any kind of criticism on the way in which the meagre space has been
used, especially as the author, with his well-known journalistic skill, has
succeeded in writing with more than usual attractiveness. There should
have been room for at least three volumes in the series-either divided

Copyright (c) 2004 ProQuest Information and Learning Company

Copyright (c) Liverpool University Press