Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by LEYPOLDT & HOLT, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Copyright, 1889, HENRY HOLT & CO. NOTE TO THE NEW EDITION. IN preparing a reprint of Le Cid, after so many years, the editor congratulates himself and his colleagues almost all now his juniors that much of what was written in the original Preface is no longer true. one rejoices more than he in the progress that has been made in modern language study in the last twenty years, and in the helps - then so few, now so abundant for advanced work in almost every department of French or German scholarship. Yet, for this very reason, as a kind of landmark that Preface has been allowed to stand unchanged, with its original date. For the same reason, too, the edition, then almost a pioneer, has been kept within its original scope, with only such few changes or additions as have been deemed necessary to adapt it better to that purpose · still a useful one, if no longer relatively so important. It is no small ground of congratulation that, for so long a time, the book has maintained itself, with fair approval, among so many readers. The Editor trusts that its welcome and its usefulness may not yet be exhausted-as the interest of Le Cid never can be until some younger and stronger scholar shall more worthily interpret this beautiful masterpiece of poetry, love and chivalry, to our American youth. COLUMBIA, S. C., 1889. 28740 OF SALIFORNIA PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. THIS edition of The Cid is designed to meet what are believed to be the actual wants of the students of French in our colleges and other institutions of learning. The Editor has found, in his own experience, that the most intelligent and advanced students often do not read the masterpieces of French literature with interest, for the simple reason that they do not sufficiently understand their language. Even the student who is perfectly familiar with the modern grammatical French, as it is commonly taught, will find constant difficulties in the language of the classical writers difficulties which, oftentimes, grammar and dictionaries will not solve. No language is so superior to its grammar as the French ; no language, except perhaps the English itself, can be so poorly taught by grammatical methods, or brought within grammatical explanations; in no language is the play of idiom more lively and various, and less within the control of ordinary analysis. Thus, while in some respects it is an easy language, it seems to be forgotten that in other respects, for English students at least, it is a very difficult one. The reading of a French or German author, in our schools, should be as accurate and as profitable, for both linguistic and literary discipline, as that of a Latin or Greek author; yet this reading is for 5 |