PARIS, GASTON [BRUNO PAULIN GASTON] French scholar, son of Alexis Paulin Paris, was born at Avenay (Marne) on Aug. 9, 1839. An early impulse to the study of Ro mance literature was developed by courses of study at Bonn (1856-57) under Friedrich Diez, at Gottingen (1857-58) and finally at the Ecole des Chartres (1858-61). His first important work, Etude sur le role de l'accent latin dans la langue francaise (1862), was developed later in his Lettre a M. Leon Gautier sur la versification latine rhythmique (1866). Gaston Paris maintained that French versification was a natural development of popular Latin methods which depended on accent rather than quantity, and were as widely different from classical rules as the Low Latin was from the classical idiom. He succeeded his father as professor of mediaeval French literature at the College de France in 1872, becoming director in 1895; in 1876 he was admitted to the Acad emy of Inscriptions and in 1896 to the French Academy. Gaston Paris won a European reputation as a Romance scholar, and was a literary critic of great acumen and breadth of view. His Vie de Saint-Alexis (1872) provided a model for future editors of medi aeval texts. It included the original text and the variations dating from the 12th, i3th and 14th centuries. Gaston Paris contributed largely to the Histoire litteraire de la France, and with Paul Meyer published Romania, a journal devoted to Romance litera ture. He trained at the Ecole des Chartres and the College de
France a band of disciples who continued his traditions of exact research. Gaston Paris died in Paris on March 6, 1903. He had endeared himself to a wide circle of scholars outside his own coun try by his unfailing urbanity and generosity.
His works include: Les plus anciens monuments de la langue francaise (1875) ; Deux redactions du roman des Sept sages de Rome (i876) ; La poesie du moyen age (1885 and 1895); Penseurs et Poetes (1897) ; Francois Villon (1901, "Grands ecrivains francais" series) ; Legendes du moyen age (1903) ; an edition (with G. Raynaud) of the Mystere de la passion d'Arnaud Greban (1878) ; and a translation (with Brachet and A. Morel-Fatio) of Friedrich Diez's Grammaire des langues romanes (1874-78).
See "Hommage a Gaston Paris" (1903), the opening lecture of his successor, Joseph Bedier, in the chair of mediaeval literature at the College de France; A. Thomas, Essais de philologie francaise (1897) W. P. Ker, in the Fortnightly Review (July, 1904) ; M. Croiset, Notice sur Gaston Paris (1904) ; J. Mier et M. Rogues, Bibliographie des travaux de Gaston Paris (1904).