LION OF FLANDERS, The. Lion of Flanders) by Henri Conscience (1813-83), written in the early years of his career (1838), represents on the artistic side the maximum of his achievement. His father was one of that amazing train of French adventurers who seem to have been called forth to follow the fortunes of Napoleon. The sympathy between the dis appointed and erratic father, a foiled, soured and misanthropical man of action, and the patient, earnest and artistically endowed son could never have been close. The future author had been born at Antwerp in the years that marked the decline of Napoleon's power, and his mother was Flemish. His temperament bound him much more to her and to his native land of Flanders which in spite of a glorious past had no status as a nation. The speech of the Flemings was looked upon, even by the Flemings themselves, not as a language, but as a dialect, unsuited to any serious literary effort. With this estimate, Conscience, fond of his mother tongue, could not agree, and he de cided to work toward the recognition of Flem ish as a language and toward the creation of a Flemish literature. In a long life of patient, conscientious effort, he fully achieved his pur pose and is properly regarded as the founder of the Flemish literary movement.
It was natural that with this aim he should have turned for some of his material to the earlier history of his country, the days of the glory of Bruges and Ghent, of the struggles of the guilds and of the old Flemish knights. This provides the back?round for the moving story of the Lion of Flanders (Robert of Bethune), who made common cause with the Flemish burghers against the French tyranny of Phillip the Fair. It is full of the pageantry of a rich epoch, and moves rapidly with a large, full sweep and swing. The more important male characters are powerfully drawn, though the heroine is weak and uncon vincing. Though the of Flanders) is substantially accurate, as a picture of the time, it should nevertheless be remembered that the events are marshaled and colored by the au thor's patriotic fervor and not drawn with the dispassionate analysis of the modern historian. As an historical novel, however, it stands with the best of its class and deserves the celebrity which has brought about its translation into nearly all European languages.