A Short History of French Literature

Dupont.

The minor poets of this second Romantic school may again be grouped together. Charles Coran, a miscellaneous poet of talent, anticipated the school of which we shall shortly have to give some notice, that of the Parnassiens. Joséphin Soulary is remarkable for the extreme beauty of his sonnets, in devoting himself to which form he anticipated a general tendency of contemporary poets both English and French. Auguste Vacquerie, better known as a critic, a dramatist, and a journalist, began as a lyrical and miscellaneous poet, and achieved some noticeable work. Gustave Le Vavasseur attempted, not without success, to revive the vigorous tradition of Norman poetry. Pierre Dupont, better known than any of these, seemed at one time likely to be a poet of the first rank, but unfortunately wasted his talent in Bohemian dawdling and disorder. His songs were the delight of the young generation of 1848, and two of them, Le Chant des Ouvriers and Les Bœufs, are still most remarkable compositions. Louis Bouilhet (whose best poem is Melænis) has some resemblance to M. Leconte de Lisle, though he went still further afield for his subjects. He had no small power, but the defect of the old descriptive poetry revived in him, and in some of his contemporaries and followers, the defect necessarily attendant on forgetfulness of the fact that description by itself, however beautiful it may be, is not poetry. With these may be mentioned Gustave Nadaud, a song-writer pure and simple, free from almost any influence of school literature, a true follower of Béranger, though with much less range, wit, and depth.

The Parnasse.

Except Dupont and Nadaud, all the poets just mentioned may be said to belong more or less to the school of Gautier – the school, that is to say, which attached preponderant importance to form in poetry. Towards the middle of the Second Empire a crowd of younger writers, who had adopted this principle still more unhesitatingly, grew up, and formed what has been known for some years, partly seriously, partly in derision, as the Parnassien school. The origin of this term was the issue, in 1866 (as a sort of poetical manifesto preluding the great Exhibition of the next year), of a collection of poetry from the pens of a large number of poets, from Théophile Gautier and Emile Deschamps downwards. This was entitled Le Parnasse Contemporain, after an old French fashion. Another collection of the same kind was begun in 1869, interrupted by the war, and continued afterwards; and a third in 1876: while the Parnassien movement was also represented in several newspapers, the chief of which was La Renaissance. Another nickname of the poets of this sect (which, however, included almost all French writers of verse, even Victor de Laprade being counted in) was les impassibles, for their presumed devotion to art for art's sake, and their scorn of didactic, domestic, and sentimental poetry. Their numbers were very great, and none, save a few, can be mentioned here. Perhaps the chief of the original Parnassiens were MM. Sully Prudhomme and François Coppée, the former of whom experienced some reaction and affected what is called 'thoughtful verse,' while M. Coppée, having taken to domestic subjects, is as popular as any contemporary French poet, and in at least one instance (Le Luthier de Crémone) has achieved success at the theatre. A poet of great gifts, the latest of the vagabond school of Villon, was Albert Glatigny, who lived as a strolling actor, and died young. Many of his poems, but especially the Ballade des Enfans sans Souci, have singular force and pathos. It would hardly be fair to mention any other names, because a singular evenness of talent and general characteristics manifests itself among these poets. All sacrifice something to the perfection of form, or, to speak more correctly and critically, most are saved only by the perfection of their form, which is as a rule far superior to that of English minor poets. Of late years the Parnasse as a single group has broken up somewhat, and during the last decade some isolated poets of promise have appeared. M. Maurice Bouchor recurred to the bacchanalian model for inspiration; M. Paul Deroulède is tyrtaean and bellicose. Both of these may be said to be representative of reaction against the Parnasse. The new naturalist school, which has produced such singular work in prose fiction, is represented in poetry by M. Richepin and M. Guy de Maupassant. The former, with much unworthy work, produced in La Mer and elsewhere excellent things. The latter, despite an unfortunate licence of subject, showed himself the strongest and most accomplished versifier who has made his appearance in France for the last twenty years. But after his first efforts he appeared to abandon himself almost entirely to prose. M. Paul Verlaine, a poet known from the early days of the Parnasse, has more recently produced work of increased but very unequal merit, exaggerating the faults but showing some of the charm of Baudelaire; and, partly under his, partly under foreign influence, a still younger school has begun to make experiments in prosody which are not uninteresting, but which are too minute for notice here.

Minor and later Dramatists.

Scribe.

Ponsard.

Emile Augier.

Eugène Labiche.

Dumas the Younger.

Victorien Sardou.

The progress of French drama during the last half century is of somewhat less importance to literature, but of even more to social history, than that of poetry. The greatest masters of drama have already been mentioned among the eight typical names of 1830, even Balzac having attempted it, though without much success. The most famous and successful playwrights, however, as distinguished from the producers of literary dramas, have yet to be noticed[293 - In this notice of the acting drama of France, with which, as contrasted with the literary theatre, the present writer has comparatively little acquaintance, he is considerably indebted to Mr. Brander Matthews' useful French Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century. London and New York; 1882.]. Pixérécourt, a melodramatist and a book-collector, achieved his first success with a play on the well-known story of the Dog of Montargis (itself dating back to the earliest days of the Chansons de Gestes), in 1814, and followed it up with a long succession of similar pieces. Two years later Eugène Scribe, who had been born in 1791, made his début, as far as success goes, with Une Nuit de la Garde Nationale. Scribe was one of the most prolific, one of the most successful, and one of the least literary of French dramatists. For nearly half a century he continued, sometimes alone, and sometimes in collaboration, to pour forth vaudevilles, dramas, and comedies, almost all of which were favourably received. Scribe was generous to his associates, and would sometimes acknowledge the communication of a bare idea by a share in the profits of the play which it suggested. He had also an almost unrivalled knowledge of the technique of the theatre, and not a little wit. But his style is loose and careless, and his dramas do not bear reading. His most important later plays are Valérie, 1822; Le Mariage d'Argent, 1827; Bertrand et Raton, 1833; Le Verre d'Eau, 1840; Une Chaîne, 1841; Bataille de Dames, 1851. One of the less famous partakers in the first Romantic movement, Bouchardy, distinguished himself, in succession to Pixérécourt, as a Romantic melodramatist, his most famous works being Le Sonneur de Saint Paul, and Lazare le Pâtre. In 1843 a kind of reaction was supposed to be about to take place, the signs of which were the performance of the Lucrèce of Ponsard in that year, and of the Ciguë of Emile Augier the year after. Ponsard, however, was only a Romantic whose colour was deadened by his inability to attain more brilliant tones. His succeeding plays, Agnès de Méranie, Charlotte Corday, L'Honneur et l'Argent, showed this sufficiently. M. Emile Augier is a more remarkable and a more independent figure. In so far as he represents a protest against Romanticism at all (which he does only very partially), it is because he shared in the growing tendency towards realism, that is, to a recurrence in the Romantic sense to the tragédie bourgeoise of the preceding century, and because also he gave no countenance to the practice, in which some of the early Romantics indulged, of representing immoral personages as interesting. Almost all M. Augier's dramas, such as L'Aventurière, 1849, which is his masterpiece, Gabrielle, 1849, Diane, 1852, Le Mariage d'Olympe, 1855, Le Fils de Giboyer, 1862, and others of more recent date, are distinctly on the side of the angels. But the author does not make the excellence of his intention a reason for passing off inferior work, and he is justly recognised as one of the leaders of French drama in the latter half of the century. About this same time (1845) was the date of the appearance of a fertile and successful playwright of the less exalted class, M. Dennery (Don César de Bazan, L'Aieule). Auguste Maquet, another of the old guard of Romanticism, distinguished himself by helping to adapt to the stage the novels of Dumas the elder, which he had already helped to write; and one of his colleagues on Dumas' staff, M. Octave Feuillet, who was shortly to make a great reputation for himself as a novelist, appeared on the boards with Échec et Mat. During the whole of this decade (1840-1850) Delphine Gay, the beautiful and accomplished wife of the journalist Emile de Girardin, was a frequent and successful play-writer. Soon afterwards M. Legouvé, son of the academician of the same name, and himself an academician, began to collaborate with Scribe in works of more importance (Adrienne Lecouvreur) than the latter had before attempted; while George Sand and her former friend, Jules Sandeau, were also drawn into the inevitable theatrical vortex. In collaboration with Augier, Sandeau produced, from one of his own novels, one of the best plays of the century, Le Gendre de M. Poirier, 1855. Eugène Labiche, who had been born in 1815, distinguished himself, in 1851, by Le Chapeau de Paille d'Italie, and in it laid the foundation of a long career of success in the lighter kind of play which, at last, conducted him to the Academy. His best-known play is Le Voyage de M. Perrichon. The year 1852 was memorable for the French stage, for it saw the production of La Dame aux Camélias, the first important play of Alexandre Dumas fils. Without much of his father's talent for novel-writing, M. Dumas has been both a more successful, and perhaps a better, dramatist. Most of his plays have been directed to some burning question of the social or ethical kind, and it has been his practice to re-issue them after a time, with argumentative prefaces, in a very singular style. Diane de Lys, Le Demi-Monde, La Question d'Argent, Le Fils Naturel, Le Supplice d'une Femme (nominally composed with Emile de Girardin), Les Idées de Madame Aubray, Une Visite de Noces, and L'Étrangère, are his chief works. In 1854 appeared a now almost forgotten work by Victorien Sardou, who was destined to be the favourite dramatist of the Second Empire, and to share with MM. Augier and Dumas fils the chief rank among the dramatists of the last half of the century. Seven years later Nos Intimes gave him a great success, and, in 1865, La Famille Benoiton a greater, which he followed up with Nos Bons Villageois, 1866. Since that time he has written many plays, of which the finest by far, and one of the few comedies of this age likely to become classical, is the admirable Rabagas– a satire of the keenest on the interested politicians, who, in France as elsewhere, take up demagogy as a trade. M. Sardou has attempted serious work in various plays, the best of which is, perhaps, Patrie, but it is not his forte. Satirical observation of manners, and especially of the current political and social follies of the day, is what he can do best, and in this peculiar line he has few equals. But he is admitted to be one of the most unequal of writers. A peculiar offspring of the Second Empire are the brilliant burlesques of Offenbach, which owed at least part of their brilliancy to the librettos composed for them by MM. Meilhac and Halévy. The first-named of these had produced successful dramas as far back as 1859. The collaborateurs did not confine themselves to furnishing words for M. Offenbach's music, but attempted the prose drama frequently and with success, Froufrou being their most important work in this way. M. Gondinet and M. Pailleron also deserve notice as successful manufacturers of light plays, the latter in especial having an excellent wit (Le monde où l'on s'ennuie, Le Chevalier Trumeau). This may also be asserted of M. Halévy, who has latterly, in Les Petites Cardinal and other non-dramatic sketches, shown himself to even greater advantage than on the stage. Indeed the Cardinal family may be said to be the most striking literary creation of its kind for years.

In a different class and earlier, Joseph Autran, a poet of the school of Lamartine, obtained a great reputation by his tragedy of La Fille d'Eschyle, which procured him a seat in the Academy, and gave him the opportunity of writing not a few volumes of polished, but not very vigorous, poetry. M. Théodore de Banville, who has tried most paths in literature, produced, in 1866, a short play, with the old mystery-writer Gringoire for hero and title-giver; a play which is admirably written, and which has kept its place on the stage. M. François Coppée's graceful Luthier de Crémone has already been mentioned. Another literary dramatist, to distinguish the class from those who are playwrights first of all, is M. Henri de Bornier, who obtained some success, in 1875, with La Fille de Roland, and, in 1880, with Les Noces d'Attila. Both these are good, though not consummate, specimens of the poetical drama.

Classes of Nineteenth-Century Fiction.

Active, however, as was the cultivation of poetry proper and of the drama, it is not likely that the nineteenth century will be principally known in French literary history either as a poetical, or as a dramatic age. Its most creative production is in the field of prose fiction. It is particularly noteworthy that every one of the eight names which have been set at its head is the name of a novelist, and that the energy of most of these authors in novel-writing has been very considerable. Their production may be divided into two broad classes – novels of incident, of which Hugo and Dumas were the chief practitioners, and which derive chiefly from Sir Walter Scott; and novels of character, which, with a not inconsiderable admixture of English influence, may be said to be legitimately descended from the indigenous novel created by Madame de la Fayette, continued by Marivaux and still more by Prévost, and maintained, though in diminished vivacity, by later writers. Of this school George Sand and Balzac are the masters, though much importance must also be assigned to Stendhal. At first the novelists of 1830 decidedly preferred the novel of incident, the literary success of which in the hands of Hugo, and its pecuniary success in the hands of Dumas, were equally likely to excite ambitions of different kinds.

Minor and later Novelists.

Jules Janin.

A rival of both of these in popularity during the reign of Louis Philippe, though infinitely inferior to both in literary skill, was Eugène Sue. With him may be classed another voluminous manufacturer of exciting stories, Frédéric Soulié, and somewhat later Paul Féval, with next to them Amédée Achard and Roger de Beauvoir. A better writer than any of these was Jules Janin, whose literary career was long and prosperous, but not uniform. Janin began with a strange story, in the extremest Romantic taste, called L'Ane Mort et la Femme Guillotinée. This at a later period he represented as an intentional caricature, which is not on the whole likely. He followed it up with Barnave, a historical novel full of exciting incident. Both these books, however, with grave defects, have power perhaps superior to that shown in anything that Janin did later. Being an exceedingly facile writer, and lacking that peculiar quality of style which sometimes precludes popularity with the many as much as it secures it with the few, he became absorbed in journalism, in the furnishing of miscellaneous articles, prefaces, and so forth, to the booksellers, and finally in theatrical criticism, where he reigned supreme for many years. None of his later novels need remark. With Janin may be mentioned M. Alphonse Karr, who however has been more of a journalist than of a novelist. His abundant and lively work has not perhaps the qualities of permanence. But his Voyage autour de mon Jardin, his Sous les Tilleuls, and the satirical publication known as Les Guépes, deserve at least to be named. Here too may be noticed M. Barbey d'Aurévilly whose works critical and fictitious (the chief being probably L'Ensorcelée) display a very remarkable faculty of style, perhaps too deliberately eccentric, but full of distinction and vigour.

Under the Empire, a fresh group of novelists of incident sprang up. MM. Erckmann and Chatrian produced in collaboration a large number of tales, chiefly dealing with the events of the Revolution and the First Empire in the north-eastern provinces of France. Criminal and legal subjects were great favourites with the late Emile Gaboriau, who naturalised in France the detective novel. His chief follower is M. Fortuné du Boisgobey.

Charles de Bernard.

The best novelists of the generation of 1830, outside the list of masters, have yet to be noticed. These are Charles de Bernard and Jules Sandeau. Charles de Bernard was at one time Balzac's secretary, but his fashion of work is entirely different from that of his employer. He divides himself for the most part between the representation of the Parisian life of good society and that of country-house manners. His shorter tales are perhaps his best, and many of them, such as L'Ecueil, La Quarantaine, Le Paratonnerre, Le Gendre, etc., are admirable examples of a class in which Frenchmen have always excelled. But his longer works, Gerfaut, Les Ailes d'Icare, Un Homme Sérieux, etc., are not inferior to them in wit, in accurate knowledge and skilful portraiture of character, in good breeding, and in satiric touches which are always good-humoured.

Jules Sandeau.

Jules Sandeau was a novelist of no very different class, but with less wit, with much less satiric intention, and with a greater infusion of sentiment, not to say tragedy. His best novels, Catherine, Mademoiselle de Penarvan, Mademoiselle de la Seiglière, Le Docteur Herbeau, are drawn from provincial life, which, from the great size of France and its diversity in scenery and local character, has been a remarkably fertile subject to French novelists. These novels are remarkable for their accurate and dramatic construction (which is such that they have lent themselves in more than one instance to theatrical adaptation with great success) and their pure and healthy morality.

Octave Feuillet.

Murger.

Edmond About.

Feydeau.

Gustave Droz

Next in order of birth may be mentioned Octave Feuillet, who began, as has been mentioned, by officiating as assistant to Alexandre Dumas. His first independent efforts in novel-writing, Bellah and Onesta, were of the same kind as his master's; but they were not great successes, and after a short time he struck into an original and much more promising path. His first really characteristic novel was La Petite Comtesse, 1856, and this was followed by others, the best of which are Le Roman d'un Jeune Homme Pauvre, 1858; Sibylle, 1862; M. de Camors, 1867; and Julia de Trécœur, 1872: the two last being perhaps his strongest books, though the Roman d'un Jeune Homme Pauvre is the most popular. M. Feuillet wrote in a pure and easy style, and exhibited in his novels acquaintance with the manners of good society, and a considerable command of pathos. He was more studious of the proprieties than most of his contemporaries, but has indulged in a somewhat unhealthy sentimentalism. Henry Murger had a very original, though a somewhat limited, talent. He is the novelist of what is called the Parisian Bohême, the reckless society of young artists and men of letters, which has always grouped itself in greater numbers at Paris than anywhere else. The novel, or rather the series of sketches, entitled La Vie de Bohême is one which, from the truth to nature, the pathos, and the wit which accompany its caricature and burlesque of manners, will always hold a position in literature. Murger, who experienced many hardships in his youth, was all his life a careless and reckless liver, and died young. His works (all prose fiction, except a small collection of poems not very striking in form but touching and sincere in sentiment) are tolerably numerous, but the best of them are little more than repetitions of the Vie de Bohême. Edmond About, a very lively writer, whose liveliness was not always kept sufficiently in check by good taste, oscillated between fiction and journalism, latterly inclining chiefly to journalism. In his younger days he was better known as a novelist, and some of his works, such as Tolla and Le Roi des Montagnes, were very popular. More characteristic perhaps are his shorter and more familiar stories (L'Homme à l'Oreille Cassée, Le Nez d'un Notaire, etc.). In this same group of novelists of the Second Republic and Empire ranks Ernest Feydeau, a morbid and thoroughly unwholesome author, who, however, did not lack power, and once at least (in Sylvie) produced work of unquestionable merit. His other novels, Fanny, Daniel, La Comtesse de Chalis, are chiefly remarkable as showing the worst side of the society of the Empire. Among writers of short stories Champfleury, a friend and contemporary of Murger (who has more recently betaken himself to artistic criticism of the historical kind), deserves notice for his amusing extravaganzas, and Gustave Droz for the singularly ingenious and witty series of domestic sketches entitled Monsieur, Madame et Bébé, and Entre Nous. The range of subject in these is wide and not always what is understood by the English word domestic. But the fancy shown in their design and the literary skill of their execution are alike remarkable and worthy of the ancient reputation of France in the short prose tale. Nor have they lacked followers.

Flaubert.

The greatest of the Second Empire novelists is unquestionably Gustave Flaubert, who was born in 1821. Having a sufficient income he betook himself early to literature, which he cultivated with an amount of care and elaborate self-discipline rare among authors. In 1848 he contributed to the Artiste newspaper, then edited by Gautier, some fragments of a remarkable fantasy-piece on the legend of St. Anthony, which was not published as a whole till nearly a quarter of a century later. In 1859, being then nearly forty years old, he achieved at once a great success and a great scandal by his novel of Madame Bovary, a study of provincial life, as unsparing as any of Balzac's, but more true to actual nature, more finished in construction, and far superior in style. It was the subject of a prosecution, but the author was acquitted. Next, M. Flaubert selected an archaeological subject, and produced, after long study, Salammbo, a novel the scene of which is pitched at Carthage in the days of the mercenary war. This book, like the former, has a certain repulsiveness of subject in parts; but the vigour of the drawing and the extraordinary skill in description are as remarkable as ever. L'Education Sentimentale, which followed, was Flaubert's least popular work, being too long, and having an insufficiently defined plot and interest. Then appeared the completed Tentation de St. Antoine, a book deserving to rank at the head of its class – that of the fantastic romance. Afterwards came Trois Contes, exhibiting in miniature all the author's characteristics; and lastly, after his sudden death, in 1881, the unfinished Bouvard et Pécuchet. The faults of Flaubert are, in the first place, indiscriminate meddling with subjects best left alone, which he shares with most French novelists; in the second, a certain complaisance in dealing with things simply horrible, which is more peculiar to him; in the third, an occasional prodigality of erudite detail which clogs and impedes the action. His merits are an almost incomparable power of description, a mastery of those types of character which he attempts, an imagination of extraordinary power, and a singular satirical criticism of life, which does not exclude the possession of a vein of romantic and almost poetical sentiment and suggestion. He is a writer repulsive to many, unintelligible to more, and never likely to be generally popular, but sure to retain his place in the admiration of those who judge literature as literature.

The Naturalists. Emile Zola.

The name of Flaubert has been much invoked, and his reputation has been not a little compromised, by a small but noisy school of novelists and critics who call themselves naturalists, and affect to preach and practice a new crusade for the purpose of revolutionising poetry, fiction, and the drama. These persons, whose leader is M. Emile Zola, a busy and popular novelist, an unsuccessful dramatist, and a critic of great industry, include the brothers Goncourt (one of whom is now dead) and a number of younger writers who deserve no notice, except M. Guy de Maupassant, whose prose, if too often ill employed, is as vigorous as his verse, and who in his excellent Pierre et Jean broke his naturalist chains. The naturalists affect to derive from Stendhal, through Balzac and Flaubert. That is to say, they adopt the analytic method, and devote themselves chiefly to the study of character. But they go farther than these great artists by objecting to the processes of art. According to them, literature is to be strictly 'scientific,' to confine itself to anatomy, and, it would appear, to morbid anatomy only. The Romantic treatment, that is to say, the presentation of natural facts in an artistic setting, is rigidly proscribed. Everything must be set down on the principle of a newspaper report, or, to go to another art for an illustration, as if by a photographic camera, not by an artist's pencil. Now it will be obvious to any impartial critic that the pursuance of this method is in itself fatal to the interest of a book. The reader, unless of the very lowest order of intellect, does not want in a novel a mere reproduction of the facts of life, still less a mere scientific reference of them to causes. Accordingly, the naturalist method inevitably produces an extreme dulness. In their search for a remedy, its practitioners have observed that there are certain divisions of human action, usually classed as vice and crime, in which, for their own sake, and independently of pleasure in artistic appreciation of the manner in which they are presented, a morbid interest is felt by a large number of persons. They therefore, with businesslike shrewdness, invariably, or almost invariably, select their subjects from these privileged classes. The ambition of the naturalist, briefly described without epigram or flippancy, but as he would himself say scientifically, is to mention the unmentionable with as much fulness of detail as possible. In this business M. Emile Zola has not hitherto been surpassed, though many of his pupils have run him hard. Unfortunately, for those who are proof against the attraction of disgusting subjects merely because they are disgusting, M. Zola is one of the dullest of writers. His style is also very bad, possessing for its sole merits a certain vulgar vigour which is occasionally not ineffective, and a capacity for vivid description. He is deeply learned in argot, or slang, the use of which is one of the naturalist instruments, and his works are therefore not useless as repertories of expressions to be avoided. M. Zola's criticisms are more interesting than his novels, consisting chiefly of vigorous denunciations of all the good writers of his own day.

M. Victor Cherbuliez, besides political and miscellaneous work of inferior relative power, has produced a series of novels (Le Comte Kostia, Le Roman d'une Honnête Femme, Méta Holdenis, Samuel Brohl et Cie) which are remarkable for style, construction, and wit. M. Alphonse Daudet, beginning early, produced in his first stage a charming collection of Lettres de mon Moulin, and a pathetic autobiographic novel Le Petit Chose. In his second, attempting the manner of Dickens, he obtained with Jack, 1873, and Froment Jeune et Risler Aîné, 1874, great popularity. His later works, Le Nabab, Les Rois en Exil, Numa Roumestan, L'Évangéliste, L'Immortel, shew, in their condescending to the satisfaction of vulgar curiosity as to living or lately dead persons, a great falling off. The capacity of M. Daudet (whose Tartarin de Tarascon with its sequel is wholly admirable extravaganza) cannot be doubted: his taste is deplorable. Of still more recent novelists two only can be mentioned: M. Georges Ohnet (Serge Panine, Le Maître de Forges, La Grande Marnière) whose popularity with readers is only equalled by the unanimous disfavour with which all competent critics regard him, and M. Viaud ('Pierre Loti'), a naval officer, whose work (Aziyadé, Le Mariage de Loti, Mon Frère Yves, Madame Chrysanthème), midway between the novel, the autobiography, and the travel-book displays some elegance and much 'preciousness' of style and fancy.

Journalists and Critics.

Paul de Saint-Victor.

Hippolyte Taine.

After the Revolution the fortune of journalism was assured, and though under the subsequent forms of government it was subjected to a rigid censorship, it was too firmly established to be overthrown. Almost all men of letters flocked to it. The leading article or unsigned political and miscellaneous essay has never been so strong a feature of French journalism as it has been of English. On the other hand, the feuilleton, or daily, weekly, and monthly instalment of fiction or criticism, has been one of its chief characteristics. Many, if not most, of the most celebrated novels of the last half century have originally appeared in this form, publication in independent parts, which was long fashionable in England, never having found favour in France. In the same way, though weekly reviews devoted wholly or mainly to literary criticism have, for some reason, never been successful with the French as they have with us, daily journalism has given a greater space to criticism, and especially to theatrical criticism. All French criticism subsequent to 1830 may be said to derive, whether it deals with literature, with the theatre, or with art, from three masters, Sainte-Beuve, Gautier, and Janin. The method of the first has been sufficiently explained. Gautier's was rather the expression of a fine critical appreciation in the most exquisite style, and Janin's, the far easier, and, after a short time, unimportant plan of gossiping amiably and amusingly about, it might be the subject, it might be something quite different. The only successor to Gautier was Paul de Saint-Victor, who, however, was inferior to his master in appreciative power, and exaggerated his habit of relying on style to carry him through. Paul de Saint-Victor was not a frequent writer, and his collected works as yet do not fill many volumes. Hommes et Dieux, which is perhaps the principal of them, exhibits a deficiency of catholicity in literary appreciation. His latest book, Les Deux Masques, an unfinished study of the history of the stage, contains much brilliant writing, but is wanting in solid qualities. As a theatrical critic, Janin was succeeded by a curiously different person, M. Francisque Sarcey, who has chiefly been noteworthy for severity and a kind of pedagogic common sense, as unlike as possible to the good-humoured gossip of Janin. M. de Pontmartin was an acrid but vigorous critic on the royalist and orthodox side. M. Hippolyte Taine, chief of Sainte-Beuve's followers, has somewhat caricatured his master's method. Sainte-Beuve's principle was, it must be remembered, to examine carefully the circumstances of his author's time, in order to ascertain their bearing upon him. In M. Taine's hands this wise practice changed itself into a theory – the theory that every man is a kind of product of the circumstances, and that, by examining the latter, the man is necessarily explained. M. Taine chose for his principal exercising ground the history of English literature. He produced under that title a series of studies often acute, always brilliant in style, but constantly showing the faults of the critical method just indicated. Of other literary critics, the two chief besides M. Taine are M. Edmond Scherer and M. Emile Montégut. The latter is a critic of a very fine and delicate appreciation. A short essay of his on Boccaccio may be specified as one of the best of French contemporary critical exercises. M. Scherer has a good deal of common sense, a considerable acquaintance with literature, and a clear, straightforward, and vigorous style. His judgment, however, is much limited by prejudice, and some of his studies, such as those on Baudelaire and Diderot, show that he is an untrustworthy judge of what is not commonplace.

Academic Critics.

A separate school of criticism, of a more academic character than that represented by most of the names just mentioned, has existed in France during the greater part of the century, and during a great part of it has found its means of utterance partly in the University chairs and in treatises crowned by the Academy, partly in a well-known fortnightly periodical, the Revue des Deux-Mondes. The master of this school of criticism may be said to have been Villemain, 1790-1870, who represents the classical tradition corrected by a very considerable study of other European languages besides French. Not the least part of the narrowness of the older classical school was due to its ignorance of these languages, and its consequent incapacity to make the necessary comparisons. Villemain's criticism, though not quite so flexible as it might have been, was on the whole sound, and the same variety of the art, though with more limitations, was represented by Guizot. Not a few critics of merit of the same kind were born at the close of the last century, or at the beginning of this. Among them may be mentioned M. Nisard, a bitter opponent of the Romantic movement, and a prejudiced critic of French literature, but a writer of very considerable knowledge, and of some literary merit; Eugène Geruzez, author of by far the best history of French literature in a small compass, and of many separate treatises of value; Alexandre Vinet, a Swiss, and a Protestant, who died at no very advanced age, leaving much work of merit; and Saint-Marc Girardin, who busied himself nearly as much in journalism and politics as in literary criticism proper, but whose professorial Cours de Littérature Dramatique is a work of interest, exhibiting a kind of transition style between the older and newer criticism. Michelet, Quinet, M. Renan, and others, who will be mentioned under other heads, have also been considerable as critics. Philarète Chasles was a lively writer, who devoted himself especially to English literature, and whose judgment in matters literary was not quite equal to his affection for them. The critics of the Revue des Deux-Mondes proper include, besides not a few authors named elsewhere, Gustave Planche, a person of curious idiosyncrasy, chiefly remarkable for the ferocity of his critiques; Saint René Taillandier, a dull man of industry; and M. Caro, a man of industry who was not dull. Latterly some younger writers have endeavoured (chiefly in its pages) to set up a kind of neo-classical school, which is equally opposed to modern innovations, and to the habit of studying old French, that is, French before the sixteenth century. The chief of these advocates of a return to the Malherbe-Boileau dungeon is M. Ferdinand Brunetière. We must not omit among the older generation M. Lenient, the author of two admirable volumes on the History of French Satire; among the younger, M. Paul Stapfer, the author of an excellent study of 'Shakespeare et l'Antiquité,' M. Jules Lemaître, a brilliant critic, who is perhaps a little more brilliant than critical, and M. Emile Faguet, whose criticism is as sound as it is accomplished.

Among the representatives of art criticism Viollet-le-Duc as a writer on architecture, and Charles Blanc (brother of Louis) as an authority on decorative art generally, made before their deaths reputations sufficiently exceptional to be noticed here. Here also, as representatives of other classes of literature, the names of Hector Berlioz, the great composer, author of letters and memoirs of great interest; of Henri Monnier, an artist not much less skilful with his pen than with his pencil in satirical sketches of Parisian types (especially his famous 'Joseph Prudhomme'); of Charles Monselet, a miscellaneous writer whose sympathies were as wide and his temper as genial as his literary faculty was accomplished; of X. Doudan, whose posthumous remains and letters attracted much attention after a life of silence; and of the Genevese diarist Amiel, selections from whose vast journal of philosophical sentimentalism and miscellaneous reflection have also been popular, may be cited.

Linguistic and Literary Study of French.

The revived study of old French literature just noticed is the only department of the literature of erudition which can receive notice here, for prose science and classical study fall equally out of our range of possible treatment here. The Histoire Littéraire was revived, and has been steadily proceeded with. Every department of old French literature has been studied, latterly in vigorous rivalry with the Germans. The most important single name in this study has been that of the late M. Paulin Paris, who edited reprints of all sorts with untiring energy, and in a thoroughly literary spirit. The Chansons de Gestes have been the especial care of M. Paulin Paris, his son M. Gaston Paris (Histoire Poétique de Charlemagne), and M. Léon Gautier, who has written, and is now republishing in an altered and improved form, a great work on the early French epics. The Arthurian romances have been more studied in Germany and Belgium than in France, though valuable work has been done in them by M. Paulin Paris, M. Hucher, and others. The Fabliaux have recently appeared in a nearly complete edition, by M. de Montaiglon. M. P. Meyer has thrown new light on the Roman d'Alixandre. The Roman du Renart, also published by Méon, has been undertaken again by M. Ernest Martin. The separate authors of the later ages have, in almost every case, been the subject of much careful work, and for some years past a 'Société des Anciens Textes Français' has existed for the express purpose of publishing unprinted MSS. This society has undertaken the great collection of Miracles de Notre Dame, the works of Eustache Deschamps, and other important tasks. A great deal of excellent work in the same direction has been done in Belgium by members of the various Academies. The great classics of France, from the sixteenth century onward, have been the object of constant and careful editing, such as the classics of no other country have enjoyed. Nor has the linguistic part of the study been omitted. The two chief monuments of this are the great dictionary of Littré, and the complement of it, now in course of publication, by M. Godefroy, which contains a complete lexicon of the older tongue. Among the collections of old French literature, the Bibliothèque Elzévirienne may be especially noticed. This, besides many reprints of isolated authors, contains invaluable examples of the early theatre, a still more precious collection of scattered poems of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and one of miscellanies of the sixteenth and seventeenth. Under the Empire the government began the publication of all the Chansons de Gestes, but the enterprise was unfortunately interrupted at the tenth volume.

Philosophical Writers.

Comte.

The branches of literature, other than the Belles Lettres, which naturally retain, longer than those which busy themselves with science as it is now understood, the literary interest, are philosophy, theology, and history. In philosophy France has produced, during the present century, only one name of the first importance. As has been the case with all other European nations, her philosophical energies have chiefly been devoted to the historical side of philosophy, a tendency specially encouraged by the already-mentioned influence of Cousin. Damiron, the chief authority in French on the materialist schools of the eighteenth century; M. Jules Simon and Vacherot, who busied themselves chiefly with the Alexandrian philosophers – Cousin it should be remembered was the editor of Proclus – and Charles de Rémusat, a man of great capacity, who, among other rather unexpected literary occupations, devoted himself to Abelard, Thomas à Becket, and other representatives of scholasticism, illustrate this tendency. The philosophy of the middle ages was also the subject of one of the clearest and best-written of philosophical studies, the De la Philosophie Scolastique of B. Hauréau. The name, however, of the century in French philosophical literature is that of Auguste Comte, the founder of what is called Positivism. He was born at Montpelier three or four years before the end of the last century, and died at Paris in September, 1857. Comte passed through the discipline of initiation in the Saint Simonian views – Saint Simon was a descendant of the great writer of that name, who developed a curious form of communism very interesting politically, but important to literature only from the remarkable influence it had upon his contemporaries – but, like most of Saint Simon's disciples, soon emancipated himself. To discuss Comte's philosophical views would be impossible here. It is sufficient to say that the cardinal principle of his earlier work, the Cours de Philosophie Positive, is that the world of thought has passed through successively a theological stage and a metaphysical stage, and is now reduced to the observation and classification of phenomena and their relations. On the basis cleared by this sweeping hypothesis, Comte, in his later days (under the inspiration of a lady, Madame Clotilde de Vaux, if he himself be believed), developed a remarkable construction of positive religion. This was indignantly rejected by his most acute followers, the chief of whom was the philologist and critic Littré. Outside of Comtism, France has not produced many writers on philosophy, except philosophical historians. M. Taine, in his De l'Intelligence, turned his acute intellect and ready pen in this direction for a moment, but not with much success. Perhaps from the literary view the most important philosophical writer in French for the last half century is M. Renan, who will find his place more appropriately in the next paragraph. Between Saint Simon and Comte, if space allowed, notice would have to be taken of many political writers of the middle of the century, whose visionary and for the most part communistic views had a considerable but passing influence, such as Cabet, Fourier, Pierre Leroux, and the violent and not wholly sane but vigorous Proudhon. Here, however, nothing but bare mention, and that only for completeness' sake, can be given to them.

Theological Writers. Montalembert.

Ozanam.

Lacordaire.

Ernest Renan.