| especially as afterwards developed in the apocalyptic Paroles | each, as it was produced or published (Cromwell, Hernani, d'un croyant (1839) are to be discerned many of the tendencies Marion de l'Orme, Le Roi s'amuse, Lucrèce Borgia, Marie Tudor, of the Romantic school, particularly its bardy and picturesque Ruy Blas and Les Burgraves), was a literary event, and excited choice of language, and the disdain of established and accepted the most violent discussion-the author's usual plan being to methods which it professed. The signs of the revolution itself prefix a prose preface of a very militant character to his work. were, as was natural, first given in periodical literature. The A still more melodramatic variety of drame was that chiefly feudalist affectations of Chateaubriand and the legitimists represented by Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), whose Henri III excited a sort of aesthetic affection for Gothicism, and Walter and Antony, to which may be added later La Tour de Nesle Scott became one of the most favourite authors in France. and Mademoiselle de Belleisle, were almost as much rallying Soon was started the periodical La Muse française, in which the points for the early Romantics as the dramas of Hugo, despite names of Hugo, Vigny, Deschamps and Madame de Girardin their inferior literary value. At the same time Alexandre Soumet appear. Almost all the writers in this periodical were eager (1788-1845), in Norma, Une Fête de Néron, &c., and Casimir royalists, and for some time the battle was still fought on poli- | Delavigne in Marino Faliero, Louis XI, &c., maintained a tical grounds. There could, however, be no special connexion somewhat closer adherence to the older models. The classical between classical drama and liberalism; and the liberal journal, or semi-classical reaction of the last years of Louis Philippe was the Globe, with no less a person than Sainte-Beuve among its represented in tragedy by Ponsard (Lucrèce, Agnes de Meranie, contributors, declared definite war against classicism in the Charlotte Corday, Ulysse, and several comedies), and on the comic drama. The chief "classical " organs were the Constitutionnel, side, to a certain extent, by Emile Augier (1820-1889) in the Journal des débals, and after a time and not exclusively, L'Aventurière, Le Gendre de M. Poirier, Le Fils de Giboyer, &c. the Revue des deux mondes. Soon the question became purely During almost the whole period Eugène Scribe (1791-1861) literary, and the Romantic school proper was born in the famous poured forth innumerable comedies of the vaudeville order, cénacle or clique in which Hugo was chief poet, Sainte-Beuve which, without possessing much literary value, attained immense chief critic, and Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, the brothers Emile popularity. For the last half-century the realist development (1791-1871) and Antony (1800-1869), Deschamps, Petrus Borel of Romanticism has had the upper hand in dramatic composition, (1809-1859) and others were officers. Alfred de Vigny and its principal representatives being on the one side Victorien Alfred de Musset stand somewhat apart, and so does Charles Sardou (1831-1909), who in Nos Intimes, La Famille Benotton, Nodier (1780-1844), a versatile and voluminous writer, the very Rabagas, Dora, &c., chiefly devoted himself to the satirical variety and number of whose works have somewhat prevented treatment of manners, and Alexandre Dumas fils (1824-1895), the individual excellence of any of them from having justice author in 1852 of the famous Dame aux camélias, who in such done to it. The objects of the school, which was at first violently pieces as Les Idées de Madame Aubray and L'Étrangère rather opposed, so much so that certain academicians actually petitioned busied himself with morals and "problems," while his Dame the king to forbid the admission of any Romantic piece at the aux camélias (1852) is sometimes ranked as the first of such things Théâtre Français, were, briefly stated, the burning of everything in "modern" style. Certain isolated authors also deserve which had been adored, and the adoring of everything which notice, such as Joseph Autran (1813-1877), a poet and acadehad been burnt. They would have no unities, no arbitrary mician having some resemblance to Lamartine, whose Fille selection of subjects, no restraints on variety of versification, no d'Eschyle created for him a dramatic reputation which he did academically limited vocabulary, no considerations of artificial not attempt to follow up, and Gabriel Legouvé (b. 1807), whose beauty, and, above all, no periphrastic expression. The mot Adrienne Lecouvreur was assisted to popularity by the admirable propre, the calling of a spade a spade, was the great command- talent of Rachel. A special variety of drama of the first literary ment of Romanticism; but it must be allowed that what was importance has also been cultivated in this century under the taken away in periphrase was made up in adjectives. Musset, title of scènes or proverbes, slight dramatic sketches in which the who was very much of a free-lance in the contest, maintained dialogue and style are of even more importance than the action. indeed that the differentia of the Romantic was the copious use The best of all of these are those of Alfred de Musset (1810-1857), of this part of speech. All sorts of epithets were invented to whose Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée, On ne badine distinguish the two parties, of which flamboyant and grisâtre pas avec l'amour, &c., are models of grace and wit. Among his are perhaps the most accurate and expressive pair-the former followers may be mentioned especially Octave Feuillet (1821serving to denote the gorgeous tints and bold attempts of the 1890). Few social dramas of the kind in modern times have new school, the latter the grey colour and monotonous outlines attained a greater success than Le Monde où l'on s'ennuie (1868) of the old. The representation of Hernani in 1830 was the cul- of Edouard Pailleron (1834-1899). (See also DRAMA.) mination of the struggle, and during great part of the reign of Louis Philippe almost all the younger men of letters in France were Romantics. The representation of the Lucrèce of François Ponsard (1814-1867) in 1846 is often quoted as the herald or sign of a classical reaction. But this was only apparent, and signified, if it signified anything, merely that the more juvenile excesses of the Romantics were out of date. All the greatest men of letters of France since 1830 have been on the innovating side, and all without exception, whether intentionally or not, have had their work coloured by the results of the movement, and of those which have succeeded it as developments rather than reactions. Drama and Poetry since 1830.-Although the immediate subject on which the battles of Classics and Romantics arose was dramatic poetry, the dramatic results of the movement have not been those of greatest value or most permanent character. The principal effect in the long run has been the introduction of a species of play called drame, as opposed to regular comedy and tragedy, admitting of much freer treatment than either of these two as previously understood in French, and lending itself in some measure to the lengthy and disjointed action, the multiplicity of personages, and the absence of stock characters which characterized the English stage in its palmy days. All Victor Hugo's dramatic works are of this class, and Victor In poetry proper, as in drama, Victor Hugo showed the way. In him all the Romantic characteristics were expressed and embodied-disregard of arbitrary critical rules, free choice of subject, variety and vigour of metre, splendour and sonorousness of diction, abundant "local colour," and that irrepressible individualism which is one of the chief, though not perhaps the chief, of the symptoms. If the careful attention to form which is also characteristic of the movement is less apparent in him than in some of his followers, it is not because it is absent, but because the enthusiastic conviction with which he attacked every subject somewhat diverts attention from it. As with the merits so with the defects. A deficient sense of the ludicrous which characterized many of the Romantics was strongly apparent in their leader, as was also an equally representative grandiosity, and a fondness for the introduction of foreign and unfamiliar words, especially proper names, which occasionally produces an effect of burlesque. Victor Hugo's earliest poetical works, his chiefly royalist and political Odes, were cast in the older and accepted forms, but already displayed astonishing poetical qualities. But it was in the Ballades (for instance, the splendid Pas d'armes du roi Jean, written in verses of three syllables) and the Orientales ( of which may be taken for a sample the sixth section of Navarin, a perfect Musset. hardly inferior to Gautier's. This peculiar and somewhat torrent of outlandish terms poured forth in the most admirable | while his style has an exquisite but unaffected strangeness differences at most of individuality: in the other of kind. We | M. Maurice Bouchor (b. 1864), who started his serious and shall not, therefore, further refer to these dubious classifications: respectable work with Les Symboles in 1888; while M. Henri de but specify briefly the most remarkable poets whom they concern, Regnier, born in the same year, has received very high praise and all the older of whom, it may be observed, were represented for work from Lendemains in 1886 and other volumes up to in the Parnasse itself. Of these the most remarkable were Sully Les Jeux rustiques et divins (1897) and Les Médailles d'argile Prudhomme (1839-1907), Francois Coppée (1842-1908) and Paul (1900). The truth, however, perhaps is that this extraordinary Verlaine (1844-1896). The first (Stances et poèmes, 1865, Vaines abundance of verse (for we have not mentioned a quarter of the Tendresses, 1875, Bonheur, 1888, &c.) is a philosophical and names which present themselves, or a twentieth part of those rather pessimistic poet who has very strongly rallied the suffrages who figure in M. Mendès's catalogue for the last half-century) of the rather large present public who care for the embodiment reminds the literary historian somewhat too much of similar of these tendencies in verse; the second (La Grève des forgerons, phenomena in other times. There is undoubtedly a great diffu1869, Les Humbles, 1872, Contes et vers, 1881-1887, &c.) a sion of poetical dexterity, and not perhaps a small one of poetical dealer with more generally popular subjects in a more sentimental spirit, but it requires the settling, clarifying and distinguishing manner; and the third (Sagesse, 1881, Parallèlement, 1889, effects of time to separate the poet from the minor poet. Still Poèmes saturniens, including early work, 1867-1890), by far the more perhaps must we look to time to decide whether the vers most original and remarkable poet of the three, starting with libre as it is called-that is to say, the verse freed from the minute Baudelaire and pushing farther the fancy for forbidden subjects, traditions of the elder prosody, admitting hiatus, neglecting to but treating both these and others with wonderful command of a greater or less extent caesura, and sometimes relying upon mere sound and image-suggestion. Verlaine in fact (he was actually rhythm to the neglect of strict metre altogether-can hold its well acquainted with English) endeavoured, and to a small ground. It has as yet been practised by no poet at all approachextent succeeded in the endeavour, to communicate to Frenching the first class, except Verlaine, and not by him in its extremer the vague suggestion of visual and audible appeal which has forms. And the whole history of prosody and poetry teaches us characterized English poetry from Blake through Coleridge. that though similar changes often come in as it were unperceived, Others of the original Parnassiens who deserve mention are they scarcely ever take root in the language unless a great poet Albert Glatigny (1839-1873), a Bohemian poet of great talent adopts them. Or rather it should perhaps be said that when who died young; Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898), afterwards they are going to take root in the language a great poet always chief of the Symbolists, also a true poet in his way, but somewhat does adopt them before very long. barren, and the victim of pose and trick; José Maria de Heredia (1842-1905), a very exquisite practitioner of the sonnet but with perhaps more art than matter in him; Henri Cazalis (1840-1909), | who long afterwards, under his name of Jean Lahor; appeared as a Symbolist pessimist; A. Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, another eccentric but with a spark of genius; Emmanuel des Essarts; Auguste de Châtillon (1810-1882); Léon Dierx (b. 1838) who, after producing even less than Mallarmé, succeeded him as Symbolist chief; Jean Aicard (b. 1848), a southern bard of merit; and lastly Catulle Mendès himself, who has been a brilliant writer in verse and prose ever since, and whose Mouvement poétique français de 1867 à 1900 (1903), an official report largely amplified so that it is in fact a history and dictionary of French poetry during the century, forms an almost unique work of reference on the subject. Among the later recruits the most specially noticeable was Armand Silvestre (1837-1901), whose verse (La Chanson des heures, 1878, Ailes d'or, 1880, La Chanson des étoiles, 1885), of an ethereal beauty, was contrasted with prose admirably written and sometimes most amusing, but "Pantagruelist," and more, in manners and morals. This declension from poetry to prose fiction was also noticeable in Guy de Maupassant, André Theuriet, Anatole France and even Alphonse Daudet. Yet another flight of poets may be grouped as those specially representing the last quarter of the century and (whether Parnassian, Symbolist or what not) the latest development of French poetry. Verlaine and Mallarmé already mentioned were in a manner the leaders of these. Perhaps something of the influence of Whitman may be detected in the irregular verses of Gustave Kahn (b. 1859), Francis Viélé Griffin, actually an American by birth (b. 1864), Stuart Merrill, of like origin, and Paul Fort (b. 1872). But the whole tendency of the period has been to relax the stringency of French prosody. Albert Samain (18591900), a musical versifier enough; Jean Moréas (1856-1910) who began with a volume called Les Syrtes in 1884); Laurent Tailhade (b. 1854) and others are more or less Symbolist, and contributed to the Symbolist periodical (one of many such since the beginning of the Romantic movement which would almost require an article to themselves), the Mercure de France. An older man than many of these, M. Jean Richepin (b. 1849), made for a time considerable noise with poetical work of a colour older even than his age, and harking back somewhat to the JeuneFrance and Bousingot type of early Romanticism-La Chanson des gueux, Les Blasphèmes, &c. Other writers of note are M. Paul Déroulède (b. 1846), a violently nationalist poet; Prose Fiction since 1830.-Even more remarkable, because more absolutely novel, was the outburst of prose fiction which followed 1830. Madame de Lafayette, Le Sage, Marivaux, Voltaire, the Abbé Prévost, Diderot, J. J. Rousseau, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Fiévée had all of them produced work excellent in its way, and comprising in a more or less rudimentary condition most varieties of the novel. But none of them had, in the French phrase, made a school, and at no time had prose fiction been composed in any considerable quantities. The immense influence which Walter Scott exercised was perhaps the direct cause of the attention paid to prose fiction; the facility, too, with which all the fancies, tastes and beliefs of the time could be embodied in such work may have had considerable importance. But it is difficult on any theory of cause and effect to account for the appearance in less than ten years of such a group of novelists as Hugo, Gautier, Dumas, Mérimée, | Balzac, George Sand, Jules Sandeau and Charles de Bernard, names to which might be added others scarcely inferior. There is hardly anything else resembling it in literature, except the great cluster of English dramatists in the beginning of the 17th century, and of English poets at the beginning of the 19th; and it is remarkable that the excellence of the first group was maintained by a fresh generation-Murger, About, Feuillet, Flaubert, Erckmann-Chatrian, Droz, Daudet, Cherbuliez and Gaboriau, forming a company of diadochi not far inferior to their predecessors, and being themselves not unworthily succeeded almost up to the present day. The romance-writing of France during the period has taken two different directions-the first that of the novel of incident, the second that of analysis and character. The first, now mainly deserted, was that which, as was natural when Scott was the model, was formerly most trodden; the second required the genius of George Sand and of Balzac and the more problematical talent of Beyle to attract students to it. The novels of Victor Hugo are novels of incident, with a strong infusion of purpose, and considerable but rather ideal character drawing. They are in fact lengthy prose drames rather than romances proper, and they have found no imitators. They display, however, the powers of the master at their fullest. On the other hand, Alexandre Dumas originally com- Dumas. posed his novels in close imitation of Scott, and they are much less dramatic than narrative in character, so that they lend themselves to almost indefinite continuation, and there is often no particular reason why they should terminate even at the end of the score or so of volumes to which they sometimes actually extend. Of this purely narrative kind, which hardly younger. even attempts anything but the boldest character drawing, I mentioned Henry Murger (1822-1861), the painter of what is Sylvie, Catherine d'Overmeire). Emile Gaboriau (1833-1873), | quality they carried, and the elder of them after his brother's During the last decade of the Second Empire there arose, continuing for varying lengths of time till nearly the end of the century, another remarkable group of novelists, most of whom are dealt with under separate headings, but who must receive combined treatment here; with the warning that even more danger than in the case of the poets is incurred by classing them in "schools." Undoubtedly, however, the "Naturalist" tendency, starting from Balzac and continued through Flaubert, but taking quite a new direction under some of those to be mentioned, is in a manner dominant. Flaubert himself and Feuillet (an exact observer of manners but an anti-Naturalist) have already been mentioned. Victor Cherbuliez (1829-1899), a constant writer in the Revue des deux mondes on politics and other subjects, also accomplished a long series of novels from Le Comte Kostia (1863) onwards, of which the most remarkable | are that just named, Le Roman d'une honnête femme (1866), and Meta Holdenis (1873). With something of Balzac and more of Feuillet, Cherbuliez mixed with his observation of society a dose of sentimental and popular romance which offended the younger critics of his day, but he had solid merits. Gustave Droz (b. 1832) devoted himself chiefly to short stories sufficiently "free" in subject (Monsieur, madame et bébé, Entre nous, &c.) but full of fancy, excellently written, and of a delicate wit in one sense if not in all. André Theuriet (1833-1907) began with poetry but diverged to novels, in which the scenery of France and especially of its great forests is used with much skill; Le Fils Maugars (1879) may be mentioned out of many as a specimen. Léon Cladel (1835-1892), whose most remarkable work was Les Va-nu-pieds (1874), had, as this title of itself shows, Naturalist leanings; but with a quaint Romantic tendency in prose and verse. The Naturalists proper chiefly developed or seemed to develop one side of Balzac, but almost entirely abandoned his Romantic element. They aimed first at exact and almost photographic delineation of the accidents of modern life, and secondly at still more uncompromising non-suppression of the essential features and functions of that life which are usually suppressed. This school may be represented in chief by four novelists (really three, as two of them were brothers who wrote together till the rather early death of one of them), Emile Zola (1840-1903), Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897), and Edmond (1822-1897) and Jules (1830-1870) de Goncourt. The first, of Italian extraction and Marseillais birth, began by work of undecided kinds and was always a critic as well as a novelist. Of this first stage Contes à Ninon (1864) and Thérèse Raquin (1867) deserve to be specified. But after 1870 Zola entered upon a huge scheme (suggested no doubt by the Comédie humaine) of tracing the fortunes in every branch, legitimate and illegitimate, and in every rank of society of a family, Les Rougon-Macquart, and carried it out in a full score of novels during more than as many years. He followed this with a shorter series on places, Paris, Rome, Lourdes, and lastly by another of strangely apocalyptic tone, Fécondité, Travail, Vérité, the last a story of the Dreyfus case, retrospective and, as it proved, prophetic. The extreme repulsiveness of much of his work, and the overdone detail of almost the whole of it, caused great prejudice against him, and will probably always prevent his being ranked among the greatest novelists; but his power is indubitable, and in passages, if not in whole books, does itself justice. MM. de Goncourt, besides their work in Naturalist (they would have preferred to call it "Impressionist ") fiction, devoted themselves especially to study and collection in the fine arts, and produced many volumes on the historical side of these, volumes distinguished by accurate and careful research. This death continued to carry, into novel-writing (Renée Mauperin, Germinie Lacerteux, Chérie, &c.) with the addition of an extraordinary care for peculiar and, as they called it, “personal diction. On the other hand, Alphonse Daudet (who with the other three, Flaubert to some extent, and the Russian novelist Turgenieff, formed a sort of cénacle or literary club) mixed with some Naturalism a far greater amount of fancy and wit than his companions allowed themselves or could perhaps attain; and in the Tarlarin series (dealing with the extravagances of his fellow-Provençaux) added not a little to the gaiety of Europe. His other novels (Fromont jeune et Risler aîné, Jack, Le Nabab, &c.), also very popular, have been variously judged, there being something strangely like plagiarism in some of them, and in others, in fact in most, an excessive use of that privilege of the novelist which consists in introducing real persons under more or less disguise. It should be observed in speaking of this group that the Goncourts, or rather the survivor of them, left an elaborate Journal disfigured by spite and bad taste, but of much importance for the appreciation of the personal side of French literature during the last half of the century. In 1880 Zola, who had by this time formed a regular school of disciples, issued with certain of them a collection of short stories, Les Soirées de Médan, which contains one of his own best things, L'Attaque du moulin, and also the capital story, Boule de suif, by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), who in the same year published poems, Des vers, of very remarkable if not strictly poetical quality. Maupassant developed during his short literary career perhaps the greatest powers shown by any French novelist since Flaubert (his sponsor in both senses) in a series of longer novels (Une Vie, Bel Ami, Pierre et Jean, Fort comme la mort) and shorter stories (Monsieur Parent, Les Saurs Rondoli, Le Horla), but they were distorted by the Naturalist pessimism and grime, and perhaps also by the brain-disease of which their author died. M. J. K. Huysmans (b. 1848), also a contributor to Les Soirées de Médan, who had begun a little earlier with Marthe (1876) and other books, gave his most characteristic work in 1884 with Au rebours and in 1891 with Là-bas, stories of exaggerated and "satanic" pose, decorated with perhaps the extremest achievements of the school in mere ugliness and nastiness. Afterwards, by an obvious reaction, he returned to Catholicism. Of about the same date as these two are two other novelists of note, Julien Viaud ("“Pierre Loti,” b. 1850), a naval officer who embodied his experiences of foreign service with a faint dose of story and character interest, and a far larger one of elaborate description, in a series of books (Aziyadé, Le Mariage de Loti, Madame Chrysanthème, &c.), and M. Paul Bourget (b. 1852), an important critic as well as novelist who deflected the Naturalist current into a psychological channel, connecting itself higher with Stendhal, and composed in its books very popular in their way-Cruelle Enigme (1885), Le Disciple, Terre promise, Cosmopolis. As a contrast or complement to Bourget's "psychological" novel may be taken the "ethical" novel of Edouard Rod (1857-1909)-La Vie privée de Michel Tessier (1893), Le Sens de la vie, Les Trois Caurs. Contemporary with these as a novelist though a much older man, and occupied at different times of his life with verse and with criticism, came Anatole France (b. 1844), who in Le Crime de Silvestre Bonnard, La Rôtisserie de la reine Pédauque, Le Lys rouge, and others, has made a kind of novel as different from the ordinary styles as Pierre Loti's, but of far higher appeal in its wit, its subtle fancy, and its perfect French. Ferdinand Fabre (1830-1898) and René Bazin (b. 1853) represent the union, not too common in the French novel, of orthodoxy in morals and religion with literary ability. Further must be mentioned Paul Hervieu (b. 1857), a dramatist rather than a novelist; the brothers Margueritte (Paul, b. 1860, Victor, b. 1866), especially strong in short stories and passages; another pair of brothers of Belgian origin writing under the name of "J. H. Rosny "Zolaists partly converted not to religion but to science and a sort of non-Christian virtue; the ingenious and amusing, if not exactly moral, brilliancy of Marcel Prévost (b. 1862); the |