contorted but rather attractive style and the perverse sentiment | already alluded to, which he contributed to the Globe. But it of Maurice Barrès (b. 1862); and, above all, the audacious and was not till later that his style of criticism became fully developed inimitable dialogue pieces of "Gyp" (Madame de Martel, b. and accentuated. During the first decade of Louis Philippe's 1850), worthy of the best times of French literature for gaiety, reign his critical papers, united under the title of Critiques el satire, acuteness and style, and perhaps likely, with the work portraits littéraires, show a gradual advance. During the next of Maupassant, Pierre Loti and Anatole France, to represent the ten years he was mainly occupied with his studies of the writers capital achievement of their particular generation to posterity. of the Port Royal school. But it was during the last twenty Periodical Literature since 1830. Criticism.-One of the causes years of his life, when the famous Causeries du lundi appeared which led to this extensive composition of novels was the great weekly in the columns of the Constitutionnel and the Moniteur, spread of periodical literature in France, and the custom of that his most remarkable productions came out. Sainte-Beuve's including in almost all periodicals, daily, weekly or monthly, style of criticism (which is the key to so much of French literature a feuilleton or instalment of fiction. Of the contributors of these of the last half-century that it is necessary to dwell on it at some periodicals who were strictly journalists and almost political length), excellent and valuable as it is, lent itself to two corrupjournalists only, the most remarkable after Carrel were his tions. There is, in the first place, in making the careful investigaopponent in the fatal duel,-Émile de Girardin, Lucien A. tions into the character and circumstances of each writer which Prévost-Paradol (1829-1870), Jean Hippolyte Cartier, called it demands, a danger of paying too much attention to the man de Villemessant (1812-1879), and, above all, Louis Veuillot and too little to his work, and of substituting for a critical study (1815-1883), the most violent and unscrupulous but by no means a mere collection of personal anecdotes and traits, especially if the least gifted of his class. The same spread of periodical the author dealt with belongs to a foreign country or a past age. literature, together with the increasing interest in the literature The other danger is that of connecting the genius and character of the past, led also to a very great development of criticism. of particular authors too much with their conditions and circumAlmost all French authors of any eminence during nearly the stances, so as to regard them as merely so many products of the last century have devoted themselves more or less to criticism age. These faults, and especially the latter, have been very of literature, of the theatre, or of art. And sometimes, as in the noticeable in many of Sainte-Beuve's successors, particularly in, case of Janin and Gautier, the comparatively lucrative nature of perhaps, Hippolyte Taine, who, however, besides his work on journalism, and the smaller demands which it made for labour and English literature, did much of importance on French, and has intellectual concentration, have diverted to feuilleton-writing been regarded as the first critic who did thorough honour to abilitics which might perhaps have been better employed. Balzac in his own country. A large number of other critics At the same time it must be remembered that from this devotion during the period deserve notice because, though acting more. of men of the best talents to critical work has arisen an immense or less on the newer system of criticism, they have manifested elevation of the standard of such work. Before the romantic considerable originality in its application. As far as merely movement in France Diderot in that country, Lessing and some critical faculty goes, and still more in the power of giving literary of his successors in Germany, Hazlitt, Coleridge and Lamb in expression to criticism, Théophile Gautier yields to no one. England, had been admirable critics and reviewers. But the His Les Grotesques, an early work dealing with Villon, the earlier theory of criticism, though these men's principles and practice "Théophile" de Viau, and other enfants terribles of French had set it aside, still remained more or less what it had been for literature, has served as a model to many subsequent writers, centuries. The critic was merely the administrator of certain such as Charles Monselet (1825-1888), and Charles Asselineau hard and fast rules. There were certain recognized kinds of (1820-1874), the affectionate historian, in his Bibliographie literary composition; every new book was bound to class itself romantique (1872-1874), of the less famous promoters of the under one or other of these. There were certain recognized rules Romantic movement. On the other hand, Gautier's picture for each class; and the goodness or badness of a book consisted criticisms, and his short reviews of books, obituary notices, simply in its obedience or disobedience to these rules. Even the and other things of the kind contributed to daily papers, are in kinds of admissible subjects and the modes of admissible treat-point of style among the finest of all such fugitive compositions. ment were strictly noted and numbered. This was especially the Jules Janin (1804-1874), chiefly a theatrical critic, excelled in case in France and with regard to French belles-lettres, so that, as light and easy journalism, but his work has neither weight of we have seen, certain classes of composition had been reduced to substance nor careful elaboration of manner sufficient to give it unimportant variations of a registered pattern. The Romantic permanent value. This sort of light critical comment has become protest against this absurdity was specially loud and completely almost a speciality of the French press, and among its numerous victorious. It is said that a publisher advised the youthful practitioners the names of Armand de Pontmartin (1811-1890) Lamartine to try "to be like somebody else" if he wished to (an imitator and assailant of Sainte-Beuve), Arsène Houssaye, succeed. The Romantic standard of success was, on the contrary, Pierangelo Fiorentino (1806-1864), may be mentioned. Edmond to be as individual as possible. Victor Hugo himself composed Scherer (1815-1889) and Paul de Saint-Victor (1827-1881) a good deal of criticism, and in the preface to his Orientales he represent different sides of Sainte-Beuve's style in literary states the critical principles of the new school clearly. The critic, criticism, Scherer combining with it a martinet and somewhat he says, has nothing to do with the subject chosen, the colours prudish precision, while Saint-Victor, with great powers of employed, the materials used. Is the work, judged by itself and appreciation, is the most flowery and "prose-poetical " of French with regard only to the ideal which the worker had in his mind, critics. In theatrical censure Francisque Sarcey (1827-1899), good or bad? It will be seen that as a legitimate corollary of an acute but somewhat severe and limited judge, succeeded to this theorem the critic becomes even more of an interpreter than the good-natured sovereignty of Janin. The criticism of the of a judge. He can no longer satisfy himself or his readers by Revue des deux mondes has played a sufficiently important part comparing the work before him with some abstract and accepted in French literature to deserve separate notice in passing. standard, and marking off its shortcomings. He has to recon- Founded in 1829, the Revue, after some vicissitudes, soon attained, struct, more or less conjecturally, the special ideal at which each under the direction of the Swiss Buloz, the character of being of his authors aimed, and to do this he has to study their idiosyn- one of the first of European critical periodicals. Its style of crasies with the utmost care, and set them before his readers criticism has, on the whole, inclined rather to the classical sidein as full and attractive a fashion as he can manage. The first that is, to classicism as modified by, and possible after, the writer who thoroughly grasped this necessity and successfully Romantic movement. Besides some of the authors already dealt with it was Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve named, its principal critical contributors were Gustave Planche (1804-1869), who has indeed identified his name with (1808-1857), an acute but somewhat truculent critic, Saintthe method of criticism just described. Sainte-Beuve's René Taillandier (1817-1879), and Emile Montégut (1825-1805), first remarkable work (his poems and novels we may leave out a man of letters whom greater leisure would have made greater, of consideration) was the sketch of 16th-century literature but who actually combined much and varied critical power with

SainteBeuve.

an agreeable style. Lastly we must notice the important section | his death the first critic of France and a worthy successor of of professorial or university critics, whose critical work has taken her best. the form either of regular treatises or of courses of republished Of others older and younger must be mentioned Paul Stapfer lectures, books somewhat academic and rhetorical in character, (b. 1840), professor of literature, and the author of divers excellent but often representing an amount of influence which has served works from Shakespeare et l'antiquité to volumes of the first value largely to stir up attention to literature. The most prominent on Montaigne and Rabelais; Paul Bourget and Edouard Rod, name among these is that of Abel Villemain (1790-1867), who already noticed; Augustin Filon (b. 1841), author of much good was one of the earliest critics of the literature of his own country work on English literature and an excellent book on Mérimée; to obtain a hearing out of it. Désiré Nisard (1806-1888) was Alexandre Beljame (1843-1906), another eminent student of perhaps more fortunate in his dealings with Latin than with English literature, in which subject J. A. Jusserand (b. 1855), French, and in his History of the latter literature represents Legouis, K. A. J. Angellier (b. 1848), and others have recently too much the classical tradition, but he had dignity, erudition distinguished themselves; Gustave Larroumet, especially an and an excellent style. Alexandre Vinet (1797-1847), a Swiss authority on Marivaux; Eugène Lintilhac (b. 1854); Georges critic of considerable eminence, Saint-Marc-Girardin (1801-1873), Pellissier; Gustave Lanson, author of a compact history of whose Cours de littérature dramatique is his chief work, and French literature in French; Marcel Schwob, who had done Eugène Géruzez (1799-1865), the author not only of an extremely excellent work on Villon and other subjects before his early useful and well-written handbook to French literature before the death; René Doumic, a frequent writer in the Revue des deux Revolution, but also of other works dealing with separate portions mondes, who collected four volumes of Études sur la littérature of the subject, must also be mentioned. One remarkable critic, française between 1895 and 1900; and the Vicomte Melchior de Ernest Hello (1818-1885), attracted during his life little attention Vogüé (b. 1848), whose interests have been more politicaleven in France, and hardly any out of it, his work being strongly philosophical than strictly literary, but who has done much to tinctured with the unpopular flavour and colour of uncom- familiarize the French public with that Russian literature to promising "clericalism," and his extremely bad health keeping which Mérimée had been the first to introduce them. But the him out of the ordinary fraternities of literary society. It was, body of recent critical literature in France is perhaps larger however, as full of idiosyncrasy as of partisanship, and is exceed-in actual proportion and of greater value when considered in ingly interesting to those who regard criticism as mainly valuable relation to other kinds of literature than has been the case at because it gives different aspects of the same thing. any previous period.

Perhaps in no branch of belles-lettres did the last quarter of the century maintain the level at which predecessors had arrived better than in criticism; though whether this fact is connected with something of decadence in the creative branches, is a question which may be better posed than resolved here. A remarkable writer whose talent, approaching genius, was spoilt by eccentricity and pose, and who belonged to a more modern generation, Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly (1808-1889), poet, novelist and critic, produced much of his last critical work, and corrected more, in these later days. Not only did the critical work in various ways of Renan, Taine, Scherer, Sarcey and others continue during parts of it, but a new generation, hardly in this case inferior to the old, appeared. The three chiefs of this were the already mentioned Anatole France, Emile Faguet (b. 1847), and Ferdinand Brunetière (1849-1906), to whom some would add Jules Lemaître (b. 1853). The last, however, though a brilliant writer, was but an "interim" critic, beginning with poetry and other matters, and after a time turning to yet others, while, brilliant as he was, his criticism was often ill-informed. So too Anatole France, after compiling four volumes of La Vie littéraire in his own inimitable style and with singular felicity of appreciation, also turned away. The phenomenon in both cases may be associated, though it must not be too intimately connected in the relation of cause and effect, with the fact that both were champions and practitioners of "impressionist criticism "—of the doctrine (unquestionably sound if not exaggerated) that the first duty of the critic is to reproduce the effect produced on his own mind by the author. Brunetière and Faguet, on the other hand, are partisans of the older academic style of criticism by kind and on principle. Faguet, besides regular volumes on each of the four great centuries of French literature, has produced much other work-all of it somewhat "classical" in tendency and frequently exhibiting something of a want of comprehension of the Romantic side. Brunetière was still more prolific on the same side but with still greater effort after system and "science." In the books definitely called L'Évolution des genres, in his Manuel of French literature, and in a large number of other volumes of collected essays he enforced with great learning and power of argument, if with a somewhat narrow purview and with some prejudice against writers whom he disliked, a new form of the old doctrine that the "kind" not the individual author or book ought to be the main subject of the critic's attention. He did not escape the consequential danger of taking authors and books not as they are but as in relation to the kinds which they in fact constitute and to his general views. But he was undoubtedly at

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History since 1830.-The remarkable development of historical studies which we have noticed as taking place under the Restoration was accelerated and intensified in the reigns of Charles X. and Louis Philippe. Both the scope and the method of the historian underwent a sensible alteration. For something like 150 years historians had been divided into two classes, those who produced elegant literary works pleasant to read, and those who produced works of laborious crudition, but not even intended for general perusal. The Vertots and Voltaires were on one side, the Mabillons and Tillemonts on another. Now, although the duty of a French historian to produce works of literary merit was not forgotten, it was recognized as part of that duty to consult original documents and impart original observation. At the same time, to the merely political events which had formerly been recognized as forming the historian's province were added the social and literary phenomena which had long been more or less neglected. Old chronicles and histories were re-read and re-edited; innumerable monographs on special subjects and periods were produced, and these latter were of immense service to romance writers at the time of the popularity of the historical novel. Not a few of the works, for instance, which were signed by Alexandre Dumas consist mainly of extracts or condensations from old chronicles, or modern monographs, ingeniously united by dialogue and varnished with a little description. History, however, had not to wait for this second-hand popularity, and its cultivators had fully sufficient literary talent to maintain its dignity. Sismondi, whom we have already noticed, continued during this period his great Histoire des Français, and produced his even better-known Histoire des républiques italiennes au moyen âge. The brothers Thierry devoted themselves to early French history,Amédée Thierry (1797-1873) producing a Histoire des Gaulois and other works concerning the Roman period, and Augustin Thierry (1795-1856) the well-known history of the Norman Conquest, the equally attractive Récits des temps Merovingiens and other excellent works. Philippe de Ségur (1780-1873) gave a history of the Russian campaign of Napoleon, and some other works chiefly dealing with Russian history. The voluminous Histoire de France of Henri Martin (1810-1883) is perhaps the best and most impartial work dealing in detail with the whole subject. A. G. P. Brugière, baron de Barante (1782-1866), after beginning with literary criticism, turned to history, and in his Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne produced a work of capital importance. As was to be expected, many of the most brilliant results of this devotion to historical subjects consisted of works dealing with the French Revolution. No

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writers even in the estimation of critics who are not enamoured of his substance and tone. But, under the influence of Taine to some extent and of a general European tendency still more, France during this period attained or recovered a considerable place for what is called "scientific " history-the history which while, in some cases, though not in all, not neglecting the development of style attaches itself particularly to "the document," on the one hand, and to philosophical arrangement on the other. The chief representative of the school was probably Albert Sorel (1842-1906), whose various handlings of the Revolutionary period (including an excursion into partly literary criticism in the shape of an admirable monograph on Madame de Staël) have established themselves once for all. In a wider sweep Ernest Lavisse (b. 1842), who has dealt mainly with the 18th century, may hold a similar position. Of others, older and younger, the duc de Broglie (1821-1901), who devoted himself also to the 18th century and especially to its secret diplomacy; Gaston Boissier (b. 1823), a classical scholar rather than an historian proper, and one of the latest masters of the older French academic style; ThureauDangin (b. 1837), a student of mid 19th-century history; Henri Houssaye (b. 1848), one of the Napoleonic period; Gabriel Hanotaux (b. 1853), an historian of Richelieu and other subjects, and a practical politician, may be mentioned. A large accession has also been made to the publication of older memoirs-that important branch of French literature from almost the whole of its existence since the invention of prose.

series of historical events has ever perhaps received treatment | all countries of Europe, takes pre-eminence among French at the same time from so many different points of view, and by writers of such varied literary excellence, among whom it must, however, be said that the purely royalist side is hardly at all represented. One of the earliest of these histories is that of François Mignet (1796-1884), a sober and judicious historian of the older school, also well known for his Histoire de Marie Stuart. About the same time was begun the brilliant if not extremely trustworthy work of Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877) on the Revolution, which established the literary reputation of the future president of the French republic, and was at a later period completed by the Histoire du consulat et de l'empire. The downfall of the July monarchy and the early years of the empire witnessed the publication of several works of the first importance on this subject. Barante contributed histories of the Convention and the Directory, but the three books of greatest note were those of Lamartine, Jules Michelet (1798-1874), and Louis Blanc (1811-1882). Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins is written from the constitutional-republican point of view, and is sometimes considered to have had much influence in producing the events of 1848. It is, perhaps, rather the work of an orator and poet than of an historian. The work of Michelet is of a more original character. Besides his history of the Revolution, Michelet wrote an extended history of France, and a very large number of smaller works on historical, political and social subjects. His imaginative powers are of the highest order, and his style stands alone in French for its strangely broken and picturesque character, its turbid abundance of striking images, and its somewhat sombre magnificence, qualities which, as may easily be supposed, found full occupation in a history of the Revolution. The work of Louis Blanc was that of a sincere but ardent republican, and is useful from this point of view, but possesses no extraordinary literary merit. The principal contributions to the history of the Revolution of the third quarter of the century were those of Quinet, Lanfrey and Taine. Edgar Quinet (1803-1875), like Louis Blanc a devotee of the republic and an exile for its sake, brought to this one of his latest works a mind and pen long trained to literary and historical studies; but La Révolution is not considered his best work. P. Lanfrey devoted himself with extraordinary patience and acuteness to the destruction of the Napoleonic legend, and the setting of the character of Napoleon I. in a new, authentic and very far from favourable light. And Taine, after distinguishing himself, as we have mentioned, in literary criticism (Histoire de la littérature anglaise), and attaining less success in philosophy (De l'intelligence), turned in Les Origines de la France moderne to an elaborate discussion of the Revolution, its causes, character and consequences, which excited some commotion among the more ardent devotees of the principles of '89. To return from this group, we must notice J. F. Michaud (1767-1839), the historian of the crusades, and François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787-1874), who, like his rival Thiers, devoted himself much to historical study. His earliest works were literary and linguistic, but he soon turned to political history, and for the last half-century of his long life his contributions to historical literature were almost incessant and of the most various character. The most important are the histories Des Origines du gouvernement représentatif, De la révolution d'Angleterre, De la civilisation en France, and latterly a Histoire de France, which he was writing at the time of his death. Among minor historians of the earlier century may be mentioned Prosper Duvergier de Hauranne (1798-1881) (Gouvernement parlementaire en France), J. J. Ampère (1800-1864) (Histoire romaine à Rome), Auguste Arthur Beugnot (17971865) (Destruction du paganisme d'occident), J. O. B. de Cléron, comte d'Haussonville (La Réunion de la Lorraine à la France), Achille Tendelle de Vaulabelle (1799–1870) (Les Deux Restaurations). In the last quarter of the century, under the department of history, the most remarkable names were still those of Taine and Renan, the former being distinguished for thought and matter, the latter for style. Indeed it may be here proper to remark that Renan, in the kind of elaborated semi-poetic style which has most characterized the prose of the 19th century in

Summary and Conclusion.-We have in these last pages given such an outline of the 19th-century literature of France as seemed convenient for the completion of what has gone before. It has been already remarked that the nearer approach is made to our own time the less is it possible to give exhaustive accounts of the individual cultivators of the different branches of literature. It may be added, perhaps, that such exhaustiveness becomes, as we advance, less and less necessary, as well as less and less possible. The individual poet of to-day may and does produce work that is in itself of greater literary value than that of the individual trouvère. As a matter of literary history his contribution is less remarkable because of the examples he has before him and the circumstances which he has around him. Yet we have endeavoured to draw such a sketch of French literature from the Chanson de Roland onwards that no important development and hardly any important partaker in such development should be left out. A few lines may, perhaps, be now profitably given to summing up the aspects of the whole, remembering always that, as in no case is generalization easier than in the case of the literary aspects and tendencies of periods and nations, so in no case is it apt to be more delusive unless corrected and supported by ample information of fact and detail. At the close of the 11th century and at the beginning of the 12th we find the vulgar tongue in France not merely in fully organized use for literary purposes, but already employed in most of the forms of poetical writing. An immense outburst of epic and narrative verse has taken place, and lyrical poe'ry, not limited as in the case of the epics to the north of France, but extending from Roussillon to the Pas de Calais, completes this. The 12th century adds to these earliest forms the important development of the mystery, extends the subjects and varies the manner of epic verse, and begins the compositions of literary prose with the chronicles of St Denis and of Villehardouin, and the prose romances of the Arthurian cycle. All this literaure is so far connected purely with the knightly and priestly orders, though it is largely composed and still more largely dealt in by classes of men, trouvères and jongleurs, who are not necessarily either knights or priests, and in the case of the jongleurs are certainly neither. With a possible ancestry of Romance and Teutonic cantilenae, Breton lais, and vernacular legends, the new literature has a certain pattern and model in Latin and for the most part ecclesiastical compositions. It has the sacred books and the legends of the saints for examples of narrative, the rhythm of the hymns for a guide to metre, and the ceremonies of the church for a stimulant to dramatic performance. By degrees