Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

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 torrent of outlandish terms poured forth in the most admirable verse, or _Les Djinns_, where some of the stanzas have lines of two syllables each) that the grand provocation was thrown to the believers in alexandrines, careful caesuras and strictly separated couplets. _Les Feuilles d'automne_, _Les Chants du crepuscule_, _Les Voix interieures_, _Les Rayons et les ombres_, the productions of the next twenty years, were quieter in style and tone, but no less full of poetical spirit. The Revolution of 1848, the establishment of the empire and the poet's exile brought about a fresh determination of his genius to lyrical subjects. _Les Chatiments_ and _La Legende des siecles_, the one political, the other historical, reach perhaps the high-water mark of French verse; and they were followed by the philosophical _Contemplations_, the lighter _Chansons des rues et des bois_, the _Annee terrible_, the second _Legende des siecles_, and the later work to be found noticed _sub nom_. We have been thus particular here because the literary productiveness of Victor Hugo himself has been the measure and sample of the whole literary productiveness of France on the poetical side. At five-and-twenty he was acknowledged as a master, at seventy-five he was a master still. His poetical influence has been represented in three different schools, from which very few of the poetical writers of the century can be excluded. These few we may notice first. Alfred de Musset, a writer of great genius, felt part of the Romantic inspiration very strongly, but was on the whole unfortunately influenced by Byron, and partly out of wilfulness, partly from a natural want of persevering industry and vigour, allowed himself to be careless and even slovenly in composition. Notwithstanding this, many of his lyrics are among the finest poems in the language, and his verse, careless as it is, has extraordinary natural grace. Auguste Barbier (1805-1882) whose _Iambes_ shows an extraordinary command of nervous and masculine versification, also comes in here; and the Breton poet, Auguste Brizeux (1803-1858), much admired by some, together with Hegesippe Moreau, an unequal writer possessing some talent, Pierre Dupont (1821-1870), one of much greater gifts, and Gustave Nadaud (1820-1893), a follower of Beranger, also deserve mention. Of the school of Lamartine rather than of Hugo are Alfred de Vigny (1799-1865) and Victor de Laprade (1812-1887), the former a writer of little bulk and somewhat over-fastidious, but possessing one of the most correct and elegant styles to be found in French, with a curious restrained passion and a complicated originality, the latter a meditative and philosophical poet, like Vigny an admirable writer, but somewhat deficient in pith and substance, as well as in warmth and colour. Madame Ackermann (1813-1890) is the chief philosophical poetess of France, and this style has recently been very popular; but for actual poetical powers, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786-1859) perhaps excelled her, though in a looser and more sentimental fashion. The poetical schools which more directly derive from the Romantic movement as represented by Hugo are three in number, corresponding in point of time with the first outburst of the movement, with the period of reaction already alluded to, and with the closing years of the second empire. Of the first by far the most distinguished member was Theophile Gautier (1811-1872), the most perfect poet in point of form that France has produced. When quite a boy he devoted himself to the study of 16th-century masters, and though he acknowledged the supremacy of Hugo, his own talent was of an individual order, and developed itself more or less independently. _Albertus_ alone of his poems has much of the extravagant and grotesque character which distinguished early romantic literature. The _Comedie de la mort_, the _Poesies diverses_, and still more the _Emaux et camees_, display a distinctly classical tendency--classical, that is to say, not in the party and perverted sense, but in its true acceptation. The tendency to the fantastic and horrible may be taken as best shown by Petrus Borel (1809-1859), a writer of singular power almost entirely wasted. Gerard Labrunie or de Nerval (1808-1855) adopted a manner also fantastic but more idealistic than Borel's, and distinguished himself by his Oriental travels and studies, and by his attention to popular ballads and traditions, while his style has an exquisite but unaffected strangeness hardly inferior to Gautier's. This peculiar and somewhat quintessenced style is also remarkable in the _Gaspard de la nuit_ of Louis Bertrand (1807-1841), a work of rhythmical prose almost unique in its character. One famous sonnet preserves the name of Felix Arvers (1806-1850). The two Deschamps were chiefly remarkable as translators. The next generation produced three remarkable poets, to whom may perhaps be added a fourth. Theodore de Banville (1823-1891), adopting the principles of Gautier, and combining with them a considerable satiric faculty, composed a large amount of verse, faultless in form, delicate and exquisite in shades and colours, but so entirely neutral in moral and political tone that it has found fewer admirers than it deserved. Charles Marie Rene Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894), carrying out the principle of ransacking foreign literature for subjects, went to Celtic, classical or even Oriental sources for his inspiration, and despite a science in verse not much inferior to Banville's, and a far wider range and choice of subject, diffused an air of erudition, not to say pedantry, over his work which disgusted some readers, and a pessimism which displeased others, but has left poetry only inferior to that of the greatest of his countrymen. Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), by his choice of unpopular subjects and the terrible truth of his analysis, revolted not a few of those who, in the words of an English critic, cannot take pleasure in the representation if they do not take pleasure in the thing represented, and who thus miss his extraordinary command of the poetical appeal in sound, in imagery and in suggestion generally. Thus, by a strange coincidence, each of the three representatives of the second Romantic generation was for a time disappointed of his due fame. A fourth poet of this time, Josephin Soulary (1815-1891), produced sonnets of rare beauty and excellence. A fifth, Louis Bouilhet (1822-1869), an intimate friend of Flaubert, pushed even farther the fancy for strange subjects, but showed powers in _Melaenis_ and other things. In 1866 a collection of poems, entitled after an old French fashion _Le Parnasse contemporain_, appeared. It included contributions by many of the poets just mentioned, but the mass of the contributors were hitherto unknown to fame. A similar collection appeared in 1869, and was interrupted by the German war, but continued after it, and a third in 1876.

The first _Parnasse_ had been projected by MM. Xavier de Ricard (b. 1843) and Catulle Mendes (1841-1909) as a sort of manifesto of a school of young poets: but its contents were largely coloured by the inclusion among them of work by representatives of older generations--Gautier, Laprade, Leconte de Lisle, Banville, Baudelaire and others. The continuation, however, of the title in the later issues, rather than anything else, led to the formation and promulgation of the idea of a "Parnassien" or an "Impassible" school which was supposed to adopt as its watchword the motto of "Art for Art's sake," to pay especial attention to form, and also to aim at a certain objectivity. As a matter of fact the greater poets and the greater poems of the Parnasse admit of no such restrictive labelling, which can only be regarded as mischievous, though (or very mainly because) it has been continued. Another school, arising mainly in the later 'eighties and calling itself that of "Symbolism," has been supposed to indicate a reaction against Parnassianism and even against the main or Hugonic Romantic tradition generally; with a throwing back to Lamartine and perhaps Chenier. This idea of successive schools ("Decadents," "Naturists," "Simplists," &c.) has even been reduced to such an _absurdum_ as the statement that "France sees a new school of poetry every fifteen years." Those who have studied literature sufficiently widely, and from a sufficient elevation, know that these systematisings are always more or less delusive. Parnassianism, symbolism and the other things are merely phases of the Romantic movement itself--as may be proved to demonstration by the simple process of taking, say, Hugo and Verlaine on the one hand, Delille or Escouchard Lebrun on the other, and comparing the two first mentioned with each other and with the older poet. The differences in the first case will be found to be differences at most of individuality: in the other of kind. We shall not, therefore, further refer to these dubious classifications: but specify briefly the most remarkable poets whom they concern, and all the older of whom, it may be observed, were represented in the _Parnasse_ itself. Of these the most remarkable were Sully Prudhomme (1839-1907), Francois Coppee (1842-1908) and Paul Verlaine (1844-1896). The first (_Stances et poemes_, 1865, _Vaines Tendresses_, 1875, _Bonheur_, 1888, &c.) is a philosophical and rather pessimistic poet who has very strongly rallied the suffrages of the rather large present public who care for the embodiment of these tendencies in verse; the second (_La Greve des forgerons_, 1869, _Les Humbles_, 1872, _Contes et vers_, 1881-1887, &c.) a dealer with more generally popular subjects in a more sentimental manner; and the third (_Sagesse_, 1881, _Parallelement_, 1889, _Poemes saturniens_, including early work, 1867-1890), by far the most original and remarkable poet of the three, starting with Baudelaire and pushing farther the fancy for forbidden subjects, but treating both these and others with wonderful command of sound and image-suggestion. Verlaine in fact (he was actually well acquainted with English) endeavoured, and to a small extent succeeded in the endeavour, to communicate to French the vague suggestion of visual and audible appeal which has characterized English poetry from Blake through Coleridge. Others of the original Parnassiens who deserve mention are Albert Glatigny (1839-1873), a Bohemian poet of great talent who died young; Stephane Mallarme (1842-1898), afterwards chief of the Symbolists, also a true poet in his way, but somewhat barren, and the victim of pose and trick; Jose 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 Chatillon (1810-1882); Leon Dierx (b. 1838) who, after producing even less than Mallarme, succeeded him as Symbolist chief; Jean Aicard (b. 1848), a southern bard of merit; and lastly Catulle Mendes himself, who has been a brilliant writer in verse and prose ever since, and whose _Mouvement poetique francais de 1867 a 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 etoiles_, 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, Andre 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 Mallarme 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 Viele 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 (1859-1900), a musical versifier enough; Jean Moreas (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 Jeune-France and "Bousingot" type of early Romanticism--_La Chanson des gueux_, _Les Blasphemes_, &c. Other writers of note are M. Paul Deroulede (b. 1846), a violently nationalist poet; M. Maurice Bouchor (b. 1864), who started his serious and respectable work with _Les Symboles_ in 1888; while M. Henri de Regnier, born in the same year, has received very high praise for work from _Lendemains_ in 1886 and other volumes up to _Les Jeux rustiques et divins_ (1897) and _Les Medailles d'argile_ (1900). The truth, however, perhaps is that this extraordinary abundance of verse (for we have not mentioned a quarter of the names which present themselves, or a twentieth part of those who figure in M. Mendes's catalogue for the last half-century) reminds the literary historian somewhat too much of similar phenomena in other times. There is undoubtedly a great diffusion of poetical dexterity, and not perhaps a small one of poetical spirit, but it requires the settling, clarifying and distinguishing effects of time to separate the poet from the minor poet. Still more perhaps must we look to time to decide whether the _vers libre_ as it is called--that is to say, the verse freed from the minute traditions of the elder prosody, admitting hiatus, neglecting to a greater or less extent _caesura_, and sometimes relying upon mere rhythm to the neglect of strict metre altogether--can hold its ground. It has as yet been practised by no poet at all approaching the first class, except Verlaine, and not by him in its extremer forms. And the whole history of prosody and poetry teaches us that though similar changes often come in as it were unperceived, they scarcely ever take root in the language unless a great poet adopts them. Or rather it should perhaps be said that when they are going to take root in the language a great poet always does adopt them before very long.

Dumas.

Balzac the younger.

_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 Abbe Prevost, Diderot, J. J. Rousseau, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Fievee 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, Merimee, 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 composed 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 even attempts anything but the boldest character drawing, the best of them, such as _Les Trois Mousquetaires_, _Vingt ans apres_, _La Reine Margot_, are probably the best specimens extant. Dumas possesses, almost alone among novelists, the secret of writing interminable dialogue without being tedious, and of telling the story by it. Of something the same kind, but of a far lower stamp, are the novels of Eugene Sue (1804-1857). Dumas and Sue were accompanied and followed by a vast crowd of companions, independent or imitative. Alfred de Vigny had already attempted the historical novel in _Cinq-Mars_. Henri de La Touche (1785-1851) (_Fragoletta_), an excellent critic who formed George Sand, but a mediocre novelist, may be mentioned: and perhaps also Roger de Beauvoir, whose real name was Eugene Auguste Roger de Bully (1806-1866) (_Le Chronique de Saint Georges_), and Frederic Soulie (_Les Memoires du diable_) (1800-1847). Paul Feval (_La Fee des greves_) (1817-1877) and Amedee Achard (_Belle-Rose_) (1814-1875) are of the same school, and some of the attempts of Jules Janin (1804-1874), more celebrated as a critic, may also be connected with it. By degrees, however, the taste for the novel of incident, at least of an historical kind, died out till it was revived in another form, and with an admixture of domestic interest, by MM. Erckmann-Chatrian. The last and one of the most splendid instances of the old style was _Le Capitaine Fracasse_, which Theophile Gautier began early and finished late as a kind of _tour de force_. The last-named writer in his earlier days had modified the incident novel in many short tales, a kind of writing for which French has always been famous, and in which Gautier's sketches are masterpieces. His only other long novel, _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, belongs rather to the class of analysis. With Gautier, as a writer whose literary characteristics even excel his purely tale-telling powers, may be classed Prosper Merimee (1803-1870), one of the most exquisite 19th-century masters of the language. Already, however, in 1830 the tide was setting strongly in favour of novels of contemporary life and manners. These were of course susceptible of extremely various treatment. For many years Paul de Kock (1793-1871), a writer who did not trouble himself about Classics or Romantics or any such matter, continued the tradition of Marivaux, Crebillon _fils_, and Pigault Lebrun (1753-1835) in a series of not very moral or polished but lively and amusing sketches of life, principally of the bourgeois type. Later Charles de Bernard (1804-1850) (_Gerfaut_) with infinitely greater wit, elegance, propriety and literary skill, did the same thing for the higher classes of French society. But the two great masters of the novel of character and manners as opposed to that of history and incident are Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) and Aurore Dudevant, commonly called George Sand (1804-1876). Their influence affected the entire body of novelists who succeeded them, with very few exceptions. At the head of these exceptions may be placed Jules Sandeau (1811-1883), who, after writing a certain number of novels in a less individual style, at last made for himself a special subject in a certain kind of domestic novel, where the passions set in motion are less boisterous than those usually preferred by the French novelist, and reliance is mainly placed on minute character drawing and shades of colour sober in hue but very carefully adjusted (_Catherine_, _Mademoiselle de Penarvan_, _Mademoiselle de la Seigliere_). In the same class of the more quiet and purely domestic novelists may be placed X. B. Saintine (1798-1865) (_Picciola_), Madame C. Reybaud (1802-1871) (_Clementine_, _Le Cadet de Colobrieres_), J. T. de Saint-Germain (_Pour en epingle_, _La Feuille de coudrier_), Madame Craven (1808-1891) (_Recit d'une soeur_, _Fleurange_). Henri Beyle (1798-1865), who wrote under the _nom de plume_ of Stendhal and belongs to an older generation than most of these, also stands by himself. His chief book in the line of fiction is _La Chartreuse de Parme_, an exceedingly powerful novel of the analytical kind, and he also composed a considerable number of critical and miscellaneous works. Of little influence at first (though he had great power over Merimee) and never master of a perfect style, he has exercised ever increasing authority as a master of pessimist analysis. Indeed much of his work was never published till towards the close of the century. Last among the independents must be mentioned Henry Murger (1822-1861), the painter of what is called Bohemian life, that is to say, the struggles, difficulties and amusements of students, youthful artists, and men of letters. In this peculiar style, which may perhaps be regarded as an irregular descendant of the picaroon romance, Murger has no rival; and he is also, though on no extensive scale, a poet of great pathos. But with these exceptions, the influences of the two writers we have mentioned, sometimes combined, more often separate, may be traced throughout the whole of later novel literature. George Sand began with books strongly tinged with the spirit of revolt against moral and social arrangements, and she sometimes diverged into very curious paths of pseudo-philosophy, such as was popular in the second quarter of the century. At times, too, as in _Lucrezia Floriani_ and some other works, she did not hesitate to draw largely on her own personal adventures and experiences. But latterly she devoted herself rather to sketches of country life and manners, and to novels involving bold if not very careful sketches of character and more or less dramatic situations. She was one of the most fertile of novelists, continuing to the end of her long life to pour forth fiction at the rate of many volumes a year. Of her different styles may be mentioned as fairly characteristic, _Lelia_, _Lucrezia Floriani_, _Consuelo_, _La Mare au diable_, _La Petite Fadette_, _Francois le champi_, _Mademoiselle de la Quintinie_. Considering the shorter length of his life the productiveness of Balzac was almost more astonishing, especially if we consider that some of his early work was never reprinted, and that he left great stores of fragments and unfinished sketches. He is, moreover, the most remarkable example in literature of untiring work and determination to achieve success despite the greatest discouragements. His early work was worse than unsuccessful, it was positively bad. After more than a score of unsuccessful attempts, _Les Chouans_ at last made its mark, and for twenty years from that time the astonishing productions composing the so-called _Comedie humaine_ were poured forth successively. The sub-titles which Balzac imposed upon the different batches, _Scenes de la vie parisienne_, _de la vie de province_, _de la vie intime_, &c., show, like the general title, a deliberate intention on the author's part to cover the whole ground of human, at least of French life. Such an attempt could not succeed wholly; yet the amount of success attained is astonishing. Balzac has, however, with some justice been accused of creating the world which he described, and his personages, wonderful as is the accuracy and force with which many of the characteristics of humanity are exemplified in them, are somehow not altogether human. Since these two great novelists, many others have arisen, partly to tread in their steps, partly to strike out independent paths. Octave Feuillet (1821-1890), beginning his career by apprenticeship to Alexandre Dumas and the historical novel, soon found his way in a very different style of composition, the _roman intime_ of fashionable life, in which, notwithstanding some grave defects, he attained much popularity and showed remarkable skill in keeping abreast of his time. The so-called realist side of Balzac was developed (but, as he himself acknowledged, with a double dose of intermixed if somewhat transformed Romanticism) by Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), who showed culture, scholarship and a literary power over the language inferior to that of no writer of the century. No novelist of his generation has attained a higher literary rank than Flaubert. _Madame Bovary_ and _L'Education sentimentale_ are studies of contemporary life; in _Salammbo_ and _La Tentation de Saint Antoine_ erudition and antiquarian knowledge furnish the subjects for the display of the highest literary skill. Of about the same date Edmond About (1828-1885), before he abandoned novel-writing, devoted himself chiefly to sketches of abundant but not always refined wit (_L'Homme a l'oreille cassee_, _Le Nez d'un notaire_), and sometimes to foreign scenes (_Tolla_, _Le Roi des montagnes_). Champfleury (Henri Husson, 1829-1889), a prolific critic, deserves notice for stories of the extravaganza kind. During the whole of the Second Empire one of the most popular writers was Ernest Feydeau (1821-1873), a writer of great ability, but morbid and affected in the choice and treatment of his subjects (_Fanny_, _Sylvie_, _Catherine d'Overmeire_). Emile Gaboriau (1833-1873), taking up that side of Balzac's talent which devoted itself to inextricable mysteries, criminal trials, and the like, produced _M. Le Coq_, _Le Crime d'Orcival_, _La Degringolade_, &c.; and Adolphe Belot (b. 1829) for a time endeavoured to out-Feydeau Feydeau in _La Femme de feu_ and other works. Eugene Fromentin (1820-1876), best known as a painter, wrote a novel, _Dominique_, which was highly appreciated by good judges.

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 honnete 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 bebe_, _Entre nous_, &c.) but full of fancy, excellently written, and of a delicate wit in one sense if not in all. Andre 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. Leon 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 a Ninon_ (1864) and _Therese Raquin_ (1867) deserve to be specified. But after 1870 Zola entered upon a huge scheme (suggested no doubt by the _Comedie 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, _Fecondite_, _Travail_, _Verite_, 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 quality they carried, and the elder of them after his brother's death continued to carry, into novel-writing (_Renee Mauperin_, _Germinie Lacerteux_, _Cherie_, &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 _cenacle_ 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 _Tartarin_ series (dealing with the extravagances of his fellow-Provencaux) added not a little to the gaiety of Europe. His other novels (_Fromont jeune et Risler aine_, _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 Soirees de Medan_, 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 Soeurs 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 Soirees de Medan_, 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 _La-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 (_Aziyade_, _Le Mariage de Loti_, _Madame Chrysantheme_, &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 privee de Michel Tessier_ (1893), _Le Sens de la vie_, _Les Trois Coeurs_. 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 Rotisserie de la reine Pedauque_, _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 Rene 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 Prevost (b. 1862); the contorted but rather attractive style and the perverse sentiment of Maurice Barres (b. 1862); and, above all, the audacious and inimitable dialogue pieces of "Gyp" (Madame de Martel, b. 1850), worthy of the best times of French literature for gaiety, satire, acuteness and style, and perhaps likely, with the work of Maupassant, Pierre Loti and Anatole France, to represent the capital achievement of their particular generation to posterity.

Sainte-Beuve.

_Periodical Literature since 1830. Criticism._--One of the causes which led to this extensive composition of novels was the great spread of periodical literature in France, and the custom of including in almost all periodicals, daily, weekly or monthly, a _feuilleton_ or instalment of fiction. Of the contributors of these periodicals who were strictly journalists and almost political journalists only, the most remarkable after Carrel were his opponent in the fatal duel,--Emile de Girardin, Lucien A. Prevost-Paradol (1829-1870), Jean Hippolyte Cartier, called de Villemessant (1812-1879), and, above all, Louis Veuillot (1815-1883), the most violent and unscrupulous but by no means the least gifted of his class. The same spread of periodical literature, together with the increasing interest in the literature of the past, led also to a very great development of criticism. Almost all French authors of any eminence during nearly the last century have devoted themselves more or less to criticism of literature, of the theatre, or of art. And sometimes, as in the case of Janin and Gautier, the comparatively lucrative nature of journalism, and the smaller demands which it made for labour and intellectual concentration, have diverted to feuilleton-writing abilities which might perhaps have been better employed. At the same time it must be remembered that from this devotion of men of the best talents to critical work has arisen an immense elevation of the standard of such work. Before the romantic movement in France Diderot in that country, Lessing and some of his successors in Germany, Hazlitt, Coleridge and Lamb in England, had been admirable critics and reviewers. But the theory of criticism, though these men's principles and practice had set it aside, still remained more or less what it had been for centuries. The critic was merely the administrator of certain hard and fast rules. There were certain recognized kinds of literary composition; every new book was bound to class itself under one or other of these. There were certain recognized rules for each class; and the goodness or badness of a book consisted simply in its obedience or disobedience to these rules. Even the kinds of admissible subjects and the modes of admissible treatment were strictly noted and numbered. This was especially the case in France and with regard to French _belles-lettres_, so that, as we have seen, certain classes of composition had been reduced to unimportant variations of a registered pattern. The Romantic protest against this absurdity was specially loud and completely victorious. It is said that a publisher advised the youthful Lamartine to try "to be like somebody else" if he wished to succeed. The Romantic standard of success was, on the contrary, to be as individual as possible. Victor Hugo himself composed a good deal of criticism, and in the preface to his _Orientales_ he states the critical principles of the new school clearly. The critic, he says, has nothing to do with the subject chosen, the colours employed, the materials used. Is the work, judged by itself and with regard only to the ideal which the worker had in his mind, good or bad? It will be seen that as a legitimate corollary of this theorem the critic becomes even more of an interpreter than of a judge. He can no longer satisfy himself or his readers by comparing the work before him with some abstract and accepted standard, and marking off its shortcomings. He has to reconstruct, more or less conjecturally, the special ideal at which each of his authors aimed, and to do this he has to study their idiosyncrasies with the utmost care, and set them before his readers in as full and attractive a fashion as he can manage. The first writer who thoroughly grasped this necessity and successfully dealt with it was Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869), who has indeed identified his name with the method of criticism just described. Sainte-Beuve's first remarkable work (his poems and novels we may leave out of consideration) was the sketch of 16th-century literature already alluded to, which he contributed to the _Globe_. But it was not till later that his style of criticism became fully developed and accentuated. During the first decade of Louis Philippe's reign his critical papers, united under the title of _Critiques et portraits litteraires_, show a gradual advance. During the next ten years he was mainly occupied with his studies of the writers of the Port Royal school. But it was during the last twenty years of his life, when the famous _Causeries du lundi_ appeared weekly in the columns of the _Constitutionnel_ and the _Moniteur_, that his most remarkable productions came out. Sainte-Beuve's style of criticism (which is the key to so much of French literature of the last half-century that it is necessary to dwell on it at some length), excellent and valuable as it is, lent itself to two corruptions. There is, in the first place, in making the careful investigations into the character and circumstances of each writer which it demands, a danger of paying too much attention to the man and too little to his work, and of substituting for a critical study a mere collection of personal anecdotes and traits, especially if the author dealt with belongs to a foreign country or a past age. The other danger is that of connecting the genius and character of particular authors too much with their conditions and circumstances, so as to regard them as merely so many products of the age. These faults, and especially the latter, have been very noticeable in many of Sainte-Beuve's successors, particularly in, perhaps, Hippolyte Taine, who, however, besides his work on English literature, did much of importance on French, and has been regarded as the first critic who did thorough honour to Balzac in his own country. A large number of other critics during the period deserve notice because, though acting more or less on the newer system of criticism, they have manifested considerable originality in its application. As far as merely critical faculty goes, and still more in the power of giving literary expression to criticism, Theophile Gautier yields to no one. His _Les Grotesques_, an early work dealing with Villon, the earlier "Theophile" de Viau, and other _enfants terribles_ of French literature, has served as a model to many subsequent writers, such as Charles Monselet (1825-1888), and Charles Asselineau (1820-1874), the affectionate historian, in his _Bibliographie romantique_ (1872-1874), of the less famous promoters of the Romantic movement. On the other hand, Gautier's picture criticisms, and his short reviews of books, obituary notices, and other things of the kind contributed to daily papers, are in point of style among the finest of all such fugitive compositions. Jules Janin (1804-1874), chiefly a theatrical critic, excelled in light and easy journalism, but his work has neither weight of substance nor careful elaboration of manner sufficient to give it permanent value. This sort of light critical comment has become almost a speciality of the French press, and among its numerous practitioners the names of Armand de Pontmartin (1811-1890) (an imitator and assailant of Sainte-Beuve), Arsene Houssaye, Pierangelo Fiorentino (1806-1864), may be mentioned. Edmond Scherer (1815-1889) and Paul de Saint-Victor (1827-1881) represent different sides of Sainte-Beuve's style in literary criticism, Scherer combining with it a martinet and somewhat prudish precision, while Saint-Victor, with great powers of appreciation, is the most flowery and "prose-poetical" of French critics. In theatrical censure Francisque Sarcey (1827-1899), an acute but somewhat severe and limited judge, succeeded to the good-natured sovereignty of Janin. The criticism of the _Revue des deux mondes_ has played a sufficiently important part in French literature to deserve separate notice in passing. Founded in 1829, the _Revue_, after some vicissitudes, soon attained, under the direction of the Swiss Buloz, the character of being one of the first of European critical periodicals. Its style of criticism has, on the whole, inclined rather to the classical side--that is, to classicism as modified by, and possible after, the Romantic movement. Besides some of the authors already named, its principal critical contributors were Gustave Planche (1808-1857), an acute but somewhat truculent critic, Saint-Rene Taillandier (1817-1879), and Emile Montegut (1825-1895), a man of letters whom greater leisure would have made greater, but who actually combined much and varied critical power with an agreeable style. Lastly we must notice the important section of professorial or university critics, whose critical work has taken the form either of regular treatises or of courses of republished lectures, books somewhat academic and rhetorical in character, but often representing an amount of influence which has served largely to stir up attention to literature. The most prominent name among these is that of Abel Villemain (1790-1867), who was one of the earliest critics of the literature of his own country to obtain a hearing out of it. Desire Nisard (1806-1888) was perhaps more fortunate in his dealings with Latin than with French, and in his _History_ of the latter literature represents too much the classical tradition, but he had dignity, erudition and an excellent style. Alexandre Vinet (1797-1847), a Swiss critic of considerable eminence, Saint-Marc-Girardin (1801-1873), whose _Cours de litterature dramatique_ is his chief work, and Eugene Geruzez (1799-1865), the author not only of an extremely useful and well-written handbook to French literature before the Revolution, but also of other works dealing with separate portions of the subject, must also be mentioned. One remarkable critic, Ernest Hello (1818-1885), attracted during his life little attention even in France, and hardly any out of it, his work being strongly tinctured with the unpopular flavour and colour of uncompromising "clericalism," and his extremely bad health keeping him out of the ordinary fraternities of literary society. It was, however, as full of idiosyncrasy as of partisanship, and is exceedingly interesting to those who regard criticism as mainly valuable because it gives different aspects of the same thing.

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 Brunetiere (1849-1906), to whom some would add Jules Lemaitre (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 litteraire_ 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. Brunetiere 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. Brunetiere was still more prolific on the same side but with still greater effort after system and "science." In the books definitely called _L'Evolution 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 his death the first critic of France and a worthy successor of her best.

Of others older and younger must be mentioned Paul Stapfer (b. 1840), professor of literature, and the author of divers excellent works from _Shakespeare et l'antiquite_ to volumes of the first value on Montaigne and Rabelais; Paul Bourget and Edouard Rod, already noticed; Augustin Filon (b. 1841), author of much good work on English literature and an excellent book on Merimee; Alexandre Beljame (1843-1906), another eminent student of English literature, in which subject J. A. Jusserand (b. 1855), Legouis, K. A. J. Angellier (b. 1848), and others have recently distinguished themselves; Gustave Larroumet, especially an authority on Marivaux; Eugene Lintilhac (b. 1854); Georges Pellissier; Gustave Lanson, author of a compact history of French literature in French; Marcel Schwob, who had done excellent work on Villon and other subjects before his early death; Rene Doumic, a frequent writer in the _Revue des deux mondes_, who collected four volumes of _Etudes sur la litterature francaise_ between 1895 and 1900; and the Vicomte Melchior de Vogue (b. 1848), whose interests have been more political-philosophical than strictly literary, but who has done much to familiarize the French public with that Russian literature to which Merimee had been the first to introduce them. But the body of recent critical literature in France is perhaps larger in actual proportion and of greater value when considered in relation to other kinds of literature than has been the case at any previous period.