Chapter 7

THE AGE OF CRITICISM

With the generation of writers who rose to eminence after the death of Balzac, we come within the reach of living memory, so that a just estimate of their work is well-nigh impossible: it is so close to us that it is bound to be out of focus. And there is an additional difficulty in the extreme richness and variety of their accomplishment. They explored so many fields of literature, and produced so much of interest and importance, that a short account of their work can hardly fail to give a false impression of it. Only its leading characteristics and its most remarkable manifestations can be touched upon here.

The age was before all else an age of Criticism. A strong reaction set in against the looseness of construction and the extravagance of thought which had pervaded the work of the Romantics; and a new ideal was set up--an ideal which was to combine the width and diversity of the latter with the precision of form and the deliberate artistic purpose of the Classical age. The movement affected the whole of French literature, but its most important results were in the domain of Prose. Nowhere were the defects of the Romantics more obvious than in their treatment of history. With a very few exceptions they conceived of the past as a picturesque pageant--a thing of contrasts and costumes, an excuse for rhetorical descriptions, without inner significance or a real life of its own. One historian of genius they did indeed produce--MICHELET; and the contrast between his work and that of his successors, TAINE and RENAN, is typical of the new departure. The great history of Michelet, with its strange, convulsive style, its capricious and imaginative treatment of facts, and its undisguised bias, shows us the spectacle of the past in a series of lurid lightning-flashes--a spectacle at once intensely vivid and singularly contorted; it is the history of a poet rather than of a man of science. With Taine and Renan the personal element which forms the very foundation of Michelet's work has been carefully suppressed. It is replaced by an elaborate examination of detail, a careful, sober, unprejudiced reconstruction of past conditions, an infinitely conscientious endeavour to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. Nor is their history merely the dead bones of analysis and research; it is informed with an untiring sympathy; and--in the case of Renan especially--a suave and lucid style adds the charm and amenity which art alone can give.

The same tendencies appear to a still more remarkable degree in Criticism. With SAINTE-BEUVE, in fact, one might almost say that criticism, as we know it, came into existence for the first time. Before him, all criticism had been one of two things: it had been either a merely personal expression of opinion, or else an attempt to establish universal literary canons and to judge of writers by the standards thus set up. Sainte-Beuve realized that such methods--the slap-dash pronouncements of a Johnson or the narrow generalizations of a Boileau--were in reality not critical at all. He saw that the critic's first duty was not to judge, but to understand; and with this object he set himself to explore all the facts which could throw light on the temperament, the outlook, the ideals of his author; he examined his biography, the society in which he lived, the influences of his age; and with the apparatus thus patiently formed he proceeded to act as the interpreter between the author and the public. His _Causeries du Lundi_--short critical papers originally contributed to a periodical magazine and subsequently published in a long series of volumes--together with his _Port Royal_--an elaborate account of the movements in letters and philosophy during the earlier years of Louis XIV's reign--contain a mass of material of unequalled value concerning the whole of French literature. His analytical and sympathetic mind is reflected in the quiet wit and easy charm of his writing. Undoubtedly the lover of French literature will find in Sainte-Beuve's _Lundis_ at once the most useful and the most agreeable review of the subject in all its branches; and the more his knowledge increases, the more eagerly will he return for further guidance and illumination to those delightful books.

But the greatest prose-writer of the age devoted himself neither to history nor to criticism--though his works are impregnated with the spirit of both--but to Fiction. In his novels, FLAUBERT finally accomplished what Balzac had spasmodically begun--the separation of the art of fiction from the unreality, the exaggeration, and the rhetoric of the Romantic School. Before he began to write, the movement towards a greater restraint, a more deliberate art, had shown itself in a few short novels by GEORGE SAND--the first of the long and admirable series of her mature works--where, especially in such delicate masterpieces as _La Mare au Diable, La Petite Fadette_, and _François le Champi_, her earlier lyricism and incoherence were replaced by an idyllic sentiment strengthened and purified by an exquisite sense of truth. Flaubert's genius moved in a very different and a far wider orbit: but it was no less guided by the dictates of deliberate art. In his realism, his love of detail, and his penetrating observation of facts, Flaubert was the true heir of Balzac; while in the scrupulosity of his style and the patient, laborious, and sober treatment of his material he presented a complete contrast to his great predecessor. These latter qualities make Flaubert the pre-eminent representative of his age. The critical sense possessed him more absolutely and with more striking results than all the rest of his contemporaries. His watchfulness over his own work was almost infinite. There has never been a writer who took his art with such a passionate seriousness, who struggled so incessantly towards perfection, and who suffered so acutely from the difficulties, the disappointments, the desperate, furious efforts of an unremitting toil. His style alone cost him boundless labour. He would often spend an entire day over the elaboration and perfection of a single sentence, which, perhaps, would be altogether obliterated before the publication of the book. He worked in an apoplectic fervour over every detail of his craft--eliminating repetitions, balancing rhythms, discovering the precise word for every shade of meaning, with an extraordinary, an almost superhuman, persistence. And in the treatment of his matter his conscientiousness was equally great. He prepared for his historical novels by profound researches in the original authorities of the period, and by personal visits to the localities he intended to describe. When he treated of modern life he was no less scrupulously exact. One of his scenes was to pass in a cabbage-garden by moonlight. But what did a cabbage-garden by moonlight really look like? Flaubert waited long for a propitious night, and then went out, notebook in hand, to take down the precise details of what he saw. Thus it was that his books were written very slowly, and his production comparatively small. He spent six years over the first and most famous of his works--_Madame Bovary_; and he devoted no less than thirteen to his encyclopedic _Bouvard et Pécuchet_, which was still unfinished when he died.

The most abiding impression produced by the novels of Flaubert is that of solidity. This is particularly the case with his historical books. The bric-à-brac and fustian of the Romantics has disappeared, to be replaced by a clear, detailed, profound presentment of the life of the past. In _Salammbô_, ancient Carthage rises up before us, no crazy vision of a picturesque and disordered imagination, but in all the solidity of truth; coloured, not with the glaring contrasts of rhetoric, but with the real blaze of an eastern sun; strange, not with an imported fantastic strangeness manufactured in nineteenth-century Paris, but with the strangeness--so much more mysterious and significant--of the actual, barbaric Past.

The same characteristics appear in Flaubert's modern novels. _Madame Bovary_ gives us a picture of life in a French provincial town in the middle of the last century--a picture which, with its unemphatic tones, its strong, sensitive, and accurate drawing, its masterly design, produces an effect of absolutely convincing veracity. The character and the fate of the wretched woman who forms the central figure of the story come upon us, amid the grim tepidity of their surroundings, with extraordinary force. Flaubert's genius does not act in sudden flashes, but by the method of gradual accumulation. The effects which it produces are not of the kind that overwhelm and astonish, but of the more subtle sort that creep into the mind by means of a thousand details, an infinitude of elaborated fibres, and which, once there, are there for ever.

The solidity of Flaubert's work, however, was not unaccompanied with drawbacks. His writing lacks fire; there is often a sense of effort in it; and, as one reads his careful, faultless, sculpturesque sentences, it is difficult not to long, at times, for some of the irregular vitality of Balzac. Singularly enough, Flaubert's correspondence--one of the most interesting collections of letters in the language--shows that, so far as his personal character was concerned, irregular vitality was precisely one of his dominating qualities. But in his fiction he suppressed this side of himself in the interests, as he believed, of art. It was his theory that a complete detachment was a necessary condition for all great writing; and he did his best to put this theory into practice. But there was one respect in which he did not succeed in his endeavour. His hatred and scorn of the mass of humanity, his conception of them as a stupid, ignorant, and vulgar herd, appears throughout his work, and in his unfinished _Bouvard et Pécuchet_ reaches almost to the proportion of a monomania. The book is an infinitely elaborate and an infinitely bitter attack on the ordinary man. There is something tragic in the spectacle of this lonely, noble, and potent genius wearing out his life at last over such a task--in a mingled agony of unconscious frenzied self-expression and deliberate misguided self-immolation.

In poetry, the reaction against Romanticism had begun with the _Émaux et Camées_ of THÉOPHILE GAUTIER--himself in his youth one of the leaders of the Romantic School; and it was carried further in the work of a group of writers known as the _Parnassiens_--the most important of whom were LECONTE DE LISLE, SULLY PRUDHOMME, and HEREDIA. Their poetry bears the same relation to that of Musset as the history of Renan bears to that of Michelet, and the prose of Flaubert to that of Hugo. It is restrained, impersonal, and polished to the highest degree. The bulk of it is not great; but not a line of it is weak or faulty; and it possesses a firm and plastic beauty, well expressed by the title of Gautier's volume, and the principles of which are at once explained and exemplified in his famous poem beginning--

Oui, l'oeuvre sort plus belle D'une forme au travail Rebelle, --Vers, marbre, onyx, émail.

The _Parnassiens_ particularly devoted themselves to classical subjects, and to descriptions of tropical scenes. Their rich, sonorous, splendidly-moulded language invests their visions with a noble fixity, an impressive force. Among the gorgeous descriptive pieces of Leconte de Lisle, the exquisite lyrics of Sully Prudhomme, and the chiselled sonnets of Heredia some of the finest and weightiest verse of the century is to be found.

The age produced one other poet who, however, by the spirit of his work, belongs rather to the succeeding epoch than to his own. This was BAUDELAIRE, whose small volume--_Les Fleurs du Mal_--gives him a unique place among the masters of the poetic art. In his form, indeed, he is closely related to his contemporaries. His writing has all the care, the balance, the conscientious polish of the _Parnassiens_; it is in his matter that he differs from them completely. He was not interested in classical imaginations and impersonal descriptions; he was concerned almost entirely with the modern life of Paris and the actual experiences of a disillusioned soul. As intensely personal as the _Parnassiens_ were detached, he poured into his verse all the gloom of his own character, all the bitterness of his own philosophy, all the agony of his own despair. Some poets--such as Keats and Chénier--in spite of the misfortunes of their lives, seem to distil nothing but happiness and the purest beauty into their poetry; they only come to their true selves amid the sunlight and the flowers. Other writers--such as Swift and Tacitus--rule supreme over the kingdom of darkness and horror, and their finest pages are written in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Writers of this kind are very rarely poets; and it is Baudelaire's great distinction that he was able to combine the hideous and devastating conceptions of complete pessimism with the passion, the imagination, and the formal beauty that only live in magnificent verse. He is the Swift of poetry. His vision is black and terrible. Some of his descriptions are even more disgusting than those of Swift, and most of his pages are no fit reading for the young and ignorant. But the wise reader will find in this lurid poetry elements of profundity and power which are rare indeed. Above all, he will find in it a quality not common in French poetry--a passionate imagination which clothes the thought with splendour, and lifts the strange words of this unhappy mortal into the deathless regions of the sublime.

CONCLUSION

With the death of Flaubert in 1880, French literature entered upon a new phase--a phase which, in its essential qualities, has lasted till to-day, and which forms a suitable point for the conclusion of the present sketch.

This last phase has been dominated by two men of genius. In prose, MAUPASSANT carried on the work of Flaubert with a sharper manner and more vivid style, though with a narrower range. He abandoned the exotic and the historical visions of his predecessor, and devoted himself entirely, in his brilliant novels and yet more brilliant short stories, to an almost fiendishly realistic treatment of modern life. A precisely contrary tendency marks the poetry of VERLAINE. While Maupassant completely disengaged prose from every alien element of poetry and imagination, pushing it as far as it could go in the direction of incisive realism, Verlaine and his fellow-workers in verse attempted to make poetry more truly poetical than it had ever been before, to introduce into it the vagueness and dreaminess of individual moods and spiritual fluctuations, to turn it away from definite fact and bring it near to music.

It was with Verlaine and his successors that French verse completely broke away from the control of those classical rules, the infallibility of which had been first attacked by the Romantics. In order to express the delicate, shifting, and indecisive feelings which he loved so well, Verlaine abolished the last shreds of rhythmical regularity, making his verse a perfectly fluid substance, which he could pour at will into the subtle mould of his feeling and his thought. The result justified the means. Verlaine's poetry exhales an exquisite perfume--strange, indistinct, and yet, after the manner of perfume, unforgettable. Listening to his enchanting, poignant music, we hear the trembling voice of a soul. This last sad singer carries us back across the ages, and, mingling his sweet strain with the distant melancholy of Villon, symbolizes for us at once the living flower and the unchanging root of the great literature of France.

* * * * *

We have now traced the main outlines of that literature from its dim beginnings in the Dark Ages up to the threshold of the present time. Looking back over the long line of writers, the first impression that must strike us is one of extraordinary wealth. France, it is true, has given to the world no genius of the colossal stature and universal power of Shakespeare. But, then, where is the equal of Shakespeare to be found? Not even in the glorious literature of Greece herself. Putting out of account such an immeasurable magnitude, the number of writers of the first rank produced by France can be paralleled in only one other modern literature--that of England. The record is, indeed, a splendid one which contains, in poetry and drama, the names of Villon, Ronsard, Corneille, Molière, Racine, La Fontaine, Chénier, Lamartine, Hugo, Vigny, Gautier, Baudelaire, Verlaine; and in prose those of Froissart, Rabelais, Montaigne, Pascal, Bossuet, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Montesquieu, Saint-Simon, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Balzac, Flaubert, and Maupassant. And, besides this great richness and variety, another consideration gives a peculiar value to the literature of France. More than that of any other nation in Europe, it is distinctive and individual; if it had never existed, the literature of the world would have been bereft of certain qualities of the highest worth which France alone has been able to produce. Where else could we find the realism which would replace that of Stendhal and Balzac, Flaubert and Maupassant? Where else should we look for the brilliant lucidity and consummate point which Voltaire has given us? Or the force and the precision that glow in Pascal? Or the passionate purity that blazes in Racine?

Finally, if we would seek for the essential spirit of French literature, where shall we discover it? In its devotion to truth? In its love of rhetoric? In its clarity? In its generalizing power? All these qualities are peculiarly its own, but, beyond and above them, there is another which controls and animates the rest. The one high principle which, through so many generations, has guided like a star the writers of France is the principle of deliberation, of intention, of a conscious search for ordered beauty; an unwavering, an indomitable pursuit of the endless glories of art.

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF AUTHORS AND THEIR PRINCIPAL WORKS

I. _Middle Ages_

CHANSONS DE GESTE, eleventh to thirteenth centuries. _Chanson de Roland, circa_ 1080.

ROMANS BRETONS, twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES, wrote _circa_ 1170-80.

FABLIAUX, twelfth and thirteenth centuries. _Roman de Renard_, thirteenth century. _Aucassin et Nicolete, circa_ thirteenth century.

VILLEHARDOUIN, _d_. 1213. _Conquête de Constantinople_, 1205-13.

GUILLAUME DE LORRIS (?). _La Roman de la Rose_ (first part), _circa_ 1237.

JEAN DE MEUNG, _d_. 1305. _La Roman de la Rose_ (second part), 1277.

JOINVILLE, 1224-1319. _Vie de Saint Louis_, 1309.

FROISSART, 1337-_circa_ 1410. _Chroniques_, 1373-1400.

VILLON, 1431-(?). _Grand Testament_, 1461.

COMMYNES, 1445-1509. _Mémoires_, 1488-98.

II. _Renaissance_

MAROT, 1496-1544.

RABELAIS, _circa_ 1494-1553.

RONSARD, 1524-85.

DU BELLAY, 1522-60. _Défense et Illustration de la Langue Française_, 1549.

JODELLE, 1532-73. _Cléopâtre_, 1552.

MONTAIGNE, 1533-92. _Essays_, 1580-88.

III. _Age of Transition_

MALHERBE, 1555-1628. _Odes_, 1607-28.

HARDY, 1570-1631 (_circa_). _Tragedies_, 1593-1630.

ACADEMY, founded 1629.

CORNEILLE, 1606-84. _Le Cid_, 1636. _Les Horaces_, 1640. _Cinna_, 1640. _Polyeucte_, 1643.

PASCAL, 1623-62. _Lettres Provinciales_, 1656-57. _Pensées_, first edition 1670, first complete edition 1844.

IV. _Age of Louis XIV_

MOLIÈRE, 1622-73. _Les Précieuses Ridicules_, 1659. _L'École des Femmes_, 1662. _Tartufe_, 1664. _Le Misanthrope_, 1666. _Le Malade Imaginaire_, 1673.

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, 1613-80. _Maximes_, 1665.

BOILEAU, 1636-1711. _Satires_, 1666. _Art Poétique_, 1674.

RACINE, 1639-99. _Andromaque_, 1667. _Phèdre_, 1677. _Athalie_, 1691.

LA FONTAINE, 1621-95. _Fables_, 1668-92.

BOSSUET, 1627-1704. _Oraisons Funèbres_, 1669-87. _Histoire Universelle_, 1681.

MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ, 1626-96. _Letters_, 1671-96.

MADAME DE LAFAYETTE, 1634-93. _La Princesse de Clèves_, 1678.

LA BRUYÈRE, 1645-96. _Les Caractères_, 1688-94.

V. _Eighteenth Century_

FONTENELLE, 1657-1757. _Histoire des Oracles_, 1687.

BAYLE, 1647-1706. _Dictionnaire Historique et Critique_, 1697.

FÉNELON, 1651-1715. _Télémaque_, 1699.

MONTESQUIEU, 1689-1755. _Lettres Persanes_, 1721. _L'Esprit des Lois_, 1748.

VOLTAIRE (1694-1778). _La Henriade_, 1723. _Zaïre_, 1732. _Lettres Philosophiques_, 1734. _Essai sur les Moeurs_, 1751-56. _Candide_, 1759. _Dictionnaire Philosophique_, 1764. _Dialogues_, etc., 1755-78.

LE SAGE, 1668-1747. _Gil Blas_, 1715-35.

MARIVAUX, 1688-1763. _Vie de Marianne_, 1731-41. _Les Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard_, 1734.

SAINT-SIMON, 1675-1755. _Mémoires_, begun 1740, first edition 1830.

DIDEROT, 1713-84. _Encyclopédie_, 1751-80. _La Religieuse_, first edition 1796. _Le Neveu de Rameau_, first edition 1823.

ROUSSEAU, 1712-78. _La Nouvelle Héloïse_, 1761. _Contrat Social_, 1762. _Confessions_, first edition 1781-88.

BEAUMARCHAIS, 1732-99. _Le Mariage de Figaro_, 1784.

CONDORCET, 1743-94. _Progrès de l'Esprit Humain_, 1794.

CHÉNIER, 1762-94. _Poems_, 1790-94, first edition 1819.

VI. _Nineteenth Century_--I

CHATEAUBRIAND, 1768-1848. _Atala_, 1801. _Génie du Christianisme_, 1802. _Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe_, published 1849.

LAMARTINE, 1790-1869. _Méditations_, 1820.

HUGO, 1802-85. _Hernani_, 1830. _Les Feuilles d'Automne_, 1831. _Notre-Dame de Paris_, 1831. _Les Châtiments_, 1852. _Les Contemplations_, 1856. _La Légende des Siècles_, 1859. _Les Misérables_, 1862.

VIGNY, 1797-1863. _Poemes Antiques et Modernes_, 1826. _Servitude et Grandeur Militaires_, 1835.

MUSSET, 1810-57. _Caprices de Marianne_, 1833. _Lorenzaccio_, 1834. _Les Nuits_, 1835-40.

GEORGE SAND, 1804-76. _Indiana_, 1832. _François le Champi_, 1850.

STENDHAL, 1783-1842. _Le Rouge et le Noir_, 1831.

BALZAC, 1799-1850. _La Comédie Humaine_, 1829-50.

MICHELET, 1798-1874. _History_, 1833-67.

VII. _Nineteenth Century_--II

SAINTE-BEUVE, 1804-69. _Lundis_, 1850-69.

RENAN, 1833-92. _Vie de Jésus_, 1863.

TAINE, 1828-93.

FLAUBERT, 1821-80. _Madame Bovary_, 1857. _Salammbô_, 1862.

GAUTIER, 1811-72. _Émaux et Camées_, 1852.

BAUDELAIRE, 1821-67. _Les Fleurs du Mal_, 1857.

LECONTE DE LISLE, 1818-94. _Poems_, 1853-84.

SULLY PRUDHOMME, 1839-1907. _Poems_, 1865-88.

HEREDIA, 1842-1905. _Les Trophées_, 1893.

MAUPASSANT, 1850-93.

VERLAINE, 1844-96.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The number of works dealing with the history and criticism of French literature is very large indeed. The following are the most useful reviews of the whole subject:--

PETIT DE JULLEVILLE. _Histoire de la Langue et de la Littérature française_ (8 vols.).

LANSON. _Histoire de la Littérature française_ (1 vol.).

BRUNETIÈRE. _Manuel de l'histoire de la Littérature française_ (1 vol.).

DOWDEN. _History of French Literature_ (1 vol.).

An excellent series of biographies of the principal authors, by the leading modern critics, is that of _Les Grands Écrivains Français_ (published by Hachette).

The critical essays of Sainte-Beuve are particularly valuable. They are contained in his _Causeries du Lundi, Premiers Lundis, Nouveaux Lundis, Portraits de Femmes, Portraits Littéraires_, and _Portraits Contemporains_.

Some interesting criticisms of modern writers are to be found in _La Vie Littéraire_, by Anatole France.

Editions of the principal authors are very numerous. The monumental series of _Les Grands Écrivains de la France_ (Hachette) contains complete texts of most of the great writers, with elaborate and scholarly commentaries of the highest value. Cheaper editions of the masterpieces of the language are published by Hachette, La Bibliothèque Nationale, Jean Gillequin, Nelson, Dent, Gowans & Gray.

There are also numerous lyrical anthologies, of which two of the best are _Les Chefs-d'oeuvre de la Poésie lyrique française_ (Gowans & Gray) and _The Oxford Book of French Verse_ (Clarendon Press). But it must be remembered that the greater part of what is most characteristic in French literature appears in its poetic drama and its prose, and is therefore necessarily excluded from such collections.

INDEX

Academy, the French, 34-36 Aesop, 80 Aristotle, 67 Arnold, Matthew, 64 _Aucassin et Nicolete_, 11-12, 13 Austen, Jane, 161

Balzac, Honoré de (1799-1850), 160-164, 166, 168, 171, 175, 176 _La Comédie Humaine_, 161-164 Baudelaire, Charles (1821-67), 172-173, 175 _Les Fleurs du Mal_, 172 Bayle, Pierre (1647-1706) _Dictionnaire Historique et Critique_, 96 Beaumarchais, De [_pseud. of_ Pierre Auguste Caron] (1732-99), 140-141 _Le Mariage de Figaro_, 140-141 Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153), 130 Boileau, Nicolas (1636-1711), 53-55, 143, 167 _Art Poétique_, 53 _À son Esprit_, 54 Bolingbroke, 102 Bossuet, Jacques Benigne (1627-1704), 85-86, 122, 129, 144, 175 _Elévations sur les Mystères_, 86 _Histoire Universelle_, 85, 122 _Méditations sur l'Evangile_, 86 _Oraisons Funèbres_, 86 Bourgogne, Duc de, 95 Browne, Sir Thomas, 35 Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de (1707-88), 118 Byron, 35, 137, 146, 156

Calas, Jean (1698-1762), 126 Catherine of Russia, 115 Cervantes, 56 _Chanson de Roland_, 8, 12 _Chansons de Geste_, 8, 9 Chapelain, Jean (1595-1674), 55 Chateaubriand, François René, Vicomte de (1768-1848), 145-146, 148, 175 _Génie du Christianisme_, 145 _Martyrs_, 145 _Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe_, 146 Chénier, André (1762-94), 142-143, 173, 175 _Églogues_, 143 Chrétien de Troyes (12th century), 14 Columbus, 111 Commynes, Philippe de (1445-1509), 17-18 _Mémoires_, 17 Condillac, Étienne Bonnot de Mably de (1715-80), 118 Condorcet, Marquis de (1743-94), 114, 118 _Progrès de l'Esprit Humain_, 115 Congreve, 35 Constant, Benjamin (1845-1902), 158 _Adolphe_, 158 Copernicus, 44, 111 Corneille, Pierre (1606-84), 36-41, 48, 55, 77, 144, 175 _Le Cid_, 36, 37, 39 _Cinna_, 39 _Les Horaces_, 39 _Polyeucte_, 39 Cotin, l'Abbé (1604-82), 55

Dalembert, Jean le Rond (1717-83), 118 Dante, 8, 56, 101 Diderot, Denis (1713-84), 35, 116, 118, 131, 136, 139, 145, 158, 175 _Le Neveu de Rameau_, 116-117 _La Religieuse_, 158 Dryden, 64 Du Bellay, Joachim (1522-60), 22 _Les Antiquités de Rome_, 24 _La Défense et Illustration de la Langue Française_, 22 Du Châtelet, Mme., 119-120 Du Deffand, Mme. (1697-1780), 99 Dumas, Alexandra (1824-95), 148

_Encyclopédie_, 115-116

_Fabliaux_, 10, 144 Fénelon, François (1651-1715), 95, 110 _Télémaque_, 95 Flaubert, Gustave (1821-80), 35, 168-171, 172, 174, 175, 176 _Bouvard et Pécuchet_, 170 _Madame Bovary_, 170 _Salammbô_, 170 Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovyer de (1657-1757), 95-96 _Histoire des Oracles_, 96 Francis I, 21 Frederick the Great, 115, 120 Froissart, Jean (_c._ 1337-_c_. 1410), 16-17, 41, 175 _Chroniques_, 16-17

Gautier, Théophile, (1811-72), 148, 171-172, 175 _Émaux et Camées_, 171-172 Gray, Thomas, 35

Hardy, Alexandra (_c._ 1570-_c_. 1631), 36, 37 Helvétius, Claude Adrien (1715-71), 118 Heredia, José-Maria de (1842-1905), 172 Holbach, Baron d' (1723-89), 118 Homer, 101 Hugo, Victor (1802-85), 37, 148, 149-155, 158, 159, 160, 161, 164, 172, 175 _Les Châtiments_, 155 _Les Contemplations_, 155 _Les Feuilles d'Automne_, 155 _Hernani_, 149, 152 _La Légende des Siècles_, 155 _Les Misérables_, 159, 161 _Les Rayons et Les Ombres_, 155 Hume, David, 139

James, Henry, 161 Jodelle, Étienne (1532-73), 36, 37 _Cléopâtre_, 36 Johnson, Samuel, 167 Joinville, Jean, Sire de (1224-1319), 13-14, 41 _Vie de Saint Louis_, 13-14

Keats, John, 143, 173

Labé, Louise (_c._ 1520-66), 24 La Bruyère, Jean de (1645-96), 87, 88-92, 106-107, 144, 175 _Les Caractères_, 89-91 Laclos, Pierre Choderlos de (1741-1803), 158 _Liaisons Dangereuses_, 158 Lafayette, Mme. de (1634-93), 157, 158 _La Princess de Clèves_, 157, 158 La Fontaine, Jean de (1621-95), 11, 53, 79-84, 87, 143, 144, 175 Lamartine, Alphonse (1790-1869), 147, 148, 175 _Le Lac_, 147 La Rochefoucauld, Duc de (1613-80), 87-88, 175 Leconte de Lisle, Charles Marie (1818-94), 172 Le Sage, Alain-René (1668-1747), 158 _Gil Blas_, 158 Locke, John, 102 Lorris, Guillaume de (_fl._ 13th century), 14-15 _La Roman de la Rose_, 14-15 Louis IX, 13-14 Louis XI, 17 Louis XIII, 32 Louis XIV, 31, 33, 41, 45-93, 94-95, 97, 105, 106, 168 Louis XV, 110 Luther, Martin, 111

Machiavelli, 17 Malherbe, François de (1555-1628), 32-34, 38, 41, 149 Marivaux, Pierre (1688-1763), 103-105, 157, 158 _Les Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard_, 104 _Vie de Marianne_, 158 Marlowe, Christopher, 37 Marmontel, Jean François (1723-99), 118 Marot, Clément (1496-1544), 21-22 Maupassant, Guy de (1850-93), 174, 175, 176 Meung, Jean de (_c._ 1250-1305), 14-15, 25 _La Roman de la Rose_, 15 Michelet, Jules (1798-1874), 166-167, 172 Milton, 62, 101, 153 Molière [_pseud. of_ Jean-Baptiste Poquelin] (1622-73), 35, 53, 55-64, 77, 84, 93, 175 _Don Juan_, 61, 62 _L'École des Femmes_, 57 _Les Femmes Savantes_, 61 _Le Malade Imaginaire_, 58 _Le Misanthrope_, 59, 61, 63 _Les Précieuses Ridicules_, 57, 62 _Tartufe_, 60, 62 Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de (1533-92), 27-30, 31, 41, 175 _Apologie de Raimond Sebond_, 28 Montesquieu, Baron de (1689-1755), 96-100, 103, 110, 122, 175 _Considérations sur la Grandeur et la Décadence des Romains_, 98 _L'Esprit des Lois_, 98-99, 113 _Lettres Persanes_, 96-98, 100 Musset, Alfred de (1810-57), 148, 155, 156-157, 172 _Lorenzaccio_, 157 _Les Nuits_, 157

_Parnassiens, Les_, 172, 173 Pascal, Blaise (1623-62), 41-44, 129, 144, 175, 176 _Lettres Provinciales_, 41-42, 43, 129 _Pensées_, 43-44 _Philosophes, Les_, 111-115, 118, 133, 134 _Pléiade, La_, 22-24, 31, 32 Pombal, 115 Pope, Alexander, 135 Pradon, Nicolas (1632-98), 55 _Précieux, Les_, 33-34, 41, 55 Prévost, l'Abbé (1697-1763), 157-158 _Manon Lescaut_, 157-158, 159

Rabelais, François (_c._ 1494-_c._ 1553), 24-27, 28, 31, 117, 175 Racine, Jean (1639-99), 37, 48, 53, 55, 56, 64-79, 85, 87, 93, 100, 103, 143, 144, 150, 175, 176 _Andromaque_, 76 _Bajazet_, 77 _Bérénice_, 68, 70-71 _Britannicus_, 77 _Phèdre_, 77-79 _Les Plaideurs_, 77 Renan, Ernest (1823-92), 167, 172 Richelieu, Cardinal de (1585-1642), 32, 36 _Romans Bretons_, 9, 10 _Roman de Renard_, 10 _Roman de la Rose_, 14-16 Ronsard, Pierre de (1524-85), 22, 23-34, 175 _La Françiade_, 23 _Odes_, 23 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-78), 112, 131-139, 145, 146, 158, 159, 175 _Confessions_, 133, 137-138 _Le Contrat Social_, 132 _La Nouvelle Héloïse_, 132, 158

Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustin (1804-69), 167-168 _Causeries du Lundi_, 168 _Port-Royal_, 168 Saint-Simon, Duc de (1675-1755), 105-110, 136, 153, 175 _Mémoires_, 105-110, 136 Sand, George [_pseud. of_ Amandine Lucile Aurore Dupin] (1804-76), 159, 168 _François le Champi_, 168 _La Mare au Diable_, 168 _La Petite Fadette_, 168 Scott, Sir Walter, 35 Scudéry, Madeleine de (1607-1701), 157 Sévigné, Mme. de (1626-96), 48 Shakespeare, 35, 56, 60, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 102, 152, 153, 157, 175 Sirven (1709-64), 126 Sophocles, 78 Stendhal [_pseud, of_ Marie-Henri Beyle] (1783-1842), 160, 176 _La Chartreuse de Parme_, 160 _Le Rouge et Le Noir_, 160 Sully Prudhomme, René François Armand (1839-1907), 172 Swift, Jonathan, 173

Tacitus, 173 Taine, Henri (1828-93), 167 Theocritus, 143 Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques (1727-81), 112, 118

Verlaine, Paul (1844-96), 174-175 Versailles, 45-47, 106 Vigny, Alfred de (1797-1863), 148, 155-156, 175 _Colère de Samson_, 156 _Maison du Berger_, 156 _Moïse_, 156 _Monts des Oliviers_, 156 _La Mort du Loup_, 156 _Servitude et Grandeur Militaires_, 156 Villehardouin, Geoffroi de (_c._ 1160-1213), 13, 14 _La Conquête de Constantinople_, 12-13 Villon, François (1431-1463 or after), 18-19, 20, 24, 175 _Grand Testament_, 18 _Petit Testament_, 18 Virgil, 8, 101 Voltaire, François Marie Arouet de (1694-1778), 35, 100-103, 105, 110, 119-131, 135, 136, 139, 140, 144, 145, 152, 175, 176 _Alzire_, 119, 152 _Candide_, 127-128 Correspondence, 129 _Diatribe du Docteur Akakia_, 120 _Dictionnaire Philosophique_, 123, 130 _Le Dîner du Comte de Boulainvilliers_, 123 _Essai sur les Moeurs_, 121-122 _Frère Rigolet et l'Empereur de la Chine_, 123 _La Henriade_, 101 _Lettres Philosophiques_, 102, 119 _Life of Charles XII_, 101 _Mahomet_, 119 _Mérope_, 119 _Zaïre_, 119, 152

Watteau, Antoine, 104 Wordsworth, William, 74