1. European Literature in the Dark Ages.—2. The Arabian language.—3. Arabian Mythology and the Koran.—4. Historical Development of Arabian Literature.—5. Grammar and Rhetoric.—6. Poetry.—7. The Arabian Tales.— 8. History and Science.—9. Education.

1. EUROPEAN LITERATURE IN THE DARK AGES.—The literature, arts, and sciences of the Arabs formed the connecting link between the civilizations of ancient and modern times. To them we owe the revival of learning in Western Europe, and many of the inventions and useful arts perfected by later nations.

From the middle of the sixth century A.D. to the beginning of the eleventh, the interval between the decline of ancient and the development of modern literature is known in history as the Dark Ages. The sudden rise of the Arabian Empire and the rapid development of its literature were the great events which characterize the period.

At the beginning of this epoch classical genius was already extinct, and the purity of the classical tongues was yielding rapidly to the corruptions of the provinces and of the new dialects. Many other causes conspired to work great changes in the fabric of society, and in the manifestations of human intellect. Throughout this period the treasures of Greek and Latin literature, exposed to the danger of perishing and impaired by much actual loss, exerted no influence on the minds of those who still used the tongues to which they belong. Greek letters, as we have seen, decayed with the Byzantine power, and the vital principle in both became extinct long before the sword of the Turkish conqueror inflicted the final blow. The fate of Latin literature was not less deplorable. When province after province of the Roman dominions was overrun by the northern hordes, when the imperial schools were suppressed and the monuments of ancient genius destroyed, an enfeebled people and a debased language could not withstand such adverse circumstances. During the seventh and eighth centuries Latin composition degenerated into the rudeness of the monkish style. The care bestowed by Charlemagne upon education in the ninth century produced some purifying effect upon the writings of the cloister; the tenth was distinguished by an increased zeal in the task of transcribing the classical authors, and in the eleventh the Latin works of the Normans display some masculine force and freedom. Latin was the repository of such knowledge as the times could boast; it was used in the service of the church, and in the chronicles that supplied the place of history, but it was not the vehicle of any great production stamped with true genius and impressing the minds of posterity. Still, genius was not altogether extinguished in every part of Europe. The north, which sent out its daring tribes to change the aspect of civil life, furnished a fresh source of mental inspiration, which was destined, with the recovered influence of the classic spirit and other prolific causes, to give birth to some of the best portions of modern literature.

At the memorable epoch of the overthrow of the Roman dominion in the West (476 A.D.), the seats of the Teutonic race extended from the banks of the Rhine and the Danube to the rock-bound coasts of Norway. The victorious invaders who occupied the southern provinces of Europe speedily lost their own forms of speech, which were broken down, together with those of the vanquished, into a jargon unfit for composition. But in Germany and Scandinavia, where the old language retained its purity, song continued to flourish. There, from the most distant eras described by Tacitus and other Latin writers, the favorite attendants of kings and chiefs were those celebrated bards who preserved in their traditionary strains the memory of great events, the praises of the gods, the glory of warriors, and the laws and customs of their countrymen. Intrusted, like the Grecian heroic minstrelsy, to oral recitation, it was not until the propitious reign of Charlemagne that these verses were collected. But, through the bigotry of his successor or the ravages of time, not a fragment of this collection remains. We are enabled, however, to form an idea of the general tone and tenor of this early Teutonic poetry from other interesting remains. The "Nibelungen-Lied" (Lay of the Nibelungen) and "Heldenbuch" (Book of Heroes) may be regarded as the Homeric poems of Germany. After an examination of their monuments, the ability of the ancient bards, the honor in which they were held, and the enthusiasm which they produced, will not be surprising.

Equally distinguished were the Scalds of Scandinavia. Ever in the train of princes and gallant adventurers, they chanted their rhymeless verse for the encouragement and solace of heroes. Their oldest songs, or sagas, are mostly of a historical import. In the Icelandic Edda, however, the richest monument of this species of composition, the theological element of their poetry is shadowed out in the most picturesque and fanciful legends.

Such was the intellectual state of Europe down to the age of Charlemagne. While in the once famous seats of arts and arms scarcely a ray of native genius or courage was visible, the light of human intellect still burned in lands whose barbarism had furnished matter for the sarcasm of classical writers.

Charlemagne encouraged learning, established schools, and filled his court with men of letters; while in England, the illustrious Alfred, himself a scholar and an author, improved and enriched the Anglo-Saxon dialect, and exerted the most beneficial influence on his contemporaries.

The confusion and debasement of language in the south of Europe has already been alluded to. But the force and activity of mind, that formed an essential characteristic of the conquering race, were destined ultimately to evolve regularity and harmony out of the concussion of discordant elements. The Latin and Teutonic tongues were blended together, and hence proceeded all the chief dialects of modern Europe. Over the south, from Portugal to Italy, the Latin element prevailed; but even where the Teutonic was the chief ingredient, as in the English and German, there has also been a large infusion of the Latin. To these two languages, and to the ProvenÇal, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, called, from their Roman origin, the Romance or Romanic languages, all that is prominent and precious in modern letters belongs. But it is not until the eleventh century that their progress becomes identified with the history of literature. Up to this period there had been little repose, freedom, or peaceful enjoyment of property. The independence and industry of the middle classes were almost unknown, and the chieftain, the vassal, and the slave were the characters which stood out in the highest relief. Throughout the whole of the eleventh century, the social chaos seemed resolving itself into some approach to order and tranquillity. The gradual abolition of personal servitude, hardly accomplished in three successive centuries, now began. A third estate arose. The rights of cities, and the corporation-spirit, the result of the necessity that drove men to combine for mutual defense, led to intercourse among them and to consequent improvement in language. Chivalry, also, served to mitigate the oppressions of the nobles, and to soften and refine their manners. From the date of the first crusade (1093 A.D.) down to the close of the twelfth century, was the golden age of chivalry. The principal thrones of Europe were occupied by her foremost knights. The East formed a point of union for the ardent and adventurous of different countries, whose courteous rivalry stimulated the growth of generous sentiments and the passion for brave deeds. The genius of Europe was roused by the passage of thousands of her sons through Greece into Asia and Egypt, amidst the ancient seats of art, science, and refinement; and the minds of men received a fresh and powerful impulse. It was during the eleventh century that the brilliancy of the Arabian literature reached its culminating point, and, through the intercourse of the Troubadours with the Moors of the peninsula, and of the Crusaders with the Arabs in the East, began to influence the progress of letters in Europe.

2. THE ARABIAN LANGUAGE.—The Arabian language belongs to the Semitic family; it has two principal dialects—the northern, which has, for centuries, been the general tongue of the empire, and is best represented in literature, and the southern, a branch of which is supposed to be the mother of the Ethiopian language. The former, in degenerated dialects, is still spoken in Arabia, in parts of western Asia, and throughout northern Africa, and forms an important part of the Turkish, Persian, and other Oriental languages. The Arabic is characterized by its guttural sounds, by the richness and pliability of its vowels, by its dignity, volume of sound, and vigor of accentuation and pronunciation. Like all Semitic languages, it is written from right to left; the characters are of Syrian origin, and were introduced into Arabia before the time of Mohammed. They are of two kinds, the Cufic, which were first used, and the Neskhi, which superseded them, and which continue in use at the present day. The Arabic alphabet was, with a few modifications, early adopted by the Persians and Turks.

3. ARABIAN MYTHOLOGY AND THE KORAN.—Before the time of Mohammed, the Arabians were gross idolaters. They had some traditionary idea of the unity and perfections of the Deity, but their creed embraced an immense number of subordinate divinities, represented by images of men and women, beasts and birds. The essential basis of their religion was Sabeism, or star-worship. The number and beauty of the heavenly luminaries, and the silent regularity of their motions, could not fail deeply to impress the minds of this imaginative people, living in the open air, under the clear and serene sky, and wandering among the deserts, oases, and picturesque mountains of Arabia. They had seven celebrated temples dedicated to the seven planets. Some tribes exclusively reverenced the moon; others the dog-star. Some had received the religion of the Magi, or fire-worshipers, while others had become converts to Judaism.

Ishmael is one of the most venerated progenitors of the nation; and it is the common faith that Mecca, then an arid wilderness, was the spot where his life was providentially saved, and where Hagar, his mother, was buried. The well pointed out by the angel, they believe to be the famous Zemzem, of which all pious Mohammedans drink to this day. To commemorate the miraculous preservation of Ishmael, God commanded Abraham to build a temple, and he erected and consecrated the Caaba, or sacred house, which is still venerated in Mecca; and the black stone incased within its walls is the same on which Abraham stood.

Mohammed (569-632 A.D.) did not pretend to introduce a new religion; his professed object was merely to restore the primitive and only true faith, such as it had been in the days of the patriarchs; the fundamental idea of which was the unity of God. He made the revelations of the Old and New Testaments the basis of his preaching. He maintained the authority of the books of Moses, admitted the divine mission of Jesus, and he enrolled himself in the catalogue of inspired teachers. This doctrine was proclaimed in the memorable words, which for so many centuries constituted the war-cry of the Saracens,—There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet. Mohammed preached no dogmas substantially new, but he adorned, amplified, and adapted to the ideas, prejudices, and inclinations of the Orientals, doctrines which were as old as the race. He enjoined the ablutions suited to the manners and necessities of hot climates. He ordained five daily prayers, that man might learn habitually to elevate his thoughts above the outward world. He instituted the festival of the Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca, and commanded that every man should bestow in alms the hundredth part of his possessions; observances which, for the most part, already existed in the established customs of the country.

The Koran (Reading), the sacred book of the Mohammedans, is, according to their belief, the revelation of God to their prophet Mohammed. It contains not only their religious belief, but their civil, military, and political code. It is divided into 114 chapters, and 1,666 verses. It is written in rhythmical prose, and its materials are borrowed from the Jewish and Christian scriptures, the legends of the Talmud, and the traditions and fables of the Arabian and Persian mythologies. Confusion of ideas, obscurity, and contradictions destroy the unity and even the interest of this work. The chapters are preposterously distributed, not according to their date or connection, but according to their length, beginning with the longest, and ending with the shortest; and thus the work becomes often the more unintelligible by its singular arrangement. But notwithstanding this, there is scarcely a volume in the Arabic language which contains passages breathing more sublime poetry, or more enchanting eloquence; and the Koran is so far important in the history of Arabian letters, that when the scattered leaves were collected by Abubeker, the successor of Mohammed (635 A.D.) and afterwards revised, in the thirtieth year of the Hegira, they fixed at once the classic language of the Arabs, and became their standard in style as well as in religion.

This work and its commentaries are held in the highest reverence by the Mohammedans. It is the principal book taught in their schools; they never touch it without kissing it, and carrying it to the forehead, in token of their reverence; oaths before the courts are taken upon it; it is learned by heart, and repeated every forty days; many believers copy it several times in their lives, and often possess one or more copies ornamented with gold and precious stones.

The Koran treats of death, resurrection, the judgment, paradise, and the place of torment, in a style calculated powerfully to affect the imagination of the believer. The joys of paradise, promised to all who fall in the cause of religion, are those most captivating to an Arabian fancy. When Al Sirat, or the Bridge of Judgment, which is as slender as the thread of a famished spider, and as sharp as the edge of a sword, shall be passed by the believer, he will be welcomed into the gardens of delight by black-eyed Houris, beautiful nymphs, not made of common clay, but of pure essence and odors, free from all blemish, and subject to no decay of virtue or of beauty, and who await their destined lovers in rosy bowers, or in pavilions formed of a single hollow pearl. The soil of paradise is composed of musk and saffron, sprinkled with pearls and hyacinths. The walls of its mansions are of gold and silver; the fruits, which bend spontaneously to him who would gather them, are of a flavor and delicacy unknown to mortals. Numerous rivers flow through this blissful abode; some of wine, others of milk, honey, and water, the pebbly beds of which are rubies and emeralds, and their banks of musk, camphor, and saffron. In paradise the enjoyment of the believers, which is subject neither to satiety nor diminution, will be greater than the human understanding can compass. The meanest among them will have eighty thousand servants, and seventy-two wives. Wine, though forbidden on earth, will there be freely allowed, and will not hurt or inebriate. The ravishing songs of the angels and of the Houris will render all the groves vocal with harmony, such as mortal ear never heard. At whatever age they may have died, at their resurrection all will be in the prime of manly and eternal vigor. It would be a journey of a thousand years for a true Mohammedan to travel through paradise, and behold all the wives, servants, gardens, robes, jewels, horses, camels, and other things, which belong exclusively to him.

The hell of Mohammed is as full of terror as his heaven is of delight. The wicked, who fall into the gulf of torture from the bridge of Al Sirat, will suffer alternately from cold and heat; when they are thirsty, boiling water will be given them to drink; and they will be shod with shoes of fire. The dark mansions of the Christians, Jews, Sabeans, Magians, and idolaters are sunk below each other with increasing horrors, in the order of their names. The seventh or lowest hell is reserved for the faithless hypocrites of every religion. Into this dismal receptacle the unhappy sufferer will be dragged by seventy thousand halters, each pulled by seventy thousand angels, and exposed to the scourge of demons, whose pastime is cruelty and pain.

It is a portion of the faith inculcated in the Koran, that both angels and demons exist, having pure and subtle bodies, created of fire, and free from human appetites and desires. The four principal angels are Gabriel, the angel of revelation; Michael, the friend and protector of the Jews; Azrael, the angel of death; and Izrafel, whose office it will be to sound the trumpet at the last day. Every man has two guardian angels to attend him and record his actions, good and evil. The doctrine of the angels, demons, and jins or genii, the Arabians probably derived from the Hebrews. The demons are fallen angels, the prince of whom is Eblis; he was at first one of the angels nearest to God's presence, and was called Azazel. He was cast out of heaven, according to the Koran, for refusing to pay homage to Adam at the time of the creation. The genii are intermediate creatures, neither wholly spiritual nor wholly earthly, some of whom are good and entitled to salvation, and others infidels and devoted to eternal torture. Among them are several ranks and degrees, as the Peris, or fairies, beautiful female spirits, who seek to do good upon the earth, and the Deev, or giants, who frequently make war upon the Peris, take them captive, and shut them up in cages. The genii, both good and bad, have the power of making themselves invisible at pleasure. Besides the mountain o£ Kaf, which is their chief place of resort, they dwell in ruined cities, uninhabited houses, at the bottom of wells, in woods, pools of water, and among the rocks and sandhills of the desert. Shooting stars are still believed by the people of the East to be arrows shot by the angels against the genii, who transgress these limits and approach too near the forbidden regions of bliss. Many of the genii delight in mischief; they surprise and mislead travelers, raise whirlwinds, and dry up springs in the desert. The Ghoul lives on the flesh of men and women, whom he decoys to his haunts in wild and barren places, in order to kill and devour them, and when he cannot thus obtain food, he enters the graveyards and feeds upon the bodies of the dead.

The fairy mythology of the Arabians was introduced into Europe in the eleventh century by the Troubadours and writers of the romances of chivalry, and through them it became an important element in the literature of Europe. It constituted the machinery of the Fabliaux of the TrouvÈres, and of the romantic epics of Boccaccio, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, Shakspeare, and others.

The three leading Mohammedan sects are the Sunnees, the Sheahs, and the Wahabees. The Sunnees acknowledge the authority of the first Caliphs, from whom most of the traditions were derived. The Sheahs assert the divine right of Ali to succeed to the prophet; consequently they consider the first Caliphs, and all their successors, as usurpers. The Wahabees are a sect of religious reformers, who took their name from Abd al Wahab (1700- 1750), the Luther of the Mohammedans. They became a formidable power in Arabia, but they were finally overcome by Ibrahim Pacha in 1816.

4. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARABIAN LITERATURE.—The literature of the Arabians has, properly speaking, but one period; although from remote antiquity poetry was with them a favorite occupation, and long before the time of Mohammed the roving tribes of the desert had their annual conventions, where they defended their honor and celebrated their heroic deeds. As early as the fifth century A.D., at the fair of Ochadh, thirty days every year were employed not only in the exchange of merchandise, but in the nobler display of rival talents. A place was set apart for the competitions of the bards, whose highest ambition was to conquer in this literary arena, and the victorious compositions were inscribed in golden letters upon Egyptian paper, and suspended upon the doors of the Caaba, the ancient national sanctuary of Mecca. Seven of the most famous of these ancient poets have been celebrated by Oriental writers under the title of the Arabian Pleiades, and their songs, still preserved, are full of passion, manly pride, and intensity of imagination and feeling. These and similar effusions constituted the entire literature of Arabia, and were the only archives of the nation previous to the age of Mohammed.

The peninsula of Arabia, hitherto restricted to its natural boundaries, and peopled by wandering tribes, had occupied but a subordinate place in the history of the world. But the success of Mohammed and the preaching of the Koran were followed by the union of the tribes who, inspired by the feelings of national pride and religious fervor, in less than a century made the Arabian power, tongue, and religion predominant over a third part of Asia, almost one half of Africa, and a part of Spain; and, from the ninth to the sixteenth century, the literature of the Arabians far surpassed that of any contemporary nation.

After the fall of the Roman empire in the fifth century A.D., when the western world sank into barbarism, and the inhabitants, ever menaced by famine or the sword, found full occupation in struggling against civil wars, feudal tyranny, and the invasion of barbarians; when poetry was unknown, philosophy was proscribed as rebellion against religion, and barbarous dialects had usurped the place of that beautiful Latin language which had so long connected the nations of the West, and preserved to them so many treasures of thought and taste, the Arabians, who by their conquests and fanaticism had contributed more than any other nation to abolish the cultivation of science and literature, having at length established their empire, in turn devoted themselves to letters. Masters of the country of the magi and the Chaldeans, of Egypt, the first storehouse of human science, of Asia Minor, where poetry and the fine arts had their birth, and of Africa, the country of impetuous eloquence and subtle intellect—they seemed to unite in themselves the advantages of all the nations which they had thus subjugated. Innumerable treasures had been the fruit of their conquests, and this hitherto rude and uncultivated nation now began to indulge in the most unbounded luxury. Possessed of all the delights that human industry, quickened by boundless riches, could procure, with all that could flatter the senses and attach the heart to life, they now attempted to mingle with these the pleasures of the intellect, the cultivation of the arts and sciences, and all that is most excellent in human knowledge. In this new career, their conquests were not less rapid than they had been in the field; nor was the empire which they founded less extended. With a celerity equally surprising, it rose to a gigantic height, but it rested on a foundation no less insecure, and it was quite as transitory in its duration.

The Hegira, or flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina, corresponds with the year 622 of our era, and the supposed burning of the Alexandrian library by Amrou, the general of the Caliph Omar, with the year 641. This is the period of the deepest barbarism among the Saracens, and this event, doubtful as it is, has left a melancholy proof of their contempt for letters. A century had scarcely elapsed from the period to which this barbarian outrage is referred, when the family of the Abassides, who mounted the throne of the Caliphs in 750, introduced a passionate love of art, of science, and of poetry. In the literature of Greece, nearly eight centuries of progressive cultivation succeeding the Trojan war had prepared the way for the age of Pericles. In that of Rome, the age of Augustus was also in the eighth century after the foundation of the city. In French literature, the age of Louis XIV. was twelve centuries subsequent to Clovis, and eight after the development of the first rudiments of the language. But, in the rapid progress of the Arabian empire, the age of Al Mamoun, the Augustus of Bagdad, was not removed more than one hundred and fifty years from the foundation of the monarchy. All the literature of the Arabians bears the marks of this rapid development.

Ali, the fourth Caliph from Mohammed, was the first who extended any protection to letters. His rival and successor, Moawyiah, the first of the Ommyiades (661-680), assembled at his court all who were most distinguished by scientific acquirements; he surrounded himself with poets; and as he had subjected to his dominion many of the Grecian islands and provinces, the sciences of Greece under him first began to obtain any influence over the Arabians.

After the extinction of the dynasty of the Ommyiades, that of the Abassides bestowed a still more powerful patronage on letters. The celebrated Haroun al Raschid (786-809) acquired a glorious reputation by the protection he afforded to letters. He never undertook a journey without carrying with him at least a hundred men of science in his train, and he never built a mosque without attaching to it a school.

But the true protector and father of Arabic literature was Al Mamoun, the son of Haroun al Raschid (813-833), who rendered Bagdad the centre of literature. He invited to his court from every part of the world all the learned men with whose existence he was acquainted, and he retained them by rewards, honors, and distinctions of every kind. He exacted, as the most precious tribute from the conquered provinces, all the important books and literary relics that could be discovered. Hundreds of camels might be seen entering Bagdad, loaded with nothing but manuscripts and papers, and those most proper for instruction were translated into Arabic. Instructors, translators, and commentators formed the court of Al Mamoun, which appeared to be rather a learned academy, than the seat of government in a warlike empire. The Caliph himself was much attached to the study of mathematics, which he pursued with brilliant success. He conceived the grand design of measuring the earth, which was accomplished by his mathematicians, at his own expense. Not less generous than enlightened, Al Mamoun, when he pardoned one of his relatives who had revolted against him, exclaimed, "If it were known what pleasure I experience in granting pardon, all who have offended against me would come and confess their crimes."

The progress of the Arabians in science was proportioned to the zeal of the sovereign. In every town of the empire schools, colleges, and academies were established. Bagdad was the capital of letters as well as of the Caliphs, but Bassora and Cufa almost equaled that city in reputation, and in the number of celebrated poems and treatises that they produced. Balkh, Ispahan, and Samarcand were equally the homes of science. Cairo contained a great number of colleges; in the towns of Fez and Morocco the most magnificent buildings were appropriated to the purposes of instruction, and in their rich libraries were preserved those precious volumes which had been lost in other places.

What Bagdad was to Asia, Cordova was to Europe, where, particularly in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Arabs were the pillars of literature. At this period, when learning found scarcely anywhere either rest or encouragement, the Arabians were employed in collecting and diffusing it in the three great divisions of the world. Students traveled from France and other European countries to the Arabian schools in Spain, particularly to learn medicine and mathematics. Besides the academy at Cordova, there were established fourteen others in different parts of Spain, exclusive of the higher schools. The Arabians made the most rapid advancement in all the departments of learning, especially in arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. In the various cities of Spain, seventy libraries were opened for public instruction at the period when all the rest of Europe, without books, without learning, without cultivation, was plunged in the most disgraceful ignorance. The number of Arabic authors which Spain produced was so prodigious, that many Arabian bibliographers wrote learned treatises on the authors born in particular towns, or on those among the Spaniards who devoted themselves to a single branch of study, as philosophy, medicine, mathematics, or poetry. Thus, throughout the vast extent of the Arabian empire, the progress of letters had followed that of arms, and for five centuries this literature preserved all its brilliancy.

5. GRAMMAR AND RHETORIC.—The perfection of the language was one of the first objects of the Arabian scholars, and from the rival schools of Cufa and Bassora a number of distinguished men proceeded, who analyzed with the greatest subtlety all its rules and aided in perfecting it. As early as in the age of Ali, the fourth Caliph, Arabian literature boasted of a number of scientific grammarians. Prosody and the metric art were reduced to systems. Dictionaries of the language were composed, some of which are highly esteemed at the present day. Among these may be mentioned the "Al Sehah," or Purity, and "El Kamus," or the Ocean, which is considered the best dictionary of the Arabian language. The study of rhetoric was united to that of grammar, and the most celebrated works of the Greeks on this art were translated and adapted to the Arabic. After the age of Mohammed and his immediate successors, popular eloquence was no longer cultivated. Eastern despotism having supplanted the liberty of the desert, the heads of the state or army regarded it beneath them to harangue the people or the soldiers; they called upon them only for obedience. But though political eloquence was of short duration among the Arabians, on the other hand they were the inventors of that species of rhetoric most cultivated at the present day, that of the academy and the pulpit. Their philosophers in these learned assemblies displayed all the measured harmony of which their language was susceptible. Mohammed had ordained that his faith should be preached in the mosques;—many of the harangues of these sacred orators are still preserved in the Escurial, and the style of them is very similar to that of the Christian orators.

6. POETRY.—Poetry still more than eloquence was the favorite occupation of the Arabians from their origin as a nation. It is said that this people alone have produced more poets than all others united. Mohammed himself, as well as some of his first companions, cultivated this art, but it was under Haroun al Raschid and his successor, Al Mamoun, and more especially under the OmmyÏades of Spain that Arabic poetry attained its highest splendor. But the ancient impetuosity of expression, the passionate feeling, and the spirit of individual independence no longer characterized the productions of this period, nor is there among the numerous constellations of Arabic poets any star of distinguished magnitude. With the exception of Mohammed and a few of the Saracen conquerors and sovereigns, there is scarcely an individual of this nation whose name is familiar to the nations of Christendom.

The Arabians possess many heroic poems composed for the purpose of celebrating the praises of distinguished men, and of animating the courage of their soldiers. They do not, however, boast of any epics; their poetry is entirely lyric and didactic. They have been inexhaustible in their love poems, their elegies, their moral verses,—among which their fables may be reckoned,—their eulogistic, satirical, descriptive, and above all, their didactic poems, which have graced even the most abstruse science, as grammar, rhetoric, and arithmetic. But among all their poems, the catalogue alone of which, in the Escurial, consists of twenty-four volumes, there is not a single epic, comedy, or tragedy.

In those branches of poetry which they cultivated they displayed surprising subtlety and great refinement of thought, but the fame of their compositions rests, in some degree, on their bold metaphors, their extravagant allegories, and their excessive hyperboles. The Arabs despised the poetry of the Greeks, which appeared to them timid, cold, and constrained, and among all the books, which, with almost superstitious veneration, they borrowed from them, there is scarcely a single poem which they judged worthy of translation. The object of the Arabian poets was to make a brilliant use of the boldest and most gigantic images, and to astonish the reader by the abruptness of their expressions. They burdened their compositions with riches, under the idea that nothing which was beautiful could be superfluous. They neglected natural sentiment, and the more they could multiply the ornaments of art, the more admirable in their eyes did the work appear.

The nations who possessed a classical poetry, in imitating nature, had discovered the use of the epic and the drama, in which the poet endeavors to express the true language of the human heart. The people of the East, with the exception of the Hindus, never made this attempt—their poetry is entirely lyric; but under whatever name it may be known, it is always found to be the language of the passions. The poetry of the Arabians is rhymed like our own, and the rhyming is often carried still farther in the construction of the verse, while the uniformity of sound is frequently echoed throughout the whole expression. The collection made by Aboul Teman (fl. 845 A.D.) containing the Arabian poems of the age anterior to Mohammed, and that of Taoleti, which embraces the poems of the subsequent periods, are considered the richest and most complete anthologies of Arabian poetry. Montanebbi, a poet who lived about 1050, has been compared to the Persian Hafiz.

7. THE ARABIAN TALES.—If the Arabs have neither the epic nor the drama, they have been, on the other hand, the inventors of a style of composition which is related to the epic, and which supplies among them the place of the drama. We owe to them those tales, the conception of which is so brilliant and the imagination so rich and varied: tales which have been the delight of our infancy, and which at a more advanced age we can never read without feeling their enchantment anew. Every one is acquainted with the "Arabian Nights Entertainments;" but in our translation we possess but a very small part of the Arabian collection, which is not confined merely to books, but forms the treasure of a numerous class of men and women, who, throughout the East, find a livelihood in reciting these tales to crowds, who delight to forget the present, in the pleasing dreams of imagination. In the coffee-houses of the Levant, one of these men will gather a silent crowd around him, and picture to his audience those brilliant and fantastic visions which are the patrimony of Eastern imaginations. The public squares abound with men of this class, and their recitations supply the place of our dramatic representations. The physicians frequently recommend them to their patients in order to soothe pain, to calm agitation, or to produce sleep; and these story-tellers, accustomed to sickness, modulate their voices, soften their tones, and gently suspend them as sleep steals over the sufferer.

The imagination of the Arabs in these tales is easily distinguished from that of the chivalric nations. The supernatural world is the same in both, but the moral world is different. The Arabian tales, like the romances of chivalry, convey us to the fairy realms, but the human personages which they introduce are very dissimilar. They had their birth after the Arabians had devoted themselves to commerce, literature, and the arts, and we recognize in them the style of a mercantile people, as we do that of a warlike nation in the romances of chivalry. Valor and military achievements here inspire terror but no enthusiasm, and on this account the Arabian tales are often less noble and heroic than we usually expect in compositions of this nature. But, on the other hand, the Arabians are our masters in the art of producing and sustaining this kind of fiction. They are the creators of that brilliant mythology of fairies and genii which extends the bounds of the world, and carries us into the realms of marvels and prodigies. It is from them that European nations have derived that intoxication of love, that tenderness and delicacy of sentiment, and that reverential awe of women, by turns slaves and divinities, which have operated so powerfully on their chivalrous feelings. We trace their effects in all the literature of the south, which owes to this cause its mental character. Many of these tales had separately found their way into the poetic literature of Europe, long before the translation of the Arabian Nights. Some are to be met with in the old fabliaux, in Boccaccio, and in Ariosto, and these very tales which have charmed our infancy, passing from nation to nation through channels frequently unknown, are now familiar to the memory and form the delight of the imagination of half the inhabitants of the globe.

The author of the original Arabic work is unknown, as is also the period at which it was composed. It was first introduced into Europe from Syria, where it was obtained, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, by Galland, a French traveler, who was sent to the East by the celebrated Colbert, to collect manuscripts, and by him first translated and published.

8. HISTORY AND SCIENCE.—As early as the eighth century A.D., history became an important department in Arabian literature. At later periods, historians who wrote on all subjects were numerous. Several authors wrote universal history from the beginning of the world to their own time; every state, province, and city possessed its individual chronicle, Many, in imitation of Plutarch, wrote the lives of distinguished men; and there was such a passion for every species of composition, and such a desire to leave no subject untouched, that there was a serious history written of celebrated horses, and another of camels that had risen to distinction. They possessed historical dictionaries, and made use of all those inventions which curtail labor and dispense with the necessity of research. Every art and science had its history, and of these this nation possessed a more complete collection than any other, either ancient or modern. The style of the Arabian historians is simple and unadorned.

Philosophy was passionately cultivated by the Arabians, and upon it was founded the fame of many ingenious and sagacious men, whose names are still revered in Europe. Among them were Averrhoes of Cordova (d. 1198), the great commentator on the works of Aristotle, and Avicenna (d. 1037), a profound philosopher as well as a celebrated writer on medicine. Arabian philosophy penetrated rapidly into the West, and had greater influence on the schools of Europe than any branch of Arabic literature; and yet it was the one in which the progress was, in fact, the least real. The Arabians, more ingenious than profound, attached themselves rather to the subtleties than to the connection of ideas; their object was more to dazzle than to instruct, and they exhausted their imaginations in search of mysteries. Aristotle was worshiped by them, as a sort of divinity. In their opinion all philosophy was to be found in his writings, and they explained every metaphysical question according to the scholastic standard.

The interpretation of the Koran formed another important part of their speculative studies, and their literature abounds with exegetic works on their sacred book, as well as with commentaries on Mohammedan law. The learned Arabians did not confine themselves to the studies which they could only prosecute in their closets; they undertook, for the advancement of science, the most perilous journeys, and we owe to Aboul Feda (1273- 1331) and other Arabian travelers the best works on geography written in the Middle Ages.

The natural sciences were cultivated by them with great ardor, and many naturalists among them merit the gratitude of posterity. Botany and chemistry, of which they were in some sort the inventors, gave them a better acquaintance with nature than the Greeks or Romans ever possessed, and the latter science was applied by them to all the necessary arts of life. Above all, agriculture was studied by them with a perfect knowledge of the climate, soil, and growth of plants. From the eighth to the eleventh century, they established medical schools in the principal cities of their dominions, and published valuable works on medical science. They introduced more simple principles into mathematics, and extended the use and application of that science. They added to arithmetic the decimal system, and the Arabic numerals, which, however, are of Hindu origin; they simplified the trigonometry of the Greeks, and gave algebra more useful and general applications. Bagdad and Cordova had celebrated schools of astronomy, and observatories, and their astronomers made important discoveries; a great number of scientific words are evidently Arabic, such as algebra, alcohol, zenith, nadir, etc., and many of the inventions, which at the present day add to the comforts of life, are due to the Arabians. Paper, now so necessary to the progress of intellect, was brought by them from Asia. In China, from all antiquity, it had been manufactured from silk, but about the year 30 of the Hegira (649 A.D.) the manufacture of it was introduced at Samarcand, and when that city was conquered by the Arabians, they first employed cotton in the place of silk, and the invention spread with rapidity throughout their dominions. The Spaniards, in fabricating paper, substituted flax for cotton, which was more scarce and dear; but it was not till the end of the thirteenth century that paper mills were established in the Christian states of Spain, from whence the invention passed, in the fourteenth century only, to Treviso and Padua. Tournaments were first instituted among the Arabians, from whom they were introduced into Italy and France. Gunpowder, the discovery of which is generally attributed to a German chemist, was known to the Arabians at least a century before any trace of it appeared in European history. The compass, also, the invention of which has been given alternately to the Italians and French in the thirteenth century, was known to the Arabians in the eleventh. The number of Arabic inventions, of which we enjoy the benefit without suspecting it, is prodigious.

Such, then, was the brilliant light which literature and science displayed from the ninth to the fourteenth century of our era in those vast countries which had submitted to the yoke of Islamism. In this immense extent of territory, twice or thrice as large as Europe, nothing is now found but ignorance, slavery, terror, and death. Few men are there capable of reading the works of their illustrious ancestors, and few who could comprehend them are able to procure them. The prodigious literary riches of the Arabians no longer exist in any of the countries where the Arabians or Mussulmans rule. It is not there that we must seek for the fame of their great men or for their writings. What has been preserved is in the hands of their enemies, in the convents of the monks, or in the royal libraries of Europe.

9. EDUCATION.—At present there is little education, in our sense of the word, in Arabia. In the few instances where public schools exist, writing, grammar, and rhetoric sum up the teaching. The Bedouin children learn from their parents much more than is common in other countries. Great attention is paid to accuracy of grammar and purity of diction throughout the country, and of late literary institutions have been established at Beyrout, Damascus, Bagdad, and Hefar.

Such is the extent of Arabic literature, that, notwithstanding the labors of European scholars and the productions of native presses, in Boulak and Cairo, in India, and recently in England, where Hassam, an Arabian poet, has devoted himself to the production of standard works, the greater part of what has been preserved is still in manuscript and still more has perished.

was over, ProvenÇal poetry had received its death-blow. The language of Provence was destined to share the fate of its poetry; it became identified in the minds of the orthodox with heresy and rebellion. When Charles of Anjou acquired the kingdom of Naples, he drew thither the ProvenÇal nobility, and thus drained the kingdom of those who had formerly maintained its chivalrous manners. In the beginning of the fourteenth century, when the Court of Rome was removed to Avignon, the retinues of the three successive popes were Italians, and the Tuscan language entirely superseded the ProvenÇal among the higher classes.

2. THE TROUVÈRES.—While the ProvenÇal was thus relapsing into a mere dialect, the north of France was maturing a new language and literature of an entirely different character. Normandy, a province of France, was invaded in the tenth century by a new northern tribe, who, under the command of Rollo or Raoul the Dane, incorporated themselves with the ancient inhabitants. The victors adopted the language of the vanquished, stamped upon it the impress of their own genius, and gave it a fixed form. It was from Normandy that the first writers and poets in the French language sprang. While the Romance ProvenÇal spoken in the South was sweet, and expressive of effeminate manners, the Romance-Wallon was energetic and warlike, and represented the severer manners of the Germans. Its poetry, too, was widely different from the ProvenÇal. It was no longer the idle baron sighing for his lady-love, but the songs of a nation of hardy warriors, celebrating the prowess of their ancestors with all the exaggerations that fancy could supply. The Langue d'oui became the vehicle of literature only in the twelfth century,—a hundred years subsequent to the Romance ProvenÇal. The poets and reciters of tales, giving the name of Troubadour a French termination, called themselves TrouvÈres. They originated the brilliant romances of chivalry, the fabliaux or tales of amusement, and the dramatic invention of the Mysteries. The first literary work in this tongue is the versified romance of a fabulous history of the early kings of England, beginning with Brutus, the grandson of AEneas, who, after passing many enchanted isles, at length establishes himself in England, where he finds King Arthur, the chivalric institution of the Round Table, and the enchanter Merlin, one of the most popular personages of the Middle Ages. Out of this legend arose some of the boldest creations of the human fancy. The word "romance," now synonymous with fictitious composition, originally meant only a work in the modern dialect, as distinguished from the scholastic Latin. There is little doubt that these tales were originally believed to be strictly true. One of the first romances of chivalry was "Tristam de LÉonois," written in 1190. This was soon followed by that of the "San Graal" and "Lancelot;" and previously to 1213 Ville-Hardouin had written in the French language a "History of the Conquest of Constantinople." The poem of "Alexander," however, which appeared about the same time, has enjoyed the greatest reputation. It is a series of romances and marvelous histories, said to be the result of the labors of nine celebrated poets of the time. Alexander is introduced, surrounded not by the pomp of antiquity, but by the splendors of chivalry. The high renown of this poem has given the name of Alexandrine verse to the measure in which it is written.

The spirit of chivalry which burst forth in the romances of the trouvÈres, the heroism of honor and love, the devotion of the powerful to the weak, the supernatural fictions, so novel and so dissimilar to everything in antiquity or in later times, the force and brilliancy of imagination which they display, have been variously attributed to the Arabians and the Germans, but they were undoubtedly the invention of the Normans. Of all the people of ancient Europe, they were the most adventurous and intrepid. They established a dynasty in Russia; they cut their way through a perfidious and sanguinary nation to Constantinople; they landed on the coasts of England and France, and surprised nations who were ignorant of their existence; they conquered Sicily, and established a principality in the heart of Syria. A people so active, so enterprising, and so intrepid, found no greater delight in their leisure hours than listening to tales of adventures, dangers, and battles. The romances of chivalry are divided into three distinct classes. They relate to three different epochs in the early part of the Middle Ages, and represent three bands of fabulous heroes. In the romances of the first class, the exploits of Arthur, son of Pendragon, the last British king who defended England against the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons, are celebrated. In the second we find the Amadises, but whether they belong to French literature has been reasonably disputed. The scene is placed nearly in the same countries as in the romances of the Round Table, but there is a want of locality about them, and the name and the times are absolutely fabulous. "Amadis of Gaul," the first of these romances, and the model of all the rest, is claimed as the work of Vasco Lobeira, a Portuguese (1290-1325); but no doubt exists with regard to the continuations and numerous imitations of this work, which are incontestably of Spanish origin, and were in their highest repute when Cervantes produced his inimitable "Don Quixote." The third class of chivalric romances, relating to the court of Charlemagne and his Paladins, is entirely French, although their celebrity is chiefly due to the renowned Italian poet who availed himself of their fictions. The most ancient monument of the marvelous history of Charlemagne is the chronicle of Turpin, of uncertain date, and which, though fabulous, can scarcely be considered as a romance. This and other similar narratives furnished materials for the romances, which appeared at the conclusion of the Crusades, when a knowledge of the East had enriched the French imagination with all the treasures of the Arabian. The trouvÈres were not only the inventors of the romances of chivalry, but they originated the allegories, and the dramatic compositions of southern Europe. Although none of their works have obtained a high reputation or deserve to be ranked among the masterpieces of human intellect, they are still worthy of attention as monuments of the progress of mind.

The French possessed, above every other nation of modern times, an inventive spirit, but they were, at the same time, the originators of those tedious allegorical poems which have been imitated by all the romantic nations. The most ancient and celebrated of these is the "Romance of the Rose," though not a romance in the present sense of the word. At the period of its composition, the French language was still called the Romance, and all its more voluminous productions Romances. The "Romance of the Rose" was the work of two authors, Guillaume de Lorris, who commenced it in the early part of the thirteenth century, and Jean de Meun (b. 1280), by whom it was continued. Although it reached the appalling length of twenty thousand verses, no book was ever more popular. It was admired as a masterpiece of wit, invention, and philosophy; the highest mysteries of theology were believed to be concealed in this poetical form, and learned commentaries were written upon its veiled meaning by preachers, who did not scruple to cite passages from it in the pulpit. But the tedious poem and its numberless imitations are nothing but rhymed prose, which it would be impossible to recognize as poetry, if the measure of the verse were taken away.

In considering the popularity of these long, didactic works, it must not be forgotten that the people of that day were almost entirely without books. A single volume was the treasure of a whole household. In unfavorable weather it was read to a circle around the fire, and when it was finished the perusal was again commenced. No comparison with other books enabled men to form a judgment upon its merits. It was reverenced like holy writ, and they accounted themselves happy in being able to comprehend it.

Another species of poetry peculiar to this period had at least the merit of being exceedingly amusing. This was the fabliaux, tales written in verse in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They are treasures of invention, simplicity, and gayety, of which other nations can furnish no instances, except by borrowing from the French. A collection of Indian tales, translated into Latin in the tenth or eleventh century, was the first storehouse of the trouvÈres. The Arabian tales, transmitted by the Moors to the Castilians, and by the latter to the French, were in turn versified. But above all, the anecdotes collected in the towns and castles of France, the adventures of lovers, the tricks of gallants, and the numerous subjects gathered from the manners of the age, afforded inexhaustible materials for ludicrous narratives to the writers of these tales. They were treasures common to all. We seldom know the name of the trouvÈre by whom these anecdotes were versified. As they were related, each one varied them according to the impression he wished to produce. At this period there were neither theatrical entertainments nor games at cards to fill up the leisure hours of society, and the trouvÈres or relators of the tales were welcomed at the courts, castles, and private houses with an eagerness proportioned to the store of anecdotes which they brought with them to enliven conversation. Whatever was the subject of their verse, legends, miracles, or licentious anecdotes, they were equally acceptable. These tales were the models of those of Boccaccio, La Fontaine, and others. Some of them have had great fame, and have passed from tongue to tongue, and from age to age, down to our own times. Several of them have been introduced upon the stage, and others formed the originals of Parnell's "Hermit," of the "ZaÏre" of Voltaire, and of the "Renard," which Goethe has converted into a long poem. But perhaps the most interesting and celebrated of all the fabliaux is that of "Aucassin and Nicolette," which has furnished the subject for a well-known opera.

It was at this period, when the ancient drama was entirely forgotten, that a dramatic form was given to the great events which accompanied the establishment of the Christian religion. The first to introduce this grotesque species of composition, were the pilgrims who had returned from the Holy Land. In the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, their dramatic representations were first exhibited in the open streets; but it was only at the conclusion of the fourteenth that a company of pilgrims undertook to amuse the public by regular dramatic entertainments. They were called the Fraternity of the Passion, from the passion of our Saviour being one of their most celebrated representations. This mystery, the most ancient dramatic work of modern Europe, comprehends the whole history of our Lord, from his baptism to his death. The piece was too long for one representation, and was therefore continued from day to day. Eighty-seven characters successively appear in this mystery, among whom are the three persons of the Trinity, angels, apostles, devils, and a host of other personages, the invention of the poet's brain. To fill the comic parts, the dialogues of the devils were introduced, and their eagerness to maltreat one another always produced much laughter in the assembly. Extravagant machinery was employed to give to the representation the pomp which we find in the modern opera; and this drama, placing before the eyes of a Christian assembly all those incidents for which they felt the highest veneration, must have affected them much more powerfully than even the finest tragedies can do at the present day.

The mystery of the Passion was followed by a crowd of imitations. The whole of the Old Testament, and the lives of all the saints, were brought upon the stage. The theatre on which these mysteries were represented was always composed of an elevated scaffold divided into three parts,—heaven, hell, and the earth between them. The proceedings of the Deity and Lucifer might be discerned in their respective abodes, and angels descended and devils ascended, as their interference in mundane affairs was required. The pomp of these representations went on increasing for two centuries, and, as great value was set upon the length of the piece, some mysteries could not be represented in less than forty days.

The "Clerks of the Revels," an incorporated society at Paris, whose duty it was to regulate the public festivities, resolved to amuse the people with dramatic representations themselves, but as the Fraternity of the Passion had obtained a royal license to represent the mysteries, they were compelled to abstain from that kind of exhibition. They therefore invented a new one, to which they gave the name of "Moralities," and which differed little from the mysteries, except in name. They were borrowed from the Parables, or the historical parts of the Bible, or they were purely allegorical. To the Clerks of the Revels we also owe the invention of modern comedy. They mingled their moralities with farces, the sole object of which was to excite laughter, and in which all the gayety and vivacity of the French character were displayed. Some of these plays still retain their place upon the French stage. At the commencement of the fifteenth century another comic company was established, who introduced personal and even political satire upon the stage. Thus every species of dramatic representation was revived by the French. This was the result of the talent for imitation so peculiar to the French people, and of that pliancy of thought and correctness of intellect which enables them to conceive new characters. All these inventions, which led to the establishment of the Romantic drama in other countries, were known in France more than a century before the rise of the Spanish or Italian theatre, and even before the classical authors were first studied and imitated. At the end of the sixteenth century, these new pursuits acquired a more immediate influence over the literature of France, and wrought a change in its spirit and rules, without, however, altering the national character and taste which had been manifested in the earliest productions of the trouvÈres.

3. FRENCH LITERATURE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.—French had as yet been merely a popular language; it varied from province to province, and from author to author, because no masterpiece had inaugurated any one of its numerous dialects. It was disdained by the more serious writers, who continued to employ the Latin. In the fifteenth century literature assumed a somewhat wider range, and the language began to take precision and force. But with much general improvement and literary industry there was still nothing great or original, nothing to mark an epoch in the history of letters. The only poets worthy of notice were Charles, Duke of Orleans (1391-1465), and Villon, a low ruffian of Paris (1431-1500). Charles was taken prisoner at the battle of Agincourt, and carried to England, where he was detained for twenty-five years, and where he wrote a volume of poems in which he imitated the allegorical style of the Romance of the Rose. The verses of Villon were inspired by the events of his not very creditable life. Again and again he suffered imprisonment for petty larcenies, and at the age of twenty-five was condemned to be hanged. His language is not that of the court, but of the people; and his poetry marks the first sensible progress after the Romance of the Rose.

It has been well said that literature begins with poetry; but it is established by prose, which fixes the language. The earliest work in French prose is the chronicle of Ville-Hardouin (1150-1213), written in the thirteenth century. It is a personal narrative and relates with graphic particularity the conquest of Constantinople by the knights of Christendom. This ancient chronicle traces out for us some of the realities, of which the mediaeval romances were the ideal, and enables us to judge in a measure how far these romances embody substantial truth.

A great improvement in style is apparent in Joinville (1223-1317), the amiable and light-hearted ecclesiastic who wrote the Life of St. Louis, whom he had accompanied to the Holy Land, and whose pious adventures he affectionately records. Notwithstanding the anarchy which prevailed in France during the fourteenth century, some social progress was made; but while public events were hostile to poetry, they gave inspiration to the historic muse, and Froissart arose to impart vivacity of coloring to historic narrative.

Froissart (1337-1410) was an ecclesiastic of the day, but little in his life or writings bespeaks the sacred calling. Having little taste for the duties of his profession, he was employed by the Lord of Montfort to compose a chronicle of the wars of the time; but there were no books to tell him of the past, no regular communication between nations to inform him of the present; so he followed the fashion of knights errant, and set out on horseback, not to seek adventures, but, as an itinerant historian, to find materials for his chronicle. He wandered from town to town, and from castle to castle, to see the places of which he would write, and to learn events on the spot where they occurred. His first journey was to England; here he was employed by Queen Philippa of Hainault to accompany the Duke of Clarence to Milan, where he met Boccaccio and Chaucer. He afterwards passed into the service of several of the princes of Europe, to whom he acted as secretary and poet, always gleaning material for historic record. His book is an almost universal history of the different states of Europe, from 1322 to the end of the fourteenth century. He troubles himself with no explanations or theories of cause and effect, nor with the philosophy of state policy; he is simply a graphic story-teller. Sir Walter Scott called Froissart his master.

Philippe de Commines (1445-1509) was a man of his age, but in advance of it, combining the simplicity of the fifteenth century with the sagacity of a later period. An annalist, like Froissart, he was also a statesman, and a political philosopher; embracing, like Machiavelli and Montesquieu, the remoter consequences which flowed from the events he narrated and the principles he unfolded. He was an unscrupulous diplomat in the service of Louis XI., and his description of the last years of that monarch is a striking piece of history, whence poets and novelists have borrowed themes in later times. But neither the romance of Sir Walter Scott nor the song of BÉranger does justice to the reality, as presented by the faithful Commines.

PERIOD SECOND.

THE RENAISSANCE AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH LITERATURE (1500-1700).

1. THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION.—During the preceding ages, erudition and civilization had not gone hand-in-hand. On the one side there was the bold, chivalric mind of young Europe, speaking with the tongues of yesterday, while on the other was the ecclesiastical mind, expressing itself in degenerate Latin. The one was a life of gayety and rude disorder—the life of court and castle as depicted in the literature just scanned; the other, that of men separated from the world, who had been studying the literary remains of antiquity, and transcribing and treasuring them for future generations. Hitherto these two sections had held their courses apart; now they were to meet and blend in harmony. The vernacular poets, on the one hand, borrowing thought and expression from the classics, and the clergy, on the other, becoming purveyors of light literature to the court circles.

The fifteenth century, though somewhat barren, had prepared for the fecundity of succeeding ages. The revival of the study of ancient literature, which was promoted by the downfall of Constantinople, the invention of printing, the discovery of the new world, the decline of feudalism, and the consequent elevation of the middle classes,—all concurred to promote a rapid improvement of the human intellect.

During the early part of the sixteenth century, all the ardor of the French mind was turned to the study of the dead languages; men of genius had no higher ambition than to excel in them, and many in their declining years went in their gray hairs to the schools where the languages of Homer and Cicero were taught. In civil and political society, the same enthusiasm manifested itself in the imitation of antique manners; people dressed in the Greek and Roman fashions, borrowed from them the usages of life, and made a point of dying like the heroes of Plutarch.

The religious reformation came soon after to restore the Christian, as the revival of letters had brought back the pagan antiquity. Ignorance was dissipated, and religion was disengaged from philosophy. The Renaissance, as the revival of antique learning was called, and the Reformation, at first made common cause. One of those who most eagerly imbibed the spirit of both was the Princess Marguerite de Valois (1492-1549), elder sister of Francis I., who obtained the credit of many generous actions which were truly hers. The principal work of this lady was "L'HeptamÉron," or the History of the Fortunate Lovers, written on the plan and in the spirit of the Decameron of Boccaccio, a work which a lady of our times would be unwilling to own acquaintance with, much more to adopt as a model; but the apology for Marguerite must be found in the manners of the times. L'HeptamÉron is the earliest French prose that can be read without a glossary.

In 1518, when Margaret was twenty-six years of age, she received from her brother a gifted poet as valet-de-chambre; this was Marot (1495-1544), between whom and the learned princess a poetical intercourse was maintained. Marot had imbibed the principles of Calvin, and had also drank deeply of the spirit of the Renaissance; but he displayed the poet more truly before he was either a theologian or a classical scholar. He may be considered the last type of the old French school, of that combination of grace and archness, of elegance and simplicity, of familiarity and propriety, which is a national characteristic of French poetic literature, and in which they have never been imitated.

Francis Rabelais (1483-1553) was one of the most remarkable persons that figured in the Renaissance, a learned scholar, physician, and philosopher, though known to posterity chiefly as an obscene humorist. He is called by Lord Bacon "the great jester of France." He was at first a monk of the Franciscan order, but he afterwards threw off the sacerdotal character, and studied medicine. From about the year 1534, Rabelais was in the service of the Cardinal Dubellay, and a favorite in the court circles of Paris and Rome. It was probably during this period that he published, in successive parts, the work on which his popular fame has rested, the "Lives of Gargantua and Pantagruel." It consists of the lives and adventures of these two gigantic heroes, father and son, with the waggeries and practical jokes of Panurge, their jongleur, and the blasphemies and obscenities of Friar John, a fighting, swaggering, drinking monk. With these are mingled dissertations, sophistries, and allegorical satires in abundance. The publication of the work created a perfect uproar at the Sorbonne, and among the monks who were its principal victims; but the cardinals enjoyed its humor, and protected its author, while the king, Francis I., pronounced it innocent and delectable. It became the book of the day, and passed through countless editions and endless commentaries; and yet it is agreed on all hands that there exists not another work, admitted as literature, that would bear a moment's comparison with it, for indecency, profanity, and repulsive and disgusting coarseness. His work is now a mere curiosity for the student of antique literature.

As Rabelais was the leading type of the Renaissance, so was Calvin (1509- 1564) of the Reformation. Having embraced the principles of Luther, he went considerably farther in his views. In 1532 he established himself at Geneva, where he organized a church according to his own ideas. In 1535 he published his "Institutes of the Christian Religion," distinguished for great severity of doctrine. His next most celebrated work is a commentary on the Scriptures.

Intellect continued to struggle with its fetters. Many, like Rabelais, mistrusted the whole system of ecclesiastical polity established by law, and yet did not pin their faith on the dictates of the austere Calvin. The almost inevitable consequence was a wide and universal skepticism, replacing the former implicit subjection to Romanism.

The most eminent type of this school was Montaigne (1533-1592), who, in his "Essays," shook the foundations of all the creeds of his day, without offering anything to replace them. He is considered the earliest philosophical writer in French prose, the first of those who contributed to direct the minds of his countrymen to the study of human nature. In doing so, he takes himself as his subject; he dissects his feelings, emotions, and tendencies with the coolness of an operating surgeon. To a singular power of self-investigation and an acute observation of the actions of men, he added great affluence of thought and excursiveness of fancy, which render him, in spite of his egotism, a most attractive writer. As he would have considered it dishonest to conceal anything about himself, he has told much that our modern ideas of decorum would deem better untold.

Charron (1541-1603), the friend and disciple of Montaigne, was as bold a thinker, though inferior as a writer. In his book, "De la Sagesse," he treats religion as a mere matter of speculation, a system of dogmas without practical influence. Other writers followed in the same steps, and affected, like him, to place skepticism at the service of good morals. "License," says a French writer, "had to come before liberty, skepticism before philosophical inquiry, the school of Montaigne before that of Descartes." On the other hand, St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), in his "Introduction to a Devout Life," and other works, taught that the only cure for the evils of human nature was to be found in the grace which was revealed by Christianity.

In these struggles of thought, in this conflict of creeds, the language acquired vigor and precision. In the works of Calvin, it manifested a seriousness of tone, and a severe purity of style which commanded general respect. An easy, natural tone was imparted to it by Amyot (1513-1593), professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Paris, who enriched the literature with elegant translations, in which he blended Hellenic graces with those strictly French.

2. LIGHT LITERATURE.—Ronsard (1524-1585), the favorite poet of Mary Queen of Scots, flourished at the time that the rage for ancient literature was at its height. He traced the first outlines of modern French poetry, and introduced a higher style of poetic thought and feeling than had hitherto been known. To him France owes the first attempt at the ode and the heroic epic; in the former, he is regarded as the precursor of Malherbe, who is still looked on as a model in this style, But Ronsard, and the numerous school which he formed, not only imitated the spirit and form of the ancients, but aimed to subject his own language to combinations and inversions like those of the Greek and Latin, and foreign roots and phrases began to overpower the reviving flexibility of the French idiom.

Under this influence, the drama was restored by Jodelle (1532-1573) and others, in the shape of imitations and translations. Towards the end of the century, however, there appeared a reaction against this learned tragedy, led by Alexander Hardy (1560-1631), who, with little or no original genius, produced about twelve hundred plays. He borrowed in every direction, and imitated the styles of all nations. But the general taste, however, soon returned to the Greek and Roman school.

The glorious reign of Henry IV. had been succeeded by the stormy minority of Louis XIII., when Malherbe (1556-1628), the tyrant of words and syllables, appeared as the reformer of poetry. He attracted attention by ridiculing the style of Ronsard. He became the laureate of the court, and furnished for it that literature in which it was beginning to take delight. In the place of Latin and Greek French, he inaugurated the extreme of formality; the matter of his verse was made subordinate to the manner; he substituted polish for native beauty, and effect for genuine feeling.

I. de Balzac (1594-1624), in his frivolous epistles, used prose as Malherbe did verse, and a numerous school of the same character was soon formed. The works of Voiture (1598-1648) abound in the pleasantries and affected simplicity which best befit such compositions. The most trifling adventure—the death of a cat or a dog—was transformed into a poem, in which there was no poetry, but only a graceful facility, which was considered perfectly charming. Then, as though native affectation were not enough, the borrowed wit of Italian Marinism, which had been eagerly adopted in Spain, made its way thence into France, with Spanish exaggeration superadded. A disciple of this school declares that the eyes of his mistress are as "large as his grief, and as black as his fate." Malherbe and his school fell afterwards into neglect, for fashionable caprice had turned its attention to burlesque, and every one believed himself capable of writing in this style, from the lords and ladies of the court down to the valets and maid-servants. It was men like Scarron (1610- 1660), familiar with literary study, and, from choice, with the lowest society, who introduced this form, the pleasantry of which was increased by contrast with the finical taste that had been in vogue. Fashion ruled the light literature of France during the first half of the seventeenth century, and through all its diversities, its great characteristic is the absence of all true and serious feeling, and of that inspiration which is drawn from realities. In the productions of half a century, we find not one truly elevated, energetic, or pathetic work.

It is during this time, that is, between the death of Henry IV (1610), and that of Richelieu (1642), that we mark the beginning of literary societies in France. The earliest in point of date was headed by Madame de Rambouillet (1610-1642), whose hotel became a seminary of female authors and factious politicians. This lady was of Italian origin, of fine taste and education. She had turned away in disgust from the rude manners of the court of Henry IV, and devoted herself to the study of the classics. After the death of the king, she gathered a distinguished circle round herself, combining the elegances of high life with the cultivation of literary taste. While yet young, Madame de Rambouillet was attacked with a malady which obliged her to keep her bed the greater part of every year. An elegant alcove was formed in the great salon of the house, where her bed was placed, and here she received her friends. The choicest wits of Paris flocked to her levÉes; the Hotel de Rambouillet became the fashionable rendezvous of literature and taste, and bas-bleu-ism was the rage. Even the infirmities of this accomplished lady were imitated. An alcove was essential to every fashionable belle, who, attired in a coquettish dishabille, and reclining on satin pillows, fringed with lace, gave audience to whispered gossip in the ruelle, as the space around the bed was called.

Among the personages renowned in their day, who frequented the Hotel de Rambouillet, were Mademoiselle de Scudery (1607-1701), then in the zenith of her fame, Madame de SÉvignÉ (1627-1696), Mademoiselle de la Vergne, afterwards Madame de Lafayette (1655-1693), eminent as literary characters; the Duchess de Longueville, the Duchess de Chevreuse, and Madame DeshouliÈres, afterwards distinguished for their political ability. At the feet of these noble ladies reclined a number of young seigneurs, dangling their little hats surcharged with plumes, while their mantles of silk and gold were spread loosely on the floor. And there, in more grave attire, were the professional littÉrateurs, such as Balzac, Voiture, MÉnage, Scudery, Chaplain, Costart, Conrad, and the AbbÉ Bossuet. The Cupid of the hotel was strictly Platonic. The romances of Mademoiselle de Scudery were long-spun disquisitions on love; her characters were drawn from the individuals around her, who in turn attempted to sustain the characters and adopt the language suggested in her books. One folly led on another, till at last the vocabulary of the salon became so artificial, that none but the initiated could understand it. As for Mademoiselle de Scudery herself, applying, it would seem, the impracticable tests she had invented for sounding the depths of the tender passion, though not without suitors, she died an old maid, at the advanced age of ninety-four.

The civil wars of the Fronde (1649-1654) were unfavorable to literary meetings. The women who took the most distinguished part in these troubles had graduated, so to say, from the Hotel de Rambouillet, which, perhaps for this reason, declined with the ascendency of Louis XIV. The agitations of the Fronde taught him to distrust clever women, and he always showed a marked dislike for female authorship.

3. THE FRENCH ACADEMY.—The taste for literature, which had become so generally diffused, rendered the men whose province it was to define its laws the chiefs of a brilliant empire. Scholars, therefore, frequently met together for critical discussion. About the year 1629 a certain number of men of letters agreed to assemble one day in each week. It was a union of friendship, a companionship of men of kindred tastes and occupations; and to prevent intrusion, the meetings were for some time kept secret. When Richelieu came to hear of the existence of the society, desirous to make literature subservient to his political glory, he proposed to these gentlemen to form themselves into a corporation, established by letters patent, at the same time hinting that he had the power to put a stop to their secret meetings. The argument was irresistible, and the little society consented to receive from his highness the title of the French Academy, in 1635. The members of the Academy were to occupy themselves in establishing rules for the French language, and to take cognizance of whatever books were written by its members, and by others who desired its opinions.

4. THE DRAMA.—The endeavor to imitate the ancients in the tragic art displayed itself at a very early period among the French, and they considered that the surest method of succeeding in this endeavor was to observe the strictest outward regularity of form, of which they derived their ideas more from Aristotle, and especially from Seneca, than from any intimate acquaintance with the Greek models themselves. Three of the most celebrated of the French tragic poets, Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, have given, it would seem, an immutable shape to the tragic stage of France by adopting this system, which has been considered by the French critics universally as alone entitled to any authority, and who have viewed every deviation from it as a sin against good taste. The treatise of Aristotle, from which they have derived the idea of the far-famed three unities, of action, time, and place, which have given rise to so many critical wars, is a mere fragment, and some scholars have been of the opinion that it is not even a fragment of the true original, but of an extract which some person made for his own improvement. From this anxious observance of the Greek rules, under totally different circumstances, it is obvious that great inconveniences and incongruities must arise; and the criticism of the Academy on a tragedy of Corneille, "that the poet, from the fear of sinning against the rules of art, had chosen rather to sin against the rules of nature," is often applicable to the dramatic writers of France.

Corneille (1606-1684) ushered in a new era in the French drama. It has been said of him that he was a man greater in himself than in his works, his genius being fettered by the rules of the French drama and the conventional state of French verse. The day of mysteries and moralities was past, and the comedies of Hardy, the court poet of Henry IV., had, in their turn, been consigned to oblivion, yet there was an increasing taste for the drama. The first comedy of Corneille, "MÉlite," was followed by many others, which, though now considered unreadable, were better than anything then known. The appearance of the "Cid," in 1635, a drama constructed on the foundation of the old Spanish romances, constituted an era in the dramatic history of France. Although not without great faults, resulting from strict adherence to the rules, it was the first time that the depths of passion had been stirred on the stage, and its success was unprecedented. For years after, his pieces followed each other in rapid succession, and the history of the stage was that of Corneille's works. In the "Cid," the triumph of love was exhibited; in "Les Horaces," love was represented as punished for its rebellion against the laws of honor; in "Cinna," all more tender considerations are sacrificed to the implacable duty of avenging a father; while in "Polyeucte," duty triumphs alone. Corneille did not boldly abandon himself to the guidance of his genius; he feared criticism, although he defied it. His success proved the signal for envy and detraction; he became angry at being obliged to fight his way, and therefore withdrew from the path in which he was likely to meet enemies. His decline was as rapid as his success had been brilliant. "The fall of the great Corneille," says Fontenelle, "may be reckoned as among the most remarkable examples of the vicissitudes of human affairs. Even that of Belisarius asking alms is not more striking." As his years increased, he became more anxious for popularity; having been so long in possession of undisputed superiority, he could not behold without dissatisfaction the rising glory of his successors; and, towards the close of his life, this weakness was greatly increased by the decay of his bodily organs.

5. PHILOSOPHY.—During this period, in a region far above court favor, Descartes (1596-1650) elaborated his system of philosophy, in creating a new method of philosophizing. The leading peculiarity of his system was the attempt to deduce all moral and religious truth from self- consciousness. I think, therefore I am, was the famous axiom on which the whole was built. From this he inferred the existence of two distinct natures in man, the mental and the physical, and the existence of certain ideas which he called innate in the mind, and serving to connect it with the spiritual and invisible. Besides these new views in metaphysics, Descartes made valuable contributions to mathematical and physical science; and though his philosophy is now generally discarded, it is not forgotten that he opened the way for Locke, Newton, and Leibnitz, and that his system was in reality the base of all those that superseded it. There is scarcely a name on record, the bearer of which has given a greater impulse to mathematical and philosophical inquiry than Descartes, and he embodied his thoughts in such masterly language, that it has been justly said of him, that his fame as a writer would have been greater if his celebrity as a thinker had been less.

The age of Descartes was an interesting era in the annals of the human mind. The darkness of scholastic philosophy was gradually clearing away before the light which an improved method of study was shedding over the natural sciences. A system of philosophy, founded on observation, was preparing the downfall of those traditional errors which had long held the mastery in the schools. Geometricians, physicians, and astronomers taught, by their example, the severe process of reasoning which was to regenerate all the sciences; and minds of the first order, scattered in various parts of Europe, communicated to each other the results of their labors, and stimulated each other to new exertions.

One of the most eminent contemporaries of Descartes was Pascal (1628- 1662). At the age of sixteen he wrote a treatise on conic sections, which was followed by several important discoveries in arithmetic and geometry. His experiments in natural science added to his fame, and he was recognized as one of the most eminent geometricians of modern times. But he soon formed the design of abandoning science for pursuits exclusively religious, and circumstances arose which became the occasion of those "Provincial Letters," which, with the "PensÉes de la Religion," are considered among the finest specimens of French literature.

The abbey of Port Royal occupied a lonely situation about six leagues from Paris. Its internal discipline had recently undergone a thorough reformation, and the abbey rose to such a high reputation, that men of piety and learning took up their abode in its vicinity, to enjoy literary leisure. The establishment received pupils, and its system of education became celebrated in a religious and intellectual point of view. The great rivals of the Port Royalists were the Jesuits. Pascal, though not a member of the establishment, was a frequent visitor, and one of his friends there, having been drawn into a controversy with the Sorbonne on the doctrines of the Jansenists, had recourse to his aid in replying. Pascal published a series of letters in a dramatic form, in which he brought his adversaries on the stage with himself, and fairly cut them up for the public amusement. These letters, combining the comic pleasantry of MoliÈre with the eloquence of Demosthenes, so elegant and attractive in style, and so clear and popular that a child might understand them, gained immediate attention; but the Jesuits, whose policy and doctrines they attacked, finally induced the parliament of Provence to condemn them to be burned by the common hangman; and the Port Royalists, refusing to renounce their opinions, were driven from their retreat, and the establishment broken up. Pascal's masterpiece is the "PensÉes de la Religion;" it consists of fragments of thought, without apparent connection or unity of design. These thoughts are in some places obscure; they contain repetitions, and even contradictions, and require that arrangement that could only have been supplied by the hand of the writer. It has often been lamented that the author never constructed the edifice which it is believed he had designed, and of which these thoughts were the splendid materials.

6. THE RISE OF THE GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH LITERATURE.—When Louis XIV. came to the throne (1638-1715), France was already subject to conditions certain to produce a brilliant period in literature. She had been brought into close relations with Spain and Italy, the countries then the most advanced in intellectual culture; and she had received from the study of the ancient masters the best correctives of whatever might have been extravagant in the national genius. She had learned some useful lessons from the polemical distractions of the sixteenth century. The religious earnestness excited by controversy was gratified by preachers of high endowments, and the political ascendency of France, among the kingdoms of Europe, imparted a general freedom and buoyancy. But of all the influences which contributed to perfect the literature of France in the latter half of the seventeenth century, none was so powerful as that of the monarch himself, who, by his personal power, rendered his court a centre of knowledge, and, by his government, imparted a feeling of security to those who lived under it. The predominance of the sovereign became the most prominent feature in the social character of the age, and the whole circle of the literature bears its impress. Louis elevated and improved, in no small degree, the position of literary men, by granting pensions to some, while he raised others to high offices of state; or they were recompensed by the public, through the general taste, which the monarch so largely contributed to diffuse.

The age, unlike that which followed it, was one of order and specialty in literature; and in classifying its literary riches, we shall find the principal authors presenting themselves under the different subjects: Racine with tragedy, MoliÈre with comedy, Boileau with satirical and mock- heroic, La Fontaine with narrative poetry, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and Massillon with pulpit eloquence; Patru, Pellisson, and some others with that of the bar; Bossuet, de Retz, and St. Simon with history and memoirs; Rochefoucauld and La BruyÈre with moral philosophy; FÉnelon and Madame de Lafayette with romance; and Madame de SÉvignÉ with letter-writing.

The personal influence of the king was most marked on pulpit eloquence and dramatic poetry. Other branches found less favor, from his dislike to those who chiefly treated them. The recollections of the Fronde had left in his mind a distrust of Rochefoucauld. A similar feeling of political jealousy, with a thorough hatred of bel esprit, especially in a woman, prevented him from appreciating Madame de SÉvignÉ; and he seems not even to have observed La BruyÈre, in his modest functions as teacher of history to the Duke of Burgundy. He had no taste for the pure mental speculations of Malebranche or FÉnelon; and in metaphysics, as in religion, had little patience for what was beyond the good sense of ordinary individuals. The same hatred of excess rendered him equally the enemy of refiners and free- thinkers, so that the like exile fell to the lot of Arnauld and Bayle, the one carrying to the extreme the doctrines of grace, and the other those of skeptical inquiry. Nor did he relish the excessive simplicity of La Fontaine, or deem that his talent was a sufficient compensation for his slovenly manners and inaptitude for court life. Of all these writers it may be said, that they flourished rather in spite of the personal influence of the monarch than under his favor.

7. TRAGEDY.—The first dramas of Racine (1639-1699) were but feeble imitations of Corneille, who advised the young author to attempt no more tragedy. He replied by producing "Andromaque," which had a most powerful effect upon the stage. The poet had discovered that sympathy was a more powerful source of tragic effect than admiration, and he accordingly employed the powers of his genius in a truthful expression of feeling and character, and a thrilling alternation of hope and fear, anger and pity. "Andromaque" was followed almost every year by a work of similar character. Henrietta of England induced Corneille and Racine, unknown to each other, to produce a tragedy on Berenice, in order to contrast the powers of these illustrious rivals. They were represented in the year 1670; that of Corneille proved a failure, but Racine's was honored; by the tears of the court and the city. Soon after, partly disgusted at the intrigues against him, and partly from religious principle, Racine abandoned his career while yet in the full vigor of his life and genius. He was appointed historiographer to the king, conjointly with Boileau, and after twelve years of silence he was induced by Madame de Maintenon to compose the drama of "Esther" for the pupils in the Maison de St. Cyr, which met with prodigious success. "Athalie," considered the most perfect of his works, was composed with similar views; theatricals having been abandoned at the school, however, the play was published, but found no readers. Discouraged by this second injustice, Racine finally abandoned the drama. "Athalie" was but little known till the year 1716, since when its reputation has considerably augmented. Voltaire pronounced it the most perfect work of human genius. The subject of this drama is taken from the twenty-second and twenty-third chapter of II. Chronicles, where it is written that Athaliah, to avenge the death of her son, destroyed all the seed royal of the house of Judah, but that the young Joash was stolen from among the rest by his aunt Jehoshabeath, the wife of the high-priest, and hidden with his nurse for six years in the temple. Besides numerous tragedies, Racine composed odes, epigrams, and spiritual songs. By a rare combination of talents he wrote as well in prose as in verse. His "History of the Reign of Louis XIV." was destroyed by a conflagration, but there remain the "History of Port Royal," some pleasing letters, and some academic discourses. The tragedies of Racine are more elegant than those of Corneille, though less bold and striking. Corneille's principal characters are heroes and heroines thrown into situations of extremity, and displaying strength of mind superior to their position. Racine's characters are men, not heroes,—men such as they are, not such as they might possibly be.

France produced no other tragic dramatists of the first class in this age.
Somewhat later, CrÉbillon (1674-1762), in such wild tragedies as "Atrea,"
"Electra," and "Rhadamiste," introduced a new element, that of terror, as
a source of tragic effect.

Cardinal Mazarin had brought from Italy the opera or lyric tragedy, which was cultivated with success by Quinault (1637-1688). He is said to have taken the bones out of the French language by cultivating an art in which thought, incident, and dialogue are made secondary to the development of tender and voluptuous feeling.

8. COMEDY.—The comic drama, which occupied the French stage till the middle of the seventeenth century, was the comedy of intrigue, borrowed from Spain, and turning on disguises, dark lanterns, and trap-doors to help or hinder the design of personages who were types, not of individual character, but of classes, as doctors, lawyers, lovers, and confidants. It was reserved for MoliÈre (1622-1673) to demolish all this childishness, and enthrone the true Thalia on the French stage. Like Shakspeare, he was both an author and an actor. The appearance of the "PrÉcieuses Ridicules" was the first of the comedies in which the gifted poet assailed the follies of his age. The object of this satire was the system of solemn sentimentality which at this time was considered the perfection of elegance. It will be remembered that there existed at Paris a coterie of fashionable women who pretended to the most exalted refinement both of feeling and expression, and that these were waited upon and worshiped by a set of nobles and littÉrateurs, who used towards them a peculiar strain of high-flown, pedantic gallantry. These ladies adopted fictitious names for themselves and gave enigmatical ones to the commonest things. They lavished upon each other the most tender appellations, as though in contrast to the frigid tone in which the Platonism of the Hotel required them to address the gentlemen of their circle. Ma chÈre, ma prÉcieuse, were the terms most frequently used by the leaders of this world of folly, and a prÉcieuse came to be synonymous with a lady of the clique; hence the title of the comedy. The piece was received with unanimous applause; a more signal victory could not have been gained by a comic poet, and from the time of its first representation this bombastic nonsense was given up. MoliÈre, perceiving that he had struck the true vein, resolved to study human nature more and Plautus and Terence less. Comedy after comedy followed, which were true pictures of the follies of society; but whatever was the theme of his satire, all proved that he had a falcon's eye for detecting vice and folly in every shape, and talons for pouncing upon all as the natural prey of the satirist. On the boards he always took the principal character himself, and he was a comedian in every look and gesture. The "Malade Imaginaire" was the last of his works. When it was produced upon the stage, the poet himself was really ill, but repressing the voice of natural suffering, to affect that of the hypochondriac for public amusement, he was seized with a convulsive cough, and carried home dying. Though he was denied the last offices of the church, and his remains were with difficulty allowed Christian burial, in the following century his bust was placed in the Academy, and a monument erected to his memory in the cemetery of PÈre la Chaise. The best of MoliÈre's works are, "Le Misanthrope," "Les Femmes Savantes," and "Tartuffe;" these are considered models of high comedy. Other comedians followed, but at a great distance from him in point of merit.

9. FABLE, SATIRE, MOCK-HEROIC, AND OTHER POETRY.—La Fontaine (1621-1695) was the prince of fabulists; his fables appeared successively in three collections, and although the subjects of some of these are borrowed, the dress is entirely new. His versification constitutes one of the greatest charms of his poetry, and seems to have been the result of an instinctive sense of harmony, a delicate taste, and rapidity of invention. There are few authors in France more popular, none so much the familiar genius of every fireside. La Fontaine himself was a mere child of nature, indolent, and led by the whim of the moment, rather than by any fixed principle. He was desired by his father to take charge of the domain of which he was the keeper, and to unite himself in marriage with a family relative. With unthinking docility he consented to both, but neglected alike his official duties and domestic obligations with an innocent unconsciousness of wrong. He was taken to Paris by the Duchess of Bouillon and passed his days in her coteries, and those of Racine and Boileau, utterly forgetful of his home and family, except when his pecuniary necessities obliged him to return to sell portions of his property to supply his wants. When this was exhausted, he became dependent on the kindness of female discerners of merit. Henrietta of England attached him to her suite; and after her death, Madame de la SabliÈre gave him apartments at her house, supplied his wants, and indulged his humors for twenty years. When she retired to a convent, Madame d'Hervart, the wife of a rich financier, offered him a similar retreat. While on her way to make the proposal, she met him in the street, and said, "La Fontaine, will you come and live in my house?" "I was just going, madame," he replied, as if his doing so had been the simplest and most natural thing in the world. And here he remained the rest of his days. France has produced numerous writers of fables since the time of La Fontaine, but none worthy of comparison with him.

The writings of Descartes and Pascal, with the precepts of the Academy and Port Royal, had established the art of prose composition, but the destiny of poetry continued doubtful. Corneille's masterpieces afforded models only in one department; there was no specific doctrine on the idea of what poetry ought to be. To supply this was the mission of Boileau (1636-1711); and he fulfilled it, first by satirizing the existing style, and then by composing an "Art of Poetry," after the manner of Horace. In the midst of men who made verses for the sake of making them, and composed languishing love-songs upon the perfections of mistresses who never existed except in their own imaginations, Boileau determined to write nothing but what interested his feelings, to break with this affected gallantry, and draw poetry only from the depths of his own heart. His dÉbut was made in unmerciful satires on the works of the poetasters, and he continued to plead the cause of reason against rhyme, of true poetry against false. Despite the anger of the poets and their friends, his satires enjoyed immense favor, and he consolidated his victory by writing the "Art of Poetry," in which he attempted to restore it to its true dignity. This work obtained for him the title of Legislator of Parnassus. The mock- heroic poem of the "Lutrin" is considered as the happiest effort of his muse, though inferior to the "Rape of the Lock," a composition of a similar kind. The occasion of this poem was a frivolous dispute between the treasurer and the chapter of a cathedral concerning the placing of a reading-desk (lutrin). A friend playfully challenged Boileau to write a heroic poem on the subject, to verify his own theory that the excellence of a heroic poem depended upon the power of the inventor to sustain and enlarge upon a slender groundwork. Boileau was the last of the great poets of the golden age.

The horizon of the poets was at this time somewhat circumscribed. Confined to the conventional life of the court and the city, they enjoyed little opportunity for the contemplation of nature. The policy of Louis XIV. proscribed national recollections, so that the social life of the day was alone open to them. Poetry thus became abstract and ideal, or limited to the delineation of those passions which belong to a highly artificial state of society. Madame DeshouliÈres (1634-1694) indeed wrote some graceful idyls, but she by no means entered into the spirit of rural life and manners, like La Fontaine.

10. ELOQUENCE OF THE PULPIT AND OF THE BAR.—Louis XIV. afforded to religious eloquence the most efficacious kind of encouragement, that of personal attendance. The court preachers had no more attentive auditor than their royal master, who was singularly gifted with that tenderness of conscience which leads a man to condemn himself for his sins, yet indulge in their commission; to feel a certain pleasure in self-accusation, and to enjoy that reaction of mind which consists in occasionally holding his passions in abeyance. This attention on the part of a great monarch, the liberty of saying everything, the refined taste of the audience, who could on the same day attend a sermon of Bourdaloue and a tragedy of Racine, all tended to lead pulpit eloquence to a high degree of perfection; and, accordingly, we find the function of court preacher exercised successively by Bossuet (1627-1704), Bourdaloue (1632-1704), and Massillon (1663-1742), the greatest names that the Roman Catholic Church has boasted in any age or country. Bossuet addressed the conscience through the imagination, Bourdaloue through the judgment, and Massillon through the feelings. FlÉchier (1632-1710), another court preacher, renowned chiefly as a rhetorician, was not free from the affectation of Les PrÉcieuses; but Bossuet was perhaps the most distinguished type of the age of Louis XIV., in all save its vices. For the instruction of the Dauphin, to whom he had been appointed preceptor, he wrote his "Discourse upon Universal History," by which he is chiefly known to us. The Protestant controversy elicited his famous "Exposition of the Catholic Doctrine." A still more celebrated work is the "History of the Variations," the leading principle of which is, that to forsake the authority of the church leads one knows not whither, that there can be no new religious views except false ones, and that there can be no escape from the faith transmitted from age to age, save in the wastes of skepticism. In his controversy with FÉnelon, in relation to the mystical doctrines of Madame Guyon, Bossuet showed himself irritated, and at last furious, at the moderate and submissive tone of his opponent. He procured the banishment of FÉnelon from court, and the disgrace of his friends; and through his influence the pope condemned the "Maxims of the Saints," in which FÉnelon endeavored to show that the views of Madame Guyon were those of others whom the church had canonized. The sermons of Bossuet were paternal and familiar exhortations; he seldom prepared them, but, abandoning himself to the inspiration of the moment, was now simple and touching, now energetic and sublime, His familiarity with the language of inspiration imparted to his discourses a tone of almost prophetic authority; his eloquence appeared as a native instinct, a gift direct from heaven, neither marred nor improved by the study of human rules. France does not acknowledge the Protestant Saurin (1677-1730), as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes expatriated him in childhood; but his sermons occupy a distinguished place in the theological literature of the French language.

Political or parliamentary oratory was as yet unknown, for the parliament no sooner touched on matters of state and government, than Louis XIV entered, booted and spurred, with whip in hand, and not figuratively, but literally, lashed the refractory assembly into silence and obedience. But the eloquence of the bar enjoyed a considerable degree of freedom in this age. Law and reason, however, were too often overlaid by worthless conceits and a fantastic abuse of classic and scriptural citations. Le Maitre (1608-1658), Patru (1604-1681), Pellisson (1624-1693), Cochin (1687-1749), and D'Aguesseau (1668-1751), successively purified and elevated the language of the tribunals.

11. MORAL PHILOSOPHY.—The most celebrated moralist of the age was the Duke de Rochefoucauld (1613-1680). He was early drawn into those conflicts known as the wars of the Fronde, though he seems to have had little motive for fighting or intriguing, except his restlessness of spirit and his attachment to the Duchess de Longueville. He soon quarreled with the duchess, dissolved his alliance with CondÉ, and being afterwards included in the amnesty, he took up his residence at Paris, where he was one of the brightest ornaments of the court of Louis XIV. His chosen friends, in his declining years, were Madame de SÉvignÉ, one of the most accomplished women of the age, and Madame de Lafayette, who said of him, "He gave me intellect, and I reformed his heart." But if the taint was removed from his heart, it continued in the understanding. His famous "Maxims," published in 1665, gained for the author a lasting reputation, not less for the perfection of his style, than for the boldness of his paradoxes. The leading peculiarity of this work is the principle that self-interest is the ruling motive in human nature, placing every virtue, as well as every vice, under contribution to itself. It is generally agreed that Rochefoucauld's views of human nature were perverted by the specimens of it which he had known in the wars of the Fronde, which were stimulated by vice, folly, and a restless desire of power. His "Memoirs of the Reign of Anne of Austria" embody the story of the Fronde, and his "Maxims" the moral philosophy he deduced from it.

While Pascal, in proving all human remedies unworthy of confidence, had sought to drive men upon faith by pursuing them with despair, and Rochefoucauld, by his pitiless analysis of the disguises of the human heart, led his readers to suspect their most natural emotions, and well- nigh took away the desire of virtue by proving its impossibility, La BruyÈre (1639-1696) endeavored to make the most of our nature, such as it is, to render men better, even with their imperfections, to assist them by a moral code suited to their strength, or rather to their weakness. His "Characters of our Age" is distinguished for the exactness and variety of the portraits, as well as for the excellence of its style. The philosophy of La BruyÈre is unquestionably based on reason, and not on revelation.

In the moral works of Nicole, the Port Royalist (1611-1645), we find a system of truly Christian ethics, derived from the precepts of revelation; they are elegant in style, though they display little originality.

The only speculative philosopher of this age, worthy of mention, is Malebranche (1631-1715), a disciple of Descartes; but, unlike his master, instead of admitting innate ideas, he held that we see all in Deity, and that it is only by our spiritual union with the Being who knows all things that we know anything. He professed optimism, and explained the existence of evil by saying that the Deity acts only as a universal cause. His object was to reconcile philosophy with revelation; his works, though models of style, are now little read.

12. HISTORY AND MEMOIRS.—History attained no degree of excellence during this period. Bossuet's "Discourse on Universal History" was a sermon, with general history as the text. At a somewhat earlier date, MÉzeray (1610- 1683) compiled a history of France. The style is clear and nervous, and the spirit which pervades it is bold and independent, but the facts are not always to be relied on. The "History of Christianity," by the AbbÉ Fleury (1640-1723), was pronounced by Voltaire to be the best work of the kind that had ever appeared. Rollin (1661-1741) devoted his declining years to the composition of historical works for the instruction of young people. His "Ancient History" is more remarkable for the excellence of his intentions than for the display of historical talent. Indeed, the historical writers of this period may be said to have marked, rather than filled a void.

The writers of memoirs were more happy. At an earlier period, BrantÔme (1527-1614), a gentleman attached to the suite of Charles IX. and Henry III., employed his declining years in describing men and manners as he had observed them; and his memoirs are admitted to embody but too faithfully a representation of that singular mixture of elegance and grossness, of superstition and impiety, of chivalrous feelings and licentious morals, which characterized the sixteenth century. The Duke of Sully (1559-1641), the skillful financier of Henry IV., left valuable memoirs of the stirring events of his day. The "Memoirs" of the Cardinal de Betz (1614-1679), who took so active a part in the agitations of the Fronde, embody the enlarged views of the true historian, and breathe the impetuous spirit of a man whose native element is civil commotion, and who looks on the chieftainship of a party as worthy to engage the best powers of his head and heart; but his style abounds with negligences and irregularities which would have shocked the littÉrateurs of the day.

The Duke de St. Simon (1675-1755) is another of those who made no pretensions to classical writing. All the styles of the seventeenth century are found in him. His language has been compared to a torrent, which appears somewhat incumbered by the debris which it carries, yet makes its way with no less rapidity.

Count Hamilton (1646-1720) narrates the adventures of his brother-in-law, Count de Grammont, of which La Harpe says, "Of all frivolous books, it is the most diverting and ingenious." Much lively narration is here expended on incidents better forgotten.

13. ROMANCE AND LETTER-WRITING.—The growth of kingly power, the order which it established, and the civilization which followed in its train, restrained the development of public life and increased the interests of the social relations. From this new state of things arose a modified kind of romance, in which elevated sentiments replaced the achievements of mediaeval fiction and the military exploits of Mademoiselle de Scudery's tales. Madame de Lafayette introduced that kind of romance in which the absorbing interest is that of conflicting passion, and external events were the occasion of developing the inward life of thought and feeling. She first depicted manners as they really were, relating natural events with gracefulness, instead of narrating those that never could have had existence.

The illustrious FÉnelon (1651-1715) was one of the few authors of this period who belonged exclusively to no one class. He appears as a divine in his "Sermons" and "Maxims;" as a rhetorician in his "Dialogues on Eloquence;" as a moralist in his "Education of Girls;" as a politician in his "Examination of the Conscience of a King;" and it may be said that all these characters are combined in "Telemachus," which has procured for him a widespread fame, and which classes him among the romancers. Telemachus was composed with the intention of its becoming a manual for his pupil, the young Duke of Burgundy, on his entrance into manhood. Though its publication caused him the loss of the king's favor, it went through numerous editions, and was translated into every language of Europe. It was considered, in its day, a manual for kings, and it became a standard book, on account of the elegance of its style, the purity of its morals, and the classic taste it was likely to foster in the youthful mind.

Madame de SÉvignÉ made no pretensions to authorship. Her letters were written to her daughter, without the slightest idea that they would be read, except by those to whom they were addressed; but they have immortalized their gifted author, and have been pronounced worthy to occupy an eminent place among the classics of French literature. The matter which these celebrated letters contain is multifarious; they are sketches of Madame de SÉvignÉ's friends, Madame de Lafayette, Madame Scarron, and all the principal personages of that brilliant court, from which, however, she was excluded, in consequence of her early alliance with the Fronde, her friendship for Fouquet, and her Jansenist opinions. All the occurrences, as well as the characters of the day, are touched in these letters; and so graphic is the pen, so clear and easy the style, that we seem to live in those brilliant days, and to see all that was going on. Great events are detailed in the same tone as court gossip; Louis XIV., Turenne, CondÉ, the wars of France and of the empire are freely mingled with details of housewifery, projects of marriage,—in short, the seventeenth century is depicted in the correspondence of two women who knew nothing so important as their own affairs.

Considerable interest attaches also to the letters of Madame de Maintenon (1635-1719), a lady whose life presents singular contrasts, worthy of the time. To her influence on the king, after her private marriage to him, is attributed much that is inauspicious in the latter part of his reign, the combination of ascetic devotion and religious bigotry with the most flagrant immorality, the appointment of unskillful generals and weak- minded ministers, the persecution of the Jansenists, and, above all, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had secured religious freedom to the Protestants.

PERIOD THIRD.

LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION AND OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (1700-1885).

1. THE DAWN OF SKEPTICISM.—In the age just past we have seen religion, antiquity, and the monarchy of Louis XIV., each exercising a distinct and powerful influence over the buoyancy of French genius, which cheerfully submitted to their restraining power. A school of taste and elegance had been formed, under these circumstances, which gave law to the rest of Europe and constituted France the leading spirit of the age. On the other hand, the dominant influences of the eighteenth century were a skeptical philosophy, a preference for modern literature, and a rage for political reform. The transition, however, was not sudden nor immediate, and we come now to the consideration of those works which occupy the midway position between the submissive age of Louis XIV. and the daring infidelity and republicanism of the eighteenth century.

The eighteenth century began with the first timid protestation against the splendid monarchy of Louis XIV., the domination of the Catholic Church, and the classical authority of antiquity, and it ended when words came to deeds, in the sanguinary revolution of 1789. When the first generation of great men who sunned themselves in the glance of Louis XIV. had passed away, there were none to succeed them; the glory of the monarch began to fade as the noble cortÈge disappeared, and admiration and enthusiasm were no more. The new generation, which had not shared the glory and prosperity of the old monarch, was not subjugated by the recollections of his early splendor, and was not, like the preceding, proud to wear his yoke. A certain indifference to principle began to prevail; men ventured to doubt opinions once unquestioned; the habit of jesting with everything and unblushing cynicism appeared almost under the eyes of the aged Louis; even Massillon, who exhorted the people to obedience, at the same time reminded the king that it was necessary to merit it by respecting their rights. The Protestants, exiled by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, revenged themselves by pamphlets against the monarch and the church, and these works found their way into France, and fostered there the rising discontent and contempt for the authority of the government.

Among these refugees was Bayle (1647-1706), the coolest and boldest of doubters. He wrote openly against the intolerance of Louis XIV., and he affords the first announcement of the characteristics of the century. His "Historical and Critical Dictionary," a vast magazine of knowledge and incredulity, was calculated to supersede the necessity of study to a lively and thoughtless age. His skepticism is learned and philosophical, and he ridicules those who reject without examination still more than those who believe with docile credulity. Jean Baptiste Rousseau (1670- 1741), the lyric poet of this age, displayed in his odes considerable energy, and a kind of pompous harmony, which no other had imparted to the language, yet he fails to excite the sympathy. In his writings we find that free commingling of licentious morals with a taste for religious sublimities which characterized the last years of Louis XIV. The AbbÉ Chaulieu (1639-1720) earned the appellation of the Anacreon of the Temple, but he did not, like Rousseau, prostitute poetry in strains of low debauchery.

The tragedians followed in the footsteps of Racine with more or less success, and comedy continued, with some vigor, to represent the corrupt manners of the age. Le Sage (1668-1747) applied his talent to romance; and, like MoliÈre, appreciated human folly without analyzing it. "Gil Blas" is a picture of the human heart under the aspect at once of the vicious and the ridiculous.

Fontenelle (1657-1757), a nephew of the great Corneille, is regarded as the link between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he having witnessed the splendor of the best days of Louis XIV., and lived long enough to see the greatest men of the eighteenth century. He made his dÉbut in tragedy, in which, however, he found little encouragement. In his "Plurality of Worlds," and "Dialogues of the Dead," there is much that indicates the man of science. His other works are valued rather for their delicacy and impartiality than for striking originality.

Lamotte (1672-1731) was more distinguished in criticism than in any other sphere of authorship. He raised the standard of revolt against the worship of antiquity, and would have dethroned poetry itself on the ground of its inutility. Thus skepticism began by making established literary doctrines matters of doubt and controversy. Before attacking more serious creeds it fastened on literary ones.

Such is the picture presented by the earlier part of the eighteenth century. Part of the generation had remained attached to the traditions of the great age. Others opened the path into which the whole country was about to throw itself. The faith of the nation in its political institutions, its religious and literary creed, was shaken to its foundation; the positive and palpable began to engross every interest hitherto occupied by the ideal; and this disposition, so favorable to the cultivation of science, brought with it a universal spirit of criticism. The habit of reflecting was generally diffused, people were not afraid to exercise their own judgment, every man had begun to have a higher estimate of his own opinions, and to care less for those hitherto received as undoubted authority. Still, literature had not taken any positive direction, nor had there yet appeared men of sufficiently powerful genius to give it a decisive impulse.

2. PROGRESS OF SKEPTICISM.—The first powerful attack on the manners, institutions, and establishments of France, and indeed of Europe in general, is that contained in the "Persian Letters" of the Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755); in which, under the transparent veil of pleasantries aimed at the Moslem religion, he sought to consign to ridicule the belief in every species of dogma. But the celebrity of Montesquieu is founded on his "Spirit of Laws," the greatest monument of human genius in the eighteenth century. It is a profound analysis of law in its relation with government, customs, climate, religion, and commerce. The book is inspired with a spirit of justice and humanity; but it places the mind too much under the dominion of matter, and argues for necessity rather than liberty, thus depriving moral obligation of much of its absolute character. It is an extraordinary specimen of argument, terseness, and erudition.

The maturity of the eighteenth century is found in Voltaire (1694-1778); he was the personification of its rashness, its zeal, its derision, its ardor, and its universality. In him nature had, so to speak, identified the individual with the nation, bestowing on him a character in the highest degree elastic, having lively sensibility but no depth of passion, little system of principle or conduct, but that promptitude of self- direction which supplies its place, a quickness of perception amounting almost to intuition, and an unexampled degree of activity, by which he was in some sort many men at once. No writer, even in the eighteenth century, knew so many things or treated so many subjects. That which was the ruin of some minds was the strength of his. Rich in diversified talent and in the gifts of fortune, he proceeded to the conquest of his age with the combined power of the highest endowments under the most favorable circumstances. He was driven again and again, as a moral pest, from the capital of France by the powers that fain would have preserved the people from his opinions, yet ever gaining ground, his wit always welcome, and his opinions gradually prevailing, one audacious sentiment after another broached, and branded with infamy, yet secretly entertained, till the futile struggle was at length given in, and the nation, as with one voice, avowed itself his disciple.

It has been said that Voltaire showed symptoms of infidelity from infancy. When at college he gave way to sallies of wit, mirth, and profanity which astonished his companions and terrified his preceptors. He was twice imprisoned in the Bastile, and many times obliged to fly from the country. In England he became acquainted with Bolingbroke and all the most distinguished men of the time, and in the school of English philosophy he learned to use argument, as well as ridicule, in his war with religion. In 1740 we find him assisting Frederick the Great to get up a refutation of Machiavelli; again, he is appointed historiographer of France, Gentleman of the Bed-chamber, and Member of the Academy; then he accepts an invitation to reside at the Court of Prussia, where he soon quarrels with the king. After many vicissitudes he finally purchased the estate of Ferney, near the Lake of Geneva, where he resided during the rest of his days. From this retreat he poured out an exhaustless variety of books, which were extensively circulated and eagerly perused. He had the admiration of all the wits and philosophers of Europe, and included among his pupils and correspondents some of the greatest sovereigns of the age. At the age of eighty-four he again visited Paris. Here his levees were more crowded than those of any emperor; princes and peers thronged his ante-chamber, and when he rode through the streets a train attended him which stretched far over the city. He was made president of the Academy, and crowned with laurel at the theatre, where his bust was placed on the stage and adorned with palms and garlands. He died soon after, without the rites of the church, and was interred secretly at a Benedictine abbey.

The national enthusiasm which decreed Voltaire, as he descended to the tomb, such a triumph as might have honored a benefactor of the race, gave place to doubt and disputation as to his merits. In tragedy he is admitted to rank after Corneille and Racine; in "ZaÏre," which is his masterpiece, there is neither the lofty conception of the one, nor the perfect versification of the other, but there is a warmth of passion, an enthusiasm of feeling, and a gracefulness of expression which fascinate and subdue. As an epic poet he has least sustained his renown; though the "Henriade" has unquestionably some great beauties, its machinery is tame, and the want of poetic illusion is severely felt. His poetry, especially that of his later years, is by no means so disgraceful to the author as the witticisms in prose, the tales, dialogues, romances, and pasquinades which were eagerly sought for and readily furnished, and which are, with little exception, totally unworthy of an honorable man. As a historian, Voltaire lacked reflection and patience for investigation. His "History of Charles XII.," however, was deservedly successful; the reason being that he chose for his hero the most romantic and adventurous of sovereigns, to describe whom there was more need of rapid narrative and brilliant coloring than of profound knowledge and a just appreciation of human nature. In his history of the age of Louis XIV., Voltaire sought not only to present a picture, but a series of researches destined to instruct the memory and exercise the judgment. The English historians, imitating his mode, have surpassed him in erudition and philosophic impartiality. Still later, his own countrymen have carried this species of writing to a high degree of perfection. Throughout the "Essay on the Manners of Nations" we find traces of that hatred of religion which he openly cherished in the latter part of his life. The style, however, is pleasing, the facts well arranged, and the portraits traced with originality and vivacity.

Some have attributed to Voltaire the serious design of overturning the three great bases of society, religion, morality, and civil government, but he had not the genius of a philosopher, and there is no system of philosophy in his works. That he had a design to amuse and influence his age, and to avenge himself on his enemies, is obvious enough. Envy and hatred employed against him the weapons of religion, hence he viewed it only as an instrument of persecution. His great powers of mind were continually directed by the opinions of the times, and the desire of popularity was his ruling motive. The character of his earlier writings shows that he did not bring into the world a very independent spirit; they display the lightness and frivolity of the time with the submission of a courtier for every kind of authority, but as his success increased everything encouraged him to imbue his works with that spirit which found so general a welcome. In vain the authority of the civil government endeavored to arrest the impulse which was gaining strength from day to day; in vain this director of the public mind was imprisoned and exiled; the farther he advanced in his career and the more audaciously he propagated his views on religion and government, the more he was rewarded with the renown which he sought. Monarchs became his friends and his flatterers; opposition only increased his energy, and made him often forget moderation and good taste.

3. FRENCH LITERATURE DURING THE REVOLUTION.—The names of Voltaire and Montesquieu eclipse all others in the first half of the eighteenth century, but the influence of Voltaire was by far the most immediate and extensive. After he had reached the zenith of his glory, about the middle of the century, there appeared in France a display of various talent, evoked by his example and trained by his instructions, yet boasting an independent existence. In the works of these men was consummated the literary revolution of which we have marked the beginnings, a revolution more striking than any other ever witnessed in the same space of time. It was no longer a few eminent men that surrendered themselves boldly to the skeptical philosophy which is the grand characteristic of the eighteenth century; writers of inferior note followed in the same path; the new opinions took entire possession of all literature and cooperated with the state of the morals and the government to bring about a fearful revolution. The whole strength of the literature of this age being directed towards the subversion of the national institutions and religion, formed a homogeneous body of science, literature, and the arts, and a compact phalanx of all writers under the common name of philosophers. Women had their share in the maintenance of this league; the salons of Mesdames du Deffand (1696-1780), Geoffrin (b. 1777), and De l'Espinasse (1732-1776) were its favorite resorts; but the great rendezvous was that of the Baron d'Holbach, whence its doctrines spread far and wide, blasting, like a malaria, whatever it met with on its way that had any connection with religion, morals, or venerable social customs. Besides Voltaire, who presided over this coterie, at least in spirit, the daily company included Diderot, an enthusiast by nature and a cynic and sophist by profession; D'Alembert, a genius of the first order in mathematics, though less distinguished in literature; the malicious Marmontel, the philosopher HelvÉtius, the AbbÉ Raynal, the furious enemy of all modern institutions; the would-be sentimentalist Grimm, and D'Holbach himself. Hume, Gibbon, Bolingbroke, and others were affiliated members. Their plan was to write a book which would in some sense supersede all others, itself forming a library containing the most recent discoveries in philosophy, and the best explanations and details on every topic, literary and scientific.

The project of this great enterprise of an Encyclopaedia as an immense vehicle for the development of the opinions of the philosophers, alarmed the government, and the parliament and the clergy pronounced its condemnation. The philosophy of Descartes and the eminent thinkers of the seventeenth century assumed the soul of man as the starting-point in the investigation of physical science. The men of the eighteenth century had become tired of following out the sublimities and abstractions of the Cartesians, and they took the opposite course; beginning from sensation, they did not stop short of the grossest materialism and positive atheism.

Such were the principles of the Encyclopaedia, more fully developed and explained in the writings of Condillac (1715-1780), the head of this school of philosophy. His first work, "On the Origin of Human Knowledge," contains the germ of all that he afterwards published. In his "Treatise on Sensation," he endeavored, but in vain, to derive the notion of duty from sensation, and expert as he was in logic, he could not conceal the great gulf which his theory left between these two terms. Few writers have enjoyed more success; he brought the science of thought within the reach of the vulgar by stripping it of everything elevated, and every one was surprised and delighted to find that philosophy was so easy a thing. Having determined not to establish morality on any innate principles of the soul, these philosophers founded it on the fact common to all animated nature, the feeling of self-interest. Already deism had rejected the evidence of a divine revelation. Now atheism raised a more audacious front, and proclaimed that all religious sentiment was but the reverie of a disordered mind. The works in which this opinion is most expressly announced, date from the period of the Encyclopaedia.

D'Alembert (1717-1773) is now chiefly known as the author of the preliminary discourse of the Encyclopaedia, which is ranked among the principal works of the age.

Diderot (1714-1784), had he devoted himself to any one sphere, instead of wandering about in the chaos of opinions which rose and perished around him, might have left a lasting reputation, and posterity, instead of merely repeating his name, would have spoken of his works. He may be regarded as a writer injurious at once to literature and to morals.

The most faithful disciple of the philosophy of this period was HelvÉtius (1715-1771), known chiefly by his work, "On the Mind," the object of which is to prove that physical sensibility is the origin of all our thoughts. Of all the writers who maintained this opinion, none have represented it in so gross a manner. His work was condemned by the Sorbonne, the pope, and the parliament; it was burned by the hand of the hangman, and the author was compelled to retract it.

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a writer who marched under none of the recognized banners of the day. The Encyclopaedists had flattered themselves that they had tuned the opinion of all Europe to their philosophical strain, when suddenly they heard his discordant note. Without family, without friends, without home, wandering from place to place, from one condition in life to another, he conceived a species of revolt against society, and a feeling of bitterness against those civil organizations in which he could never find a suitable place. He combated the atheism of the Encyclopaedists, their materialism and contempt for moral virtue, for pure deism was his creed. He believed in a Supreme Being, a future state, and the excellence of virtue, but denying all revealed religion, he would have men advance in the paths of virtue, freely and proudly, from love of virtue itself, and not from any sense of duty or obligation. In the "Social Contract" he traced the principles of government and laws in the nature of man, and endeavored to show the end which they proposed to themselves by living in communities, and the best means of attaining this end.

The two most notable works of Rousseau are "Julie," or the "Nouvelle HÉloÏse," and "Emile." The former is a kind of romance, owing its interest mainly to development of character, and not to incident or plot. Emile embodies a system of education in which the author's thoughts are digested and arranged. He gives himself an imaginary pupil, the representative of that life of spontaneous development which was the writer's ideal. In this work there is an episode, the "Savoyard Vicar's Confession of Faith," which is a declaration of pure deism, leveled especially against the errors of Catholicism. It raised a perfect tempest against the author from every quarter. The council of Geneva caused his book to be burned by the executioner, and the parliament of Paris threatened him with imprisonment. Under these circumstances he wrote his "Confessions," which he believed would vindicate him before the world. The reader, who may expect to find this book abounding with at least as much virtue as a man may possess without Christian principle, will find in it not a single feature of greatness; it is a proclamation of disagreeable faults; and yet he would persuade us that he was virtuous, by giving the clearest proofs that he was not.

To the names of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau, must be added that of Buffon (1707-1788), and we have the four writers of this age who left all their contemporaries far behind. Buffon having been appointed superintendent of the Jardin des Plantes, and having enriched this fine establishment, and gathered into it, from all parts of the world, various productions of nature, conceived the project of composing a natural history, which should embrace the whole immensity of being, animate and inanimate. He first laid down the theory of the earth, then treated the natural history of man, afterwards that of viviparous quadrupeds and birds. The first volumes of his work appeared in 1749; the most important of the supplementary matter which followed was the "Epochs of Nature." He gave incredible attention to his style, and is one of the most brilliant writers of the eighteenth century. No naturalist has ever equaled him in the magnificence of his theories, or the animation of his descriptions of the manners and habits of animals. It is said that he wrote the "Epochs of Nature" eleven times over. He not only recited his compositions aloud, in order to judge of the rhythm and cadence, but he made a point of being in full dress before he sat down to write, believing that the splendor of his habiliments impressed his language with that pomp and elegance which he so much admired, and which is his distinguishing characteristic. Buffon, while maintaining friendship with the celebrated men of his age, did not identify himself with the party of the encyclopaedists, or the sects into which they were divided. But he lived among men who deemed physical nature alone worthy of study, and the wits of the age who had succeeded in discovering how a Supreme Being might be dispensed with. Buffon evaded the subject entirely, and amid all his lofty soarings showed no disposition to rise to the Great First Cause. After his time, science lost its contemplative and poetical character, and acquired that of intelligent observation. It became a practical thing, and entered into close alliance with the arts. The arts and sciences, thus combined, became the glory of France, as literature had been in the preceding age.

The declining years of Voltaire and Rousseau witnessed no rising genius of similar power, but some authors of a secondary rank deserve notice. Marmontel (1728-1799) is distinguished as the writer of "Belisarius," a philosophical romance, "Moral Tales," and "Elements of Literature." He endeavors to lead his readers to the enjoyments of literature, instead of detaining them with frigid criticisms.

La Harpe (1739-1803) displayed great eloquence in literary criticism, and some of his works maintain their place, though they have little claim to originality.

Many writers devoted themselves to history, but the spirit of French philosophy was uncongenial to this species of composition, and the age does not afford one remarkable historian. The fame of the AbbÉ Raynal (1718-1796) rests chiefly on his "History of the Two Indies." It is difficult to conceive how a sober man could have arrived at such delirium of opinion, and how he could so complacently exhibit principles which tended to overthrow the whole system of society. Scarcely a crime was committed during the revolution, with which this century closes, but could find its advocate in this declaimer. When, however, Raynal found himself in the midst of the turmoils he had suggested, he behaved with justice, moderation, and courage; thus proving that his opinions were not the result of experience.

The days of true religious eloquence were past; faith was extinct among the greater part of the community, and cold and timid among the rest. Preachers, in deference to their audience, kept out of view whatever was purely religious, and enlarged on those topics which coincided with mere human morality. Religion was introduced only as an accessory which it was necessary to disguise skillfully, in order to escape derision. Genuine pulpit eloquence was out of the question under these circumstances.

Forensic eloquence had been improving in simplicity and seriousness since the commencement of the eighteenth century, and men of the law were now led by the circumstances of the times to trace out universal principles, rather than to discuss isolated facts. The eloquence of the bar thus acquired more extensive influence; the measures of the government converted it into a hostile power, and it furnished itself with weapons of reason and erudition which had not been thought of before.

We come now close upon the epoch when the national spirit was no longer to be traced in books, but in actions. The reign of Louis XV. had been marked with general disorder, and while he was sinking into the grave, amid the scorn of the people, the magistrates were punished for opposing the royal authority, and the public were indignant at the arbitrary proceeding. Beaumarchais (1732-1799) became the organ of this feeling, and his memoirs, like his comedies, are replete with enthusiasm, cynicism, and buffoonery. Literature was never so popular; it was regarded as the universal and powerful instrument which it behooved every man to possess. All grades of society were filled with authors and philosophers; the public mind was tending towards some change, without knowing what it would have; from the monarch on the throne to the lowest of the people, all perceived the utter discordance that prevailed between existing opinions and existing institutions.

In the midst of the dull murmur which announced the approaching storm, literature, as though its work of agitation had been completed, took up the shepherd's reed for public amusement. "Posterity would scarcely believe," says an eminent historian, "that 'Paul and Virginia' and the 'Indian Cottage' were composed at this juncture by Bernardin de St, Pierre, (1737-1814), as also the 'Fables of Florian' which are the only ones that have been considered readable since those of La Fontaine." About the same time appeared the "Voyage of Anacharsis," in which the AbbÉ BarthÉlemy (1716-1795) embodied his erudition in an attractive form, presenting a lively picture of Greece in the time of Pericles.

Among the more moral writers of this age was Necker (1732-1804), the financial minister of Louis XVI., who maintained the cause of religion against the torrent of public opinion in works distinguished for delicacy and elevation, seriousness and elegance.

When the storm at length burst, the country was exposed to every kind of revolutionary tyranny. The first actors in the work of destruction were, for the most part, actuated by good intentions; but these were soon superseded by men of a lower class, envious of all distinctions of rank and deeply imbued with the spirit of the philosophers. Some derived, from the writings of Rousseau, a hatred of everything above them; others had taken from Mably his admiration of the ancient republics of Greece and Rome, and would reproduce them in France; others had borrowed from Raynal the revolutionary torch which he had lighted for the destruction of all institutions; others, educated in the atheistic fanaticism of Diderot, trembled with rage at the very name of a priest or religion; and thus the Revolution was gradually handed over to the guidance of passion and personal interest.

In hurrying past these years of anarchy and bloodshed, we cast a glance upon the poet, AndrÉ ChÉnier (1762-1794), who dared to write against the excesses of his countrymen, in consequence of which he was cited before the revolutionary tribunal, condemned, and executed.

4. FRENCH LITERATURE UNDER THE EMPIRE.—Napoleon, on the establishment of the empire, gave great encouragement to the arts, but none to literature. Books were in little request; old editions were sold for a fraction of their original price; but new works were dear, because the demand for them was so limited. When literature again lifted its head, it appeared that in the chaos of events a new order of thought had been generated. The feelings of the people were for the freer forms of modern literature, introduced by Madame de StaËl and ChÂteaubriand, rather than the ancient classics and the French models of the seventeenth century.

Madame de StaËl (1766-1817) has been pronounced by the general voice to be among the greatest of all female authors. She was early introduced to the society of the cleverest men in Paris, with whom her father's house was a favorite resort; and before she was twelve years of age, such men as Raynal, Marmontel, and Grimm used to converse with her as though she were twenty, calling out her ready eloquence, inquiring into her studies, and recommending new books. She thus imbibed a taste for society and distinction, and for bearing her part in the brilliant conversation of the salon. At the age of twenty she became the wife of the Baron de StaËl, the Swedish minister at Paris. On her return, after the Reign of Terror, Madame de StaËl became the centre of a political society, and her drawing- rooms were the resort of distinguished foreigners, ambassadors, and authors. On the accession of Napoleon, a mutual hostility arose between him and this celebrated woman, which ended in her banishment and the suppression of her works.

"The Six Years of Exile" is the most simple and interesting of her productions. Her "Considerations on the French Revolution" is the most valuable of her political articles. Among her works of fiction, "Corinne" and "Delphine" have had the highest popularity. But of all her writings, that on "Germany" is considered worthy of the highest rank, and it was calculated to influence most beneficially the literature of her country, by opening to the rising generation of France unknown treasures of literature and philosophy. Writers like Delavigne, Lamartine, BÉranger, De Vigny, and Victor Hugo, though in no respect imitators of Madame de StaËl, are probably much indebted to her for the stimulus to originality which her writings afforded.

Another female author, who lived, like Madame de StaËl through the
Revolution, and exercised an influence on public events, was Madame de
Genlis (1746-1830). Her works, which extend to at least eighty volumes,
are chiefly educational treatises, moral tales, and historical romances.
Her political power depended rather on her private influence in the
Orleans family than upon her pen.

ChÂteaubriand (1769-1848) must be placed side by side with Madame de StaËl, as another of those brilliant and versatile geniuses who have dazzled the eyes of their countrymen, and exerted a permanent influence on French literature. While the eighteenth century had used against religion all the weapons of ridicule, he defended it by poetry and romance. Christianity he considered the most poetical of all religions, the most attractive, the most fertile in literary, social, and artistic results, and he develops his theme with every advantage of language and style in the "Genius of Christianity" and the "Martyrs." Some of the characteristics of ChÂteaubriand, however, have produced a seriously injurious effect on French literature, and of these the most contagious and corrupting is his passion for the glitter of words and the pageantry of high-sounding phrases.

The salutary reaction against skepticism, produced in literature by Madame de StaËl and ChÂteaubriand was carried into philosophy by Maine de Biran (1766-1824), and more particularly by Royer-Collard (1763-1846) who took a decided stand against the school of Condillac and the materialists of the eighteenth century. Royer-Collard restored its spiritual character to the science of the human mind, by introducing into it the psychological discoveries of the Scotch school. Benjamin Constant (1767-1830) infused into political science a spirit of freedom before quite unknown. In his works he attempted to limit the authority of the government, to build up society on personal freedom, and on the guaranties of individual right. His writings combine extraordinary power of logic with great variety and beauty of style.

Proceeding in another direction, Bonald (1753-1846) opposed the spirit of the French Revolution, by establishing the authority of the church as the only criterion of truth and morality. As Rousseau had placed sovereign power in the will of the people, Bonald placed it in that of God, as it is manifested to man through language and revelation, and of this revelation he regarded the Catholic church as the interpreter. He develops his doctrines in numerous works, especially in his "Primitive Legislation," which is characterized by boldness, dogmatism, sophistry in argument, and by severity and purity of style.

The peculiarities of Bonald were carried still farther by De Maistre (1755-1852), whose hatred of the Revolution led him into the system of an absolute theocracy, such as was dreamed of by Gregory VII. and Innocent III.

5. FRENCH LITERATURE FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE PRESENT TIME.—The influences already spoken of, in connection with the literary progress which began in Germany and England towards the close of the eighteenth century, produced in the beginning of the nineteenth century a revival in French literature; but the conflict of opinions, the immense number of authors, and their extraordinary fecundity, render it difficult to examine or classify them. We first notice the great advances in history and biography. Among the earlier specimens may be mentioned the voluminous works of Sismondi and the "Biographie Universelle," in fifty-two closely printed volumes, the most valuable body of biography that any modern literature can boast. Since 1830, historians and literary critics have occupied the foreground in French literature. The historians have divided themselves into two schools, the descriptive and the philosophical. With the one class history consists of a narration of facts in connection with a picture of manners, bringing scenes of the past vividly before the mind of the reader, leaving him to deduce general truths from the particular ones brought before him. The style of these writers is simple and manly, and no opinions of their own shine through their statements. The chief representatives of this class, who regard Sir Walter Scott as their master, are Thierry, Villemain, Barante, and in historical sketches and novels, Dumas and De Vigny.

The philosophical school, on the other hand, consider this scenic narrative more suitable to romance than to history; they seek in the events of the past the chain of causes and effects in order to arrive at general conclusions which may direct the conduct of men in the future. At the head of this school is Guizot (1787-1876), who has developed his historical views in his essays on the "History of France," and more particularly in his "History of European Civilization," in which he points out the origin of modern civilization, and follows the progress of the human mind from the fall of the Roman Empire. The philosophical historians have been again divided according to their different theories, but the most eminent of them are those whom ChÂteaubriand calls fatalists; men who, having surveyed the course of public events, have come to the conclusion that individual character has had little influence on the political destinies of mankind, that there is a general and inevitable series of events which regularly succeed each other with the certainty of cause and effect, and that it is as easy to trace it as it is impossible to resist or divert it from its course. A tendency to these views is visible in almost every French historian and philosopher of the present time. The philosophy of history thus grounded has, in their hands, assumed the aspect of a science.

HISTORY.—Among the celebrated writers who have combined the philosophical and narrative styles are the brothers AmadÉe and Augustine Thierry (1787- 1873), (1795-1856), who produced a "History of the Gauls," of "The Norman Conquest," and other excellent works; Sismondi (1773-1842), whose history of the "Italian Republics" and of the "French People" are characterized by immense erudition; Thiers (1797-1877), whose clearness of style is combined with comprehensiveness and eloquence; Mignet (1796-1884), celebrated for his history of the French Revolution. The voluminous "History of France," by Henri Martin (1810-1884), is perhaps the best and most important work treating the whole subject in detail.

The downfall of the July Monarchy brought forth works of importance on this subject, the most noted of which are those by Lamartine, Michelet, and Louis Blanc. Lamartine's "History of the Girondins" was written from a constitutional and republican point of view, and was not without influence in producing the Revolution of 1848, but it is the work of an orator and poet rather than that of a historian. The historical and political works of Michelet (1778-1873) are of a more original character; his imaginative powers are of the highest order, and his style is striking and picturesque. The work of Louis Blanc (1813-1883) is that of a sincere and ardent republican, and is useful from that point of view, as is that of Quinet (1803-1875). Lanfrey places the character of Napoleon in a new and far from favorable light. Taine, so distinguished in literary criticism, has discussed elaborately the causes of the Revolution.

POETRY AND THE DRAMA; RISE OF THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL.—During the Middle Ages men of letters followed each other in the cultivation of certain literary forms, often with little regard to their adaptation to the subject. The vast extension of thought and knowledge in the sixteenth century broke up the old forms and introduced the practice of treating each subject in a manner more or less appropriate to it. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed a return to the observance of arbitrary rules, though the evil effects were somewhat counterbalanced by the enlargement of thought and the increasing knowledge of other literature, ancient and modern. The great Romantic movement, which began in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, repeated on a larger scale the movement of the sixteenth to break up and discard many stiff and useless literary forms, to give strength and variety to such as were retained, and to enrich the language by new inventions and revivals. The supporters of this reform long maintained an animated controversy with the adherents of the classical school, and it was only after several years that the younger combatants came out victorious. The objects of the school were so violently opposed that the king was petitioned to forbid the admission of any Romantic drama at the ThÉÂtre FranÇais, the petitioners asserting that the object of their adversaries was to burn everything that had been adored and to adore everything that had been burned. The representation of Victor Hugo's "Hernani" was the culmination of the struggle, and since that time all the greatest men of letters in France have been on the innovating side. In belles-lettres and history the result has been most remarkable. Obsolete rules which had so long regulated the French stage have been abolished; poetry not dramatic has been revived; prose romance and literary criticism have been brought to a degree of perfection previously unknown; and in history more various and remarkable works have been produced than ever before, while the modern French language, if it lacks the precision and elegance to which from 1680 to 1800 all else had been sacrificed, has become a much more suitable instrument for the accurate and copious treatment of scientific subjects. At the time of the accession of Charles X. (1824), the only writers of eminence were BÉranger (1780-1857), Lamartine (1790-1869), and Lamennais (1782-1854), and they mark the transition between the old and new. BÉranger was the poet of the people; most of his earlier compositions were political, extolling the greatness of the fallen empire or bewailing the low state of France under the restored dynasty. They were received with enthusiasm and sung from one end of the country to the other. His later songs exhibit a not unpleasing change from the audacious and too often licentious tone of his earlier days. In the hands of Lamartine the language, softened and harmonized, loses that clear epigrammatic expression which, before him, had appeared inseparable from French poetry. His works are pervaded by an earnest religious feeling and a rare delicacy of expression. "Jocelyn," a romance in verse, the "Meditations," and "Harmonies" are among his best works.

Victor Hugo (b. 1800) at the age of twenty-five was the acknowledged master in poetry as in the drama, and this position he still holds. In him all the Romantic characteristics are expressed and embodied,—disregard of arbitrary rules, free choice of subjects, variety and vigor of metre, and beauty of diction. His poetical influence has been represented in three different schools, corresponding in point of time with the first outburst of the movement, a brief period of reaction, and the closing years of the second empire. Of the first, ThÉophile Gautier (1811-1872) was the most distinguished member. The next generation produced those remarkable poets, Theodore de Banville (b. 1820), who composed a large amount of verse faultless in form and exquisite in shade and color, but so neutral in tone that it has found few admirers, and Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), who offends by the choice of unpopular subjects and the terrible truth of his analysis.

The poems of De Vigny are sweet and elegant, though somewhat lacking in the energy belonging to lyric composition. Those of Alfred de Musset (1800-1857) are among the finest in the language.

The Gascon poet Jasmin has produced a good deal of verse in the western dialect of the Langue d'oc, and recently a more cultivated and literary school of poets has arisen in Provence, the chief of whom is Mistral.

The effect of the Romantic movement on the drama has been the introduction of a species of play called the drame, as opposed to regular comedy and tragedy, and admitting of freer treatment. Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas (1803-1874), Victorien Sardou (b. 1831), Alexandre Dumas fils (b. 1821), LegouvÉ (b. 1807), Scribe (1791-1861), Octave Feuillet (b. 1812), have produced works of this class.

The literature of France during the last generation has been prolific in dramas and romances, all of which indicate a chaos of opinion. It is not professedly infidel, like that of the eighteenth century, nor professedly pietistic, like that of the seventeenth. It seems to have no general aim, the opinions and efforts of the authors being seldom consistent with themselves for any length of time. No one can deny that this literature engages the reader's most intense interest by the seductive sagacity of the movement, the variety of incident, and the most perfect command of those means calculated to produce certain ends.

In 1866 appeared a collection of poems, "Le Parnasse Contemporain," which included contributions of many poets already named, and of others unknown. Two other collections followed, one in 1869 and one in 1876, by numerous contributors, who have mostly published separate works. They are called collectively, half seriously and half in derision, "Les Parnassiens." Their cardinal principle is a devotion to poetry as an art, with diversity of aim and subject. Of these, CoppÉe devotes himself to domestic and social subjects; Louise Siefert indulges in the poetry of despair; Glatigny excels all in individuality of poetical treatment. The Parnassiens number three or four score poets; the average of their work is high, though to none can be assigned the first rank.

FICTION.—Previous to 1830 no writer of fiction had formed a school, nor had this form of literature been cultivated to any great extent. From the immense influence of Walter Scott, or from other causes, there suddenly appeared a remarkable group of novelists, Hugo, Gautier, Dumas, MÉrimÉe, Balzac, George Sand, Sandeau, Charles de Bernard, and others scarcely inferior. It is remarkable that the excellence of the first group has been maintained by a new generation, Murger, About, Feuillet, Flaubert, Erckmann-Chatrian, Droz, Daudet, Cherbulliez, Gaboriau, Dumas fils, and others.

During this period the romance-writing of France has taken two different directions. The first, that of the novel of incident, of which Scott was the model; the second, that of analysis and character, illustrated by the genius of Balzac and George Sand. The stories of Hugo are novels of incident with ideal character painting. Dumas's works are dramatic in character and charming for their brilliancy and wit. His "Trois Mousquetaires" and "Monte Christo" are considered his best novels. Of a similar kind are the novels of Eugene Sue. Both writers were followed by a crowd of companions and imitators. The taste for the novel of incident, which had nearly died out, was renewed in another form, with the admixture of domestic interest, by the literary partners, Erckmann-Chatrian.

ThÉophile Gautier modified the incident novel in many short tales, a kind of writing for which the French have always been famous, and of which the writings of Gautier were masterpieces. With him may be classed Prosper MÉrimÉe (1803-1871), one of the most exquisite masters of the language.

Since 1830 the tendency has been towards novels of contemporary life. The two great masters of the novel of character and manners, as opposed to that of history and incident, are HonorÉ de Balzac (1799-1850) and Aurore Dudevant, commonly called George Sand (d. 1876), whose early writings are strongly tinged with the spirit of revolt against moral and social arrangements: later she devoted herself to studies of country life and manners, involving bold sketches of character and dramatic situations. One of the most remarkable characteristics of her work is the apparently inexhaustible imagination with which she continued to the close of her long life to pour forth many volumes of fiction year after year. Balzac, as a writer, was equally productive. In the "ComÉdie Humaine" he attempted to cover the whole ground of human, or at least of French life, and the success he attained was remarkable. The influence of these two writers affected the entire body of those who succeeded them with very few exceptions. Among these are Jules Sandeau, whose novels are distinguished by minute character-drawing in tones of a sombre hue.

Saintine, the author of "Picciola," Mme. Craven (ReÇit d'une Soeur), Henri Beyle, who, under the nom de plume of Stendhal, wrote the "Chartreuse de Parme," a powerful novel of the analytical kind, and Henri Murger, a painter of Bohemian life. Octave Feuillet has attained great popularity in romances of fashionable life. Gustave Flaubert (b. 1821), with great acuteness and knowledge of human nature, combines scholarship and a power over the language not surpassed by any writer of the century. Edmond About (b. 1828) is distinguished by his refined wit. One of the most popular writers of the second empire is Ernest Feydeau (1821-1874), a writer of great ability, but morbid and affected in the choice and treatment of his subjects. Of late, many writers of the realist school have striven to outdo their predecessors in carrying out the principles of Balzac; among these are Gaboriau, Cherbulliez, Droz, BÉlot, Alphonse Daudet.

CRITICISM.—Previous to the Romantic movement in France the office of criticism had been to compare all literary productions with certain established rules, and to judge them accordingly. The theory of the new school was, that a work should be judged by itself alone or by the author's ideal. The great master of this school was Sainte-Beuve (1804- 1869), who possessed a rare combination of great and accurate learning, compass and profundity of thought, and above all sympathy in judgment. Hippolyte Taine (b. 1828), the most brilliant of living French critics, ThÉophile Gautier, ArsÈne Houssaye, Jules Janin (d. 1874), Sarcey, and others, are distinguished in this branch of letters.

MISCELLANEOUS.—Among earlier writers of the nineteenth century are Sismondi, whose "Literature of Southern Europe" remains without a rival, the work of GinguenÉ on "Italian Literature," and of Renouard on "ProvenÇal Poetry." In intellectual philosophy Jouffroy and Damiron continued the work begun by Royer-Collard, that of destroying the influence of sensualism and materialism. The philosophical writings of Cousin (1792-1867) are models of didactic prose, and in his work on "The Beautiful, True, and Good" he raises the science of aesthetics to its highest dignity. Lamennais (1782-1854) exhibits in his writings various phases of religious thought, ending in rationalism. Comte (1798-1857), in his "Positive Philosophy," shows power of generalization and force of logic, though tending to atheism and socialism. De Tocqueville and Chevalier are distinguished in political science, the former particularly for his able work on "Democracy in America." Renan (b. 1823) is a prominent name in theological writing, and Montalembert (1810-1870) a historian with strong religious tendencies.

Among the orators Lacordaire, PÈre Felix, PÈre Hyacinthe, and Coquerel are best known.

Among the women of France distinguished for their literary abilities are Mme. Durant, who, under the name of Henri Greville, has given, in a series of tales, many charming pictures of Russian life, Mlle. Clarisse Bader, who has produced valuable historical works on the condition of women in all ages, and Mme. Adam, a brilliant writer and journalist.

In science, Pasteur and Milne-Edwards hold the first rank in biology, Paul
Bert in physiology, and Quatrefages in anthropology of races.

athers. Though others may have been more learned or masters of a purer style, none more powerfully touched and warmed the heart towards religion. His "City of God" is one of the great monuments of human genius. St. Jerome (330-420) wrote many epistles full of energy and affection, as well as of religious zeal. He made a Latin version of the Old Testament, which was the foundation of the Vulgate, and which gave a new impulse to the study of the Holy Scriptures. Leo the Great (fl. 440) is the first pope whose writings have been preserved. They consist of sermons and letters. His style is finished and rhetorical.

10. ROMAN JURISPRUDENCE.—In the period which followed, from the death of Augustus to the time of the Antonines, Roman civilians and legal writers continued to be numerous, and as a professional body they seem to have enjoyed high consideration until the close of the reign of Alexander Severus, 385* A.D. After that time they were held in much less estimation, as the science fell into the hands of freedmen and plebeians, who practiced it as a sordid and pernicious trade. With the reign of Constantine, the credit of the profession revived, and the youth of the empire were stimulated to pursue the study of the law by the hope of being ultimately rewarded by honorable and lucrative offices, the magistrates being almost wholly taken from the class of lawyers. Two jurists of this reign, Gregorianus and Hermogenianus, are particularly distinguished as authors of codes which are known by their names, and which were recognized as standard authorities in courts of justice. The "Code of Theodosius" was a collection of laws reduced by that emperor, and promulgated in both empires 438 A.D. It retained its authority in the western empire until its final overthrow, 476 A.D., and even after this, though modified by the institutions of the conquerors. In the eastern empire, it was only superseded by the code of Justinian. This emperor undertook the task of reducing to order and system the great confusion and perplexity in which the whole subject of Roman jurisprudence was involved. For this purpose he employed the most eminent lawyers, with the celebrated Tribonian at their head, to whom he intrusted the work of forming and publishing a complete collection of the preceding laws and edicts, and who devoted several years of unwearied labor and research to this object. They first collected and reduced the imperial constitutions from the time of Hadrian downwards, which was promulgated as the "Justinian Code." Their next labor was to reduce the writings of the jurisconsults of the preceding ages, especially those who had lived under the empire, and whose works are said to have amounted to two thousand volumes. This work was published 533 A.D., under the title of "Pandects," or "Digest," the former title referring to their completeness as comprehending the whole of Roman jurisprudence, and the latter to their methodical arrangement. At the same time, a work prepared by Tribonian was published by the order of the emperor, on the elements or first principles of Roman law, entitled "Institutes," and another collection consisting of constitutions and edicts, under the title of "Novels," chiefly written in Greek, but known to the moderns by a Latin translation. These four works, the Code, the Pandects, the Institutes, and the Novels, constituted what is now called the Body of Roman Law.

The system of jurisprudence established by Justinian remained in force in the eastern empire until the taking of Constantinople, 1453 A.D. After the fall of the western empire, these laws had little sway until the twelfth century, when Irnerius, a German lawyer who had studied at Constantinople, opened a school at Bologna, and thus revived and propagated in the West a knowledge of Roman civil law. Students flocked to this school from all parts, and by them Roman jurisprudence, as embodied in the system of Justinian, was transmitted to most of the countries of Europe.

During the fourth and fifth centuries, the process of the debasement of the Roman tongue went on with great rapidity. The influence of the provincials began what the irruptions of the northern tribes consummated. In many scattered parts of the empire it is probable that separate Latin dialects arose, and the strain upon the whole structure of the tongue was prodigious, when the Goths poured into Italy, established themselves in the capital, and began to speak and write in a language previously foreign to them. With the close of the reign of Theodoric the curtain falls upon ancient literature.

, and it is difficult to conceive how so grand and beautiful a whole could be formed on a plan so trivial and irregular. The plan has been compared to a scaffolding surrounded and concealed by a majestic building, serving to connect its parts, but having no share in producing the unity of the effect. One of the most affecting and beautiful of all the passages of the Lusiad, is the narrative of the tragical fate of IÑez de Castro, who, after her death, was proclaimed queen of Portugal, upon the accession of her lover to the throne.

In the poems of CamoËns we find examples of every species of composition practiced in his age and country. Some of them bear the impress of his personal character, and of his sad and agitated career. A wild tone of sorrow runs through them, which strikes the ear like wailings heard through the gloom of midnight and darkness. We know not by what calamity they were called forth, but it is the voice of grief, and it awakens an answering throb within the breast.

6. DRAMATIC POETRY.—The drama is quite a barren field in Portuguese literature. The stage of Lisbon has been occupied almost exclusively by the Italian opera and Spanish comedy. Only one poet of any name has written in the Portuguese spirit. This was Gil Vicente (1490-1556). He resided constantly at the court, and was employed in providing occasional pieces for its civil and religious festivities. It is probable that he was an actor, and it is certain that he educated for the stage his daughter, Paula, who was equally celebrated as an actress, a poetess, and a musician. The dramas of Vicente consist of autos, comedies, tragi- comedies, and farces. The autos, or religious pieces, were written chiefly to furnish entertainment for the court on Christmas night. The shepherds had naturally an important part assigned to them, and the whole was pervaded by the pastoral feeling which distinguishes them remarkably from the Spanish autos. But the best productions of this author are his farces, which approach much nearer to the style of true comedy than the plays published under that name.

Saa de Miranda, desirous of conferring on his country a classical theatre, produced two erudite comedies, but he was born a pastoral poet, and made himself a dramatist only by imitation. Ferreira belonged to the same school, and the favor bestowed by the court on the dramas of these two poets, was one obstacle to the formation of a national drama. Another was, the pertinacious attachment of the Portuguese to pastoral poetry, and nothing could be more contrary to dramatic life than the languor, sentimentality, and monotony peculiar to the eclogue.

7. PROSE WRITING.—After CamoËns, Saa de Miranda, and Ferreira, the language and the literature of Portugal are indebted to no other writer so much as to Rodriguez Lobo (b. 1558). The history of Portuguese eloquence may be said to commence with him, for he laid so good a foundation for the cultivation of a pure prose style that, in every effort to obtain classic perfection, subsequent writers have merely followed in his steps. His verse is nowise inferior to his prose. Among his poetic works appears a whole series of historic romances, written by way of ridiculing that species of composition.

Lobo stood alone, in the sixteenth century, in his efforts to improve the prose of his country. Gongorism had, meanwhile, introduced bombast and metaphorical obscurity, and no writer of eminence arose to attempt a more natural style, till the end of the seventeenth century.

Foremost among those who undertook to relate the history of their country, especially of her oriental discoveries, and who communicated to their records an ardent patriotic feeling, is Barros (1496-1571); he took Livy for his model, and his labors are worthy of honorable notice. India was the favorite topic of Portuguese historians; and several similar works, but inferior to that of Barros, appeared in the same age. Bernardo de Brito (d. 1617) undertook the task of compiling a history of Portugal. His narration begins with the creation of the world, and breaks off where the history of modern Portugal commences. It is eminently distinguished for style and descriptive talent. The biography of Juan de Castro, written by Jacinto de Andrade, is considered as a masterpiece of the Portuguese prose.

The conquered Indians found an eloquent defender in Veira (1608-1697), a Catholic missionary, who spent a great part of his life in the deserts of South America, and wrote catechisms in different languages for the use of the natives. Having returned to the court of John IV., he undertook to defend the natural rights of Indians against the rapacity of the conquerors. He undertook also the defense of the Jews in his native country, and showed so much interest in their cause that he was twice brought before the Inquisition. His sermons and letters are models of prose writings, full of the inspiration which springs from the boldness of his subjects.

8. PORTUGUESE LITERATURE IN THE SEVENTEENTH, EIGHTEENTH, AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES.—Portuguese literature during the seventeenth century would present an utter blank, but for the few literary productions to which we have alluded. Previous to that time, patriotic valor and romantic enterprise expanded the national genius; but before it could mature, the despotism of the monarchy, the horrors of the Inquisition, and the influence of wealth and luxury, had done their work of destruction, and the prostrate nation had in the seventeenth century reaped the bitter fruits. The most brilliant period of Portuguese poetry had passed away, and no new era commenced. The flame of patriotism was extinct, Brazil was the only colony that remained, the spirit of national enterprise was no more, and a general lethargy overspread the nation. Labor was reckoned a disgrace, commerce a degradation, and agriculture too fatiguing for even the lowest classes of the community. Both Spain and Portugal felt the paralyzing influence of their humbled position in the scale of nations, and civil and religious despotism had overthrown, in both countries, the intellectual power which had so long withstood its degrading influence.

Thousands of sonnets, chiefly of an amorous nature, filled up the seventeenth century in Portugal, while Spain was exhausting its expiring energies in dramas. Souza, the most eminent of the sonneteers, alone produced six hundred. In the first, he announces that the collection is designed to celebrate "the penetrating shafts of love, which were shot from a pair of heavenly eyes, and which, after inflicting immortal wounds, issued triumphant from the poet's breast."

In the eighteenth century, the influence of French taste crept quietly into the literature as well as the manners of the Portuguese nation. Royal academies of history and language were founded, and an academy of sciences, which, since 1792, has exercised an influence over literary taste, and given birth to many excellent treatises on philosophy and criticism.

About the year 1735, the nation seemed on the eve of possessing a drama of its own. Antonio JosÉ, an obscure Jew, composed a number of comic operas, in the vernacular tongue, which had long been banished from the theatre of Lisbon. In spite of much coarseness, their genuine humor and familiar gayety excited the greatest enthusiasm, and for ten years the theatre was crowded with delighted audiences. But the Jew was seized and burnt, by order of the Inquisition, at the last auto da fÉ, which took place in 1745, and the theatre was closed.

Although French literature continued to exert its influence in the beginning of the nineteenth century, masterpieces of English literature at that time found their way into Portugal, and excited much admiration and imitation. Manuel do Nascimento (1734-1819) is the representative of the classic style, and his works, both in poetry and prose, are distinguished by purity of language. Manuel de Bocage (1766-1805) is one of the most celebrated modern poets, and though his poems are not examples of refined taste or elegance of style, they evince enthusiasm and poetical fire. Among the poets of the present day, there are some who have emancipated themselves from the imitation of foreign models, and have attempted to combine the earliest national elements of their literature with the characteristic tendencies of the present age.

t by borrowing from the French. A collection of Indian tales, translated into Latin in the tenth or eleventh century, was the first storehouse of the trouvÈres. The Arabian tales, transmitted by the Moors to the Castilians, and by the latter to the French, were in turn versified. But above all, the anecdotes collected in the towns and castles of France, the adventures of lovers, the tricks of gallants, and the numerous subjects gathered from the manners of the age, afforded inexhaustible materials for ludicrous narratives to the writers of these tales. They were treasures common to all. We seldom know the name of the trouvÈre by whom these anecdotes were versified. As they were related, each one varied them according to the impression he wished to produce. At this period there were neither theatrical entertainments nor games at cards to fill up the leisure hours of society, and the trouvÈres or relators of the tales were welcomed at the courts, castles, and private houses with an eagerness proportioned to the store of anecdotes which they brought with them to enliven conversation. Whatever was the subject of their verse, legends, miracles, or licentious anecdotes, they were equally acceptable. These tales were the models of those of Boccaccio, La Fontaine, and others. Some of them have had great fame, and have passed from tongue to tongue, and from age to age, down to our own times. Several of them have been introduced upon the stage, and others formed the originals of Parnell's "Hermit," of the "ZaÏre" of Voltaire, and of the "Renard," which Goethe has converted into a long poem. But perhaps the most interesting and celebrated of all the fabliaux is that of "Aucassin and Nicolette," which has furnished the subject for a well-known opera.

It was at this period, when the ancient drama was entirely forgotten, that a dramatic form was given to the great events which accompanied the establishment of the Christian religion. The first to introduce this grotesque species of composition, were the pilgrims who had returned from the Holy Land. In the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, their dramatic representations were first exhibited in the open streets; but it was only at the conclusion of the fourteenth that a company of pilgrims undertook to amuse the public by regular dramatic entertainments. They were called the Fraternity of the Passion, from the passion of our Saviour being one of their most celebrated representations. This mystery, the most ancient dramatic work of modern Europe, comprehends the whole history of our Lord, from his baptism to his death. The piece was too long for one representation, and was therefore continued from day to day. Eighty-seven characters successively appear in this mystery, among whom are the three persons of the Trinity, angels, apostles, devils, and a host of other personages, the invention of the poet's brain. To fill the comic parts, the dialogues of the devils were introduced, and their eagerness to maltreat one another always produced much laughter in the assembly. Extravagant machinery was employed to give to the representation the pomp which we find in the modern opera; and this drama, placing before the eyes of a Christian assembly all those incidents for which they felt the highest veneration, must have affected them much more powerfully than even the finest tragedies can do at the present day.

The mystery of the Passion was followed by a crowd of imitations. The whole of the Old Testament, and the lives of all the saints, were brought upon the stage. The theatre on which these mysteries were represented was always composed of an elevated scaffold divided into three parts,—heaven, hell, and the earth between them. The proceedings of the Deity and Lucifer might be discerned in their respective abodes, and angels descended and devils ascended, as their interference in mundane affairs was required. The pomp of these representations went on increasing for two centuries, and, as great value was set upon the length of the piece, some mysteries could not be represented in less than forty days.

The "Clerks of the Revels," an incorporated society at Paris, whose duty it was to regulate the public festivities, resolved to amuse the people with dramatic representations themselves, but as the Fraternity of the Passion had obtained a royal license to represent the mysteries, they were compelled to abstain from that kind of exhibition. They therefore invented a new one, to which they gave the name of "Moralities," and which differed little from the mysteries, except in name. They were borrowed from the Parables, or the historical parts of the Bible, or they were purely allegorical. To the Clerks of the Revels we also owe the invention of modern comedy. They mingled their moralities with farces, the sole object of which was to excite laughter, and in which all the gayety and vivacity of the French character were displayed. Some of these plays still retain their place upon the French stage. At the commencement of the fifteenth century another comic company was established, who introduced personal and even political satire upon the stage. Thus every species of dramatic representation was revived by the French. This was the result of the talent for imitation so peculiar to the French people, and of that pliancy of thought and correctness of intellect which enables them to conceive new characters. All these inventions, which led to the establishment of the Romantic drama in other countries, were known in France more than a century before the rise of the Spanish or Italian theatre, and even before the classical authors were first studied and imitated. At the end of the sixteenth century, these new pursuits acquired a more immediate influence over the literature of France, and wrought a change in its spirit and rules, without, however, altering the national character and taste which had been manifested in the earliest productions of the trouvÈres.

3. FRENCH LITERATURE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.—French had as yet been merely a popular language; it varied from province to province, and from author to author, because no masterpiece had inaugurated any one of its numerous dialects. It was disdained by the more serious writers, who continued to employ the Latin. In the fifteenth century literature assumed a somewhat wider range, and the language began to take precision and force. But with much general improvement and literary industry there was still nothing great or original, nothing to mark an epoch in the history of letters. The only poets worthy of notice were Charles, Duke of Orleans (1391-1465), and Villon, a low ruffian of Paris (1431-1500). Charles was taken prisoner at the battle of Agincourt, and carried to England, where he was detained for twenty-five years, and where he wrote a volume of poems in which he imitated the allegorical style of the Romance of the Rose. The verses of Villon were inspired by the events of his not very creditable life. Again and again he suffered imprisonment for petty larcenies, and at the age of twenty-five was condemned to be hanged. His language is not that of the court, but of the people; and his poetry marks the first sensible progress after the Romance of the Rose.

It has been well said that literature begins with poetry; but it is established by prose, which fixes the language. The earliest work in French prose is the chronicle of Ville-Hardouin (1150-1213), written in the thirteenth century. It is a personal narrative and relates with graphic particularity the conquest of Constantinople by the knights of Christendom. This ancient chronicle traces out for us some of the realities, of which the mediaeval romances were the ideal, and enables us to judge in a measure how far these romances embody substantial truth.

A great improvement in style is apparent in Joinville (1223-1317), the amiable and light-hearted ecclesiastic who wrote the Life of St. Louis, whom he had accompanied to the Holy Land, and whose pious adventures he affectionately records. Notwithstanding the anarchy which prevailed in France during the fourteenth century, some social progress was made; but while public events were hostile to poetry, they gave inspiration to the historic muse, and Froissart arose to impart vivacity of coloring to historic narrative.

Froissart (1337-1410) was an ecclesiastic of the day, but little in his life or writings bespeaks the sacred calling. Having little taste for the duties of his profession, he was employed by the Lord of Montfort to compose a chronicle of the wars of the time; but there were no books to tell him of the past, no regular communication between nations to inform him of the present; so he followed the fashion of knights errant, and set out on horseback, not to seek adventures, but, as an itinerant historian, to find materials for his chronicle. He wandered from town to town, and from castle to castle, to see the places of which he would write, and to learn events on the spot where they occurred. His first journey was to England; here he was employed by Queen Philippa of Hainault to accompany the Duke of Clarence to Milan, where he met Boccaccio and Chaucer. He afterwards passed into the service of several of the princes of Europe, to whom he acted as secretary and poet, always gleaning material for historic record. His book is an almost universal history of the different states of Europe, from 1322 to the end of the fourteenth century. He troubles himself with no explanations or theories of cause and effect, nor with the philosophy of state policy; he is simply a graphic story-teller. Sir Walter Scott called Froissart his master.

Philippe de Commines (1445-1509) was a man of his age, but in advance of it, combining the simplicity of the fifteenth century with the sagacity of a later period. An annalist, like Froissart, he was also a statesman, and a political philosopher; embracing, like Machiavelli and Montesquieu, the remoter consequences which flowed from the events he narrated and the principles he unfolded. He was an unscrupulous diplomat in the service of Louis XI., and his description of the last years of that monarch is a striking piece of history, whence poets and novelists have borrowed themes in later times. But neither the romance of Sir Walter Scott nor the song of BÉranger does justice to the reality, as presented by the faithful Commines.

PERIOD SECOND.

THE RENAISSANCE AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH LITERATURE (1500-1700).

1. THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION.—During the preceding ages, erudition and civilization had not gone hand-in-hand. On the one side there was the bold, chivalric mind of young Europe, speaking with the tongues of yesterday, while on the other was the ecclesiastical mind, expressing itself in degenerate Latin. The one was a life of gayety and rude disorder—the life of court and castle as depicted in the literature just scanned; the other, that of men separated from the world, who had been studying the literary remains of antiquity, and transcribing and treasuring them for future generations. Hitherto these two sections had held their courses apart; now they were to meet and blend in harmony. The vernacular poets, on the one hand, borrowing thought and expression from the classics, and the clergy, on the other, becoming purveyors of light literature to the court circles.

The fifteenth century, though somewhat barren, had prepared for the fecundity of succeeding ages. The revival of the study of ancient literature, which was promoted by the downfall of Constantinople, the invention of printing, the discovery of the new world, the decline of feudalism, and the consequent elevation of the middle classes,—all concurred to promote a rapid improvement of the human intellect.

During the early part of the sixteenth century, all the ardor of the French mind was turned to the study of the dead languages; men of genius had no higher ambition than to excel in them, and many in their declining years went in their gray hairs to the schools where the languages of Homer and Cicero were taught. In civil and political society, the same enthusiasm manifested itself in the imitation of antique manners; people dressed in the Greek and Roman fashions, borrowed from them the usages of life, and made a point of dying like the heroes of Plutarch.

The religious reformation came soon after to restore the Christian, as the revival of letters had brought back the pagan antiquity. Ignorance was dissipated, and religion was disengaged from philosophy. The Renaissance, as the revival of antique learning was called, and the Reformation, at first made common cause. One of those who most eagerly imbibed the spirit of both was the Princess Marguerite de Valois (1492-1549), elder sister of Francis I., who obtained the credit of many generous actions which were truly hers. The principal work of this lady was "L'HeptamÉron," or the History of the Fortunate Lovers, written on the plan and in the spirit of the Decameron of Boccaccio, a work which a lady of our times would be unwilling to own acquaintance with, much more to adopt as a model; but the apology for Marguerite must be found in the manners of the times. L'HeptamÉron is the earliest French prose that can be read without a glossary.

In 1518, when Margaret was twenty-six years of age, she received from her brother a gifted poet as valet-de-chambre; this was Marot (1495-1544), between whom and the learned princess a poetical intercourse was maintained. Marot had imbibed the principles of Calvin, and had also drank deeply of the spirit of the Renaissance; but he displayed the poet more truly before he was either a theologian or a classical scholar. He may be considered the last type of the old French school, of that combination of grace and archness, of elegance and simplicity, of familiarity and propriety, which is a national characteristic of French poetic literature, and in which they have never been imitated.

Francis Rabelais (1483-1553) was one of the most remarkable persons that figured in the Renaissance, a learned scholar, physician, and philosopher, though known to posterity chiefly as an obscene humorist. He is called by Lord Bacon "the great jester of France." He was at first a monk of the Franciscan order, but he afterwards threw off the sacerdotal character, and studied medicine. From about the year 1534, Rabelais was in the service of the Cardinal Dubellay, and a favorite in the court circles of Paris and Rome. It was probably during this period that he published, in successive parts, the work on which his popular fame has rested, the "Lives of Gargantua and Pantagruel." It consists of the lives and adventures of these two gigantic heroes, father and son, with the waggeries and practical jokes of Panurge, their jongleur, and the blasphemies and obscenities of Friar John, a fighting, swaggering, drinking monk. With these are mingled dissertations, sophistries, and allegorical satires in abundance. The publication of the work created a perfect uproar at the Sorbonne, and among the monks who were its principal victims; but the cardinals enjoyed its humor, and protected its author, while the king, Francis I., pronounced it innocent and delectable. It became the book of the day, and passed through countless editions and endless commentaries; and yet it is agreed on all hands that there exists not another work, admitted as literature, that would bear a moment's comparison with it, for indecency, profanity, and repulsive and disgusting coarseness. His work is now a mere curiosity for the student of antique literature.

As Rabelais was the leading type of the Renaissance, so was Calvin (1509- 1564) of the Reformation. Having embraced the principles of Luther, he went considerably farther in his views. In 1532 he established himself at Geneva, where he organized a church according to his own ideas. In 1535 he published his "Institutes of the Christian Religion," distinguished for great severity of doctrine. His next most celebrated work is a commentary on the Scriptures.

Intellect continued to struggle with its fetters. Many, like Rabelais, mistrusted the whole system of ecclesiastical polity established by law, and yet did not pin their faith on the dictates of the austere Calvin. The almost inevitable consequence was a wide and universal skepticism, replacing the former implicit subjection to Romanism.

The most eminent type of this school was Montaigne (1533-1592), who, in his "Essays," shook the foundations of all the creeds of his day, without offering anything to replace them. He is considered the earliest philosophical writer in French prose, the first of those who contributed to direct the minds of his countrymen to the study of human nature. In doing so, he takes himself as his subject; he dissects his feelings, emotions, and tendencies with the coolness of an operating surgeon. To a singular power of self-investigation and an acute observation of the actions of men, he added great affluence of thought and excursiveness of fancy, which render him, in spite of his egotism, a most attractive writer. As he would have considered it dishonest to conceal anything about himself, he has told much that our modern ideas of decorum would deem better untold.

Charron (1541-1603), the friend and disciple of Montaigne, was as bold a thinker, though inferior as a writer. In his book, "De la Sagesse," he treats religion as a mere matter of speculation, a system of dogmas without practical influence. Other writers followed in the same steps, and affected, like him, to place skepticism at the service of good morals. "License," says a French writer, "had to come before liberty, skepticism before philosophical inquiry, the school of Montaigne before that of Descartes." On the other hand, St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), in his "Introduction to a Devout Life," and other works, taught that the only cure for the evils of human nature was to be found in the grace which was revealed by Christianity.

In these struggles of thought, in this conflict of creeds, the language acquired vigor and precision. In the works of Calvin, it manifested a seriousness of tone, and a severe purity of style which commanded general respect. An easy, natural tone was imparted to it by Amyot (1513-1593), professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Paris, who enriched the literature with elegant translations, in which he blended Hellenic graces with those strictly French.

2. LIGHT LITERATURE.—Ronsard (1524-1585), the favorite poet of Mary Queen of Scots, flourished at the time that the rage for ancient literature was at its height. He traced the first outlines of modern French poetry, and introduced a higher style of poetic thought and feeling than had hitherto been known. To him France owes the first attempt at the ode and the heroic epic; in the former, he is regarded as the precursor of Malherbe, who is still looked on as a model in this style, But Ronsard, and the numerous school which he formed, not only imitated the spirit and form of the ancients, but aimed to subject his own language to combinations and inversions like those of the Greek and Latin, and foreign roots and phrases began to overpower the reviving flexibility of the French idiom.

Under this influence, the drama was restored by Jodelle (1532-1573) and others, in the shape of imitations and translations. Towards the end of the century, however, there appeared a reaction against this learned tragedy, led by Alexander Hardy (1560-1631), who, with little or no original genius, produced about twelve hundred plays. He borrowed in every direction, and imitated the styles of all nations. But the general taste, however, soon returned to the Greek and Roman school.

The glorious reign of Henry IV. had been succeeded by the stormy minority of Louis XIII., when Malherbe (1556-1628), the tyrant of words and syllables, appeared as the reformer of poetry. He attracted attention by ridiculing the style of Ronsard. He became the laureate of the court, and furnished for it that literature in which it was beginning to take delight. In the place of Latin and Greek French, he inaugurated the extreme of formality; the matter of his verse was made subordinate to the manner; he substituted polish for native beauty, and effect for genuine feeling.

I. de Balzac (1594-1624), in his frivolous epistles, used prose as Malherbe did verse, and a numerous school of the same character was soon formed. The works of Voiture (1598-1648) abound in the pleasantries and affected simplicity which best befit such compositions. The most trifling adventure—the death of a cat or a dog—was transformed into a poem, in which there was no poetry, but only a graceful facility, which was considered perfectly charming. Then, as though native affectation were not enough, the borrowed wit of Italian Marinism, which had been eagerly adopted in Spain, made its way thence into France, with Spanish exaggeration superadded. A disciple of this school declares that the eyes of his mistress are as "large as his grief, and as black as his fate." Malherbe and his school fell afterwards into neglect, for fashionable caprice had turned its attention to burlesque, and every one believed himself capable of writing in this style, from the lords and ladies of the court down to the valets and maid-servants. It was men like Scarron (1610- 1660), familiar with literary study, and, from choice, with the lowest society, who introduced this form, the pleasantry of which was increased by contrast with the finical taste that had been in vogue. Fashion ruled the light literature of France during the first half of the seventeenth century, and through all its diversities, its great characteristic is the absence of all true and serious feeling, and of that inspiration which is drawn from realities. In the productions of half a century, we find not one truly elevated, energetic, or pathetic work.

It is during this time, that is, between the death of Henry IV (1610), and that of Richelieu (1642), that we mark the beginning of literary societies in France. The earliest in point of date was headed by Madame de Rambouillet (1610-1642), whose hotel became a seminary of female authors and factious politicians. This lady was of Italian origin, of fine taste and education. She had turned away in disgust from the rude manners of the court of Henry IV, and devoted herself to the study of the classics. After the death of the king, she gathered a distinguished circle round herself, combining the elegances of high life with the cultivation of literary taste. While yet young, Madame de Rambouillet was attacked with a malady which obliged her to keep her bed the greater part of every year. An elegant alcove was formed in the great salon of the house, where her bed was placed, and here she received her friends. The choicest wits of Paris flocked to her levÉes; the Hotel de Rambouillet became the fashionable rendezvous of literature and taste, and bas-bleu-ism was the rage. Even the infirmities of this accomplished lady were imitated. An alcove was essential to every fashionable belle, who, attired in a coquettish dishabille, and reclining on satin pillows, fringed with lace, gave audience to whispered gossip in the ruelle, as the space around the bed was called.

Among the personages renowned in their day, who frequented the Hotel de Rambouillet, were Mademoiselle de Scudery (1607-1701), then in the zenith of her fame, Madame de SÉvignÉ (1627-1696), Mademoiselle de la Vergne, afterwards Madame de Lafayette (1655-1693), eminent as literary characters; the Duchess de Longueville, the Duchess de Chevreuse, and Madame DeshouliÈres, afterwards distinguished for their political ability. At the feet of these noble ladies reclined a number of young seigneurs, dangling their little hats surcharged with plumes, while their mantles of silk and gold were spread loosely on the floor. And there, in more grave attire, were the professional littÉrateurs, such as Balzac, Voiture, MÉnage, Scudery, Chaplain, Costart, Conrad, and the AbbÉ Bossuet. The Cupid of the hotel was strictly Platonic. The romances of Mademoiselle de Scudery were long-spun disquisitions on love; her characters were drawn from the individuals around her, who in turn attempted to sustain the characters and adopt the language suggested in her books. One folly led on another, till at last the vocabulary of the salon became so artificial, that none but the initiated could understand it. As for Mademoiselle de Scudery herself, applying, it would seem, the impracticable tests she had invented for sounding the depths of the tender passion, though not without suitors, she died an old maid, at the advanced age of ninety-four.

The civil wars of the Fronde (1649-1654) were unfavorable to literary meetings. The women who took the most distinguished part in these troubles had graduated, so to say, from the Hotel de Rambouillet, which, perhaps for this reason, declined with the ascendency of Louis XIV. The agitations of the Fronde taught him to distrust clever women, and he always showed a marked dislike for female authorship.

3. THE FRENCH ACADEMY.—The taste for literature, which had become so generally diffused, rendered the men whose province it was to define its laws the chiefs of a brilliant empire. Scholars, therefore, frequently met together for critical discussion. About the year 1629 a certain number of men of letters agreed to assemble one day in each week. It was a union of friendship, a companionship of men of kindred tastes and occupations; and to prevent intrusion, the meetings were for some time kept secret. When Richelieu came to hear of the existence of the society, desirous to make literature subservient to his political glory, he proposed to these gentlemen to form themselves into a corporation, established by letters patent, at the same time hinting that he had the power to put a stop to their secret meetings. The argument was irresistible, and the little society consented to receive from his highness the title of the French Academy, in 1635. The members of the Academy were to occupy themselves in establishing rules for the French language, and to take cognizance of whatever books were written by its members, and by others who desired its opinions.

4. THE DRAMA.—The endeavor to imitate the ancients in the tragic art displayed itself at a very early period among the French, and they considered that the surest method of succeeding in this endeavor was to observe the strictest outward regularity of form, of which they derived their ideas more from Aristotle, and especially from Seneca, than from any intimate acquaintance with the Greek models themselves. Three of the most celebrated of the French tragic poets, Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, have given, it would seem, an immutable shape to the tragic stage of France by adopting this system, which has been considered by the French critics universally as alone entitled to any authority, and who have viewed every deviation from it as a sin against good taste. The treatise of Aristotle, from which they have derived the idea of the far-famed three unities, of action, time, and place, which have given rise to so many critical wars, is a mere fragment, and some scholars have been of the opinion that it is not even a fragment of the true original, but of an extract which some person made for his own improvement. From this anxious observance of the Greek rules, under totally different circumstances, it is obvious that great inconveniences and incongruities must arise; and the criticism of the Academy on a tragedy of Corneille, "that the poet, from the fear of sinning against the rules of art, had chosen rather to sin against the rules of nature," is often applicable to the dramatic writers of France.

Corneille (1606-1684) ushered in a new era in the French drama. It has been said of him that he was a man greater in himself than in his works, his genius being fettered by the rules of the French drama and the conventional state of French verse. The day of mysteries and moralities was past, and the comedies of Hardy, the court poet of Henry IV., had, in their turn, been consigned to oblivion, yet there was an increasing taste for the drama. The first comedy of Corneille, "MÉlite," was followed by many others, which, though now considered unreadable, were better than anything then known. The appearance of the "Cid," in 1635, a drama constructed on the foundation of the old Spanish romances, constituted an era in the dramatic history of France. Although not without great faults, resulting from strict adherence to the rules, it was the first time that the depths of passion had been stirred on the stage, and its success was unprecedented. For years after, his pieces followed each other in rapid succession, and the history of the stage was that of Corneille's works. In the "Cid," the triumph of love was exhibited; in "Les Horaces," love was represented as punished for its rebellion against the laws of honor; in "Cinna," all more tender considerations are sacrificed to the implacable duty of avenging a father; while in "Polyeucte," duty triumphs alone. Corneille did not boldly abandon himself to the guidance of his genius; he feared criticism, although he defied it. His success proved the signal for envy and detraction; he became angry at being obliged to fight his way, and therefore withdrew from the path in which he was likely to meet enemies. His decline was as rapid as his success had been brilliant. "The fall of the great Corneille," says Fontenelle, "may be reckoned as among the most remarkable examples of the vicissitudes of human affairs. Even that of Belisarius asking alms is not more striking." As his years increased, he became more anxious for popularity; having been so long in possession of undisputed superiority, he could not behold without dissatisfaction the rising glory of his successors; and, towards the close of his life, this weakness was greatly increased by the decay of his bodily organs.

5. PHILOSOPHY.—During this period, in a region far above court favor, Descartes (1596-1650) elaborated his system of philosophy, in creating a new method of philosophizing. The leading peculiarity of his system was the attempt to deduce all moral and religious truth from self- consciousness. I think, therefore I am, was the famous axiom on which the whole was built. From this he inferred the existence of two distinct natures in man, the mental and the physical, and the existence of certain ideas which he called innate in the mind, and serving to connect it with the spiritual and invisible. Besides these new views in metaphysics, Descartes made valuable contributions to mathematical and physical science; and though his philosophy is now generally discarded, it is not forgotten that he opened the way for Locke, Newton, and Leibnitz, and that his system was in reality the base of all those that superseded it. There is scarcely a name on record, the bearer of which has given a greater impulse to mathematical and philosophical inquiry than Descartes, and he embodied his thoughts in such masterly language, that it has been justly said of him, that his fame as a writer would have been greater if his celebrity as a thinker had been less.

The age of Descartes was an interesting era in the annals of the human mind. The darkness of scholastic philosophy was gradually clearing away before the light which an improved method of study was shedding over the natural sciences. A system of philosophy, founded on observation, was preparing the downfall of those traditional errors which had long held the mastery in the schools. Geometricians, physicians, and astronomers taught, by their example, the severe process of reasoning which was to regenerate all the sciences; and minds of the first order, scattered in various parts of Europe, communicated to each other the results of their labors, and stimulated each other to new exertions.

One of the most eminent contemporaries of Descartes was Pascal (1628- 1662). At the age of sixteen he wrote a treatise on conic sections, which was followed by several important discoveries in arithmetic and geometry. His experiments in natural science added to his fame, and he was recognized as one of the most eminent geometricians of modern times. But he soon formed the design of abandoning science for pursuits exclusively religious, and circumstances arose which became the occasion of those "Provincial Letters," which, with the "PensÉes de la Religion," are considered among the finest specimens of French literature.

The abbey of Port Royal occupied a lonely situation about six leagues from Paris. Its internal discipline had recently undergone a thorough reformation, and the abbey rose to such a high reputation, that men of piety and learning took up their abode in its vicinity, to enjoy literary leisure. The establishment received pupils, and its system of education became celebrated in a religious and intellectual point of view. The great rivals of the Port Royalists were the Jesuits. Pascal, though not a member of the establishment, was a frequent visitor, and one of his friends there, having been drawn into a controversy with the Sorbonne on the doctrines of the Jansenists, had recourse to his aid in replying. Pascal published a series of letters in a dramatic form, in which he brought his adversaries on the stage with himself, and fairly cut them up for the public amusement. These letters, combining the comic pleasantry of MoliÈre with the eloquence of Demosthenes, so elegant and attractive in style, and so clear and popular that a child might understand them, gained immediate attention; but the Jesuits, whose policy and doctrines they attacked, finally induced the parliament of Provence to condemn them to be burned by the common hangman; and the Port Royalists, refusing to renounce their opinions, were driven from their retreat, and the establishment broken up. Pascal's masterpiece is the "PensÉes de la Religion;" it consists of fragments of thought, without apparent connection or unity of design. These thoughts are in some places obscure; they contain repetitions, and even contradictions, and require that arrangement that could only have been supplied by the hand of the writer. It has often been lamented that the author never constructed the edifice which it is believed he had designed, and of which these thoughts were the splendid materials.

6. THE RISE OF THE GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH LITERATURE.—When Louis XIV. came to the throne (1638-1715), France was already subject to conditions certain to produce a brilliant period in literature. She had been brought into close relations with Spain and Italy, the countries then the most advanced in intellectual culture; and she had received from the study of the ancient masters the best correctives of whatever might have been extravagant in the national genius. She had learned some useful lessons from the polemical distractions of the sixteenth century. The religious earnestness excited by controversy was gratified by preachers of high endowments, and the political ascendency of France, among the kingdoms of Europe, imparted a general freedom and buoyancy. But of all the influences which contributed to perfect the literature of France in the latter half of the seventeenth century, none was so powerful as that of the monarch himself, who, by his personal power, rendered his court a centre of knowledge, and, by his government, imparted a feeling of security to those who lived under it. The predominance of the sovereign became the most prominent feature in the social character of the age, and the whole circle of the literature bears its impress. Louis elevated and improved, in no small degree, the position of literary men, by granting pensions to some, while he raised others to high offices of state; or they were recompensed by the public, through the general taste, which the monarch so largely contributed to diffuse.

The age, unlike that which followed it, was one of order and specialty in literature; and in classifying its literary riches, we shall find the principal authors presenting themselves under the different subjects: Racine with tragedy, MoliÈre with comedy, Boileau with satirical and mock- heroic, La Fontaine with narrative poetry, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and Massillon with pulpit eloquence; Patru, Pellisson, and some others with that of the bar; Bossuet, de Retz, and St. Simon with history and memoirs; Rochefoucauld and La BruyÈre with moral philosophy; FÉnelon and Madame de Lafayette with romance; and Madame de SÉvignÉ with letter-writing.

The personal influence of the king was most marked on pulpit eloquence and dramatic poetry. Other branches found less favor, from his dislike to those who chiefly treated them. The recollections of the Fronde had left in his mind a distrust of Rochefoucauld. A similar feeling of political jealousy, with a thorough hatred of bel esprit, especially in a woman, prevented him from appreciating Madame de SÉvignÉ; and he seems not even to have observed La BruyÈre, in his modest functions as teacher of history to the Duke of Burgundy. He had no taste for the pure mental speculations of Malebranche or FÉnelon; and in metaphysics, as in religion, had little patience for what was beyond the good sense of ordinary individuals. The same hatred of excess rendered him equally the enemy of refiners and free- thinkers, so that the like exile fell to the lot of Arnauld and Bayle, the one carrying to the extreme the doctrines of grace, and the other those of skeptical inquiry. Nor did he relish the excessive simplicity of La Fontaine, or deem that his talent was a sufficient compensation for his slovenly manners and inaptitude for court life. Of all these writers it may be said, that they flourished rather in spite of the personal influence of the monarch than under his favor.

7. TRAGEDY.—The first dramas of Racine (1639-1699) were but feeble imitations of Corneille, who advised the young author to attempt no more tragedy. He replied by producing "Andromaque," which had a most powerful effect upon the stage. The poet had discovered that sympathy was a more powerful source of tragic effect than admiration, and he accordingly employed the powers of his genius in a truthful expression of feeling and character, and a thrilling alternation of hope and fear, anger and pity. "Andromaque" was followed almost every year by a work of similar character. Henrietta of England induced Corneille and Racine, unknown to each other, to produce a tragedy on Berenice, in order to contrast the powers of these illustrious rivals. They were represented in the year 1670; that of Corneille proved a failure, but Racine's was honored; by the tears of the court and the city. Soon after, partly disgusted at the intrigues against him, and partly from religious principle, Racine abandoned his career while yet in the full vigor of his life and genius. He was appointed historiographer to the king, conjointly with Boileau, and after twelve years of silence he was induced by Madame de Maintenon to compose the drama of "Esther" for the pupils in the Maison de St. Cyr, which met with prodigious success. "Athalie," considered the most perfect of his works, was composed with similar views; theatricals having been abandoned at the school, however, the play was published, but found no readers. Discouraged by this second injustice, Racine finally abandoned the drama. "Athalie" was but little known till the year 1716, since when its reputation has considerably augmented. Voltaire pronounced it the most perfect work of human genius. The subject of this drama is taken from the twenty-second and twenty-third chapter of II. Chronicles, where it is written that Athaliah, to avenge the death of her son, destroyed all the seed royal of the house of Judah, but that the young Joash was stolen from among the rest by his aunt Jehoshabeath, the wife of the high-priest, and hidden with his nurse for six years in the temple. Besides numerous tragedies, Racine composed odes, epigrams, and spiritual songs. By a rare combination of talents he wrote as well in prose as in verse. His "History of the Reign of Louis XIV." was destroyed by a conflagration, but there remain the "History of Port Royal," some pleasing letters, and some academic discourses. The tragedies of Racine are more elegant than those of Corneille, though less bold and striking. Corneille's principal characters are heroes and heroines thrown into situations of extremity, and displaying strength of mind superior to their position. Racine's characters are men, not heroes,—men such as they are, not such as they might possibly be.

France produced no other tragic dramatists of the first class in this age.
Somewhat later, CrÉbillon (1674-1762), in such wild tragedies as "Atrea,"
"Electra," and "Rhadamiste," introduced a new element, that of terror, as
a source of tragic effect.

Cardinal Mazarin had brought from Italy the opera or lyric tragedy, which was cultivated with success by Quinault (1637-1688). He is said to have taken the bones out of the French language by cultivating an art in which thought, incident, and dialogue are made secondary to the development of tender and voluptuous feeling.

8. COMEDY.—The comic drama, which occupied the French stage till the middle of the seventeenth century, was the comedy of intrigue, borrowed from Spain, and turning on disguises, dark lanterns, and trap-doors to help or hinder the design of personages who were types, not of individual character, but of classes, as doctors, lawyers, lovers, and confidants. It was reserved for MoliÈre (1622-1673) to demolish all this childishness, and enthrone the true Thalia on the French stage. Like Shakspeare, he was both an author and an actor. The appearance of the "PrÉcieuses Ridicules" was the first of the comedies in which the gifted poet assailed the follies of his age. The object of this satire was the system of solemn sentimentality which at this time was considered the perfection of elegance. It will be remembered that there existed at Paris a coterie of fashionable women who pretended to the most exalted refinement both of feeling and expression, and that these were waited upon and worshiped by a set of nobles and littÉrateurs, who used towards them a peculiar strain of high-flown, pedantic gallantry. These ladies adopted fictitious names for themselves and gave enigmatical ones to the commonest things. They lavished upon each other the most tender appellations, as though in contrast to the frigid tone in which the Platonism of the Hotel required them to address the gentlemen of their circle. Ma chÈre, ma prÉcieuse, were the terms most frequently used by the leaders of this world of folly, and a prÉcieuse came to be synonymous with a lady of the clique; hence the title of the comedy. The piece was received with unanimous applause; a more signal victory could not have been gained by a comic poet, and from the time of its first representation this bombastic nonsense was given up. MoliÈre, perceiving that he had struck the true vein, resolved to study human nature more and Plautus and Terence less. Comedy after comedy followed, which were true pictures of the follies of society; but whatever was the theme of his satire, all proved that he had a falcon's eye for detecting vice and folly in every shape, and talons for pouncing upon all as the natural prey of the satirist. On the boards he always took the principal character himself, and he was a comedian in every look and gesture. The "Malade Imaginaire" was the last of his works. When it was produced upon the stage, the poet himself was really ill, but repressing the voice of natural suffering, to affect that of the hypochondriac for public amusement, he was seized with a convulsive cough, and carried home dying. Though he was denied the last offices of the church, and his remains were with difficulty allowed Christian burial, in the following century his bust was placed in the Academy, and a monument erected to his memory in the cemetery of PÈre la Chaise. The best of MoliÈre's works are, "Le Misanthrope," "Les Femmes Savantes," and "Tartuffe;" these are considered models of high comedy. Other comedians followed, but at a great distance from him in point of merit.

9. FABLE, SATIRE, MOCK-HEROIC, AND OTHER POETRY.—La Fontaine (1621-1695) was the prince of fabulists; his fables appeared successively in three collections, and although the subjects of some of these are borrowed, the dress is entirely new. His versification constitutes one of the greatest charms of his poetry, and seems to have been the result of an instinctive sense of harmony, a delicate taste, and rapidity of invention. There are few authors in France more popular, none so much the familiar genius of every fireside. La Fontaine himself was a mere child of nature, indolent, and led by the whim of the moment, rather than by any fixed principle. He was desired by his father to take charge of the domain of which he was the keeper, and to unite himself in marriage with a family relative. With unthinking docility he consented to both, but neglected alike his official duties and domestic obligations with an innocent unconsciousness of wrong. He was taken to Paris by the Duchess of Bouillon and passed his days in her coteries, and those of Racine and Boileau, utterly forgetful of his home and family, except when his pecuniary necessities obliged him to return to sell portions of his property to supply his wants. When this was exhausted, he became dependent on the kindness of female discerners of merit. Henrietta of England attached him to her suite; and after her death, Madame de la SabliÈre gave him apartments at her house, supplied his wants, and indulged his humors for twenty years. When she retired to a convent, Madame d'Hervart, the wife of a rich financier, offered him a similar retreat. While on her way to make the proposal, she met him in the street, and said, "La Fontaine, will you come and live in my house?" "I was just going, madame," he replied, as if his doing so had been the simplest and most natural thing in the world. And here he remained the rest of his days. France has produced numerous writers of fables since the time of La Fontaine, but none worthy of comparison with him.

The writings of Descartes and Pascal, with the precepts of the Academy and Port Royal, had established the art of prose composition, but the destiny of poetry continued doubtful. Corneille's masterpieces afforded models only in one department; there was no specific doctrine on the idea of what poetry ought to be. To supply this was the mission of Boileau (1636-1711); and he fulfilled it, first by satirizing the existing style, and then by composing an "Art of Poetry," after the manner of Horace. In the midst of men who made verses for the sake of making them, and composed languishing love-songs upon the perfections of mistresses who never existed except in their own imaginations, Boileau determined to write nothing but what interested his feelings, to break with this affected gallantry, and draw poetry only from the depths of his own heart. His dÉbut was made in unmerciful satires on the works of the poetasters, and he continued to plead the cause of reason against rhyme, of true poetry against false. Despite the anger of the poets and their friends, his satires enjoyed immense favor, and he consolidated his victory by writing the "Art of Poetry," in which he attempted to restore it to its true dignity. This work obtained for him the title of Legislator of Parnassus. The mock- heroic poem of the "Lutrin" is considered as the happiest effort of his muse, though inferior to the "Rape of the Lock," a composition of a similar kind. The occasion of this poem was a frivolous dispute between the treasurer and the chapter of a cathedral concerning the placing of a reading-desk (lutrin). A friend playfully challenged Boileau to write a heroic poem on the subject, to verify his own theory that the excellence of a heroic poem depended upon the power of the inventor to sustain and enlarge upon a slender groundwork. Boileau was the last of the great poets of the golden age.

The horizon of the poets was at this time somewhat circumscribed. Confined to the conventional life of the court and the city, they enjoyed little opportunity for the contemplation of nature. The policy of Louis XIV. proscribed national recollections, so that the social life of the day was alone open to them. Poetry thus became abstract and ideal, or limited to the delineation of those passions which belong to a highly artificial state of society. Madame DeshouliÈres (1634-1694) indeed wrote some graceful idyls, but she by no means entered into the spirit of rural life and manners, like La Fontaine.

10. ELOQUENCE OF THE PULPIT AND OF THE BAR.—Louis XIV. afforded to religious eloquence the most efficacious kind of encouragement, that of personal attendance. The court preachers had no more attentive auditor than their royal master, who was singularly gifted with that tenderness of conscience which leads a man to condemn himself for his sins, yet indulge in their commission; to feel a certain pleasure in self-accusation, and to enjoy that reaction of mind which consists in occasionally holding his passions in abeyance. This attention on the part of a great monarch, the liberty of saying everything, the refined taste of the audience, who could on the same day attend a sermon of Bourdaloue and a tragedy of Racine, all tended to lead pulpit eloquence to a high degree of perfection; and, accordingly, we find the function of court preacher exercised successively by Bossuet (1627-1704), Bourdaloue (1632-1704), and Massillon (1663-1742), the greatest names that the Roman Catholic Church has boasted in any age or country. Bossuet addressed the conscience through the imagination, Bourdaloue through the judgment, and Massillon through the feelings. FlÉchier (1632-1710), another court preacher, renowned chiefly as a rhetorician, was not free from the affectation of Les PrÉcieuses; but Bossuet was perhaps the most distinguished type of the age of Louis XIV., in all save its vices. For the instruction of the Dauphin, to whom he had been appointed preceptor, he wrote his "Discourse upon Universal History," by which he is chiefly known to us. The Protestant controversy elicited his famous "Exposition of the Catholic Doctrine." A still more celebrated work is the "History of the Variations," the leading principle of which is, that to forsake the authority of the church leads one knows not whither, that there can be no new religious views except false ones, and that there can be no escape from the faith transmitted from age to age, save in the wastes of skepticism. In his controversy with FÉnelon, in relation to the mystical doctrines of Madame Guyon, Bossuet showed himself irritated, and at last furious, at the moderate and submissive tone of his opponent. He procured the banishment of FÉnelon from court, and the disgrace of his friends; and through his influence the pope condemned the "Maxims of the Saints," in which FÉnelon endeavored to show that the views of Madame Guyon were those of others whom the church had canonized. The sermons of Bossuet were paternal and familiar exhortations; he seldom prepared them, but, abandoning himself to the inspiration of the moment, was now simple and touching, now energetic and sublime, His familiarity with the language of inspiration imparted to his discourses a tone of almost prophetic authority; his eloquence appeared as a native instinct, a gift direct from heaven, neither marred nor improved by the study of human rules. France does not acknowledge the Protestant Saurin (1677-1730), as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes expatriated him in childhood; but his sermons occupy a distinguished place in the theological literature of the French language.

Political or parliamentary oratory was as yet unknown, for the parliament no sooner touched on matters of state and government, than Louis XIV entered, booted and spurred, with whip in hand, and not figuratively, but literally, lashed the refractory assembly into silence and obedience. But the eloquence of the bar enjoyed a considerable degree of freedom in this age. Law and reason, however, were too often overlaid by worthless conceits and a fantastic abuse of classic and scriptural citations. Le Maitre (1608-1658), Patru (1604-1681), Pellisson (1624-1693), Cochin (1687-1749), and D'Aguesseau (1668-1751), successively purified and elevated the language of the tribunals.

11. MORAL PHILOSOPHY.—The most celebrated moralist of the age was the Duke de Rochefoucauld (1613-1680). He was early drawn into those conflicts known as the wars of the Fronde, though he seems to have had little motive for fighting or intriguing, except his restlessness of spirit and his attachment to the Duchess de Longueville. He soon quarreled with the duchess, dissolved his alliance with CondÉ, and being afterwards included in the amnesty, he took up his residence at Paris, where he was one of the brightest ornaments of the court of Louis XIV. His chosen friends, in his declining years, were Madame de SÉvignÉ, one of the most accomplished women of the age, and Madame de Lafayette, who said of him, "He gave me intellect, and I reformed his heart." But if the taint was removed from his heart, it continued in the understanding. His famous "Maxims," published in 1665, gained for the author a lasting reputation, not less for the perfection of his style, than for the boldness of his paradoxes. The leading peculiarity of this work is the principle that self-interest is the ruling motive in human nature, placing every virtue, as well as every vice, under contribution to itself. It is generally agreed that Rochefoucauld's views of human nature were perverted by the specimens of it which he had known in the wars of the Fronde, which were stimulated by vice, folly, and a restless desire of power. His "Memoirs of the Reign of Anne of Austria" embody the story of the Fronde, and his "Maxims" the moral philosophy he deduced from it.

While Pascal, in proving all human remedies unworthy of confidence, had sought to drive men upon faith by pursuing them with despair, and Rochefoucauld, by his pitiless analysis of the disguises of the human heart, led his readers to suspect their most natural emotions, and well- nigh took away the desire of virtue by proving its impossibility, La BruyÈre (1639-1696) endeavored to make the most of our nature, such as it is, to render men better, even with their imperfections, to assist them by a moral code suited to their strength, or rather to their weakness. His "Characters of our Age" is distinguished for the exactness and variety of the portraits, as well as for the excellence of its style. The philosophy of La BruyÈre is unquestionably based on reason, and not on revelation.

In the moral works of Nicole, the Port Royalist (1611-1645), we find a system of truly Christian ethics, derived from the precepts of revelation; they are elegant in style, though they display little originality.

The only speculative philosopher of this age, worthy of mention, is Malebranche (1631-1715), a disciple of Descartes; but, unlike his master, instead of admitting innate ideas, he held that we see all in Deity, and that it is only by our spiritual union with the Being who knows all things that we know anything. He professed optimism, and explained the existence of evil by saying that the Deity acts only as a universal cause. His object was to reconcile philosophy with revelation; his works, though models of style, are now little read.

12. HISTORY AND MEMOIRS.—History attained no degree of excellence during this period. Bossuet's "Discourse on Universal History" was a sermon, with general history as the text. At a somewhat earlier date, MÉzeray (1610- 1683) compiled a history of France. The style is clear and nervous, and the spirit which pervades it is bold and independent, but the facts are not always to be relied on. The "History of Christianity," by the AbbÉ Fleury (1640-1723), was pronounced by Voltaire to be the best work of the kind that had ever appeared. Rollin (1661-1741) devoted his declining years to the composition of historical works for the instruction of young people. His "Ancient History" is more remarkable for the excellence of his intentions than for the display of historical talent. Indeed, the historical writers of this period may be said to have marked, rather than filled a void.

The writers of memoirs were more happy. At an earlier period, BrantÔme (1527-1614), a gentleman attached to the suite of Charles IX. and Henry III., employed his declining years in describing men and manners as he had observed them; and his memoirs are admitted to embody but too faithfully a representation of that singular mixture of elegance and grossness, of superstition and impiety, of chivalrous feelings and licentious morals, which characterized the sixteenth century. The Duke of Sully (1559-1641), the skillful financier of Henry IV., left valuable memoirs of the stirring events of his day. The "Memoirs" of the Cardinal de Betz (1614-1679), who took so active a part in the agitations of the Fronde, embody the enlarged views of the true historian, and breathe the impetuous spirit of a man whose native element is civil commotion, and who looks on the chieftainship of a party as worthy to engage the best powers of his head and heart; but his style abounds with negligences and irregularities which would have shocked the littÉrateurs of the day.

The Duke de St. Simon (1675-1755) is another of those who made no pretensions to classical writing. All the styles of the seventeenth century are found in him. His language has been compared to a torrent, which appears somewhat incumbered by the debris which it carries, yet makes its way with no less rapidity.

Count Hamilton (1646-1720) narrates the adventures of his brother-in-law, Count de Grammont, of which La Harpe says, "Of all frivolous books, it is the most diverting and ingenious." Much lively narration is here expended on incidents better forgotten.

13. ROMANCE AND LETTER-WRITING.—The growth of kingly power, the order which it established, and the civilization which followed in its train, restrained the development of public life and increased the interests of the social relations. From this new state of things arose a modified kind of romance, in which elevated sentiments replaced the achievements of mediaeval fiction and the military exploits of Mademoiselle de Scudery's tales. Madame de Lafayette introduced that kind of romance in which the absorbing interest is that of conflicting passion, and external events were the occasion of developing the inward life of thought and feeling. She first depicted manners as they really were, relating natural events with gracefulness, instead of narrating those that never could have had existence.

The illustrious FÉnelon (1651-1715) was one of the few authors of this period who belonged exclusively to no one class. He appears as a divine in his "Sermons" and "Maxims;" as a rhetorician in his "Dialogues on Eloquence;" as a moralist in his "Education of Girls;" as a politician in his "Examination of the Conscience of a King;" and it may be said that all these characters are combined in "Telemachus," which has procured for him a widespread fame, and which classes him among the romancers. Telemachus was composed with the intention of its becoming a manual for his pupil, the young Duke of Burgundy, on his entrance into manhood. Though its publication caused him the loss of the king's favor, it went through numerous editions, and was translated into every language of Europe. It was considered, in its day, a manual for kings, and it became a standard book, on account of the elegance of its style, the purity of its morals, and the classic taste it was likely to foster in the youthful mind.

Madame de SÉvignÉ made no pretensions to authorship. Her letters were written to her daughter, without the slightest idea that they would be read, except by those to whom they were addressed; but they have immortalized their gifted author, and have been pronounced worthy to occupy an eminent place among the classics of French literature. The matter which these celebrated letters contain is multifarious; they are sketches of Madame de SÉvignÉ's friends, Madame de Lafayette, Madame Scarron, and all the principal personages of that brilliant court, from which, however, she was excluded, in consequence of her early alliance with the Fronde, her friendship for Fouquet, and her Jansenist opinions. All the occurrences, as well as the characters of the day, are touched in these letters; and so graphic is the pen, so clear and easy the style, that we seem to live in those brilliant days, and to see all that was going on. Great events are detailed in the same tone as court gossip; Louis XIV., Turenne, CondÉ, the wars of France and of the empire are freely mingled with details of housewifery, projects of marriage,—in short, the seventeenth century is depicted in the correspondence of two women who knew nothing so important as their own affairs.

Considerable interest attaches also to the letters of Madame de Maintenon (1635-1719), a lady whose life presents singular contrasts, worthy of the time. To her influence on the king, after her private marriage to him, is attributed much that is inauspicious in the latter part of his reign, the combination of ascetic devotion and religious bigotry with the most flagrant immorality, the appointment of unskillful generals and weak- minded ministers, the persecution of the Jansenists, and, above all, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had secured religious freedom to the Protestants.

PERIOD THIRD.

LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION AND OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (1700-1885).

1. THE DAWN OF SKEPTICISM.—In the age just past we have seen religion, antiquity, and the monarchy of Louis XIV., each exercising a distinct and powerful influence over the buoyancy of French genius, which cheerfully submitted to their restraining power. A school of taste and elegance had been formed, under these circumstances, which gave law to the rest of Europe and constituted France the leading spirit of the age. On the other hand, the dominant influences of the eighteenth century were a skeptical philosophy, a preference for modern literature, and a rage for political reform. The transition, however, was not sudden nor immediate, and we come now to the consideration of those works which occupy the midway position between the submissive age of Louis XIV. and the daring infidelity and republicanism of the eighteenth century.

The eighteenth century began with the first timid protestation against the splendid monarchy of Louis XIV., the domination of the Catholic Church, and the classical authority of antiquity, and it ended when words came to deeds, in the sanguinary revolution of 1789. When the first generation of great men who sunned themselves in the glance of Louis XIV. had passed away, there were none to succeed them; the glory of the monarch began to fade as the noble cortÈge disappeared, and admiration and enthusiasm were no more. The new generation, which had not shared the glory and prosperity of the old monarch, was not subjugated by the recollections of his early splendor, and was not, like the preceding, proud to wear his yoke. A certain indifference to principle began to prevail; men ventured to doubt opinions once unquestioned; the habit of jesting with everything and unblushing cynicism appeared almost under the eyes of the aged Louis; even Massillon, who exhorted the people to obedience, at the same time reminded the king that it was necessary to merit it by respecting their rights. The Protestants, exiled by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, revenged themselves by pamphlets against the monarch and the church, and these works found their way into France, and fostered there the rising discontent and contempt for the authority of the government.

Among these refugees was Bayle (1647-1706), the coolest and boldest of doubters. He wrote openly against the intolerance of Louis XIV., and he affords the first announcement of the characteristics of the century. His "Historical and Critical Dictionary," a vast magazine of knowledge and incredulity, was calculated to supersede the necessity of study to a lively and thoughtless age. His skepticism is learned and philosophical, and he ridicules those who reject without examination still more than those who believe with docile credulity. Jean Baptiste Rousseau (1670- 1741), the lyric poet of this age, displayed in his odes considerable energy, and a kind of pompous harmony, which no other had imparted to the language, yet he fails to excite the sympathy. In his writings we find that free commingling of licentious morals with a taste for religious sublimities which characterized the last years of Louis XIV. The AbbÉ Chaulieu (1639-1720) earned the appellation of the Anacreon of the Temple, but he did not, like Rousseau, prostitute poetry in strains of low debauchery.

The tragedians followed in the footsteps of Racine with more or less success, and comedy continued, with some vigor, to represent the corrupt manners of the age. Le Sage (1668-1747) applied his talent to romance; and, like MoliÈre, appreciated human folly without analyzing it. "Gil Blas" is a picture of the human heart under the aspect at once of the vicious and the ridiculous.

Fontenelle (1657-1757), a nephew of the great Corneille, is regarded as the link between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he having witnessed the splendor of the best days of Louis XIV., and lived long enough to see the greatest men of the eighteenth century. He made his dÉbut in tragedy, in which, however, he found little encouragement. In his "Plurality of Worlds," and "Dialogues of the Dead," there is much that indicates the man of science. His other works are valued rather for their delicacy and impartiality than for striking originality.

Lamotte (1672-1731) was more distinguished in criticism than in any other sphere of authorship. He raised the standard of revolt against the worship of antiquity, and would have dethroned poetry itself on the ground of its inutility. Thus skepticism began by making established literary doctrines matters of doubt and controversy. Before attacking more serious creeds it fastened on literary ones.

Such is the picture presented by the earlier part of the eighteenth century. Part of the generation had remained attached to the traditions of the great age. Others opened the path into which the whole country was about to throw itself. The faith of the nation in its political institutions, its religious and literary creed, was shaken to its foundation; the positive and palpable began to engross every interest hitherto occupied by the ideal; and this disposition, so favorable to the cultivation of science, brought with it a universal spirit of criticism. The habit of reflecting was generally diffused, people were not afraid to exercise their own judgment, every man had begun to have a higher estimate of his own opinions, and to care less for those hitherto received as undoubted authority. Still, literature had not taken any positive direction, nor had there yet appeared men of sufficiently powerful genius to give it a decisive impulse.

2. PROGRESS OF SKEPTICISM.—The first powerful attack on the manners, institutions, and establishments of France, and indeed of Europe in general, is that contained in the "Persian Letters" of the Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755); in which, under the transparent veil of pleasantries aimed at the Moslem religion, he sought to consign to ridicule the belief in every species of dogma. But the celebrity of Montesquieu is founded on his "Spirit of Laws," the greatest monument of human genius in the eighteenth century. It is a profound analysis of law in its relation with government, customs, climate, religion, and commerce. The book is inspired with a spirit of justice and humanity; but it places the mind too much under the dominion of matter, and argues for necessity rather than liberty, thus depriving moral obligation of much of its absolute character. It is an extraordinary specimen of argument, terseness, and erudition.

The maturity of the eighteenth century is found in Voltaire (1694-1778); he was the personification of its rashness, its zeal, its derision, its ardor, and its universality. In him nature had, so to speak, identified the individual with the nation, bestowing on him a character in the highest degree elastic, having lively sensibility but no depth of passion, little system of principle or conduct, but that promptitude of self- direction which supplies its place, a quickness of perception amounting almost to intuition, and an unexampled degree of activity, by which he was in some sort many men at once. No writer, even in the eighteenth century, knew so many things or treated so many subjects. That which was the ruin of some minds was the strength of his. Rich in diversified talent and in the gifts of fortune, he proceeded to the conquest of his age with the combined power of the highest endowments under the most favorable circumstances. He was driven again and again, as a moral pest, from the capital of France by the powers that fain would have preserved the people from his opinions, yet ever gaining ground, his wit always welcome, and his opinions gradually prevailing, one audacious sentiment after another broached, and branded with infamy, yet secretly entertained, till the futile struggle was at length given in, and the nation, as with one voice, avowed itself his disciple.

It has been said that Voltaire showed symptoms of infidelity from infancy. When at college he gave way to sallies of wit, mirth, and profanity which astonished his companions and terrified his preceptors. He was twice imprisoned in the Bastile, and many times obliged to fly from the country. In England he became acquainted with Bolingbroke and all the most distinguished men of the time, and in the school of English philosophy he learned to use argument, as well as ridicule, in his war with religion. In 1740 we find him assisting Frederick the Great to get up a refutation of Machiavelli; again, he is appointed historiographer of France, Gentleman of the Bed-chamber, and Member of the Academy; then he accepts an invitation to reside at the Court of Prussia, where he soon quarrels with the king. After many vicissitudes he finally purchased the estate of Ferney, near the Lake of Geneva, where he resided during the rest of his days. From this retreat he poured out an exhaustless variety of books, which were extensively circulated and eagerly perused. He had the admiration of all the wits and philosophers of Europe, and included among his pupils and correspondents some of the greatest sovereigns of the age. At the age of eighty-four he again visited Paris. Here his levees were more crowded than those of any emperor; princes and peers thronged his ante-chamber, and when he rode through the streets a train attended him which stretched far over the city. He was made president of the Academy, and crowned with laurel at the theatre, where his bust was placed on the stage and adorned with palms and garlands. He died soon after, without the rites of the church, and was interred secretly at a Benedictine abbey.

The national enthusiasm which decreed Voltaire, as he descended to the tomb, such a triumph as might have honored a benefactor of the race, gave place to doubt and disputation as to his merits. In tragedy he is admitted to rank after Corneille and Racine; in "ZaÏre," which is his masterpiece, there is neither the lofty conception of the one, nor the perfect versification of the other, but there is a warmth of passion, an enthusiasm of feeling, and a gracefulness of expression which fascinate and subdue. As an epic poet he has least sustained his renown; though the "Henriade" has unquestionably some great beauties, its machinery is tame, and the want of poetic illusion is severely felt. His poetry, especially that of his later years, is by no means so disgraceful to the author as the witticisms in prose, the tales, dialogues, romances, and pasquinades which were eagerly sought for and readily furnished, and which are, with little exception, totally unworthy of an honorable man. As a historian, Voltaire lacked reflection and patience for investigation. His "History of Charles XII.," however, was deservedly successful; the reason being that he chose for his hero the most romantic and adventurous of sovereigns, to describe whom there was more need of rapid narrative and brilliant coloring than of profound knowledge and a just appreciation of human nature. In his history of the age of Louis XIV., Voltaire sought not only to present a picture, but a series of researches destined to instruct the memory and exercise the judgment. The English historians, imitating his mode, have surpassed him in erudition and philosophic impartiality. Still later, his own countrymen have carried this species of writing to a high degree of perfection. Throughout the "Essay on the Manners of Nations" we find traces of that hatred of religion which he openly cherished in the latter part of his life. The style, however, is pleasing, the facts well arranged, and the portraits traced with originality and vivacity.

Some have attributed to Voltaire the serious design of overturning the three great bases of society, religion, morality, and civil government, but he had not the genius of a philosopher, and there is no system of philosophy in his works. That he had a design to amuse and influence his age, and to avenge himself on his enemies, is obvious enough. Envy and hatred employed against him the weapons of religion, hence he viewed it only as an instrument of persecution. His great powers of mind were continually directed by the opinions of the times, and the desire of popularity was his ruling motive. The character of his earlier writings shows that he did not bring into the world a very independent spirit; they display the lightness and frivolity of the time with the submission of a courtier for every kind of authority, but as his success increased everything encouraged him to imbue his works with that spirit which found so general a welcome. In vain the authority of the civil government endeavored to arrest the impulse which was gaining strength from day to day; in vain this director of the public mind was imprisoned and exiled; the farther he advanced in his career and the more audaciously he propagated his views on religion and government, the more he was rewarded with the renown which he sought. Monarchs became his friends and his flatterers; opposition only increased his energy, and made him often forget moderation and good taste.

3. FRENCH LITERATURE DURING THE REVOLUTION.—The names of Voltaire and Montesquieu eclipse all others in the first half of the eighteenth century, but the influence of Voltaire was by far the most immediate and extensive. After he had reached the zenith of his glory, about the middle of the century, there appeared in France a display of various talent, evoked by his example and trained by his instructions, yet boasting an independent existence. In the works of these men was consummated the literary revolution of which we have marked the beginnings, a revolution more striking than any other ever witnessed in the same space of time. It was no longer a few eminent men that surrendered themselves boldly to the skeptical philosophy which is the grand characteristic of the eighteenth century; writers of inferior note followed in the same path; the new opinions took entire possession of all literature and cooperated with the state of the morals and the government to bring about a fearful revolution. The whole strength of the literature of this age being directed towards the subversion of the national institutions and religion, formed a homogeneous body of science, literature, and the arts, and a compact phalanx of all writers under the common name of philosophers. Women had their share in the maintenance of this league; the salons of Mesdames du Deffand (1696-1780), Geoffrin (b. 1777), and De l'Espinasse (1732-1776) were its favorite resorts; but the great rendezvous was that of the Baron d'Holbach, whence its doctrines spread far and wide, blasting, like a malaria, whatever it met with on its way that had any connection with religion, morals, or venerable social customs. Besides Voltaire, who presided over this coterie, at least in spirit, the daily company included Diderot, an enthusiast by nature and a cynic and sophist by profession; D'Alembert, a genius of the first order in mathematics, though less distinguished in literature; the malicious Marmontel, the philosopher HelvÉtius, the AbbÉ Raynal, the furious enemy of all modern institutions; the would-be sentimentalist Grimm, and D'Holbach himself. Hume, Gibbon, Bolingbroke, and others were affiliated members. Their plan was to write a book which would in some sense supersede all others, itself forming a library containing the most recent discoveries in philosophy, and the best explanations and details on every topic, literary and scientific.

The project of this great enterprise of an Encyclopaedia as an immense vehicle for the development of the opinions of the philosophers, alarmed the government, and the parliament and the clergy pronounced its condemnation. The philosophy of Descartes and the eminent thinkers of the seventeenth century assumed the soul of man as the starting-point in the investigation of physical science. The men of the eighteenth century had become tired of following out the sublimities and abstractions of the Cartesians, and they took the opposite course; beginning from sensation, they did not stop short of the grossest materialism and positive atheism.

Such were the principles of the Encyclopaedia, more fully developed and explained in the writings of Condillac (1715-1780), the head of this school of philosophy. His first work, "On the Origin of Human Knowledge," contains the germ of all that he afterwards published. In his "Treatise on Sensation," he endeavored, but in vain, to derive the notion of duty from sensation, and expert as he was in logic, he could not conceal the great gulf which his theory left between these two terms. Few writers have enjoyed more success; he brought the science of thought within the reach of the vulgar by stripping it of everything elevated, and every one was surprised and delighted to find that philosophy was so easy a thing. Having determined not to establish morality on any innate principles of the soul, these philosophers founded it on the fact common to all animated nature, the feeling of self-interest. Already deism had rejected the evidence of a divine revelation. Now atheism raised a more audacious front, and proclaimed that all religious sentiment was but the reverie of a disordered mind. The works in which this opinion is most expressly announced, date from the period of the Encyclopaedia.

D'Alembert (1717-1773) is now chiefly known as the author of the preliminary discourse of the Encyclopaedia, which is ranked among the principal works of the age.

Diderot (1714-1784), had he devoted himself to any one sphere, instead of wandering about in the chaos of opinions which rose and perished around him, might have left a lasting reputation, and posterity, instead of merely repeating his name, would have spoken of his works. He may be regarded as a writer injurious at once to literature and to morals.

The most faithful disciple of the philosophy of this period was HelvÉtius (1715-1771), known chiefly by his work, "On the Mind," the object of which is to prove that physical sensibility is the origin of all our thoughts. Of all the writers who maintained this opinion, none have represented it in so gross a manner. His work was condemned by the Sorbonne, the pope, and the parliament; it was burned by the hand of the hangman, and the author was compelled to retract it.

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a writer who marched under none of the recognized banners of the day. The Encyclopaedists had flattered themselves that they had tuned the opinion of all Europe to their philosophical strain, when suddenly they heard his discordant note. Without family, without friends, without home, wandering from place to place, from one condition in life to another, he conceived a species of revolt against society, and a feeling of bitterness against those civil organizations in which he could never find a suitable place. He combated the atheism of the Encyclopaedists, their materialism and contempt for moral virtue, for pure deism was his creed. He believed in a Supreme Being, a future state, and the excellence of virtue, but denying all revealed religion, he would have men advance in the paths of virtue, freely and proudly, from love of virtue itself, and not from any sense of duty or obligation. In the "Social Contract" he traced the principles of government and laws in the nature of man, and endeavored to show the end which they proposed to themselves by living in communities, and the best means of attaining this end.

The two most notable works of Rousseau are "Julie," or the "Nouvelle HÉloÏse," and "Emile." The former is a kind of romance, owing its interest mainly to development of character, and not to incident or plot. Emile embodies a system of education in which the author's thoughts are digested and arranged. He gives himself an imaginary pupil, the representative of that life of spontaneous development which was the writer's ideal. In this work there is an episode, the "Savoyard Vicar's Confession of Faith," which is a declaration of pure deism, leveled especially against the errors of Catholicism. It raised a perfect tempest against the author from every quarter. The council of Geneva caused his book to be burned by the executioner, and the parliament of Paris threatened him with imprisonment. Under these circumstances he wrote his "Confessions," which he believed would vindicate him before the world. The reader, who may expect to find this book abounding with at least as much virtue as a man may possess without Christian principle, will find in it not a single feature of greatness; it is a proclamation of disagreeable faults; and yet he would persuade us that he was virtuous, by giving the clearest proofs that he was not.

To the names of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau, must be added that of Buffon (1707-1788), and we have the four writers of this age who left all their contemporaries far behind. Buffon having been appointed superintendent of the Jardin des Plantes, and having enriched this fine establishment, and gathered into it, from all parts of the world, various productions of nature, conceived the project of composing a natural history, which should embrace the whole immensity of being, animate and inanimate. He first laid down the theory of the earth, then treated the natural history of man, afterwards that of viviparous quadrupeds and birds. The first volumes of his work appeared in 1749; the most important of the supplementary matter which followed was the "Epochs of Nature." He gave incredible attention to his style, and is one of the most brilliant writers of the eighteenth century. No naturalist has ever equaled him in the magnificence of his theories, or the animation of his descriptions of the manners and habits of animals. It is said that he wrote the "Epochs of Nature" eleven times over. He not only recited his compositions aloud, in order to judge of the rhythm and cadence, but he made a point of being in full dress before he sat down to write, believing that the splendor of his habiliments impressed his language with that pomp and elegance which he so much admired, and which is his distinguishing characteristic. Buffon, while maintaining friendship with the celebrated men of his age, did not identify himself with the party of the encyclopaedists, or the sects into which they were divided. But he lived among men who deemed physical nature alone worthy of study, and the wits of the age who had succeeded in discovering how a Supreme Being might be dispensed with. Buffon evaded the subject entirely, and amid all his lofty soarings showed no disposition to rise to the Great First Cause. After his time, science lost its contemplative and poetical character, and acquired that of intelligent observation. It became a practical thing, and entered into close alliance with the arts. The arts and sciences, thus combined, became the glory of France, as literature had been in the preceding age.

The declining years of Voltaire and Rousseau witnessed no rising genius of similar power, but some authors of a secondary rank deserve notice. Marmontel (1728-1799) is distinguished as the writer of "Belisarius," a philosophical romance, "Moral Tales," and "Elements of Literature." He endeavors to lead his readers to the enjoyments of literature, instead of detaining them with frigid criticisms.

La Harpe (1739-1803) displayed great eloquence in literary criticism, and some of his works maintain their place, though they have little claim to originality.

Many writers devoted themselves to history, but the spirit of French philosophy was uncongenial to this species of composition, and the age does not afford one remarkable historian. The fame of the AbbÉ Raynal (1718-1796) rests chiefly on his "History of the Two Indies." It is difficult to conceive how a sober man could have arrived at such delirium of opinion, and how he could so complacently exhibit principles which tended to overthrow the whole system of society. Scarcely a crime was committed during the revolution, with which this century closes, but could find its advocate in this declaimer. When, however, Raynal found himself in the midst of the turmoils he had suggested, he behaved with justice, moderation, and courage; thus proving that his opinions were not the result of experience.

The days of true religious eloquence were past; faith was extinct among the greater part of the community, and cold and timid among the rest. Preachers, in deference to their audience, kept out of view whatever was purely religious, and enlarged on those topics which coincided with mere human morality. Religion was introduced only as an accessory which it was necessary to disguise skillfully, in order to escape derision. Genuine pulpit eloquence was out of the question under these circumstances.

Forensic eloquence had been improving in simplicity and seriousness since the commencement of the eighteenth century, and men of the law were now led by the circumstances of the times to trace out universal principles, rather than to discuss isolated facts. The eloquence of the bar thus acquired more extensive influence; the measures of the government converted it into a hostile power, and it furnished itself with weapons of reason and erudition which had not been thought of before.

We come now close upon the epoch when the national spirit was no longer to be traced in books, but in actions. The reign of Louis XV. had been marked with general disorder, and while he was sinking into the grave, amid the scorn of the people, the magistrates were punished for opposing the royal authority, and the public were indignant at the arbitrary proceeding. Beaumarchais (1732-1799) became the organ of this feeling, and his memoirs, like his comedies, are replete with enthusiasm, cynicism, and buffoonery. Literature was never so popular; it was regarded as the universal and powerful instrument which it behooved every man to possess. All grades of society were filled with authors and philosophers; the public mind was tending towards some change, without knowing what it would have; from the monarch on the throne to the lowest of the people, all perceived the utter discordance that prevailed between existing opinions and existing institutions.

In the midst of the dull murmur which announced the approaching storm, literature, as though its work of agitation had been completed, took up the shepherd's reed for public amusement. "Posterity would scarcely believe," says an eminent historian, "that 'Paul and Virginia' and the 'Indian Cottage' were composed at this juncture by Bernardin de St, Pierre, (1737-1814), as also the 'Fables of Florian' which are the only ones that have been considered readable since those of La Fontaine." About the same time appeared the "Voyage of Anacharsis," in which the AbbÉ BarthÉlemy (1716-1795) embodied his erudition in an attractive form, presenting a lively picture of Greece in the time of Pericles.

Among the more moral writers of this age was Necker (1732-1804), the financial minister of Louis XVI., who maintained the cause of religion against the torrent of public opinion in works distinguished for delicacy and elevation, seriousness and elegance.

When the storm at length burst, the country was exposed to every kind of revolutionary tyranny. The first actors in the work of destruction were, for the most part, actuated by good intentions; but these were soon superseded by men of a lower class, envious of all distinctions of rank and deeply imbued with the spirit of the philosophers. Some derived, from the writings of Rousseau, a hatred of everything above them; others had taken from Mably his admiration of the ancient republics of Greece and Rome, and would reproduce them in France; others had borrowed from Raynal the revolutionary torch which he had lighted for the destruction of all institutions; others, educated in the atheistic fanaticism of Diderot, trembled with rage at the very name of a priest or religion; and thus the Revolution was gradually handed over to the guidance of passion and personal interest.

In hurrying past these years of anarchy and bloodshed, we cast a glance upon the poet, AndrÉ ChÉnier (1762-1794), who dared to write against the excesses of his countrymen, in consequence of which he was cited before the revolutionary tribunal, condemned, and executed.

4. FRENCH LITERATURE UNDER THE EMPIRE.—Napoleon, on the establishment of the empire, gave great encouragement to the arts, but none to literature. Books were in little request; old editions were sold for a fraction of their original price; but new works were dear, because the demand for them was so limited. When literature again lifted its head, it appeared that in the chaos of events a new order of thought had been generated. The feelings of the people were for the freer forms of modern literature, introduced by Madame de StaËl and ChÂteaubriand, rather than the ancient classics and the French models of the seventeenth century.

Madame de StaËl (1766-1817) has been pronounced by the general voice to be among the greatest of all female authors. She was early introduced to the society of the cleverest men in Paris, with whom her father's house was a favorite resort; and before she was twelve years of age, such men as Raynal, Marmontel, and Grimm used to converse with her as though she were twenty, calling out her ready eloquence, inquiring into her studies, and recommending new books. She thus imbibed a taste for society and distinction, and for bearing her part in the brilliant conversation of the salon. At the age of twenty she became the wife of the Baron de StaËl, the Swedish minister at Paris. On her return, after the Reign of Terror, Madame de StaËl became the centre of a political society, and her drawing- rooms were the resort of distinguished foreigners, ambassadors, and authors. On the accession of Napoleon, a mutual hostility arose between him and this celebrated woman, which ended in her banishment and the suppression of her works.

"The Six Years of Exile" is the most simple and interesting of her productions. Her "Considerations on the French Revolution" is the most valuable of her political articles. Among her works of fiction, "Corinne" and "Delphine" have had the highest popularity. But of all her writings, that on "Germany" is considered worthy of the highest rank, and it was calculated to influence most beneficially the literature of her country, by opening to the rising generation of France unknown treasures of literature and philosophy. Writers like Delavigne, Lamartine, BÉranger, De Vigny, and Victor Hugo, though in no respect imitators of Madame de StaËl, are probably much indebted to her for the stimulus to originality which her writings afforded.

Another female author, who lived, like Madame de StaËl through the
Revolution, and exercised an influence on public events, was Madame de
Genlis (1746-1830). Her works, which extend to at least eighty volumes,
are chiefly educational treatises, moral tales, and historical romances.
Her political power depended rather on her private influence in the
Orleans family than upon her pen.

ChÂteaubriand (1769-1848) must be placed side by side with Madame de StaËl, as another of those brilliant and versatile geniuses who have dazzled the eyes of their countrymen, and exerted a permanent influence on French literature. While the eighteenth century had used against religion all the weapons of ridicule, he defended it by poetry and romance. Christianity he considered the most poetical of all religions, the most attractive, the most fertile in literary, social, and artistic results, and he develops his theme with every advantage of language and style in the "Genius of Christianity" and the "Martyrs." Some of the characteristics of ChÂteaubriand, however, have produced a seriously injurious effect on French literature, and of these the most contagious and corrupting is his passion for the glitter of words and the pageantry of high-sounding phrases.

The salutary reaction against skepticism, produced in literature by Madame de StaËl and ChÂteaubriand was carried into philosophy by Maine de Biran (1766-1824), and more particularly by Royer-Collard (1763-1846) who took a decided stand against the school of Condillac and the materialists of the eighteenth century. Royer-Collard restored its spiritual character to the science of the human mind, by introducing into it the psychological discoveries of the Scotch school. Benjamin Constant (1767-1830) infused into political science a spirit of freedom before quite unknown. In his works he attempted to limit the authority of the government, to build up society on personal freedom, and on the guaranties of individual right. His writings combine extraordinary power of logic with great variety and beauty of style.

Proceeding in another direction, Bonald (1753-1846) opposed the spirit of the French Revolution, by establishing the authority of the church as the only criterion of truth and morality. As Rousseau had placed sovereign power in the will of the people, Bonald placed it in that of God, as it is manifested to man through language and revelation, and of this revelation he regarded the Catholic church as the interpreter. He develops his doctrines in numerous works, especially in his "Primitive Legislation," which is characterized by boldness, dogmatism, sophistry in argument, and by severity and purity of style.

The peculiarities of Bonald were carried still farther by De Maistre (1755-1852), whose hatred of the Revolution led him into the system of an absolute theocracy, such as was dreamed of by Gregory VII. and Innocent III.

5. FRENCH LITERATURE FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE PRESENT TIME.—The influences already spoken of, in connection with the literary progress which began in Germany and England towards the close of the eighteenth century, produced in the beginning of the nineteenth century a revival in French literature; but the conflict of opinions, the immense number of authors, and their extraordinary fecundity, render it difficult to examine or classify them. We first notice the great advances in history and biography. Among the earlier specimens may be mentioned the voluminous works of Sismondi and the "Biographie Universelle," in fifty-two closely printed volumes, the most valuable body of biography that any modern literature can boast. Since 1830, historians and literary critics have occupied the foreground in French literature. The historians have divided themselves into two schools, the descriptive and the philosophical. With the one class history consists of a narration of facts in connection with a picture of manners, bringing scenes of the past vividly before the mind of the reader, leaving him to deduce general truths from the particular ones brought before him. The style of these writers is simple and manly, and no opinions of their own shine through their statements. The chief representatives of this class, who regard Sir Walter Scott as their master, are Thierry, Villemain, Barante, and in historical sketches and novels, Dumas and De Vigny.

The philosophical school, on the other hand, consider this scenic narrative more suitable to romance than to history; they seek in the events of the past the chain of causes and effects in order to arrive at general conclusions which may direct the conduct of men in the future. At the head of this school is Guizot (1787-1876), who has developed his historical views in his essays on the "History of France," and more particularly in his "History of European Civilization," in which he points out the origin of modern civilization, and follows the progress of the human mind from the fall of the Roman Empire. The philosophical historians have been again divided according to their different theories, but the most eminent of them are those whom ChÂteaubriand calls fatalists; men who, having surveyed the course of public events, have come to the conclusion that individual character has had little influence on the political destinies of mankind, that there is a general and inevitable series of events which regularly succeed each other with the certainty of cause and effect, and that it is as easy to trace it as it is impossible to resist or divert it from its course. A tendency to these views is visible in almost every French historian and philosopher of the present time. The philosophy of history thus grounded has, in their hands, assumed the aspect of a science.

HISTORY.—Among the celebrated writers who have combined the philosophical and narrative styles are the brothers AmadÉe and Augustine Thierry (1787- 1873), (1795-1856), who produced a "History of the Gauls," of "The Norman Conquest," and other excellent works; Sismondi (1773-1842), whose history of the "Italian Republics" and of the "French People" are characterized by immense erudition; Thiers (1797-1877), whose clearness of style is combined with comprehensiveness and eloquence; Mignet (1796-1884), celebrated for his history of the French Revolution. The voluminous "History of France," by Henri Martin (1810-1884), is perhaps the best and most important work treating the whole subject in detail.

The downfall of the July Monarchy brought forth works of importance on this subject, the most noted of which are those by Lamartine, Michelet, and Louis Blanc. Lamartine's "History of the Girondins" was written from a constitutional and republican point of view, and was not without influence in producing the Revolution of 1848, but it is the work of an orator and poet rather than that of a historian. The historical and political works of Michelet (1778-1873) are of a more original character; his imaginative powers are of the highest order, and his style is striking and picturesque. The work of Louis Blanc (1813-1883) is that of a sincere and ardent republican, and is useful from that point of view, as is that of Quinet (1803-1875). Lanfrey places the character of Napoleon in a new and far from favorable light. Taine, so distinguished in literary criticism, has discussed elaborately the causes of the Revolution.

POETRY AND THE DRAMA; RISE OF THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL.—During the Middle Ages men of letters followed each other in the cultivation of certain literary forms, often with little regard to their adaptation to the subject. The vast extension of thought and knowledge in the sixteenth century broke up the old forms and introduced the practice of treating each subject in a manner more or less appropriate to it. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed a return to