Romains jusqu'à nos jours, or in the Histoire des Etats-Unis d'Amérique, he showed also that he could wield the satirist's pen in such romances as Paris en Amérique, and the Prince Caniche. Flaubert in Salammbô restored to life the civilisation of ancient Carthage, and his minute observation of life in Madame Bovary opened new horizons to French fiction. Taine shines as a philosopher and as a writer in the Histoire de la Littérature anglaise, while Renan, in the Vie de Jésus, the Origines du Christianisme, and similar studies, gives us a prose endowed with a poetic wealth altogether his own. Political economy was not neglected; since it was honoured by the works of Lanfrey, the earnest defender of reason and of freedom, in the Eglise et la Philosophie du 18e siècle, the sturdy opponent of Catholicism in the Histoire politique des Papes, of Socialism in the Lettres d'Everard, and of Cæsarism in the Histoire de Napoléon I, his greatest work. The Fleurs du Mal of Baudelaire are poems of love, at once mystical and licentious. Théodore de Banville gave us exquisitely chiselled verses, full of elaboration, imagery, and colour, in his Odes, his Nouvelles Odes funambulesques, and his Trentesix Ballades joyeuses; and formulated a new code of poetic laws in his Petit Traité de la poésie française. As for Théophile Gautier, at once a critic and a creator, who adds to his rich vocabulary the special study of style and form, his work is of immense importance. The Mariages de Paris, De Pontoise à Stamboul, the Roman d'un brave Homme, are all beautiful specimens of the clear and witty style which earned for Edmond About the nickname of "Voltaire's grandson." Alexandre Dumas, the elder, possessed at once a vivid imagination and an incredible facility of production; gifts abundantly displayed in both his novels and his plays. Who has not read the Collier de la Reine, the Trois Mousquetaires, and the Comte de Monte-Cristo? Dumas, the younger, follows in his father's footsteps. He, too, wrote both plays and novels. L'affaire Clémenceau, the Dame aux Camélias, the Demi-monde, the Fils naturel, reveal him as a writer, a thinker, and a moralist. Grace is the marked characteristic of both the plays and the novels of Octave Feuillet. The Comte de Gobineau, who left one

great poem unfinished, Amadis, is a scholar as well as a poet. He undertook, in his Religions et les Philosophies dans l'Asie centrale, to make known the history and the doctrines of Persian cults; he displays his profound erudition in his Histoire des Perses d'après les Auteurs orientaux, grecs et latins, and his Essai sur l'Inégalité des Races humaines was the starting-point of a new school of chronology. Victor Hugo reformed French poetry, found new virility by saturating his vocabulary with the wealth of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He is the great master of the Romantic School, which he substituted for the Classic School. Whether he dealt with political, religious, social, or artistic matters, whether he wrote fiction, drama, or verse, he is at home in every department of literary activity, everywhere a master. Exiled by the events of the 2nd December 1851, he took refuge first in Jersey and later in Guernsey. There, face to face with the waves, he seems to have found inspiration in the storms, in the grandeur of the sea. In that environment he wrote two pamphlets, Napoléon le Petit and the Châtiments, which are at once histories and poems of the highest rank. Later, he wrote the Légende des Siècles, a series of epopees and marvellous fancies in which he brings back to life the extinct civilisations of twenty centuries. Notre-Dame de Paris, gives us again the Paris of the Middle Ages, while the Misérables is a moving tale based upon an erudite historical conception. Hugo sought for the most striking antitheses, evoking the paroxysms of love and of fear. Nothing is too lofty for his imagination, characterised as it is by the most sublime grandeur. Renan well said that Hugo, "like a Cyclops still half buried in the earth, possesses the secrets of a lost world. His tremendous writings reflect, as in a mirage, a universe which no other eye but his can still see." Yet he could leave these regions of the supernatural and the fantastic, and the Art d'être Grand-père shows that he can commune, as no one else could, with the pure soul of a child. The fanciful verses, entitled the Prunes, which Alphonse Daudet included in his volume of Amoureuses, first drew attention to the author whom the Nabad, Numa Roumestan, and other successful works soon placed among the list of contemporary

novelists. The Vers of Guy de Maupassant are the work of a writer of humorous tales, and the poet-musician Verlaine finds new rhythms in Sagesse and the Romans sans paroles, while the fertile pen of Claretie produces novels, plays, and columns of journalism. Erckmann-Chatrian are two authors whose unbroken association has merged into a single personality, and who achieved great popularity by their Romans nationaux. Another novelist, Jules Verne, gifted with a vivid imagination and a ready wit, breaks away from the old traditions of the fairy-tale, and finds a new world of marvels, based upon the latest scientific and geographical researches. Cinq Semaines en Ballon, the first story of this sort, was soon followed by the Désert de Glace, Vingt mille Lieues sous les Mers, the Voyage autour du Monde en 80 jours, all of which won unbounded popularity. Louis Viaud, a writer of great talent, signs the pseudonym of Pierre Loti to Madame Chrysanthème, Mon frère Yves, and the Pêcheur d'Islande, all charming books. Theuriet is at once a novelist and a poet. Exquisite in Raymonde, touching in the Filleul d'un Marquis, psychological in Sauvageonne, he shows his love for nature in the Journal de Tristan, and his keen analysis in Michel Verneuil. Thibault, who writes under the name of " Anatole France," has published some fine verses, the Poèmes dorés, and he takes his place among the delicate writers of short stories in his Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard. Catulle Mendès has written some beautiful verse; his Soleil de Minuit, the Soirs moroses; and some brilliant fiction, too. At the head of the Realistic School stands Emile Zola, who, in Thérèse Raquin, Rougon Macquart, La Terre, and other novels depicts everything he sees, without recoiling from the least important detail, however brutal it may be. These powerful studies are written in a rich and vigorous style, and they exercise a considerable influence upon contemporary fiction. Paul Bourget shows originality and psychological insight in Cruelle Enigme, l'Irreparable, and Un Crime d'Amour, while Sully-Prudhomme gives his thoughts masterly expression in Justice, Vaines Tendresses, and Le Bonheur. The poetic idiom of Southern France was restored to life by the Provençal poet, Mistral, whose grand rustic epopée Mireille, and

whose Calendan, too, enjoyed an immediate success; while François Coppée, an observer of nature and of the life about him, gives us a picture of delightful and familiar scenes in the Intimités, Les Humbles, and La Grève des Forgerons. Criticism has its shining lights in the person of J. Lemaître with his Contemporains, and Brunetière, who displays his learning in Racine, Diderot, Le Roman Naturaliste, Histoire et Littérature. Nor must we forget that history has recently been enriched by such important works as Guizot's L'Histoire racontée à mes petits Enfants; Le Consulat et l'Empire by Thiers; Louis Blanc's L'Histoire de la Révolution française; and Michelet's L'Histoire de France, as well as a mass of monographs, memoirs, and volumes of letters and of recollections.

On the whole, the nineteenth century has produced a great variety of important works. It is not possible to sum up in one word their general character, but some general observations suggest themselves. The first is that romance and the naturalistic school occupy an important place in the literature of our time; and the second is, that as we approach the close of the century, individuality of product tends more and more to replace the system by which the writers of an earlier day grouped themselves in schools. It becomes evident, too, that the seeking for the exact word, and for the "document" is accompanied on all sides by a scrupulous study of form, which has never been more sedulously cultivated. Erudition appears hand in hand with fancy, and criticism exercises more and more its sapient influence.

L. Vallis

Bibliothécaire à la Bibliothèque Nat.

PARIS, March 1899.