Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/716

 080 FRANCE [LITERATURE. ideal at which each of his authors aimed, and to do this he has to study their idiosyncracies with the utmost care, and set them before his readers in as full and attractive a Sainte- fashion as he can manage. The first writer who thoroughly Beuve. g ras p ei i this necessity and successfully dealt with it was Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869), who has indeed identified his name with the method of criticism just described. Sainte- Beuve s first remarkable work (his poems and novels we may leave out of consideration) was the sketch of 16th century literature already alluded to which he contributed to the Globe. But it was not till later that his style of criticism became fully developed and accentuated. During the first decade of Louis Philippe s reign his critical papers, united under the title of Critiques et Portraits Litteraires, show a gradual advance. During the next ten years he was mainly occupied with his studies of the writers of the Port Royal school. But it was during the last twenty years of his life, when the famous Causer ies du Lundi appeared weekly in the columns of the Constitutional and the Moniteur, that his most remarkable productions came out. Sainte-Beuve s style of criticism (which is the key to so much of French literature of the last half century that it is necessary to dwell on it at some length), excellent and valuable as it is, le.nt itself to two corruptions. There is, in the first place, in making the careful investigations into the character and circumstances of each writer which it demands, a danger ot paying too much attention to the man and too little to his work, and of substituting for a critical study a mere collection of personal anecdotes and traits, especially if the author dealt with belongs to a foreign country or a past age. The other danger is that of connecting the genius and character of particular authors too much with their conditions and circumstances so as to regard them as merely so many products of the age. These faults, and especially the latter, have been very noticeable in many of Sainte- Beuve s successors, particularly in M. Henri Taine, the most brilliant of living French critics, and owing to his Ilistoire de la Litterature Anglaise, the best known in England. A large number of other critics during the period deserve notice because they have, though acting more or less on the newer system of criticism, manifested considerable origin ality in its application. As far as merely critical faculty goes, and still more in the power of giving literary expres sion to criticism, Thc ophile Gautier yields to no one. His Les Grotesques, an early work dealing with Villon, De Yiau, and other en/ants terribles of French literature, has served as a model to many subsequent writers, such as Charles Monselet and Charles Asselineau, the affectionate historian of the less famous promoters of the romantic movement. On the other hand, Gautier s picture criticisms, and his short reviews of books, obituary notices, and other things of the kind contributed to daily papers, are in point of style among the finest of all such fugitive compositions. Janin, chiefly a theatrical critic, excelled in light and easy journalism, but his work has neither weight of substance nor careful elaboration of manner sufficient to give it permanent value. This sort of light critical comment lias become almost a specialty of the French press, and among its numerous prac titioners the names of Armand de Pontmartin (an imitator and assailant of Sainte-Beuve), Arsene Houssaye, Fiorentino, may be mentioned. Edmond Scherer and Paul de St Victor the former of whom was born in 1812, the latter in 1827 represent different sides of Sainte-Beuve s style in literary criticism; and in theatrical censure Fran- cisque Sarcey, an acute but somewhat severe judge, has succeeded to the good-natured sovereignty of Janin. The criticism of the Revue des Deux Mondes has played a suffi ciently important part inFrench literature to deserve separate notice in passing. Founded in 1829, the Revue, after some vicissitudes, soon attained, under the direction of the Swiss Buloz, the character of being one of the first of European critical periodicals. Its style of criticism has on the whole inclined rather to the classical side, that is, to classicism as modified by, and possible after, the romantic movement. Besides some of the authors already named, its principal critical contributors have been Gustave Planche, an acute but somewhat truculent critic, Henri Etienne, St Ren6 Taillandier. Lastly we must notice the important section of professorial or university critics, whose critical work has taken the form either of regular treatises or of courses of republishcd lectures, books somewhat academic and rhe torical in character, but often representing an amount of influence which has served largely to stir up attention to literature. The most prominent name among these is that of Villemain (1790-1870), who was one of the earliest critics of the literature of his own country that obtained a hearing out of it. M. Nisard (b. 180G) has perhaps been more fortunate in his dealings with Latin than with French, and in his History of the latter literature represents too much the classical tradition; Alexandre Vinct (1797-1847), a Swiss critic of considerable eminence, Saint-Marc-Girardin (1801-1873), whoso Course de Litterature JJramatique is his chief work, and Eugene Geruzez (1799-18G5), who is the author not only of an extremely useful and well- written handbook to French literature before the Revolu tion, but also of other works dealing with separate por tions of the subject, must also be mentioned. History since 1830. The remarkable development of historical studies which we have noticed as taking place under the Piestoration was accelerated and intensified in the reigns of Charles X. and Louis Philippe. Both the scope and the method of the historian underwent a sensible altera tion. For something like 150 years historians had been divided into two classes, those who produced elegant literary works pleasant to read, and those w r ho produced works of laborious erudition, but not even intended for general perusal. The Vertots and Voltaires were on one side, the Mabillons and Tillemonts on another. Now, although the duty of a French historian to produce works of literary merit was not forgotten, it was recognized as part of that duty to consult original documents and impart original observation. At the same time, to the merely political events which had formerly been recognized as forming the historian s province were added the social and literary phenomena which had long been more or less neglected. Old chronicles and histories were re-read and re-edited ; innumerable monographs on special subjects and periods were produced, and these latter were of immense service to romance writers at the time of the popularity of the histori cal novel. Not a few of the works, for instance, which were signed by Alexandre Dumas consist mainly of extracts or condensations from old chronicles, or modern monographs ingeniously united by dialogue and varnished with a little description. History, however, had not to wait for this second-hand popularity, and its cultivators had fully suffi cient literary talent to maintain its dignity. Sismondi, whom we have already noticed, continued during this period his great Ilistoire des Fran^ais, and produced his even better known Ilistoire des Republiques Italiennes au Moyen Age. The brothers Thierry devoted themselves to early French history, Am6d6e Thierry (1787-1873) producing a Histoire des Gaulois and other works concerning the Roman period, and Augustin Thierry (1795-1856) the well-known history of the Norman Conquest, the equally attractive Rccits des Temps Merovingiens, and other excellent works. Philippe de Se&quot;gur (1780-1875) gave a history of the Russian cam paign of Napoleon, and some other works chiefly dealing with Russian history. The voluminous Histoire de Francs of Henri Martin (b. 1810) is perhaps the best and most impartial work dealing in detail with the whole ^subject.