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372 are to be seen in the literature produced north of the Alps. It is where the strongest currents meet that the most complex eddies are produced. To the sincerity and ardour of the Catholic reaction in France, and Holland, and England, we owe some beautiful and interesting literature in prose and verse.

In France, the scepticism and libertinism of the Renaissance pass rapidly away. Catholicism and classicism advance hand in hand. Corneille's Polyeucte, and Racine's later Athalie and Esther, are not less characteristic of the age than Cinna and Britannicus, Arnauld's La Fréquente Communion than the Discours de la Méthode. For the Jansenist movement, which produced the Lettres Provinciales and the Pensées, though it came into conflict with Jesuit influence and ecclesiastical authority, is only an incident in the general spiritual history of the period, and was not without influence even on those who opposed it, and on the great preachers of the period which follows.

In Holland, the result of the dissensions in Protestantism and of the Catholic reaction is seen in the strange phenomenon, that the greatest and not least representative poet of a Protestant country is an ardent Catholic, using the stage to set forth Catholic doctrine, and pouring out his heart in poetic apologetics, and hymns to the Virgin and saintly martyrs. And a deep religious strain runs through all the Dutch poetry of this period. Hooft alone has the blended epicureanism and stoicism which mark the pure child of the Classical Renaissance. Huyghens