THE REVOLUTIONARY ORATORS.—During the revolutionary period may be pointed out the great orators of the Assembly: Mirabeau, Barnave, Danton, Vergniaud, Robespierre; the ill-starred authors of national songs: Marie Joseph Chenier; the author of the Marseillaise, Rouget de Lisle, who only succeeded on the day that he wrote it. And so we reach the nineteenth century.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.—At the commencement of a century which was so brilliant from the literary aspect, James Delille was despotic: his earlier efforts have already been attended to. A skilled versifier, but without fire or many ideas, he made cultured translations from Virgil and Milton, wrote perennially descriptive poems, such as The Man in the Fields, The Gardens, etc., and a witty satirical poem on Conversation, which, in our opinion, was the best thing he wrote.

GREAT POETS: LAMARTINE.—Great poets were to come. Aroused, without doubt, by the poetic genius of the prose writer Chateaubriand, the first generation of the romantics was formed by Lamartine, Victor Hugo, and Alfred de Vigny. Romanticism was the preponderance of imagination and sensibility over reason and observation. Lamartine rebathed poetry in its ancient and eternal sources: love, religion, and the sentiment of nature. In his Meditations, his Harmonies, and his Contemplations, he reawoke feelings long slumbering, and profoundly moved the hearts of men. In Jocelyn he widened his scope, and, emerging from himself, narrated, as he imagined it, the story of the soul of a priest during the Revolution, and subsequently in the obscurity of a rural parish; in The Fall of an Angel he reverted to the life of primaeval man as he conceived it to be when humanity was still barbarous. Apart from his poetic works, he wrote The History of the Girondins, which is a romanesque history of almost the whole of the Revolution, some novels, some autobiographic episodes, and a few discourses on literature.

VICTOR HUGO.—Victor Hugo, though less sensitive than Lamartine but more imaginative, began with lyrical poems which were somewhat reminiscent of the classical manner, then went on to pictures of the East, thence to meditations on what happened to himself, and on all subjects (Autumn Leaves, Lights and Shades); next, in full possession of his genius, he dwelt on great philosophical meditations in his Contemplations, and in The Legend of the Centuries gave that epic fragment which is a picture of history. His was one of the most powerful imaginations that the world has ever seen, as well as a creator of style, who made a style for himself all in vision and colour, and also in melody and orchestration. Although in prose he lacked one part of his resources, he utilised the rest magnificently, and Notre Dame and The Miserable are works which excite admiration, at least in parts. Later, he will be dealt with as a dramatist.

ALFRED DE VIGNY.—Alfred de Vigny was the most philosophical of these three great poets, though inferior to the other two in creative imaginativeness. He meditated deeply on the existence of evil on earth, on the misfortunes of man, and the sadness of life, and his most despairing songs, which were also his most beautiful, left a profound echo in the hearts of his contemporaries. Some of his poems, such as The Bottle in the Sea, The Shepherd's House, The Fury of Samson, are among the finest works of French literature.

MUSSET; THEOPHILE GAUTIER.—The second generation of romanticism, which appeared about 1830, possessed Alfred de Musset and Theophile Gautier as chief representatives. They bore little mutual resemblance, be it said, the former only knowing how to sing about himself, his pleasures, his illusions, his angers, and, above all, his sorrows, always with sincerity and in accents that invariably charmed and sometimes lacerated; the latter, supremely artist, always seeking the fair exterior and delighting in reproducing it as though he were a painter, a sculptor, or a musician, and excellent and dexterous in these "transpositions of art," whether they were in verse or prose.

THE PROSE WRITERS: CHATEAUBRIAND.—The French prose writers of this first half of the nineteenth century were emphatically poets, as had also already been Jean Jacques Rousseau and even Buffon. Imagination, sensibility, and the sentiment for nature were the mistresses of their faculties. Chateaubriand was the promoter of all the literary movement of the nineteenth century, alike in prose and poetry. He was a literary theorist, an epic poet in prose, traveller, polemist, orator. His great literary theory was in The Genius of Christianity, and consisted in supporting that all true poetic beauties lay in Christianity. His epic poems in prose are The Natchez, a picture of the customs of American Indians, The Martyrs, a panorama of the struggle of paganism at its close and of Christianity at its beginning; his travels were The Voyage in America and The Itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem. Member of the parliamentary assemblies, ambassador and minister, he wrote and spoke in the most brilliant and impassioned manner on the subjects that he took up. Finally, falling back on himself, as he had never ceased to do more or less all through his career, he left, in his marvellous Memoirs from Beyond the Tomb, a posthumous work which is, perhaps, his masterpiece. His infinitely supple and variegated style formed a continuous artistic miracle, so harmonious and musical was it more musical even than that of Jean Jacques Rousseau.

MME. DE STAEL.—At the same time, though she died long before him, Mme. de Stael, by her curious and interesting, though never affecting, novels, Delphine and Corinne, by her dissertations on various serious subjects, by her work on Germany, which initiated the French into the habits and literature of neighbours they were ill acquainted with, also directed the minds of men into new paths, and she was prodigal of ideas which she had almost always borrowed, but which she thoroughly understood, profoundly reconsidered, and to which she imparted an appearance of originality even in the eyes of those who had given them to her.

THE HISTORIANS.—Even the historians of this first half of the century were poets: Augustin Thierry, who reconstituted scientifically but imaginatively The Merovingian Era; Michelet, pupil of Vico, who saw in history the development of an immense poem and cast over his account of the Middle Ages the fire and feverishness of his ardent imagination and tremulous sensitiveness. Guizot and Thiers can be left apart, for they were statesmen by education and, although capable of passion, sought the one to rationally generalise and "discipline history," as was said, the other solely to capture facts accurately and to set them out clearly in orderly fashion.

THE PHILOSOPHERS.—The philosophers were not sheltered from this contagion, and if Cousin and his eclectic school loved to attach themselves to the seventeenth century both in mind and style, Lamennais, first in his Essay on Indifference, then in his Study of a Philosophy and in his Words of a Believer, impassioned, impetuous, and febrile, underwent the influence of romanticism, but also gave to the romantics the greater portion of the ideas they put in verse.

THE NOVEL.—As for the novel, it was only natural that it should be deeply affected by the spirit of the new school. George Sand wrote lyrical novels, if the phrase may be used—and, as I think, it is here the accurate expression—entitled Indiana, Valentine, Mauprat, and especially Lelia. She was to impart wisdom later on.

It even happened that a mind born to see reality in an admirably accurate manner, saw it so only by reason of the times, or at least partly due to the times, associated it with a magnifying but deforming imagination converting it into a literary megalomania; and this was the case of Honore de Balzac.

NON-ROMANTIC LITERATURE.—Nevertheless, as was only natural, throughout the whole of the romantic epoch there was an entire literature which did not submit to its influence, and simply carried on the tradition of the eighteenth century. In poetry there was the witty, malicious, and very often highly exalted Beranger, whose songs are almost always excellent songs and sometimes are odes; and there was also the able and dexterous but frigid Casimir Delavigne. In prose there was Benjamin Constant, supremely oratorical and a very luminous orator, also a religious philosopher in his work On Religions, and a novelist in his admirable Adolphus, which was semi-autobiographical.

Classical also were Joseph de Maistre, in his political considerations (Evenings in St. Petersburg), and, in fiction, Merimee, accurate, precise, trenchant, and cultured; finally in criticism, Sainte-Beuve, who began, it is true, by being the theorist and literary counsellor of romanticism, but who was soon freed from the spell, almost from 1830, and became author of Port Royal. Though possessing a wide and receptive mind because he was personified intelligence, he was decisively classical in his preferences, sentiments, ideas, and even in his style.

Stendhal, pure product of the eighteenth century, and even exaggerating the spirit of that century in the dryness of his soul and of his style, a pure materialist writing with precision and with natural yet intentional nakedness, possessed valuable gifts of observation, and in his famous novel, Red and Black, in the first part of the Chartreuse of Parma, and in his Memoirs of a Tourist, knew how to draw characters with exactness, sobriety, and power, and to set them in reliefs that were remarkably rare.

THE STAGE.—The drama was very brilliant during this first half of the nineteenth century. The struggle was lively for thirty or thirty-five years between the classicists and the romanticists; the classics defending their citadel, the French stage, much more by their polemics in the newspapers than by the unimportant works which they brought to the Comedie francaise, the romantics here producing nearly all the plays of Hugo (Hernani, Marion de Lorme, Ruy Blas, The Burghers, etc.), and the works of Vigny(Othello, Marshal d'Ancre), as well as the dramas of Dumas (Henry III and his Court, etc.). Between the two schools, both of which were on the stage nearer to the modern than to the antique, the dexterous Casimir Delavigne, with almost invariable success, gave Marino Faliero, Louis XI, The Children of Edward, Don Juan of Austria, and Princess Aurelia, which was pretty, but without impassioned interest.

A veritable dramatic genius, although destitute of style, of elevation of thought and of ideas, but a prodigious constructor of well-made plays, was Eugene Scribe, who, by his dramas and comedies, as well as the libretti of operas, was the chief purveyor to the French stage between 1830 and 1860.

ROMANTICISM AND REALISM.—So far as pure literature was concerned, the second half of the nineteenth century was divided between enfeebled but persistent romanticism and realism. Theophile Gautier, in 1853, gave his Enamels and Cameos, his best poetic work, and later (1862) his Captain Fracasse. Hugo wrote his Miserables, the second and third Legends of the Centuries, Songs of the Streets and the Woods, etc.

A third romantic generation, of which Theodore de Banville was the most brilliant representative, and which proceeded far more from Gautier than from Hugo or De Musset, pushed verbal and rhythmic virtuosity to the limit and perhaps beyond. Then great or highly distinguished poets appeared.

FAMOUS POETS.—Leconte de Lisle, philosophical poet, attracted by Indian literature, by pessimism, by the taste for nothingness, and the thirst for death, forcing admiration by his sculptural form and majestic rhythm; Sully-Prudhomme, another philosopher, especially psychological, manipulating the lyrical elegy with much art and, above all, infusing into it a grave, sad, and profound sensibility which would have awakened the affection and earned the respect of Catullus, Tibullus, and Lucretius; Francis Coppee, the poet of the joys and sorrows of the lowly, a dexterous versifier too, and possessed of a sincerity so candid as to make the reader forget that there is art in it; Baudelaire, inquisitive about rare and at times artificial sensations, possessing a laborious style, but sometimes managing to produce a deep impression either morbid or lugubrious, considered by an entire school which is still extant as one of the greatest poets within the whole range of French literature; Verlaine, extremely unequal, often detestable and contemptible, but suddenly charming and touching or revealing a religious feeling that suggests a clerk of the Middle Ages; Catulle Mendes, purely romantic, wholly virtuoso, but an astonishingly dexterous versifier. To these poets some highly curious literary dandies set themselves in opposition, being desirous of renovating the poetic art by ascribing more value to the sound of words than to their meaning, striving to make a music of poesy and, in a general way—which is their chief characteristic—being difficult to understand. They gave themselves the name of symbolists, and accepted that of decadents; they regarded Stephen Mallarme either as their chief or as a friend who did them honour. This school has been dignified by no masterpieces and will probably ere long be forgotten.

REALISTIC LITERATURE.—Confronting all this literature, which had a romantic origin even when it affected scorn of the men of 1830, was developed an entire realistic literature composed almost exclusively of writers in prose, but of prose imbued with poetry written by some who had read the romantics and who would not have achieved what they did had romanticism not already existed, a fact which they themselves have not denied, and which is now almost universally accepted. Flaubert, whose masterpiece, Madame Bovary, is dated 1857, was very precisely divided between the two schools; he possessed the taste for breadth of eloquence, for the adventurous, and for Oriental colouring, and also the taste for the common, vulgar, well visualised, thoroughly assimilated truth, tersely portrayed in all its significance. But as he has succeeded better, at least in the eyes of his contemporaries, as a realist than as a man with imagination, he passes into history as the founder of realism always conditionally upon considering Balzac as possessing much of the vigorous realism which provided the impulse and furnished models.

NATURALISM.—From the realism of Flaubert was born the naturalism of Zola, which is the same thing more grossly expressed. Also by his energetic, violent, and tenacious talent, as well as by a weighty though powerful imagination, he exercised over his contemporaries a kind of fascination which it would be puerile to regard as an infatuation for which there was no cause.

More refined and even extremely delicate, though himself also fond of the small characteristic fact; possessed, too, with a graceful and gracious sensibility, Alphonse Daudet often charmed and always interested us in his novels, which are the pictorial anecdotes of the Parisian world at the close of the second Empire and the opening of the third Republic.

The brothers De Goncourt also enjoyed notable success, being themselves absorbed in the exceptional deed and the exceptional character whilst possessing a laboured style which is sometimes seductive because of its unlooked-for effects.

THE POSITIVISTS.—Two great men filled with their renown an epoch already so brilliant; namely, Renan and Taine, both equally historians and philosophers. Renan composed The History of the Children of Israel and The Origins of Christianity, as well as various works of general philosophy, of which the most celebrated is entitled Philosophical Dialogues. Taine wrote the history of The Origins of Contemporary France: that is, the history of the French Revolution, and sundry philosophical works of which the principal are On Intelligence and The French Philosophers of the Eighteenth Century. Both were "positivists," that is to say, elevating Auguste Comte, who has his place in the history of philosophy, but not here, because he was not a good writer; both were positivists, but Renan possessed a lively and profound sense of the grandeur and the moral beauty of Christianity, Taine being imbued with more philosophic strictness. Renan, with infinite flexibility of intelligence, applied himself to understand thoroughly and always (with some excess) to bring home to us the great figures of the Bible, the Gospels, and the early Christians, as well as their foes down to the time of Marcus Aurelius. Further, he affirmed science to possess unique value in his Future of Science; elsewhere, under the similitude of "dreams," he indulged in conceptions, hypotheses, and metaphysical imaginations which were voluntarily rash and infinitely seductive. As always happens, he possessed the style of his mind, supple, sinuous, undulating, astonishingly plastic, insatiable, and charming, evoking the comment, "That is admirably done and it is impossible to know with what it is done."

TAINE.—Taine, more rigid, accumulating documents and methodically arranging them in a method that refuses to be concealed, advances in a rectilineal order, step by step, and with a measured gait, to a solid truth which he did not wish to be either evasive or complex. Highly pessimistic and a little affecting to be so, just as Renan was optimistic and much affected being so, he believed in the evil origin of man and of the necessity for him to be drastically curbed if he is to remain inoffensive. He has written a history of the Revolution wherein he has refused admiration and respect for the crimes then committed, which is why posterity now begins to be very severe upon him. His learned style is wholly artificial, coloured without his being a colourist, composed of metaphors prolonged with difficulty, yet remaining singularly imposing and powerful. He was a curious philosopher, an upright, severe, and rather systematic historian, solid and laboriously original as a writer.

BRUNETIERE.—Brunetiere, of the great French thinkers before our contemporaneous epoch, was critic, literary historian, philosopher, theologian, and orator. As critic, he defended classic tradition against bold innovations, and, especially, moral literature against licentious or gross literature; as a literary historian he renovated literary history by the introduction of the curious, audacious, and fruitful theory of evolution, and his Manual of the History of French Literature was a masterpiece; as philosopher he imparted clearness and precision into the system of Auguste Comte, whose disciple he was; as theologian, exceeding Comte and utilising him, he added weight to Catholicism in France by finding new and decisive "reasons for belief"; as orator he raised his marvellously eloquent tones in France, Switzerland, and America, making more than a hundred "fighting speeches." Since the death of Renan and Taine, he has been the sole director of French thought, which he continues to guide by his books and by the diffusion of his thought among the most vigorous, serious, and meditative minds of the day.

THE CONTEMPORANEOUS DRAMA.—The drama, since 1850, has been almost exclusively written in prose. Emil Augier, however, composed some comedies and dramas in verse and in verse particularly suited to the stage; but the major portion of his work is in prose, whilst Alexander Dumas and Sardou have written exclusively in prose. Augier and Dumas came from Balzac, and remained profoundly realistic, which was particularly suitable to authors of comedy. They studied the manners of the second Empire and depicted them wittily; they studied the social questions which agitated educated minds at this time and drew useful inspiration. Augier leant towards good middle-class common-sense, which did not prevent him from having plenty of wit. Dumas was more addicted to paradox and possessed as much ability as his rival. Victorien Sardou, as dexterous a dramatic constructor as Scribe, and who sometimes rose above this, dragged his easy tolerance from the grand historic drama to the comedy of manners, to light comedy and to insignificant comedy with prodigious facility and inexhaustible fertility.

The most admired living authors, whom we shall be content only to name because they are living, are poets: Edmond Rostand, author of Loiterings; Edmond Haraucourt, author of The Naked Soul and The Hope of the World; Jean Aicard, author of Miette el Nore; Jean Richepin, author of Cesarine, Caresses, Blasphemies, etc.; in fiction, Paul Bourget, Marcel Prevost, Rene Bazin, Bordeaux, Boylesve, Henri de Regnier; in history, Ernest Lavisse, Aulard, Seignobos, D'Haussonville; in philosophy, Boutroux, Bergson, Theodule Ribot, Fouillee, Izoulet; in the drama, Paul Hervieu, Lavedan, Bataille, Brieux, Porto-Riche, Bernstein, Wolff, Tristan Bernard, Edmond Rostand, author of Cyrano de Bergerac and of The Aiglon; as orators, Alexander Ribot, De Mun Poincare, Jaures, etc.



CHAPTER XVI

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: ENGLAND

Poets of the Eighteenth Century: Pope, Young, MacPherson, etc.: Prose Writers of the Eighteenth Century: Daniel Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Swift, Sterne, David Hume. Poets of the Nineteenth Century: Byron, Shelley, the Lake Poets: Prose Writers of the Nineteenth Century: Walter Scott, Macaulay, Dickens, Carlyle.

THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE: POETS.—As in France, the eighteenth century (the age of Queen Anne) was in England richer in prose than in poetry. As poets, however, must be indicated Thomson, descriptive and dramatic, whose profound feeling for nature was not without influence over French writers of the same century; Pope, descriptive writer, translator, moralist, elegiast, very intelligent and highly polished, whose Essay on Criticism and Essay on Man were remarkably utilised by Voltaire; Edward Young, whose Night Thoughts enjoyed the same prodigious success in France as in England, and who contributed in no small measure to darken and render gloomy both literatures; MacPherson, who invented Ossian, that is, pretended poems of the Middle Ages, a magnificent genius, be it said, who exercised considerable influence over the romanticism of both lands; Chatterton, who trod the same road, but with less success, yet was valued almost equally by the French romantic poets, and to them he has owed at least the consolidation of his immortality; Cowper, elegiac and fantastic, with a highly humorous vein; Crabbe, a very close observer of popular customs and an ingenious novelist in verse, quite analogous to the Dutch painters; Burns, a peasant-poet, sensitive and impassioned, yet at the same time a careful artist moved by local customs, the manifestations of which he saw displayed before his eyes.

PROSE WRITERS.—The masters of prose (some being also true poets) were innumerable. Daniel Defoe, journalist, satirist, pamphleteer, was the author of the immortal Robinson Crusoe; Addison, justly adored by Voltaire, author of a sound tragedy, Cato, is supremely a scholar, the acute, sensible, and extremely thoughtful editor of The Spectator; Richardson, the idol of Diderot and of Jean Jacques Rousseau, enjoyed a European success with his sentimental and virtuous novels, Pamela, Clarissa Harlowe, and Sir Charles Grandison. As a critic and as a personality, Dr. Johnson has no parallel in any age or land. His Dictionary is famous despite its faults, and Rasselas, which he wrote to pay for his mother's funeral, can still be read.

Fielding, who began by being only the parodist of Richardson, in Joseph Andrews, ended by becoming an astounding realistic novelist, the worthy predecessor of Thackeray and Dickens in his extraordinary Tom Jones. The amiable Goldsmith, more akin to Richardson, wrote that idyllic novel The Vicar of Wakefield, the charm of which was still felt throughout Europe only fifty years ago. Laurence Sterne, the most accurate representative of English humour, capable of emotion more especially ironical, jester, mystificator, has both amused and disquieted several generations with his Sentimental Journey and his fantastical, disconcerting and enchanting Tristram Shandy. Swift, horribly bitter, a corrosive and cruel satirist, sadly scoffed at all the society of his time in Gulliver's Travels, in Drapier's Letters, in his Proposal to Prevent the Children of the Poor Being a Burden, in a mass of other small works wherein the most infuriated wrath is sustained under the form of calm and glacial irony.

HISTORY.—History was expressed in England in the eighteenth century by David Hume, who chronicled the progress of the English race from the Middle Ages until the eighteenth century; by Robertson, who similarly handled the Scotch and who narrated the reign of Charles V; and by Gibbon, so habitually familiar with the French society of his time, who followed the Romans from the first Caesars to Marcus Aurelius, then more closely from Marcus Aurelius to the epoch of Constantine, and finally the Byzantine Empire up to the period of the Renaissance. The imposing erudition, the rather pompous but highly distinguished style of the author, without counting his animosity to Christianity, caused him to enjoy a great success, especially in France. The work of Gibbon is regarded as the finest example of history written by an Englishman.

THE STAGE.—The stage in England in the eighteenth century sank far below its importance in the seventeenth century; yet who does not know She Stoops to Conquer of Goldsmith, and that sparkling and lively comedy, The School for Scandal, by Sheridan? Note, as an incomparable journalist, the famous and mysterious Junius, who, from 1769 to 1772, waged such terrible war on the minister Grafton.

THE LAKE POETS.—In the nineteenth century appeared those poets so familiar to the French romanticists, or else the latter pretended they were, who were termed the lake poets, because they were lovers of the countryside; these were Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. Southey was an epic and elegiac poet, whilst he was also descriptive; Coleridge, philosopher, metaphysician, a little nebulous and disordered, had very fine outbursts and some lamentable falls. Wordsworth was a most distinguished lyricist. Lord Byron did not acquire honour by so roughly handling Southey and Wordsworth.

THE ROMANTIC EPOCH.—The two greatest English poets of the romantic period were Lord Byron and Shelley; the former the admirable poet of disenchantment and of despair, gifted with a noble epic genius, creating and vitalising characters which, it must be confessed, differed very little from one another, but an exalted figure with a grand manner and, except Shakespeare, the only English poet who exercised genuine influence over French literature; the latter an idealistic poet of the most suave delicacy, aerial and heavenly, despite a private life of the utmost disorder and even guilt, he is one of the most perfect poets that ever lived; a great tragedian, too, in his Cenci, quite unknown in France until the middle of the nineteenth century, but since then the object of a sort of adoration among the larger number of Gallic poets and lovers of poetry.

Keats was as romantic as Shelley and Byron, both in spite of and because of his desperate efforts to assimilate the Grecian spirit. He dreamt of its heroes and its ancient myths, but there is in him little that is Grecian except the choice of subjects, and it is not in his grand poem, Endymion, nor even in that fine fragment, Hyperion, that can be found the real melancholy, sensitive, and modern poet, but in his last short poems, The Skylark, On a Greek Vase, Autumn, which, by the exquisite perfection of their form and the harmonious richness of the style, take rank among the most beautiful songs of English lyrism.

Nearer to us came Tennyson, possessing varied inspiration, epical, lyrical, elegiac poet, always exalted and pure, approaching the classical, and himself already a classic.

Swinburne, almost exclusively lyrical, a dexterous and enchanting versifier, inspired by the ancient Greeks, generally evinced a highly original poetic temperament, and Dante Rossetti, imbued with mediaeval inspiration, possessed a powerful and slightly giddy imagination. Far less known on the Continent, where critics may feel surprise at her necessary inclusion here, is his sister, Christina Rossetti. Her qualities as a poet are a touching and individual grace, much delicate spontaneity, a pure and often profound emotion, and an instinct as a stylist which is almost infallible. The Brownings form a celebrated couple, and about them Carlyle, on hearing of their marriage, observed that he hoped they would understand each other. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, translator of Aeschylus of Theocritus, gave proof in her original poetry of a vigour, of a vividness, and of a vigorous exuberance of similes that often recalled the Elizabethans, but marred her work by declamatory rhetoric and by a tormented and often obscure style. Robert Browning was yet more difficult, owing to his overpowering taste for subtlety and the bizarre—nay, even the grotesque. Almost ignored, or at least unappreciated by his contemporaries, he has since taken an exalted place in English admiration, which he owes to the depth, originality, and extreme richness of his ideas, all the more, perhaps, because they lend themselves to a number of differing interpretations.

THE NOVELISTS.—In prose the century began with the historical novelist, Sir Walter Scott, full of lore and knowledge, reconstructor and astonishing reviver of past times, more especially the Middle Ages, imbuing all his characters with life, and even in some measure vitalising the objects he evoked. None more than he, not even Byron, has enjoyed such continuous appreciation with both French romantic poets and also the French reading public. The English novel, recreated by this great master, was worthily continued by Dickens, both sentimentalist and humourist, a jesting, though genial, delineator of the English middle class, and an accurate and sympathetic portrayer of the poor; by Thackeray, supreme railer and satirist, terrible to egoists, hypocrites, and snobs; by the prolific and entertaining Bulwer-Lytton, by the grave, philosophical, and sensible George Eliot, by Charlotte Bronte, author of the affecting Jane Eyre, etc., and her sister Emily, whose Wuthering Heights has been almost extravagantly admired.

Four other great prose writers presenting startling divergences from one another cannot be omitted. Belonging to the first half of the nineteenth century, Charles Lamb earned wide popularity by his Tales from Shakespeare and Poetry for Children, written in collaboration with his sister Mary; but he was specially remarkable for his famed Essays of Elia, wherein he affords evidence of possessing an almost paradoxical mixture of delicate sensibility and humour, as well as of accurate and also fantastic observation. Newman, at first an English clergyman but subsequently a cardinal, after conversion to the Catholic Church, appears to me hardly eligible in a history of literature in which Lamennais has no place. As a literary man, his famous sermons at Oxford and the Tracts exercised much influence, and provoked such impassioned and prodigious revival of old doctrines and of an antiquated spirit in religion; then the Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Callista, and the History of Arianism, revealed him as a master of eloquence.

Ruskin, as art critic, in his bold volumes illumined with remarkable beauty of styles, Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, and The Stones of Venice, formulated the creed and the school of pre-Raphaelitism. At the time of the religious revival at Oxford, he preached a servile imitation of antiquity by the path of the Renaissance, appealing to national and mediaeval inspiration, not without naivete and archaism, none the less evident because he was sincere and mordant. George Meredith, who died only in 1910, was a prolific and often involved novelist (the Browning of prose), with a passion for metaphors and a too freely expressed eclectic scorn for the multitude. Withal, he had a profound knowledge of life and of the human soul; impregnated with humour, he was creator of unforgettable types of character, and no pre-occupation of his epoch was foreign to his mind, whilst his vigorous realism always obstinately refused to turn from contemporaneous themes, or to gratify the needs and aspirations which it was possible to satisfy. His epitaph might well be that he understood the women of his time, a rare phenomenon.

HISTORY.—History could show two writers of absolute superiority—Macaulay (History of England since James II), an omnivorous reader and very brilliant writer, and Carlyle, the English Michelet, feverish, passionate, incongruous, and disconcerting, who dealt with history as might a very powerful lyrical poet.



CHAPTER XVII

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: GERMANY

Poets of the Eighteenth Century: Klopstock, Lessing, Wieland; Prose Writers of the Eighteenth Century: Herder, Kant. Poets of the Nineteenth Century: Goethe, Schiller, Koerner.

THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT.—In the literature of Germany the eighteenth century, sometimes designated under the title of the age of Frederick the Great, forms a Renaissance or, if preferred, an awakening after a fairly prolonged slumber. This awakening was assisted by a quarrel, sufficiently unimportant in itself, but which proved fertile, between Gottsched, the German Boileau, and Bodmer, the energetic vindicator of the rights of the imagination. In the train of Bodmer came Haller, like him a Swiss; then suddenly Klopstock appeared. The Messiah of Klopstock is an epic poem; it is the history of Jesus Christ from Cana to the Resurrection, with a crowd of episodes dexterously attached to the action. The profound religious sentiment, the grandeur of the setting, the beauty of the scenes, the purity and nobility of the sermon, the Biblical colour so skilfully spread over the whole composition, cause this vast poem, which was perhaps unduly praised on its first appearance, to be one of the finest products of the human mind, even when all reservations are made. German literature revived. As for Gottsched, he was vanquished.

THE POETS.—Then came Lavater, Buerger, Lessing, Wieland. Lavater, a Swiss like Haller, is remembered for his scientific labours, but was also a meritorious poet, and his naive and moving Swiss Hymns have remained national songs; Buerger was a great poet, lyrical, impassioned, personal, original, vibrating; Wieland, the Voltaire of Germany, although he began by being the friend of Klopstock, witty, facile, light, and graceful, whose Oberon and Agathon preserve the gift of growing old felicitously, is one of the most delightful minds that Germany produced. Napoleon did him the honour of desiring to converse with him as with Goethe.

LESSING.—Lessing, personally, was a great author, and owing to the influence he exercised over his fellow-countrymen, he holds one of the noblest positions in the history of German literature. He was a critic, and in his Dramaturgie of Hamburg and elsewhere, with all his strength, and often unjustly, he combated French literature to arrest the ascendency which, according to his indolent opinion, it exercised over the Germans; and in his Laocooen, with admirable lucidity, he made a kind of classification of the arts. As author, properly speaking, he wrote Fables which to our taste are dry and cold; he made several dramatic efforts none of which were masterpieces, the best being Minna von Barnhelm and Emilia Galotti, and a philosophical poem in dialogue (for it could hardly be termed drama), Nathan the Sage, which possessed great moral and literary beauties.

HERDER.—Herder was the Vico of Germany. Here was the historical philosopher, or rather the thoughtful philosopher on history. He did everything: literary criticism, works of erudition, translations, even personal poems, but his great work was Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind. This was the theory of progress in all its breadth and majesty, supported by arguments that are at least spacious and imposing. From Michelet to Quinet, on to Renan, every French author who has at all regarded the unity of the destinies of the human race has drawn inspiration from him. His broad, measured, and highly coloured style is on the level of the subject and conforms to it. Even in an exclusively literary history Kant must not be forgotten, because when he set himself to compose a moral dissertation, as, for example, the one upon lying, he took high rank as a writer.

THE GLORIOUS EPOCH.—Thus is reached the end of the eighteenth close on the beginning of the nineteenth century. In this intermediary epoch shone the most glorious hour of Teutonic literature. Simultaneously Iffland, Kotzebue, Koerner, Schiller, and Goethe were to the fore. This formed a great constellation. Iffland, actor, manager, and author, friend and protector of Schiller, wrote numerous dramas, the principal of which were The Criminal through Ambition, The Pupil, The Hunters, The Lawyers, The Friends of the House. He was realistic without being gloomy. He resembled the French Sedaine. Kotzebue, who was the friend of Catherine of Russia, subsequently disgraced by her, possessed a highly irritable and quarrelsome disposition, and was finally killed in 1819 as a reactionary by a Liberal student, did not fall far short of genius. He wrote a number of dramas and comedies. Those still read with pleasure are Misanthropy and Repentance, Hugo Grotius, The Calumniator, and The Small German Town, which has remained a classic.

KOeRNER.—Koerner, the "Tyrtaeus of Germany," was simultaneously a brave soldier and a great lyrical poet who was killed on the battlefield of Gadebusch, wrote lyrical poems, dramas, comedies, farces, and, above all, The Lyre and Sword, war-songs imbued with splendid spirit.

SCHILLER.—Schiller is a vast genius, historian, lyrical poet, dramatic poet, critic, and in all these different fields he showed himself to be profoundly original. He wrote The Thirty Years' War; odes, ballads, dithyrambic poems, such as The Clock, so universally celebrated; dissertations of philosophic criticism, such as The God of Greece and The Artists; finally, a whole repertory of drama (the only point on which it is possible to show that he surpasses Goethe), in which may be remarked his first audacious and anarchical work, The Brigands, then the Conjuration of Fieso, Intrigue and Love, Don Carlos, Wallenstein (a trilogy composed of The Camp of Wallenstein, The Piccolomini, The Death of Wallenstein), Mary Stuart, The Betrothed of Messina, The Maid of Orleans, William Tell. By his example primarily, and by his instruction subsequently (Twelve Letters on Don Carlos, Letters on Aesthetic Education, The Sublime, etc.), he exercised over literature and over German thought an influence at least equal, and I believe superior, to that of Goethe. He was united to Goethe by the ties of a profound and undeviating friendship. He died whilst still young, in 1805, twenty-seven years before his illustrious friend.

GOETHE.—Goethe, whom posterity can only put in the same rank as Homer, is even more universal genius, and has approached yet closer to absolute beauty. Of Franco-German education, he subsequently studied at Strasburg, commencing, whilst still almost a student, with the imperishable Werther, to which it may be said that a whole literature is devoted and, parenthetically, a literature diametrically opposed to what Goethe subsequently became. Then a journey through Italy, which revealed Goethe to himself, made him a man who never ceased to desire to combine classic beauty and Teutonic ways of thinking, and who was often magnificently successful. To put it in another way, Goethe in his own land is a Renaissance in himself, and the Renaissance which Germany had not known in either the sixteenth or seventeenth century came as the gift of Goethe. Immediately after his return from Italy he wrote Tasso (of classic inspiration), Wilhelm Meister (of Teutonic inspiration), Iphigenia (classical), Egmont (Teutonic), etc. Then came Hermann and Dorothea, which was absolutely classic in the simplicity of its plan and purity of lyric verse, but essentially modern in its picture of German customs; The Roman Elegies, The Elective Affinities, Poetry and Truth (autobiography mingled with romance), The Western Eastern Divan, lyrical poems, and finally, the two parts of Faust. In the first part of Faust, Goethe was, and desired to be, entirely German; in the second, through many reveries more or less relative to the theme, he more particularly desires to depict the union of the German spirit with that of classical genius, which formed his own life, and led to intelligent action, which also was a portion of his existence. And for beauty, drama, pathos, ease, phantasy, and fertility in varied invention, nothing has ever surpassed if anything has even equalled the two parts of Faust regarded as a single poem.

Apart from his literary labours, Goethe occupied himself with the administration of the little duchy of Weimar, and in scientific research, notably on plants, animals, and the lines in which he displayed marked originality. He died in 1832, having been born in 1749. His literary career extends over, approximately, sixty years, equal to that of Victor Hugo, and almost equal to that of Voltaire.

THE CONTEMPORANEOUS PERIOD.—After the death of Goethe, Germany could not maintain the same height. Once more was she glorified in poetry by Henry Heine, an extremely original witty traveller, in his Pictures of Travel, elegiac and deeply lyrical, affecting and delightful at the same time in The Intermezzo; by the Austrian school, Zedlitz, Gruen, and the melancholy and deep-thinking Lenau; in prose, above all, by the philosophers, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and lastly Nietzsche—at once philosopher, moralist (after his own manner), and poet, with an astonishing imagination; by the historians Niebuhr (before 1830), Treitschke, Mommsen, etc. Germany seems to have drooped, so far as literature is concerned, despite some happy exceptions (especially in the drama: Hauptmann, Sudermann), since her military triumphs of 1870 and the consequent industrial activity.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: ITALY

Poets: Metastasio, Goldoni, Alfieri, Monti, Leopardi. Prose Writers: Silvio Pellico, Fogazzaro, etc.

LITERARY AWAKENING.—After a long decadence, Italy, less overwhelmed politically than previously, reawoke about 1750. Once more poets came forward: Metastasio, author of tragedies and operas; Goldoni, a very witty and gay comic poet; Alfieri who revived Italian tragedy, which had been languishing and silent since Maffei, and who, like Voltaire in France, and with greater success, established a philosophical and political tribune; Foscolo, sufficiently feeble in tragedy but very touching and eloquent in The Tombs, inspired by Young's Night Thoughts and The Letters of Jacob Ortis, an interesting novelist and eloquently impassioned patriot; Monti, versatile and master of all recantations according to his own interests, but a very pure writer and not without brilliance in his highly diversified poems.

EMINENT PROSE WRITERS.—Italy could show eminent prose writers, such as those jurisprudent philanthropists Filangieri and Beccaria; critics and literary historians like Tiraboschi.

NINETEENTH CENTURY.—In the nineteenth century may first be found among poets that great poet, the unhappy Leopardi, the bard of suffering, of sorrow, and of despair; Carducci, a brilliant orator, imbued with vigorous passions; Manzoni, lyricist, dramatist, vibrating with patriotic enthusiasm, affecting in his novel The Betrothal, which became popular in every country in Europe. In prose, Silvio Pellico equally moved Europe to tears by his book My Prisons, wherein he narrated the experiences of his nine years of captivity at the hands of Austria, and found his agreeable tragedy of Francesca da Rimini welcomed with flattering appreciation. Philosophy was specially represented by Gioberti, author of The Treatise on the Supernatural, and journalism by Giordani, eloquent, at times with grace and ease, and at others with harshness and violence.

THE MODERNS.—As these words were written came the news of the death of the illustrious novelist Fogazzaro. Gabriel d'Annunzio, poet and ultra-romantic novelist, and Mathilde Serao, an original novelist, pursue their illustrious careers.



CHAPTER XIX

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: SPAIN

The Drama still Brilliant: Moratin. Historians and Philosophers, Novelists, Orators.

THE DRAMA. Since the middle of the seventeenth century, approximately, Spain has exercised less literary influence than in the preceding centuries. Nevertheless Spanish literature was not extinct; it was in the drama more especially that it was manifest. Candamo, Canizares, and Zamora all illumined the stage. Candamo devoted himself to the historical drama; his masterpiece in this type was The Slave in Golden Chains; Canizares, powerful satirist, displayed the comic spirit in his comedies of character; Zamora manipulated the comedy of intrigue with remarkable dexterity. Then came Vincente de la Huerta, skilful in combining the type of French tragedy with something of the ancient dramatic national genius; then Leandro Moratin (called Moratin the Younger to distinguish him from his father Nicholas), very imitative, no doubt, of Moliere, but in himself highly gifted, and of whose works can still be read with pleasure The Old Man and the Young Girl, The New Comedy on the Coffee, The Female Hypocrite, etc. He also wrote lyrical poems and sonnets. He lived long in France, where he became impregnated with Gallic classical literature.

PROSE.—Stronger and more brilliant at that period than the poetry, the prose was represented by Father Florez, author of Ecclesiastical Spain; by the Marquis de San Phillipo, author of the War of Succession in Spain; by Antonio de Solis, author of The Conquest of Mexico. In fiction there was the interesting Father Isla, a Jesuit, who gave a clever imitation of the Don Quixote of Cervantes in his History of the Preacher Friar Gerund. He was well read and patriotic. He was convinced that Le Sage had taken all his Gil Blas from various Spanish authors, and he published a translation of his novel under the title: The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santiago, stolen from Spain and adopted in France by M. Le Sage, restored to their country and native tongue by a jealous Spaniard who will not endure being laughed at. Another Jesuit (and it may be noticed that Spanish Jesuits of the seventeenth century often displayed a very liberal and modern mind), Father Feijoo, wrote a kind of philosophical dictionary entitled Universal Dramatic Criticism, a review of human opinions which was satirical, humorous, and often extremely able. The historian Antonio de Solis, who was also a reasonably capable dramatist, produced a History of the Conquest of South America Known under the name of New Spain, in a chartered style that was very elegant and even too elegant. Jovellanos wrote much in various styles. Among others he wrote one fine tragedy, Pelagia; a comedy presenting clever contrasts, entitled The Honorable Criminal; a mass of studies on the past of Spain, economic treatises, satires, and pamphlets. Engaged in all the historical and political vicissitudes of his country, he expired miserably in 1811, after having been alternately in exile and at the head of affairs.

ROMANTICISM.—In the nineteenth century Spanish romanticism was brought back in dignified poetic style by Angel Saavedra, Jose Zorilla, Ventura de la Vega, Ramon Campoamor, Espronceda. The latter especially counts among the great literary Spaniards, for he was poet and novelist, who wrote The Student of Salamanca (Don Juan), The Devil World (a kind of Faust), lyrical poems, and an historical novel, Sancho Saldano.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.—In drama, Quintana also produced a Pelagia; the Duke of Rivas a Don Alvaro, which enjoyed an immediate success; Zorilla a Don Juan entirely novel in conception; Martinez de la Rose tragedies, some in the classic vein, others with modern intrigue and comedies; Gutierrez, by his Foundling, attracted the attention of librettists of French operas; Breton de los Herreros wrote sparkling comedies, the multiplicity of which suggest Scribe. In prose, Fernan Caballero was a fertile novelist and an attentive and accurate painter of manner. Trueba (who was also an elegant poet) was an affecting idyllic novelist. Emilio Castelar, the Lamartine of Spain as he was called by Edmond About, was a splendid orator, thrown by the chances of political life for one hour at the head of national affairs, who raised himself to the highest rank in the admiration of his contemporaries by his novels: for instance, The Sister of Charity and his works on philosophical history and the history of art, Civilisation in the First Centuries of Christianity, The Life of Byron, Souvenirs of Italy, etc. In our day, there have been numerous distinguished authors (and for us, at least, out of the crowd stands forth the dramatist Jose Echegaray), who carry on the glorious tradition of Spanish literature.



CHAPTER XX

RUSSIAN LITERATURE

Middle Ages. Some Epic Narratives. Renaissance in the Seventeenth Century. Literature Imitative of the West in the Eighteenth Century. Original Literature in the Nineteenth Century.

THE MIDDLE AGES.—Russia possessed a literature even in the Middle Ages. In the eleventh century the metropolitan Hilarion wrote a discourse on the Old and the New Testament. In the twelfth century, the Chronicle that is said to be by Nestor is the first historical monument of Russia. At the same period Vladimir Monomaque, Prince of Kief, who devoted his life to fighting with all his neighbours, left his son an autobiographic instruction, which is very interesting for the light it throws on the events and, especially, on the customs of his day. At the same time the hegumen (abbot) Daniel left an account of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In the thirteenth century (probably) another Daniel, Daniel the prisoner, wrote from his distant place of exile to his prince a supplicatory letter, which is astonishing because in it is found a remarkable and wholly unexpected degree of literary talent. In the thirteenth or fourteenth century two epic pieces, The Lay of the Battle of Igor and The Zadonstchina, of which it is uncertain which imitated the other, alike present vigorous and vivid accounts of battles. In the fifteenth or sixteenth century there is a didactic work, The Domostroi, which is a moral treatise, a handbook of domestic economy, a manual of gardening, and a cookery book, etc. The Tzar Ivan the Terrible (sixteenth century) was a dexterous diplomatist and a precise, nervous, and ironical writer. He left highly curious letters.

RENAISSANCE.—Kutochikine (seventeenth century), who was minister in his own land, then disgraced and exiled in Sweden, wrote an extremely interesting book on the habits of his contemporaries. The "Renaissance," if it may be so termed, that is, the contact between the Russian spirit and Western genius, occurred in the eighteenth century. Prince Kantemir, Russian ambassador in London, who knew Montesquieu, Maupertuis, the Abbe Guasco, etc., wrote satires in the manner of Horace and of Boileau. Trediakowski took on himself to compose a very tedious Telemachidus, but he knew how to unravel the laws of Russian metre and to write odes which at least were indicative of the right direction.

LOMONOSOV.—Lomonosov is regarded as the real father of Russian literature, as the Peter the Great of literature—a great man withal, engineer, chemist, professor, grammarian. Regarding him solely as a literary man, he made felicitous essays in tragedy, lyrical poetry, epic poetry, polished the Russian versification, established its grammar, and imparted a powerful impulse in a multitude of directions.

CREATION OF THE DRAMA.—Soumarokoff founded the Russian drama. He was manager of the first theatre opened in St. Petersburg (1756). In the French vein he wrote tragedies, comedies, fables, satires, and epigrams. He corresponded with Voltaire. The latter wrote to him in 1769: "Sir, your letter and your works are a great proof that genius and taste pertain to all lands. Those who said that poetry and music belonged only to temperate climates were deeply in error. If climate were so potent, Greece would still produce Platos and Anacreons, just as she produces the same fruits and flowers; Italy would have Horaces, Virgils, Ariostos, and Tassos.... The sovereigns who love the arts change the climates; they cause roses to bud in the midst of snows. That is what your incomparable monarch has done. I could believe that the letters with which she has honoured me came from Versailles and yours from one of my colleagues in the Academy.... Over me you possess one prodigious advantage: I do not know a word of your language and you are completely master of mine.... Yes, I regard Racine as the best of our tragic poets.... He is the only one who has treated love tragically; for before him Corneille had only expressed that passion well in The Cid, and The Cid is not his. Love is ridiculous or insipid in nearly all his other works. I think as you do about Quinault; he is a great man in his own way. He would not have written the Art of Poetry, but Boileau would not have written Armida. I entirely agree with what you write about Moliere and of the tearful comedy which, to the national disgrace, has succeeded to the only real comic type brought to perfection by the inimitable Moliere. Since Regnard, who was endowed with a truly comic genius and who alone came near Moliere, we have only had monstrosities.... That, sir, is the profession of faith you have asked of me." This letter is quoted, despite its errors, because it forms, as it were, a preface to Russian literature, and also a patent of nobility granted to this literature.

CATHERINE II.—The Empress wrote in Russian advice as to the education of her grandson, very piquant comedies, and review articles. Von Vizin, a comic author, was the first to look around and to depict the custom of his country, which means that he was the earliest humorous national writer. The classic works of Von Vizin were The Brigadier and The Minor. Whilst pictures of contemporaneous manners, they were also pleadings in favour of a reformed Russia against the Russia that existed before Peter the Great, which still in part subsisted, as was only natural. He made a journey to France and it will be seen from his correspondence that he brought back a highly flattering impression.

RADISTCHEF.—Radistchef was the first Russian political writer. Under the pretext of a Voyage from Petersburg to Moscow, he attacked serfdom, absolute government, even religion, for which he was condemned to death and exiled to Siberia. He was pardoned later on by Paul I, but soon after committed suicide. He was verbose, but often really eloquent.

ORATORS AND POETS.—The preacher Platon, whose real name was Levchine, was an orator full of sincerity, unction, and sometimes of real power. He was religious tutor to the hereditary Grand Duke, son of Catherine II. Another preacher, and his successor at the siege of Moscow, Vinogradsky, was likewise a really great orator. It was he who, after the French retreat from Russia, delivered the funeral oration on the soldiers killed at Borodino. Ozerov was a classical tragedy writer after the manner of Voltaire, and somewhat hampered thereby. Batiouchkov, although he lived right into the middle of the nineteenth century, is already a classic. He venerated and imitated the writers of antiquity; he was a devout admirer of Tibullus, and wrote elegies which are quite exquisite. Krylov was a fabulist: a dexterous delineator of animals and a delicate humourist. Frenchmen and Italians have been alike fascinated by him, and his works have often been translated; until the middle of the nineteenth century he enjoyed European popularity.

THE GOLDEN AGE: PUSHKIN.—The true Russian nineteenth century and its golden age must be dated from Pushkin. He wrote from his earliest youth. He was an epic poet, novelist, and historian. His principal poems were Ruslan and Liudmila, Eugene Onegin, Poltava; his most remarkable historical essay was The Revolt of Pugachev. He possessed a fertile and vigorous imagination, which he developed by continual and enthusiastic study of Byron. He did not live long enough either for his own fame or for the welfare of Russian literature, being killed in a duel at the age of thirty-eight. Merimee translated much by Pushkin. The French lyric stage has mounted one of his most delicate inspirations, La Rousalka (the water nymph). He was quite conscious of his own genius and, freely imitating the Exegi monumentum of Horace, as will be seen, he wrote: "I have raised to myself a monument which no human hand has constructed.... I shall not entirely perish ... the sound of my name shall permeate through vast Russia.... For long I shall be dear to my race because my lyre has uttered good sentiments, because, in a brutal age, I have vaunted liberty and preached love for the down-trodden. Oh, my Muse, heed the commands of God, fear not offence, claim no crown; receive with equal indifference eulogy and calumny, but never dispute with fools."

LERMONTOV.—Lermontov was not inferior to his friend Pushkin, whom he closely resembled. Like him he drew inspiration from the romantic poets of the West. He loved the East, and his short, glorious suggestions came to him from the Caucasus. Among his finest poetic works may be cited The Novice Ismael Bey, The Demon, The Song of the Tzar Ivan. He wrote a novel, perhaps autobiographical, entitled A Hero of Our Own Time, the hero of which is painted in highly Byronic colours.

GOGOL.—Russian taste was already veering to the epic novel or epopee in prose, of which Gogol was the most illustrious representative until Tolstoy. He was highly gifted. In him the feeling for Nature was acutely active, and recalling his descriptions of the plains of the Crimea, its rivers and steppes, he must be regarded as the Rousseau and Chateaubriand of Russia. Further, he was a close student of village habits, and a painter in astonishing hues. He eminently possessed the sense of epic grandeur, and added a sarcastic vein of delightful irony. His Taras Bulba, King of the Dwarfs, History of a Fool, and Dead Souls, have the force of arresting realism, his Revisor (inspector of finances) is a caustic comedy which has been a classic not only in Russia but in France, where it was introduced in translation by Merimee.

TURGENEV.—Turgenev, less epical than Gogol, was also studious of local habits and dexterous in describing them. He began with exquisite Huntsman's Tales impregnated with truth and precision, as well as intimate and picturesque details; then he extended his scope and wrote novels, but never at great length, and therefore suited to the exigencies or habits of Western Europe (such as Smoke). He had selected Paris as his abode, and he mixed with the greatest thinkers of the day: Taine, Flaubert, Edmond About. In the eyes of his fellow-countrymen he became ultimately too Western and too Parisian. His was a delicate, sensitive soul, prone to melancholy and perpetually dreaming. He had a cult of form in which he went so far as to make it a sort of scruple and superstition.

TOLSTOY.—Tolstoy, so recently dead, was a great epic poet in prose, a very powerful and affecting novelist, and in some measure an apostle. He began with _Boyhood Adolescence and Youth_, in itself very curious and particularly valuable because of the idea it conveys of the life of the lords of the Russian soil, and for its explanation of the formation of the soul and genius of Tolstoy; then came _The Cossacks_, full of magnificent descriptions of the Caucasus and of interesting scenes of military and rural life; subsequently that masterpiece of Tolstoy's, _War and Peace_, narratives dealing with the war of Napoleon with Russia and of the subsequent period of peaceful and healthy rural life. It is impossible to adequately admire the power of narration and descriptive force, the fertility of incidents, characterisations, and dramatic moments, the art or rather the gift of portraiture, and finally, the grandeur and moral elevation, in fact, all the qualities, not one of which he appeared to lack, of which Tolstoy gave proof and which he displayed in this immense history of the Russian soul at the commencement of the nineteenth century; for it is thus that it is meet to qualify this noble creation. The only analogy is with _Les Miserables_ of Victor Hugo, and it must be admitted that despite its incomparable merits, the French work is the more unequal. _Anna Karenina_ is only a novel in the vein of French novels, but very profound and remarkable for its analysis of character and also impassioned and affecting, besides having considerable moral range. _The Kreutzer_ Sonata_ is a romance rather than a novel, but cruelly beautiful because it exposes with singular clairvoyance the misery of a soul impotent for happiness. _Resurrection_ shows that mournful and impassioned pity felt by Tolstoy for the humble and the "fallen," to use the phrase of Pushkin; it realises a lofty dramatic beauty. Tolstoy, in a thousand pamphlets or brief works, preached to his own people and to mankind the strict morality of Christ, charity, renunciation, peace at all price, without taking into account the necessities of social life; and he denounced, as had Jean Jacques Rousseau, the culpability of art and literature, being resigned to recognising his own works as condemnable. His was the soul of an exalted poet and a lofty poetical mind; from a poet must not be demanded practical common sense or that feeling for reality which is demanded, often unavailingly, from a statesman.

DOSTOEVSKY.—Dostoevsky, with a tragic genius as great as that of Tolstoy, may be said to have been more restricted because he exclusively delineated the unhappy, the miserable, and those defeated in life. He knew them personally because, after being arrested in 1849 at the age of fifty for the crime of belonging to a secret society, he spent years in the convict prisons of Siberia. Those miseries he describes in the most exact terms and with heart-rending eloquence in Buried Alive: Ten Years in Siberia, and in the remarkable novel entitled Crime and Punishment. He has lent invaluable aid in the propagation of two sentiments which have created some stir in the West and which, assuredly, we desire to foster: namely, "the religion of human suffering" and the cult of "expiation."



CHAPTER XXI

POLISH LITERATURE

At an Early Date Western Influence sufficiently Potent. Sixteenth Century Brilliant; Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries highly Cultured; Nineteenth Century Notably Original.

WESTERN INFLUENCE—Widely different from Russian literature, much more Western, based more on Greek and Latin culture, Polish literature holds high rank in the histories of European literature. Christians from the tenth century, the Poles knew from this epoch religious songs written by monks, in the vulgar tongue. To this is due the possession of the Bogarodzica, a religious and bellicose song dedicated to the Virgin mother of God, which is even now comprehensible, so little has the Polish language changed. All through the Middle Ages, literary historians can only find chronicles written sometimes in Latin, sometimes in the native language. Under the influence of the universities, and also of the parliamentary rule, the language acquired alike more consistency and more authority in the fifteenth century, whilst the sixteenth was the golden literary epoch of the Poles. There were poets, and even great poets, as well as orators and historians. Such was Kochanowski, very much a Western, who lived some time in Italy, also seven years in France, and was a friend of Ronsard. His writings were epical, lyrical, tragical, satirical, and especially elegiacal. He is a classic in Poland. Grochowski left a volume of diversified poems, hymns on various texts of Thomas a Kempis, The Nights of Thorn, etc. Martin Bielski, who was an historian too, but in Latin, left two political satires on the condition of Poland, and his son Joachim wrote a history of his native land in Polish.

SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES.—Though somewhat less brilliant than the preceding, the period of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is not unfavourable to Poland. Then may be enumerated the satirical Opalinski, the lyrical Kochanowski, the dramatist Bogulawski, manager of the theatre at Warsaw, who not only translated plays from the French, English, and Spanish, but himself wrote several comedies, of which The Lover, Author, and Servant has remained the most celebrated. Rzewuski was a dramatic author with such national plays as Wladislas at Varna and Zolkewishi, and comedies as The Vexations and The Capricious, and he also was historian, orator, literary critic, and theorist.

Potocki was a literary and theoretical critic and founder of a sort of Polish academy (society for the perfection of the tongue and of style). Prince Czartoryski showed himself an excellent moralist in his Letters to Doswiadryski. Niemcewicz extended his great literary talent into a mass of diversified efforts. He wrote odes held in esteem, tragedies, comedies, fables, and tales, historical novels, and he translated the poems of Pope and the Athalie of Racine.

LITERARY RENAISSANCE.—Losing her national independence, Poland experienced a veritable literary renaissance, which offered but slender compensation. She applied herself to explore her origins, to regain the ancient spirit, and to live nationally in her literature. Hence her great works of patriotic erudition. Czacki with his Laws of Poland and of Lithuania, Kollontay with his Essay on the Heredity of the Throne of Poland, and his Letters of an Anonymous to Stanislas Malachowski, etc., Bentkowski with his History of Polish Literature and his Introduction to General Literature, etc. Thence came the revival of imaginative literature, Felinski, on the one hand translator of Crebillon, Delille and Alfieri on the other, he was the personally distinguished author of the drama Barbe Radzivill; Bernatowicz, author of highly remarkable historical novels, among which Poiata gives a picture of the triumph of Christianity in Lithuania in the fourteenth century; Karpinski, dramatist, author of Judith, a tragedy; Alcestis, an opera; Cens, a comedy, etc.; Mickiewicz, scholar, poet, and novelist, who, exiled from his own land, was professor of literature at Lausanne, then in Paris, at the College of France, extremely popular in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, the friend of Goethe, Lamennais, Cousin, Michelet, and of all the French youth. He was the author of fine poems, of a great historical novel, Conrade Vattenrod, of The People and the Polish Pilgrims, of a Lesson on the Slav States.

MODERN EPOCH.—At the time of writing, Poland continues to be a literary nation well worthy of attention. She presents an example to the races which incur the risk of perishing as nations because of their political incapacity; by preserving their tongue and by sanctifying it with a worthy literature they guard their country and, like the Greeks and Italians, hope to reconquer it some day through the sudden turns of fortune shown in history.



INDEX OP NAMES CITED

A

About Addison Aeschines Aeschylus Aesop Aicard Alarcon Alcasus Alcamo, Ciullo of Aleman Alexander Alfieri Alphonso X Alphonso XI Alvarez Ambrose, St. Amyot Anacreon Anaxagoras Andocides Anne, Queen Annunzio, Gabriel d' Antiphon Antonina Antonius Diogenes Apollonius Appian Apuleius Aratus Arcadius Archilochus Aretino Ariosto Aristophanes Aristotle Arnauld Arrian Asclepiades Athanasius, St. Attius Aubigne, Agrippa d' Augier Augustine, St. Augustus Aulard Aurispa Ausonius Avienus

B

Babrius Bacon, Francis Baldi Balzac, G. de Balzac, H. de Bandello Banville, T. de Barnave Barthari Basil, S. Bataille Batiouchkov Baudelaire Bayle Bazin Beaumarchais Beaumont Beccaria Belisarius Bellay, Joachim du Belleau Bembo Benserade Bentkowski Beranger Bergerac, Cyrano de Bergson Bernard, Tristan Bernardes Bernatowicz Berni Bernstein Bertaut Bielski, Joachim Bielski, Martin Bion Boccaccio Bodmer Boetie, La Bogulawski Boileau Bojardo Bordeaux Bordello Bossuet Bourdaloue Bourget Boutroux Boylesve Brantome Brieux Bronte, C. Bronte, E. Browning, E. B. Browning, Robert Brueys, de Brunetiere Brunetto Buddha Buffon Bulwer-Lytton Bunyan Buerger Burgundy, Duke of Burns Burton, Robert Byron

C

Caballero Caesar, Julius Calderon Callimachus Callinos Calvin Caminha Camoens Campistron Campoamor Candamo Canizares Carducci Carlyle Caro Cassini Cassius Castelar Castro Catherine of Russia Cato Catullus Cellini, Benvenuto Cephalon Cervantes Charles of Orleans Charles II Charles V Chateaubriand Chatterton Chaucer Chenier, Andre Chenier, Marie-Joseph Chrysippus Chrysostom Cicero Claudian Cleanthes Coleridge Comines Commodian Comnenus Comte Condillac Congreve Constant Copernicus Coppee Corneille Corte-Real Cousin Cowper Crabbe Cratinos Crebillon Cromwell Cyprian, St. Czacki Czartoryski

D

Dancourt Daniel (the abbot) Daniel (the prisoner) Dante Danton Daudet Davenant Davila Defoe Delavigne Delille Demosthenes Descartes Desportes Destouches Diamante Dickens Diderot Dietmar Diogenes Dolce Dostoevsky Dryden Duclos Dufresny Dumas, (pere) Dumas, (fils) Duerer

E

Eberling Echegaray Eliot, George Elisabeth Ennius Epictetus Epicurus Erasmus Ercilla Espinel Espronceda Eudoxia Eupolis Euripides Eusebius Eustathius Evemerus

F

Falcam Fayette, Mme. de la Feijoo Felinski Fenelon Ferreira Fichte Ficino Fielding Filangieri Flaubert Fletcher Florez Fogazzaro Folengo Fontenelle Foscolo Fouillee Fox Frederick II Froissart

G

Galen Galileo Garnier Gautier Gellius Aulus Gerson Gibbon Gilbert Gil Vicente Gioberti Giordani Goethe Gogol Goldoni Goldsmith Goncourt, de Gongora Gorgias Gottsched Gower Gregory, St. Gresset Grimm Grochowski Gruen Guarini Guasco Guevara Guicciardini Guittone Guizot Gutierrez Guyot

H

Habington Haller Haraucourt Hartmann Hauptmann Haussonville, d' Hecataeus of Abdera Hegel Heine Heliodorus Henry VI Heraclitus Herbert Herder Herodian Herodotus Herreros Hervieu Hesiod Hilarion Hilarius, St. Hildebrand Hippocrates Homer Horace Huerta Hugo, Victor Hugo of Berzi Hume Hutten Hyperides

I

Iffland Isla Isocrates Ivan Izoulet

J

Jacopone James I Jaures Jerome, St. Jodelle Johnson, Dr Joinville Jonson, Ben Joseph of Byzantium Jovellanos Julian the Apostate Junius Justinian Juvenal Juvencus

K

Kalidas Kant Kantemir Karpinski Keats Kempis, T. a Klopstock Kochanowski Kollontay Koerner Kotzebue Krylov Kuerenberg Kutochikine

L

Laberius La Bruyere Lacerda La Chaussee Lactantius La Fontaine Lamartine Lamb, C Lamennais La Motte Lanfranc La Rochefoucauld Lascaris Lavater Lavedan Lavisse Leconte de Lisle Leibnitz Lenau Leonardo da Vinci Leonidas Leopardi Lermontov Le Sage Lessing Libanius Livius Livy Lobo Locke Lomonosov Longus Lope de Vega Lorris, William of Louis, St Louis XI Lucena Lucian Lucilius Lucretius Luther Lycophron Lyly Lysias

M

Mably Macaulay Machiavelli MacPherson Maffei Mairet Maistre, Joseph de Malaspina Malebranche Malherbe Mallarme Manuel, John Manzinho Manzoni Marcus Aurelius Marini Marivaux Marlowe Marmontel Marot Martial Martinez, Rose de la Mary, Princess Maynard Medici, Catherine de' Medici, Marie de' Melanchthon Meleager Menander Mendes Mendoza Mercier Meredith Merimee Metastasio Meung, John de Mezeray Michelet Mickiewicz Milton Mirabeau Moliere Mommsen Monomaque Montaigne Montalvo Montchrestien Montemayor Montesquieu Monti Montluc Moratin, Leandro Moratin, Nicholas Moschus Mun, de Musseus Musset, A. de

N

Naevius Napoleon Nepos Nerva Newman Newton Nicole Niebuhr Niemcewicz Nietzsche Nonnus

O

Olivares Opalinski Oppian Otway Ovid Ozerov

P

Pacuvius Palaprat Pandolfini Pascal Paulinus, St. Paul I Pellico Pereira Pericles Perron Perseus Peter the Great Petrarch Petronius Philetas Philip III Philostrates Pico della Mirandola Pindar Piron Pisistratus Planudes Plato Platon Plautus Pliny the Elder Pliny the Younger Plutarch Politien Polybius Pompignan Pomponius Pontus Pope Porto-Riche Potocki Prevost, Abbe Prevost, Marcel. Procopius Propertius Protagoras Prudentius Ptolemy Publius Syrus Pulci Pushkin

Q

Quevedo Quinet Quintana Quintilian Quintus Quintus Curtius

R

Rabelais Racan Racine Radistchef Raynal Regnard Regnier, H. de Regnier, M. Renan Retz, Cardinal de Ribeiro Ribot, A. Ribot, T. Richardson Richepin Rivas Robert Robertson Robespierre Rojas Ronsard Rosa Rosa, Salvator Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Dante Rostand Roucher Rouget de Lisle Rousseau, J. B. Rousseau, J. J. Ruskin Rutilius Rzewuski

S

Saa de Miranda Saa e Menezes Saavedra Saint-Amant Saint-Evremond Saint-Gelais Saint-Lambert Saint-Pierre, Bernardin de Saint-Simon Sainte-Beuve Sakyamuni Sallust Sand, George San Phillipo Sannazaro Sappho Sardou Savonarola Scarron Sceve, Maurice Schiller Schopenhauer Scipio Scott Scribe Scudery Sedaine Segrais Seignobos Senancour Seneca the Philosopher Seneca the Tragic Serao Sevigne Sextus Empiricus Shakespeare Shelley Sheridan Sidney Silius Italicus Simonides Socrates Solis Sophocles Soumarokoff Southey Spenser Stael, Mme. de Statius Stendhal Sterne Sudermann Sully-Prudhomme Swift Swinburne

T

Tacitus Taine Tannhaeuser Tansillo Tasso Tassoni Tennyson Terence Tertullian Thackeray Thales Theocritus Theodora Theophrastus Thespis Thibaut Thierry Thiers Thomson Thorn Thucydides Tibullus Tiraboschi Tirso de Molina Tolstoy Torricelli Trajan Trediakowski Treitschke Trueba Turgenev Turgot Tyrtaeus

U

Urfe, Honore d'

V

Vair, du Valerius Flaccus Valmiki Varro Vaugelas Ventura de la Vega Vergniaud Verlaine Vian, Theophilus de Vico Vignes, Peter of Vigny, Alfred de Villehardouin Villon Vinogradsky Virgil Vizin, von Voiture Voltaire

W

Waller Wieland Wolff Wordsworth Wycherley

X

Xenophon

Y

Young

Z

Zamora Zedlitz Zeno Ziorgi Zola Zorilla Zwingli

THE END