VOLUME XI SLICE II French Literature to Frost, William (continued 4)

Drama and Poetry since 1830.—Although the immediate subject on which the battles of Classics and Romantics arose was dramatic poetry, the dramatic results of the movement have not been those of greatest value or most permanent character. The principal effect in the long run has been the introduction of a species of play called drame, as opposed to regular comedy and tragedy, admitting of much freer treatment than either of these two as previously understood in French, and lending itself in some measure to the lengthy and disjointed action, the multiplicity of personages, and the absence of stock characters which characterized the English stage in its palmy days. All Victor Hugo’s dramatic works are of this class, and each, as it was produced or published (Cromwell, Hernani, Marion de l’Orme, Le Roi s’amuse, Lucrèce Borgia, Marie Tudor, Ruy Blas and Les Burgraves), was a literary event, and excited the most violent discussion—the author’s usual plan being to prefix a prose preface of a very militant character to his work. A still more melodramatic variety of drame was that chiefly represented by Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), whose Henri III and Antony, to which may be added later La Tour de Nesle and Mademoiselle de Belleisle, were almost as much rallying points for the early Romantics as the dramas of Hugo, despite their inferior literary value. At the same time Alexandre Soumet (1788-1845), in Norma, Une Fête de Néron, &c., and Casimir Delavigne in Marino Faliero, Louis XI, &c., maintained a somewhat closer adherence to the older models. The classical or semi-classical reaction of the last years of Louis Philippe was represented in tragedy by Ponsard (Lucrèce, Agnes de Méranie, Charlotte Corday, Ulysse, and several comedies), and on the comic side, to a certain extent, by Émile Augier (1820-1889) in L’Aventurière, Le Gendre de M. Poirier, Le Fils de Giboyer, &c. During almost the whole period Eugène Scribe (1791-1861) poured forth innumerable comedies of the vaudeville order, which, without possessing much literary value, attained immense popularity. For the last half-century the realist development of Romanticism has had the upper hand in dramatic composition, its principal representatives being on the one side Victorien Sardou (1831-1909), who in Nos Intimes, La Famille Benoîton, Rabagas, Dora, &c., chiefly devoted himself to the satirical treatment of manners, and Alexandre Dumas fils (1824-1895), author in 1852 of the famous Dame aux camélias, who in such pieces as Les Idées de Madame Aubray and L’Étrangère rather busied himself with morals and “problems,” while his Dame aux camélias (1852) is sometimes ranked as the first of such things in “modern” style. Certain isolated authors also deserve notice, such as Joseph Autran (1813-1877), a poet and academician having some resemblance to Lamartine, whose Fille d’Æschyle created for him a dramatic reputation which he did not attempt to follow up, and Gabriel Legouvé (b. 1807), whose Adrienne Lecouvreur was assisted to popularity by the admirable talent of Rachel. A special variety of drama of the first literary importance has also been cultivated in this century under the title of scènes or proverbes, slight dramatic sketches in which the dialogue and style are of even more importance than the action. The best of all of these are those of Alfred de Musset (1810-1857), whose Il faut qu’une porte soit ouverte ou fermée, On ne badine pas avec l’amour, &c., are models of grace and wit. Among his followers may be mentioned especially Octave Feuillet (1821-1890). Few social dramas of the kind in modern times have attained a greater success than Le Monde où l’on s’ennuie (1868) of Édouard Pailleron (1834-1899). (See also Drama.)

In poetry proper, as in drama, Victor Hugo showed the way. In him all the Romantic characteristics were expressed and embodied—disregard of arbitrary critical rules, free choice of subject, variety and vigour of metre, splendour Victor Hugo. and sonorousness of diction, abundant “local colour,” and that irrepressible individualism which is one of the chief, though not perhaps the chief, of the symptoms. If the careful attention to form which is also characteristic of the movement is less apparent in him than in some of his followers, it is not because it is absent, but because the enthusiastic conviction with which he attacked every subject somewhat diverts attention from it. As with the merits so with the defects. A deficient sense of the ludicrous which characterized many of the Romantics was strongly apparent in their leader, as was also an equally representative grandiosity, and a fondness for the introduction of foreign and unfamiliar words, especially proper names, which occasionally produces an effect of burlesque. Victor Hugo’s earliest poetical works, his chiefly royalist and political Odes, were cast in the older and accepted forms, but already displayed astonishing poetical qualities. But it was in the Ballades (for instance, the splendid Pas d’armes du roi Jean, written in verses of three syllables) and the Orientales (of which may be taken for a sample the sixth section of Navarin, a perfect torrent of outlandish terms poured forth in the most admirable verse, or Les Djinns, where some of the stanzas have lines of two syllables each) that the grand provocation was thrown to the believers in alexandrines, careful caesuras and strictly separated couplets. Les Feuilles d’automne, Les Chants du crépuscule, Les Voix intérieures, Les Rayons et les ombres, the productions of the next twenty years, were quieter in style and tone, but no less full of poetical spirit. The Revolution of 1848, the establishment of the empire and the poet’s exile brought about a fresh determination of his genius to lyrical subjects. Les Châtiments and La Légende des siècles, the one political, the other historical, reach perhaps the high-water mark of French verse; and they were followed by the philosophical Contemplations, the lighter Chansons des rues et des bois, the Année terrible, the second Légende des siècles, and the later work to be found noticed sub nom. We have been thus particular here because the literary productiveness of Victor Hugo himself has been the measure and sample of the whole literary productiveness of France on the poetical side. At five-and-twenty he was acknowledged as a master, at seventy-five he was a master still. His poetical influence has been represented in three different schools, from which very few of the poetical writers of the century can be excluded. These few we may notice first. Alfred Musset. de Musset, a writer of great genius, felt part of the Romantic inspiration very strongly, but was on the whole unfortunately influenced by Byron, and partly out of wilfulness, partly from a natural want of persevering industry and vigour, allowed himself to be careless and even slovenly in composition. Notwithstanding this, many of his lyrics are among the finest poems in the language, and his verse, careless as it is, has extraordinary natural grace. Auguste Barbier (1805-1882) whose Iambes shows an extraordinary command of nervous and masculine versification, also comes in here; and the Breton poet, Auguste Brizeux (1803-1858), much admired by some, together with Hégésippe Moreau, an unequal writer possessing some talent, Pierre Dupont (1821-1870), one of much greater gifts, and Gustave Nadaud (1820-1893), a follower of Béranger, also deserve mention. Of the school of Lamartine rather than of Hugo are Alfred de Vigny (1799-1865) and Victor de Laprade (1812-1887), the former a writer of little bulk and somewhat over-fastidious, but possessing one of the most correct and elegant styles to be found in French, with a curious restrained passion and a complicated originality, the latter a meditative and philosophical poet, like Vigny an admirable writer, but somewhat deficient in pith and substance, as well as in warmth and colour. Madame Ackermann (1813-1890) is the chief philosophical poetess of France, and this style has recently been very popular; but for actual poetical powers, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786-1859) perhaps excelled her, though in a looser and more sentimental fashion. The poetical schools which more directly derive from the Romantic movement as represented by Hugo are three in number, corresponding in point of time with the first outburst of the movement, with the period of reaction already alluded to, and with the closing years of the second empire. Of the first by far the most distinguished member was Théophile Gautier (1811-1872), the most perfect Gautier. poet in point of form that France has produced. When quite a boy he devoted himself to the study of 16th-century masters, and though he acknowledged the supremacy of Hugo, his own talent was of an individual order, and developed itself more or less independently. Albertus alone of his poems has much of the extravagant and grotesque character which distinguished early romantic literature. The Comédie de la mort, the Poésies diverses, and still more the Émaux et camées, display a distinctly classical tendency—classical, that is to say, not in the party and perverted sense, but in its true acceptation. The tendency to the fantastic and horrible may be taken as best shown by Petrus Borel (1809-1859), a writer of singular power almost entirely wasted. Gerard Labrunie or de Nerval (1808-1855) adopted a manner also fantastic but more idealistic than Borel’s, and distinguished himself by his Oriental travels and studies, and by his attention to popular ballads and traditions, while his style has an exquisite but unaffected strangeness hardly inferior to Gautier’s. This peculiar and somewhat quintessenced style is also remarkable in the Gaspard de la nuit of Louis Bertrand (1807-1841), a work of rhythmical prose almost unique in its character. One famous sonnet preserves the name of Félix Arvers (1806-1850). The two Deschamps were chiefly remarkable as translators. The next generation produced three remarkable poets, to whom may perhaps be added a fourth. Théodore de Banville (1823-1891), adopting the principles of Gautier, and combining with them a considerable satiric faculty, composed a large amount of verse, faultless in form, delicate and exquisite in shades and colours, but so entirely neutral in moral and political tone that it has found fewer admirers than it deserved. Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894), carrying out the principle of ransacking foreign literature for subjects, went to Celtic, classical or even Oriental sources for his inspiration, and despite a science in verse not much inferior to Banville’s, and a far wider range and choice of subject, diffused an air of erudition, not to say pedantry, over his work which disgusted some readers, and a pessimism which displeased others, but has left poetry only inferior to that of the greatest of his countrymen. Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), by his choice of unpopular subjects and the terrible truth of his analysis, revolted not a few of those who, in the words of an English critic, cannot take pleasure in the representation if they do not take pleasure in the thing represented, and who thus miss his extraordinary command of the poetical appeal in sound, in imagery and in suggestion generally. Thus, by a strange coincidence, each of the three representatives of the second Romantic generation was for a time disappointed of his due fame. A fourth poet of this time, Joséphin Soulary (1815-1891), produced sonnets of rare beauty and excellence. A fifth, Louis Bouilhet (1822-1869), an intimate friend of Flaubert, pushed even farther the fancy for strange subjects, but showed powers in Melænis and other things. In 1866 a collection of poems, entitled after an old French fashion Le Parnasse contemporain, appeared. It included contributions by many of the poets just mentioned, but the mass of the contributors were hitherto unknown to fame. A similar collection appeared in 1869, and was interrupted by the German war, but continued after it, and a third in 1876.

The first Parnasse had been projected by MM. Xavier de Ricard (b. 1843) and Catulle Mendès (1841-1909) as a sort of manifesto of a school of young poets: but its contents were largely coloured by the inclusion among them of work by representatives of older generations—Gautier, Laprade, Leconte de Lisle, Banville, Baudelaire and others. The continuation, however, of the title in the later issues, rather than anything else, led to the formation and promulgation of the idea of a “Parnassien” or an “Impassible” school which was supposed to adopt as its watchword the motto of “Art for Art’s sake,” to pay especial attention to form, and also to aim at a certain objectivity. As a matter of fact the greater poets and the greater poems of the Parnasse admit of no such restrictive labelling, which can only be regarded as mischievous, though (or very mainly because) it has been continued. Another school, arising mainly in the later ’eighties and calling itself that of “Symbolism,” has been supposed to indicate a reaction against Parnassianism and even against the main or Hugonic Romantic tradition generally; with a throwing back to Lamartine and perhaps Chénier. This idea of successive schools (“Decadents,” “Naturists,” “Simplists,” &c.) has even been reduced to such an absurdum as the statement that “France sees a new school of poetry every fifteen years.” Those who have studied literature sufficiently widely, and from a sufficient elevation, know that these systematisings are always more or less delusive. Parnassianism, symbolism and the other things are merely phases of the Romantic movement itself—as may be proved to demonstration by the simple process of taking, say, Hugo and Verlaine on the one hand, Delille or Escouchard Lebrun on the other, and comparing the two first mentioned with each other and with the older poet. The differences in the first case will be found to be differences at most of individuality: in the other of kind. We shall not, therefore, further refer to these dubious classifications: but specify briefly the most remarkable poets whom they concern, and all the older of whom, it may be observed, were represented in the Parnasse itself. Of these the most remarkable were Sully Prudhomme (1839-1907), François Coppée (1842-1908) and Paul Verlaine (1844-1896). The first (Stances et poèmes, 1865, Vaines Tendresses, 1875, Bonheur, 1888, &c.) is a philosophical and rather pessimistic poet who has very strongly rallied the suffrages of the rather large present public who care for the embodiment of these tendencies in verse; the second (La Grève des forgerons, 1869, Les Humbles, 1872, Contes et vers, 1881-1887, &c.) a dealer with more generally popular subjects in a more sentimental manner; and the third (Sagesse, 1881, Parallèlement, 1889, Poèmes saturniens, including early work, 1867-1890), by far the most original and remarkable poet of the three, starting with Baudelaire and pushing farther the fancy for forbidden subjects, but treating both these and others with wonderful command of sound and image-suggestion. Verlaine in fact (he was actually well acquainted with English) endeavoured, and to a small extent succeeded in the endeavour, to communicate to French the vague suggestion of visual and audible appeal which has characterized English poetry from Blake through Coleridge. Others of the original Parnassiens who deserve mention are Albert Glatigny (1839-1873), a Bohemian poet of great talent who died young; Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898), afterwards chief of the Symbolists, also a true poet in his way, but somewhat barren, and the victim of pose and trick; José Maria de Heredia (1842-1905), a very exquisite practitioner of the sonnet but with perhaps more art than matter in him; Henri Cazalis (1840-1909), who long afterwards, under his name of Jean Lahor, appeared as a Symbolist pessimist; A. Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, another eccentric but with a spark of genius; Emmanuel des Essarts; Auguste de Châtillon (1810-1882); Léon Dierx (b. 1838) who, after producing even less than Mallarmé, succeeded him as Symbolist chief; Jean Aicard (b. 1848), a southern bard of merit; and lastly Catulle Mendès himself, who has been a brilliant writer in verse and prose ever since, and whose Mouvement poétique français de 1867 à 1900 (1903), an official report largely amplified so that it is in fact a history and dictionary of French poetry during the century, forms an almost unique work of reference on the subject. Among the later recruits the most specially noticeable was Armand Silvestre (1837-1901), whose verse (La Chanson des heures, 1878, Ailes d’or, 1880, La Chanson des étoiles, 1885), of an ethereal beauty, was contrasted with prose admirably written and sometimes most amusing, but “Pantagruelist,” and more, in manners and morals. This declension from poetry to prose fiction was also noticeable in Guy de Maupassant, André Theuriet, Anatole France and even Alphonse Daudet.

Yet another flight of poets may be grouped as those specially representing the last quarter of the century and (whether Parnassian, Symbolist or what not) the latest development of French poetry. Verlaine and Mallarmé already mentioned were in a manner the leaders of these. Perhaps something of the influence of Whitman may be detected in the irregular verses of Gustave Kahn (b. 1859), Francis Viélé Griffin, actually an American by birth (b. 1864), Stuart Merrill, of like origin, and Paul Fort (b. 1872). But the whole tendency of the period has been to relax the stringency of French prosody. Albert Samain (1859-1900), a musical versifier enough; Jean Moréas (1856-1910) who began with a volume called Les Syrtes in 1884; Laurent Tailhade (b. 1854) and others are more or less Symbolist, and contributed to the Symbolist periodical (one of many such since the beginning of the Romantic movement which would almost require an article to themselves), the Mercure de France. An older man than many of these, M. Jean Richepin (b. 1849), made for a time considerable noise with poetical work of a colour older even than his age, and harking back somewhat to the Jeune-France and “Bousingot” type of early Romanticism—La Chanson des gueux, Les Blasphèmes, &c. Other writers of note are M. Paul Déroulède (b. 1846), a violently nationalist poet; M. Maurice Bouchor (b. 1864), who started his serious and respectable work with Les Symboles in 1888; while M. Henri de Regnier, born in the same year, has received very high praise for work from Lendemains in 1886 and other volumes up to Les Jeux rustiques et divins (1897) and Les Médailles d’argile (1900). The truth, however, perhaps is that this extraordinary abundance of verse (for we have not mentioned a quarter of the names which present themselves, or a twentieth part of those who figure in M. Mendès’s catalogue for the last half-century) reminds the literary historian somewhat too much of similar phenomena in other times. There is undoubtedly a great diffusion of poetical dexterity, and not perhaps a small one of poetical spirit, but it requires the settling, clarifying and distinguishing effects of time to separate the poet from the minor poet. Still more perhaps must we look to time to decide whether the vers libre as it is called—that is to say, the verse freed from the minute traditions of the elder prosody, admitting hiatus, neglecting to a greater or less extent caesura, and sometimes relying upon mere rhythm to the neglect of strict metre altogether—can hold its ground. It has as yet been practised by no poet at all approaching the first class, except Verlaine, and not by him in its extremer forms. And the whole history of prosody and poetry teaches us that though similar changes often come in as it were unperceived, they scarcely ever take root in the language unless a great poet adopts them. Or rather it should perhaps be said that when they are going to take root in the language a great poet always does adopt them before very long.

Prose Fiction since 1830.—Even more remarkable, because more absolutely novel, was the outburst of prose fiction which followed 1830. Madame de Lafayette, Le Sage, Marivaux, Voltaire, the Abbé Prévost, Diderot, J. J. Rousseau, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Fiévée had all of them produced work excellent in its way, and comprising in a more or less rudimentary condition most varieties of the novel. But none of them had, in the French phrase, made a school, and at no time had prose fiction been composed in any considerable quantities. The immense influence which Walter Scott exercised was perhaps the direct cause of the attention paid to prose fiction; the facility, too, with which all the fancies, tastes and beliefs of the time could be embodied in such work may have had considerable importance. But it is difficult on any theory of cause and effect to account for the appearance in less than ten years of such a group of novelists as Hugo, Gautier, Dumas, Mérimée, Balzac, George Sand, Jules Sandeau and Charles de Bernard, names to which might be added others scarcely inferior. There is hardly anything else resembling it in literature, except the great cluster of English dramatists in the beginning of the 17th century, and of English poets at the beginning of the 19th; and it is remarkable that the excellence of the first group was maintained by a fresh generation—Murger, About, Feuillet, Flaubert, Erckmann-Chatrian, Droz, Daudet, Cherbuliez and Gaboriau, forming a company of diadochi not far inferior to their predecessors, and being themselves not unworthily succeeded almost up to the present day. The romance-writing of France during the period has taken two different directions—the first that of the novel of incident, the second that of analysis and character. The first, now mainly deserted, was that which, as was natural when Scott was the model, was formerly most trodden; the second required the genius of George Sand and of Balzac and the more problematical talent of Beyle to attract students to it. The novels of Victor Hugo are novels of incident, with a strong infusion of purpose, and considerable but rather ideal character drawing. They are in fact lengthy prose drames rather than romances proper, and they have found no imitators. They display, however, the powers of the master at their fullest. Dumas. On the other hand, Alexandre Dumas originally composed his novels in close imitation of Scott, and they are much less dramatic than narrative in character, so that they lend themselves to almost indefinite continuation, and there is often no particular reason why they should terminate even at the end of the score or so of volumes to which they sometimes actually extend. Of this purely narrative kind, which hardly even attempts anything but the boldest character drawing, the best of them, such as Les Trois Mousquetaires, Vingt ans après, La Reine Margot, are probably the best specimens extant. Dumas possesses, almost alone among novelists, the secret of writing interminable dialogue without being tedious, and of telling the story by it. Of something the same kind, but of a far lower stamp, are the novels of Eugène Sue (1804-1857). Dumas and Sue were accompanied and followed by a vast crowd of companions, independent or imitative. Alfred de Vigny had already attempted the historical novel in Cinq-Mars. Henri de La Touche (1785-1851) (Fragoletta), an excellent critic who formed George Sand, but a mediocre novelist, may be mentioned: and perhaps also Roger de Beauvoir, whose real name was Eugène Auguste Roger de Bully (1806-1866) (Le Chronique de Saint Georges), and Frédéric Soulié (Les Mémoires du diable) (1800-1847). Paul Féval (La Fée des grèves) (1817-1877) and Amédée Achard (Belle-Rose) (1814-1875) are of the same school, and some of the attempts of Jules Janin (1804-1874), more celebrated as a critic, may also be connected with it. By degrees, however, the taste for the novel of incident, at least of an historical kind, died out till it was revived in another form, and with an admixture of domestic interest, by MM. Erckmann-Chatrian. The last and one of the most splendid instances of the old style was Le Capitaine Fracasse, which Théophile Gautier began early and finished late as a kind of tour de force. The last-named writer in his earlier days had modified the incident novel in many short tales, a kind of writing for which French has always been famous, and in which Gautier’s sketches are masterpieces. His only other long novel, Mademoiselle de Maupin, belongs rather to the class of analysis. With Gautier, as a writer whose literary characteristics even excel his purely tale-telling powers, may be classed Prosper Mérimée (1803-1870), one of the most exquisite 19th-century masters of the language. Already, however, in 1830 the tide was setting strongly in favour of novels of contemporary life and manners. These were of course susceptible of extremely various treatment. For many years Paul de Kock (1793-1871), a writer who did not trouble himself about Classics or Romantics or any such matter, continued the tradition of Marivaux, Crébillon fils, and Pigault Lebrun (1753-1835) in a series of not very moral or polished but lively and amusing sketches of life, principally of the bourgeois type. Later Charles de Bernard (1804-1850) (Gerfaut) with infinitely greater wit, elegance, propriety and literary skill, did the same thing for the higher classes of French society. But the two great masters of the novel of character and manners as opposed to that of history and incident are Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) and Aurore Dudevant, commonly called George Sand (1804-1876). Their influence affected the entire body of novelists who succeeded them, with very few exceptions. At the head of these exceptions may be placed Jules Sandeau (1811-1883), who, after writing a certain number of novels in a less individual style, at last made for himself a special subject in a certain kind of domestic novel, where the passions set in motion are less boisterous than those usually preferred by the French novelist, and reliance is mainly placed on minute character drawing and shades of colour sober in hue but very carefully adjusted (Catherine, Mademoiselle de Penarvan, Mademoiselle de la Seiglière). In the same class of the more quiet and purely domestic novelists may be placed X. B. Saintine (1798-1865) (Picciola), Madame C. Reybaud (1802-1871) (Clémentine, Le Cadet de Colobrières), J. T. de Saint-Germain (Pour en épingle, La Feuille de coudrier), Madame Craven (1808-1891) (Récit d’une sœur, Fleurange). Henri Beyle (1798-1865), who wrote under the nom de plume of Stendhal and belongs to an older generation than most of these, also stands by himself. His chief book in the line of fiction is La Chartreuse de Parme, an exceedingly powerful novel of the analytical kind, and he also composed a considerable number of critical and miscellaneous works. Of little influence at first (though he had great power over Mérimée) and never master of a perfect style, he has exercised ever increasing authority as a master of pessimist analysis. Indeed much of his work was never published till towards the close of the century. Last among the independents must be mentioned Henry Murger (1822-1861), the painter of what is called Bohemian life, that is to say, the struggles, difficulties and amusements of students, youthful artists, and men of letters. In this peculiar style, which may perhaps be regarded as an irregular descendant of the picaroon romance, Murger has no rival; and he is also, though on no extensive scale, a poet of great pathos. But with these exceptions, the influences of the two writers we have mentioned, sometimes combined, more often separate, may be traced throughout the whole of later novel literature. George Sand began with books strongly tinged with the spirit of revolt against moral and social arrangements, and she sometimes diverged into very curious paths of pseudo-philosophy, such as was popular in the second quarter of the century. At times, too, as in Lucrezia Floriani and some other works, she did not hesitate to draw largely on her own personal adventures and experiences. But latterly she devoted herself rather to sketches of country life and manners, and to novels involving bold if not very careful sketches of character and more or less dramatic situations. She was one of the most fertile of novelists, continuing to the end of her long life to pour forth fiction at the rate of many volumes a year. Of her different styles may be mentioned as fairly characteristic, Lélia, Lucrezia Floriani, Consuelo, La Mare au diable, La Petite Fadette, François le champi, Mademoiselle de la Quintinie. Considering the shorter Balzac the younger. length of his life the productiveness of Balzac was almost more astonishing, especially if we consider that some of his early work was never reprinted, and that he left great stores of fragments and unfinished sketches. He is, moreover, the most remarkable example in literature of untiring work and determination to achieve success despite the greatest discouragements. His early work was worse than unsuccessful, it was positively bad. After more than a score of unsuccessful attempts, Les Chouans at last made its mark, and for twenty years from that time the astonishing productions composing the so-called Comédie humaine were poured forth successively. The sub-titles which Balzac imposed upon the different batches, Scènes de la vie parisienne, de la vie de province, de la vie intime, &c., show, like the general title, a deliberate intention on the author’s part to cover the whole ground of human, at least of French life. Such an attempt could not succeed wholly; yet the amount of success attained is astonishing. Balzac has, however, with some justice been accused of creating the world which he described, and his personages, wonderful as is the accuracy and force with which many of the characteristics of humanity are exemplified in them, are somehow not altogether human. Since these two great novelists, many others have arisen, partly to tread in their steps, partly to strike out independent paths. Octave Feuillet (1821-1890), beginning his career by apprenticeship to Alexandre Dumas and the historical novel, soon found his way in a very different style of composition, the roman intime of fashionable life, in which, notwithstanding some grave defects, he attained much popularity and showed remarkable skill in keeping abreast of his time. The so-called realist side of Balzac was developed (but, as he himself acknowledged, with a double dose of intermixed if somewhat transformed Romanticism) by Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), who showed culture, scholarship and a literary power over the language inferior to that of no writer of the century. No novelist of his generation has attained a higher literary rank than Flaubert. Madame Bovary and L’Éducation sentimentale are studies of contemporary life; in Salammbô and La Tentation de Saint Antoine erudition and antiquarian knowledge furnish the subjects for the display of the highest literary skill. Of about the same date Edmond About (1828-1885), before he abandoned novel-writing, devoted himself chiefly to sketches of abundant but not always refined wit (L’Homme à l’oreille cassée, Le Nez d’un notaire), and sometimes to foreign scenes (Tolla, Le Roi des montagnes). Champfleury (Henri Husson, 1829-1889), a prolific critic, deserves notice for stories of the extravaganza kind. During the whole of the Second Empire one of the most popular writers was Ernest Feydeau (1821-1873), a writer of great ability, but morbid and affected in the choice and treatment of his subjects (Fanny, Sylvie, Catherine d’Overmeire). Émile Gaboriau (1833-1873), taking up that side of Balzac’s talent which devoted itself to inextricable mysteries, criminal trials, and the like, produced M. Le Coq, Le Crime d’Orcival, La Dégringolade, &c.; and Adolphe Belot (b. 1829) for a time endeavoured to out-Feydeau Feydeau in La Femme de feu and other works. Eugène Fromentin (1820-1876), best known as a painter, wrote a novel, Dominique, which was highly appreciated by good judges.

During the last decade of the Second Empire there arose, continuing for varying lengths of time till nearly the end of the century, another remarkable group of novelists, most of whom are dealt with under separate headings, but who must receive combined treatment here; with the warning that even more danger than in the case of the poets is incurred by classing them in “schools.” Undoubtedly, however, the “Naturalist” tendency, starting from Balzac and continued through Flaubert, but taking quite a new direction under some of those to be mentioned, is in a manner dominant. Flaubert himself and Feuillet (an exact observer of manners but an anti-Naturalist) have already been mentioned. Victor Cherbuliez (1829-1899), a constant writer in the Revue des deux mondes on politics and other subjects, also accomplished a long series of novels from Le Comte Kostia (1863) onwards, of which the most remarkable are that just named, Le Roman d’une honnête femme (1866), and Meta Holdenis (1873). With something of Balzac and more of Feuillet, Cherbuliez mixed with his observation of society a dose of sentimental and popular romance which offended the younger critics of his day, but he had solid merits. Gustave Droz (b. 1832) devoted himself chiefly to short stories sufficiently “free” in subject (Monsieur, madame et bébé, Entre nous, &c.) but full of fancy, excellently written, and of a delicate wit in one sense if not in all. André Theuriet (1833-1907) began with poetry but diverged to novels, in which the scenery of France and especially of its great forests is used with much skill; Le Fils Maugars (1879) may be mentioned out of many as a specimen. Léon Cladel (1835-1892), whose most remarkable work was Les Va-nu-pieds (1874), had, as this title of itself shows, Naturalist leanings; but with a quaint Romantic tendency in prose and verse.

The Naturalists proper chiefly developed or seemed to develop one side of Balzac, but almost entirely abandoned his Romantic element. They aimed first at exact and almost photographic delineation of the accidents of modern life, and secondly at still more uncompromising non-suppression of the essential features and functions of that life which are usually suppressed. This school may be represented in chief by four novelists (really three, as two of them were brothers who wrote together till the rather early death of one of them), Émile Zola (1840-1903), Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897), and Edmond (1822-1897) and Jules (1830-1870) de Goncourt. The first, of Italian extraction and Marseillais birth, began by work of undecided kinds and was always a critic as well as a novelist. Of this first stage Contes à Ninon (1864) and Thérèse Raquin (1867) deserve to be specified. But after 1870 Zola entered upon a huge scheme (suggested no doubt by the Comédie humaine) of tracing the fortunes in every branch, legitimate and illegitimate, and in every rank of society of a family, Les Rougon-Macquart, and carried it out in a full score of novels during more than as many years. He followed this with a shorter series on places, Paris, Rome, Lourdes, and lastly by another of strangely apocalyptic tone, Fécondité, Travail, Vérité, the last a story of the Dreyfus case, retrospective and, as it proved, prophetic. The extreme repulsiveness of much of his work, and the overdone detail of almost the whole of it, caused great prejudice against him, and will probably always prevent his being ranked among the greatest novelists; but his power is indubitable, and in passages, if not in whole books, does itself justice.

MM. de Goncourt, besides their work in Naturalist (they would have preferred to call it “Impressionist”) fiction, devoted themselves especially to study and collection in the fine arts, and produced many volumes on the historical side of these, volumes distinguished by accurate and careful research. This quality they carried, and the elder of them after his brother’s death continued to carry, into novel-writing (Renée Mauperin, Germinie Lacerteux, Chérie, &c.) with the addition of an extraordinary care for peculiar and, as they called it, “personal” diction. On the other hand, Alphonse Daudet (who with the other three, Flaubert to some extent, and the Russian novelist Turgenieff, formed a sort of cénacle or literary club) mixed with some Naturalism a far greater amount of fancy and wit than his companions allowed themselves or could perhaps attain; and in the Tartarin series (dealing with the extravagances of his fellow-Provençaux) added not a little to the gaiety of Europe. His other novels (Fromont jeune et Risler aîné, Jack, Le Nabab, &c.), also very popular, have been variously judged, there being something strangely like plagiarism in some of them, and in others, in fact in most, an excessive use of that privilege of the novelist which consists in introducing real persons under more or less disguise. It should be observed in speaking of this group that the Goncourts, or rather the survivor of them, left an elaborate Journal disfigured by spite and bad taste, but of much importance for the appreciation of the personal side of French literature during the last half of the century.

In 1880 Zola, who had by this time formed a regular school of disciples, issued with certain of them a collection of short stories, Les Soirées de Médan, which contains one of his own best things, L’Attaque du moulin, and also the capital story, Boule de suif, by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), who in the same year published poems, Des vers, of very remarkable if not strictly poetical quality. Maupassant developed during his short literary career perhaps the greatest powers shown by any French novelist since Flaubert (his sponsor in both senses) in a series of longer novels (Une Vie, Bel Ami, Pierre et Jean, Fort comme la mort) and shorter stories (Monsieur Parent, Les Sœurs Rondoli, Le Horla), but they were distorted by the Naturalist pessimism and grime, and perhaps also by the brain-disease of which their author died. M. J. K. Huysmans (b. 1848), also a contributor to Les Soirées de Médan, who had begun a little earlier with Marthe (1876) and other books, gave his most characteristic work in 1884 with Au rebours and in 1891 with Là-bas, stories of exaggerated and “satanic” pose, decorated with perhaps the extremest achievements of the school in mere ugliness and nastiness. Afterwards, by an obvious reaction, he returned to Catholicism. Of about the same date as these two are two other novelists of note, Julien Viaud (“Pierre Loti,” b. 1850), a naval officer who embodied his experiences of foreign service with a faint dose of story and character interest, and a far larger one of elaborate description, in a series of books (Aziyadé, Le Mariage de Loti, Madame Chrysanthème, &c.), and M. Paul Bourget (b. 1852), an important critic as well as novelist who deflected the Naturalist current into a “psychological” channel, connecting itself higher with Stendhal, and composed in its books very popular in their way—Cruelle Énigme (1885), Le Disciple, Terre promise, Cosmopolis. As a contrast or complement to Bourget’s “psychological” novel may be taken the “ethical” novel of Edouard Rod (1857-1909)—La Vie privée de Michel Tessier (1893), Le Sens de la vie, Les Trois Cœurs. Contemporary with these as a novelist though a much older man, and occupied at different times of his life with verse and with criticism, came Anatole France (b. 1844), who in Le Crime de Silvestre Bonnard, La Rôtisserie de la reine Pédauque, Le Lys rouge, and others, has made a kind of novel as different from the ordinary styles as Pierre Loti’s, but of far higher appeal in its wit, its subtle fancy, and its perfect French. Ferdinand Fabre (1830-1898) and René Bazin (b. 1853) represent the union, not too common in the French novel, of orthodoxy in morals and religion with literary ability. Further must be mentioned Paul Hervieu (b. 1857), a dramatist rather than a novelist; the brothers Margueritte (Paul, b. 1860, Victor, b. 1866), especially strong in short stories and passages; another pair of brothers of Belgian origin writing under the name of “J. H. Rosny”—Zolaists partly converted not to religion but to science and a sort of non-Christian virtue; the ingenious and amusing, if not exactly moral, brilliancy of Marcel Prévost (b. 1862); the contorted but rather attractive style and the perverse sentiment of Maurice Barrès (b. 1862); and, above all, the audacious and inimitable dialogue pieces of “Gyp” (Madame de Martel, b. 1850), worthy of the best times of French literature for gaiety, satire, acuteness and style, and perhaps likely, with the work of Maupassant, Pierre Loti and Anatole France, to represent the capital achievement of their particular generation to posterity.

Periodical Literature since 1830. Criticism.—One of the causes which led to this extensive composition of novels was the great spread of periodical literature in France, and the custom of including in almost all periodicals, daily, weekly or monthly, a feuilleton or instalment of fiction. Of the contributors of these periodicals who were strictly journalists and almost political journalists only, the most remarkable after Carrel were his opponent in the fatal duel,—Émile de Girardin, Lucien A. Prévost-Paradol (1829-1870), Jean Hippolyte Cartier, called de Villemessant (1812-1879), and, above all, Louis Veuillot (1815-1883), the most violent and unscrupulous but by no means the least gifted of his class. The same spread of periodical literature, together with the increasing interest in the literature of the past, led also to a very great development of criticism. Almost all French authors of any eminence during nearly the last century have devoted themselves more or less to criticism of literature, of the theatre, or of art. And sometimes, as in the case of Janin and Gautier, the comparatively lucrative nature of journalism, and the smaller demands which it made for labour and intellectual concentration, have diverted to feuilleton-writing abilities which might perhaps have been better employed. At the same time it must be remembered that from this devotion of men of the best talents to critical work has arisen an immense elevation of the standard of such work. Before the romantic movement in France Diderot in that country, Lessing and some of his successors in Germany, Hazlitt, Coleridge and Lamb in England, had been admirable critics and reviewers. But the theory of criticism, though these men’s principles and practice had set it aside, still remained more or less what it had been for centuries. The critic was merely the administrator of certain hard and fast rules. There were certain recognized kinds of literary composition; every new book was bound to class itself under one or other of these. There were certain recognized rules for each class; and the goodness or badness of a book consisted simply in its obedience or disobedience to these rules. Even the kinds of admissible subjects and the modes of admissible treatment were strictly noted and numbered. This was especially the case in France and with regard to French belles-lettres, so that, as we have seen, certain classes of composition had been reduced to unimportant variations of a registered pattern. The Romantic protest against this absurdity was specially loud and completely victorious. It is said that a publisher advised the youthful Lamartine to try “to be like somebody else” if he wished to succeed. The Romantic standard of success was, on the contrary, to be as individual as possible. Victor Hugo himself composed a good deal of criticism, and in the preface to his Orientales he states the critical principles of the new school clearly. The critic, he says, has nothing to do with the subject chosen, the colours employed, the materials used. Is the work, judged by itself and with regard only to the ideal which the worker had in his mind, good or bad? It will be seen that as a legitimate corollary of this theorem the critic becomes even more of an interpreter than of a judge. He can no longer satisfy himself or his readers by comparing the work before him with some abstract and accepted standard, and marking off its shortcomings. He has to reconstruct, more or less conjecturally, the special ideal at which each of his authors aimed, and to do this he has to study their idiosyncrasies with the utmost care, and set them before his readers in as full and attractive a fashion as he can manage. The first writer who thoroughly grasped this necessity and successfully Sainte-Beuve. dealt with it was Charles Augustin 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 littéraires, 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 Causeries du lundi appeared weekly in the columns of the Constitutionnel 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, lent 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 of 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, perhaps, Hippolyte Taine, who, however, besides his work on English literature, did much of importance on French, and has been regarded as the first critic who did thorough honour to Balzac in his own country. A large number of other critics during the period deserve notice because, though acting more or less on the newer system of criticism, they have manifested considerable originality in its application. As far as merely critical faculty goes, and still more in the power of giving literary expression to criticism, Théophile Gautier yields to no one. His Les Grotesques, an early work dealing with Villon, the earlier “Théophile” de Viau, and other enfants terribles of French literature, has served as a model to many subsequent writers, such as Charles Monselet (1825-1888), and Charles Asselineau (1820-1874), the affectionate historian, in his Bibliographie romantique (1872-1874), 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. Jules Janin (1804-1874), 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 has become almost a speciality of the French press, and among its numerous practitioners the names of Armand de Pontmartin (1811-1890) (an imitator and assailant of Sainte-Beuve), Arsène Houssaye, Pierangelo Fiorentino (1806-1864), may be mentioned. Edmond Scherer (1815-1889) and Paul de Saint-Victor (1827-1881) represent different sides of Sainte-Beuve’s style in literary criticism, Scherer combining with it a martinet and somewhat prudish precision, while Saint-Victor, with great powers of appreciation, is the most flowery and “prose-poetical” of French critics. In theatrical censure Francisque Sarcey (1827-1899), an acute but somewhat severe and limited judge, succeeded to the good-natured sovereignty of Janin. The criticism of the Revue des deux mondes has played a sufficiently important part in French 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 were Gustave Planche (1808-1857), an acute but somewhat truculent critic, Saint-René Taillandier (1817-1879), and Émile Montégut (1825-1895), a man of letters whom greater leisure would have made greater, but who actually combined much and varied critical power with an agreeable style. 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 republished lectures, books somewhat academic and rhetorical 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 Abel Villemain (1790-1867), who was one of the earliest critics of the literature of his own country to obtain a hearing out of it. Désiré Nisard (1806-1888) was perhaps more fortunate in his dealings with Latin than with French, and in his History of the latter literature represents too much the classical tradition, but he had dignity, erudition and an excellent style. Alexandre Vinet (1797-1847), a Swiss critic of considerable eminence, Saint-Marc-Girardin (1801-1873), whose Cours de littérature dramatique is his chief work, and Eugène Géruzez (1799-1865), the author not only of an extremely useful and well-written handbook to French literature before the Revolution, but also of other works dealing with separate portions of the subject, must also be mentioned. One remarkable critic, Ernest Hello (1818-1885), attracted during his life little attention even in France, and hardly any out of it, his work being strongly tinctured with the unpopular flavour and colour of uncompromising “clericalism,” and his extremely bad health keeping him out of the ordinary fraternities of literary society. It was, however, as full of idiosyncrasy as of partisanship, and is exceedingly interesting to those who regard criticism as mainly valuable because it gives different aspects of the same thing.

Perhaps in no branch of belles-lettres did the last quarter of the century maintain the level at which predecessors had arrived better than in criticism; though whether this fact is connected with something of decadence in the creative branches, is a question which may be better posed than resolved here. A remarkable writer whose talent, approaching genius, was spoilt by eccentricity and pose, and who belonged to a more modern generation, Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly (1808-1889), poet, novelist and critic, produced much of his last critical work, and corrected more, in these later days. Not only did the critical work in various ways of Renan, Taine, Scherer, Sarcey and others continue during parts of it, but a new generation, hardly in this case inferior to the old, appeared. The three chiefs of this were the already mentioned Anatole France, Émile Faguet (b. 1847), and Ferdinand Brunetière (1849-1906), to whom some would add Jules Lemaître (b. 1853). The last, however, though a brilliant writer, was but an “interim” critic, beginning with poetry and other matters, and after a time turning to yet others, while, brilliant as he was, his criticism was often ill-informed. So too Anatole France, after compiling four volumes of La Vie littéraire in his own inimitable style and with singular felicity of appreciation, also turned away. The phenomenon in both cases may be associated, though it must not be too intimately connected in the relation of cause and effect, with the fact that both were champions and practitioners of “impressionist criticism”—of the doctrine (unquestionably sound if not exaggerated) that the first duty of the critic is to reproduce the effect produced on his own mind by the author. Brunetière and Faguet, on the other hand, are partisans of the older academic style of criticism by kind and on principle. Faguet, besides regular volumes on each of the four great centuries of French literature, has produced much other work—all of it somewhat “classical” in tendency and frequently exhibiting something of a want of comprehension of the Romantic side. Brunetière was still more prolific on the same side but with still greater effort after system and “science.” In the books definitely called L’Évolution des genres, in his Manuel of French literature, and in a large number of other volumes of collected essays he enforced with great learning and power of argument, if with a somewhat narrow purview and with some prejudice against writers whom he disliked, a new form of the old doctrine that the “kind” not the individual author or book ought to be the main subject of the critic’s attention. He did not escape the consequential danger of taking authors and books not as they are but as in relation to the kinds which they in fact constitute and to his general views. But he was undoubtedly at his death the first critic of France and a worthy successor of her best.

Of others older and younger must be mentioned Paul Stapfer (b. 1840), professor of literature, and the author of divers excellent works from Shakespeare et l’antiquité to volumes of the first value on Montaigne and Rabelais; Paul Bourget and Edouard Rod, already noticed; Augustin Filon (b. 1841), author of much good work on English literature and an excellent book on Mérimée; Alexandre Beljame (1843-1906), another eminent student of English literature, in which subject J. A. Jusserand (b. 1855), Legouis, K. A. J. Angellier (b. 1848), and others have recently distinguished themselves; Gustave Larroumet, especially an authority on Marivaux; Eugène Lintilhac (b. 1854); Georges Pellissier; Gustave Lanson, author of a compact history of French literature in French; Marcel Schwob, who had done excellent work on Villon and other subjects before his early death; René Doumic, a frequent writer in the Revue des deux mondes, who collected four volumes of Études sur la littérature française between 1895 and 1900; and the Vicomte Melchior de Vogüé (b. 1848), whose interests have been more political-philosophical than strictly literary, but who has done much to familiarize the French public with that Russian literature to which Mérimée had been the first to introduce them. But the body of recent critical literature in France is perhaps larger in actual proportion and of greater value when considered in relation to other kinds of literature than has been the case at any previous period.

History since 1830.—The remarkable development of historical studies which we have noticed as taking place under the Restoration 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 alteration. For something like 150 years historians had been divided into two classes, those who produced elegant literary works pleasant to read, and those who 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 historical 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 sufficient literary talent to maintain its dignity. Sismondi, whom we have already noticed, continued during this period his great Histoire des Français, and produced his even better-known Histoire des républiques italiennes au moyen âge. The brothers Thierry devoted themselves to early French history, Amédée Thierry (1797-1873) 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 Récits des temps Mérovingiens and other excellent works. Philippe de Ségur (1780-1873) gave a history of the Russian campaign of Napoleon, and some other works chiefly dealing with Russian history. The voluminous Histoire de France of Henri Martin (1810-1883) is perhaps the best and most impartial work dealing in detail with the whole subject. A. G. P. Brugière, baron de Barante (1782-1866), after beginning with literary criticism, turned to history, and in his Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne produced a work of capital importance. As was to be expected, many of the most brilliant results of this devotion to historical subjects consisted of works dealing with the French Revolution. No series of historical events has ever perhaps received treatment at the same time from so many different points of view, and by writers of such varied literary excellence, among whom it must, however, be said that the purely royalist side is hardly at all represented. One of the earliest of these histories is that of François Mignet (1796-1884), a sober and judicious historian of the older school, also well known for his Histoire de Marie Stuart. About the same time was begun the brilliant if not extremely trustworthy work of Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877) on the Revolution, which established the literary reputation of the future president of the French republic, and was at a later period completed by the Histoire du consulat et de l’empire. The downfall of the July monarchy and the early years of the empire witnessed the publication of several works of the first importance on this subject. Barante contributed histories of the Convention and the Directory, but the three books of greatest note were those of Lamartine, Jules Michelet (1798-1874), and Louis Blanc (1811-1882). Lamartine’s Histoire des Girondins is written from the constitutional-republican point of view, and is sometimes considered to have had much influence in producing the events of 1848. It is, perhaps, rather the work of an orator and poet than of an historian. The work of Michelet is of a more original character. Besides his history of the Revolution, Michelet wrote an extended history of France, and a very large number of smaller works on historical, political and social subjects. His imaginative powers are of the highest order, and his style stands alone in French for its strangely broken and picturesque character, its turbid abundance of striking images, and its somewhat sombre magnificence, qualities which, as may easily be supposed, found full occupation in a history of the Revolution. The work of Louis Blanc was that of a sincere but ardent republican, and is useful from this point of view, but possesses no extraordinary literary merit. The principal contributions to the history of the Revolution of the third quarter of the century were those of Quinet, Lanfrey and Taine. Edgar Quinet (1803-1875), like Louis Blanc a devotee of the republic and an exile for its sake, brought to this one of his latest works a mind and pen long trained to literary and historical studies; but La Révolution is not considered his best work. P. Lanfrey devoted himself with extraordinary patience and acuteness to the destruction of the Napoleonic legend, and the setting of the character of Napoleon I. in a new, authentic and very far from favourable light. And Taine, after distinguishing himself, as we have mentioned, in literary criticism (Histoire de la littérature anglaise), and attaining less success in philosophy (De l’intelligence), turned in Les Origines de la France moderne to an elaborate discussion of the Revolution, its causes, character and consequences, which excited some commotion among the more ardent devotees of the principles of ’89. To return from this group, we must notice J. F. Michaud (1767-1839), the historian of the crusades, and François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787-1874), who, like his rival Thiers, devoted himself much to historical study. His earliest works were literary and linguistic, but he soon turned to political history, and for the last half-century of his long life his contributions to historical literature were almost incessant and of the most various character. The most important are the histories Des Origines du gouvernement représentatif, De la révolution d’Angleterre, De la civilisation en France, and latterly a Histoire de France, which he was writing at the time of his death. Among minor historians of the earlier century may be mentioned Prosper Duvergier de Hauranne (1798-1881) (Gouvernement parlementaire en France), J. J. Ampère (1800-1864) (Histoire romaine à Rome), Auguste Arthur Beugnot (1797-1865) (Destruction du paganisme d’occident), J. O. B. de Cléron, comte d’Haussonville (La Réunion de la Lorraine à la France), Achille Tendelle de Vaulabelle (1799-1870) (Les Deux Restaurations). In the last quarter of the century, under the department of history, the most remarkable names were still those of Taine and Renan, the former being distinguished for thought and matter, the latter for style. Indeed it may be here proper to remark that Renan, in the kind of elaborated semi-poetic style which has most characterized the prose of the 19th century in all countries of Europe, takes pre-eminence among French writers even in the estimation of critics who are not enamoured of his substance and tone. But, under the influence of Taine to some extent and of a general European tendency still more, France during this period attained or recovered a considerable place for what is called “scientific” history—the history which while, in some cases, though not in all, not neglecting the development of style attaches itself particularly to “the document,” on the one hand, and to philosophical arrangement on the other. The chief representative of the school was probably Albert Sorel (1842-1906), whose various handlings of the Revolutionary period (including an excursion into partly literary criticism in the shape of an admirable monograph on Madame de Staël) have established themselves once for all. In a wider sweep Ernest Lavisse (b. 1842), who has dealt mainly with the 18th century, may hold a similar position. Of others, older and younger, the duc de Broglie (1821-1901), who devoted himself also to the 18th century and especially to its secret diplomacy; Gaston Boissier (b. 1823), a classical scholar rather than an historian proper, and one of the latest masters of the older French academic style; Thureau-Dangin (b. 1837), a student of mid 19th-century history; Henri Houssaye (b. 1848), one of the Napoleonic period; Gabriel Hanotaux (b. 1853), an historian of Richelieu and other subjects, and a practical politician, may be mentioned. A large accession has also been made to the publication of older memoirs—that important branch of French literature from almost the whole of its existence since the invention of prose.

Summary and Conclusion.—We have in these last pages given such an outline of the 19th-century literature of France as seemed convenient for the completion of what has gone before. It has been already remarked that the nearer approach is made to our own time the less is it possible to give exhaustive accounts of the individual cultivators of the different branches of literature. It may be added, perhaps, that such exhaustiveness becomes, as we advance, less and less necessary, as well as less and less possible. The individual poet of to-day may and does produce work that is in itself of greater literary value than that of the individual trouvère. As a matter of literary history his contribution is less remarkable because of the examples he has before him and the circumstances which he has around him. Yet we have endeavoured to draw such a sketch of French literature from the Chanson de Roland onwards that no important development and hardly any important partaker in such development should be left out. A few lines may, perhaps, be now profitably given to summing up the aspects of the whole, remembering always that, as in no case is generalization easier than in the case of the literary aspects and tendencies of periods and nations, so in no case is it apt to be more delusive unless corrected and supported by ample information of fact and detail.

At the close of the 11th century and at the beginning of the 12th we find the vulgar tongue in France not merely in fully organized use for literary purposes, but already employed in most of the forms of poetical writing. An immense outburst of epic and narrative verse has taken place, and lyrical poetry, not limited as in the case of the epics to the north of France, but extending from Roussillon to the Pas de Calais, completes this. The 12th century adds to these earliest forms the important development of the mystery, extends the subjects and varies the manner of epic verse, and begins the compositions of literary prose with the chronicles of St Denis and of Villehardouin, and the prose romances of the Arthurian cycle. All this literature is so far connected purely with the knightly and priestly orders, though it is largely composed and still more largely dealt in by classes of men, trouvères and jongleurs, who are not necessarily either knights or priests, and in the case of the jongleurs are certainly neither. With a possible ancestry of Romance and Teutonic cantilenae, Breton lais, and vernacular legends, the new literature has a certain pattern and model in Latin and for the most part ecclesiastical compositions. It has the sacred books and the legends of the saints for examples of narrative, the rhythm of the hymns for a guide to metre, and the ceremonies of the church for a stimulant to dramatic performance. By degrees also, in this 12th century, forms of literature which busy themselves with the unprivileged classes begin to be born. The fabliau takes every phase of life for its subject; the folk-song acquires elegance and does not lose raciness and truth. In the next century, the 13th, medieval literature in France arrives at its prime—a prime which lasts until the first quarter of the 14th. The early epics lose something of their savage charms, the polished literature of Provence quickly perishes. But in the provinces which speak the more prevailing tongue nothing is wanting to literary development. The language itself has shaken off all its youthful incapacities, and, though not yet well adapted for the requirements of modern life and study, is in every way equal to the demands made upon it by its own time. The dramatic germ contained in the fabliau and quickened by the mystery produces the profane drama. Ambitious works of merit in the most various kinds are published; Aucassin et Nicolette stands side by side with the Vie de Saint Louis, the Jeu de la feuillie with Le Miracle de Théophile, the Roman de la rose with the Roman du Renart. The earliest notes of ballads and rondeau are heard; endeavours are made with zeal, and not always without understanding, to naturalize the wisdom of the ancients in France, and in the graceful tongue that France possesses. Romance in prose and verse, drama, history, songs, satire, oratory and even erudition, are all represented and represented worthily. Meanwhile all nations of western Europe have come to France for their literary models and subjects, and the greatest writers in English, German, Italian, content themselves with adaptations of Chrétien de Troyes, of Benoit de Sainte More, and of a hundred other known and unknown trouvères and fabulists. But this age does not last long. The language has been put to all the uses of which it is as yet capable; those uses in their sameness begin to pall upon reader and hearer; and the enormous evils of the civil and religious state reflect themselves inevitably in literature. The old forms die out or are prolonged only in half-lifeless travesties. The brilliant colouring of Froissart, and the graceful science of ballade and rondeau writers like Lescurel and Deschamps, alone maintain the literary reputation of the time. Towards the end of the 14th century the translators and political writers import many terms of art, and strain the language to uses for which it is as yet unhandy, though at the beginning of the next age Charles d’Orléans by his natural grace and the virtue of the forms he used emerges from the mass of writers. Throughout the 15th century the process of enriching or at least increasing the vocabulary goes on, but as yet no organizing hand appears to direct the process. Villon stands alone in merit as in peculiarity. But in this time dramatic literature and the literature of the floating popular broadsheet acquire an immense extension—all or almost all the vigour of spirit being concentrated in the rough farce and rougher lampoon, while all the literary skill is engrossed by insipid rhétoriqueurs and pedants. Then comes the grand upheaval of the Renaissance and the Reformation. An immense influx of science, of thought to make the science living, of new terms to express the thought, takes place, and a band of literary workers appear of power enough to master and get into shape the turbid mass. Rabelais, Amyot, Calvin and Herberay fashion French prose; Marot, Ronsard and Regnier refashion French verse. The Pléiade introduces the drama as it is to be and the language that is to help the drama to express itself. Montaigne for the first time throws invention and originality into some other form than verse or than prose fiction. But by the end of the century the tide has receded. The work of arrangement has been but half done, and there are no master spirits left to complete it. At this period Malherbe and Balzac make their appearance. Unable to deal with the whole problem, they determine to deal with part of it, and to reject a portion of the riches of which they feel themselves unfit to be stewards. Balzac and his successors make of French prose an instrument faultless and admirable in precision, unequalled for the work for which it is fit, but unfit for certain portions of the work which it was once able to perform. Malherbe, seconded by Boileau, makes of French verse an instrument suited only for the purposes of the drama of Euripides, or rather of Seneca, with or without its chorus, and for a certain weakened echo of those choruses, under the name of lyrics. No French verse of the first merit other than dramatic is written for two whole centuries. The drama soon comes to its acme, and during the succeeding time usually maintains itself at a fairly high level until the death of Voltaire. But prose lends itself to almost everything that is required of it, and becomes constantly a more and more perfect instrument. To the highest efforts of pathos and sublimity its vocabulary and its arrangement likewise are still unsuited, though the great preachers of the 17th century do their utmost with it. But for clear exposition, smooth and agreeable narrative, sententious and pointed brevity, witty repartee, it soon proves itself to have no superior and scarcely an equal in Europe. In these directions practitioners of the highest skill apply it during the 17th century, while during the 18th its powers are shown to the utmost of their variety by Voltaire, and receive a new development at the hands of Rousseau. Yet, on the whole, it loses during this century. It becomes more and more unfit for any but trivial uses, and at last it is employed for those uses only. Then occurs the Revolution, repeating the mighty stir in men’s minds which the Renaissance had given, but at first experiencing more difficulty in breaking up the ground and once more rendering it fertile. The faulty and incomplete genius of Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël gives the first evidence of a new growth, and after many years the Romantic movement completes the work. Whether the force of that movement is now, after three-quarters of a century, spent or not, its results remain. The poetical power of French has been once more triumphantly proved, and its productiveness in all branches of literature has been renewed, while in that of prose fiction there has been almost created a new class of composition. In the process of reform, however, not a little of the finish of French prose style has been lost, and the language itself has been affected in something the same way as it was affected by the less judicious innovations of the Ronsardists. The pedantry of the Pléiade led to the preposterous compounds of Du Bartas; the passion of the Romantics for foreign tongues and for the mot propre has loaded French with foreign terms on the one hand and with argot on the other, while it is questionable whether the vers libre is really suited to the French genius. There is, therefore, room for new Malherbes and Balzacs, if the days for Balzacs and Malherbes had not to all appearance passed. Should they be once more forthcoming, they have the failure as well as the success of their predecessors to guide them.

Finally, we may sum up even this summary. For volume and merit taken together the product of these eight centuries of literature excels that of any European nation, though for individual works of the supremest excellence they may perhaps be asked in vain. No French writer is lifted by the suffrages of other nations—the only criterion when sufficient time has elapsed—to the level of Homer, of Shakespeare, or of Dante, who reign alone. Of those of the authors of France who are indeed of the thirty but attain not to the first three Rabelais and Molière alone unite the general suffrage, and this fact roughly but surely points to the real excellence of the literature which these men are chosen to represent. It is great in all ways, but it is greatest on the lighter side. The house of mirth is more suited to it than the house of mourning. To the latter, indeed, the language of the unknown marvel who told Roland’s death, of him who gave utterance to Camilla’s wrath and despair, and of Victor Hugo, who sings how the mountain wind makes mad the lover who cannot forget, has amply made good its title of entrance. But for one Frenchman who can write admirably in this strain there are a hundred who can tell the most admirable story, formulate the most pregnant reflection, point the acutest jest. There is thus no really great epic in French, few great tragedies, and those imperfect and in a faulty kind, little prose like Milton’s or like Jeremy Taylor’s, little verse (though more than is generally thought) like Shelley’s or like Spenser’s. But there are the most delightful short tales, both in prose and in verse, that the world has ever seen, the most polished jewelry of reflection that has ever been wrought, songs of incomparable grace, comedies that must make men laugh as long as they are laughing animals, and above all such a body of narrative fiction, old and new, prose and verse, as no other nation can show for art and for originality, for grace of workmanship in him who fashions, and for certainty of delight to him who reads.

Bibliography.—The most elaborate book on French literature as a whole is that edited by Petit de Julleville, and composed of chapters by different authors, Histoire de la langue et de la littérature françaises (8 vols., Paris, 1896-1899). Unfortunately these chapters, some of which are of the highest excellence, are of very unequal value: they require connexions which are not supplied, and there is throughout a neglect of minor authors. The bibliographical indications are, however, most valuable. For a survey in a single volume Lanson’s Histoire has superseded the older but admirable manuals of Demogeot and Géruzez, which, however, are still worth consulting. Brunetière’s Manuel (translated into English) is very valuable with the cautions above given; and the large Histoire de la langue française depuis le seizième siècle of Godefroy supplies copious and well-chosen extracts with much biographical information. In English there is an extensive History by H. van Laun (3 vols., 1874, &c.); a Short History by Saintsbury (1882; 6th ed. continued to the end of the century, 1901); and a History by Professor Dowden (1895).

To pass to special periods—the fountain-head of the literature of the middle ages is the ponderous Histoire littéraire already referred to, which, notwithstanding that it extended to 27 quarto volumes in 1906, and had occupied, with interruptions, 150 years in publication, had only reached the 14th century. Many of the monographs which it contains are the best authorities on their subjects, such as that of P. Paris on the early chansonniers, of V. Leclerc on the fabliaux, and of Littré on the romans d’aventures. For the history of literature before the 11th century, the period mainly Latin, J. J. Ampère’s Histoire littéraire de la France avant Charlemagne, sous Charlemagne, et jusqu’au onzième siècle is the chief authority. Léon Gautier’s Épopées françaises (5 vols., 1878-1897) contains almost everything known concerning the chansons de geste. P. Paris’s Romans de la table ronde was long the main authority for this subject, but very much has been written recently in France and elsewhere. The most important of the French contributions, especially those by Gaston Paris (whose Histoire poétique de Charlemagne has been reprinted since his death), will be found in the periodical Romania, which for more than thirty years has been the chief receptacle of studies on old French literature. On the cycle of Reynard the standard work is Rothe, Les Romans de Renart. All parts of the lighter literature of old France are excellently treated by Lenient, Le Satire au moyen âge. The early theatre has been frequently treated by the brothers Parfaict (Histoire du théâtre français), by Fabre (Les Clercs de la Bazoche), by Leroy (Étude sur les mystères), by Aubertin (Histoire de la langue et de la littérature française au moyen âge). This latter book will be found a useful summary of the whole medieval period. The historical, dramatic and oratorical sections are especially full. On a smaller scale but of unsurpassed authority is G. Paris’s Littérature du moyen âge translated into English.

On the 16th century an excellent handbook is that by Darmesteter and Hatzfeld; and the recent Literature of the French Renaissance of A. Tilley (2 vols., 1904) is of high value. Sainte-Beuve’s Tableau has been more than once referred to. Ebert (Entwicklungsgeschichte der französischen Tragödie vornehmlich im 16ten Jahrhundert) is the chief authority for dramatic matters. Essays and volumes on periods and sub-periods since 1600 are innumerable; but those who desire thorough acquaintance with the literature of these three hundred years should read as widely as possible in all the critical work of Sainte-Beuve, of Schérer, of Faguet and Brunetière—which may be supplemented ad libitum from that of other critics mentioned above. The series of volumes entitled Les grands écrivains français, now pretty extensive, is generally very good, and Catulle Mendès’s invaluable book on 19th-century poetry has been cited above. As a companion to the study of poetry E. Crepet’s Poètes français (4 vols., 1861), an anthology with introductions by Sainte-Beuve and all the best critics of the day, cannot be surpassed, but to it may be added the later Anthologie des poètes français du XIXe siècle (1877-1879).

(G. Sa.)

FRENCH POLISH, a liquid for polishing wood, made by dissolving shellac in methylated spirit. There are four different tints, brown, white, garnet and red, but the first named is that most extensively used. All the tints are made in the same manner, with the exception of the red, which is a mixture of the brown polish and methylated spirit with either Saunders wood or Bismarck brown, according to the strength of colour required. Some woods, and especially mahogany, need to be stained before they are polished. To stain mahogany mix some bichromate of potash in hot water according to the depth of colour required. After staining the wood the most approved method of filling the grain is to rub in fine plaster of Paris (wet), wiping off before it “sets.” After this is dry it should be oiled with linseed oil and thoroughly wiped off. The wood is then ready for the polish, which is put on with a rubber made of wadding covered with linen rag and well wetted with polish. The polishing process has to be repeated gradually, and after the work has hardened, the surface is smoothed down with fine glass-paper, a few drops of linseed oil being added until the surface is sufficiently smooth. After a day or two the surface can be cleared by using a fresh rubber with a double layer of linen, removing the top layer when it is getting hard and finishing off with the bottom layer.

FRENCH REVOLUTION, THE. Among the many revolutions which from time to time have given a new direction to the political development of nations the French Revolution stands out as at once the most dramatic in its incidents and the most momentous in its results. This exceptional character is, indeed, implied in the name by which it is known; for France has experienced many revolutions both before and since that of 1789, but the name “French Revolution,” or simply “the Revolution,” without qualification, is applied to this one alone. The causes which led to it: the gradual decay of the institutions which France had inherited from the feudal system, the decline of the centralized monarchy, and the immediate financial necessities that compelled the assembling of the long neglected states-general in 1789, are dealt with in the article on France: History. The successive constitutions, and the other legal changes which resulted from it, are also discussed in their general relation to the growth of the modern French polity in the article France (Law and Institutions). The present article deals with the progress of the Revolution itself from the convocation of the states-general to the coup d’état of the 18th Brumaire which placed Napoleon Bonaparte in power.

The elections to the states-general of 1789 were held in unfavourable circumstances. The failure of the harvest of 1788 and a severe winter had caused widespread distress. The government was weak and despised, and its agents Opening of the States-General. were afraid or unwilling to quell outbreaks of disorder. At the same time the longing for radical reform and the belief that it would be easy were almost universal. The cahiers or written instructions given to the deputies covered well-nigh every subject of political, social or economic interest, and demanded an amazing number of changes. Amid this commotion the king and his ministers remained passive. They did not even determine the question whether the estates should act as separate bodies or deliberate collectively. On the 5th of May the states-general were opened by Louis in the Salle des Menus Plaisirs at Versailles. Barentin, the keeper of the seals, informed them that they were free to determine whether they would vote by orders or vote by head. Necker, as director-general of the finances, set forth the condition of the treasury and proposed some small reforms. The Tiers État (Third Estate) was dissatisfied that the question of joint or separate deliberation should have been left open. It was aware that some of the nobles and many of the inferior clergy agreed with it as to the need for comprehensive reform. Joint deliberation would ensure a majority to the reformers and therefore the abolition of privileges and the extinction of feudal rights of property. Separate deliberation would enable the majority among the nobles and the superior clergy to limit reform. Hence it became the first object of the Tiers État to effect the amalgamation of the three estates.

The conflict between those who desired and those who resisted amalgamation took the form of a conflict over the verification of the powers of the deputies. The Tiers État insisted that the deputies of all three estates should have their Conflict between the Three Estates. powers verified in common as the first step towards making them all members of one House. It resolved to hold its meetings in the Salle des Menus Plaisirs, whereas the nobles and the clergy met in smaller apartments set aside for their exclusive use. It refrained from taking any step which might have implied that it was an organized assembly, and persevered in regarding itself as a mere crowd of individual members incapable of transacting business. Meanwhile the clergy and the nobles began a separate verification of their powers. But a few of the nobles and a great many of the clergy voted against this procedure. On the 7th the Tiers État sent deputations to exhort the other estates to union, while the clergy sent a deputation to it with the proposal that each estate should name commissioners to discuss the best method of verifying powers. The Tiers État accepted the proposal and conferences were held, but without result. It then made another appeal to the clergy which was almost successful. The king interposed with a command for the renewal of the conferences. They were resumed under the presidency of Barentin, but again to no purpose.

On the 10th of June Sieyès moved that the Tiers État should for the last time invite the First and Second Estates to join in the verification of powers and announce that, whether they did or not, the work of verifying would begin forthwith. The motion was carried by an immense majority. As there was no response, the Tiers État on the 12th named Bailly provisional president and commenced verification. Next day three curés of Poitou came to have their powers verified. Other clergymen followed later. When the work of verification was over, a title had to be found for the body thus created, which would no longer accept the style of the Tiers État. On the 15th Sieyès proposed that they should entitle themselves the Assembly of the known and verified representatives of the French nation. Mirabeau, Mounier and others proposed various appellations. But success was reserved for Legrand, an obscure deputy who proposed the simple name of National Assembly. Withdrawing his own motion, Sieyès adopted Legrand’s suggestion, which was carried by 491 votes to 90. The Assembly went on to declare that it placed the debts of the crown under the safeguard of the national honour and that all existing taxes, although illegal as having been imposed without the consent of the people, should continue to be paid until the day of dissolution.

By these proceedings the Tiers État and a few of the clergy declared themselves the national legislature. Then and thereafter the National Assembly assumed full sovereign and constituent powers. Nobles and clergy might The National Assembly. come in if they pleased, but it could do without them. The king’s assent to its measures would be convenient, but not necessary. This boldness was rewarded, for on the 19th the clergy decided by a majority of one in favour of joint verification. On the same day the nobles voted an address to the king condemning the action of the Tiers État. Left to himself, Louis might have been too inert for resistance. But the queen and his brother, the count of Artois, with some of the ministers and courtiers, urged him to make a stand. A Séance Royale was notified for the 22nd and workmen were sent to prepare the Salle des Menus Plaisirs for the ceremony. On the 20th Bailly and the deputies proceeded to the hall and found it barred against their entrance. Thereupon they adjourned to a neighbouring tennis Oath of the Tennis Court. court, where Mounier proposed that they should swear not to separate until they had established the constitution. With a solitary exception they swore and the Oath of the Tennis Court became an era in French history. As the ministers could not agree on the policy which the king should announce in the Séance Royale, it was postponed to the 23rd. The Assembly found shelter in the church of St Louis, where it was joined by the main body of the clergy and by the first of the nobles.

At the Séance Royale Louis made known his will that the Estates should deliberate apart, and declared that if they should refuse to help him he would do by his sole authority what was necessary for the happiness of his people. When he quitted the hall, some of the clergy and most of the nobles retired to their separate chambers. But the rest, together with the Tiers État, remained, and Mirabeau declared that, as they had come by the will of the nation, force only should make them withdraw. “Gentlemen,” said Sieyès, “you are to-day what you were yesterday.” With one voice the Assembly proclaimed its adhesion to its former decrees and the inviolability of its members. In Versailles and in Paris popular feeling was clamorous for the Assembly and against the court. During the next few days many of the clergy and nobles, including the archbishop of Paris and the duke of Orleans, joined the Assembly. Louis tamely accepted his defeat. He recalled Necker, who had resigned after the Séance Royale. On the 27th he wrote to those clerical and noble deputies who still held out, urging submission. By the 2nd of July the joint verification of powers was completed. The last trace of the historic States-General disappeared and the National Assembly was perfect. On the same day it claimed an absolute discretion by a decree that the mandates of the electors were not binding on its members.

Having failed in their first attempt on the Assembly, the Court party resolved to try what force could do. A large number of troops, chiefly foreign regiments in the service of France, were concentrated near Paris under the command of the Dismissal of Necker. marshal de Broglie. On Mirabeau’s motion the Assembly voted an address to the king asking for their withdrawal. The king replied that the troops were not meant to act against the Assembly, but intimated his purpose of transferring the session to some provincial town. On the same day he dismissed Necker and ordered him to quit Versailles. These acts led to the first insurrection of Paris. The capital had long been in a dangerous condition. Bread was dear and employment was scarce. The measures taken to relieve distress had allured a multitude of needy and desperate men from the surrounding country. Among the middle class there already existed a party, consisting of men like Danton or Camille Desmoulins, which was prepared to go much further than any of the leaders of the Assembly. The rich citizens were generally fund-holders, who regarded the Assembly as the one bulwark against a public bankruptcy. The duke of Orleans, a weak and dissolute but ambitious man, had conceived the hope of supplanting his cousin on the throne. He strained his wealth and influence to recruit followers and to make mischief. The gardens of his residence, the Palais Royal, became the centre of political agitation. Ever since the elections virtual freedom of the press and freedom of speech had prevailed in Paris. Clubs were multiplied and pamphlets came forth every hour. The municipal officers who were named by the Crown had little influence with the citizens. The police were a mere handful. Of the two line regiments quartered in the capital, one was Swiss and therefore trusty; but the other, the Gardes Françaises, shared all the feelings of the populace.

On the 12th of July Camille Desmoulins announced the dismissal of Necker to the crowd in the Palais Royal. Warmed by his eloquence, they sallied into the street. Part of Broglie’s troops occupied the Champs Elysées and the Rioting in Paris. Place Louis Quinze. After one or two petty encounters with the mob they were withdrawn, either because their temper was uncertain or because their commanders shunned responsibility. Paris was thus left to the rioters, who seized arms wherever they could find them, broke open the jails, burnt the octroi barriers and soon had every man’s life and goods at their discretion. Citizens with anything to lose were driven to act for themselves. For the purpose of choosing its representatives in the states-general the Third Estate of Paris had named 300 electors. Their function once discharged, these men had no public character, but they resolved that they would hold together in order to watch over the interests of the city. After the Séance Royale the municipal authority, conscious of its own weakness, allowed them to meet at the Hôtel de Ville, where they proceeded to consider the formation of a civic guard. On the 13th, when all was anarchy in Paris, they were joined by Flesselles, Provost of the Merchants, and other municipal officers. The project of a civic guard was then adopted. The insurrection, however, ran its course unchecked. Crowds of deserters from the regular troops swelled the ranks of the insurgents. They attacked the Fall of the Bastille, July 14, 1789. Hôtel des Invalides and carried off all the arms which were stored there. With the same object they assailed the Bastille. The garrison was small and disheartened, provisions were short, and after some hours’ fighting De Launay the governor surrendered on promise of quarter. He and several of his men were, notwithstanding, butchered by the mob before they could be brought to the Hôtel de Ville. As all Paris was in the hands of the insurgents, the king saw the necessity of submission. On the morning of the 15th he entered the hall of the Assembly to announce that the troops would be withdrawn. Immediately afterwards he dismissed his new ministers and recalled Necker. Thereupon the princes and courtiers most hostile to the National Assembly, the count of Artois, the prince of Condé, the duke of Bourbon and many others, feeling themselves no longer safe, quitted France. Their departure is known as the first emigration.

The capture of the Bastille was hailed throughout Europe as symbolizing the fall of absolute monarchy, and the victory of the insurgents had momentous consequences. Recognizing New municipality of Paris and National Guard. the 300 electors as a temporary municipal government, the Assembly sent a deputation to confer with them at the Hôtel de Ville, and on a sudden impulse one of these deputies, Bailly, lately president of the Assembly, was chosen to be mayor of Paris. The marquis Lafayette, doubly popular as a veteran of the American War and as one of the nobles who heartily upheld the cause of the Assembly, was chosen commandant of the new civic force, thenceforwards known as the National Guard. On the 17th Louis himself visited Paris and gave his sanction to the new authorities. In the course of the following weeks the example of Paris was copied throughout France. All the cities and towns set up new elective authorities and organized a National Guard. At the same time the revolution Revolution in the provinces. spread to the country districts. In most of the provinces the peasants rose and stormed and burnt the houses of the seigneurs, taking peculiar care to destroy their title-deeds. Some of the seigneurs were murdered and the rest were driven into the towns or across the frontier. Amid the universal confusion the old administrative system vanished. The intendants and sub-delegates quitted or were driven from their posts. The old courts of justice, whether royal or feudal, ceased to act. In many districts there was no more police, public works were suspended and the collection of taxes became almost impossible. The insurrection of July really ended the ancien régime.

Disorder in the provinces led directly to the proceedings on the famous night of the 4th of August. While the Assembly was considering a declaration which might calm revolt, the vicomte de Noailles and the duc d’Aiguillon moved The 4th of August. that it should proclaim equality of taxation and the suppression of feudal burdens. Other deputies rose to demand the repeal of the game laws, the enfranchisement of such serfs as were still to be found in France, and the abolition of tithes and of feudal courts and to renounce all privileges, whether of classes, of cities, or of provinces. Amid indescribable enthusiasm the Assembly passed resolution after resolution embodying these changes. The resolutions were followed by decrees sometimes hastily and unskilfully drawn. In vain Sieyès remarked that in extinguishing tithes the Assembly was making a present to every landed proprietor. In vain the king, while approving most of the decrees, tendered some cautious criticisms of the rest. The majority did not, indeed, design to confiscate property wholesale. They drew a distinction between feudal claims which did and did not carry a moral claim to compensation. But they were embarrassed by the wording of their own decrees and forestalled by the violence of the people. The proceedings of the 4th of August issued in a wholesale transfer of property from one class to another without any indemnity for the losers.