the worth of many detachable portions which might be acknowledged as utterly perfect in a lower moral point of view, under the mere conditions of art. It would be easy to take my stand on successful instances of objectivity in Shelley; there is the unrivaled "Cenci"; there is the "Julian and Maddalo" too; there is the magnificent "Ode to Naples." Why not regard, it may be said, the less organized matter as the radiant elemental foam and. solution, out of which would have been evolved, eventually, creations as perfect even as those? But I prefer to look for the highest attainment, not simply the high,—and seeing it, I hold by it. There is surely enough of the work "Shelley" to be known enduringly among men, and, I believe, to be accepted of God as human work may; and around the imperfect proportions of such, the most elaborated productions of ordinary art must arrange themselves as inferior illustrations. From an essay on Shelley published by the 651 FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE (1849-) S EDITOR of the Revue des Deux Mondes, Ferdinand Brunetière is ex officio chief of French literary critics. In style of expression and habits of thought he approximates Matthew Arnold more than he does Taine. He is self-controlled always, and at times almost severe, with more of Attic plainness than we would look for in a master of all the possibilities of so flexible and rich a language as French. He was born at Toulon, July 19th, 1849, and was educated at Marseilles and Paris. In 1875 he joined the staff of the Revue des Deux Mondes, the leading critical review of France, and his merit as a writer and scholar made him its editor in chief. The first two series of his "Critical Studies" were crowned by the French Academy to which he was elected in 1893. He is a member of the Legion of Honor also. Among his works are "Critical Studies of French Literature," "Questions of Criticism," "The Evolution of Lyric Poetry," and many essays as yet uncollected. He is an opponent of materialism in literature. THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTIC OF FRENCH LITERATURE T NO ATTEMPT to express and to sum up in a word the essential characteristic of a great literature, so varied and so rich as the French, which dates back eight or nine hundred years, seems at first sight a rash, imprudent, and altogether chimerical undertaking. What connection can be discovered between a romance of the Round Table, such as "Le Chevalier au Lion," by Crestien de Troyes, for instance, and "Le Maître de Forges," by M. Georges Ohnet, or "Doit-on le Dire," or "La Cagnotte," or any other play you please, by Eugène Labiche, or Edmond Gondinet ? Do not the authors, their subjects, their language, the times and the places in which they lived, all differ one from another? And if, in order to determine the essential characteristic of a literature, we begin by eliminating from its history all diversifying elements, what an insignificant "precipitate," what literary or even historic fact is likely to be left, and what shall we, who speciously pretended to characterize it, have done but attenuate the substance of our observations to the vanishing point? This objection can easily be met. In the first place, even if it is not an absolute mathematical truth, verifiable at any given. time, that a great literature is the complete expression of the genius of a race, and its annals the faithful summary of the whole history of a civilization, the contrary is still less true: and whatever differences an interval of six or seven hundred years-a long period in the life of a nation-may have effected between a trouvère of the twelfth century and a playwright or novelist of the Third Republic, yet, as they are both French, there must necessarily exist some relation between them. Observe again, how in this Europe of ours, in which so many different races, alien and hostile one to another, have been everywhere clashing and fighting and cutting one another's throats, mutual intercourse and understandings have been steadily on the increase. It was their literature that gave the great modern nationalities a point of union and concentration, through which they became conscious of themselves. Would united Italy exist if there had been nothing in common between Dante and Alfieri? Would Germany, if there had not been something of Luther in the soul of every German? And what finally justifies an inquiry into the essential characteristic of a literature is the flood of light which this characteristic, once defined, throws upon the innermost history of that literature, enabling us to understand the slow succession of elements that have contributed to the creation of "the souls of nations." Suppose, for instance, that the essential characteristic of the Italian is to be what I may call an artistic literature. This characteristic alone would at once differentiate it from all other modern literatures-French or German, Spanish or English. These latter are certainly not deficient in works of art, but none of them, so far as I know, makes art its chief aim; nor do their authors, like Ariosto or Tasso, propose, as their sole aim and object, to realize some purely poetic fantasy or dream of beauty. The close affinities which have always connected the literature of Italy with the other arts, especially with painting and music, are included in the enunciation of this characteristic. There is something of Orcagna and of Fra Angelico in the "Divina Com media"; and when we read the "Jerusalem" or the "Aminta, does it not seem as though the transformation from the epic to the grand opera were taking place before our very eyes? This artistic character suffices also to explain the preponderating influence of Italian literature at the time of the Renaissance. The French, during the reigns of Francis I. and Henry II., and the English in Henry VIII.'s and Elizabeth's time, owed their first sensation of art to the Italians. The idea of the power of art, if it does not sum up the whole Renaissance, constitutes perhaps its most important feature. And who cannot perceive the intimate connection between this conception of a purely artistic literature and what the Italians have termed virtù, which certainly does not mean "virtue" (it may possess some of that quality, though the reverse has often been the case), but which is, in terms of logic, the genus of which "virtuosity" is only a species ? Who does not see in what way the definition of the essential characteristic of a literature leads by easy steps to a knowledge of the soul of a people and a race? To take another example. Let us suppose that the essential characteristic of the Spanish is to be a chivalrous literature. Are not all its annals illuminated by this definition as by a flash of light? We grasp immediately the relationship uniting works so different as the epic legends and songs of the "Romancero"; the stories of adventure and amorous pastorals in the style of the "Amadis" or the "Diana" of Montemayor; the dramas of Calderon and Lope de Vega, such as the "Physician of His Honor," or "Mudarra the Bastard"; and mystic treatises and picaresque romances after the manner of the "Castle of the Soul" and "Lazarillo de Tormes." We recognize in all these the family features, the hereditary something which bears eternal witness to their common origin, namely, that Castilian chivalry, which, in its sometimes sublime and sometimes grotesque exaggeration, seems according to occasion to lead indifferently to the extremes of devotion or folly. Then read "Don Quixote." If in this political and financial, industrial, utilitarian, and positivist Europe, we have not yet quite lost the sense of the chivalrous, we owe it to the influence of Spanish literature. It could easily be proved that Spain has saved and preserved for us whatever of the spirit of the Middle Ages deserved perchance not utterly to perish. And who will say that it is useless to take cognizance of this useless, I mean, for a more accurate knowledge, for a more intimate understanding of Spanish literature, of its rôle in history, and of the genius of Spain herself? The essential characteristic of French literature is more difficult to determine; not, I need scarcely say, because our national literature is more original than the others, or richer in masterpieces, or more resplendent with great names. Nothing could be more impertinent than to urge such a pretension-nothing more ridiculous than to believe it. If the Spaniards have not had a Voltaire, nor the Italians a Molière, we French have not had either a Dante or a Cervantes. But it may be said that the French is certainly the richest of all modern literatures. It is also the oldest; and we may here be permitted to recall what Dante, with whom Italian literature properly begins, and Chaucer, whose "Canterbury Tales " may be said to have inaugurated English literature, owed, the one to our troubadours and the other to the more or less anonymous authors of our old fabliaux. Again, has not French literature been the most ready in its recognition and welcome of others? Has it not always exhibited the keenest curiosity about foreign literatures; and has it not been most richly and liberally inspired by them? Is there any that has showed less scruple in converting the Italian and Spanish novels "into blood and nutriment" for its own purpose? Ronsard is almost an Italian poet when he sings of his Cassandre, his Marie, his Hélène, his "divers loves," with metaphors borrowed from Petrarch and Bembo. And is not Corneille himself, in spite of some Norman attributes, a kind of Spanish dramatist? When he does not derive his inspiration from Alarcon or Guillen de Castro, he seeks it in Seneca or Lucan, who were both natives of Cordova. We have prose writers, too, like Diderot, about whom it is still a moot point, after the lapse of fully one hundred years, whether he was the most German or the most English of our Champenois. Why, if we are not careful, very soon no one at Paris will read any but Russian novelists, such as Goncharoff or Shtchedrin, or play any but Scandinavian melodramas, like "The Lady of the Sea" or "The Wild Duck." I may add that, while French literature is international or cosmopolitan in this sense, it is still more so in that it can claim to have attracted more foreigners than any other. Thus Italians, such as Brunetto Latini, the master of Dante, down to Galiani, the friend of our encyclopedists; Englishmen, like Hamilton, Chesterfield, and Walpole; and Germans, like Leibnitz and Frederick the Great, all |