BOOKS AND CRITICS. 



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the Germans alone do — classics by whose form 

 and spirit they have profited so little. It is one 

 of the paradoxes of literary history that in this 

 very country— Germany — which is the world's 

 schoolmaster in learning the Greek and Latin 

 languages — so little of the style and beauty of 

 those immortal models passes into its daily liter- 

 ature. 



If style and form alone were what gave value 

 to literature, the first literature now produced in 

 the world would be the French. All that the 

 Germans have not the French have. Form, 

 method, measure, proportion, classical elegance, 

 refinement, the cultivated taste, the stamp of 

 good society — these traits belong not only to the 

 first class of French books, but even to their 

 second and third rate books. No writer in 

 France of whatever calibre can hope for accept- 

 ance who violates good taste or is ignorant of 

 polite address. German literature is not written 

 by gentlemen — mind, I speak of literature, not 

 of works of erudition — but by a tousle-headed, 

 unkempt, unwashed professional bookmaker, ig- 

 norant alike of manners and the world. In 

 France a writer cannot gain a hearing unless he 

 stands upon the platform of the man of the 

 world, who lives in society, and accepts its pre- 

 scription before he undertakes to instruct it. 

 French books are written by men of the world 

 for the world. This is the merit of the French. 

 The weak point of French books is their defi- 

 ciency of fact, their emptiness of information. 

 The self-complacent ignorance of the French 

 writer is astonishing. Their books are too often 

 style and nothing more. The French language 

 has been wrought up to be the perfect vehicle of 

 wit and wisdom — the wisdom of the serpent — 

 the incisive medium of the practical intelligence. 

 But the French mind has polished the French 

 language to this perfection at a great cost — at 

 the cost of total ignorance of all that is not 

 written in French. Few educated Frenchmen 

 know any language but their own. They travel 

 little, and, when they do travel, their ignorance 

 of the speech of the country cuts them off from 

 getting to know what the people are like. We 

 must credit the French with knowing their own 

 affairs; of the affairs even of their nearest 

 neighbors in Europe they are as ignorant as a 

 Chinese. Their newspapers are dependent for 

 their foreign intelligence on the telegrams of the 

 Times. Hence their foreign policy has been a 

 series of blunders. Had the merits of the case 

 been known to it, could republican France, in 

 1849, have sent out an expedition to Eome to set 



up again the miserable ecclesiastical government 

 which the Komans had thrown off? I was read- 

 ing in the Figaro not long ago a paragraph giv- 

 ing an account of the visit of a French gentle- 

 man in England. On some occasion he had to 

 make a speech ; and he made it in English, ac- 

 quitting himself very creditably. " M. Blanc," 

 says the Figaro, "being a Breton, spoke Eng- 

 lish like a native Englishman, on account of the 

 close affinity between the two languages, Breton 

 and English." The Figaro is one of the most 

 widely-circulated newspapers in France. Eng- 

 land is a country with which the French are in 

 close and constant communication, and yet they 

 have not discovered that the English tongue does 

 not belong to the Keltic family of languages. 

 That Germany is as little known to them as Eng- 

 land I might instance in the most popular tour- 

 ist's book of the day. Victor Tissot's " Voyage 

 au Pays des Milliards " has reached something 

 approaching to fifty editions. It is nothing but 

 a tissue of epigrams and witty exaggerations, a 

 farce disguised as fact, and taken by the French 

 nation as a serious description of German life. 



It is an error to say, as is sometimes said, 

 that French literature is a mere literature of 

 style. This finished expression embalms much 

 worldly wisdom, the life-experience of the most 

 social of modern men and women ; but it is an 

 experience whose horizon is limited by the limits 

 of France. It is a strictly national literature. 

 It is, in this respect, the counterpart of the liter- 

 ature of ancient Athens. We, all the rest of us, 

 are to the Frenchman barbarians in our speech 

 and manners. He will not trouble himself about 

 us. By this exclusiveness he gains something 

 and loses much. He preserves the purity of his 

 style. The clearness of his vision and the pre- 

 cision of his judgment, from his national point 

 of view, are unimpaired. He loses the cosmo- 

 politan breadth — the comparative standpoint. 

 But the comparative standpoint is the great 

 conquest of our century, which has revolutionized 

 history and created social science and the sci- 

 ence of language. 



He who aims at comprehending modern liter- 

 ature must keep himself well acquainted with 

 the contemporary course of French and German 

 books, as well as of his own language ; and these 

 two are enough. A Spanish literature of to-day 

 can hardly be said to exist, and the Italians are 

 too much occupied at present in reproduction 

 and imitation to have much that is original to 

 contribute to the general stock of Europe. 



English, French, German : the periodical and 



