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THE FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 



THE " Quarterly Review" some time ago put forth a fulminating 

 article against French novels. In this article the origin of political 

 revolution in France was attributed to the depraved taste of the nation 

 with regard to literature, a proposition no less ridiculous than un- 

 founded. To suppose that the insurrection of 1830, an insurrection 

 having for its object the working of a great and glorious change in 

 the liberties of a mighty people, depended on the licentiousness of 

 novels and dramas, is (o believe that the heated imaginations of men 

 were fired rather by the contents of a circulating library than influ- 

 enced by a just sense of wrong and oppression. That certain political 

 pamphlets or articles in liberal journals may more or less guide the 

 public mind, and teach the indolent and careless to think for them- 

 selves, is certain ; but that works abounding with voluptuousness and 

 licentiousness can produce the same results is a speculation as pal- 

 pably false, as it is adventurously put forward. 



These preliminary remarks may seem to imply an acknowledg- 

 ment on our parts, that the aspersion generally cast on French novels 

 by the writer in the " Quarterly Review" is correct and well founded. 

 Such acknowledgment, however, we do not mean to make uncondi- 

 tionally nor without qualification. 



The writer in the " Quarterly" has a most marvellous facility of 

 stringing together a variety of epithets, that we only expect to see 

 in the police reports of the " Weekly Dispatch" or " Bell's Life in 

 London." " A vulgar, stupid, and ugly maid-servant of an obscure 

 house had attractions for Jean Jacques Rousseau ;" and what then? 

 Why, it follows that his taste was not the best in the world, and that 

 this, as far as regarded himself, was a matter more to deplore than 

 to condemn. " A baser, meaner, filthier scoundrel never polluted 

 society than Rousseau." This is partially true : but does the fact 

 depreciate the value of his excellent writings ? Is it not the substance 

 of the book we look at, and not the man who wrote it? Supposing 

 it had been published anonymously, would the world have found its 

 style more faultless, its argument more pointed, its elucidations more 

 clear, and its exposition of tyranny and injustice more palpable than 

 while it bore his name? And are the theories of the "Contrat Social" 

 as vain, as absurd, and as fatal in their practice as the writer in the 

 " Quarterly" would endeavour to make them appear? No for the 

 sovereignty of the people is indisputably the people's right; and no 

 one can deny a nation's privilege to choose its own governors. As 

 for Rousseau's works, in which he attacks the fundamental principles 

 and the excellence of the doctrines of the Christian religion, who 

 shall dare, in times of research and enterprise, to revile a man be- 

 cause, not having any power over volition, he differs in his sectarian 

 principles from the rest of a small portion of the denizens of earth ? 

 It is only from the propagation of theories that correct systems arise. 

 The diversified speculations of men afford grounds for the thinking- 



