252 BIBLIOGRAPHY 



les prend du moment ou ils s'ouvrent, qui pese sur eux avec toute la force 

 d'une institution, qui dure en cux, qui les tient dans Ic rest de leur carri^rc, 

 qui, sous toutes les formes et par toutes les bouches, vient k toute minute 

 heurter ou 6touffer toute invention et tout effort. Je I'ai subie moi-meme, et 

 je sens bien que je n'aurais pu en parler autrement. (p. iii.) 



1857 (January). — Les Philosophes frangais du XlXme siecle, par H. Taine, 

 ancien eleve de I'ficole normale, docteur es lettres, Paris: Hachette, 1857, 

 367 pages. 



The 3rd, definitive edition (October, 1868), bore the present title, and it was 

 revised, not so much in content, as in tone, which was softened somewhat 

 throughout. We have used the 13th edition, no date. 



1855 (March)-i863 (December) 



Histoire de la litterature anglaise [History of English Literature]. Dedicated to 

 F. Guizot, French historian and statesman. 



Taine's labours on his masterpiece lasted over eight years, beginning with 

 articles on Macaulay (March, 1855) and ending with the famous 'Intro- 

 duction', which first appeared as an article on 'L'Histoire, son present et son 

 avenir' (December, 1863). The story of its composition is not easily sum- 

 marized, since, though Taine had his method clearly in mind from the begin- 

 ning, he shuttled back and forth between the m^odern and earlier writers, and 

 there were frequent interruptions. 



At first Taine had thought of a study of Shakespeare {V. & C, II, 83, 

 5 November, 1854), and a Shakespeare article was among the early products 

 (July, 1856). Some of the best articles were published in 1856: Anglo-Saxons 

 (January), Normans (February), Dickens (February), Chaucer (March), 

 Macaulay (April), Shakespeare (July), Ben Jonson (November), and Spenser 

 (December). 



Taine's writing then began to slacken off because of ill health: in 1857, he 

 published for the History only on Thackeray (January) and Milton (June); in 

 1858, on Swift (August) and Dryden (December); and 1859 was a total blank. 

 The voyage to the Pyrenees (1854) had cured his laryngitis, but subsequent 

 overwork — as a result of which Taine had achieved remarkable success for a 

 young man in his late twenties — led in 1857 to *une crise de fatigue cerebrale 

 et de depression nerveuse qui dura pendant plus de deux ans' {V. & C, II, 

 149). This forced him to suspend his philosophic labours completely and to 

 work at literary^ study only intermittently: there were periods when he could 

 not even read. 



By the beginning of 1 858, Taine was capable of working two or three hours 

 a day, and it was during this period that he wrote his important essay on 

 Balzac and the studies of Swift and Dryden. In the autumn of that year, he 

 travelled in Belgium, Holland, the Rhine valley, and western Germany, but, 

 despite these diversions, his illness continued, and 1859 was 'la plus triste et la 

 plus sterile de sa vie' {V. & C, II, 153). By the end of the year he was working 

 again; he was subsequently subject to occasional periods of nervous fatigue, 

 though they were never again so painfully severe as during these three years. 



