TENDENCIES IN FRENCH LITERATURE. 207 



unhealthy habitations in which the rich man permits beggars to crowd 

 and suffer, the miasm, as if in revenge, is propagated to marble 

 palaces. 



That imbecile idea of some European nations, who, instead of 

 disinfecting the medium, find it better to put down the doctors who 

 propose remedies, can not make itself at home except among peoples 

 who are destined to perish.* — Translated for the Popular Science 

 Monthly from the Archives di Psichiatria. 



TENDE:^rCIES IN FRENCH LITERATURE.f 



SUGGESTED BY PROFESSOR DOWDEN'S RECENT BOOK. 

 By PELHAM EDGAR, Ph.D. 



TO present Victor Hugo in a few pages is to carve a colossus on 

 a cherry stone." Thus Professor Dowden prefaces his ten ad- 

 mirable pages on the great French poet; and with equal appropriate- 

 ness we might assign the phrase as a motto for the whole undertaking. 

 The subject is too vast to cope with adequately in the limits of a 

 slender volume, the tendencies too complex; and the appeal from 

 human interest, which since the days of Sainte-Beuve and Taine has 

 formed such an important element in scientific criticism, had to be 

 abandoned in favor of generalized views of literary conditions and 

 tendencies necessarily abstract or impersonal in character. Yet, de- 

 spite these evident restrictions which the requirements of his task im- 

 posed upon him, Professor Dowden has produced a work of extraordi- 

 nary merit, a masterpiece indeed in its kind. If we were not assured 

 that everything which the eminent critic writes is its o^vn sufficient 

 justification, we might be inclined to question the necessity of the 

 present volume, in view of the painstaking and conscientious treatise 

 that Mr. Saintsbury gave to the public some sixteen years ago, and 

 which has deservedly remained until the present time the most re- 

 liable English text-book upon the subject of French literature. ^ With 

 no desire to disparage Mr. Saintsbury's scholarly contribution, the 

 present work does in truth supply a need which the earlier book, in 

 spite of its abundant merit, failed to satisfy. It is not harsh criticism 

 to state that Mr. Saintsbury's volume, crammed as it is with a plethora 



* To the charges made against me by M. Gautier (Le proces Luccheni, 1899) of having 

 formulated a diagnosis without seeing the patient, which was therefore inexact, and of hav- 

 ing described characteristics of degeneration which did not exist, I answer with the pages 

 of Forel, certainly the most eminent alienist of our time, who had him under his eyes dur- 

 ing the whole process, and whose diagnosis -differs but little from mine. 



f A History of French Literature. By Edward Dowden, D. Lit., LL. D., etc. Xew 

 York: D. Appleton and Company. 1897. 



