37-2 1'ilK STUDY OF FRENCH I N FOREIGN UNIVERSITIES. 



or the study of French. I need not be long here, 

 because we are in terra cognita, French literature being 

 highly appreciated by all persons of culture, and quite a 

 Series of names of renowned foreign scholars and critics Inning 

 been associated with all its phases for a great length of time. I 

 will strictly confine my remarks within the hounds oi what 

 appears to he the special task of higher education. It seems to 

 me that, with regard to the study of literature, the task of higher 

 education ought to he not to cover the entire vast area of French 

 literature from beginning to end, and to relate, in a compendious 

 synoptic manner, the whole of its history, hut either to comment 

 in a most thorough-going way upon any one special department of 

 literature: the epic, the drama, the fable, the novel, and to scruti- 

 nise its origin and evolution— a modus operandi highly advocated 

 by the famous late lamented F. Brunetiere — or, to study in its 

 veriest detail, a period, part of a period, and the life and works 

 of some standard writer. Such is the method generally favoured 

 and adopted at Paris, where the programs of the College de 

 France and the Sorbonne put before the students every year a 

 new and strictly circumscribed subject. Not to speak of the im- 

 possibility for foreigners ever to raise themselves to the level of 

 the eminent French masters, who by the manner alone in which 

 they speak of the literature of the past, contribute no end of 

 brilliant material to that of the future, we must never forget that 

 the task, qua talis, of a professor of French at a university outside 

 France, is very different from the one a son of the land has to 

 accomplish before an audience of Frenchmen. There are a great 

 many things which the latter may safely suppose to be known. 

 but which the former must necessarily mention and frequently 

 even comment and expatiate Upon. That is why. in our case, it 

 will be found useful ami reasonable to travel through the history 

 of literature period after period — literature has itself imprinted a 

 special stamp on each of the centuries that make up its history — 

 hut. in order to avoid the danger of making foul work by driving 

 too many ploughs at once, it will be found indispensable as well 

 to pause and make a stay from time to time at some special work 

 of note, and to study it exhaustively by submitting it to all the 

 delicate tests and operations of historical criticism. In following 

 this method there is. however, one thing to be feared, viz., that 

 one gets simply overwhelmed by the immensity of the task as well 

 as by the profusion of the material. The scientific problems 

 found in the history of French literature are as important as they 

 are numerous. There are, in the Breton cycle, for instance, the 

 romances of the Saint-Graal and its mystic band of guardians and 

 questers, the filiation of which no investigator can trace but at 

 the cost of interminable peregrinations, equal almost to those 

 performed by the heroes of the tales he is studying. Then there 

 are the " Fableaux." those imperishable monuments of the " esprit 

 gaulois." which are knit up with ancient oriental literature, and 

 even with that of India. Then, again, there is the epic poetrv of 

 the Middle Ages, whose history has had to be revised, recast and 



