3/4 THE STUDY OF FRENCH IN FOREIGN UNIVERSITIES. 



and in our days the chairs of modern languages and their 

 philology and literature have become scientific and academic 

 centres of the highest order. 



I have one point left now, about which I should like to say a 

 word before concluding. It is literary criticism. With regard to 

 literary criticism, which ought to have its legitimate place after 

 historical research, we must be very cautious. Trustworthy 

 authorities, among whom is Prof. Van Hamel, are of opinion that 

 higher education should be very chary of it if it wishes to avoid 

 the pitfall of commonplace triteness. A literary work, it will be 

 admitted, is not only a linguistic or an historical monument, it is 

 at the same time a work of art. and a work of art can be 

 thoroughly grasped and known only after one has succeeded m 

 realising and appreciating its aesthetic value. Now, literary criti- 

 cism is in itself an art rather than a branch of science. A man 

 may cultivate it if endowed with aesthetic perception, but it cannot 

 be taught ; it presupposes a series of strenuous studies, but the 

 mere fact of being a scholar is not in itself sufficient to make a 

 man a critic. No man, however learned, can be pitchforked into 

 a literary critic ; it is the gift again that does it ; like the true poet, 

 Criticus nascitur non fit. Then — and this remark seems to be 

 particularly well founded where foreign literature is brought into 

 play — we find ourselves often lacking in the indispensable criterium 

 for making high-wrought criticism. There exist, of course, a 

 certain number of universal laws, dictated by the understanding 

 and by taste, by which every literary work, no matter from which 

 country it emanates, has to abide. As soon as we take it for 

 granted that these laws either condemn or approve, claim admira- 

 tion or taunt with reproof, neither the personality of the critic nor 

 his nationality is of the slightest consequence. But alongside of 

 these essential principles, there is no end of aesthetic ideas and 

 notions, the value of which is of a purely relative, transient, local 

 or personal nature. In every serious literary work there are quite 

 a number of specific elements, in the explanation of which extrac- 

 tion, temperament, habits, milieu and ambitions of some special 

 nature or other are to be taken into account. A foreigner must 

 needs have great difficulty in grasping all these details, and when 

 he has succeeded in getting a clear understanding of them it is 

 hardly likely that he will dare to criticise. It is all very well for 

 an " academicien " of the standing of Nisard to pass judgment on 

 the literature of his country conformably with his personal acade- 

 mical ideal, and to proclaim subordinate to the great literary 

 productions of the Golden Era all the writings that have either 

 gone before or come after them. But in an unpretentious student 

 of French, teaching French literature at a foreign university, it 

 will be wisdom not to swell the host of critics and to make his- 

 torical study and treatment of his subject the be-all and end-all of 

 his task. I need not mention, I am sure, that he will be perfectly 

 welcome and at liberty to voice and ventilate his personal views 

 and appreciations on any literary production he has made an 

 object of investigation. But let, in his teaching, the historical 



