LITERATURE, CONTINENTAL, IN 1872. 



455 



into a foreign idiom. This work, which is one 

 of vast bibliographical importance, owes its 

 origin to the head librarian of the Royal Li- 

 brary here, Chr. Bruuns, and is edited under 

 his supervision. The first part, of 596 col- 

 umns, comprises theology only, with a system- 

 atic table of contents, but an index of names is 

 wanting. 



FKANCE. The literary results of the last 

 year are unsatisfactory, sterile, and unattrac- 

 tive. No new men of talent arise. The old 

 pens have been scribbling, plying their old 

 trade, unheeded by the public, whose heart 

 and mind have been engrossed by Versailles, 

 Thiers, the Pacte de Bordeaux, the Proposition 

 jRivet, the Centre- Gauche, Contre-Droit, and 

 their ramifications, modifications, contradic- 

 tions, wars, reconciliations, and tergiversa- 

 tions of all kinds. "We call that politics. 



Many booksellers have disappeared ; bank- 

 ruptcy has struck down the firms of Lacroix 

 & Co. and Amyot. Some of the best houses 

 are tottering ; the French Academy is silent 

 a good old girl, who has played strange 

 pranks, feels ashamed, abashed, shuts herself 

 up, conceals from all eyes her last choices, and 

 does not know what to do, having been igno- 

 miniously treated by Bishop Dupanloup, who 

 spurned her, and by the public, whom M. Oli- 

 vier's admission scandalized. 



The present stage is, for French literature 

 as well as for French society, a halt, a repose, 

 a void, if you please a place for us to pause, 

 to look around, and take heart and breath, 

 and gird our loins for a new journey and a 

 fresh evolution of our mental life and literary 

 strength. 



A man of wit and learning, of the name of 

 Martin (a name as common in France as 

 Schultz in Germany and Smith in England), 

 has been at the pains of making a bundle of 

 all the barbarisms, solecisms, and untoward or 

 illicit modes of speaking and writing, which 

 are to be met with in our books, journals, etc., 

 of the day. His publication, which appears 

 weekly, has for its title Vaugelas's Messenger. 

 Vaugelas was a Savoyard of yore, a kind of 

 French Person in his day, an austere and in- 

 exorable judge of verbal niceties. M. Martin 

 Vaugelas follows the track of the older one. 

 Any foreigner desirous to know exactly the 

 present state of our most difficult and peculiarly 

 intricate language, must read the Vaugelas's 

 Messenger, where every new batch of provin- 

 cial terms, incorrect expressions, vulgarisms, 

 slang words, and grammatical impurities, and 

 all blunders into which the fashionable writ- 

 ers of the moment may have fallen, are regu- 

 larly noted down, and ascribed to the delin- 

 quent. It is a most prodigious crop. Acade- 

 micians, the natural tutors and overseers of 

 the idiom and style, are contributors to that 

 budget in large proportions. Novelists of no- 

 toriety and talent introduce into the vernacu- 

 lar French of Rabelais, Moliere, and Voltaire, 

 the dialectic peculiarities of the South and of 



the North. About and the Alsacians write a 

 kind of Alsacian French. The Paris slang 

 forms a great item in the Figaro and Gaulois, 

 but more especially and powerfully in the Vie 

 Parisienne, the modish Kladderadatsch of our 

 French capital. Any man, German-bred or 

 Saxon-bred, Englishman or Scotchman, who 

 can read currently and understand thoroughly 

 the Vie Parisienne, is a Parisian born, or de- 

 serves to be so. Even the savants and philoso- 

 phers begin to adopt a patois of their own. 



I went to see the other day, at our Francais, 

 the revival of some chefs-d'auvre, gems of our 

 older school. The performers were young and 

 clever. Some of them, namely, Mounet-Sul- 

 ley, energetic, and sculptural. The utterance 

 good; acting excellent. Although all went 

 exceedingly well, the heart of the public was 

 untouched. " Near me sat " (so speaks one 

 of our contemporaries) "a dozen gentlemen, 

 of about thirty or above that age, all men of 

 good breeding, something like a deputation 

 from the Jockey Club. They remained quiet, 

 attentively listening, respectfully looking at 

 the sacred piay. By-and-by they began to 

 yawn ; some dozed a little, others fumbled into 

 their pockets. Some one then exclaimed, 'It 

 wants breadth ! ' and another, k Really Andro- 

 mache plays too much with the corpse ! ' The 

 latter being weary of the sentimental coquetry 

 of the Greek widow, the former of the narrow 

 compass into which Racine's plot is com- 

 pressed." Neither of them felt the fine points, 

 the depth, and the sweet cadences. Yes, gentle- 

 men, Racine wants breadth ; you are too broad 

 for him, he too delicate and refined for you. 

 Breadth he never sought ; he wrote for his 

 little circle of leaux esprits and leaux sei- 

 gneurs, whom he took to be the whole world. 

 He did not write for you, who call yourselves 

 aristocrats, and are in reality no such thing. 

 Aristophanes wrote cynical, half-naked, half- 

 tipsy comedies, to please his fellow Athenians, 

 who were not ashamed to go about in the 

 same Bacchanalian, indecent predicament. 

 Never think of pulling violently off any 

 drama from its parent stem, public opinions 

 and manners, whence it draws its very nour- 

 ishment and life. 



Sardou now reigns. He has overstepped 

 even Dumas^Zs. He is the undoubted succes- 

 sor of Scribe, and a universal favorite. More 

 satirical, personal, and vindictive than Scribe, 

 less dry and philosophically inclined than Du- 

 mas, he perfectly chimes in with the humors 

 of the day. Sardou is intentionally eccentric, 

 fantastical, and delicate. The difference be- 

 tween him and Scribe is the same as between 

 some ruse commercial traveller amusing his 

 table denote, with ready wit and fun of indif- 

 ferent kind, and the high-bred young fellow, 

 with exnberant spirits, who does not care 

 much about restraint or bon gout, Sardou, son 

 to a Southern bourgeios, a land-owner and 

 spiritist of the environs of Cannes, passes, too, 

 for a believer in tables tournantes and rappings; 



