FRENCH LITERATURE 201 



A general accession of interest in the art of the playwright as something to be studied 

 in the printed page as well as in the theatre, is a striking development of the hour. A 

 few years ago it was a rare thing for a play to be printed, at least until it had achieved 

 exceptional good fortune on the boards. Now the public is interested to apply the test 

 of reading alongside the test of hearing and seeing. American publishers are putting 

 forth not only translations of the best European plays, but issues of new American 

 dramatic efforts. Not only the best plays of Clyde Fitch (1865-1909) and Augustus 

 Thomas (b. 1859) have been printed, but numerous plays by younger playwrights, like 

 (to cite a single example) " The Nigger," by Edward Sheldon. This new tendency to 

 publish plays does not indicate a return to the " closet drama," but a new realisation 

 that a good play is not merely a " show," but a very important form of literature. The 

 very large number of persons in America who are now trying to write plays, and even 

 trying to learn how to write them, is a sign of awakening. Already a number of young 

 playwrights have made notable progress towards a drama of sincerity and power. 



Literature of the solider (and not necessaril) less imaginative) types is also finding an 

 increased audience. Publishers say that there is a growing demand for books of biog- 

 raphy and history for " summer reading." The autumn of 1912, for example, saw the 

 completion of John Bigelow's (1817-1911) Retrospections of an Active Life; Mark Twain's 

 Biography (by Albert Bigelow Paine, b. 1861), the life of George Palmer Putnam, by 

 George Haven Putnam (b. 1844); and Personal Traits of Abraham Lincoln, by Helen 

 Nicolay (b. 1866) ; books of considerable merit dealing with special periods of American 

 history, or with special aspects of her development, have been many of late. It is 

 noteworthy that American scholars in general are following the example of the late John 

 Fiske and the late William James in cultivating a style such as to give their work a 

 chance of survival as literature. (HENRY WALCOTT BOYNTON.) 



FRENCH LITERATURE 



There are periods that pass and leave little changed in the literature of a nation, and 

 others which are a veritable springtime full of burgeons and new voices. Since 1909 the 

 progress of the Idealist Renaissance in France has changed the character of its literature. 

 Zola and the Goncourts the names of a dozen years ago are as though they had not 

 been. If the refined and philosophic scepticism of the seventies linger with a few 

 great writers Anatole France, Jules Lemaitre, Pierre Loti, Henri de Regnier we see 

 no yoUng men on their track. Always in France the spirit of Racine has warred with 

 the spirit of Rabelais, or, to put things on a lower level, the art of Octave Feuillet has 

 contradicted the art of Zola. To-day the classics and the idealists have come to the 

 front. Ten years ago literature was positive, objective, and, if we may say so, visual; 

 for that phrase of Gautier's: " Je suis un homme pour qui le monde visible existe," was 

 still the motto of the hour. The younger men are writers for whom the invisible world 

 exists and occupy themselves chiefly with the interior sphere. The other day, M. Rene 

 Boylesve expressed very happily this change of front to a reporter of the Revue des Fran- 

 qais (Sept. 25, 1912). He said "In my young days I used to visit Alphonse Daudet 

 whom I greatly admired. He encouraged me, and we would talk of literature. He used 

 to say gently, ' I have never described anything that I have not seen.' I felt he was 

 offering me a piece of advice, discreetly, and I used to go away incapable of writing any- 

 thing for long afterwards, since at every turn I caught myself on the point of describing 

 things I had never seen "such things for instance as emotion, beliefs, traditions, opin- 

 ions, the moral atmosphere of a society. And M. Boylesve showed the journalist the 

 plan or scenario for a novel lying on his writing table no project of a plot, no list of 

 personages, but a sequence of maxims and reflections. " Take care of the moral atmo- 

 sphere," he would say, " and the characters will take care of themselves." So soon as 

 he begins to write he forgets his notes, which transpose themselves into persons and 

 actions, but all his care is to invent the moral world which brings them forth, just as 

 Daudet would proceed from a description of physical reality to the spirit within. 



1 See E. B. xi, no et seq. 



