LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 



157 



on jurisprudence, belongs to the first half of 

 the eighteenth century. Among the historians 

 contemporary with Voltaire, were Condorcet, 

 author of a History of Civilization, and Barth- 

 lemy, who also wrote the Voyage de Jeune An- 

 acharsis. La Bruyere, La Harpe, and Madame 

 d'Epinay distinguished themselves by their 

 didactic and epistolary writings. The most 

 noted novelists were Marmontel, Bernardin de 

 St. Pierre, author of Paul and Virginia, and 

 Louvet. Marivaux attained distinction as a 

 writer of comedies, and Beaumarchais as a 

 dramatist and writer of operas. The well- 

 known Barber of Seville is from his pen. 

 France produced few lyric poets during the 

 last century. Lebrun, Delille, and Joseph 

 Chenier are the most worthy of mention, but 

 the Marseillaise of Rouget de Lisle is the finest 

 lyric of the century, if not of all French litera- 

 ture. Mirabeau, Barnave, Sieyes, and the lead- 

 ers of the Revolution gave a new and splendid 

 character to French oratory, toward the close 

 of the century. 



Chateaubriand, De Stae'l, and Be>anger con- 

 nect the age of Rousseau and Voltaire with the 

 modern literature of France. Chateaubriand 

 was born in 1769, and published his first work, 

 the Essay on Revolutions, in London, in 1797, 

 while in exile. His Atala, the subject of which 

 was derived from his adventures among the 

 Natchez tribe of Indians, on the Mississippi, 

 appeared in 1801, and his Genie du Christian- 

 isme in 1802. He also published Les Martyrs in 

 1807, and an account of his travels in the East. 

 He filled many diplomatic stations under the 

 Bourbons, and was made peer of France. 

 After his death, which took place in 1848, his 

 autobiography was published, under the title 

 of Memoir es d' outre Tombe. Madame de 

 Stael, the daughter of M. Neckar, afterwards 

 minister under Louis XVI., was born in 1766, 

 and first appeared as an author in 1788, when 

 she published a series of letters on the life and 

 writings of Rousseau. During the French 

 Revolution she remained in Switzerland and 

 England, where she wrote several political 

 pamphlets, dramas, and essays on life and 

 literature. Her romance of Corinne was pub- 

 lished in 1807, and her De I'Allemagne, which 

 directed attention to the literature of Ger- 

 many, in 1810. Her work entitled Ten Years 

 of Exile, was written in Sweden ; she died in 

 Paris in 1817. B6ranger is the first song- 

 writer of France. Many of his lyrics and 

 ballads have become household words with the 

 common people. Casimir Delavigne, who 

 died in 1843, was among the first restorers of 

 that lyric school, which Lamartine, Victor 

 Hugo, and Alfred de Musset have since carried 

 to a high degree of perfection . The most re- 



nowned names in recent French literature are, 

 as poets, Alphonse de Lamartine, author of 

 Meditations Poetiques, Harmonies Poetiques and 

 La Chute d'un Ange ; Victor Hugo, author of 

 three volumes of lyrical romances and ballads ; 

 Alfred de Musset; Jean Reboul, a disciple of 

 Lamartine ; and Auguste Barbier, who mingles 

 with his poems a vein of keen satire. Jasmin, 

 a barber of Agen, has obtained much celebrity 

 by his poems in the Gascon dialect. The new 

 school of French romance has infected the 

 modern literature of all countries. Balzac, 

 who died in 1850, is unequaled as a painter 

 of society and manners ; Eugene Sue, whose 

 Mysteries of Paris and Wandering Jew have 

 been so widely read, delights in exciting sub- 

 jects and the most intricate and improbable 

 plots ; Alexander Dumas, best known by his 

 Count of Monte Cristo, and his romances of 

 travel, is a master of picturesque narrative ; 

 Victor Hugo is best known as a novelist by his 

 Notre Dame de Paris, a brilliant historical 

 fiction, and Les Miserables ; and Paul de Kock, 

 as a lively though unscrupulous painter of 

 Parisian life, enjoys a remarkable popularity. 

 The most striking and original writer of 

 fiction is Madame Dudevant, better known as 

 " George Sand," whose Andre, Lettres d'un 

 ]'o)/(i(/eur, and Consuclo,ha,ve placed her in the 

 first rank of French authors. It is somewhat 

 remarkable that the excellence of this group of 

 novelists has been maintained by a new gen- 

 eration of writers, Murger, About, Feuillet, 

 Flaubet, Erckmann-Chatrian, Droz, Daudet, 

 Cherbulliez, Gaboriau, Dumas, Jils, Zola, 

 Merime'e, and others. As dramatists, Scribe, 

 Leon Gozlan, Etienne Arago, Germain Dela- 

 vigne, Sardou, and Felix Pyat have distin- 

 guished themselves. The most prominent 

 historical and political writers are Lamartine, 

 Thiers, Michelet, Guizot, Louis Blanc, De 

 Tocqueville and Thibaudeau ; while Cousin 

 and Comte are the founders of the new schools 

 of philosophy. French oratory now occupies 

 a higher position than ever before; its most 

 illustrious names are Guizot, Thiers, Berryer, 

 Lamartine, Odilon Barrot, Victor Hugo, La- 

 cordaire, Pere Hyacinthe, and Coquerel. 

 Renan is a prominent name in theological 

 writing, and Montalembert a historian with 

 strong religious tendencies. The great master 

 of criticism is Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869), who 

 possessed a rare combination of great and ac- 

 curate learning, compass and profundity of 

 thought, and, above all, sympathy in judgment. 

 Henri Taine, whose works on English litera- 

 ture are among the best we have, Theophile 

 Gautier, Arsene Houssaye, Jules Janin, Sarcy, 

 and others, are distinguished in this branch 

 of letters. 



