450 ROMANCE LITERATURE 



in a bundle. Even in this domain Germany will show the compact 

 ranks that have rendered her victorious in war, in politics, in indus- 

 tries, as well as in science generally. 



Let us cross the Rhine. They have not idled, indeed, in France 

 since we have left her. How could they idle, when, to the natural 

 increase of the movement that we have seen in its beginning, was 

 added the fact that the free literary tendencies of the so-called 

 "romanticism" grew and took shape? It is not without significance 

 even for us that this movement was due especially to a Germanic 

 impulse, and significant also, in its nebulosity, is the designation 

 itself, which, whether we will or not, takes us back to the pure Middle 

 Ages. 1 The attraction of the Middle Ages grew mo re intense, and with 

 it the attraction of all that which, though belonging to modern times, 

 had preserved a flavor of the Middle Ages. 



We can therefore imagine what an echo answered the eloquent 

 word of Villemain, when, from his chair in the Faculte des Lettres, 

 he opposed to the mean criticism of the eighteenth century a criticism 

 winged like an eagle, a human taste to the narrow taste which had 

 ruled so long. In Villemain Madame de Stael is continued and 

 completed. The historical sense which permits the appreciation of 

 lasting beauty through changeable conditions is wide awake. 2 And 

 Villemain will speak of Shakespeare, of Provencal literature, of Old 

 French, of Italian, of Spanish. And from a chair more solemn than 

 the one from which, a few decades earlier, the high priest of the 

 criticism of his time declared "monstrous and full of queerness" the 

 Divine Comedy, granting it only many scattered beauties of style 



1 Remember how the word " romantique" is defined by Madame de Stael, who. 

 "Si ... n'a pas tout a fait invente le mot, . . . 1'a popularise" (Sorel, Mmr, 

 de Stai'l, in the collection Les grands (crivains fran^ais, p. 171): "On prend quel- 

 quefois le mot classique comme synonyme de perfection. Je m'en sers ici dans une 

 autre acception, en considerant la poesie classique comme celle des anciens et la 

 poesie romantique comme celle qui tient de quelque maniere aux traditions 

 chevaleresques. Cette division se rapport e egalement aux deux ores du monde: 

 celle qui a precede I'etablissement du christianisme et celle qui 1'a suivi.'' (Ibid., 

 p. 172.) Did perhaps this passage of the general preface of Bouterwek (vol. I. p. iv) 

 influence her? ''Die erste Poesie in neu-europaischen Sprachen 1st die ' frohliche 

 Kunst' (fjnj/d .snVnrtfl) der Troubadours, und die erste Prosa nach dem Aussterben 

 der lateinischen Volkssprache die romantische in den R ittergeschi eh ten aus 

 dfr let /ten Halfte des dreizehnten und der erst en des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts." 

 Another passage of Houterwek in the preface to the History of French Literature, 

 (p. vi i.v-ufd in 1X00. s<>ems noteworthy to me: "... die iibrigen Wcrke . . . 

 aus denen man den r <> m a n t i s ch e n G e i s t der altfranzosischen Poesie in 

 sein.- n Ireilich nicht so eleganten, aber in einem hoheren Sinne poetischen Erfindun- 

 gen und Ai usseruniren lernen konnte, grossten TlieiU in Handschriften verborgen 

 gebliehen sind." The author puts himself in evidence, by the different way of 

 printing th" tv.-o words that are here of interest to us. 



2 Cnurx rlr Ijtti'rntnrr jranrnise. Tableau d>i di.r-liiitii'nic fit'clc, vol. in (1S20\ 

 p. 1S7: " Kst-ce que toutes ces bizarrerit s fie 1'imagination grecque n'auraient pas 

 ete vraiment intolerable* pour le bon gout du xvn" et du xvin'' sieele? Faut-il 

 decirler cependant que ces fantasques inventions etaient absurdes. ridicules. ( t 

 qu'il n'y a p:is un etat de societe. un c'tat de 1'imagination humaine ou e< s choss 

 puissent avoir leur grandeur, leur energie? Faut-il nier meme qu'elles n'ai<-nt une 

 beaute duralile, pour qui saura les comprcndre par cette imagination qui se rend 

 contemporaine de toutes les epoques?" 



