can hardly be exaggerated. Chateaubriand’s literary father was
Rousseau, and his voyage to America helped to develop the seeds
which Rousseau had sown. In René and other works of the
same kind, the naturalism of Rousseau received a still further
development. But it was not in mere naturalism that Chateaubriand
was to find his most fertile and most successful theme.
It was, on the contrary, in the rehabilitation of Christianity as
an inspiring force in literature. The 18th century had used
against religion the method of ridicule; Chateaubriand, by
genius rather than by reasoning, set up against this method that
of poetry and romance. “Christianity,” says he, almost in
so many words, “is the most poetical of all religions, the most
attractive, the most fertile in literary, artistic and social results.”
This theme he develops with the most splendid language, and
with every conceivable advantage of style, in the Génie du
Christianisme and the Martyrs. The splendour of imagination,
the summonings of history and literature to supply effective and
touching illustrations, analogies and incidents, the rich colouring
so different from the peculiarly monotonous and grey tones of
the masters of the 18th century, and the fervid admiration for
nature which were Chateaubriand’s main attractions and characteristics,
could not fail to have an enormous literary influence.
Indeed he has been acclaimed, with more reason than is usually
found in such acclamations, as the founder of comparative and
imaginative literary criticism in France if not in Europe. The
Romantic school acknowledged, and with justice, its direct
indebtedness to him.
Literature since 1830.—In dealing with the last period of the history of French literature and that which was introduced by the literary revolution of 1830 and has continued, in phases of only partial change, to the present day, a slight alteration of treatment is requisite. The subdivisions of literature have lately become so numerous, and the contributions to each have reached such an immense volume, that it is impossible to give more than cursory notice, or indeed allusion, to most of them. It so happens, however, that the purely literary characteristics of this period, though of the most striking and remarkable, are confined to a few branches of literature. The character of the 19th century in France has hitherto been at least as strongly marked as that of any previous period. In the middle ages men of letters followed each other in the cultivation of certain literary forms for long centuries. The chanson de geste, the Arthurian legend, the roman d’aventure, the fabliau, the allegorical poem, the rough dramatic jeu, mystery and farce, served successively as moulds into which the thought and writing impulse of generations of authors were successively cast, often with little attention to the suitability of form and subject. The end of the 15th century, and still more the 16th, owing to the vast extension of thought and knowledge then introduced, finally broke up the old forms, and introduced the practice of treating each subject in a manner more or less appropriate to it, and whether appropriate or not, freely selected by the author. At the same time a vast but somewhat indiscriminate addition was made to the actual vocabulary of the language. The 17th and 18th centuries witnessed a process of restriction once more to certain forms and strict imitation of predecessors, combined with attention to purely arbitrary rules, the cramping and impoverishing effect of this (in Fénelon’s words) being counterbalanced partly by the efforts of individual genius, and still more by the constant and steady enlargement of the range of thought, the choice of subjects, and the familiarity with other literature, both of the ancient and modern world. The literary work of the 19th century and of the great Romantic movement which began in its second quarter was to repeat on a far larger scale the work of the 16th, to break up and discard such literary forms as had become useless or hopelessly stiff, to give strength, suppleness and variety to such as were retained, to invent new ones where necessary, to enrich the language by importations, inventions and revivals, and, above all, to bring into prominence the principle of individualism. Authors and even books, rather than groups and kinds, demand principal attention.
The result of this revolution is naturally most remarkable in the belles-lettres and the kindred department of history. Poetry, not dramatic, has been revived; prose romance and literary criticism have been brought to a perfection previously unknown; and history has produced works more various, if not more remarkable, than at any previous stage of the language. Of all these branches we shall therefore endeavour to give some detailed account. But the services done to the language were not limited to the strictly literary branches of literature. Modern French, if it lacks, as it probably does lack, the statuesque precision and elegance of prose style to which between 1650 and 1800 all else was sacrificed, has become a much more suitable instrument for the accurate and copious treatment of positive and concrete subjects. These subjects have accordingly been treated in an abundance corresponding to that manifested in other countries, though the literary importance of the treatment has perhaps proportionately declined. We cannot even attempt to indicate the innumerable directions of scientific study which this copious industry has taken, and must confine ourselves to those which come more immediately under the headings previously adopted. In philosophy proper France, like other nations, has been more remarkable for attention to the historical side of the matter than for the production of new systems; and the principal exception among her philosophical writers, Auguste Comte (1793–1857), besides inclining, as far as his matter went to the political and scientific rather than to the purely philosophical side (which indeed he regarded as antiquated), was not very remarkable merely as a man of letters. Victor Cousin (1792–1867), on the other hand, almost a brilliant man of letters and for a time regarded as something of a philosophical apostle preaching “eclecticism,” betook himself latterly to biographical and other miscellaneous writing, especially on the famous French ladies of the 17th century, and is likely to be remembered chiefly in this department, though not to be forgotten in that of philosophical history and criticism. The same curious declension was observable in the much younger Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (1828–1893), who, beginning with philosophical studies, and always maintaining a strong tincture of philosophical determinism, applied himself later, first to literary history and criticism in his famous Histoire de la littérature anglaise (1864), and then to history proper in his still more famous and far more solidly based Origines de la France contemporaine (1876). To him, however, we must recur under the head of literary criticism. And not dissimilar phenomena, not so much of inconstancy to philosophy as of a tendency towards the applied rather than the pure branches of the subject, are noticeable in Edgar Quinet (1803–1875), in Charles de Rémusat (1797–1875), and in Ernest Renan (1823–1892), the first of whom began by translating Herder while the second and third devoted themselves early to scholastic philosophy, de Rémusat dealing with Abelard (1845) and Anselm (1856), Renan with Averroes (1852). More single-minded devotion to at least the historical side was shown by Jean Philibert Damiron (1794–1862), who published in 1842 a Cours de philosophie and many minor works at different times; but the inconstancy recurs in Jules Simon (1814–1896), who, in the earlier part of his life a professor of philosophy and a writer of authority on the Greek philosophers (especially in Histoire de l’école d’Alexandrie, 1844–1845), began before long to take an active and, towards the close of his life-work, all but a foremost part in politics. In theology the chief name of great literary eminence in the earlier part of the century is that of Lamennais, of whom more presently, in the later, that of Renan again. But Charles Forbes de Montalembert (1810–1870), an historian with a strong theological tendency, deserves notice; and among ecclesiastics who have been orators and writers the père Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire (1802–1861), a pupil of Lamennais who returned to orthodoxy but always kept to the Liberal side; the père Célestin Joseph Félix (1810–1891), a Jesuit teacher and preacher of eminence; and the père Didon (1840–1900), a very popular preacher and writer who, though thoroughly orthodox, did not escape collision with his superiors. On the Protestant side Athanase Coquerel (1820–1875) is the most remarkable name. Recently Paul Sabatier (b. 1858) has displayed, especially
