series of historical events has ever perhaps received treatment
at the same time from so many different points of view, and by
writers of such varied literary excellence, among whom it must,
however, be said that the purely royalist side is hardly at all
represented. One of the earliest of these histories is that of
François Mignet (1796–1884), a sober and judicious historian of
the older school, also well known for his Histoire de Marie Stuart.
About the same time was begun the brilliant if not extremely
trustworthy work of Adolphe Thiers (1797–1877) on the Revolution,
which established the literary reputation of the future
president of the French republic, and was at a later period completed
by the Histoire du consulat et de l’empire. The downfall
of the July monarchy and the early years of the empire witnessed
the publication of several works of the first importance on this
subject. Barante contributed histories of the Convention and
the Directory, but the three books of greatest note were those
of Lamartine, Jules Michelet (1798–1874), and Louis Blanc
(1811–1882). Lamartine’s Histoire des Girondins is written
from the constitutional-republican point of view, and is sometimes
considered to have had much influence in producing the events
of 1848. It is, perhaps, rather the work of an orator and poet
than of an historian. The work of Michelet is of a more original
character. Besides his history of the Revolution, Michelet wrote
an extended history of France, and a very large number of smaller
works on historical, political and social subjects. His imaginative
powers are of the highest order, and his style stands alone in
French for its strangely broken and picturesque character, its
turbid abundance of striking images, and its somewhat sombre
magnificence, qualities which, as may easily be supposed, found
full occupation in a history of the Revolution. The work of
Louis Blanc was that of a sincere but ardent republican, and is
useful from this point of view, but possesses no extraordinary
literary merit. The principal contributions to the history of the
Revolution of the third quarter of the century were those of
Quinet, Lanfrey and Taine. Edgar Quinet (1803–1875), like
Louis Blanc a devotee of the republic and an exile for its sake,
brought to this one of his latest works a mind and pen long
trained to literary and historical studies; but La Révolution is
not considered his best work. P. Lanfrey devoted himself with
extraordinary patience and acuteness to the destruction of the
Napoleonic legend, and the setting of the character of Napoleon I.
in a new, authentic and very far from favourable light. And
Taine, after distinguishing himself, as we have mentioned,
in literary criticism (Histoire de la littérature anglaise), and attaining
less success in philosophy (De l’intelligence), turned in
Les Origines de la France moderne to an elaborate discussion of
the Revolution, its causes, character and consequences, which
excited some commotion among the more ardent devotees of the
principles of ’89. To return from this group, we must notice
J. F. Michaud (1767–1839), the historian of the crusades,
and François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787–1874), who, like
his rival Thiers, devoted himself much to historical study. His
earliest works were literary and linguistic, but he soon turned
to political history, and for the last half-century of his long life
his contributions to historical literature were almost incessant
and of the most various character. The most important are
the histories Des Origines du gouvernement représentatif, De la
révolution d’Angleterre, De la civilisation en France, and latterly
a Histoire de France, which he was writing at the time of his
death. Among minor historians of the earlier century may
be mentioned Prosper Duvergier de Hauranne (1798–1881)
(Gouvernement parlementaire en France), J. J. Ampère (1800–1864)
(Histoire romaine à Rome), Auguste Arthur Beugnot (1797–1865)
(Destruction du paganisme d’occident), J. O. B. de Cléron,
comte d’Haussonville (La Réunion de la Lorraine à la France),
Achille Tendelle de Vaulabelle (1799–1870) (Les Deux Restaurations).
In the last quarter of the century, under the department
of history, the most remarkable names were still those of Taine
and Renan, the former being distinguished for thought and
matter, the latter for style. Indeed it may be here proper to
remark that Renan, in the kind of elaborated semi-poetic style
which has most characterized the prose of the 19th century in
all countries of Europe, takes pre-eminence among French
writers even in the estimation of critics who are not enamoured
of his substance and tone. But, under the influence of Taine to
some extent and of a general European tendency still more,
France during this period attained or recovered a considerable
place for what is called “scientific” history—the history which
while, in some cases, though not in all, not neglecting the development
of style attaches itself particularly to “the document,”
on the one hand, and to philosophical arrangement on the other.
The chief representative of the school was probably Albert Sorel
(1842–1906), whose various handlings of the Revolutionary period
(including an excursion into partly literary criticism in the shape
of an admirable monograph on Madame de Staël) have established
themselves once for all. In a wider sweep Ernest Lavisse (b.
1842), who has dealt mainly with the 18th century, may hold
a similar position. Of others, older and younger, the duc de
Broglie (1821–1901), who devoted himself also to the 18th century
and especially to its secret diplomacy; Gaston Boissier (b. 1823),
a classical scholar rather than an historian proper, and one of the
latest masters of the older French academic style; Thureau-Dangin
(b. 1837), a student of mid 19th-century history; Henri
Houssaye (b. 1848), one of the Napoleonic period; Gabriel
Hanotaux (b. 1853), an historian of Richelieu and other subjects,
and a practical politician, may be mentioned. A large accession
has also been made to the publication of older memoirs—that
important branch of French literature from almost the whole of
its existence since the invention of prose.
Summary and Conclusion.—We have in these last pages given such an outline of the 19th-century literature of France as seemed convenient for the completion of what has gone before. It has been already remarked that the nearer approach is made to our own time the less is it possible to give exhaustive accounts of the individual cultivators of the different branches of literature. It may be added, perhaps, that such exhaustiveness becomes, as we advance, less and less necessary, as well as less and less possible. The individual poet of to-day may and does produce work that is in itself of greater literary value than that of the individual trouvère. As a matter of literary history his contribution is less remarkable because of the examples he has before him and the circumstances which he has around him. Yet we have endeavoured to draw such a sketch of French literature from the Chanson de Roland onwards that no important development and hardly any important partaker in such development should be left out. A few lines may, perhaps, be now profitably given to summing up the aspects of the whole, remembering always that, as in no case is generalization easier than in the case of the literary aspects and tendencies of periods and nations, so in no case is it apt to be more delusive unless corrected and supported by ample information of fact and detail.
At the close of the 11th century and at the beginning of the 12th we find the vulgar tongue in France not merely in fully organized use for literary purposes, but already employed in most of the forms of poetical writing. An immense outburst of epic and narrative verse has taken place, and lyrical poetry, not limited as in the case of the epics to the north of France, but extending from Roussillon to the Pas de Calais, completes this. The 12th century adds to these earliest forms the important development of the mystery, extends the subjects and varies the manner of epic verse, and begins the compositions of literary prose with the chronicles of St Denis and of Villehardouin, and the prose romances of the Arthurian cycle. All this literature is so far connected purely with the knightly and priestly orders, though it is largely composed and still more largely dealt in by classes of men, trouvères and jongleurs, who are not necessarily either knights or priests, and in the case of the jongleurs are certainly neither. With a possible ancestry of Romance and Teutonic cantilenae, Breton lais, and vernacular legends, the new literature has a certain pattern and model in Latin and for the most part ecclesiastical compositions. It has the sacred books and the legends of the saints for examples of narrative, the rhythm of the hymns for a guide to metre, and the ceremonies of the church for a stimulant to dramatic performance. By degrees
