and of races, the inadequacy of classical criticism became more irritating and almost more scandalous.

Nevertheless, during the years which preceded the Revolution, the ground was admirably prepared for a renaissance of the classical literature of France. Antiquity was restored to unexpected favour. The discovery of Herculaneum and Pompeii gave fresh life to the science of archæology. Historical as well as æsthetic criticism of carved monuments was founded by Winckelmann, in his Histoire de l'art chez les anciens.1 Brunck published his Analecta in 1776, and Villoison his notes on Homer in 1788. Journeys in the East and in Greece were made by such travellers as Wood, Choiseul-Gouffier and Guys.2 The abbé Barthélemy produced a condensed yet spirited statement of the results of classical scholarship in his delightful Voyage d'Anacharsis, published in 1788. In 1780 David initiated the school of painting to which we owe the Serment des Horaces and the Enlèvement des Sabines. A few enthusiasts talked of "denationalizing themselves and of becoming Greeks and Romans in soul." 3

But the whole movement, which was of real importance, remained without influence upon the criticism of works of literature. Its effect was neither to extend the controversy nor to define the point at issue. Its consequences were mainly political, nor did it result in any renovation of the French genius, as this was understood by Voltaire. "Our public education," said Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, going back to his school-days, "alters the national character ..: men are made Christians by means of the catechism, pagans by the poetry of Vergil, Greeks and Romans by the study of Demosthenes and Cicero, but Frenchmen never."4 In truth the very study of antiquity, as Winckelmann or Barthélemy understood it, was as yet nothing

1 Twice translated into French before 1789; first of all at Amsterdam in 1766, and afterwards at Leipzig in 1781.

2 Guys, Voyage littéraire de la Grèce (1776). Choiseul-Gouffier, Voyage pittoresque en Grèce (1782).

On the movement as a whole see the

The phrase is quoted by Chamfort. interesting study by M. G. Renard, quoted above.

4 Œuvres posthumes, P. 447.

more than a means of getting away from one's own country and one's own environment. Left to its own strength and to the impetus it had acquired, the classical influence produced Delille's Géorgiques, or the Eloge de Marc Aurèle of Thomas; no very brilliant result. Refreshed by archæology and by the breath of individual inspiration, it was the source of Chénier's most beautiful lines.

Chénier alone, during the last twenty years of the century, is a true disciple of the ancients: "A devout worshipper of the great ones of old, I would bury myself in the sacred relics they have left." He alone triumphantly contrasts the faultless beauty with the disturbing charm of Ossian or of Shakespeare: "Seek the tempting banquets provided by this bright train of Greeks; but avoid the sodden intoxication of the treacherous and stormy waters of Parnassus with which the harsh singers of the misty North assuage their thirst." He alone, having read and, during his residence in London,2 translated portions of Milton, Thomson, and Shakespeare,3 and having spoken of Richardson in the manner we have mentioned, boldly proclaims the superiority of ancient art: "Too proud to be slaves, English poets have even cast off the fetters of common sense."

But antiquity, as Chénier conceived it, was no longer the antiquity which France of the seventeenth century had loved and understood, and one feels some concern as to what Voltaire would have said of it. On the other hand Chénier was entirely without influence during the eighteenth century, since no one

Ed. Becq de Fouquières, Poésies diverses, xi.

2 Chénier seems to have been depressed by his residence in London as though it were an exile. He found England, as Alfieri told him, "more bitter than absinthe" (Becq de Fonquières, Doc. nouv., p. 21). Writing from London in 1787, he said: "Bereft of parents, friends and countrymen, forgotten on the face of the earth and far from all my relatives, cast up by the waves upon this inhospitable island, I find the sweet name of France frequently on my lips. Alone, by the ashes of my fire, I lament my fate, I count the moments, I long for death." On the other hand his brother writes to him (7th February 1788): "You are enjoying yourself in London; I thought you would. . . .”

3 In addition to the imitations of Thomson quoted above, Chénier translated a fragment from Shakespeare. His admiration for the piece provoked his brother's condemnation.

read his poetry. It neither stimulated criticism nor furnished it with a text.

More effectually than was possible through the agency of any books, the controversy was cut short by the Revolution.

II

The primary effect of the Revolution was to restore the worship of antiquity to a degree not far short of superstition.

The innovators had at first looked to it for the regeneration of art. In a curious letter to the authors of the Journal encyclopédique,1 Daunou anticipated Mme. de Staël in giving expression to the idea that "the monotony of a despotic form of government" confines poetic genius to a narrow circle of ideas, adding that "the Revolution now about to regenerate the French empire may infuse genius with new vigour, render talent more fruitful, ennoble the subjects of art, extend its methods, multiply its forms and revive not poetry only but also eloquence and history.” This hope was disappointed, at all events at the outset ; far from renewing poetic art, the Revolution led it back to classical or pseudo-classical sources, to an art the very antithesis of that of Rousseau, whose political theories it rated so highly while it failed to recognize his literary genius.

The Revolution marked at first a step backwards in the progress of cosmopolitanism, because it occasioned a rupture, lasting from 1789 to 1814, with the rest of Europe, and with the Germanic section of it in particular. Within the course of a few months France found herself as isolated-to employ the metaphor used by a historian-as an island in mid-ocean. How was it possible, during these troublous years, to maintain literary relations with England or with Germany? Great Britain was spoken of as a "guilty island, haughty Carthage."2 In 1792, when the Institute had received a scientific memorandum from a

115th March 1790. On the classical reaction in France see M. L. Bertrand's book: La fin du classicisme et le retour à l'antique (Paris, 1897, 16mo). 2 In an opera entitled La Reprise de Toulon.

German, Roland, who was minister of the home department at the time, added the following brief, but expressive, marginal note: "We cannot look to Germany for any light on such subjects as this."1 Under the Empire matters were still worse. We know what Mme. de Staël's praises of Germany brought upon her, and Napoleon made no secret of his contempt for "German nonsense, the admirers of which are constantly disparaging French literature, French newspapers and the French drama, for the sake of magnifying the absurd and dangerous productions of Germany and the North at the expense of our own."

Sundered, therefore, by political circumstances, the threads which had been stretched from the continent to the North and vice versa remained broken for twenty years and more. Several prominent revolutionists remained, it is true, faithful to the objects of their youthful admiration: Robespierre read Gessner and Young; Camille Desmoulins Hervey and the author of Night Thoughts; Mme. Roland Thomson, and Collot d'Herbois Shakespeare, whose Merry Wives of Windsor he had formerly imitated. There were translations and adaptations of various German writers: Lessing, Goethe, Wieland, Klopstock and the writer whom the Moniteur called "Monsieur Scheller," "a strong advocate of the republic against the monarchy, a true Girondist," of whose plays several met with considerable success upon the French stage.5 We may go so far as to say that a 1 J. Simon, Une académie sous le Directoire, p. 213.

2 Esménard's report, in Welschinger: La Censure sous le premier Empire, p. 249. 3 L'amant loup-garou ou M. Rodomont (1777).

Lessing's Dramaturgie was translated in 1795, Laocoon in 1802; Nathan der Weise provided M.-J. Chénier with the inspiration for a drama. Werther was imitated several times (Stellino cu le nouveau Werther, 1791, etc.). Stella, translated by Du Buisson, was played at Louvois in 1791; Wilhelm Meister was translated by Sévelinges in 1802, under the title of Alfred.

5 12th February 1792. The Robbers was adapted by La Martelière [Schwindenhammer, the Alsatian] in 1793 and by Creuzé in 1795; in 1799 A. de Lezay translated Don Carlos, and in the same year La Martelière published his Théâtre de Schiller (Paris, year viii.); in 1802 Mercier brought out his Jeanne d'Arc, an imitation of Schiller. See Dr Richter's work, Schiller und seine Räuber in der französischen Revolution, Grünberg, 1865, 8vo, and Th. Süpfle's book already quoted.

certain limited public took a lively interest in German literature, and William de Humboldt wrote from Paris in 1800 that "people here have German names on their lips more than ever." 1

But it must be added that the public in general remained indifferent to these foreign productions, and that those even who claimed to be connoisseurs spoke of writers from beyond the Rhine upon hearsay only. "Frenchmen think they are very well informed concerning our literature," writes the same witness; "they suppose themselves thoroughly familiar with it and very fond of it. . . . But you only need to hear them talk a little to know what to think of their knowledge of it and their fondness for it. . . . The French are still too different from us to be capable of understanding us in respect to those points upon which we too are beginning to be a little original." The influence of the intellect of Germany upon that of France acquired substance with the publication of De l'Allemagne in 1812. With regard to English literature, the novelists, Richardson, Sterne, Miss Burney and even Anne Radcliffe still found an audience, and even playwrights who adapted their works for the stage,2 nor were the reputations of Young and Ossian on the wane.3 Shakespeare himself supplied the French stage with the subject of a drama almost every year. Are we to conclude therefrom that these writers were more highly appreciated and better understood? A glance at François de Neufchâteau's Pamela, or at the Jean sans Terre of Ducis, will suffice to convince us that the contrary was the case.

In short, the literature of the Revolution, like its criticism, was pseudo-classical, that is to say inferior. The men of the period, who had antiquity always upon their lips, knew in truth but little

1 Lady Blennerhasset, Mme. de Staël, vol. ii., p. 560.

2 Pamela, by F. de Neufchâteau (1793). Clarisse Harlowe, by Népomucène Lemercier (1792).

3 Young's Nuits, translated into French verse by Letourneur, Paris, 1792, 4 vols. 12mo.

Jean sans terre, by Ducis (1791); Othello, by the same (1792); Epicharis et Néron, by Legouvé (after Richard III.) (1793); Timon d'Athènes, by Sébastien Mercier (1794); Imogènes, by Dejaure (after Cymbeline) (1796), etc.