CHAPTER IV.

DIDEROT AND THE FRENCH TRANSITION.

The position of Diderot[89]
Difficult to authenticate[90]
But hardly to be exaggerated. His Impressionism[91]
The Richardson éloge[92]
The Reflections on Terence[93]
The Review of the Lettres d’Amabed[94]
The Examination of Seneca[94]
The quality and eminence of his critical position[95]
Rousseau revisited[97]
Madame de Staël[100]
Her critical position[100]
And work[100]
The Lettres sur Rousseau[101]
The Essai sur les Fictions[102]
The De La Littérature[102]
The De l’Allemagne[105]
Her critical achievement: imputed[107]
And actual[108]
Chateaubriand: his difficulties[109]
His Criticism[110]
Indirect[111]
And Direct[111]
The Génie du Christianisme[112]
Its saturation with literary criticism[113]
Survey and examples[114]
Single points of excellence[116]
And general importance[117]
Joubert: his reputation[118]
His literary αὐτάρκεια[118]
The Law of Poetry[119]
More on that subject[119]
On Style[120]
Miscellaneous Criticisms[121]
His individual judgments more dubious[122]
The reason for this[123]
Additional illustrations[123]
General remarks[125]
The other “Empire Critics”[126]
Fontanes[127]
Geoffroy[128]
Dussault[129]
Hoffman, Garat, &c.[129]
Ginguené[130]
M. J. Chénier[131]
Lemercier[131]
Feletz[132]
Cousin[133]
Villemain[133]
His claims[133]
Deductions to be made from them[134]
Beyle[135]
Racine et Shakespeare[136]
His attitude here[138]
And elsewhere[138]
Nodier[139]

CHAPTER V.

ÆSTHETICS AND THEIR INFLUENCE.

The present chapter itself a kind of excursus[141]
A parabasis on “philosophical” criticism[141]
Modern Æsthetics: their fount in Descartes and its branches[146]
In Germany: negative as well as positive inducements[147]
Baumgarten[148]
De Nonnullis ad Poema Pertinentibus[148]
And its definition of poetry[148]
The Aletheophilus[149]
The Æsthetica[149]
Sulzer[150]
Eberhard[151]
France: the Père André, his Essai sur le Beau[151]
Italy: Vico[152]
His literary places[152]
The De Studiorum Ratione[153]
The De Constantia Jurisprudentis[153]
The first Scienza Nuova[154]
The second[154]
Rationale of all this[155]
A very great man and thinker, but in pure Criticism an influence malign or null[156]
England[157]
Shaftesbury[157]
Hume[159]
Examples of his critical opinions[160]
His inconsistency[162]
Burke on the Sublime and Beautiful[163]
The Scottish æsthetic-empirics: Alison[164]
The Essay on Taste[165]
Its confusions[166]
And arbitrary absurdities[167]
An interim conclusion on the æsthetic matter[168]

CHAPTER VI.

THE STUDY OF LITERATURE.