[864]. It followed, that though less devoted to formulas than Taine, he was determined that all literary criticism must be connected with the exhibition of national character.
[865]. He had such a sense, both of French wit and of English humour, but within very narrow and sometimes quite arbitrarily drawn restrictions.
[866]. The best examples of this group are perhaps the Goethe, known in England by Mr. Arnold’s essay, the Taine’s English Literature, and the treatment of Renan’s Peuple d’Israël.
[867]. Gérard de Nerval ought to have been one of the best of these: but, like Mérimée and Gautier himself, he was much occupied with better things than criticism, and in it he chiefly dealt with drama.
[868]. Petit Traité de Poésie Française: Paris, 1891.
[869]. Paris, 1867: often reprinted.
[870]. Paris, 1880, and later (3 vols.)
[871]. The whole of the 2nd vol., Curiosités Esthétiques, and part of the 3rd, L’Art Romantique, of his Œuvres (4 vols., Paris, 1868), are occupied by this.
[872]. One of the few wholly agreeable pieces of anecdotage contained in the Journal des Goncourt seems to show that the accusations generally brought as to the poet having hastened his own end by reckless living were at least hasty. It seems that his mother, Madame Aupick, the most respectable of old ladies, died under the same curse of aphasia and general paralysis.
[873]. It would be difficult to say quite the same of the Œuvres Posthumes (Paris, 1887), though these also contain valuable critical matter. But much is familiar letter-writing never intended for serious perusal, and not a little bears the clear marks of brain-disease.