Except Dupont and Nadaud, all the poets just mentioned may be said to belong more or less to the school of Gautier—the school, that is to say, which attached preponderant importance to form in poetry. Towards the middle of the Second Empire a crowd of younger writers, who had adopted this principle still more unhesitatingly, grew up, and formed what has been known for some years, partly seriously, partly in derision, as the Parnassien school. The origin of this term was the issue, in 1866 (as a sort of poetical manifesto preluding the great Exhibition of the next year), of a collection of poetry from the pens of a large number of poets, from Théophile Gautier and Emile Deschamps downwards. This was entitled Le Parnasse Contemporain, after an old French fashion. Another collection of the same kind was begun in 1869, interrupted by the war, and continued afterwards; and a third in 1876: while the Parnassien movement was also represented in several newspapers, the chief of which was La Renaissance. Another nickname of the poets of this sect (which, however, included almost all French writers of verse, even Victor de Laprade being counted in) was les impassibles, for their presumed devotion to art for art's sake, and their scorn of didactic, domestic, and sentimental poetry. Their numbers were very great, and none, save a few, can be mentioned here. Perhaps the chief of the original Parnassiens were MM. Sully Prudhomme and François Coppée, the former of whom experienced some reaction and affected what is called 'thoughtful verse,' while M. Coppée, having taken to domestic subjects, is as popular as any contemporary French poet, and in at least one instance (Le Luthier de Crémone) has achieved success at the theatre. A poet of great gifts, the latest of the vagabond school of Villon, was Albert Glatigny, who lived as a strolling actor, and died young. Many of his poems, but especially the Ballade des Enfans sans Souci, have singular force and pathos. It would hardly be fair to mention any other names, because a singular evenness of talent and general characteristics manifests itself among these poets. All sacrifice something to the perfection of form, or, to speak more correctly and critically, most are saved only by the perfection of their form, which is as a rule far superior to that of English minor poets. Of late years the Parnasse as a single group has broken up somewhat, and during the last decade some isolated poets of promise have appeared. M. Maurice Bouchor recurred to the bacchanalian model for inspiration; M. Paul Deroulède is tyrtaean and bellicose. Both of these may be said to be representative of reaction against the Parnasse. The new naturalist school, which has produced such singular work in prose fiction, is represented in poetry by M. Richepin and M. Guy de Maupassant. The former, with much unworthy work, produced in La Mer and elsewhere excellent things. The latter, despite an unfortunate licence of subject, showed himself the strongest and most accomplished versifier who has made his appearance in France for the last twenty years. But after his first efforts he appeared to abandon himself almost entirely to prose. M. Paul Verlaine, a poet known from the early days of the Parnasse, has more recently produced work of increased but very unequal merit, exaggerating the faults but showing some of the charm of Baudelaire; and, partly under his, partly under foreign influence, a still younger school has begun to make experiments in prosody which are not uninteresting, but which are too minute for notice here.

Minor and later Dramatists.

Scribe.

Ponsard.

Emile Augier.

Eugène Labiche.

Dumas the Younger.

Victorien Sardou.

The progress of French drama during the last half century is of somewhat less importance to literature, but of even more to social history, than that of poetry. The greatest masters of drama have already been mentioned among the eight typical names of 1830, even Balzac having attempted it, though without much success. The most famous and successful playwrights, however, as distinguished from the producers of literary dramas, have yet to be noticed[293]. Pixérécourt, a melodramatist and a book-collector, achieved his first success with a play on the well-known story of the Dog of Montargis (itself dating back to the earliest days of the Chansons de Gestes), in 1814, and followed it up with a long succession of similar pieces. Two years later Eugène Scribe, who had been born in 1791, made his début, as far as success goes, with Une Nuit de la Garde Nationale. Scribe was one of the most prolific, one of the most successful, and one of the least literary of French dramatists. For nearly half a century he continued, sometimes alone, and sometimes in collaboration, to pour forth vaudevilles, dramas, and comedies, almost all of which were favourably received. Scribe was generous to his associates, and would sometimes acknowledge the communication of a bare idea by a share in the profits of the play which it suggested. He had also an almost unrivalled knowledge of the technique of the theatre, and not a little wit. But his style is loose and careless, and his dramas do not bear reading. His most important later plays are Valérie, 1822; Le Mariage d'Argent, 1827; Bertrand et Raton, 1833; Le Verre d'Eau, 1840; Une Chaîne, 1841; Bataille de Dames, 1851. One of the less famous partakers in the first Romantic movement, Bouchardy, distinguished himself, in succession to Pixérécourt, as a Romantic melodramatist, his most famous works being Le Sonneur de Saint Paul, and Lazare le Pâtre. In 1843 a kind of reaction was supposed to be about to take place, the signs of which were the performance of the Lucrèce of Ponsard in that year, and of the Ciguë of Emile Augier the year after. Ponsard, however, was only a Romantic whose colour was deadened by his inability to attain more brilliant tones. His succeeding plays, Agnès de Méranie, Charlotte Corday, L'Honneur et l'Argent, showed this sufficiently. M. Emile Augier is a more remarkable and a more independent figure. In so far as he represents a protest against Romanticism at all (which he does only very partially), it is because he shared in the growing tendency towards realism, that is, to a recurrence in the Romantic sense to the tragédie bourgeoise of the preceding century, and because also he gave no countenance to the practice, in which some of the early Romantics indulged, of representing immoral personages as interesting. Almost all M. Augier's dramas, such as L'Aventurière, 1849, which is his masterpiece, Gabrielle, 1849, Diane, 1852, Le Mariage d'Olympe, 1855, Le Fils de Giboyer, 1862, and others of more recent date, are distinctly on the side of the angels. But the author does not make the excellence of his intention a reason for passing off inferior work, and he is justly recognised as one of the leaders of French drama in the latter half of the century. About this same time (1845) was the date of the appearance of a fertile and successful playwright of the less exalted class, M. Dennery (Don César de Bazan, L'Aieule). Auguste Maquet, another of the old guard of Romanticism, distinguished himself by helping to adapt to the stage the novels of Dumas the elder, which he had already helped to write; and one of his colleagues on Dumas' staff, M. Octave Feuillet, who was shortly to make a great reputation for himself as a novelist, appeared on the boards with Échec et Mat. During the whole of this decade (1840-1850) Delphine Gay, the beautiful and accomplished wife of the journalist Emile de Girardin, was a frequent and successful play-writer. Soon afterwards M. Legouvé, son of the academician of the same name, and himself an academician, began to collaborate with Scribe in works of more importance (Adrienne Lecouvreur) than the latter had before attempted; while George Sand and her former friend, Jules Sandeau, were also drawn into the inevitable theatrical vortex. In collaboration with Augier, Sandeau produced, from one of his own novels, one of the best plays of the century, Le Gendre de M. Poirier, 1855. Eugène Labiche, who had been born in 1815, distinguished himself, in 1851, by Le Chapeau de Paille d'Italie, and in it laid the foundation of a long career of success in the lighter kind of play which, at last, conducted him to the Academy. His best-known play is Le Voyage de M. Perrichon. The year 1852 was memorable for the French stage, for it saw the production of La Dame aux Camélias, the first important play of Alexandre Dumas fils. Without much of his father's talent for novel-writing, M. Dumas has been both a more successful, and perhaps a better, dramatist. Most of his plays have been directed to some burning question of the social or ethical kind, and it has been his practice to re-issue them after a time, with argumentative prefaces, in a very singular style. Diane de Lys, Le Demi-Monde, La Question d'Argent, Le Fils Naturel, Le Supplice d'une Femme (nominally composed with Emile de Girardin), Les Idées de Madame Aubray, Une Visite de Noces, and L'Étrangère, are his chief works. In 1854 appeared a now almost forgotten work by Victorien Sardou, who was destined to be the favourite dramatist of the Second Empire, and to share with MM. Augier and Dumas fils the chief rank among the dramatists of the last half of the century. Seven years later Nos Intimes gave him a great success, and, in 1865, La Famille Benoiton a greater, which he followed up with Nos Bons Villageois, 1866. Since that time he has written many plays, of which the finest by far, and one of the few comedies of this age likely to become classical, is the admirable Rabagas—a satire of the keenest on the interested politicians, who, in France as elsewhere, take up demagogy as a trade. M. Sardou has attempted serious work in various plays, the best of which is, perhaps, Patrie, but it is not his forte. Satirical observation of manners, and especially of the current political and social follies of the day, is what he can do best, and in this peculiar line he has few equals. But he is admitted to be one of the most unequal of writers. A peculiar offspring of the Second Empire are the brilliant burlesques of Offenbach, which owed at least part of their brilliancy to the librettos composed for them by MM. Meilhac and Halévy. The first-named of these had produced successful dramas as far back as 1859. The collaborateurs did not confine themselves to furnishing words for M. Offenbach's music, but attempted the prose drama frequently and with success, Froufrou being their most important work in this way. M. Gondinet and M. Pailleron also deserve notice as successful manufacturers of light plays, the latter in especial having an excellent wit (Le monde où l'on s'ennuie, Le Chevalier Trumeau). This may also be asserted of M. Halévy, who has latterly, in Les Petites Cardinal and other non-dramatic sketches, shown himself to even greater advantage than on the stage. Indeed the Cardinal family may be said to be the most striking literary creation of its kind for years.

In a different class and earlier, Joseph Autran, a poet of the school of Lamartine, obtained a great reputation by his tragedy of La Fille d'Eschyle, which procured him a seat in the Academy, and gave him the opportunity of writing not a few volumes of polished, but not very vigorous, poetry. M. Théodore de Banville, who has tried most paths in literature, produced, in 1866, a short play, with the old mystery-writer Gringoire for hero and title-giver; a play which is admirably written, and which has kept its place on the stage. M. François Coppée's graceful Luthier de Crémone has already been mentioned. Another literary dramatist, to distinguish the class from those who are playwrights first of all, is M. Henri de Bornier, who obtained some success, in 1875, with La Fille de Roland, and, in 1880, with Les Noces d'Attila. Both these are good, though not consummate, specimens of the poetical drama.