[Footnote F: Geschichte der Französischen Revolutions-Literatur, 1789-1795. Von Schmidt-Weiszenfels. Prague: Kober und Markgraf. 8vo. pp. 395.]
[Footnote G: Histoire Littéraire de la Convention Nationale. Par
Eugène Maron. Paris: Poulet-Malassis et De Boise. 12mo. pp. 359.]
To return to the volumes of M. Gerusez. It is rather a sign of poverty in general literary history, that detached sketches, with little connection beyond their chronological order, should have been deemed worthy of the prize and the praises awarded to them. However, though lacking in comprehensive views such as we have a right to expect from an author who attempts to portray the rise, growth, and full expansion of a literature, the work of M. Gerusez may be perused with pleasure and profit by the student. It is clear and satisfactory in the details. Thus, the pages devoted to the writers of the "Encyclopédie," though few, may vie with any that have been written to set in their true light men whose influence was so great on the generation that succeeded them. If impartiality consisted in always steering in the juste-milieu, M. Gerusez would be the most impartial of historians. As it is, we have to thank him for a good book, regretting only that he has gone no farther.
Far otherwise is it with M. Saint-Marc Girardin. The eloquent Sorbonne professor has seen his fame increase with every new volume of his "Course of Dramatic Literature." We have now the fourth volume.[H] "A Course of Dramatic Literature";—it is more. It is the history of the expression of Passion among the ancients and the moderns, by no means confined to the drama. The present volume, as well as the third, published several years ago, is devoted to the analysis of Love as expressed in different ages and by different nations, under the two divisions of L'Amour Ingénu and L'Amour Conjugal.
[Footnote H: Cours de Littérature Dramatique. Par Saint-Marc Girardin,
de l'Académie Française, Professeur à la Faculté des Lettres de Paris,
Membre du Conseil Impérial de l'Instruction Publique. Tome IV. Paris:
Charpentier.]
The first he had studied in the authors of antiquity in his third volume, beginning in this with the episode of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius; then following up, through the moderns, the expression of Ingenuous Love in Corneille, La Fontaine, Sédaine, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Milton, Gessner, Voss, André Chénier, and Chateaubriand. For the last he finds more blame than praise. Indeed, this effect-seeking writer, with all his genius, seemed less fitted than any one to express the natural and spontaneous. His Atala, who charms us so at the first reading, deals in studied emotions. As to René, his is the vain sentimentality parading its own impotency for higher feelings, a virtual boasting of want of soul,—the sickly dissatisfaction of Werther, without his passion for an excuse. M. Saint-Marc Girardin then follows up his subject through later authors, even in Madame George Sand and in Madame Émile de Girardin. He is particularly severe upon Lamartine, that poet "who for more than thirty years seemed best to express love as our century understands it," but who in Raphael and Graziella destroyed, by disclosing too much, the power of his "Méditations Poétiques."
On Conjugal Love the classic models are first consulted,—Oenone, Evadne, Medea,—these characters being followed through the delineation of modern dramatists. We know of no more exquisite criticism than the pages devoted to Griseldis. Analyzing the accounts of Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Perault, our author concludes with the play of "Munck Bellinghausen." The last chapters, on "Love and Duty," are among the most eloquently written in the volume. For style, M. Saint-Marc Girardin is second to no living author of France.
In this course we find an evident predilection for the models of antiquity. When a comparison is instituted between the ancients and the moderns, we feel pretty certain of the result before the writer has proceeded very far. Not that we ever find a systematic idolizing of all that is classic merely. Far from it. Modern writers are not neglected. In this particular a genuine service is done to critical literature. It often seems as if literary lecturers and historians were attacked by an aesthetic presbyopy. For them the present age never produces anything worth even a passing remark. The masterpieces they notice must be old and time-honored. Not so in the present studies on the passions. Ponsard finds his place side by side with older names. After an appreciative notice of the Lucretia of Livy, we find a comment on the Lucretia which may have been played the week before at the Théâtre Français. Nor is it a slight service done to contemporary letters, when a master-critic turns his thoughts to works which, if they do not hold the first rank, yet, by the talent of their authors and the nature of their subjects, have attracted all eyes for a time. Such are the writings of Madame George Sand. Of these, "André," "La Mare au Diable," and "La Petite Fadette" are reviewed with praise in the work under consideration, while the force of criticism is expended on "Indiana," "Lelia," and "Jacques."
* * * * *
Whatever claims the academician Victor de Laprade may have to poetic talent, he certainly sinks below mediocrity when he attempts to discuss the principles of the art he practises. Since it has been his good-fortune to be numbered among the illustrious Forty he has several times attempted literary criticism, but never so extensively as in his last work, "Questions d'Art et de Morale."[I] This is a series of discursive essays, a few upon art in general, the greater part, however, restricted to letters; the whole written in a poetic prose not without a certain charm, but wearisome for continuous reading.