which, some
forty years after his death, brought about the revival of poetry in
France, through recurrence to nature, passion, truth, vividness, and
variety of sentiment.

[Sidenote: Newspapers of the Revolution.]

[Sidenote: The Influence of Journalism.]

So long as the old _regime_ lasted journalism was naturally in a
condition of suppression, but from the beginning of the Revolution it
assumed at once an important position in the state, and a position still
more important as a nursery of rising men of letters. At the time of the
outbreak only two papers of importance existed, the already mentioned
_Gazette de France_, and the _Journal de Paris_, in which Garat, Andre
Chenier, Roucher, and many other men of distinction, won their spurs.
1789, however, saw the birth of numerous sheets, some of which continued
almost till our own days. The most important was the _Gazette Nationale_
or _Moniteur Universel_, in which not merely Garat and La Harpe, but
Ginguene, a literary critic of talent and a republican of moderate
principles, together with the future historian Lacretelle, and the comic
poet, fabulist, and critic Andrieux, took part. Rivarol, Champcenetz,
and Pelletier conducted the Royalist _Actes des Apotres_, Marat started
his ultra-republican _Ami du Peuple_, Camille Desmoulins the _Courier de
Brabant_, Durozoy the _Gazette de Paris_. Barrere and Louvet, both
notorious, if not famous names, launched for the first time a paper with
a title destined to fortune, _Le Journal des Debats_; and Camille
Desmoulins changed his oddly-named journal into one named more oddly
still, _Les Revolutions de France et de Brabant_. All these, and more,
were the growth of the single year 1789. The next saw the avowedly
Royalist _Ami du Roi_ of Royou, the atrocious _Pere Duchene_ of Hebert,
the cumbrously-named _Journal des Amis de la Constitution_, on which
Fontanes, Clermont-Tonnerre, and other future Bonapartists and
Constitutionalists worked. In 1791 no paper of importance, except the
short-lived Girondist _Chronique du Mois_, appeared. In the next year
many Terrorist prints of no literary merit were started, and one,
entitled _Nouvelles Politiques_, to which the veterans Suard and
Morellet, with Guizot, a novice of the time to come, Lacretelle, Dupont
de Nemours, and others, were contributors. In the later years of the
revolutionary period, the only important newspaper was what was first
called the _Journal de l'Empire_, and at t