clear,
straightforward, and vigorous style. His judgment, however, is much
limited by prejudice, and some of his studies, such as those on
Baudelaire and Diderot, show that he is an untrustworthy judge of what
is not commonplace.

[Sidenote: Academic Critics.]

A separate school of criticism, of a more academic character than that
represented by most of the names just mentioned, has existed in France
during the greater part of the century, and during a great part of it
has found its means of utterance partly in the University chairs and in
treatises crowned by the Academy, partly in a well-known fortnightly
periodical, the _Revue des Deux-Mondes_. The master of this school of
criticism may be said to have been Villemain, 1790-1870, who represents
the classical tradition corrected by a very considerable study of other
European languages besides French. Not the least part of the narrowness
of the older classical school was due to its ignorance of these
languages, and its consequent incapacity to make the necessary
comparisons. Villemain's criticism, though not quite so flexible as it
might have been, was on the whole sound, and the same variety of the
art, though with more limitations, was represented by Guizot. Not a few
critics of merit of the same kind were born at the close of the last
century, or at the beginning of this. Among them may be mentioned M.
Nisard, a bitter opponent of the Romantic movement, and a prejudiced
critic of French literature, but a writer of very considerable
knowledge, and of some literary merit; Eugene Geruzez, author of by far
the best history of French literature in a small compass, and of many
separate treatises of value; Alexandre Vinet, a Swiss, and a Protestant,
who died at no very advanced age, leaving much work of merit; and
Saint-Marc Girardin, who busied himself nearly as much in journalism and
politics as in literary criticism proper, but whose professorial _Cours
de Litterature Dramatique_ is a work of interest, exhibiting a kind of
transition style between the older and newer criticism. Michelet,
Quinet, M. Renan, and others, who will be mentioned under other heads,
have also been considerable as critics. Philarete Chasles was a lively
writer, who devoted himself especially to English literature, and whose
judgment in matters literary was not quite equal to his affection for
them. The critics of the _Revue des Deux-Mondes_ proper include, besides
not a few authors named elsewh