ere, Gustave Planche, a person of curious
idiosyncrasy, chiefly remarkable for the ferocity of his critiques;
Saint Rene Taillandier, a dull man of industry; and M. Caro, a man of
industry who was not dull. Latterly some younger writers have
endeavoured (chiefly in its pages) to set up a kind of neo-classical
school, which is equally opposed to modern innovations, and to the habit
of studying old French, that is, French before the sixteenth century.
The chief of these advocates of a return to the Malherbe-Boileau dungeon
is M. Ferdinand Brunetiere. We must not omit among the older generation
M. Lenient, the author of two admirable volumes on the History of French
Satire; among the younger, M. Paul Stapfer, the author of an excellent
study of 'Shakespeare et l'Antiquite,' M. Jules Lemaitre, a brilliant
critic, who is perhaps a little more brilliant than critical, and M.
Emile Faguet, whose criticism is as sound as it is accomplished.

Among the representatives of art criticism Viollet-le-Duc as a writer
on architecture, and Charles Blanc (brother of Louis) as an authority on
decorative art generally, made before their deaths reputations
sufficiently exceptional to be noticed here. Here also, as
representatives of other classes of literature, the names of Hector
Berlioz, the great composer, author of letters and memoirs of great
interest; of Henri Monnier, an artist not much less skilful with his pen
than with his pencil in satirical sketches of Parisian types (especially
his famous 'Joseph Prudhomme'); of Charles Monselet, a miscellaneous
writer whose sympathies were as wide and his temper as genial as his
literary faculty was accomplished; of X. Doudan, whose posthumous
remains and letters attracted much attention after a life of silence;
and of the Genevese diarist Amiel, selections from whose vast journal of
philosophical sentimentalism and miscellaneous reflection have also been
popular, may be cited.

[Sidenote: Linguistic and Literary Study of French.]

The revived study of old French literature just noticed is the only
department of the literature of erudition which can receive notice here,
for prose science and classical study fall equally out of our range of
possible treatment here. The _Histoire Litteraire_ was revived, and has
been steadily proceeded with. Every department of old French literature
has been studied, latterly in vigorous rivalry with the Germans. The
most important single name in this study ha