faculties. Just as (putting aside
minor and somewhat pedantic considerations) no country in Europe has so
long and so independently developed a political history, so in none has
literary history developed itself more independently and for a longer
space of continuous time. No foreign invasion sensibly affects the
French tongue; no foreign influence sensibly alters the course of French
literature. It has been shown at intervals during this history how
little direct influence classical models had on the original forms of
literature in France, how completely German and Celtic contributions of
subject were assimilated, how the Provencal examples of form were rather
independently followed than literally or slavishly adopted. The dawn or
rather the twilight of the Renaissance seemed to threaten a more
powerful and dangerous admixture. But the native genius of the language
triumphed, and finally, in the Pleiade reforms, reduced to harmlessness
the Rhetoriqueur innovations and the simultaneous danger of
Italianising. The criticism of Malherbe, harmful in some ways, served as
a counterpoise to the danger of Spanish influence which was considerable
in the early years of the seventeenth century, and by the eighteenth the
idiosyncrasy of French was so strong that, great as was the effect
successively produced by English and by German, it was unable to do more
than slightly modify French literature itself. Yet again the singular
[Greek: autarkeia] of French may be seen by turning from its general
accomplishments at different times to its particular forms. No one of
these was directly adopted from any foreign, not even from any classical
example, with the doubtful exception of the classical tragedy. The
French made their own epic, their own lyric, their own comic and
miscellaneous drama. They may be said almost to have invented the
peculiar and striking kind of history called the memoir, which has
characteristics distinguishing it radically from the classical
commentary. They apparently invented the essay, and though they only
borrowed the beast-fable, they are entitled to the credit of having seen
in it the germ of the short verse tale which has no direct moral
bearing. All the nations of Europe, so to speak, sent during the middle
ages their own raw material of subject to be worked up by French or
French-speaking men into literary form. France therefore gives (next to
Greece, and in some respects even before Greece) the most instruct