ration of
letters, if not of language. The poetical power of French has been once
more triumphantly proved, and its productiveness in all branches of
literature has been renewed, while in that of prose fiction there has
been almost created a new class of composition.

Finally, we may sum up even this summary. For volume and merit taken
together the product of these eight centuries of literature excels that
of any European nation, though for individual works of the supremest
excellence they may perhaps be asked in vain. No French writer is lifted
by the suffrages of other nations--the only criterion when sufficient
time has elapsed--to the level of Homer, of Shakespeare, or of Dante,
who reign alone. Of those of the authors of France who are indeed of the
thirty but attain not to the first three, Rabelais and Moliere alone
unite the general suffrage; and this fact roughly but surely points to
the real excellence of the literature which these men are chosen to
represent. It is great in all ways, but it is greatest on the lighter
side. The house of mirth is more suited to it than the house of
mourning. To the latter, indeed, the language of the unknown minstrel
who told Roland's death, of him who gave utterance to Camilla's wrath
and despair, and of him who in our day sang how the mountain wind makes
mad the lover who cannot forget, has amply made good its title of
entrance. But for one Frenchman who can write admirably in this strain
there are a hundred who can tell the most admirable story, formulate the
most pregnant reflexion, point the acutest jest. There is thus no really
great epic in French, few great tragedies, and those imperfect and in a
faulty kind, little prose like Milton's or like Jeremy Taylor's, little
verse (though more than is generally thought) like Shelley's or like
Spenser's. But there are the most delightful short tales, both in prose
and in verse, that the world has ever seen, the most polished jewellery
of reflexion that has ever been wrought, songs of incomparable grace,
comedies that must make men laugh so long as they are laughing animals,
and above all such a body of narrative fiction, old and new, prose and
verse, as no other nation can show for art and for originality, for
grace of workmanship in him who fashions, and for certainty of delight
to him who reads.

FOOTNOTES:

[294] The courtesy of Messrs. A. and C. Black allows me to repeat the
following passage from an article of mine in the