d to reduce criticism to a science; he hoped that at
length, as the result of numberless observations, something like a
science might come into existence. Meanwhile he would cultivate the
relative and distrust the absolute. He would study literary products
through the persons of their authors; he would examine each detail;
he would inquire into the physical characteristics of the subject
of his investigation; view him through his ancestry and among his
kinsfolk; observe him in the process of education; discover him among
his friends and contemporaries; note the moment when his genius first
unfolded itself; note the moment when it was first touched with decay;
approach him through admirers and disciples; approach him through
his antagonists or those whom he repelled; and at last, if that were
possible, find some illuminating word which resumes the results of
a completed study. There is no "code Sainte-Beuve" by which off-hand
to pronounce literary judgments; a method of Sainte-Beuve there is,
and it is the method which has best served the study of literature
in the nineteenth century.

* * * * *

Here this survey of a wide field finds its limit. The course of French
literature since 1850 may be studied in current criticism; it does
not yet come within the scope of literary history. The product of
these years has been manifold and great; their literary importance
is attested by the names--among many others--of Leconte de Lisle,
Sully Prudhomme, Verlaine, in non-dramatic poetry; of Augier and the
younger Dumas in the theatre; of Flaubert, Edmond and Jules de
Goncourt, Zola, Daudet, Bourget, Pierre Loti, Anatole France, in
fiction; of Taine and Renan in historical study and criticism; of
Fromentin in the criticism of art; of Scherer, Brunetiere, Faguet,
Lemaitre, in the criticism of literature.

The dominant fact, if we discern it aright, has been the scientific
influence, turning poetry from romantic egoism to objective art,
directing the novel and the drama to naturalism and to the study of
social environments, informing history and criticism with the spirit
of curiosity, and prompting research for laws of evolution. Whether
the spiritualist tendency observable at the present moment be a
symptom of languor and fatigue, or the indication of a new moral energy,
future years will determine.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following notes are designed as an indication of some books which
may b