buse the
Jesuits. In the end this weapon of keen and delicate satire was turned
against Christianity itself, when Voltaire in the eighteenth century
recognized its possibilities, and made use of it.

The older French literature in the sixteenth century had become so
neglected, and was so lacking in cultivation; so little adapted to
poetry, that the nation seemed in danger of losing all its earlier
traditions. For a hundred years France was given over to profane and
light literature. Montaigne, Charyon, Ronsard and de Balzac are some
of the names of this period. The death of a cat or dog was made the
subject of a poem that was no real poetry. It is due to the women of
France--to Madame de Rambouillet and her confreres, and to the literary
coteries that arose in the middle of the seventeenth century--that
French literature acquired a deeper and more serious tone. This period
was followed by the founding of the French Academy, of which Cardinal
Richelieu was the chief patron. The tragic dramatists, Corneille and
Racine, now appeared on the literary horizon. Racine's language and
versification was said to be far superior to either Milton in English
or Virgil in Latin.

In tragedy the French stand pre-eminent; but it is matter for regret
that their subjects are never taken from their own nation--they rarely
represent French heroes; and it is a weakness of their literature that
they make no direct appeal to the national feeling. There is a close
connection between the classical dramas of Racine and Corneille, and
such works as Pope's Iliad, Addison's Cato and Dryden's Alexander's
Feast, showing the general interest in Greek and Roman subjects during
their time.

The older poetry of the chivalric period was entirely discarded, though
it would have been possible to unite the old chivalric spirit, the
freedom and romance of mediaeval times, with the later renaissance, as
was done by other nations. The French literature is more closely formed
on the model of the earlier refined nations of antiquity, as the Roman
was on the Greek.

The later French poetry of the seventeenth century came into opposition
with the teaching of Rousseau, this gave birth to a taste for English
poetry and the classic poetry of France was a copy of the descriptive
poetry of England. In the eighteenth century prose writings superseded
verse. At this time the English had taken the lead in literature, and
modern French philosophy was built on that of B