pathy in letters is not to be despised.

We have observed together that the balance in this matter is heavily
against the English. M. Jusserand is easily the first authority upon
popular life in England at the close of the middle ages. M. Boutmy has
produced an analysis of our political development which our Universities
have justly recognized. Our friend M. Angellier of the Ecole Normale has
written what is acknowledged by the more learned Scotch to be the
principal existing monograph upon Robert Burns; Mr. Kipling himself has
snatched the attention of M. Chevrillon. You know how many names might
be added to this list to prove the close, applied and penetrating manner
in which French scholars have latterly presented our English writers to
their fellow-citizens.

We have both believed that something of the sort might be attempted in
the converse; that a view could be given--a glimpse at least--of that
vast organism whose foundations are in Rome, Coeval with the spring of
Christianity, and whose last growth seems as vigorous and as fecund as
though it were exempt from any laws of age.

But, I say, we know how heavy is the balance against us.

The Gallic ritual is unrecognized, even by our over-numerous class of
clerical antiquarians. The Carolingian cycle is neglected, save perhaps
for a dozen men who have seen the Song of Roland. The Complaints of
Rusteboeuf, the Fabliaux, all the local legendary poetry, all the
chroniclers (save Froissart--for he wrote of us), the tender simplicity
of Joinville, the hard steel of Villehardouin, no one has handled.

The fifteenth century, the storm of the Renaissance, are not taught.
Why, Rabelais himself might be but an unfamiliar name had not a northern
squire of genius rendered to the life three quarters of his work.

The list is interminable. Even the great Drama of the great century is
but a text for our schools leaving no sort of trace upon the mind: and
as for the French moderns (I have heard it from men of liberal
education) they are denied to have written any poetry at all: so exact,
so subtle, so readily to be missed, are the proportions of their speech.

If you ask me why I should myself approach the matter, I can plead some
inheritance of French blood, comparable, I believe, to your own; and
though I have no sort of claim to that unique and accomplished
scholarship which gives you a mastery of the French tongue unmatched in
England, and a complete familiarity with its