The Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1, by
George Saintsbury

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Title: A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1
From the Beginning to 1800

Author: George Saintsbury

Release Date: October 8, 2008 [EBook #26838]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NOVEL

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO
DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA. LTD.
TORONTO

A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NOVEL

(TO THE CLOSE OF THE 19TH CENTURY)

BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY

M.A. AND HON. D.LITT. OXON.; HON. LL.D. ABERD.; HON. D.LITT. DURH.;
FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY; HON. FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD;
LATE PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
EDINBURGH

VOL. I

FROM THE BEGINNING TO 1800

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1917

COPYRIGHT

PREFACE

In beginning what, if it ever gets finished, must in all probability be
the last of some already perhaps too numerous studies of literary
history, I should like to point out that the plan of it is somewhat
different from that of most, if not all, of its predecessors. I have
usually gone on the principle (which I still think a sound one) that, in
studying the literature of a country, or in dealing with such general
characteristics of parts of literature as prosody, or such coefficients
of all literature as criticism, minorities are, sometimes at least, of
as much importance as majorities, and that to omit them altogether is to
risk, or rather to assure, an imperfect--and dangerously
imperfect--product.

In the present instance, however, I am attempting something that I have
never, at such length, attempted before--the history of a Kind, and a
Kind which has distinguished itself, as few others have done, by
communicating to readers the _pleasure_ of literature. I might almost
say that it is th