FORMERLY LECTURER IN THE ROYAL ATHENEUM, PARIS; AUTHOR OF MILTON GOULD, KENDALL AND LINCOLN, -59, WASHINGTON STREET. V52 1848 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1848, by GOULD, KENDALL & LINCOLN, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. EDITOR'S PREFACE. IT is impossible to know a people well without an acquaintance with its literature. This is especially true with reference to France. In no other country is literature so emphatically the expression of society. The changes of opinion and sentiment within the last eighteen years have been faithfully represented by the various productions of the press. Since 1830, the incessant activity of the French mind has annually yielded in books, pamphlets, and monthly, weekly and daily journals, a quantity of printed matter which would form in octavo leaves, counting the copies of each edition, an average of two hundred and forty million volumes. In this mass are many worthless and worse than worthless productions, by some of which it is feared that modern French writers are often indiscriminately judged in the United States. But there are also contained in it numerous works which are both unexceptionable in spirit and excellent in form. The editor of the present treatise was unwilling, while at Paris, to lose an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the more valuable portions of recent French literature. He was naturally desirous that the results of his conscientious studies might be offered to the public in such a way as would tend to remove prejudices with which the subject is unfortunately connected in this country. But convinced that the latter purpose can be effected sooner, and perhaps better, by less ambitious labors than those of authorship, he has, by the advice of his Father, prepared an American edition of De Véricour's "Modern French Literature." The original work has been submitted to the inspection of Mr. Henry W. Longfellow, Professor of the French and Spanish Languages and Literatures, and of Belles-Lettres, at Harvard University, as well as to that of Mr. George Ticknor, his predecessor there in the same department. Without, of course, endorsing everything said by the author, these distinguished scholars have permitted an allusion in this place to the highly favorable impression received by them from the tone of sobriety and candor pervading the treatise, and from its large amount of information respecting all the principal modern French writers. Similar commendation has been bestowed by Mr. Charles Sumner, Mr. C. C. Jewett, lately Professor of Modern Languages at Brown University, Rev. Messrs. W. R. Williams, E. N. Kirk, R. Turnbull, and by several other competent judges. Besides, the Revolution of 1848 renders peculiarly opportune a work whose chief immediate value consists in developing those political tendencies in France which have led, sooner than might have been anticipated, to the overthrow of the Orleans dynasty and the establishment of a Republic. M. de Véricour, who is a member of the Archæological Society of Rome, the Historical Institute of France, and other learned associations in Europe, was formerly a professor at the Royal Athenæum in Paris. Among the works of which he is the author, are a valuable Report on the Educational Systems of Hofwyl, and an Essay entitled Milton et la Poésie Epique, which has been praised by leading British Reviews as "honorable to his study and appreciation of Milton." His residence during many years in Great Britain, eminently qualified him to become an interpreter of the French to the English mind. While writing this treatise on Modern French Literature, the best, and indeed the only succinct work of the kind, he was attached to the Educational Institution at Twickenham, a place famous as the abode of Pope, the English poet, and, in later times, of Louis Philippe, during different periods of exile. |