FRENCH LITERATURE.

THE FRENCH NOVEL.

N all European literature of the present day the novel holds the throne of power, and its supreme position in France is now fully allowed even by the severest critics. It may be well to examine the genealogy of this latter-day sovereign. It

is easily traced to Durfé's Arcadian pastoral "Astrée," which appeared early in the seventeenth century. This was succeeded by the heroic romances of Madeleine de Scudèry (1607-1701) flatteringly called "Sapho " by her coterie. The most famous of these romances were "The Grand Cyrus" and "Clélie," prodigiously long and provokingly affected in style. Next came Mme. de Lafayette's novels of sensibility, exemplified in "The Princess of Cleves." But Antoine Furetière had, as early as 1666 in his "Roman Bourgeois," made a collection of human documents of middle-class Parisian life. They may be compared to some of Defoe's pictures of London life. Paul Scarron's "Roman Comique" is a coarse tale of strolling players. Le Sage's "Gil Blas" was imitated from the picaroon romance of Spain, but improved on the original. Abbé Prevost in his "Manon Lescaut " anticipated the French novel of a century later, but his work had no immediate imitators. Marivaux (1688-1763), however, claimed that he had "spied out in the human heart all the nooks where love might hide," and offered his "Marianne" (1740) in proof of his claim.

But whatever critical interest may attach to these works

and to Voltaire's witty contes, to Rousseau's "New Héloise" and St. Pierre's "Paul and Virginia," as containing indications of the future popular literature, the French novel really came in with the nineteenth century. The Romanticists Chateaubriand, Victor Hugo, George Sand, Dumas père and Balzac, were its chief exponents. In them the relation of incidents leads to the revelation of character. Gradually the dialogue assumes a foremost place as an index of the mind and its changes. Next the study of the emotions and passions becomes the chief end of the novel. Even in the earliest of these writers may be traced the peculiar elements marking the latest French school. Love, pure or impure, is the pivot on which the whole fabric turns. Finally the novel has become a mere exposition of the social relations of the sexes. Yet long ago George Sand boldly set forth the misunderstood woman with her ideas of free love. Balzac introduced courtesans and unfaithful wives. To such an absurd pitch was the treatment of the question of sex carried that husbands in some of these stories were required to kill themselves to make way for their wives' lovers. Realism, which was insisted on by Balzac, descended through Flaubert to Zola, who became the acknowledged champion of that naturalism, which glories in disclosing the human brute.

Alfred Victor, Comte de Vigny (1799-1863) is credited with producing the best historical novel in French literature, "Cinq Mars." The hero is a marquis whose marriage is opposed by Richelieu, whereupon the desperate lover plots with the king's brother for the cardinal's overthrow and assassination. But Cinq Mars himself is captured and condemned to death.

Eugène Sue (1804–1857) may be regarded as a follower of Alexandre Dumas. He catered to the morbid taste for the monstrous and diabolical. In "The Mysteries of Paris" he explored the lowest stratum of society; in "The Wandering Jew" he attacked the Jesuits. A later idol of the masses is Georges Ohnet (born 1848), whose most celebrated novel is "The Iron Master." The stories of Huysmans are of more offensive character, and belong to the school aptly called "Satanism."

Of higher rank is Charles de Bernard (1804-1850), the first of Balzac's pupils. Some of his work was translated by Thackeray in his "Paris Sketch-book." Victor Cherbuliez (born 1829) reached the honor of the Academy. His best work is "The Romance of an Honest Woman," "Count Kostia," who is a civilized demon of the Russian aristocracy, and "Meta Holdenis," a tale of temptation. Octave Feuillet was the favorite novelist of the society of the Second Empire. He was regarded as the aristocratic portrayer of the Faubourg St. Germain. His most powerful story is "Julia Trécœur " but the one best known is "Romance of a Poor Young Man."

The short story was installed in French literature by the conte of Voltaire; but it received a new development by Merimée and Gautier, and finally attained its perfection in Daudet and De Maupassant. One of the earlier masters of this class was Edmond About (1828-1855), a favorite of Napoleon III. His "King of the Mountains" is a tale of bandits; his "Man with the Broken Ear" is a story of a man restored to life after being embalmed; "The Notary's Nose" tells of a strange piece of surgery as a sequence of a curious duel. Another offshoot of the older novel is the detective story, which Emile Gaboriau (1835-1873) invented. His masterpiece is "M. Lecoq." Du Boisgobey and others have followed in his footsteps with more or less success.

ALEXANDRE DUMAS.

ONE of the most curious figures of literary history is Alexandre Dumas (1806-70), dubbed by Thackeray "Alexander the Great." His grandfather, a marquis, mar

ried a creole of Haiti. His father, a darkcolored, herculean general who fought bravely in Napoleon's army, was wedded to an innkeeper's daughter. The curly hair and mulatto complexion of the famous Dumas expressed the Afric character of his inner self, his tropical luxuriousness of temper, spirit and imagination, the sunny geniality of his genius, and the full-blooded joyousness of his romantic vein. Capricious, prolix, fertile, puissant, he showed his peculiar semi-barbarism in his prodigal habits, his whims, his strange adventures, his very works. The most prolific and best paid author of his day, he squandered his money in a reckless hospitality and was ruined by building for himself a castle of Monte Cristo. Fond of animals, he kept a menagerie. He accompanied Garibaldi on a campaign against the king of Naples, and journeyed to Russia with a charlatan "medium." His son has shown his father as the Count Fernand de la Rivonniere in his aptly named play, "A Prodigal Father." The critic Jules Janin thus summarizes the genius of the elder Dumas: "A mind capable of learning all, forgetting all, comprehending all, neglecting all. Rare mind, rare attention, subtle spirit, gross talent, quick comprehension, execution barely sufficient, an artisan rather than an artist. Skillful to forge, but poor to chisel, and awkward in working with the tools that he knew so well how to make. An inexhaustible mingling of dreams, falsehoods, truths, fancies, impudence, and propriety; of the vagabond and the seigneur, of

rich and poor. Sparkling and noisy, the most willful and the most facile of men; a mixture of the tricky lawyer and of the epic poet; of Achilles and Thersites; swaggering, boastful, vain and a good fellow."

With his native temperament it is no wonder that Alexandre Dumas proved a born master of romance. His father's military feats, one of which earned for General Dumas from Napoleon himself the title of "the Horatius Cocles of the Republic," must have inspired the son, who after the Empire was to come under the spell of Romanticism and to feed his genius on Scott and Cooper.

Walking on a Paris quay one day, Dumas chanced upon a musty little book which purported to be the "Memoirs of M. D'Artagnan." In these fictitious "Memoirs" Dumas found D'Artagnan whom he has made immortal, and the now famous Three Musketeers-Porthos, Athos and Aramis, as well as the plot of Milady. Here, too, he absorbed the local color of that age of Louis XIII., of Richelieu and Mazarin. In his consequent great trilogy-"The Three Musketeers," "Twenty Years After," and "Vicomte de Bragelonne "-he revived the romance of adventure and gallantry. He regalvanized Amadis de Gaul, put him into a French cloak and armed him with a sword. D'Artagnan is a brisk and audacious young Gascon who blunders at first into all manner of mishaps and intrigues from which he extricates himself only by his imperturbable bravery and shrewdness. He provokes a quarrel with the Three Musketeers at the very outset but secures their good graces, and is educated by them into the beau ideal cavalier. These three brother-soldiers are delightfully contrasted-the good-natured giant Porthos, the dignified Athos, and the aristocratic Aramis, who finally enters the church. D'Artagnan, who goes up to Paris to seek his fortune with an old horse and a box of miraculous salve given him by his mother, passes through a series of hairbreadta escapes only to die at last on the field of battle. In these romances Dumas fascinates and thrills his reader. He makes the blood leap. He is prodigal of incident, even if loose of plot, and he is a master of intrigue and action in dialogue. Stirring scenes, indeed, are such as those of the kidnapping