nor has it elsewhere loaded itself with more burdensome duties. It has resulted in a Literature, neglectful of a basis of criticism, culture, or social agreement; a Literature, which, through the freedom it offered to individual expression, has attracted genius and constantly gathered to itself new subjects and new forms, and widened the range of ideas and emotions with which it deals. The main outlet for the nation's artistic aspirations, it has also laden itself with the duties of philosophy, religion, and practical ethics; but if it has lost thereby as a fine art, it has gained as an efficient servant of society and as a leavener of the national life. Art with us has been harnessed in service. Apollo has been in toil for Admetus. Heavy have been his burdens, strange his yoke-fellows, varied and ever multiplying have been his tasks. But if the god has been hidden, life has been illuminated.

"God, of whom music

And song and blood are pure,
The day was never darkened

That had Thee here obscure!"

In a day like ours, when we are wont to turn to the bacteriologist for guidance and philosophy, the claims of Literature to preserve the nation's health and to direct her future, may seem less convincing than they did to Spenser, and Milton, and Wordsworth, and Browning, and Emerson. Or, if we survey other of the great achievements of the English people, their creation of free political institutions, their system of law, their building of this great democracy, their accomplishments in trade, invention, and science, we shall not be inclined to claim for Literature too great a part in the advance of our civilization. But let us render to Phoebus Apollo his due. In all this advance of the English people, the bright god has been a present helper. He has been the companion of her sons, and their labors have quickened to his music. In every generation Literature has presented much of the best

that has been known or thought, and it has united, as has no other endeavor, the imagination and the intellectual genius of this vast people. It has guarded the past, and handed down her glories and lessons to the present. It has been the voice of prophets descrying the future and calling men to her allurements. It has helped to make the idealisms of its visionaries the practices of their children. Who shall measure the boundaries or predict the conquests of its magnificent empire over the minds and hearts of mankind?

XIV

FRENCH LITERATURE

BY ADOLPHE COHN, PROFESSOR OF THE ROMANCE
LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES

THE claim to distinction of a national literature may rest upon the highest degree of excellence in a special line or upon excellence of a high degree in a number of branches; and again it may lie in the presence in all sorts of productions of a quality which seems to be the special possession of that literature.

In regard to French Literature it may hardly be disputed that its special characteristics are, first, the variety of fields in which it has produced works of lasting value rather than the commanding eminence of a few monuments of literary genius. A French counterpart of the "Divina Commedia, or of "Faust," it would be idle to look for. But survey as you will the whole domain of Literature and it will be hard to discover in it any spot not marked by the production of some French work which has remained a portion of mankind's literary heritage. Poetry in all its forms, even the epic, witness the wonderful epic production of the Middle Ages; drama, romance, history, memoirs, letters, ethics, philosophy, science, in short, whatever man may have to say to his fellow-man has been at some time expressed by some Frenchman in a form upon which it has seemed difficult if not impossible to improve.

Then, if, instead of surveying the outward appearance of the literary domain, we choose to look below the surface and

to discover what is the chief and most generally diffused quality present in the works of French writers, it is not difficult to find that the chief merits by which they are distinguished is the presence in them of a quality which may be called essentially national, viz. clearness. More than a century has elapsed since Rivarol wrote "that which is not clear is not French;" and few sayings have had the good fortune of being repeated oftener than this pronouncement of the most celebrated of the panegyrists of the French language.

But one who wishes to apprehend the real spirit of French Literature must not be satisfied with that altogether too easily made discovery of the quality of clearness as the most generally possessed by the works which it contains. He must go deeper and discover the cause of the phenomenon. Nor will this be a very difficult task. The clearness and lucidity of the French language is a natural consequence of the logical character of the French mind. Man invented language because he felt the need of communicating with his fellow-man. If he had lived alone, language would never have been created. If the desired result is to be reached, what we say has to be understood, and must therefore be, above all, clearly intelligible. Thence the first duty of the speaker is to express himself with clearness. A writer is a speaker; he does not write for himself, but for the benefit or enjoyment of others; he has something to say which he wishes them to understand. Literature is a conversation. Thus Descartes, in his "Discours de la Méthode": "I know that the reading of good books is like a conversation with the best people of bygone ages." And here the most modern and subjective of the great poets of France, Alfred de Musset, is found in full agreement with the seventeenth-century philosopher. When trying to give us his reasons for loving poetry above all things else, he tells us that he loved it because "it is intelligible to the world, though spoken by the poet alone."

This conception of language as a device, having for its object to make the intercourse between the various members of the human race easier, conditioned the French language not only in the formation of its grammatical and syntactical constructions, but even in the formation of its pronunciation. Language was not only to be understood, but also uttered with as little difficulty as possible. This does not mean that French is a language a correct pronunciation of which can be easily acquired by foreigners, whose ear and organs of speech have been fashioned by some other scheme of pronunciation, but that it does not require any strenuous physical effort. An accumulation of consonants without the interposition of any vowel does require some such effort; therefore such accumulations were banished from the language of France. A curious result followed, which acted upon the very essence of French poetry, viz. the creation of nasal syllables. Originally nasal syllables were created only when the nasal consonant, n or m, was followed by another consonant, the object in view being to reduce the number of consonants separating one vowel from another. The utterance of words was thereby made easier, but the idiom was deprived of one of the most musical elements of language. Take such words as the English slumber, the Italian cantar; such a line as this suggestive line of Heine's in German: In Abendsonnenschein; these examples will suffice to show what a price the French paid for the acquisition of an easily uttered and admirably lucid language.

The latent preoccupations which thus acted upon the modeling of the idiom itself, already explain one of the most striking facts that appear in a general survey of French Literature, the absence in it of the great preponderance of poetry over prose which may be noted in almost all the other literatures of Europe. But the effect of them was most marked in French poetry itself. With its musical element reduced to a minimum, and made for a group of human beings