stories of periods--the Middle Ages, the sixteenth,
seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth centuries; some have studied
special literary fields or forms--the novel, the drama, tragedy,
comedy, lyrical poetry, history, philosophy; many have written
monographs on great authors; many have written short critical studies
of books or groups of books. I have accepted from each a gift. But
my assistants needed to be controlled; they brought me twenty thousand
pages, and that was too much. Some were accurate in statement of fact,
but lacked ideas; some had ideas, but disregarded accuracy of
statement; some unjustly depreciated the seventeenth century, some
the eighteenth. For my purposes their work had to be rewritten; and
so it happens that this book is mine as well as theirs.

The sketch of mediaeval literature follows the arrangement of matter
in the two large volumes of M. Petit de Julleville and his
fellow-labourers, to whom and to the writings of M. Gaston Paris I
am on almost every page indebted. Many matters in dispute have here
to be briefly stated in one way; there is no space for discussion.
Provencal literature does not appear in this volume. It is omitted
from the History of M. Petit de Julleville and from that of M. Lanson.
In truth, except as an influence, it forms no part of literature in
the French language.

The reader who desires guidance in bibliography will find it at the
close of each chapter of the History edited by M. Petit de Julleville,
less fully in the notes to M. Lanson's History, and an excellent table
of critical and biographical studies is appended to each volume of
M. Lintilhac's _Histoire de la Litterature Francaise_. M. Lintilhac,
however, omits many important English and German titles--among
others, if I am not mistaken, those of Birsch-Hirschfeld's
_Geschichte der Franzosichen Litteratur: die Zeit der Renaissance_,
of Lotheissen's important _Geschichte der Franzosichen Litteratur
im XVII. Jahrhundert_, and of Professor Flint's learned _Philosophy
of History_ (1893).

M. Lanson's work has been of great service in guiding me in the
arrangement of my subjects, and in giving me courage to omit many
names of the second or third rank which might be expected to appear
in a history of French literature. In a volume like the present,
selection is important, and I have erred more by inclusion than by
exclusion. The limitation of space has made me desire to say no word
that does not tend to bring out s