literature. While Cousin gave an historical interpretation of
philosophy, and Guizot applied history to the exposition of politics,
a third eminent professor, ABEL-FRANCOIS VILLEMAIN (1790-1870) was
illuminating literature with the light of history. An accomplished
classical scholar, a student of English, Italian, and Spanish authors,
Villemain, in his _Tableau de la Litterature au Moyen Age_, and his
more admirable _Tableau de la Litterature au XVIIIe Siecle_, viewed
a wide prospect, and could not apply a narrow rule to the measurement
of all that he saw. He did not formulate a method of criticism; but
instinctively he directed criticism towards history. He perceived
the correspondence between literary products and the other phenomena
of the age; he observed the movement in the spirit of a period; he
passed from country to country; he made use of biography as an aid
in the study of letters. His learning was at times defective; his
views often superficial; he suffered from his desire to entertain
his audience or to capture them by rhetoric. Yet Villemain served
letters well, and, accepted as a master by the young critics of the
_Globe_, he prepared the way for Sainte-Beuve.

While such criticism as that of Villemain was maintained by Saint-Marc
Girardin (1801-73), professor of French poetry at the Sorbonne, the
dogmatic or doctrinaire school of criticism was represented with rare
ability by DESIRE NISARD (1806-88). His capital work, the _Histoire
de la Litterature Francaise_, the labour of many years, is
distinguished by a magisterial application of ideas to the decision
of literary questions. Criticism with Nisard is not a natural history
of minds, nor a study of historical developments, so much as the
judgment of literary art in the light of reason. He confronts each
book on which he pronounces judgment with that ideal of its species
which he has formed in his own mind: he compares it with the ideal
of the genius of France, which attains its highest ends rather through
discipline than through freedom; he compares it with the ideal of
the French language; finally, he compares it with the ideal of
humanity as seen in the best literature of the world. According to
the result of the comparison he delivers condemnation or awards the
crown. In French literature, at its best, he perceives a marvellous
equilibrium of the faculties under the control of reason; it applies
general ideas to life; it avoids individual caprice; i