school, even more than the English and
the German, was a breach with tradition and an insurrection against
existing conditions, it will be well to notice briefly what the
particular situation was which the romanticists in France confronted.
"To understand what this movement was and what it did," says
Saintsbury,[14] "we must point out more precisely what were the faults of
the older literature, and especially of the literature of the late
eighteenth century. They were, in the first place, an extremely
impoverished vocabulary, no recourse being had to the older tongue for
picturesque archaisms, and little welcome being given to new phrases,
however appropriate and distinct. In the second place, the adoption,
especially in poetry, of an exceedingly conventional method of speech,
describing everything where possible by an elaborate periphrasis, and
avoiding direct and simple terms. Thirdly, in all forms of literature,
but especially in poetry and drama, the acceptance for almost every kind
of work of cut-and-dried patterns,[15] to which it was bound to conform.
We have already pointed out that this had all but killed the tragic
drama, and it was nearly as bad in the various accepted forms of poetry,
such as fables, epistles, odes, etc. Each piece was expected to resemble
something else, and originality was regarded as a mark of bad taste and
insufficient culture. Fourthly, the submission to a very limited and
very arbitrary system of versification, adapted only to the production of
tragic alexandrines, and limiting even that form of verse to one
monotonous model. Lastly, the limitation of the subject to be treated to
a very few classes and kinds." If to this description be added a
paragraph from Gautier's "Histoire du Romantisme," we shall have a
sufficient idea of the condition of French literature and art before the
appearance of Victor Hugo's "Odes et Ballades" (1826). "One cannot
imagine to what a degree of insignificance and paleness literature had
come. Painting was not much better. The last pupils of David were
spreading their wishywashy colours over the old Graeco-Roman patterns.
The classicists found that perfectly beautiful; but in the presence of
these masterpieces, their admiration could not keep them from putting
their hands before their mouths to cover a yawn; a circumstance, however,
that failed to make them any more indulgent to the artists of the new
school, whom they called tattooed savages and ac