The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cosmopolis, Complete, by Paul Bourget

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Cosmopolis, Complete

Author: Paul Bourget

Last Updated: March 3, 2009
Release Date: October 4, 2006 [EBook #3967]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COSMOPOLIS, COMPLETE ***

Produced by David Widger

COSMOPOLIS

By Paul Bourget

With a Preface by JULES LEMAITRE, of the French academy,

PAUL BOURGET

Born in Amiens, September 2, 1852, Paul Bourget was a pupil at the
Lycee Louis le Grand, and then followed a course at the Ecole des Hautes
Etudes, intending to devote himself to Greek philology. He, however,
soon gave up linguistics for poetry, literary criticism, and fiction.
When yet a very young man, he became a contributor to various journals
and reviews, among others to the 'Revue des deux Mondes, La Renaissance,
Le Parlement, La Nouvelle Revue', etc. He has since given himself up
almost exclusively to novels and fiction, but it is necessary to mention
here that he also wrote poetry. His poetical works comprise: 'Poesies
(1872-876), La Vie Inquiete (1875), Edel (1878), and Les Aveux (1882)'.

With riper mind and to far better advantage, he appeared a few years
later in literary essays on the writers who had most influenced his
own development--the philosophers Renan, Taine, and Amiel, the poets
Baudelaire and Leconte de Lisle; the dramatist Dumas fils, and the
novelists Turgenieff, the Goncourts, and Stendhal. Brunetiere says
of Bourget that "no one knows more, has read more, read better, or
meditated, more profoundly upon what he has read, or assimilated it
more completely." So much "reading" and so much "meditation," even when
accompanied by strong assimilative powers, are not, perhaps, the most
desirable and necessary tendencies in a writer of verse or of fiction.
To the philosophic critic, however, they must evidently be invaluable;
and thus it is that in a certain self-allotted domain of literary
appreciation allied to semi-scientific thought, Bourget stands to-day
without a rival. His 'Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine (1883),
Nouveaux Essais (1885), and Etudes et Portraits (1888)' are cer