least,
triumphantly decided in favor of the Romanticists, against the
Classicists. The weighty authority, however, of Sainte-Beuve, at first
thrown into the scale that at length would sink, was thence withdrawn,
and at last, if not resolutely cast upon the opposite side of the
balance, was left wavering in a kind of equipoise between the one and
the other. But our preliminary sketch has already passed the limit
within which our choice of authors for representation is necessarily
confined.

With first a few remarks, naturally suggested, that may be useful, on
the general subject thus rather touched merely than handled, the present
writer gives way to let now the representative authors themselves,
selected for the purpose, supply to the reader a just and lively idea of
French literature.

The first thing, perhaps, to strike the thoughtful mind in a
comprehensive view of the subject, is not so much the length--though
this is remarkable--as the long _continuity_ of French literary history.
From its beginning down to the actual moment, French literature has
suffered no serious break in the course of its development. There have
been periods of greater, and periods of less, prosperity and fruit; but
wastes of marked suspension and barrenness, there have been none.

The second thing noticeable is, that French literature has, to a
singular degree, lived an independent life of its own. It has found
copious springs of health and growth within its own bosom.

But then, a third thing to be also observed, is that, on the other hand,
the touch of foreign influence, felt and acknowledged by this most
proudly and self-sufficiently national of literatures, has proved to it,
at various epochs, a sovereign force of revival and elastic expansion.
Thus, the great renascence in the sixteenth century of ancient Greek and
Latin letters was new life to French literature. So, again, Spanish
literature, brought into contact with French through Corneille and
Moliere with others, gave to the national mind of France a new literary
launch. But the most recent and perhaps the most remarkable example of
foreign influence quickening French literature to make it freshly
fruitful, is supplied in the great romanticizing movement under the lead
of Victor Hugo. English literature--especially Shakspeare--was largely
the pregnant cause of this attempted emancipation of the French literary
mind from the burden of classicism.

A fourth very salient trait in