ving virtue. There is ground for
congratulation that Ducis's and Dumas's perversions of Shakespeare
excited among Frenchmen almost as devoted an homage as the dramatist's
work in its native purity and perfection claims of men whose souls are
free of the fetters of classical tradition.

IV

If any still doubt the sincerity of the worship which is offered
Shakespeare in France, I would direct the sceptic's attention to a
pathetically simple tribute which was paid to the dramatist by a
French student in the first year of the last century, when England and
France were in the grip of the Napoleonic War. It was then that a
young Frenchman proved beyond cavil by an ingenuous confession that
the English poet, in spite of the racial differences of aesthetic
sentiment, could touch a French heart more deeply than any French or
classical author. In 1801 there was published at Besancon, "de
l'imprimerie de Metoyer," a very thin volume in small octavo, under
fifty pages in length, entitled, _Pensees de Shakespeare, Extraites de
ses Ouvrages_. No compiler's name is mentioned, but there is no doubt
that the book was from the pen of a precocious native of Besancon,
Charles Nodier, who was in later life to gain distinction as a
bibliographer and writer of romance.

This forgotten volume, of which no more than twenty-five copies were
printed, and only two or three of these seem to survive, has escaped
the notice of M. Jusserand. No copy of it is in the British Museum,
or in La Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal, with which the author, Nodier, was
long honourably associated as librarian. I purchased it a few years
ago by accident in a small collection of imperfectly catalogued
Shakespeareana. Lurking in the rear of a very ragged regiment on the
shelves of the auctioneer stood Charles Nodier's _Pensees de
Shakespeare_. None competed with me for the prize. A very slight
effort delivered into my hands the little chaplet of French laurel.

The major part of the volume consists of 190 numbered sentences--each
a French rendering of an apophthegm or reflection drawn from
Shakespeare's plays. The translator is not faithful to his English
text, but his style is clear and often rises to eloquence. The book
does not, however, owe its interest to Nodier's version of
Shakespearean maxims. Nor can one grow enthusiastic over the
dedication "A elle"--an unidentified fair-one to whom the youthful
writer proffers his homage with respectful propriety. The salt