PREFACE. THIS book is meant to serve as a companion, and possibly a guide, to the better appreciation and enjoyment of those authors who mark progress or change in the evolution of literary ideals in France since the Revolution. Until any book that is worth reading is seen in its true perspective, one will not draw from it its full measure of pleasure or profit. To give some clew to the books that are significant, whether as products or as causes of changed critical standards and æsthetic principles, is what is attempted in these chapters. Three introductory chapters sketch the evolution of French literature till the close of the eighteenth century, that the reader may be reminded of those authors whose influence is still felt and of whom it belongs to the humane life to know. In the more detailed studies that follow, no mention is made of imitators or hack writers, however ephemerally popular, nor of any work that has not literary imagination and artistic form, in order that attention may be concentrated on those writers who stand for something, who mark progress |