The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-07-20

spirit of exact analysis and apprecia-
ton of fact which has been so strongly
the characteristic of literary work
throughout the world generally during
the whole of the nineteenth century.
But in even a more marked degree it
gave evidence of the approach of that
romantic movement which, under the
leadership of Victor Hugo, was the
characteristic feature of much of the
purely literary work of France during
the great middle part of the century.
1t must not be forgotten that the
eighteenth century, for all its vigor of
thought, its unrest, its determined in
vestigation into the causes and roots
of things, its wholesale onslaughts on
established order in church and state,
was, in purely literary matters, decid-
eddy conservative and uninventive.
Even Rousseau, although he was in
the realm of imaginative literature the
one great name of the age, gave to lit
erature no new form nor freed it from
any one of its many inherited restric-
lions. The consequence was that the
poetry and the drama of the Napo-
leonic age, which was merely con-
tinuation of the preceding age, were
still characterized by the same strict
conventions as to construction ana
form. the same strict limitations as to
what ideas, what situations, what char
acteristics, were proper to use or not
to use, that had been set up by Nal
herhe and Boileau in the seventeenth
century. In other words, poetic COM
positions, the dramatic art and the
production of imaginative literature of
every sort had become almost rule of
thumb.
The revolution had been an epoch of
chaos. Napoleon had come and eStab
ND
The revolution had been an epoch in
which every innovator had some hopes
of success. The natural reaction had
followed. Napoleon wanted no innova-
tors and the temper of the time sup
ported him. Napoleon's own predilec-
lions were for positive knowledge, eX-
act information, the exposition of the
ways things actually happen, the dis
covery of demonStrable laws-in other
words, for science-and men of science
he encouraged. He found them-and
this. too. pleased him. for it favored
his purposes-little inclined to be doc
trinaires, to be teachers of the people,
to be meddlesome in public affairs.
Science, then, under the Napoleonic
rule. had honor; that is TO say, natu-
raj and mathematical science; for
moral, metaphysical and historical sci
ence the matter-of-fact emperor dis
couraged as being too nebulous. Gu
vier. Lamarck, Bichat, st. Hilaire, La
place. Lagrange are some of the names
of those who gave luster to French sci
ence in Napoleon's time, and whom Ma
poleon dignified with public trusts or
with public consideration. Cuvier was
a member of the council Of state. and
afterward minister of public instruc-
ton Laplace was president of the SEN
ate. Lagrange was grand officer of the
Legion of Honor and a count of the
empire.
We have said that under the empire
poetry had little merit. There was one
poet, however, Andre Chenier Q762-
1870, who, had he been allowed to live.
would undoubtedly have been the en-
pires most brilliant literary star. Even
as it was, he was the greatest poet
France possessed for over 100 years, the
greatest, indeed, outside of the drama,
from the time of Ronsard down to the
poets of the middle nineteenth century.
But Chenier's head fell upon the scat
fold some years before the empire be-
gan Although a classic in his tastes
and in his severe and exact ideas of art
that is to say, although poet of the
school of Racine-Chenier showed the
warmth, the glow, the color, the init
mate personal note, the versatility of
expression, that characterized the ro-
mantle school of the subsequent '30s
and '40's. And that school justly re-
garded him as their precursor.
The great names in pure literature in
the actual age of Napoleon were only
o-Chateaubriand and Nine. de
Stael. 1t is customary to speak of
and Nine de Stael to-
gether. and this for a reason apart
from the fact that icy were the two
sole stars of the epocN they illuminate
I'd. Taken together Chateaubriand and
Nine. de Stael typify and represent
the whole literary move
ment of the Napoleonic age. apart from
its scientific movement
Chateaubriand G76S-1S4S) represents
the reaction OF the age against the