The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-09-08

together, it is the most complete ex-
ample of a regularly and in dependent
ly developed national Literature that
presents itself anywhere. 1t is no
doubt inferior in the point of independ-
ence to Greek, but then it has much
longer course, considered as the expon-
ent of national character. 1t has a
! shorter course than English, and it is
not more generally eXpository of ma
tional chara but then it is for
a great part of that course infinitely
more independent of foreign influences,
and, unlike English, it has scarcely any
breaks or dead seasons in it's record.
Compared with Latin (Which as lit
erature may be said to be entirely
modelled on Creek it is exceptionally
original; compared with Spanish and
Italian it has been exceptionally long
lived and hale in it's life; compared
with German is was exceptionally early
in attaining the full possession of it's
faculties. Just as quitting aside minor
and somewhat pedantic considerations
no country in Europe has so long and
so independently developed a political
history, so in none has literary his
tory developed itself more Independent
ly and for a longer space of continuous
time. No foreign invasion sensibly az
fects the French tongue; no foreign in
fluence sensibly alters the course of
French literature.
The French made their own epic,
their own lyric, their own comic and
miscellaneous drama. They may be
said almost to have invented the pecu-
liar and striking kind of history called
the memoir, which has characteristics
distinguishing it radically from the
classical commentary. They appar-
emily invented the essay, and though
they only borrowed the beast fable they
pntit1pd tn the cradif of hoxyir,
seen in it the germ of the short-verse
tale which has no direct moral bearing
All the nations of Europe, so to speak,
sent during the middle ages their own
raw material of subject to be worked
up by French or French speaking men
into literary form. France therefore
gives next to Greece, and in some re-
spects even before Greece the most
instructive and trustworthy example
extant of the chronology and order of
spontaneous literary Development
first poetry, then drama, then prose,
in poetry. first epic. then lyric, then di-
dactic and miscellaneous verse; in
drama, first ceremonial and liturgic
pieces, then comedy, then artificial
tragedy; in prose, first history, then
miscellaneous work, and lastly artifi-
cial and elaborate fiction.
The terms classic and romantic apply
to treatment, not to subject, and the
difference is that the treatment is clas-
sic when the idea is represented as di-
rectly and with as exact an adaptation
of form as possible, while it is romantic
when the idea is left TO the readers
faculty of divination assisted only by
suggestion and symbol OF these two
modes of treatment France has always
inclined to the classic: during at least
two centuries, the seventeenth and
eighteenth, she relied upon it almost
wholly. But the fertility of her me-
diaeval and renaissance literature in
strictly romantic examples and the
general tendency Of the literature of
the nineteenth century have shown a
romantic faculty inferior, but only in
ferior, to the classical.
The qualities which this general diff
ferentia has developed in French may
now be enumerated:
The first is a great and remarkable
sobriety. 1t is true that there is moth
ing more extravagant than an extrava-
CANT Frenchman, but that is the ma
tural result of reaction. AS rule, the
contributions of matter which France
received so abundantly from other ma
tons are always toned and sobered by
her in their literary formation. The
main materials of her wonderful me-
diaeval literature of fiction were fur
nished by Wales, by Germany and by
the east; all of them, to judge by the
later but more or less independent
landings which we have from indi-
genous sources, must have teemed with
the supernatural.
The next characteristics is abundant
and almost superabundant wit. A third
quality closely connected with the two
former, but not, like satiricai criticism,
simplv derived from them, is the close