Various

“ But there are the most delightful short tales, both in prose and in verse, that the world has ever seen, the most polished jewelry of reflection that has 154 ever been wrought, songs of incomparable grace, comedies that must make men laugh as long as they are laughing animals, and above all such a body of narrative fiction, old and new, prose and verse, as no other nation can show for art and for originality, for grace of workmanship in him who fashions, and for certainty of delight to him who reads. ”

“ He held with Rousseau that each age has a completeness of its own, and that the perfection of the later stage can be attained only through the perfection of the earlier. If the infant is what he should be as an infant, and the child as a child, he will become what he should be as a boy, just as naturally as new shoots spring from the healthy plant. Every stage, then, must be cared for and tended in such a way that it may attain its own perfection. Impressed with the immense importance of the first stage, Froebel like Pestalozzi devoted himself to the instruction of mothers. ”

“ FRISIANS (Lat. Frisii; in Med. Lat. Frisones, Frisiones, Fresones; in their own tongue Frêsa, Frêsen) , a people of Teutonic (Low-German) stock, who in the first century of our era were found by the Romans in occupation of the coast lands stretching from the mouth of the Scheldt to that of the Ems. They were nearly related both by speech and blood to the Saxons and Angles, and other Low German tribes, who lived to the east of the Ems and in Holstein and Schleswig. The first historical notices of the Frisians are found in the Annals of Tacitus. ”

“ Throughout the 15th century the process of enriching or at least increasing the vocabulary goes on, but as yet no organizing hand appears to direct the process. Villon stands alone in merit as in peculiarity. But in this time dramatic literature and the literature of the floating popular broadsheet acquire an immense extension—all or almost all the vigour of spirit being concentrated in the rough farce and rougher lampoon, while all the literary skill is engrossed by insipid rhétoriqueurs and pedants. Then comes the grand upheaval of the Renaissance and the Reformation. ”

“ The Revolution produced a profound alteration in the government of France, but none in the final purposes of its policy. To secure for France its so-called “natural limits”—the Rhine, the Alps, the Pyrenees and the ocean; to protect both flanks by reducing Holland on the north and Spain on the south to submission; to confirm the mighty power thus constituted, by the subjugation of Great Britain, were the objects of the Republic and of Napoleon, as they had been of Louis XIV. The naval war, like the war on land, is here considered in the first of its two phases—the Revolutionary (1792-99) . ”

“ The splendour of imagination, the summonings of history and literature to supply effective and touching illustrations, analogies and incidents, the rich colouring so different from the peculiarly monotonous and grey tones of the masters of the 18th century, and the fervid admiration for nature which were Chateaubriand’s main attractions and characteristics, could not fail to have an enormous literary influence. ”

“ The old forms die out or are prolonged only in half-lifeless travesties. The brilliant colouring of Froissart, and the graceful science of ballade and rondeau writers like Lescurel and Deschamps, alone maintain the literary reputation of the time. Towards the end of the 14th century the translators and political writers import many terms of art, and strain the language to uses for which it is as yet unhandy, though at the beginning of the next age Charles d’Orléans by his natural grace and the virtue of the forms he used emerges from the mass of writers. ”

“ The literary work of the 19th century and of the great Romantic movement which began in its second quarter was to repeat on a far larger scale the work of the 16th, to break up and discard such literary forms as had become useless or hopelessly stiff, to give strength, suppleness and variety to such as were retained, to invent new ones where necessary, to enrich the language by importations, inventions and revivals, and, above all, to bring into prominence the principle of individualism. Authors and even books, rather than groups and kinds, demand principal attention. ”

“ Many whispers there were, even in his own army, as to the dangers of passing on without “revolutionizing” aristocratic Genoa and monarchical Piedmont, and of bringing Venice, the pope and the Italian princes into the field against the French. But Bonaparte, flushed with victory, and better informed than the malcontents of the real condition of Italy, never hesitated. His first object was to drive out Beaulieu, his second to push through Tirol, and his only serious restriction the chance that the armistice with Piedmont would not result in a definitive treaty. ”

“ The century which witnessed the invention of printing naturally devoted itself at first more to the spreading of old literature than to the production of new. Yet as it perfected the early drama, so it produced the prose tale. Nor, as regards individual and single names, can the century of Charles d’Orléans, of Alain Chartier, of Christine de Pisan, of Coquillart, of Comines, and, above all, of Villon, be said to lack illustrations. ”

“ If there were many thousand soldiers who marched unarmed and shoeless in the ranks, it was towards “the Promised Land” that he led them. He looked always to the end, and 188 met each day as if with full expectation of attaining it before sunset. Strategical conditions and “new French” methods of war did not save Bonaparte in the two crises—the Dego rout and the sullen halt of the army at San Michele—but the personality which made the soldiers, on the way to Montenotte, march barefoot past a wagon-load of new boots. ”

“ The chansons de geste had shown the creative power and independent character of French literature. There is, at least about the earlier ones, nothing borrowed, traditional or scholarly. They smack of the soil, and they rank France among the very few countries which, in this matter of indigenous growth, have yielded more than folk-songs and fireside tales. The Arthurian romances, less independent in origin, exhibit a wider range of view, a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more extensive command of the sources of poetical and romantic interest. ”

“ These great writers are not merely remarkable for the vigour and originality of their thoughts, the freshness, variety and grace of their fancy, the abundance of their learning and the solidity of their arguments in the cases where argument is required. Their great merit is the creation of a language and a style able to give expression to these good gifts. The foregoing account of the medieval literature of France will have shown sufficiently that it is not lawful to despise the literary capacities and achievements of the older French. ”

“ The series of prose writers from Calvin to Montaigne, of poets from Marot to Regnier, elaborated a language yielding to no modern tongue in beauty, richness, flexibility and strength, a language which the reactionary purism of succeeding generations defaced rather than improved, and the merits of which have in still later days been triumphantly vindicated by the confession and the practice of all the greatest writers of modern France. ”

“ The commissioners of the Convention plundered the Netherlands with so little remorse that the people became bitterly hostile. The attempt to enforce a revolution of the French sort on the Catholic and conservative Belgians drove them to fury. By every unfair means the commissioners extorted the semblance of a popular vote in favour of incorporation, and France annexed the Netherlands. This was the last outrage. When a new Austrian army under the prince of Coburg entered the country, Dumouriez, who had invaded Holland, was unable to defend Belgium. ”

“ In these directions practitioners of the highest skill apply it during the 17th century, while during the 18th its powers are shown to the utmost of their variety by Voltaire, and receive a new development at the hands of Rousseau. Yet, on the whole, it loses during this century. It becomes more and more unfit for any but trivial uses, and at last it is employed for those uses only. Then occurs the Revolution, repeating the mighty stir in men’s minds which the Renaissance had given, but at first experiencing more difficulty in breaking up the ground and once more rendering it fertile. ”

“ In France as in other countries the disturbance in religious thought may undoubtedly claim the glory of having repaired this disgrace of the vulgar tongue, and of having fitted and taught it to express whatever thoughts the theologian, the historian, the philosopher, the politician and the savant had occasion to utter. But the use of prose as a vehicle for lighter themes was more continuous with the literature that preceded, and serves as a natural transition from poetry and the drama to history and science. ”