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Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II.
A History of
FRENCH LITERATURE
EDWARD DOWDEN
LL.D. (PRINCETON)
UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN
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London
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
| First Edition, 1897 New Impressions, 1899, 1904, 1907, 1911, 1914 |
PREFACE
French prose and French poetry had interested me during so many yearsthat when Mr. Gosse invited me to write this book I knew that I wasqualified in one particular—the love of my subject. Qualified inknowledge I was not, and could not be. No one can pretend to knowthe whole of a vast literature. He may have opened many books andturned many pages; he cannot have penetrated to the soul of all booksfrom the Song of Roland to Toute la Lyre. Without reaching itsspirit, to read a book is little more than to amuse the eye with printedtype.
An adequate history of a great literature can be written only bycollaboration. Professor Petit de Julleville, in the excellentHistoire de la Langue et de la Littérature Française, at presentin process of publication, has his well-instructed specialist foreach chapter. In this small volume I too, while constantly exercisingmy own judgment, have had my collaborators—the ablest and mostlearned students of French literature—who have written each a partof my book, while somehow it seems that I have written the whole.My collaborators are on my shelves. Without them I could not haveaccomplished my task; here I give them credit for their assistance.Some have written general histories of French literature; some havewritten histories of periods—the Middle Ages, the sixteenth,seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth centuries; some have studiedspecial literary fields or forms—the novel, the drama, tragedy,comedy, lyrical poetry, history, philosophy; many have writtenmonographs on great authors; many have written short critical studiesof books or groups of books. I have accepted from each a gift. Butmy assistants needed to be controlled; they brought me twenty thousandpages, and that was too much. Some were accurate in stat