in Italy that un Inglese italianato é un diavolo incarnate. There is an element of truth about this specimen of the proverbial wisdom of nations. In the great majority of instances Englishmen, who become assimilated to the inhabitants of any foreign country in which their lot is thrown, lose the native strength of their race. Grafting is not a process wont to succeed with Englishmen; and if the graft prove successful, it somehow expels the original sap. If therefore my countrymen could, by any miraculous conversion, acquire the qualities which render certain races popular, they would, I think, of necessity lose the qualities which render their own race powerful, not only for their own good, but, as I myself hold, for the good also of humanity. Insularity of mind is, I repeat, an essential condition of England's moral success, just as insularity of position is an essential condition of her material success. If this insularity is incompatible with popularity, all we can do is to make the best of what for us, at any rate, is not on the whole a bad bargain.

EDWARD DICEY.

CURRENT FRENCH LITERATURE.

ENGLISH people of a bookish turn of mind are so fully accustomed to look with envy at the greater intensity of literary life in Paris that it gives one a certain sense of surprise to find a learned Belgian who knows England (or at least Scotland) expatiating on "the intellectual eclipse of France" as regards Great Britain. But a new contemporary, the Revue Française d'Edimbourg (Armand Colin et Cie), whose first number we are pleased to welcome to-day, is entirely devoted to the task of removing this obscuration, and of revealing to Scotch readers the beauties of French philosophy and imagination. It is evident that Professor Charles Sarolea, the editor of this interesting venture, is an enthusiast, and nothing could be more exactly in sympathy with the views of COSMOPOLIS than this design of his. Like the Revue Française d'Edimbourg, our main desire is to make the principal countries of Europe better known to one another, to reveal in each that "social palingenesis" which its editor believes to be so completely misunderstood. But Professor Sarolea has a theory which requires a little consideration before we can accept it. He says that France has ceased to be a factor in the literary evolution of Europe, and particularly of England, and he bravely attributes this somewhat disputable condition to a single man. That the best French thought is ignored in Great Britain is "the crime"-of whom do you suppose ?-of M. Zola. Poor M. Zola! he has been beaten on many occasions, but never before, I think, with this particular stick.

We must leave Professor Sarolea, who is perfectly capable of defending himself, to answer the attacks which will be made upon him by such staunch defenders of "le roman

answer must surely

naturaliste" as are left in Paris. But, from the purely English view, it is impossible to sit down with complacency under the implied compliment to English morality. For, if the novels of M. Zola and his school dishonour French literature and obscure the merits of purer and more brilliant writers, why have we taken so kindly to them in this country? The be that the English public likes them, and has shown a guilty pleasure in their excesses. Professor Sarolea talks as though M. Zola and Guy de Maupassant stood at the custom-houses on the frontier and forbad the export of virtuous volumes for which foreigners were pining. When he says that books like "La Terre" "calumniate and insult" France in the eyes of Europe, and contrasts such novels from the patriotic point of view with those of George Eliot and Dickens, it is hard to see what reply M. Zola's admirers can make. Here he is probably on safe ground, but it is not ground which offers us any shelter for our morality. If English people were as "good" as the Professor thinks they are, they would with one accord have sent these shocking stories back to France. On the contrary, they have bought them in thousands, and have enjoyed them very much. If there is to be any superior talk about "poisonous honey brought from France," it must really not be allowed to proceed from English people, who have imbibed immense quantities of this poison with gusto, and who are always ready for more.

Is there not a little want of common sense in the whole accusation? M. Sarolea thinks that if English taste had not been debauched by M. Zola, we should be reading the really admirable productions of French genius. But should we? Is there any good reason to suppose that the persons in this country who pounced upon "La Bête Humaine" would, if their bookseller had refused to supply it, have ordered "Les Rôtisseries de la Reine Pédauque?" It is something like arguing that if people were forbidden by law to peruse Miss Marie Corelli, they would all read Pater instead. That M. Sarolea does not quite estimate the distinction between readers and readers is shown by what is really a very quaint lamentation of his, that persons buy "Germinal," and, consequently, neglect the works of

Guyau. The two things are like Monmouth and Mesopotamia. Thousands of people, if prevented from reading books like "Germinal," would read nothing at all; certainly they would not turn immediately to "Epicure et ses rapports avec les doctrines contemporaines." Scholars who make comparisons of this kind ---and it is often very tempting to make them-forget that the succulent novel or juicy romance does not tempt away students from sterner fare, but offers nutriment to an immense class. which would not take it at all in any finer form. Let M. Sarolea tilt at the windmill of the Naturalists if he pleases, and we wish for strength to his arm. But we really cannot sit down under his compliments to English highmindedness. If people read the novels of M. Zola in this country, it is partly because, with all their faults, these novels have fascinating qualities of force and picturesqueness, and it is partly because they like them. M. Sarolea says to his country, "You ought to be ashamed of setting tripe and onions before this austere gentleman!" But what if tripe and onions is the gentleman's favourite diet?

Any intellectual Jingoism on this score may receive a salutary check from examination of the new "Histoire de la Langue et de la Littérature Française" (Armand Colin), the two first volumes of which have just appeared under the direction of M. Gaston Paris. This work, the general editor of which is Professor Petit de Julleville, will extend to at least eight volumes, and will treat the subject from its origins to 1900. I confess that a feeling of envy steals over my mind as I turn the pages of this superb compilation, with its stately and exhaustive disquisitions by the special authorities in each department, its exquisite reproductions in colours from missals and manuscripts, its whole air of competent scholarship, aided and embellished by a perfect art of manufacture. It is useless to deny that at this moment, if we could produce in England an army of specialists capable of working together with this harmonious completeness, there is no publishing house in London that would undertake the costly task of bringing out such a series of volumes. The class of persons who read and buy books in France must be a much larger-or, at least, a

much less penurious-one than it is with us, where the rage for cheapness, for the classics of the world at a penny apiece, for rags and snippets of literature at the price of waste paper, is hastening our book-trade into bankruptcy.

Everyone who loves France and the French language should hasten to secure a copy of M. Petit de Julleville's book. The two volumes which have appeared are complete in themselves; they form a history of the subject from the earliest times down to 1500-in other words, of Mediæval French literature. The sections of the work are signed by the most competent names now to be found; for instance, the National Epos, as exemplified in the Chansons de Geste, is dealt with by M. Léon Gautier; M. Alfred Jeanroy treats of the Songs, M. Bédier of the Fabliaux, M. Ernest Langlois of the "Roman de la Rose." This is, unquestionably, the only mode in which the exhaustive history of a language or a literature can be treated to-day. The tendency of criticism must be more and more to subdivide the area which is under a single man's examination, more and more to concentrate the bibliographical microscope on a limited section of time. But, in order to obviate pedantry and a want of balance, it is necessary every now and then to recur to general principles and a large aspect of the subject, so that the more minutely the history of literature is subdivided the more care shall be taken to obtain just and brilliant summaries of the whole field on a small scale. This, also, is not neglected by M. Petit de Julleville, and he has secured from M. Gaston Paris, with his exquisite taste and encyclopædic knowledge, a general preface to the Mediaval volumes which is a miracle of synthetic tact.

In one respect, I suppose, this new History of French Literature is unique. It is the first compilation of the kind in which the Middle Ages have been, not tolerated or introduced with apologies, but given a prominent and equal rank at the feast. In old days it used to be understood that French literature opened with the age of Richelieu. After the investigations of Sainte-Beuve, the date was put a little further back, and it was with the Renaissance that the subject was supposed to begin. M. Bédier has observed, and without any trace of exaggeration, that a hundred years ago the