The proceeding[197] was probably more logical than it seems. On the one hand the attack on religion had been overwhelmingly, and the attack on civil order very largely, literary in its own character and weapons. In the second, the everlasting _philosophe_-republican chatter about the Greeks and the Romans had more than reconstituted the old classical and “ancient” prejudice. Madame de Staël had not shared this latter; but she had failed to share it principally because of her perfectibilism, which had put down the merits of the ancients chiefly to their republican constitutions. Here were a whole host of things for Chateaubriand to deal with; and in every case the literary way was an obvious line of attack, as well as one intensely congenial to the new champion. He is no perfectibilist, of course; in fact, one of the appendices of the _Génie_ is a _Letter to Fontanes_[198] on the second edition of the _De la Littérature_, combating its views. But his championship of “modern” literature is based upon its Christianisation, and he compares famous ancient with famous modern poets on purpose to show first, how Christianity has enabled the latter to rise to nobler heights; secondly, how some at least of the best points of the ancients themselves are to be found in contact with Christian ethics. Like his feminine opponent, he has some not quite cleanly rags of classicism and Gallicism about him. A too sanguine hope may be dashed when it finds him talking about the “bad taste” of Dante, and the “defects” of his age. But Romanticism, no more than its far-off godmother Rome, was to be built in a day. [Sidenote: _Survey and examples._]