Produced by Ron Swanson Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. Edited by Edmund Gosse A History of FRENCH LITERATURE BY EDWARD DOWDEN D.LITT., LL.D. (DUB.), D.C.L. (OXON.), LL.D. (EDIN.) LL.D. (PRINCETON) PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN London WILLIAM HEINEMANN MCMXIV _First Edition_, 1897 _New Impressions_, 1899, 1904, 1907, 1911, 1914 _Copyright, London_ 1897, _by William Heinemann_ PREFACE French prose and French poetry had interested me during so many years that when Mr. Gosse invited me to write this book I knew that I was qualified in one particular--the love of my subject. Qualified in knowledge I was not, and could not be. No one can pretend to know the whole of a vast literature. He may have opened many books and turned many pages; he cannot have penetrated to the soul of all books from the _Song of Roland_ to _Toute la Lyre_. Without reaching its spirit, to read a book is little more than to amuse the eye with printed type. An adequate history of a great literature can be written only by collaboration. Professor Petit de Julleville, in the excellent _Histoire de la Langue et de la Litterature Francaise_, at present in process of publication, has his well-instructed specialist for each chapter. In this small volume I too, while constantly exercising my own judgment, have had my collaborators--the ablest and most learned students of French literature--who have written each a part of my book, while somehow it seems that I have written the whole. My collaborators are on my shelves. Without them I could not have accomplished my task; here I give them credit for their assistance. Some have written general histories of French literature; some have written histories of periods--the Middle Ages, the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth centuries; some have studied special literary fields or forms--the novel, the drama, tragedy, comedy, lyrical poetry, history, philosophy; many have written monographs on great authors; many have written short critical studies of books or groups of books. I have accepted from each a gift. But my assistants needed to be controlled; they brought me twenty thousand pages, and that was too much. Some were accurate in statement of fact, but lacked ideas; some had ideas, but disregarded accuracy of statement; some unjustly depreciated the seventeenth century, some the eighteenth. For my purposes their work had to be rewritten; and so it happens that this book is mine as well as theirs.