"To present Victor Hugo in a few pages is to carve a colossus on a cherry stone." Thus Professor Dowden prefaces his ten admirable pages on the great French poet; and with equal appropriateness we might assign the phrase as a motto for the whole undertaking. The subject is too vast to cope with adequately in the limits of a slender volume, the tendencies too complex; and the appeal from human interest, which since the days of Sainte-Beuve and Taine has formed such an important element in scientific criticism, had to be abandoned in favor of generalized views of literary conditions and tendencies necessarily abstract or impersonal in character. Yet, despite these evident restrictions which the requirements of his task imposed upon him, Professor Dowden has produced a work of extraordinary merit, a masterpiece indeed in its kind. If we were not assured that everything which the eminent critic writes is its own sufficient justification, we might be inclined to question the necessity of the present volume, in view of the painstaking and conscientious treatise that Mr. Saintsbury gave to the public some sixteen years ago, and which has deservedly remained until the present time the most reliable English text-book upon the subject of French literature. With no desire to disparage Mr. Saintsbury's scholarly contribution, the present work does in truth supply a need which the earlier book, in spite of its abundant merit, failed to satisfy. It is not harsh criticism to state that Mr. Saintsbury's volume, crammed as it is with a plethora of dates and titles, is at best a compendium for convenient reference, and consequently quite unreadable as a book. Professor Dowden, on the other hand, has conquered the dry-as-dust problem with admirable skill, and the charm of his diction and the easy sequence of his ideas lead the reader insensibly on to the close of a delightful volume. Nor is the book lacking in instructive value of a highly reliable kind, for, in addition to an intimate knowledge of French criticism, Professor Dowden is evidently familiar at first hand with all the more important works of which he treats, and not infrequently proffers fertile suggestions upon debated questions. Having avowed, therefore, a genuine admiration of Professor Dowden's book, will it be thought a graceless task if, with the proverbial perversity of critics, I endeavor to point out here and there questions of importance that may seem to have merited more attention than the author was perhaps able to afford to them within his restricted space?