Produced by Peter Vachuska, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net =_THE AFTER-SCHOOL SERIES._= CLASSIC FRENCH COURSE IN ENGLISH. BY WILLIAM CLEAVER WILKINSON. NEW YORK: CHAUTAUQUA PRESS, C. L. S. C. DEPARTMENT, 805 BROADWAY. 1886. COPYRIGHT, 1886, BY PHILLIPS & HUNT. _OTHER VOLUMES IN THE AFTER-SCHOOL SERIES_ BY THE SAME AUTHOR. *PREPARATORY GREEK COURSE IN ENGLISH $1.00 **PREPARATORY LATIN COURSE IN ENGLISH 1.00 *** COLLEGE GREEK COURSE IN ENGLISH 1.00 ****COLLEGE LATIN COURSE IN ENGLISH 1.00 _The required books of the C. L. S. C. are recommended by a Council of six. It must, however, be understood that recommendation does not involve an approval by the Council, or by any member of it, of every principle or doctrine contained in the book recommended._ ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY RAND, AVERY, & COMPANY. BOSTON. PREFACE. The preparation of the present volume proposed to the author a task more difficult far than that undertaken in any one of the four preceding volumes of the group, THE AFTER-SCHOOL SERIES, to which it belongs. Those volumes dealt with literatures limited and finished: this volume deals with a literature indefinitely vast in extent, and still in vital process of growth. The selection of material to be used was, in the case of the earlier volumes, virtually made for the author beforehand, in a manner greatly to ease his sense of responsibility for the exercise of individual judgment and taste. Long prescription, joined to the winnowing effect of wear and waste through time and chance, had left little doubt what works of what writers, Greek and Roman, best deserved now to be shown to the general reader. Besides this, the prevalent custom of the schools of classical learning could then wisely be taken as a clew of guidance to be implicitly followed, whatever might be the path through which it should lead. There is here no similar avoidance of responsibility possible; for the schools have not established a custom, and French literature is a living body, from which no important members have ever yet been rent by the ravages of time. The greater difficulty seen thus to inhere already in the nature itself of the task proposed for accomplishment, was gravely increased by the much more severe compression deemed to be in the present instance desirable. The room placed at the author's disposal for a display of French literature was less than half the room allowed him for the display of either the Greek or the Latin.