Produced by Paul Murray, Suzan Flanagan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net CRITICAL MISCELLANIES BY JOHN MORLEY VOL. III. Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century London MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1904 FRANCE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. M. Taine as a man of letters 261 Political preparation needed for the historian 262 M. Taine's conception of history 265 Its shortcomings 266 Chief thesis of his book 268 The expression of this thesis not felicitous 269 Its substance unsatisfactory 272 Cardinal reason for demurring to it 275 Adaptation of the literary teaching of the eighteenth century to the social crisis 277 Why that teaching prevailed in France while it withered in England 280 Social Elements. The French Court 282 The Nobility 283 M. Taine exaggerates the importance of literature 286 Historic doctrine could have saved nothing 287 Lesson of the American Revolution 288 Conclusion 289 FRANCE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.[1] The announcement that one of the most ingenious and accomplished men of letters in Europe was engaged upon a history of the French Revolution, raised some doubts among those who have thought most about the qualifications proper to the historian. M. Taine has the quality of the best type of a man of letters; he has the fine critical aptitude for seizing the secret of an author's or an artist's manner, for penetrating to dominant and central ideas, for marking the abstract and general under accidental forms in which they are concealed, for connecting the achievements of literature and art with facts of society and impulses of human character and life. He is the master of a style which, if it seems to lack the breadth, the firmness, the sustained and level strength of great writing, is yet always energetic, and fresh, and alive with that spontaneous reality and independence of interest which distinguishes the genuine writer from the mere weaver of sentences and the servile mechanic of the pen. The matter and form alike of M. Taine's best work--and we say best, for his work is by no means without degrees and inequalities of worth--prove that he has not shrunk from the toil and austerity of the student, from that scorn of delight and living of laborious days, by which only can men either get command of the art of just and finished expression, or gather to themselves much knowledge.