The reaction of disparagement, which is now the critical vogue as to Chateaubriand's personal and literary value, meets occasional stout challenge from redoubtable voices. Mr. Matthew Arnold, for instance, protests against it, triumphantly citing out of the author for whom he stands up what certainly would read like the utterance of a mind both large and noble, could one rid one's self of the feeling that Chateaubriand in writing it had his own case chiefly in view, as follows: It is a dangerous mistake, sanctioned, like so many other dangerous mistakes, by Voltaire, to suppose that the best works of imagination are those which draw the most tears.... The true tears are those which are called forth by the beauty of poetry; there must be as much admiration in them as sorrow. The author of the foregoing, assuredly, excites with his pathos quite as much admiration as sorrow. Chateaubriand forms an essential link in the chain of literary history for France. He constitutes almost the sole representative of French literature for the period of the First Empire, so-called--that is, the time of the supreme ascendency of Napoleon Bonaparte. Madame de Stael alone needs to be named as his rival and peer. Chateaubriand, in his day--and his day was a long one, for he outlived the empire, the restoration, and the reign of Louis Philippe--was well-nigh an equal power with Napoleon himself. In his own opinion, he was fully such; for his self-complacency was unbounded. Never in the history of letters did it twice happen to an author to be better served by opportunity than in two cases was Chateaubriand. The Encyclopaedists, with Voltaire and Rousseau, had had their hour, and a reaction had set in, when Chateaubriand's "Genius of Christianity" appeared. It was the exact moment for such a book. It seemed to create the reactionary movement with which it coincided, and it rendered its author not merely famous, but powerful. Napoleon saw his account in making use of a writer who had the secret of such popularity. Besides, the Napoleonic sagacity was equal to perceiving that return to religious belief was needful for France. Napoleon made overtures to Chateaubriand, which Chateaubriand accepted. The author took office at the gift of the dictator.