In 1825 Stendhal plunging vigorously into the controversy between the Classicists and the Romanticists, published his celebrated pamphlet, _Racine and Shakespeare_, in which he vindicated with successful crispness the claims of live verse against stereotyped couplets and of modern analysis against historical tradition. His next work was the _Life of Rossini_, whom he had known personally in Milan, while in 1827 he published his first novel _Armance_, which, while not equal to the author's greatest work, give none the less good promise of that analytical dash which he was subsequently to manifest. After _Armance_ come the well-known _Promenades Rome_, while the Stendhalian masterpiece _Le Rouge et Le Noir_ was presented in 1830 to an unappreciative public. Enthusiasm for this book is the infallible test of your true Stendhalian. Some critics may prefer, possibly, the more Jamesian delicacy of _Armance_, and others fortified by the example of Goethe may avow their predilection for _The Chartreuse de Parme_ with all the _jeune premier_ charm of its amiable hero. But in our view no book by Stendhal is capable of giving the reader such intellectual thrills as that work which has been adjudged to be his greatest by Balzac, by Taine, by Bourget. Certainly no other book by Stendhal than that which has conjured up _Rougistes_ in all countries in Europe has been the object of a cult in itself. We doubt, moreover, if there is any other modern book whether by Stendhal or any one else, which has actually been learnt by heart by its devotees, who, if we may borrow the story told by M. Paul Bourget, are accustomed to challenge the authenticity of each other's knowledge by starting off with some random passage only to find it immediately taken up, as though the book had been the very Bible itself.