LITTÉRATURE FRANÇAISE DEUXIÈME ANNÉE DIX-HUITIÈME ET DIX-NEUVIÈME SIÈCLE PAR E. AUBERT Officier d'Académie; Auteur des Echos et Reflets, des Elans et NEW YORK 58890174 HARVARD Copyright, 1897, BY HENRY HOLT & CO. ROBERT DRUMMOND, ELECTROTYPER AND PRINTER, NEW YORK A la mémoire vénérée de M. William Wood, l'ami éprouvé de l'enseignement à tous les degrés, ce volume est affectueusement dédié par l'auteur. PREFACE. THIS Volume continues and completes, with the study of the writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the course of French Literature pursued in the Normal College. Like the former volume it grew and developed in the classroom; for this reason it answers certain local requirements better than a superior work of foreign origin could do. It was my intention to adopt the same plan I followed in the treatment of the seventeenth century. I would have liked to supplement each biographical sketch with the judgments of standard critics, and with a full analysis of one of the author's best works. This seems to me the fairest proceeding in regard to the latter, and the most profitable and attractive for students; but the requirements and size of the book did not allow it. There will be found in it a series of short notices on the writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the eighteenth four figures stand out above all others; they have the place of honor. After them come fourteen of the less eminent writers, whose works have a real value or have had a popularity more or less deserved. The brief notices devoted to them are followed by a few remarks on the action of the French Revolution. The nineteenth century is represented by sixteen writers of acknowledged superiority in the different walks of literature, poetry, fiction, history, philosophy, |