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toward his native tongue, we have only to contrast it with the attitude of a literary sans-culotte like Victor Hugo, who boasts that he has dealt like a Robespierre with the French vocabulary and "put a red liberty cap on the old Dictionary."

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In spite of the precept and example of Hugo and most of the men of letters of his time, Renan persisted to the end in thinking that sobriety and restraint and regard for traditional good taste are literary virtues. As a result, his style is so uniformly perfect that it rarely if ever falls short, save in so far as it images the shortcomings of his character and philosophy. The masculine elements do not predominate in his character, and his style is therefore without the virile ring that we find in the prose of a Pascal. There is not enough in his philosophy to exalt him above himself, so that his pages do not often have the communicative warmth that can come only from a vital conviction. If, instead of trying his work by these severe standards, we compare it with other recent achievement in France or elsewhere, we can hardly fail to recognize its rare distinction. Our total judgment of Renan may be summed up by saying that, though he is a great intelligence, he has few of the qualities of a great philosopher, but many of the qualities of a great historian, and nearly all the qualities of a great artist. He may be confidently recommended to students as one of the most consummate masters of prose style in a language that easily surpasses in the general excellence of its prose all other modern literatures.

1 Contemplations, I., p. 22.

SOUVENIRS

D'ENFANCE ET DE JEUNESSE

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III. LE PETIT SÉMINAIRE SAINT-NICOLAS DU CHARDONNET

IV. LE SÉMINAIRE D'Issy

V. LE SÉMINAIRE SAINT-SULPICE.

VI. PREMIERS PAS HORS DE SAINT-SULPICE

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