This volume contains in substance the first part of the course on
French Literature given in the Normal College.
Though adapted to the requirements of a special programme and to
certain conditions of space and time, it can with advantage be used
wherever an interest is taken or instruction given in French
Literature. It recommends itself particularly to American teachers and
students as a book, not imported into, but grown out of, the
class-room.
The biographical and critical notices are short, comprehensive, in the
clearest and simplest possible style. There is nothing elaborate in
them, nothing superfluous. Each of them is followed by a criticism on
the writer under consideration, by some one whose judgment is of some
account in the world of letters. It is both interesting and
instructive to know what good critics think of good writers.
The texts from the latter have been selected with great care. They are
not extracts more or less curtailed, which give an idea of a literary
work about as exactly as a stone offers the image of the monument
from which it is taken. Whenever it has been practicable, a whole work
is reviewed. The parts that are not indispensable are summarily
delineated or analyzed; the passages best calculated to illustrate the
author's manner and originality are given in full. Thus the reader
will find the whole plot of Corneille's tragedy "Horace," of Molière's
comedy "Les Femmes savantes," etc.
Following these texts will be found a collection of the author's
sententious and popular sayings. They afford a harvest of beautiful
quotations, which every one can turn to account.
Footnotes have been added only to explain what will not be found in an
ordinary dictionary.
It will be noticed that some of the text is printed with the lines
well apart, and some with them close together. The former portion is
for recitation and colloquial exercise, the portion in close print is
for reading and explaining. The selections are of sufficient variety
and excellence to commend themselves to all lovers of fine literature.