Book Description

Excerpt from A Short Introduction, to the Study of French Literature "Literature," say M. de Bonald, "is the expression of society." Napoleon I. could not separate literature from the life (as a whole) of peoples: their books he found "magnanimes quand le peuple est grand; vicieux, frivoles ou insenses quand il se corrompt et s'abaisse." Lamartine says of peoples: "Their memory begins with their literature." For Lemercier literature is the all-in-all, in which and from which and into which all is, comes, goes. Voltaire said: "les feuilles volantes sont la perte de la litterature." Guizot thinks that plastically and aesthetically modern letters are inferior to the old, superior as regards sentiments, profundity, and deep-set ideas. I have quoted these Frenchmen in the forefront of my Notes, as they give in their own incomparable way what we can only express as strangers, less well and, to the French, outlandishly. They have been cited, too, in their prose (original or translated). French prose, to many of us foreigners (i.e., non-French), is exquisite, nearly always. French verse generally pleases us less, often very much less. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.