The Press. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1908. FRANCO-BRITISH LITERARY COURTESIES.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 13231, 26 September 1908, Page 8

The Press. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1908. FRANCO-BRITISH LITERARY COURTESIES.

Tho lamentable death of Professor Churton Collins invests with special interest his share in the exchange of literary courtesies, which has been one of the concomitants of the Exhibition and the entente cordiale. A few months ago M. Yves divot, a writer well-known for his admiration of England, delivered before the "Alliance Franco-Britan-. nique" a lecture on the literary indebtedness of France to England, which was afterwards published in the "Fortnightly Review." Not to bo outdone !by this generous champion, English scholars, who wore deeply conscious of their indebtedness to French culture, put up one of the most accomplished of their number to state the case from the other side, and exhibit tho obligations of English literature to French from the Middlo Ages onwards. The lecture of Professor Collins was delivered before the same body, and subsequently published in the same review. Tho result of this pleasing emulation is that we have both sides of tho question presented, without any of tho selfishness and national vanity which so often mar even literary patriotism. The contrast in stylo between the two discourses fairly illustrates the contrasted prose methods of tho respective nations. The speech of the Frenchman is lucid and orderly, dealing rather with tendencies than with individual instances. That of the Englishman is crammed with learning, overloaded with names, and somewhat cumbrous and confused in arrangement. Moreover, it is marred by a flavour of uncritical exaggeration, and one cannot resist a suspicion that the thing is being overdone. Wo can iraa_ine Frenchmen being embarrassed by so wholesale an acknowledgment, lacking, as it is, in tbe grace and finesse which mark their own literary manifestoes. However, Professor Collins's articlo is a storehouse of valuable reference for thoso who care to pursue the subject further. In reading it ono realises with intensified'regret the loss which tho study of' literature has sustained by his untimely death. In the Middlo Ages the intercourse between France and England was "much closer than it has ever been since. But at this period the literary influence was all on one side. There was an English vernacular literature, endowed with a fair amount of vitality, but it was swamped by Chaucer, who blended native and foreign elements in a mixture, in which tho latter largely predominated. It is curious, wo may remark by the way, that just whilo this discussion is going on thero has appeared in France a prose translation of the "Canterbury Talcs." Durin_ tho centuries' preceding the Rennaissanco, Franco not only exercised a direct influence on English literature, but was also tho channel through which other Continental influences gained access to tho English mind. During the sixteenth century Italian influence began to assert itself, and it certainly predominated in the time of Shakespeare. Professor Collins, in- his anxiety to find French everywhere, hardly allows enough weight to this practical usurpation of the place of France by Italy. But tho chief factor in this undermining of French literary influence was not tho substitution for it of another foreign influence, but the development of n genuine national literary spirit. The English languago was finding its strength, as is well illustrated by tho fact that the proportion of purely English words in Shakespeare is ninety per cent, of the whole, whilo in the authorised version of the Bible it is ninety-four per cent. By way of illustrating French influence on Shakespeare, Professor Collins lays stress on tho fact that tho translation of Plutarch, on which the Roman plays were based, was suggested by the French version of Amyot. This is a poor kind of special pleading. So long ns Shakespeare got his story, it made little difference to him what the literary history of his version was. Tho transmutation into splendid drama was all his own; The real French influence on Shakespeare, as on Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, and many others, was Montaicne.

The influence, of tho French classical drama of the seventeenth century was great in England, while in Germany it was enormous. But it was in the eighteenth century that tho characteristics of French literary expression wero most deeply impressed on the English mind. Jt was the age of precision, finish, sanity, absence of exaggeration, and even of enthusiasm. These were essentially French qualities. Many of our literary forms of that period were derived from, or" modified by, French models. Letter-writing became a fine art. Memoirs acquired refinement and grace. Satire and criticism were based professedly on classical models, but were coloured by the influence of French writers, who were masters in these departments. There were frequent interchanges of visits between the leading spirits of the two countries. Then came the beginnings of the modern

Romantic movement. It had its rise, roughly speaking, contemporaneously in both countries, but if any external event coloured it more than another, it was the French Revolution. We cannot even attempt to quote, individual instances of tho literary inter-actions of that period. As the nineteenth century developed, each nation studied tho other with an ever-deepening interest. England reigned supremo in poetry, whilo in prose France set standards for the whole of Europe. To mention one department only, in philosophical history sho produced a number of writers— Guizot, de Tocqueville, Tame, Michelet, Renan—who still continuo to exercise a profound influence on our own historians. Here we must stop. England and Franco have much to learn from each other, and nothing but good can come from the cultivation of closer and more cordial relations between them.