A SHORT ATSTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE.t THE death last year
of Mr. W. H. Hudson meant a real loss to English education. He was one of the best known and most successful of University Extension lecturers, a worthy follower of Mr. Murton Collins ; a true st dent, absorbed in his work, and therefore doing it thoroughly well ; thinking more of hie subject than of his hearers, which after all is the secret of being worth hearing or reading, either as writer, lecturer, or preacher. We may add that he had imagination, which saves routine work; such as his must necessarily have been, from the danger of hidebound dryness. And he had the true critical student's power of looking at literature as a whole, and subjecting his personal preferences to the laws of sequence and proportion which rule in these matters, at least for a teacher and for a learner of foundations and technicalities.
This very useful and excellent little book represents an amount of learning and of taste far beyond what one generally expects from a manual of any literature. Of necessity it is severely condensed ; for Mr. Hudson began his study with the early Middle Ages, and the last name mentioned is that of M. Henry Bordeaux : and all this within the limits of three hundred pager of largish type. But it is only doing the book justice to say that no name of eminence or of real interest is left out. Here and there one might wish for a fuller critical appreciation ; in the ease of Villon, for instance, or Ronsard. Either of these enchanting poets deserves more space than is granted him here ; certainly more than Regnier or Boileau, Lamartine or Alfred de Vigny ; even considering the greater difficulties one or the other may present to University Extehsion students. These would only find themselves the better for a few hours spent with Ronsard in the exquisite Nature-world on the banks of the Loir to which his lovely sonnets and lyrics would introduce them• The worthier among them would discover much more in Ronsard's poetry than " tenderness of feeling and charm of versification."
But we quite acknowledge that a fuller appreciation, such as Mr. Hudson was capable of giving and would no doubt have been glad to give, was strictly outside the plan of such a book as this ; a book specially intended, as the author explained in his Preface, for " systematic study " by English readers. For their sakes we hope and expect that the book will lead them deeper into the world of French literature, already to a growing number the most fascinating of worlds.
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