physiognomy of the big Carthusian Carmelite, the furtive mien of the young page with parti-coloured pantaloons. . . .  He excelled also in setting the persons of poem, drama, or romance in ornamented frames like the Gothic shrines with triple colonettes, arches, canopied and bracketed niches, with statuettes, figurines, emblematic animals, male and female saints on a background of gold.  He entered so deeply into the sentiment of the old Gothic imagery that he could make a Lady of the Pillar in a brocade dalmatica, a Mater Dolorosa with the seven swords in her breast, a St. Christopher with the child Jesus on his shoulder and leaning on a palm tree, worthy to serve as types to the Byzantine painters of Epinal. . . .  Nothing resembled less the clock face and troubadour Middle Age which flourished about 1825.  It is one of the main services of the romantic school to have thoroughly disembarrassed art from this.”  Gautier describes also a manuscript piece of Nerval, for which he furnished a prologue, and which was an imitation of one of the Diableries, or popular farces of the Middle Ages, in which the devil was introduced.  It contained a piece within the piece, in the fashion of an old mystery play, with scenery consisting of the mouth of hell, painted red and surmounted by a blue paradise starred with gold.  An angel came down to play at dice with the devil for souls.  In his excess of zeal, the angel cheated and the devil grew angry and called him a “big booby, a celestial fowl,” and threatened to pull his feathers out ("Le Prince des Sots").

In France, as in England and Germany, the romantic revival promoted and accompanied works of erudition like Raynouard’s researches in Provencal and old French philology and the poetry of the troubadours (1816); Creuze de Lesser’s “Chevaliers de la Table Ronde”; Marchangy’s “La Gaule Poetique.”  History took new impulse from that sens du passe which romanticism did so much to awaken.  Augustin Thierry’s obligations to Scott have already been noticed.  It was the war chant of the Prankish warriors in Chateaubriand’s “Les Martyrs”—­

  “Pharamond!  Pharamond! nous avons combattu avec l’epee”—­

which first excited his historical imagination and started him upon the studies which issued in the “Recits Merovingiens” and the “Conquete d’Angleterre.”  Barante’s “Ducs de Bourgogne” (1814-28) confessedly owes much of its inception to Scott.  Michaud’s “History of the Crusades” (1811-22) and the “History of France” (1833-67) by that most romantic of historians, Michelet, may also be credited to the romantic movement.  The end of the movement, as a definite period in the history of French literature, is commonly dated from the failure upon the stage of Victor Hugo’s “Les Burgraves” in 1843.  The immediate influence of the French romantic school upon English poetry or prose was slight.  Like the German school, it came too late.  The first generation of English romantics was drawing to its close.  Scott died two years after “Hernani” stormed the French theatre.  Two years later still died Coleridge, long since fallen silent—­as a poet—­and always deaf to Gallic charming.  We shall find the first impress of French romance among younger men and in the latter half century.