In France itself the movement passed on into other phases.  Many early adherents of Hugo’s cenacle and entourage fell away from their allegiance and, like Sainte-Beuve and Musset, took up a critical or even antagonistic attitude.  Musset’s “Lettres de Dupuis et Cotonet” [40] turns the whole romantic contention into mockery.  Yet no work more fantastically and gracefully romantic, more Shaksperian in quality, was produced by any member of the school than Musset produced in such dramas as “Fantasio” and “Lorenzaccio.”

[1] It is scarcely necessary to say that no full-length picture of the French romantic movement is attempted in this chapter, but only such a sketch as should serve to illustrate its relation to English romanticism.  For the history of the movement, besides the authorities quoted or referred to in the text, I have relied principally upon the following:  Petit de Julleville:  “Histoire de la Litterature Francaise,” Tome vii., Paris, 1899.  Brunetiere:  “Manual of the History of French Literature” (authorized translation), New York, 1898.  L. Bertrand; “La Fin du Classicisme,” Paris, 1897.  Adolphe Jullien:  “Le Romantisme et L’Editeur Renduel,” Paris, 1897.  I have also read somewhat widely, though not exhaustively, in the writings of the French romantics themselves, including Hugo’s early poems and most of his dramas and romances; Nodier’s “Contes en prose et en verse “; nearly all of Musset’s works in prose and verse; ditto of Theophile Gautier’s; Stendhal’s “La Chartreuse de Parme,” “Le Rouge et le Noir,” “Racine et Shakespeare,” “Lord Byron en Italie,” etc.; Vigny’s “Chatterton,” “Cinq-Mars,” and many of his Scriptural poems; Balzac’s “Les Chouans”; Merimee’s “Chronique de Charles IX.,” and most of his “Nouvelles “; Chateaubriand’s “Le Genie du Christianisme”; some of Lamartine’s “Meditations”; most of George Sand’s novels, and a number of Dumas’; many of Sainte-Beuve’s critical writings; and the miscellanies of Gerard de Nerval (Labrunie).  Of many of these, of course, no direct use or mention is made in the present chapter.

[2] “Il a pour l’art du moyen age, un mepris voisin de la demence et de la frenesie. . . .  Voir le discours ou il propose de mutiler les statues des rois de la facade de Notre-Dame, pour en former un piedestal a la statue du peuple francais.”  Bertrand:  “La Fin du Classicisme,” pp. 302-3 and note.

[3] But see, for the Catholic reaction in France, the writings of Joseph de Maistre, especially “Du Pape” (1819).

[4] “Histoire du Romantisme” (1874).

[5] ibid., 210.

[6] Heine counted, in the Salon of 1831, more than thirty pictures inspired by Scott.

[7] Also “Le Roi Lear” (Salon of 1836) and “La Procession du Pape des Fous” (aquarelle) for Hugo’s “Notre-Dame de Paris.”

[8] Recall Schlegel’s saying that the genius of the classic drama was plastic and that of the romantic picturesque.