His
treatment of Chateaubriand, Benjamin Constant, Madame de Stael, Oberman,
Madame de Kruedener, and all the queer saints and scribbling sinners of
that period is as entertaining as it is instructive. It gives one the
spiritual complexion of the period in clear lines and vivid colors,
which can never be forgotten. Nearly all that makes France France is to
be found in these volumes--its wit, its frivolity, its bright daylight
sense, contrasting so strikingly with the moonshiny mysticism of German
romanticism. And yet France has its romanticism too, which finds vent in
a supercredulous religiosity, in a pictorial sentimentalized
Christianity, such as we encounter in Chateaubriand's "Genie du
Christianisme" and "Les Martyrs." It is with literary phenomena of this
order that "The Reaction in France" particularly deals.
The fourth course of lectures, entitled "Byron and his Group," though no
less entertaining than the rest, appears to me less satisfactory. It is
a clever presentation of Byron's case against the British public; but
the case of the British against Byron is inadequately presented.
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