VI INTRODUCTION

of manuscript documents. We no longer turn to the pages of Michelet in the hope of finding the results of accurate research. Nor is this to be expected from a man of his génération. On the other hand, he succeeds in giving the reader a gorgeous and vivid picture of the various epochs, particularly the Middle Ages, through which he leads him. Scènes burst upon the gaze in ail the brilliancy and color of real life, characters move and act as though restored by a " résurrection " (his own expression) to a new existence. Picturesqueness, dash, vigor, — ail those epithets and many others are applicable to Michelet, the Romantic prose-poet of history.

At the same time the judicious reader grieves over a lurking feeling that there is in Michelet less truth than fiction. It is not so much because he is often careless of facts, but he sees everything through the refraction of his own personality The excessive " Sympathy " of his early volumes gives way to an exaggerated Antipathy in the later ones. He takes passionate dislikes for individuals, groups of men or societies, and from that moment they hâve no redeeming quality, find no mercy in his sight. He is overfond, too, of taking one incident or trait in a man's career and deducing from it the whole life's action, alluding to it with incessant itération, until the reader, instead of being convinced, is put on his guard. But Michelet is not always wrong, and some vivid generalizations, some striking catch-words and phrases compensate for much that one is inclined to criticise.

As for Michelet's style — quel style, mes amis! as one of Anatole France's characters says of it. It is

INTRODUCTION Vil

ebullient, volcanic, epileptic. Ejaculations and linguistic spasms are trifles to him. The abruptness of his language at times reminds one of two other historians, Tacitus and Carlyle. But though he lacks the majestic and massive force of the Roman pessimist, he is fortunately free from the verbal concoctions of Carlyle's " nephelegeretous caliginosity." Michelet is not, therefore, always seeking after new words as well as untried ways of speech. Moreover, the abruptness of his language is often merely due to a very harmless and ingenuous trick of inversion, or of suppressing the finite verb of the clause, a verb which it is easy to supply. The style is therefore not difficult or complicated, and when taken in the small doses of a brief volume of extracts, is often stimulating. In fact, Michelet's position as a great character and influence in modem French literature, together with the vigor and splendor of his writings, the abundance of his ideas, his wonderful imagination, make him one of those authors with whom it is important to become acquainted at an early period in the study of French.