INTRODUCTION XV

stincts as well as the scholarly habits and the inexhaustible fund of book-knowledge of our author may be accounted for by this double heredity.

Young Thibault was sent by his pious parents to a school conducted by priests where he might receive an-education in conformity with the beliefs and:traditionsyof his people. It appears that at the Collège Stanislas from which he has given us in this book -some charming sketches he did-not shine as much as might be expected. The religious training had the effect of. making a sceptic out of the son of the Vendée monarchist. In his studies, too, he followed his fancy more than the lessons of his teachers and -his absentmindedness was their great complaint, M. Gréard addressing him in his speech before the French Academy pictured him in these words: « Vous étiez un de ces élèves, tourment et joie du maître, qui flânent autour des devoirs, se dérobent à l’explication commune et, suivant la fantaisie à laquelle elle a donné l'éveil, se font eux-mêmes en dedans la leçon qui leur plaît. »

Many times, he himself tells us, the teacher would admonish him: « Monsieur Pierre Nozière, vous vous occupez de choses étrangères à la classe.» The young idler, however, did not lose all the benefit of the lesson ; he enjoyed, in his own way, the authors that were read and commented on; they awakened in him those feelings of genuine enthusiasm which he has so admirably expressed in the chapter entitled « Humanities», and which gave him a discipline of which his whole work testifies. Strange to say, however, . he

xXvi INTRODUCTION

was not then very highly thought of by his teachers. While they approved of his Latin orations, to which students of that time were wont to apply themselves, in French theme-writing “he lacked taste,” so his professor said.

And still his bent was to write, and the only career that seemed open to the young man for whoïh books were everything, was to write books. Fortunâtely he did not have to live by his pen, for his pen became really productive only late in his life.! He had the luck soon to find one of those positions of librarian in a public library so anxiously sought after by young men of letters to-day who imagine that they cannot live away from the artistic atmosphere and literary surroundings of Paris Nobody could love Paris more than the man who once wrote: “Je suis Parisien de toute mon âme et de toute ma chair; de Paris je connais tous les pavés, j'adore toutes les pierres ; ” nobody, on the other hand, could be better fitted for the work of a library than the son of the bookseller of the “ quais,” who was raised among books, who always was a passionate bookworm and whom some one who knew him well defined as “a smiling Benedictine.” ?

-Meanwhile, he lived the life of the young “littérateurs” of the Latin Quarter who, grouped into small coteries, gather in the cafés around the Odéor,

1He was for a time a reader for the famous publisher Lemerre; and he became in 1876 librarian of the Senate where ie was the colleague of Leconte de Lisle.

3$ee Anatole France, La Vie Littéraire ; préface.

INTRODUCTION xvii

where they recite the poems of their favorite authors and discuss with the spontaneity and originality of youths on topics of art and literature. Anatole France belonged to the Parnassian group and his master was the magnificent artist of French verse, the late Leconte de Lisle, who shared at that time with Victor Hugo the admiration of the young generation,

Curiously enough most of the successful novelists and prose writers of to-day, Daudet, Maupassant, Paul Bourget, began their career by writing poetry. Anatole France is no exception to the rule. Omitting some journalistic work, some literary essays on his favorite authors such as Alfred de Vigny (1868) and several introductions to the classics which usually constitute the pastime of pedagogues rather than Of artists, his first original book was one of poems in which the influence of his models can be easily detected. They reveal the young man who had felt the charm, was still under the spell of Greek art and Greek thought, and was to be forever a faithful devotee of Hellenism. Such delicate works as Poèmes. dorés (1873) oy les Noces corinthienries (1876) were, not however to reach the general public.

‘Anatole, France bad « to wait uetih 1881 when 2) bu more: HA à ‘mere name MAR remem< bered for: having been noticed on the title pages of class books, or on small volumes of verse published by Lemerre, This. stqry, the: freshness aid. oripiuality oËwbicliwas a revelationt, was crowned by the

xviii INTRODUCTION

Frénch Academy, and then began Anatole France’s activé career. In 1885 appeared % Livre dé mon. Ami in-which he gives, as we have said, his own biography under the pretext of publishing the recollections'of “a friend.” The success was very great. More than fifty-six editions of this masterpiece have been printéd up to this day. He was, however, a slow, diffident, and if we were to believe him, a. “lazy” writer. But under the strong pressure of both publishers and public he began presently to: Rs a more stéady and fertile crop. ji

“As critic of a very influential French paper, Ze. Temps, he came in contact with a large constituency: to whomhe brought every week his impressions and: commentaries on the literary output of the day with a free suggestiveness and a nonchalance. that the objective critics of the Brunetière type accused of frivolity and branded as ‘impressionism;,” but which His: réadets relished as a treat.: These volumes:hé gâthered.in a series known as /4.: Wie-:littéraire, (1888-92). : His literary activity seeméd to: grow. stronger as he became older, and in the nineties his caréér reached its climax. be S Ne

In 1893 /a Rôtisserie: de la Reine : PSE A Opinions" de Jérôme .Coisnard, and :tbe.: ovels: -that followed, all of:the same type: with their weird.-historical.setting, archaic flavor, and:their: mixture. of etuditiof, humor, mocking irreverence and bold: thought, expressed with such felicity the state of mind of his contemporaries on all the great problems of. life. that’ thé. gêéntle-scéptic ‘and amiable icbnoclast