Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 15, 2025
During 1863-64 he produced his "History of English Literature," a work which, on account of Taine's uncompromising determinist views, raised a clerical storm in France. About 1871 Taine conceived the idea of his great life work, "Les Origines de la France Contemporaine," in which he proposed to trace the causes and effects of the revolution of 1789.
A useful comparison may be made between Taine's pages and the observations on American education recently made by M. Paul Bourget in his excellent book, "Outre-Mer." The gulf existing between truly democratic nations and those who have democracy in their speeches, but in no wise in their thoughts, is clearly brought out in this comparison.
It is an ungenerous trick of criticism to disparage good work by comparing it with better; but the reader can scarcely help contrasting M. Taine's overcrowded pages with the perfect assimilation, the pithy fulness, the pregnant meditation, of De Tocqueville's book on the same subject.
As for the others, they simply ferreted around among the old state papers, clipped them, and, following M. Taine's example, arranged, ticketed, and mounted their sensational gleanings in logical sequence, rejecting, of course, everything that did not advance the case they were trying to make. They denied themselves imagination and enthusiasm and claimed that they did not invent.
Czar, racing ahead, announced their coming to Yee Kee and the Chinaman met them as they entered the living-room. Telling them of Mrs. Taine's visit, he gave Aaron King the letter that she had left for him. As the artist, conscious of the scrutinizing gaze of his friend, read the closely written pages, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment and shame.
He had returned from Germany, where he had gone to prepare a treatise on Schiller, on account of the sudden death of Madame Taine's mother.
When he had finished, he faced the novelist's eyes steadily and, without speaking, deliberately and methodically tore Mrs. Taine's letter into tiny fragments. Dropping the scraps of paper into the waste basket, he dusted his hands together with a significant gesture and looked at his watch. "Her train left at four o'clock. It is now four-thirty."
Thus far M. Taine's brilliant antitheses the most fascinating and most dangerous model for a young writer. But we are indebted to him for a most suggestive study of the period. His astonishment, the astonishment of the Gallic mind, at what he finds, is a measure of the difference in the literature of the two races as an expression of their life.
To the dog who was moving toward the studio door, he added; "Here, Czar, you mustn't interrupt the lady. You're not in her class." They were moving away, when Mrs. Taine's voice came again, clearly and distinctly, through the window. "Oh, very well. I wish you joy of your possession. I promise you, though, that the world shall never hear of this portrait of your mistress.
When we attempt to reduce M. Taine's chapters to a body of propositions standing out in definite relief from one another, yet conveying a certain unity of interpretation, we soon feel how possible it is for an author to have literary clearness along with historic obscurity. In another respect we are inclined to question the felicity of M. Taine's method.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking