M. Paul Bourget.

The class in French 7 yesterday had the rare pleasure of hearing the eminent French author and critic, M. Paul Bourget. M. Bourget is a frequent contributor to the Revue des Deux Mondes and to the Nouvelle Revue. It was in the former publication that he made his debut as a critic in 1883. Though he is something of a novelist, it is especially as a critic that he is famous.

The members of the course found an especial interest in his remarks since M. Bourget's literary criticisms cover a large part of that period of French literature to which the course is devoted. As the class is at present making a study of Hugo, he began by referring to him.

Hugo, he said, tried to unite the corporeal and the spiritual, the real and the ideal. He took facts and in his attempts to make them appear picturesque and poetic he exaggerated grossly. It was this that offended the taste of M. Taine. He, in his characteristic love for accuracy and truth, could not but depreciate such a method.

Hugo was essentially a lyric poet and he was completely wrapped up in the romantic movement. He did not see that a scientific movement was making itself felt in literature. Those who did see the growth of this movement feared that its effect on poetry would be fatal. They believed that poetic sentiment and expression were incompatible with scientific accuracy. But their fears were not well grounded; for there sprang up a new school of poetry which proved that by reconciling these ideas to each other a better poetry would be produced.

As the chief representatives of this school M. Bourget named M. Leconte de Lisle and M Sully-Prudhomme. Both are scientists as well as poets. M. Leconte de Lisle, the greatest of contemporaneous French poets, is a poet of nature. Actuated at once by the greatest regard for truth, and desire for poetic expression, he succeeds in picturing nature in language both accurate and poetic. M. Sully-Prudhomme produced psychological studies of character which, though they are true to life, show a depth of power and feeling equal to that of the romanticist. The school of which these men are the leaders is a living proof that the scientific movement on French poetry has been a good one.