a great deal of attention since Buckle first em-
phasized its importance, more than half a cen-
tury ago. The circumstances by which it was
brought about, the progress of the English influ-
ence, and the manner in which it affected the
most eminent minds in France during the philo-
sophic age, are questions which had been barely
touched upon by historians of French literature,
like Villemain and Barante, in the first half of
the nineteenth century. Within the last sixty
years they have been brought into clearer light,
by Buckle himself, in his History of English
Civilization, and by Lord Morley, in his admir-
able studies on the French Philosophers, Rous-
seau ( 1873), Voltaire ( 1874), and Diderot and
the Encyclopœdists ( 1878); in France, by
Joseph Texte, in his work on Jean-Jacques
Rousseau et les origines du cosmopolitisme
littéraire ( 1895), and by M. J. J. Jusserand,
in his Shakespeare en France sous l'ancien
régime ( 1898), -- two books teeming with in-
formation for the student of comparative lit-
erature.

Nor has the detail of the influences exerted
in France by English writers, and of the in-

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