if they are to yield a different kind of truth, such as the spiritual nature of literature demands. Investigation must turn to the reason of things, and leave the disparate facts more on one side as an inferior matter; and the reason of things is found in the laws of the human soul, of which the world as known to us is a creation, a flowering forth, and most brilliantly so in the sphere of literature, of art, of all that is involved in our study. Sainte Beuve, as a writer, was a psychologist; he set forth the psychology of individual writers and presented them as they were in the soul. A national historian of literature might thus set forth race-psychology, a world-historian might arrive at human psychology in its elemental form. Though in this intellectual age the principle of relativity reigns supreme, the search for the absolute is still the burden of man's fate; the philosophic, poetic, creative mind cannot do other than follow on the old quest, however placidly the empiric, historical, receptive mind reposes in the relative; and although it is only the rarer mind that can so employ itself, the unaccomplished task for the student of Comparative Literature lies in the direction of the psychology of the races that have produced literature, and in a strict sense of their metaphysics.

It appears to me and I speak with great modesty-that the study of forms should result in a canon of criticism, which would mean a new and greater classicism, having in its own evolution refining and ennobling influences upon the work of original genius and also upon public taste as turned to the masters of the past; and that the study of themes should

reveal temperamentally, as form does structurally, the nature of the soul, and it is in temperament, in moods, that romanticism, which is the life of all literature, has its dwelling-place. To disclose the necessary forms, the vital moods of the beautiful soul is the far goal of our effort,—to help in this, in the bringing of those spiritual unities in which human destiny is accomplished. With such thoughts in mind it may perhaps seem to some of us that the subject of international influences is not the main road of our travel, but that the isolated phenomena of national literatures in themselves may offer more fruitful matter, because of their purity and in proportion to it; and to such the approaching exploitation of the old literatures of the Orient, which is the next great event in the literary history of the world, will afford much comfort for the very reason that they are free from our past, and will enrich in unsuspected ways our material for investigation.

Such, briefly stated, is the field occupied and unoccupied of Comparative Literature as it appears on the publication of this Journal. We desire to establish here a free exchange for the thought of all scholars interested in these studies in any of their many phases. We institute no reform; we are pledged to no single method of scholarship or kind of teaching. We gladly welcome all, at home and abroad, who are willing to contribute to the common stock of knowledge. Time only can determine what direction the study will finally take. For ourselves, we are the least of the company gathered about us,

which is a guild of scholars impanelled from all nations, co-operating in the spirit of that great intellectual state I began by speaking of; and may the good will, at least, of all true scholars go with us as we pass to our trial.

G. E. W.

Huguenot Thought in England

A Study of the Political Teachings of the Huguenots in England During the Seventeenth Century

F

By Ch. Bastide

Adjunct Professor in the Lycée at Beauvais

Part I

ROM a literary point of view the intercourse between England and France in the period immediately preceding and following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes has been minutely studied by M. Texte' and M. Jusserand,* both coming after M. Sayous.' We propose, in this paper, while tracing the progress of political speculation among the Huguenots, to discover to what extent they influenced English thought. The field of research is extensive: a mass of information on the subject lies scattered in books some of which are scarce, and the numerous manuscript sources appear to have been imperfectly explored. We can

I

2

7. 7. Rousseau et le Cosmopolitisme littéraire. Paris, 1895.

Shakespeare en France sous l'ancien Régime. Paris, 1898.

3 Littérature Française à l'étranger. 2 vols. Genève, 1853. 4 Our best thanks are due in this work to M. Mortreuil of the Paris National Library, to M. N. Weiss, the learned librarian of the Société du Protestantisme Français, and the officials of the Bodleian Library.

not hope to more than sketch the general outline of a profoundly interesting subject.

From the dawn of the Reformation, different reasons impelled the Huguenots to look towards England. Besides the natural link formed by community of thought in a matter that then pervaded life far more than it does to-day, i.e., religious belief, political necessities led the Huguenots to seek the friendship of England. Having the same household gods, the Huguenots and the English loved the same mystical Fatherland, which dangers, ambitions, and interests shared in common invested with stern reality. As the Huguenots increased, they grew from a religious sect into a party in the state, which, seeking alliances abroad, sent envoys to the foreign courts. According also to the vicissitudes of their fortunes, streams of Huguenot refugees would from time to time flow towards the neighbouring countries likely to welcome them. Thus were the Huguenots from the first represented in England not only by their noblemen, but by their very aristocracy.

A whole book might be written on the influence of Calvin upon England, both within and without the church. To a student of comparative literature, if the word be understood in the larger sense of intercommunication of thought among nations, the part played by Calvin in the early framing of the institutions of the English Reformation is a matter not too unimportant to be overlooked.

According to M. de Schickler,' the first mention of Huguenot refugees in England is under the reign

Les Eglises du Refuge en Angleterre. [2 vols. Paris. 1892.] I. 5.