IV
If any still doubt the sincerity of the worship which is offered
Shakespeare in France, I would direct the sceptic's attention to a
pathetically simple tribute which was paid to the dramatist by a
French student in the first year of the last century, when England and
France were in the grip of the Napoleonic War. It was then that a
young Frenchman proved beyond cavil by an ingenuous confession that
the English poet, in spite of the racial differences of aesthetic
sentiment, could touch a French heart more deeply than any French or
classical author. In 1801 there was published at Besancon, "de
l'imprimerie de Metoyer," a very thin volume in small octavo, under
fifty pages in length, entitled, _Pensees de Shakespeare, Extraites de
ses Ouvrages_. No compiler's name is mentioned, but there is no doubt
that the book was from the pen of a precocious native of Besancon,
Charles Nodier, who was in later life to gain distinction as a
bibliographer and writer of romance.
This forgotten volume, of which no more than twenty-five copies were
printed, and only two or three of these seem to survive, has escaped
the notice of M. Jusserand. No copy of it is in the British Museum,
or in La Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal, with which the author, Nodier, was
long honourably associated as librarian.
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