Excerpt from A History of French Literature French prose and French poetry had interested me during so many years that when Mr. Gosse invited me to write this book I knew that I was qualified in one particular - the love of my subject. Qualified in know ledge I was not, and could not be. NO one can pretend to know the whole Of a vast literature. He may have opened many books and turned many pages he cannot have penetrated to the soul of all books from the Song of Roland to Toute [a Lyre. Without reaching its spirit, to read a book is little more than to amuse the eye with printed type. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.