ANATOLE FRANCE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1342, 20 January 1912, Page 9

ANATOLE FRANCE.

The literary event of the season has •come, curiously enough, from the law courts (writes the Paris correspondent of the New lork "Evening Post"). Twenty«even year., ago, tho writer who signs Anatole/ I'ranee furnished the publisher ■Lemerro with a brief history of France. JJeitjcr tho writer nor hi; name was then what it has since become; and tho book may bo safely regarded as one of the later tasks of his "hack" period." The publisher never brought out the volume; but now—under tho shadow of a great mamo—llo proposes to do so. Naturally, Aflalole France of to-day refuses to 1:3 credited with work which belongs to another oxistenco of his. His lawyer, Raymond Pomcare, had the happy thought to ask a consultation l-rom an expert in tho writing of history, Professor Ernest Lavisse. Anatole France, I'oincare, and Lavisso aro all three of the French Acauoiny; and so tho Third Civil Chamber had an unusual literary treat when the caso came -up. The words of Lavissc have permanent value;

"It is not permissible that an historian Blind Id i:a to publish a history written l>y him twenty-seven years ago. Durin;; so long a spare ot' time, the world lias changed—the historian rw well. . . . In every civilised country, the legislator lifts been busy drawing up bit by bit, with an incoherence which the lawyer will have to bring into order, a Labour code. Forty old statutes of labour corporations tiro by way of becoming international laws. This surely is something new. Along with the social question, tho religious question has cosnc uppermost—and it is far graver than it was judged to.be by Voltaire and tbo Voltairians, who aro an anachronism nowadays. These aro only examples chosen among others of transformations Roing on before on reyes. _ Now the historian is a man who Htcs tho life fff his time and gives particular hrod to the phenomena in which that life mates iit>elf manifest. He is inrincibly

I stirred to look with a livelier curiosity in tho past at tlio phenomena which he observes in tile present. Ami, to come back to our examples, the historian here anil now will lx' prcoccupicd with social and religious things far more curiously than he would havo been a half, or even a quarter, of a century ago. While the world changes, the historian changes also. Tho man that lie is flow has not remained tho man that he was. Experience of lifo has given him now lights ami feelings. As he understands tho present better, he understands better and sometimes otherwise tho past. 1 havo seen with my own oyes a very great transformation going on in an historian of our times. When 11. Duruy became Minister of State, he had already published tho two first volumes of his "liistory of tho Romans." He had written tho third, which remained in mnuuscript during his Ministry. The day he to be Minister, he" took the manuscript from its drawer; the old paper had yellowed; its author began readinghe was not content with it. This beginning of tho history of the Roman Empire struck him as mediocre and cold. It was because, for years together, ho had seen tho reality of history; he had known personally those who make history—he had been one of them, lie rewrote tho, volume. Between the two volumes from before his ministry and those which followed it, you feel that experience of life has intervened. Now each one of us, if only lie has intelligence and feeling, grows rich by his own experience; and when ho goes to his' years far back he is astonished at how poor ho was then. And who, in our day, has more intelligence and sensibility than Anatolo Franco? To ask a man lilco him to publish a work of his vouth is to deny him the right to have lived."

The publisher offered to put on the first page of the book the date when it was written. The lawyer Academician accepted on condition that there should also bo printed 011 tho covei—"Published against the will of M. Anatole I''ranee!"