MEN I HOLD GREAT

An elegiac tone creeps into these notes on French authors, by the well-known French Catholic writer. Bidding farewell to Pascal, Moliere, Chateaubriand, and all the other Catholic writers mentioned in this slim book, Mauriac also bids hail and farewell to French civilization and Western culture as a whole. Indeed, this book is profoundly pessimistic, and in its emphasis on the Christian virtues of grace, mercy and charity, seems to be foretelling doom in the oncoming wave of future events. The book presupposes an extensive knowledge of French literature in the reader, and interest will probably be confined to students and Catholic readers.