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diff --git a/old/12670.txt b/old/12670.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..abdeb7e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/12670.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5585 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Landmarks in French Literature, by G. Lytton +Strachey + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Landmarks in French Literature + +Author: G. Lytton Strachey + +Release Date: June 21, 2004 [eBook #12670] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: US-ASCII + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LANDMARKS IN FRENCH LITERATURE*** + + +E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Wilelmina Malliere, and the Project +Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +LANDMARKS IN FRENCH LITERATURE + +by + +LYTTON STRACHEY + +London, 1912 + + + + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAP. PAGE + +I ORIGINS--THE MIDDLE AGES 7 + +II THE RENAISSANCE 20 + +III THE AGE OF TRANSITION 31 + +IV THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV 45 + +V THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 94 + +VI THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 142 + +VII THE AGE OF CRITICISM 166 + +CONCLUSION 174 + +CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF AUTHORS AND +THEIR PRINCIPAL WORKS 177 + +BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 183 + +INDEX 185 + + + + +TO + +J.M.S. + + + + +CHAPTER I + +ORIGINS--THE MIDDLE AGES + + +When the French nation gradually came into existence among the ruins of +the Roman civilization in Gaul, a new language was at the same time +slowly evolved. This language, in spite of the complex influences which +went to the making of the nationality of France, was of a simple origin. +With a very few exceptions, every word in the French vocabulary comes +straight from the Latin. The influence of the pre-Roman Celts is almost +imperceptible; while the number of words introduced by the Frankish +conquerors amounts to no more than a few hundreds. Thus the French +tongue presents a curious contrast to that of England. With us, the +Saxon invaders obliterated nearly every trace of the Roman occupation; +but though their language triumphed at first, it was eventually affected +in the profoundest way by Latin influences; and the result has been that +English literature bears in all its phases the imprint of a double +origin. French literature, on the other hand, is absolutely homogeneous. +How far this is an advantage or the reverse it would be difficult to +say; but the important fact for the English reader to notice is that +this great difference does exist between the French language and his +own. The complex origin of the English tongue has enabled English +writers to obtain those effects of diversity, of contrast, of +imaginative strangeness, which have played such a dominating part in our +literature. The genius of the French language, descended from its single +Latin stock, has triumphed most in the contrary direction--in +simplicity, in unity, in clarity, and in restraint. + +Some of these qualities are already distinctly visible in the earliest +French works which have come down to us--the _Chansons de Geste_. These +poems consist of several groups or cycles of narrative verse, cast in +the epic mould. It is probable that they first came into existence in +the eleventh and twelfth centuries; and they continued to be produced in +various forms of repetition, rearrangement, and at last degradation, +throughout the Middle Ages. Originally they were not written, but +recited. Their authors were the wandering minstrels, who found, in the +crowds collected together at the great fairs and places of pilgrimage of +those early days, an audience for long narratives of romance and +adventure drawn from the Latin chronicles and the monkish traditions of +a still more remote past. The earliest, the most famous, and the finest +of these poems is the _Chanson de Roland_, which recounts the mythical +incidents of a battle between Charlemagne, with 'all his peerage', and +the hosts of the Saracens. Apart from some touches of the +marvellous--such as the two hundred years of Charlemagne and the +intervention of angels--the whole atmosphere of the work is that of +eleventh-century France, with its aristocratic society, its barbaric +vigour, its brutality, and its high sentiments of piety and honour. The +beauty of the poem lies in the grand simplicity of its style. Without a +trace of the delicacy and variety of a Homer, farther still from the +consummate literary power of a Virgil or a Dante, the unknown minstrel +who composed the _Chanson de Roland_ possessed nevertheless a very real +gift of art. He worked on a large scale with a bold confidence. +Discarding absolutely the aids of ornament and the rhetorical +elaboration of words, he has succeeded in evoking with an extraordinary, +naked vividness the scenes of strife and heroism which he describes. At +his best--in the lines of farewell between Roland and Oliver, and the +well-known account of Roland's death--he rises to a restrained and +severe pathos which is truly sublime. This great work--bleak, bare, +gaunt, majestic--stands out, to the readers of to-day, like some huge +mass of ancient granite on the far horizon of the literature of France. + +While the _Chansons de Geste_ were developing in numerous cycles of +varying merit, another group of narrative poems, created under different +influences, came into being. These were the _Romans Bretons_, a series +of romances in verse, inspired by the Celtic myths and traditions which +still lingered in Brittany and England. The spirit of these poems was +very different from that of the _Chansons de Geste_. The latter were the +typical offspring of the French genius--positive, definite, +materialistic; the former were impregnated with all the dreaminess, the +mystery, and the romantic spirituality of the Celt. The legends upon +which they were based revolved for the most part round the history of +King Arthur and his knights; they told of the strange adventures of +Lancelot, of the marvellous quest of the Holy Grail, of the overwhelming +and fatal loves of Tristan and Yseult. The stories gained an immense +popularity in France, but they did not long retain their original +character. In the crucible of the facile and successful CHRETIEN DE +TROYES, who wrote towards the close of the twelfth century, they assumed +a new complexion; their mystical strangeness became transmuted into the +more commonplace magic of wizards and conjurers, while their elevated, +immaterial conception of love was replaced by the superfine affectations +of a mundane gallantry. Nothing shows more clearly at what an early +date, and with what strength, the most characteristic qualities of +French literature were developed, than the way in which the vague +imaginations of the Celtic romances were metamorphosed by French writers +into the unambiguous elegances of civilized life. + +Both the _Chansons de Geste_ and the _Romans Bretons_ were aristocratic +literature: they were concerned with the life and ideals--the martial +prowess, the chivalric devotion, the soaring honour--of the great nobles +of the age. But now another form of literature arose which depicted, in +short verse narratives, the more ordinary conditions of middle-class +life. These _Fabliaux_, as they were called, are on the whole of no +great value as works of art; their poetical form is usually poor, and +their substance exceedingly gross. Their chief interest lies in the fact +that they reveal, no less clearly than the aristocratic _Chansons_, some +of the most abiding qualities of the French genius. Its innate love of +absolute realism and its peculiar capacity for cutting satire--these +characteristics appear in the _Fabliaux_ in all their completeness. In +one or two of the stories, when the writer possesses a true vein of +sensibility and taste, we find a surprising vigour of perception and a +remarkable psychological power. Resembling the _Fabliaux_ in their +realism and their bourgeois outlook, but far more delicate and witty, +the group of poems known as the _Roman de Renard_ takes a high place in +the literature of the age. The humanity, the dramatic skill, and the +command of narrative power displayed in some of these pleasant satires, +where the foibles and the cunning of men and women are thinly veiled +under the disguise of animal life, give a foretaste of the charming art +which was to blossom forth so wonderfully four centuries later in the +Fables of La Fontaine. + +One other work has come down to us from this early epoch, which presents +a complete contrast, both with the rough, bold spirit of the _Chansons +de Geste_ and the literal realism of the _Fabliaux_. This is the +'chante-fable' (or mingled narrative in verse and prose) of _Aucassin et +Nicolete_. Here all is delicacy and exquisiteness--the beauty, at once +fragile and imperishable, of an enchanting work of art. The unknown +author has created, in his light, clear verse and his still more +graceful and poetical prose, a delicious atmosphere of delicate romance. +It is 'the tender eye-dawn of aurorean love' that he shows us--the +happy, sweet, almost childish passion of two young creatures who move, +in absolute innocence and beauty, through a wondrous world of their own. +The youth Aucassin, who rides into the fight dreaming of his beloved, +who sees her shining among the stars in heaven-- + + Estoilette, je te voi, + Que la lune trait a soi; + Nicolete est avec toi, + M'amiete o le blond poil. + + (Little star, I see thee there, + That the moon draws close to her! + Nicolette is with thee there, + My love of the yellow hair.)-- + +who disdains the joys of Paradise, since they exclude the joys of +loving-- + + En paradis qu'ai-je a faire? Je n'i quier entrer, mais que j'aie + Nicolete, ma tres douce amie que j'aime tant.... Mais en enfer voil + jou aler. Car en enfer vont li bel clerc et li bel cevalier, qui + sont mort as tournois et as rices guerres, et li bien sergant, et + li franc homme.... Avec ciax voil jou aler, mais que j'aie + Nicolete, ma tres douce amie, avec moi. [What have I to do in + Paradise? I seek not to enter there, so that I have Nicolette, my + most sweet friend, whom I love so well.... But to Hell will I go. + For to Hell go the fine clerks and the fine knights, who have died + in tourneys and in rich wars, and the brave soldiers and the + free-born men.... With these will I go, so that I have Nicolette, + my most sweet friend, with me.] + +--Aucassin, at once brave and naif, sensuous and spiritual, is as much +the type of the perfect medieval lover as Romeo, with his ardour and his +vitality, is of the Renaissance one. But the poem--for in spite of the +prose passages, the little work is in effect simply a poem--is not all +sentiment and dreams. With admirable art the author has interspersed +here and there contrasting episodes of realism or of absurdity; he has +woven into his story a succession of vivid dialogues, and by means of an +acute sense of observation he has succeeded in keeping his airy fantasy +in touch with actual things. The description of Nicolette, escaping from +her prison, and stepping out over the grass in her naked feet, with the +daisies, as she treads on them, showing black against her whiteness, is +a wonderful example of his power of combining imagination with detail, +beauty with truth. Together with the _Chanson de Roland_--though in such +an infinitely different style--_Aucassin et Nicolete_ represents the +most valuable elements in the French poetry of this early age. + +With the thirteenth century a new development began, and one of the +highest importance--the development of Prose. _La Conquete de +Constantinople_, by VILLEHARDOUIN, written at the beginning of the +century, is the earliest example of those historical memoirs which were +afterwards to become so abundant in French literature; and it is +written, not in the poetical prose of _Aucassin et Nicolete_, but in the +simple, plain style of straightforward narrative. The book cannot be +ranked among the masterpieces; but it has the charm of sincerity and +that kind of pleasant flavour which belong to innocent antiquity. The +good old Villehardouin has something of the engaging _naivete_, +something of the romantic curiosity, of Herodotus. And in spite of the +sobriety and dryness of his writing he can, at moments, bring a sense of +colour and movement into his words. His description of the great fleet +of the crusaders, starting from Corfu, has this fine sentence: 'Et le +jour fut clair et beau: et le vent doux et bon. Et ils laisserent aller +les voiles au vent.' His account of the spectacle of Constantinople, +when it appeared for the first time to the astonished eyes of the +Christian nobles, is well known: 'Ils ne pouvaient croire que si riche +ville put etre au monde, quand ils virent ces hauts murs et ces riches +tours dont elle etait close tout autour a la ronde, et ces riches palais +et ces hautes eglises.... Et sachez qu'il n'y eut si hardi a qui la +chair ne fremit; et ce ne fut une merveille; car jamais si grande +affaire ne fut entreprise de nulles gens, depuis que le monde fut cree.' +Who does not feel at such words as these, across the ages, the thrill of +the old adventure! + +A higher level of interest and significance is reached by JOINVILLE in +his _Vie de Saint Louis_, written towards the close of the century. The +fascination of the book lies in its human qualities. Joinville narrates, +in the easy flowing tone of familiar conversation, his reminiscences of +the good king in whose service he had spent the active years of his +life, and whose memory he held in adoration. The deeds, the words, the +noble sentiments, the saintly devotion of Louis--these things he relates +with a charming and ingenuous sympathy, yet with a perfect freedom and +an absolute veracity. Nor is it only the character of his master that +Joinville has brought into his pages; his book is as much a +self-revelation as a biography. Unlike Villehardouin, whose chronicle +shows hardly a trace of personal feeling, Joinville speaks of himself +unceasingly, and has impressed his work indelibly with the mark of his +own individuality. Much of its charm depends upon the contrast which he +thus almost unconsciously reveals between himself and his master--the +vivacious, common-sense, eminently human nobleman, and the grave, +elevated, idealizing king. In their conversations, recounted with such +detail and such relish by Joinville, the whole force of this contrast +becomes delightfully apparent. One seems to see in them, compressed and +symbolized in the characters of these two friends, the conflicting +qualities of sense and spirit, of worldliness and self-immolation, of +the most shrewd and literal perspicacity and the most visionary +exaltation, which make up the singular antithesis of the Middle Ages. + +A contrast no less complete, though of a different nature, is to be +found in the most important poetical work of the thirteenth century--_Le +Roman de la Rose_. The first part of this curious poem was composed by +GUILLAUME DE LORRIS, a young scholar who wrote for that aristocratic +public which, in the previous generation, had been fascinated by the +courtly romances of Chretien de Troyes. Inspired partly by that writer, +and partly by Ovid, it was the aim of Lorris to produce an _Art of +Love_, brought up to date, and adapted to the tastes of his aristocratic +audience, with all the elaborate paraphernalia of learned disquisition +and formal gallantry which was then the mode. The poem, cast in the form +of an intricate allegory, is of significance chiefly on account of its +immense popularity, and for its being the fountain-head of a school of +allegorical poetry which flourished for many centuries in France. Lorris +died before he had finished his work, which, however, was destined to be +completed in a singular manner. Forty years later, another young +scholar, JEAN DE MEUNG, added to the 4000 lines which Lorris had left no +fewer than 18,000 of his own. This vast addition was not only quite out +of proportion but also quite out of tone with the original work. Jean de +Meung abandoned entirely the refined and aristocratic atmosphere of his +predecessor, and wrote with all the realism and coarseness of the middle +class of that day. Lorris's vapid allegory faded into insignificance, +becoming a mere peg for a huge mass of extraordinarily varied discourse. +The whole of the scholastic learning of the Middle Ages is poured in a +confused stream through this remarkable and deeply interesting work. Nor +is it merely as a repository of medieval erudition that Jean de Meung's +poem deserves attention; for it is easy to perceive in it an +intellectual tendency far in advance of its age--a spirit which, however +trammelled by antiquated conventions, yet claims kinship with that of +Rabelais, or even that of Voltaire. Jean de Meung was not a great +artist; he wrote without distinction, and without sense of form; it is +his bold and voluminous thought that gives him a high place in French +literature. In virtue alike of his popularization of an encyclopedic +store of knowledge and of his underlying doctrine--the worship of +Nature--he ranks as a true forerunner of the great movement of the +Renaissance. + +The intellectual stirring, which seemed to be fore-shadowed by the +second part of the _Roman de la Rose_, came to nothing. The disasters +and confusion of the Hundred Years War left France with very little +energy either for art or speculation; the horrors of a civil war +followed; and thus the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are perhaps +the emptiest in the annals of her literature. In the fourteenth century +one great writer embodied the character of the time. FROISSART has +filled his splendid pages with 'the pomp and circumstance of glorious +war'. Though he spent many years and a large part of his fortune in the +collection of materials for his history of the wars between France and +England, it is not as an historian that he is now remembered; it is as a +writer of magnificent prose. His _Chroniques_, devoid of any profundity +of insight, any true grasp of the movements of the age, have rarely been +paralleled in the brilliance and animation of their descriptions, the +vigour of their character-drawing, the flowing picturesqueness of their +style. They unroll themselves like some long tapestry, gorgeously +inwoven with scenes of adventure and chivalry, with flags and spears and +chargers, and the faces of high-born ladies and the mail-clad figures of +knights. Admirable in all his descriptions, it is in his battle-pieces +that Froissart particularly excels. Then the glow of his hurrying +sentences redoubles, and the excitement and the bravery of the combat +rush out from his pen in a swift and sparkling stream. One sees the +serried ranks and the flashing armour, one hears the clash of weapons +and the shouting of the captains: 'Montjoie! Saint Denis! Saint George! +Giane!'--one feels the sway and the press and the tumult, one laments +with the vanquished, one exults with the victors, and, amid the +glittering panoply of 'grand seigneur, conte, baron, chevalier, et +escuier', with their high-sounding titles and their gallant prowess, one +forgets the reverse side of all this glory--the ravaged fields, the +smoking villages, the ruined peasants--the long desolation of France. + +The Chronicles of Froissart are history seen through the eyes of a +herald; the _Memoirs_ of PHILIPPE DE COMMYNES are history envisaged by a +politician and a diplomatist. When Commynes wrote--towards the close of +the fifteenth century--the confusion and strife which Froissart had +chronicled with such a gusto were things of the past, and France was +beginning to emerge as a consolidated and centralized state. Commynes +himself, one of the confidential ministers of Louis XI, had played an +important part in this development; and his book is the record of the +triumphant policy of his crafty and sagacious sovereign. It is a fine +piece of history, written with lucidity and firmness, by a man who had +spent all his life behind the scenes, and who had never been taken in. +The penetration and the subtlety of Commynes make his work interesting +chiefly for its psychological studies and for the light that it throws +on those principles of cunning statecraft which permeated the politics +and diplomacy of the age and were to receive their final exposition in +the _Prince_ of Machiavelli. In his calm, judicious, unaffected pages we +can trace the first beginnings of that strange movement which was to +convert the old Europe of the Middle Ages, with its universal Empire and +its universal Church, into the new Europe of independent secular +nations--the Europe of to-day. + +Commynes thus stands on the brink of the modern world; though his style +is that of his own time, his matter belongs to the future: he looks +forward into the Renaissance. At the opposite end of the social scale +from this rich and powerful diplomatist, VILLON gave utterance in +language of poignant beauty to the deepest sentiments of the age that +was passing away. A ruffian, a robber, a murderer, haunting the vile +places of Paris, flying from justice, condemned, imprisoned, almost +executed, and vanishing at last, none knows how or where, this +extraordinary genius lives now as a poet and a dreamer--an artist who +could clothe in unforgettable verse the intensest feelings of a soul. +The bulk of his work is not large. In his _Grand Testament_--a poem of +about 1500 lines, containing a number of interspersed ballades and +rondeaus--in his _Petit Testament_, and in a small number of +miscellaneous poems, he has said all that he has to say. The most +self-communicative of poets, he has impressed his own personality on +every line that he wrote. Into the stiff and complicated forms of the +rondeau and rondel, the ballade and double ballade, with their limited +rhymes and their enforced repetitions, he has succeeded in breathing not +only the spirit of beauty, but the spirit of individuality. He was not a +simple character; his melancholy was shot with irony and laughter; +sensuality and sentimentality both mingled with his finest imaginations +and his profoundest visions; and all these qualities are reflected, +shifting and iridescent, in the magic web of his verse. One thought, +however, perpetually haunts him; under all his music of laughter or of +passion, it is easy to hear one dominating note. It is the thought of +mortality. The whining, leering, brooding creature can never for a +moment forget that awful Shadow. He sees it in all its aspects--as a +subject for mockery, for penitence, for resignation, for despair. He +sees it as the melancholy, inevitable end of all that is beautiful, all +that is lovely on earth. + + Dictes moi ou, n'en quel pays + Est Flora, la belle Rommaine; + Archipiada, ne Thais-- + +and so through the rest of the splendid catalogue with its sad, +unanswerable refrain-- + + Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan? + +Even more persistently, the vision rises before him of the physical +terrors of death--the hideousness of its approaches, the loathsomeness +of its corruptions; in vain he smiles, in vain he weeps; the grim +imagination will not leave him. In the midst of his wildest debauches, +he suddenly remembers the horrible features of decaying age; he repents; +but there, close before him, he sees the fatal gibbet, and his own body +swinging among the crows. + +With Villon the medieval literature of France comes at once to a climax +and a termination. His potent and melancholy voice vibrates with the +accumulated passion and striving and pain of those far-off generations, +and sinks mysteriously into silence with the birth of a new and happier +world. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE RENAISSANCE + + +There is something dark and wintry about the atmosphere of the later +Middle Ages. The poems of Villon produce the impression of some bleak, +desolate landscape of snow-covered roofs and frozen streets, shut in by +mists, and with a menacing shiver in the air. It is-- + + sur la morte saison, + Que les loups se vivent de vent, + Et qu'on se tient en sa maison, + Pour le frimas, pres du tison. + +Then all at once the grey gloom lifts, and we are among the colours, the +sunshine, and the bursting vitality of spring. + +The great intellectual and spiritual change which came over western +Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century was the result of a +number of converging causes, of which the most important were the +diffusion of classical literature consequent upon the break-up of the +Byzantine Empire at the hands of the Turks, the brilliant civilization +of the Italian city-states, and the establishment, in France, Spain and +England, of powerful monarchies whose existence ensured the maintenance +of order and internal peace. Thus it happened that the splendid +literature of the Ancient World--so rich in beauty and so significant in +thought--came into hands worthy of receiving it. Scholars, artists and +thinkers seized upon the wondrous heritage and found in it a whole +unimagined universe of instruction and delight. At the same time the +physical discoveries of explorers and men of science opened out vast +fresh regions of speculation and adventure. Men saw with astonishment +the old world of their fathers vanishing away, and, within them and +without them, the dawning of a new heaven and a new earth. The effect on +literature of these combined forces was enormous. In France +particularly, under the strong and brilliant government of Francis I, +there was an outburst of original and vital writing. This literature, +which begins, in effect, what may be called the distinctively _modern_ +literature of France, differs in two striking respects from that of the +Middle Ages. Both in their attitude towards art and in their attitude +towards thought, the great writers of the Renaissance inaugurated a new +era in French literature. + +The new artistic views of the age first appeared, as was natural, in the +domain of poetry. The change was one towards consciousness and +deliberate, self-critical effort. The medieval poets had sung with +beauty; but that was not enough for the poets of the Renaissance: they +determined to sing not only with beauty, but with care. The movement +began in the verse of MAROT, whose clear, civilized, worldly poetry +shows for the first time that tendency to select and to refine, that +love of ease and sincerity, and that endeavour to say nothing that is +not said well, which were to become the fundamental characteristics of +all that was best in French poetry for the next three hundred years. In +such an exquisite little work of art as his epistle in three-syllabled +verse--'A une Damoyselle Malade', beginning-- + + Ma mignonne, + Je vous donne + Le bonjour, + +we already have, in all its completeness, that tone of mingled +distinction, gaiety and grace which is one of the unique products of the +mature poetical genius of France. But Marot's gift was not wide enough +for the voluminous energies of the age; and it was not until a +generation later, in the work of the _Pleiade_--a group of writers of +whom RONSARD was the chief, and who flourished about the middle of the +sixteenth century--that the poetical spirit of the French Renaissance +found its full expression. + +The mere fact that the _Pleiade_ formed a definite school, with common +principles and a fixed poetical creed, differentiates them in a striking +way from the poets who had preceded them. They worked with no casual +purpose, no merely professional art, but with a high sense of the glory +of their calling and a noble determination to give to the Muses whom +they worshipped only of their best. They boldly asserted--in Du Bellay's +admirable essay, _La Defense et Illustration de la Langue +Francaise_--the right of the French language to stand beside those of +the ancients, as a means of poetical expression; and they devoted their +lives to the proof of their doctrine. But their respect for their own +tongue by no means implied a neglect of the Classics. On the contrary, +they shared to the full the adoration of their contemporaries for the +learning and the literature of the Ancient World. They were scholars as +well as poets; and their great object was to create a tradition in the +poetry of France which should bring it into accord with the immortal +models of Greece and Rome. This desire to imitate classical literature +led to two results. In the first place, it led to the invention of a +great number of new poetical forms, and the abandonment of the old +narrow and complicated conventions which had dominated the poetry of +the Middle Ages. With the free and ample forms of the Classics before +them, Ronsard and his school enfranchised French verse. Their technical +ability was very great; and it is hardly too much to say that the result +of their efforts was the creation of something hitherto lacking in +French literature--a poetical instrument which, in its strength, its +freedom, its variety of metrical resources, and its artistic finish, was +really adequate to fulfil the highest demands of genius. In this +direction their most important single achievement was their elevation of +the 'Alexandrine' verse--the great twelve-syllabled rhyming couplet--to +that place of undisputed superiority over all other metres which it has +ever since held in French poetry. + +But the _Pleiade's_ respect for classical models led to another and a +far less fortunate result. They allowed their erudition to impinge upon +their poetry, and, in their eagerness to echo the voice of antiquity, +they too often failed to realize the true bent either of their own +language or their own powers. This is especially obvious in the longer +poems of Ronsard--his _Odes_ and his _Franciade_--where all the effort +and skill of the poet have not been enough to save his verse from tedium +and inflation. The Classics swam into the ken of these early discoverers +in such a blaze of glory that their eyes were dazzled and their feet +misled. It was owing to their very eagerness to imitate their great +models exactly--to 'ape the outward form of majesty'--that they failed +to realize the true inward spirit of Classical Art. + +It is in their shorter poems--when the stress of classical imitation is +forgotten in the ebullition of individual genius--that Ronsard and his +followers really come to their own. These beautiful lyrics possess the +freshness and charm of some clear April morning, with its delicate +flowers and its carolling birds. It is the voice of youth that sings in +light and varied measures, composed with such an exquisite happiness, +such an unlaboured art. The songs are of Love and of Nature, of roses, +skylarks and kisses, of blue skies and natural joys. Sometimes there is +a sadder note; and the tender music reminds us of the ending of +pleasures and the hurrying steps of Time. But with what a different +accent from that of the dark and relentless Villon! These gentle singers +had no words for such brutalities. + + Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, a la chandelle-- + +so Ronsard addresses his mistress; and the image is a charming one of +quiet and refined old age, with its half-smiling memories of vanished +loves. What had become, in the hands of Villon, a subject for grim jests +and horrible descriptions, gave to Ronsard simply an opportunity for the +delicate pathos of regret. Then again the note changes, and the pure, +tense passion of Louise Labe-- + + Oh! si j'etais en ce beau sein ravie + De celui-la pour lequel vais mourant-- + +falls upon our ears. And then, in the great sonnet sequence of Du +Bellay--_Les Antiquites de Rome_--we hear a splendid sound unknown +before in French poetry--the sonorous boom of proud and pompous verse. + + +Contemporary with the poetry of the _Pleiade_, the influence of the +Renaissance spirit upon French literature appeared with even more +striking force in the prose of RABELAIS. The great achievement of the +_Pleiade_ had been the establishment, once and for all, of the doctrine +that literature was something essentially artistic; it was Rabelais who +showed that it possessed another quality--that it was a mighty +instrument of thought. The intellectual effort of the Middle Ages had +very rarely clothed itself in an artistic literary form. Men laughed or +wept in the poetry or prose of their own tongue; but they thought in +scholastic Latin. The work of Jean de Meung was an exception; but, even +there, the poetical form was rough and feeble; the artistic and the +intellectual principles had not coalesced. The union was accomplished by +Rabelais. Far outstripping Jean de Meung in the comprehensiveness and +vigour of his thought, he at the same time infinitely surpassed him as +an artist. At first sight, indeed, his great book hardly conveys such an +impression; to a careless reader it might appear to be simply the work +of a buffoon or a madman. But such a conception of it would be totally +mistaken. The more closely one examines it, the more forcibly one must +be struck alike by its immense powers of intellect and its consummate +literary ability. The whole vast spirit of the Renaissance is gathered +within its pages: the tremendous vitality, the enormous erudition, the +dazzling optimism, the courage, the inventiveness, the humanity, of that +extraordinary age. And these qualities are conveyed to us, not by some +mere conscientious pedant, or some clumsy enthusiast, but by a born +writer--a man whose whole being was fixed and concentrated in an +astonishing command of words. It is in the multitude of his words that +the fertility of Rabelais' spirit most obviously shows itself. His book +is an orgy of words; they pour out helter-skelter, wildly, into swirling +sentences and huge catalogues that, in serried columns, overflow the +page. Not quite wildly, though; for, amid all the rush and bluster, +there is a powerful underlying art. The rhythms of this extraordinary +prose are long and complex, but they exist; and they are controlled with +the absolute skill of a master. + +The purpose of Rabelais' book cannot be summed up in a sentence. It may +be described as the presentment of a point of view: but _what_ point of +view? There lies the crux of the question, and numberless critics have +wrangled over the solution of it. The truth is, that the only complete +description of the point of view is to be found--in the book itself; it +is too wide and variegated for any other habitation. Yet, if it would be +vain to attempt an accurate and exhaustive account of Rabelais' +philosophy, the main outlines of that philosophy are nevertheless +visible enough. Alike in the giant-hero, Pantagruel, in his father, +Gargantua, and in his follower and boon-companion, Panurge, one can +discern the spirit of the Renaissance--expansive, humorous, powerful, +and, above all else, alive. Rabelais' book is the incarnation of the +great reaction of his epoch against the superstitious gloom and the +narrow asceticism of the Middle Ages. He proclaims, in his rich +re-echoing voice, a new conception of the world; he denies that it is +the vale of sorrows envisioned by the teachers of the past; he declares +that it is abounding in glorious energy, abounding in splendid hope, +and, by its very nature, good. With a generous hatred of stupidity, he +flies full tilt at the pedantic education of the monasteries, and +asserts the highest ideals of science and humanity. With an equal +loathing of asceticism, he satirizes the monks themselves, and sketches +out, in his description of the Abbey of Theleme, a glowing vision of +the Utopian convent. His thought was bold; but he lived in a time when +the mildest speculation was fraught with danger; and he says what he has +to say in the shifting and ambiguous forms of jest and allegory. Yet it +was by no means simply for the sake of concealment that he made his work +into the singular mixture that it is, of rambling narrative, +disconnected incident, capricious disquisition, and coarse humour. That, +no doubt, was the very manner in which his mind worked; and the +essential element of his spirit resides precisely in this haphazard and +various looseness. His exceeding coarseness is itself an expression of +one of the most fundamental qualities of his mind--its jovial acceptance +of the physical facts of life. Another side of the same characteristic +appears in his glorification of eating and drinking: such things were +part of the natural constitution of man, therefore let man enjoy them to +the full. Who knows? Perhaps the Riddle of the Universe would be solved +by the oracle of _la dive Bouteille_. + +Rabelais' book is a history of giants, and it is itself gigantic; it is +as broad as Gargantua himself. It seems to belong to the morning of the +world--a time of mirth, and a time of expectation; when the earth was +teeming with a miraculous richness, and the gods walked among men. + + +In the Essays of MONTAIGNE, written about a generation later, the spirit +of the Renaissance, which had filled the pages of Rabelais with such a +superabundant energy, appears in a quieter and more cultivated form. The +first fine rapture was over; and the impulsive ardours of creative +thought were replaced by the calm serenity of criticism and reflection. +Montaigne has none of the coarseness, none of the rollicking fun, none +of the exuberant optimism, of Rabelais; he is a refined gentleman, who +wishes to charm rather than to electrify, who writes in the quiet, easy +tone of familiar conversation, who smiles, who broods, and who doubts. +The form of the detached essay, which he was the first to use, precisely +suited his habit of thought. In that loose shape--admitting of the most +indefinite structure, and of any variety of length, from three pages to +three hundred--he could say all that he wished to say, in his own +desultory, inconsecutive, and unelaborate manner. His book flows on like +a prattling brook, winding through pleasant meadows. Everywhere the +fruits of wide reading are manifest, and numberless Latin quotations +strew his pages. He touches on every side of life--from the slightest +and most superficial topics of literature or manners to the profoundest +questions that beset humanity; and always with the same tact and +happiness, the same wealth of learned illustration, the same engaging +grace. + +The Essays are concerned fundamentally with two subjects only. First, +they illustrate in every variety of way Montaigne's general philosophy +of life. That philosophy was an absolutely sceptical one. Amid the mass +of conflicting opinions, amid the furious oppositions of creeds, amid +the flat contradictions of loudly-asseverated dogmas, Montaigne held a +middle course of calm neutrality. _Que Scais-je?_ was his constant +motto; and his Essays are a collection of numberless variations on this +one dominating theme. The _Apologie de Raimond Sebond_, the largest and +the most elaborate of them, contains an immense and searching review of +the errors, the incoherences, and the ignorance of humanity, from which +Montaigne draws his inevitable conclusion of universal doubt. Whatever +the purely philosophical value of this doctrine may be, its importance +as an influence in practical life was very great. If no opinion had any +certainty whatever, then it followed that persecution for the sake of +opinion was simply a wicked folly. Montaigne thus stands out as one of +the earliest of the opponents of fanaticism and the apostles of +toleration in the history of European thought. + +The other subject treated of in the Essays, with an equal persistence +and an equal wealth of illustration, is Montaigne himself. The least +reticent of writers, he furnishes his readers with every conceivable +piece of information concerning his history, his character, his +appearance, his health, his habits and his tastes. Here lies the +peculiar charm of his book--the endless garrulity of its confidences, +which, with their combined humour, suavity, and irresponsibility, bring +one right into the intimate presence of a fascinating man. + +For this reason, doubtless, no writer has ever been so gushed over as +Montaigne; and no writer, we may be sure, would be so horrified as he at +such a treatment. Indeed, the adulation of his worshippers has perhaps +somewhat obscured the real position that he fills in literature. It is +impossible to deny that, both as a writer and as a thinker, he has +faults--and grave ones. His style, with all its delightful abundance, +its inimitable ease, and its pleasant flavour of antiquity, yet lacks +form; he did not possess the supreme mastery of language which alone can +lead to the creation of great works of literary art. His scepticism is +not important as a contribution to philosophical thought, for his mind +was devoid both of the method and of the force necessary for the pursuit +and discovery of really significant intellectual truths. To claim for +him such titles of distinction is to overshoot the mark, and to distract +attention from his true eminence. Montaigne was neither a great artist +nor a great philosopher; he was not _great_ at all. He was a charming, +admirable human being, with the most engaging gift for conversing +endlessly and confidentially through the medium of the printed page ever +possessed by any man before or after him. Even in his self-revelations +he is not profound. How superficial, how insignificant his rambling +ingenuous outspokenness appears beside the tremendous introspections of +Rousseau! He was probably a better man than Rousseau; he was certainly a +more delightful one; but he was far less interesting. It was in the +gentle, personal, everyday things of life that his nature triumphed. +Here and there in his Essays, this simple goodness wells up clear and +pure; and in the wonderful pages on Friendship, one sees, in all its +charm and all its sweetness, that beautiful humanity which is the inward +essence of Montaigne. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE AGE OF TRANSITION + + +In the seventy years that elapsed between the death of Montaigne (1592) +and the accession to power of Louis XIV the tendencies in French +literature were fluctuating and uncertain. It was a period of change, of +hesitation, of retrogression even; and yet, below these doubtful, +conflicting movements, a great new development was germinating, slowly, +surely, and almost unobserved. From one point of view, indeed, this age +may be considered the most important in the whole history of the +literature, since it prepared the way for the most splendid and +characteristic efflorescence in prose and poetry that France has ever +known; without it, there would have been no _Grand Siecle._ In fact, it +was during this age that the conception was gradually evolved which +determined the lines upon which all French literature in the future was +to advance. It can hardly be doubted that if the fertile and varied +Renaissance movement, which had given birth to the _Pleiade_, to +Rabelais, and to Montaigne, had continued to progress unbroken and +unchecked, the future literature of France would have closely resembled +the contemporary literatures of Spain and England--that it would have +continued to be characterized by the experimental boldness and the loose +exuberance of the masters of the sixteenth century. But in France the +movement _was_ checked: and the result was a body of literature, not +only of the highest value, but also of a unique significance in European +letters. + +The break in the Renaissance movement was largely the result of +political causes. The stability and peace which seemed to be so firmly +established by the brilliant monarchy of Francis I vanished with the +terrible outbreak of the Wars of Religion. For about sixty years, with a +few intermissions, the nation was a prey to the horrors of civil strife. +And when at last order was restored under the powerful rule of Cardinal +Richelieu, and the art of writing began to be once more assiduously +practised, the fresh rich glory of the Renaissance spirit had +irrevocably passed away. Already, early in the seventeenth century, the +poetry of MALHERBE had given expression to new theories and new ideals. +A man of powerful though narrow intelligence, a passionate theorist, and +an ardent specialist in grammar and the use of words, Malherbe reacted +violently both against the misplaced and artificial erudition of the +_Pleiade_ and their unforced outbursts of lyric song. His object was to +purify the French tongue; to make it--even at the cost of diminishing +its flavour and narrowing its range--strong, supple, accurate and +correct; to create a language which, though it might be incapable of +expressing the fervours of personal passion or the airy fancies of +dreamers, would be a perfect instrument for the enunciation of noble +truths and fine imaginations, in forms at once simple, splendid and +sincere. Malherbe's importance lies rather in his influence than in his +actual work. Some of his Odes--among which his great address to Louis +XIII on the rebellion of La Rochelle deserves the highest place--are +admirable examples of a restrained, measured and weighty rhetoric, +moving to the music not of individual emotion, but of a generalized +feeling for the beauty and grandeur of high thoughts. He was +essentially an oratorical poet; but unfortunately the only forms of +verse ready to his hand were lyrical forms; so that his genius never +found a full scope for its powers. Thus his precept outweighs his +example. His poetical theories found their full justification only in +the work of his greater and more fortunate successors; and the masters +of the age of Louis XIV looked back to Malherbe as the intellectual +father of their race. + +Malherbe's immediate influence, however, was very limited. Upon the +generation of writers that followed him, his doctrines of sobriety and +simplicity made no impression whatever. Their tastes lay in an entirely +different direction. For now, in the second quarter of the seventeenth +century, there set in, with an extreme and sudden violence, a fashion +for every kind of literary contortion, affectation and trick. The value +of a poet was measured by his capacity for turning a somersault in +verse--for constructing ingenious word-puzzles with which to express +exaggerated sentiments; and no prose-writer was worth looking at who +could not drag a complicated, ramifying simile through half a dozen +pages at least. These artificialities lacked the saving grace of those +of the Renaissance writers--their abounding vigour and their inventive +skill. They were cold-blooded artificialities, evolved elaborately, +simply for their own sake. The new school, with its twisted conceits and +its super-subtle elegances, came to be known as the 'Precious' school, +and it is under that name that the satire of subsequent writers has +handed it down to the laughter of after-generations. Yet a perspicacious +eye might have seen even in these absurd and tasteless productions the +signs of a progressive movement--the possibility, at least, of a true +advance. For the contortions of the 'Precious' writers were less the +result of their inability to write well than of their desperate efforts +to do so. They were trying, as hard as they could, to wriggle themselves +into a beautiful pose; and, naturally enough, they were unsuccessful. +They were, in short, too self-conscious; but it was in this very +self-consciousness that the real hope for the future lay. The teaching +of Malherbe, if it did not influence the actual form of their work, at +least impelled them towards a deliberate effort to produce _some_ form, +and to be content no longer with the vague and the haphazard. In two +directions particularly this new self-consciousness showed itself. It +showed itself in the formation of literary _salons_--of which the chief +was the famous blue drawing-room of the Hotel de Rambouillet--where +every conceivable question of taste and art, grammar and vocabulary, was +discussed with passionate intensity; and it showed itself even more +strongly in the establishment, under the influence of Richelieu, of an +official body of literary experts--the French Academy. + +How far the existence of the Academy has influenced French literature, +either for good or for evil, is an extremely dubious question. It was +formed for the purpose of giving fixity and correctness to the language, +of preserving a high standard of literary taste, and of creating an +authoritative centre from which the ablest men of letters of the day +should radiate their influence over the country. To a great extent these +ends have been attained; but they have been accompanied by corresponding +drawbacks. Such an institution must necessarily be a conservative one; +and it is possible that the value of the Academy as a centre of purity +and taste has been at least balanced by the extreme reluctance which it +has always shown to countenance any of those forms of audacity and +change without which no literature can be saved from petrifaction. All +through its history the Academy has been timid and out of date. The +result has been that some of the very greatest of French +writers--including Moliere, Diderot, and Flaubert--have remained outside +it; while all the most fruitful developments in French literary theory +have come about only after a bitter and desperate resistance on its +part. On the whole, perhaps the most important function performed by the +Academy has been a more indirect one. The mere existence of a body of +writers officially recognized by the authorities of the State has +undoubtedly given a peculiar prestige to the profession of letters in +France. It has emphasized that tendency to take the art of writing +seriously--to regard it as a fit object for the most conscientious +craftsmanship and deliberate care--which is so characteristic of French +writers. The amateur is very rare in French literature--as rare as he is +common in our own. How many of the greatest English writers have denied +that they were men of letters!--Scott, Byron, Gray, Sir Thomas Browne, +perhaps even Shakespeare himself. When Congreve begged Voltaire not to +talk of literature, but to regard him merely as an English gentleman, +the French writer, who, in all his multifarious activities, never forgot +for a moment that he was first and foremost a follower of the profession +of letters, was overcome with astonishment and disgust. The difference +is typical of the attitude of the two nations towards literature: the +English, throwing off their glorious masterpieces by the way, as if they +were trifles; and the French bending all the resources of a trained and +patient energy to the construction and the perfection of marvellous +works of art. + +Whatever view we may take of the ultimate influence of the French +Academy, there can be no doubt at all that one of its first actions was +singularly inauspicious. Under the guidance of Cardinal Richelieu it +delivered a futile attack upon the one writer who stood out head and +shoulders above his contemporaries, and whose works bore all the marks +of unmistakable genius--the great CORNEILLE. With the production, in +1636, of Corneille's tragedy, _Le Cid_, modern French drama came into +existence. Previous to that date, two main movements are discernible in +French dramatic art--one carrying on the medieval traditions of the +mystery-and miracle-play, and culminating, early in the seventeenth +century, with the rough, vigorous and popular drama of Hardy; and the +other, originating with the writers of the Renaissance, and leading to +the production of a number of learned and literary plays, composed in +strict imitation of the tragedies of Seneca,--plays of which the typical +representative is the _Cleopatre_ of Jodelle. Corneille's achievement +was based upon a combination of what was best in these two movements. +The work of Jodelle, written with a genuinely artistic intention, was +nevertheless a dead thing on the stage; while Hardy's melodramas, +bursting as they were with vitality, were too barbaric to rank as +serious works of art. Corneille combined art with vitality, and for the +first time produced a play which was at once a splended piece of +literature and an immense popular success. Henceforward it was certain +that French drama would develop along the path which had been opened out +for it so triumphantly by the _Cid_. But what was that path? Nothing +shows more strikingly the strength of the literary opinion of that age +than the fact that it was able to impose itself even upon the mighty and +towering spirit of Corneille. By nature, there can be little doubt that +Corneille was a romantic. His fiery energy, his swelling rhetoric, his +love of the extraordinary and the sublime, bring him into closer kinship +with Marlowe than with any other writer of his own nation until the time +of Victor Hugo. But Corneille could not do what Marlowe did. He could +not infuse into the free form of popular drama the passion and splendour +of his own genius, and thus create a type of tragedy that was at once +exuberant and beautiful. And he could not do this because the literary +theories of the whole of the cultivated society of France would have +been opposed to him, because he himself was so impregnated with those +very theories that he failed to realize where the true bent of his +genius lay. Thus it was that the type of drama which he impressed upon +French literature was not the romantic type of the English Elizabethans, +but the classical type of Senecan tragedy which Jodelle had imitated, +and which was alone tolerable to the French critics of the seventeenth +century. Instead of making the vital drama of Hardy artistic, he made +the literary drama of Jodelle alive. Probably it was fortunate that he +did so; for he thus led the way straight to the most characteristic +product of the French genius--the tragedy of Racine. With Racine, the +classical type of drama, which so ill befitted the romantic spirit of +Corneille, found its perfect exponent; and it will be well therefore to +postpone a more detailed examination of the nature of that type until we +come to consider Racine himself, the value of whose work is inextricably +interwoven with its form. The dominating qualities of Corneille may be +more easily appreciated. + +He was above all things a rhetorician; he was an instinctive master of +those qualities in words which go to produce effects of passionate +vehemence, vigorous precision, and culminating force. His great +_tirades_ carry forward the reader, or the listener (for indeed the +verse of Corneille loses half its value when it is unheard), on a +full-flowing tide of language where the waves of the verse, following +one another in a swift succession of ever-rising power, crash down at +last with a roar. It is a strange kind of poetry: not that of +imaginative vision, of plastic beauty, of subtle feeling; but that of +intellectual excitement and spiritual strength. It is the poetry of +Malherbe multiplied a thousandfold in vigour and in genius, and +expressed in the form most appropriate to it--the dramatic Alexandrine +verse. The stuff out of which it is woven, made up, not of the images of +sense, but of the processes of thought, is, in fact, simply argument. +One can understand how verse created from such material might be +vigorous and impressive; it is difficult to imagine how it could also be +passionate--until one has read Corneille. Then one realizes afresh the +compelling power of genius. His tragic personages, standing forth +without mystery, without 'atmosphere', without local colour, but simply +in the clear white light of reason, rivet our attention, and seem at +last to seize upon our very souls. Their sentences, balanced, weighty +and voluble, reveal the terrors of destiny, the furies of love, the +exasperations of pride, with an intensity of intellectual precision that +burns and blazes. The deeper these strange beings sink into their +anguish, the more remorseless their arguments become. They prove their +horror in dreadful syllogisms; every inference plunges them farther into +the abyss; and their intelligence flames upward to its highest point, +when they are finally engulfed. + +Such is the singular passion that fills Corneille's tragedies. The +creatures that give utterance to it are hardly human beings: they are +embodiments of will, force, intellect and pride. The situations in which +they are placed are calculated to expose these qualities to the utmost; +and all Corneille's masterpieces are concerned with the same +subject--the combat between indomitable egoism and the forces of Fate. +It is in the meeting of these 'fell incensed opposites' that the tragedy +consists. In _Le Cid_, Chimene's passion for Rodrigue struggles in a +death-grapple with the destiny that makes Rodrigue the slayer of her +father. In _Polyeucte_ it is the same passion struggling with the +dictates of religion. In _Les Horaces_, patriotism, family love and +personal passion are all pitted against Fate. In _Cinna_, the conflict +passes within the mind of Auguste, between the promptings of a noble +magnanimity and the desire for revenge. In all these plays the central +characters display a superhuman courage and constancy and self-control. +They are ideal figures, speaking with a force and an elevation unknown +in actual experience; they never blench, they never waver, but move +adamantine to their doom. They are for ever asserting the strength of +their own individuality. + + Je suis maitre de moi comme de l'univers, + Je le suis, je veux l'etre, + +declares Auguste; and Medee, at the climax of her misfortunes, uses the +same language-- + + 'Dans un si grand revers que vous reste-t-il?'--'Moi! + Moi, dis-je, et c'est assez!' + +The word 'moi' dominates these tragedies; and their heroes, bursting +with this extraordinary egoism, assume even more towering proportions in +their self-abnegation than in their pride. Then the thrilling +clarion-notes of their defiances give way to the deep grand music of +stern sublimity and stoic resignation. The gigantic spirit recoils upon +itself, crushes itself, and reaches its last triumph. + +Drama of this kind must, it is clear, lack many of the qualities which +are usually associated with the dramatic art; there is no room in it for +variety of character-drawing, for delicacy of feeling, or for the +realistic presentation of the experiences of life. Corneille hardly +attempted to produce such effects as these; and during his early years +his great gifts of passion and rhetoric easily made up for the +deficiency. As he grew older, however, his inspiration weakened; his +command of his material left him; and he was no longer able to fill the +figures of his creation with the old intellectual sublimity. His heroes +and his heroines became mere mouthing puppets, pouring out an endless +stream of elaborate, high-flown sentiments, wrapped up in a complicated +jargon of argumentative verse. His later plays are miserable failures. +Not only do they illustrate the inherent weaknesses of Corneille's +dramatic method, but they are also full of the characteristic bad taste +and affectations of the age. The vital spirit once withdrawn, out sprang +the noisome creatures from their lurking-places to feast upon the +corpse. + +Nevertheless, with all his faults, Corneille dominated French literature +for twenty years. His genius, transcendent, unfortunate, noble in +endeavour, unequal in accomplishment, typifies the ambiguous movement +of the time. For still the flood of 'Precious' literature poured from +the press--dull, contorted epics, and stilted epigrams on my lady's +eyebrow, and learned dissertations decked out in sparkling tinsel, and +infinitely long romances, full of alembicated loves. Then suddenly one +day a small pamphlet in the form of a letter appeared on the bookstalls +of Paris; and with its appearance the long reign of confused ideals and +misguided efforts came to an end for ever. The pamphlet was the first of +Pascal's _Lettres Provinciales_--the work which ushered into being the +great classical age--the _Grand Siecle_ of Louis XIV. + +In the _Lettres Provinciales_ PASCAL created French prose--the French +prose that we know to-day, the French prose which ranks by virtue of its +vigour, elegance and precision as a unique thing in the literature of +the world. Earlier prose-writers--Joinville, Froissart, Rabelais, +Montaigne--had been in turns charming, or picturesque, or delicate, or +overflowing with vitality; but none had struck upon the really +characteristically French note. They lacked form, and those fine +qualities of strength and clarity which form alone can give. Their +sentences were indeterminate--long, complex, drifting, and connected +together by conjunctions into a loose aggregate. The 'Precious' writers +had dimly realized the importance of form, but they had not realized at +all the importance of simplicity. This was Pascal's great discovery. His +sentences are clear, straightforward, and distinct; and they are bound +together into a succession of definitely articulated paragraphs, which +are constructed, not on the system of mere haphazard aggregation, but +according to the logical development of the thought. Thus Pascal's +prose, like the verse of Malherbe and Corneille, is based upon reason; +it is primarily intellectual. But, with Pascal, the intellect expresses +itself even more exactly. The last vestiges of medieval ambiguities have +been discarded; the style is perfectly modern. So wonderfully did Pascal +master the resources of the great instrument which he had forged, that +it is true to say that no reader who wishes to realize once for all the +great qualities of French prose could do better than turn straight to +the _Lettres Provinciales_. Here he will find the lightness and the +strength, the exquisite polish and the delicious wit, the lambent irony +and the ordered movement, which no other language spoken by man has ever +quite been able to produce. The _Lettres_ are a work of controversy; +their actual subject-matter--the ethical system of the Jesuits of the +time--is remote from modern interests; yet such is the brilliance of +Pascal's art that every page of them is fascinating to-day. The vivacity +of the opening letters is astonishing; the tone is the gay, easy tone of +a man of the world; the attack is delivered in a rushing onslaught of +raillery. Gradually, as the book proceeds, there are signs of a growing +seriousness; we have a sense of graver issues, and round the small +question of the Jesuits' morality we discern ranged all the vast forces +of good and evil. At last the veil of wit and laughter is entirely +removed, and Pascal bursts forth into the full fury of invective. The +vials of wrath are opened; a terrific denunciation rolls out in a +thundering cataract; and at the close of the book there is hardly a note +in the whole gamut of language, from the airiest badinage to the darkest +objurgation, which has not been touched. + +In sheer genius Pascal ranks among the very greatest writers who have +lived upon this earth. And his genius was not simply artistic; it +displayed itself no less in his character and in the quality of his +thought. These are the sides of him which are revealed with +extraordinary splendour in his _Pensees_--a collection of notes intended +to form the basis for an elaborate treatise in defence of Christianity +which Pascal did not live to complete. The style of many of these +passages surpasses in brilliance and force even that of the _Lettres +Provinciales_. In addition, one hears the intimate voice of Pascal, +speaking upon the profoundest problems of existence--the most momentous +topics which can agitate the minds of men. Two great themes compose his +argument: the miserable insignificance of all that is human--human +reason, human knowledge, human ambition; and the transcendent glory of +God. Never was the wretchedness of mankind painted with a more +passionate power. The whole infinitude of the physical universe is +invoked in his sweeping sentences to crush the presumption of man. Man's +intellectual greatness itself he seizes upon to point the moral of an +innate contradiction, an essential imbecility. 'Quelle chimere,' he +exclaims, 'est-ce donc que l'homme! quelle nouveaute, quel monstre, quel +chaos, quel sujet de contradiction, quel prodige! Juge de toutes choses, +imbecile ver de terre, depositaire du vrai, cloaque d'incertitude et +d'erreur, gloire et rebut de l'univers!' In words of imperishable +intensity, he dwells upon the omnipotence of Death: 'Nous sommes +plaisants de nous reposer dans la societe de nos semblables. Miserables +comme nous, impuissants comme nous, ils ne nous aideront pas; on mourra +seul.' Or he summons up in one ghastly sentence the vision of the +inevitable end: 'Le dernier acte est sanglant, quelque belle que soit la +comedie en tout le reste. On jette enfin de la terre sur la tete, et en +voila pour jamais.' And so follows the conclusion of the whole: +'Connaissez donc, superbe, quel paradoxe vous etes a vous-meme. +Humiliez-vous, raison impuissante; taisez-vous, nature imbecile ... et +entendez de votre maitre votre condition veritable que vous ignorez. +Ecoutez Dieu.' + +Modern as the style of Pascal's writing is, his thought is deeply +impregnated with the spirit of the Middle Ages. He belonged, almost +equally, to the future and to the past. He was a distinguished man of +science, a brilliant mathematician; yet he shrank from a consideration +of the theory of Copernicus: it was more important, he declared, to +think of the immortal soul. In the last years of his short life he sank +into a torpor of superstition--ascetic, self-mortified, and rapt in a +strange exaltation, like a medieval monk. Thus there is a tragic +antithesis in his character--an unresolved discord which shows itself +again and again in his _Pensees_. 'Condition de l'homme,' he notes, +'inconstance, ennui, inquietude.' It is the description of his own +state. A profound inquietude did indeed devour him. He turned +desperately from the pride of his intellect to the consolations of his +religion. But even there--? Beneath him, as he sat or as he walked, a +great gulf seemed to open darkly, into an impenetrable abyss. He looked +upward into heaven, and the familiar horror faced him still: 'Le silence +eternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie!' + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV + + +When Louis XIV assumed the reins of government France suddenly and +wonderfully came to her maturity; it was as if the whole nation had +burst into splendid flower. In every branch of human activity--in war, +in administration, in social life, in art, and in literature--the same +energy was apparent, the same glorious success. At a bound France won +the headship of Europe; and when at last, defeated in arms and +politically shattered, she was forced to relinquish her dreams of +worldly power, her pre-eminence in the arts of peace remained unshaken. +For more than a century she continued, through her literature and her +manners, to dominate the civilized world. + +At no other time have the conditions of society exercised a more +profound influence upon the works of great writers. Though, with the +ascendancy of Louis, the political power of the nobles finally came to +an end, France remained, in the whole complexion of her social life, +completely aristocratic. Louis, with deliberate policy, emphasized the +existing rigidity of class-distinctions by centralizing society round +his splendid palace of Versailles. Versailles is the _clou_ to the age +of Louis XIV. The huge, almost infinite building, so stately and so +glorious, with its vast elaborate gardens, its great trees transported +from distant forests, its amazing waterworks constructed in an arid soil +at the cost of millions, its lesser satellite parks and palaces, its +palpitating crowds of sumptuous courtiers, the whole accumulated mass of +piled-up treasure and magnificence and power--this was something far +more significant than the mere country residence of royalty; it was the +summary, the crown, and the visible expression of the ideals of a great +age. And what were these ideals? The fact that the conception of society +which made Versailles possible was narrow and unjust must not blind us +to the real nobility and the real glory which it brought into being. It +is true that behind and beyond the radiance of Louis and his courtiers +lay the dark abyss of an impoverished France, a ruined peasantry, a +whole system of intolerance, and privilege, and maladministration; yet +it is none the less true that the radiance was a genuine radiance--no +false and feeble glitter, but the warm, brilliant, intense illumination +thrown out by the glow of a nation's life. That life, with all it meant +to those who lived it, has long since vanished from the earth--preserved +to us now only in the pages of its poets, or strangely shadowed forth to +the traveller in the illimitable desolation of Versailles. That it has +gone so utterly is no doubt, on the whole, a cause for rejoicing; but, +as we look back upon it, we may still feel something of the old +enchantment, and feel it, perhaps, the more keenly for its +strangeness--its dissimilarity to the experiences of our own days. We +shall catch glimpses of a world of pomp and brilliance, of ceremony and +decoration, a small, vital passionate world which has clothed itself in +ordered beauty, learnt a fine way of easy, splendid living, and come +under the spell of a devotion to what is, to us, no more than the +gorgeous phantom of high imaginations--the divinity of a king. When the +morning sun was up and the horn was sounding down the long avenues, who +would not wish, if only in fancy, to join the glittering cavalcade where +the young Louis led the hunt in the days of his opening glory? Later, +we might linger on the endless terrace, to watch the great monarch, with +his red heels and his golden snuff-box and his towering periwig, come +out among his courtiers, or in some elaborate grotto applaud a ballet by +Moliere. When night fell there would be dancing and music in the gallery +blazing with a thousand looking-glasses, or masquerades and feasting in +the gardens, with the torches throwing strange shadows among the trees +trimmed into artificial figures, and gay lords and proud ladies +conversing together under the stars. + +Such were the surroundings among which the classical literature of +France came into existence, and by which it was profoundly influenced in +a multitude of ways. This literature was, in its form and its essence, +aristocratic literature, though its writers were, almost without +exception, middle-class men brought into prominence by the royal favour. +The great dramatists and poets and prose-writers of the epoch were in +the position of artists working by special permission for the benefit +and pleasure of a select public to which they themselves had no claim +to belong. They were _in_ the world of high birth and splendid manners, +but they were not of it; and thus it happened that their creations, +while reflecting what was finest in the social ideals of the time, +escaped the worst faults of the literary productions of persons of +rank--superficiality and amateurishness. The literature of that age was, +in fact, remarkable to an extraordinary degree for precisely contrary +qualities--for the solidity of its psychological foundations and for the +supreme excellence of its craftsmanship. It was the work of profound and +subtle artists writing for a small, leisured, distinguished, and +critical audience, while retaining the larger outlook and sense of +proportion which had come to them from their own experience of life. + +The fact, too, that this aristocratic audience was no longer concerned +with the activities of political power, exercised a further influence +upon the writers of the age. The old interests of aristocracy--the +romance of action, the exalted passions of chivalry and war--faded into +the background, and their place was taken by the refined and intimate +pursuits of peace and civilization. The exquisite letters of Madame de +Sevigne show us society assuming its modern complexion, women becoming +the arbiters of taste and fashion, and drawing-rooms the centre of life. +These tendencies were reflected in literature; and Corneille's tragedies +of power were replaced by Racine's tragedies of the heart. Nor was it +only in the broad outlines that the change was manifest; the whole +temper of life, in all its details, took on the suave, decorous, +dignified tone of good breeding, and it was impossible that men of +letters should escape the infection. Their works became remarkable for +clarity and elegance, for a graceful simplicity, an easy strength; they +were cast in the fine mould of perfect manners--majestic without +pretension, expressive without emphasis, simple without carelessness, +and subtle without affectation. These are the dominating qualities in +the style of that great body of literature, which has rightly come to be +distinguished as the _Classical_ literature of France. + +Yet there was a reverse to the medal; for such qualities necessarily +involved defects, which, hardly perceptible and of small importance in +the work of the early masters of the Classical school, became more +prominent in the hands of lesser men, and eventually brought the whole +tradition into disrepute. It was inevitable that there should be a +certain narrowness in a literature which was in its very essence +deliberate, refined, and select; omission is the beginning of all art; +and the great French classicists, more supremely artistic, perhaps, than +any other body of writers in the history of the world, practised with +unsparing devotion the virtue of leaving out. The beauties of clarity, +simplicity, and ease were what they aimed at; and to attain them +involved the abandonment of other beauties which, however attractive, +were incompatible with those. Vague suggestion, complexity of thought, +strangeness of imagination--to us the familiar ornaments of poetry--were +qualities eschewed by the masters of the age of Louis XIV. They were +willing to forgo comprehensiveness and elaboration, they were ready to +forswear the great effects of curiosity and mystery; for the pursuit of +these led away from the high path of their chosen endeavour--the +creation, within the limits they had marked out, of works of flawless +art. The fact that they succeeded so well is precisely one of the +reasons why it is difficult for the modern reader--and for the +Anglo-Saxon one especially, with his different aesthetic traditions--to +appreciate their work to the full. To us, with our broader outlook, our +more complicated interests, our more elusive moods, their small bright +world is apt to seem uninteresting and out of date, unless we spend some +patient sympathy in the discovery of the real charm and the real beauty +that it contains. Nor is this our only difficulty: the classical +tradition, like all traditions, became degenerate; its virtues hardened +into mannerisms, its weaknesses expanded into dogmas; and it is +sometimes hard for us to discriminate between the artist who has +mastered the convention in which he works, and the artisan who is the +slave of it. The convention itself, if it is unfamiliar to us, is what +fills our attention, so that we forget to look for the moving spirit +behind. And indeed, in the work of the later classicists, there was too +often no spirit to look for. The husk alone remained--a finicky +pretentious framework, fluttering with the faded rags of ideals long +outworn. Every great tradition has its own way of dying; and the +classical tradition died of timidity. It grew afraid of the flesh and +blood of life; it was too polite to face realities, too elevated to +tread the common ground of fact and detail; it would touch nothing but +generalities, for they alone are safe, harmless, and respectable; and, +if they are also empty, how can that he helped? Starving, it shrank into +itself, muttering old incantations; and it continued to mutter them, +automatically, some time after it had expired. + +But, in the heyday of the age of Louis XIV, literature showed no signs +of such a malady--though no doubt it contained the latent germs of the +disease; on the contrary, the masterpieces of that epoch are charged to +the full with vitality and force. We may describe them, in one word, as +worldly--worldly in the broadest and the highest acceptation of the +term. They represent, in its perfect expression, the spirit of this +world--its greatness, its splendour, its intensity, the human drama that +animates it, the ordered beauty towards which it tends. For that was an +age in which the world, in all the plenitude of its brilliance, had come +into its own, when the sombre spirituality of the Middle Ages had been +at last forgotten, when the literatures of Greece and Rome had delivered +their benignant message, when civilization could enjoy for a space its +new maturity, before a larger vision had brought questionings, and an +inward vision aspirations unknown before. The literature of those days +was founded upon a general acceptance--acceptance both in the sphere of +politics and of philosophy. It took for granted a fixed and autocratic +society; it silently assumed the orthodox teaching of the Roman Catholic +Church. Thus, compared with the literature of the eighteenth century, it +was unspeculative; compared with that of the Middle Ages, unspiritual. +It was devoid of that perception of the marvellous and awful +significance of Natural phenomena which dominates the literature of the +Romantic Revival. Fate, Eternity, Nature, the destiny of Man, 'the +prophetic soul of the wide world dreaming on things to come'--such +mysteries it almost absolutely ignored. Even Death seemed to lie a +little beyond its vision. What a difference, in this respect, between +the literature of Louis XIV and the literature of Elizabeth! The latter +is obsessed by the smell of mortality; its imagination, penetrating to +the depths and the heights, shows us mankind adrift amid eternities, and +the whole universe the doubtful shadow of a dream. In the former, these +magnificent obscurities find no place: they have been shut out, as it +were, like a night of storm and darkness on the other side of the +window. The night is there, no doubt; but it is outside, invisible and +neglected, while within, the candles are lighted, the company is +gathered together, and all is warmth and brilliance. To eyes which have +grown accustomed to the elemental conflicts without, the room may seem +at first confined, artificial, and insignificant. But let us wait a +little! Gradually we shall come to feel the charm of the well-ordered +chamber, to appreciate the beauty of the decorations, the distinction +and the penetration of the talk. And, if we persevere, that is not all +we shall discover. We shall find, in that small society, something more +than ease and good breeding and refinement; we shall find the play of +passion and the subtle manifestation of the soul; we shall realize that +the shutting out of terrors and of mysteries has brought at least the +gain of concentration, so that we may discern unhindered the movements +of the mind of man--of man, not rapt aloft in the vast ardours of +speculation, nor involved in the solitary introspection of his own +breast; but of man, civilized, actual, among his fellows, in the bright +light of the world. + +Yet, if it is true that a refined and splendid worldliness was the +dominant characteristic of the literature of the age, it is no less true +that here and there, in its greatest writers, a contrary tendency--faint +but unmistakable--may be perceived. The tone occasionally changes; below +the polished surface a disquietude becomes discernible; a momentary +obscure exception to the general easy-flowing rule. The supreme artists +of the epoch seem to have been able not only to give expression to the +moving forces of their time, but to react against them. They were rebels +as well as conquerors, and this fact lends an extraordinary interest to +their work. Like some subtle unexpected spice in a masterly confection, +a strange, profound, unworldly melancholy just permeates their most +brilliant writings, and gives the last fine taste. + +Before considering these supreme artists more particularly, it will be +well to notice briefly the work of one who can lay no claim to such a +title, but who deserves attention as the spokesman of the literary +ideals of his age. BOILEAU, once the undisputed arbiter of taste +throughout Europe, is now hardly remembered save as the high-priest of +an effete tradition and as the author of some brilliant lines which have +passed as proverbs into the French language. He was a man of vivid +intelligence--courageous, independent, passionately devoted to +literature, and a highly skilled worker in the difficult art of writing +verse. But he lacked the force and the finesse of poetic genius; and it +is not as a poet that he is interesting: it is as a critic. When the +lines upon which French literature was to develop were still uncertain, +when the Classical school was in its infancy, and its great +leaders--Moliere, Racine, La Fontaine--were still disputing their right +to pre-eminence among a host of inferior and now forgotten writers whose +works were carrying on the weak and tasteless traditions of the former +age--it was at this moment that Boileau brought to the aid of the new +movement the whole force of his admirable clear-sightedness, his +dauntless pertinacity, and his caustic, unforgettable wit. No doubt, +without him, the Classical school would have triumphed--ultimately, like +all good things--but it would be hard to exaggerate the service which +was rendered it by Boileau. During many years, in a long series of +satires and epistles, in the _Art Poetique_ and in various prose works, +he impressed upon the reading public the worthlessness of the old +artificial school of preciosity and affectation, and the high value of +the achievements of his great contemporaries. He did more: he not only +attacked and eulogized the works of individuals, he formulated general +principles and gave pointed and repeated expression to the ideals of the +new school. Thus, through him, classicism gained self-consciousness; it +became possessed of a definite doctrine; and a group of writers was +formed, united together by common aims, and destined to exercise an +immense influence upon the development not only of French, but of +European literature. For these reasons--for his almost unerring +prescience in the discernment of contemporary merit and for his +triumphant consolidation of the classical tradition--Boileau must be +reckoned as the earliest of that illustrious company of great critics +which is one of the peculiar glories of French letters. The bulk of his +writing will probably never again be read by any save the curious +explorer; but the spirit of his work lies happily condensed in one short +epistle--_A son Esprit_--where his good sense, his wit, his lucid vigour +and his essential humanity find their consummate expression; it is a +spirit which still animates the literature of France. + +His teaching, however, so valuable in its own day, is not important as a +contribution towards a general theory of aeesthetics. Boileau attempted +to lay down the principles universally binding upon writers of poetry; +but he had not the equipment necessary for such a task. His knowledge +was limited, his sympathies were narrow, and his intellectual powers +lacked profundity. The result was that he committed the common fault of +writers immersed in the business of contemporary controversy--he erected +the precepts, which he saw to be salutary so far as his own generation +was concerned, to the dignity of universal rules. His message, in +reality, was for the France of Louis XIV; he enunciated it as if it was +the one guide to literary salvation for all ages and in all +circumstances; and it so happened that for about a century it was +accepted at his own valuation by the majority of civilized mankind. +Boileau detested--and rightly detested--the extravagant affectations of +the _precieux_ school, the feeble pomposities of Chapelain, the +contorted, inflated, logic-chopping heroes of Corneille's later style; +and the classical reaction against these errors appeared to him in the +guise of a return to the fundamental principles of Nature, Reason, and +Truth. In a sense he was right: for it is certain that the works of +Moliere and Racine were more natural, more reasonable, and more truthful +than those of l'Abbe Cotin and Pradon; his mistake lay in his assumption +that these qualities were the monopoly of the Classical school. +Perceiving the beauty of clarity, order, refinement, and simplicity, he +jumped to the conclusion that these were the characteristics of Nature +herself, and that without them no beauty could exist. He was wrong. +Nature is too large a thing to fit into a system of aesthetics; and +beauty is often--perhaps more often than not--complex, obscure, +fantastic, and strange. At the bottom of all Boileau's theories lay a +hearty love of sound common sense. It was not, as has sometimes been +asserted, imagination that he disliked, but singularity. He could write, +for instance, an enthusiastic appreciation of the sublime sentence, 'God +said, Let there be light, and there was light'; for there imagination is +clothed in transparent beauty, and grandeur is achieved by the simplest +means. More completely than any of his great contemporaries, Boileau was +a representative of middle-class France. + +Certainly the most famous, and perhaps the greatest, of the writers for +whom Boileau acted as the apologist and the interpreter was MOLIERE. In +the literature of France Moliere occupies the same kind of position as +Cervantes in that of Spain, Dante in that of Italy, and Shakespeare in +that of England. His glory is more than national--it is universal. +Gathering within the plenitude of his genius the widest and the +profoundest characteristics of his race, he has risen above the +boundaries of place and language and tradition into a large dominion +over the hearts of all mankind. To the world outside France he alone, in +undisputed eminence, speaks with the authentic voice of France herself. + +That this is so is owing mainly, of course, to the power of his genius; +but it is also owing, in some degree, to the particular form which his +genius took. Judging by quality alone, it is difficult to say whether +his work stands higher or lower in the scale of human achievement than +that of Racine--whether the breadth of vision, the diversity, and the +humanity of his comedies do or do not counterbalance the poetry, the +intensity, and the perfect art of his friend's tragedies; at least it +seems certain that the difference between the reputations of the two men +with the world in general by no means corresponds with the real +difference in their worth. It is by his very perfection, by the very +completeness of his triumph, that Racine loses. He is so absolute, so +special a product of French genius, that it is well-nigh impossible for +any one not born a Frenchman to appreciate him to the full; it is by his +incompleteness, and to some extent even by his imperfections, that +Moliere gains. Of all the great French classics, he is the least +classical. His fluid mind overflowed the mould he worked in. His art, +sweeping over the whole range of comic emotions, from the wildest +buffoonery to the grimmest satire and the subtlest wit, touched life too +closely and too often to attain to that flawless beauty to which it +seems to aspire. He lacked the precision of form which is the mark of +the consummate artist; he was sometimes tentative and ambiguous, often +careless; the structure of some of his finest works was perfunctorily +thrown together; the envelope of his thought--his language--was by no +means faultless, his verse often coming near to prose, and his prose +sometimes aping the rhythm of verse. In fact, it is not surprising that +to the rigid classicists of the eighteenth century this Colossus had +feet of clay. But, after all, even clay has a merit of its own: it is +the substance of the common earth. That substance, entering into the +composition of Moliere, gave him his broad-based solidity, and brought +him into kinship with the wide humanity of the world. + +It was on this side that his work was profoundly influenced by the +circumstances of his life. Moliere never knew the leisure, the +seclusion, the freedom from external cares, without which it is hardly +possible for art to mature to perfection; he passed his existence in the +thick of the battle, and he died as he had lived--in the harness of the +professional entertainer. His early years were spent amid the rough and +sordid surroundings of a travelling provincial company, of which he +became the manager and the principal actor, and for which he composed +his first plays. He matured late. It was not till he was thirty-seven +that he produced _Les Precieuses Ridicules_--his first work of genius; +and it was not till three years later that he came into the full +possession of his powers with _L'Ecole des Femmes_. All his masterpieces +were written in the ten years that followed (1662-73). During that +period the patronage of the king gave him an assured position; he became +a celebrity at Paris and Versailles; he was a successful man. Yet, even +during these years of prosperity, he was far from being free from +troubles. He was obliged to struggle incessantly against the intrigues +of his enemies, among whom the ecclesiastical authorities were the most +ferocious; and even the favour of Louis had its drawbacks, for it +involved a constant expenditure of energy upon the frivolous and +temporary entertainments of the Court. In addition, he was unhappy in +his private life. Unlike Shakespeare, with whom his career offers many +analogies, he never lived to reap the quiet benefit of his work, for he +died in the midst of it, at the age of fifty-one, after a performance in +the title-role of his own _Malade Imaginaire_. + +What he had achieved was, in the first place, the creation of French +Comedy. Before him, there had been boisterous farces, conventional +comedies of intrigue borrowed from the Italian, and extravagant pieces +of adventure and burlesque cast in the Spanish mould. Moliere did for +the comic element in French literature what Corneille had done for the +tragic: he raised it to the level of serious art. It was he who first +completely discovered the aesthetic possibilities that lay in the +ordinary life of every day. He was the most unromantic of writers--a +realist to the core; and he understood that the true subject of comedy +was to be found in the actual facts of human society--in the +affectations of fools, the absurdities of cranks, the stupidities of +dupes, the audacities of impostors, the humours and the follies of +family life. And, like all great originators, his influence has been +immense. At one blow, he established Comedy in its true position and +laid down the lines on which it was to develop for the next two hundred +years. At the present day, all over Europe, the main characteristics of +the average play may be traced straight back to their source in the +dominating genius of Moliere. + +If he fell short of the classical ideal in his workmanship, if he +exceeded it in the breadth and diversity of his mind, it is still true +that the essence of his dramatic method was hardly less classical than +that of Racine himself. His subject-matter was rich and various; but his +treatment of it was strictly limited by the classical conception of art. +He always worked by selection. His incidents are very few, chosen with +the utmost care, impressed upon the spectator with astonishing force, +and exquisitely arranged to succeed each other at the most effective +moment. The choice of the incidents is determined invariably by one +consideration--the light which they throw upon the characters; and the +characters themselves appear to us from only a very few carefully chosen +points of view. The narrowed and selective nature of Moliere's treatment +of character presents an illuminating contrast when compared with the +elaborately detailed method of such a master of the romantic style as +Shakespeare. The English dramatist shows his persons to us in the round; +innumerable facets flash out quality after quality; the subtlest and +most elusive shades of temperament are indicated; until at last the +whole being takes shape before us, endowed with what seems to be the +very complexity and mystery of life itself. Entirely different is the +great Frenchman's way. Instead of expanding, he deliberately narrows his +view; he seizes upon two or three salient qualities in a character and +then uses all his art to impress them indelibly upon our minds. His +Harpagon is a miser, and he is old--and that is all we know about him: +how singularly limited a presentment compared with that of +Shakespeare's bitter, proud, avaricious, vindictive, sensitive, and +almost pathetic Jew! Tartufe, perhaps the greatest of all Moliere's +characters, presents a less complex figure even than such a slight +sketch as Shakespeare's Malvolio. Who would have foreseen Malvolio's +exquisitely preposterous address to Jove? In Tartufe there are no such +surprises. He displays three qualities, and three only--religious +hypocrisy, lasciviousness, and the love of power; and there is not a +word that he utters which is not impregnated with one or all of these. +Beside the vast elaboration of a Falstaff he seems, at first sight, +hardly more solid than some astounding silhouette; yet--such was the +power and intensity of Moliere's art--the more we look, the more +difficult we shall find it to be certain that Tartufe is a less +tremendous creation even than Falstaff himself. + +For, indeed, it is in his characters that Moliere's genius triumphs +most. His method is narrow, but it is deep. He rushes to the essentials +of a human being--tears out his vitals, as it were--and, with a few +repeated master-strokes, transfixes the naked soul. His flashlight never +fails: the affected fop, the ignorant doctor, the silly tradesman, the +heartless woman of fashion--on these, and on a hundred more, he turns +it, inexorably smiling, just at the compromising moment; then turns it +off again, to leave us with a vision that we can never forget. Nor is it +only by its vividness that his portraiture excels. At its best it rises +into the region of sublimity, giving us new visions of the grandeur to +which the human spirit can attain. It is sometimes said that the essence +of Moliere lies in his common sense; that his fundamental doctrine is +the value of moderation, of the calm average outlook of the sensible man +of the world--_l'honnete homme_. And no doubt this teaching is to be +found throughout his work, devoted as it is, by its very nature, to the +eccentricities and exaggerations which beset humanity. But if he had +been nothing more than a sober propounder of the golden mean he never +would have come to greatness. No man realized more clearly the +importance of good sense; but he saw farther than that: he looked into +the profundities of the soul, and measured those strange forces which +brush aside the feeble dictates of human wisdom like gossamer, and lend, +by their very lack of compromise, a dignity and almost a nobility to +folly and even vice itself. Thus it is that he has invested the feeble, +miserable Harpagon with a kind of sordid splendour, and that he has +elevated the scoundrel Don Juan into an alarming image of intellectual +power and pride. In his satire on learned ladies--_Les Femmes +Savantes_--the ridicule is incessant, remorseless; the absurd, pedantic, +self-complacent women are turned inside out before our eyes amid a +cataract of laughter; and, if Moliere had been merely the well-balanced +moralist some critics suppose, that, no doubt, would have been enough. +But for the true Moliere it was not enough. The impression which he +leaves upon us at the end of the play is not simply one of the utter +folly of learning out of place; in Philaminte, the central female +figure, he has depicted the elevation that belongs even to a mistaken +and perverted love of what is excellent; and when she finally goes out, +ridiculous, baffled, but as unyielding as ever in her devotion to +grammar and astronomy, we come near, in the face of her majestic +absurdity, to a feeling of respect. More remarkable still is Moliere's +portrayal of the eminence of the human spirit in the case of Tartufe. +Here it is vice in its meanest and most repulsive forms which has become +endowed with an awful grandeur. Tartufe, the hypocrite, the swindler, +the seducer of his benefactor's wife, looms out on us with the kind of +horrible greatness that Milton's Satan might have had if he had come to +live with a bourgeois family in seventeenth-century France. + +Moliere's genius was many-sided; he was a master not only of the smile, +but of the laugh. He is the gayest of writers, and his farces, in their +wild hilarity, their contagious absurdity, are perfect models of what a +farce should be. He has made these light, frivolous, happy things as +eternal as the severest and the weightiest works of man. He has filled +them with a wonderful irresponsible wisdom, condensing into single +phrases the ridiculousness of generations: 'Nous avons change tout +cela.'--'Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galere?'--'Vous etes +orfevre, Monsieur Josse.' So effectually has he contrived to embalm in +the spice of his humour even the momentary affectations of his own time +that they have come down to us fresh as when they first appeared, and +the _Precieuses Ridicules_--a skit upon the manners and modes of speech +affected by the fops of 1650--still raises to-day our inextinguishable +laughter. This is the obvious side of Moliere; and it is hardly in need +of emphasis. + +It is the more remote quality of his mind--his brooding melancholy, shot +through with bitterness and doubt--that may at first sight escape the +notice of the reader, and that will repay the deepest attention. His +greatest works come near to tragedy. _Le Tartufe_, in spite of its +patched-up happy ending, leaves an impression of horror upon the mind. +_Don Juan_ seems to inculcate a lesson of fatalistic scepticism. In +this extraordinary play--of all Moliere's works the farthest removed +from the classical ideal--the conventional rules of religion and +morality are exposed to a withering scorn; Don Juan, the very embodiment +of the arrogance of intellect, and his servant Sganarelle, the futile +and superstitious supporter of decency and law, come before us as the +only alternatives for our choice; the antithesis is never resolved; and, +though in the end the cynic is destroyed by a _coup de theatre_, the +fool in all his foolishness still confronts us when the curtain falls. + +_Don Juan_--so enigmatic in its meaning and so loose in its +structure--might almost be the work of some writer of the late +nineteenth century; but _Le Misanthrope_--at once so harmonious and so +brilliant, so lucid and so profound--could only have been produced in +the age of Louis XIV. Here, in all probability, Moliere's genius reached +its height. The play shows us a small group of ladies and gentlemen, in +the midst of which one man--Alceste--stands out pre-eminent for the +intensity of his feelings and the honesty of his thoughts. He is in love +with Celimene, a brilliant and fascinating woman of the world; and the +subject of the play is his disillusionment. The plot is of the +slightest; the incidents are very few. With marvellous art Moliere +brings on the inevitable disaster. Celimene will not give up the world +for the sake of Alceste; and he will take her on no other terms. And +that is all. Yet, when the play ends, how much has been revealed to us! +The figure of Alceste has been often taken as a piece of +self-portraiture; and indeed it is difficult not to believe that some at +any rate of Moliere's own characteristics have gone to the making of +this subtle and sympathetic creation. The essence of Alceste is not his +misanthropy (the title of the play is somewhat misleading), it is his +sensitiveness. He alone, of all the characters in the piece, really +feels intensely. He alone loves, suffers, and understands. His +melancholy is the melancholy of a profound disillusionment. Moliere, one +fancies, might have looked out upon the world just so--from 'ce petit +coin sombre, avec mon noir chagrin'. The world! To Alceste, at any rate, +the world was the great enemy--a thing of vain ideals, cold hearts, and +futile consolations. He pitted himself against it, and he failed. The +world swept on remorselessly, and left him, in his little corner, alone. +That was his tragedy. Was it Moliere's also?--a tragedy, not of kings +and empires, of vast catastrophes and magnificent imaginations; but +something hardly less moving, and hardly less sublime--a tragedy of +ordinary life. + + +Englishmen have always loved Moliere. It is hardly an exaggeration to +say that they have always detested RACINE. English critics, from Dryden +to Matthew Arnold, have steadily refused to allow him a place among the +great writers of the world; and the ordinary English reader of to-day +probably thinks of him--if he thinks of him at all--as a dull, frigid, +conventional writer, who went out of fashion with full-bottomed wigs and +never wrote a line of true poetry. Yet in France Racine has been the +object of almost universal admiration; his plays still hold the stage +and draw forth the talents of the greatest actors; and there can be no +doubt that it is the name of Racine that would first rise to the lips of +an educated Frenchman if he were asked to select the one consummate +master from among all the writers of his race. Now in literature, no +less than in politics, you cannot indict a whole nation. Some justice, +some meaning, France must have when she declares with one voice that +Racine is not only one of the greatest of dramatists, but also one of +the greatest of poets; and it behoves an Englishman, before he condemns +or despises a foreign writer, to practise some humility and do his best +to understand the point of view from which that writer is regarded by +his own compatriots. No doubt, in the case of Racine, this is a +particularly difficult matter. There are genuine national antipathies to +be got over--real differences in habits of thought and of taste. But +this very difficulty, when it is once surmounted, will make the gain the +greater. For it will be a gain, not only in the appreciation of one +additional artist, but in the appreciation of a new _kind_ of artist; it +will open up a whole undiscovered country in the continent of art. + +English dramatic literature is, of course, dominated by Shakespeare; and +it is almost inevitable that an English reader should measure the value +of other poetic drama by the standards which Shakespeare has already +implanted in his mind. But, after all, Shakespeare himself was but the +product and the crown of a particular dramatic convention; he did not +compose his plays according to an ideal pattern; he was an Elizabethan, +working so consistently according to the methods of his age and country +that, as we know, he passed 'unguessed at' among his contemporaries. But +what were these methods and this convention? To judge of them properly +we must look, not at Shakespeare's masterpieces, for they are transfused +and consecrated with the light of transcendent genius, but at the +average play of an ordinary Elizabethan play-wright, or even at one of +the lesser works of Shakespeare himself. And, if we look here, it will +become apparent that the dramatic tradition of the Elizabethan age was +an extremely faulty one. It allowed, it is true, of great richness, +great variety, and the sublimest heights of poetry; but it also allowed +of an almost incredible looseness of structure and vagueness of purpose, +of dullness, of insipidity, and of bad taste. The genius of the +Elizabethans was astonishing, but it was genius struggling with +difficulties which were well-nigh insuperable; and, as a matter of fact, +in spite of their amazing poetic and dramatic powers, their work has +vanished from the stage, and is to-day familiar to but a few of the +lovers of English literature. Shakespeare alone was not subdued to what +he worked in. His overwhelming genius harmonized and ennobled the +discordant elements of the Elizabethan tradition, and invested them not +only with immortality, but with immortality understanded of the people. +His greatest works will continue to be acted and applauded so long as +there is a theatre in England. But even Shakespeare himself was not +always successful. One has only to look at some of his secondary +plays--at _Troilus and Cressida_, for instance, or _Timon of Athens_--to +see at once how inveterate and malignant were the diseases to which the +dramatic methods of the Elizabethans were a prey. Wisdom and poetry are +intertwined with flatness and folly; splendid situations drift +purposeless to impotent conclusions; brilliant psychology alternates +with the grossest indecency and the feeblest puns. 'O matter and +impertinency mixed!' one is inclined to exclaim at such a spectacle. And +then one is blinded once more by the glamour of _Lear_ and _Othello_; +one forgets the defective system in the triumph of a few exceptions, and +all plays seem intolerable unless they were written on the principle +which produced _Pericles_ and _Titus Andronicus_ and the whole multitude +of distorted and disordered works of genius of the Elizabethan age. + +Racine's principles were, in fact, the direct opposite of these. +'Comprehension' might be taken as the watchword of the Elizabethans; +Racine's was 'concentration'. His great aim was to produce, not an +extraordinary nor a complex work of art, but a flawless one; he wished +to be all matter and no impertinency. His conception of a drama was of +something swift, simple, inevitable; an action taken at the crisis, with +no redundancies however interesting, no complications however +suggestive, no irrelevances however beautiful--but plain, intense, +vigorous, and splendid with nothing but its own essential force. Nor can +there be any doubt that Racine's view of what a drama should be has been +justified by the subsequent history of the stage. The Elizabethan +tradition has died out--or rather it has left the theatre, and become +absorbed in the modern novel; and it is the drama of crisis--such as +Racine conceived it--which is now the accepted model of what a +stage-play should be. And, in this connexion, we may notice an old +controversy, which still occasionally raises its head in the waste +places of criticism--the question of the three unities. In this +controversy both sides have been content to repeat arguments which are +in reality irrelevant and futile. It is irrelevant to consider whether +the unities were or were not prescribed by Aristotle; and it is futile +to ask whether the sense of probability is or is not more shocked by the +scenic representation of an action of thirty-six hours than by one of +twenty-four. The value of the unities does not depend either upon their +traditional authority or--to use the French expression--upon their +_vraisemblance_. Their true importance lies simply in their being a +powerful means towards concentration. Thus it is clear that in an +absolute sense they are neither good nor bad; their goodness or badness +depends upon the kind of result which the dramatist is aiming at. If he +wishes to produce a drama of the Elizabethan type--a drama of +comprehension--which shall include as much as possible of the varied +manifestations of human life, then obviously the observance of the +unities must exercise a restricting and narrowing influence which would +be quite out of place. On the other hand, in a drama of crisis they are +not only useful but almost inevitable. If a crisis is to be a real +crisis it must not drag on indefinitely; it must not last for more than +a few hours, or--to put a rough limit--for more than a single day; in +fact, the unity of time must be preserved. Again, if the action is to +pass quickly, it must pass in one place, for there will be no time for +the movement of the characters elsewhere; thus the unity of place +becomes a necessity. Finally, if the mind is to be concentrated to the +full upon a particular crisis, it must not be distracted by side issues; +the event, and nothing but the event, must be displayed; in other words, +the dramatist will not succeed in his object unless he employs the unity +of action. + +Let us see how Racine carries out these principles by taking one of his +most characteristic plays--_Berenice_--and comparing it with an equally +characteristic work of Shakespeare's--_Antony and Cleopatra_. The +comparison is particularly interesting because the two dramas, while +diametrically opposed in treatment, yet offer some curious parallels in +the subjects with which they deal. Both are concerned with a pair of +lovers placed in the highest position of splendour and power; in both +the tragedy comes about through a fatal discordance between the claims +of love and of the world; in both the action passes in the age of Roman +greatness, and vast imperial issues are intertwined with individual +destinies. Of Shakespeare's drama it is hardly necessary to speak. +Nowhere else, perhaps, has that universal genius displayed more +completely the extraordinary fertility of his mind. The play is crammed +full and running over with the multifarious activities of human +existence. 'What is there in the whole of life, in all the experience of +the world,' one is inclined to ask after a perusal of it, 'that is not +to be found somewhere or other among these amazing pages?' This +tremendous effect has been produced, in the first place, by means of the +immense variety of the characters; persons of every rank and every +occupation--generals and waiting-women, princesses and pirates, +diplomatists and peasants, eunuchs and emperors--all these we have, and +a hundred more; and, of course, as the grand consummation of all, we +have the dazzling complexity of Cleopatra. But this mass of character +could never have been presented to us without a corresponding variety of +incident; and, indeed, the tragedy is packed with an endless succession +of incidents--battles, intrigues, marriages, divorces, treacheries, +reconciliations, deaths. The complicated action stretches over a long +period of time and over a huge tract of space. The scene constantly +shifts from Alexandria to Rome, from Athens to Messina, from Pompey's +galley to the plains of Actium. Some commentators have been puzzled by +the multitude of these changes, and when, for a scene of a few moments, +Shakespeare shows us a Roman army marching through Syria, they have been +able to see in it nothing more than a wanton violation of the rule of +the unity of place; they have not understood that it is precisely by +such touches as these that Shakespeare has succeeded in bringing before +our minds a sense of universal agitation and the enormous dissolution of +empires. + +Turning to _Berenice_, we find a curious contrast. The whole tragedy +takes place in a small antechamber; the action lasts hardly longer than +its actual performance--about two hours and a half; and the characters +are three in number. As for the plot, it is contained in the following +six words of Suetonius: 'Titus reginam Berenicem dimissit invitus +invitam.' It seems extraordinary that with such materials Racine should +have ventured to set out to write a tragedy: it is more extraordinary +still that he succeeded. The interest of the play never ceases for a +moment; the simple situation is exposed, developed, and closed with all +the refinements of art; nothing is omitted that is essential, nothing +that is unessential is introduced. Racine has studiously avoided +anything approaching violent action or contrast or complexity; he has +relied entirely for his effect upon his treatment of a few intimate +human feelings interacting among themselves. The strain and press of the +outer world--that outer world which plays so great a part in +Shakespeare's masterpiece--is almost banished from his drama--almost, +but not quite. With wonderful art Racine manages to suggest that, behind +the quiet personal crisis in the retired little room, the strain and the +pressure of outside things do exist. For this is the force that +separates the lovers--the cruel claims of government and the state. +When, at the critical moment, Titus is at last obliged to make the fatal +choice, one word, as he hesitates, seems to dominate and convince his +soul: it is the word 'Rome'. Into this single syllable Racine has +distilled his own poignant version of the long-resounding elaborations +of _Antony and Cleopatra_. + +It would, no doubt, be absurd to claim for Racine's tragedy a place as +high as Shakespeare's. But this fact should not blind us to the +extraordinary merits which it does possess. In one respect, indeed, it +might be urged that the English play is surpassed by the French one--and +that is, as a _play. Berenice_ is still acted with success; but _Antony +and Cleopatra_--? It is impossible to do justice to such a work on the +stage; it must be mutilated, rearranged, decocted, and in the end, at +the best, it will hardly do more than produce an impression of confused +splendour on an audience. It is the old difficulty of getting a quart +into a pint bottle. But _Berenice is_ a pint--neither more nor less, and +fits its bottle to a nicety. To witness a performance of it is a rare +and exquisite pleasure; the impression is one of flawless beauty; one +comes away profoundly moved, and with a new vision of the capacities of +art. + +Singleness of purpose is the dominating characteristic of the French +classical drama, and of Racine's in particular; and this singleness +shows itself not only in the action and its accessories, but in the +whole tone of the piece. Unity of tone is, in fact, a more important +element in a play than any other unity. To obtain it Racine and his +school avoided both the extreme contrasts and the displays of physical +action which the Elizabethans delighted in. The mixture of comedy and +tragedy was abhorrent to Racine, not because it was bad in itself, but +because it must have shattered the unity of his tone; and for the same +reason he preferred not to produce before the audience the most exciting +and disturbing circumstances of his plots, but to present them +indirectly, by means of description. Now it is clear that the great +danger lying before a dramatist who employs these methods is the danger +of dullness. Unity of tone is an excellent thing, but if the tone is a +tedious one, it is better to avoid it. Unfortunately Racine's successors +in Classical Tragedy did not realize this truth. They did not understand +the difficult art of keeping interest alive without variety of mood, and +consequently their works are now almost unreadable. The truth is that +they were deluded by the apparent ease with which Racine accomplished +this difficult task. Having inherited his manner, they were content; +they forgot that there was something else which they had not +inherited--his genius. + +Closely connected with this difficulty there was another over which +Racine triumphed no less completely, and which proved equally fatal to +his successors. Hitherto we have been discussing the purely dramatic +aspect of classical tragedy; we must not forget that this drama was also +literary. The problem that Racine had to solve was complicated by the +fact that he was working, not only with a restricted dramatic system, +but with a restricted language. His vocabulary was an incredibly small +one--the smallest, beyond a doubt, that ever a great poet had to deal +with. But that was not all: the machinery of his verse was hampered by +a thousand traditional restraints; artificial rules of every kind hedged +round his inspiration; if he were to soar at all, he must soar in +shackles. Yet, even here, Racine succeeded: he _did_ soar--though it is +difficult at first for the English reader to believe it. And here +precisely similar considerations apply, as in the case of Racine's +dramatic method. In both instances the English reader is looking for +variety, surprise, elaboration; and when he is given, instead, +simplicity, clarity, ease, he is apt to see nothing but insipidity and +flatness. Racine's poetry differs as much from Shakespeare's as some +calm-flowing river of the plain from a turbulent mountain torrent. To +the dwellers in the mountain the smooth river may seem at first +unimpressive. But still waters run deep; and the proverb applies with +peculiar truth to the poetry of Racine. Those ordinary words, that +simple construction--what can there be there to deserve our admiration? +On the surface, very little no doubt; but if we plunge below the surface +we shall find a great profundity and a singular strength. Racine is in +reality a writer of extreme force--but it is a force of absolute +directness that he wields. He uses the commonest words, and phrases +which are almost colloquial; but every word, every phrase, goes straight +to its mark, and the impression produced is ineffaceable. In English +literature there is very little of such writing. When an English poet +wishes to be forceful he almost invariably flies to the gigantic, the +unexpected, and the out-of-the-way; he searches for strange metaphors +and extraordinary constructions; he surprises us with curious mysteries +and imaginations we have never dreamed of before. Now and then, however, +even in English literature, instances arise of the opposite--the +Racinesque--method. In these lines of Wordsworth, for example-- + + The silence that is in the starry sky, + The sleep that is among the lonely hills-- + +there is no violent appeal, nothing surprising, nothing odd--only a +direct and inevitable beauty; and such is the kind of effect which +Racine is constantly producing. If he wishes to suggest the emptiness, +the darkness, and the ominous hush of a night by the seashore, he does +so not by strange similes or the accumulation of complicated details, +but in a few ordinary, almost insignificant words-- + + Mais tout dort, et l'armee, et les vents, et Neptune. + +If he wishes to bring before the mind the terrors of nightmare, a single +phrase can conjure them up-- + + C'etait pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit. + +By the same simple methods his art can describe the wonderful and +perfect beauty of innocence-- + + Le jour n'est pas plus pur que le fond de mon coeur; + +and the furies of insensate passion-- + + C'est Venus toute entiere a sa proie attachee. + +But the flavour of poetry vanishes in quotation--and particularly +Racine's, which depends to an unusual extent on its dramatic +surroundings, and on the atmosphere that it creates. He who wishes to +appreciate it to the full must steep himself in it deep and long. He +will be rewarded. In spite of a formal and unfamiliar style, in spite of +a limited vocabulary, a conventional versification, an unvaried and +uncoloured form of expression--in spite of all these things (one is +almost inclined, under the spell of Racine's enchantment, to say +_because_ of them)--he will find a new beauty and a new splendour--a +subtle and abiding grace. + +But Racine's extraordinary powers as a writer become still more obvious +when we consider that besides being a great poet he is also a great +psychologist. The combination is extremely rare in literature, and in +Racine's case it is especially remarkable owing to the smallness of the +linguistic resources at his disposal and the rigid nature of the +conventions in which he worked. That he should have succeeded in +infusing into his tiny commonplace vocabulary, arranged in rhymed +couplets according to the strictest and most artificial rules, not only +the beauty of true poetry, but the varied subtleties of character and +passion, is one of those miracles of art which defy analysis. Through +the flowing regularity of his Alexandrines his personages stand out +distinct and palpable, in all the vigour of life. The presentment, it is +true, is not a detailed one; the accidents of character are not shown +us--only its essentials; the human spirit comes before us shorn of its +particulars, naked and intense. Nor is it--as might, perhaps, have been +expected--in the portrayal of intellectual characters that Racine +particularly excels; it is in the portrayal of passionate ones. His +supreme mastery is over the human heart--the subtleties, the +profundities, the agonies, the triumphs, of love. His gallery of lovers +is a long one, and the greatest portraits in it are of women. There is +the jealous, terrific Hermione; the delicate, melancholy Junie; the +noble, exquisite, and fascinating Berenice; there is Roxane with her +voluptuous ruthlessness, and Monime with her purity and her courage; and +there is the dark, incomparable splendour of Phedre. + +Perhaps the play in which Racine's wonderful discrimination in the +drawing of passionate character may be seen in its most striking light +is _Andromaque_. Here there are four characters--two men and two +women--all under the dominion of intense feeling, and each absolutely +distinct. Andromaque, the still youthful widow of Hector, cares for only +two things in the world with passionate devotion--her young son +Astyanax, and the memory of her husband. Both are the captives of +Pyrrhus, the conqueror of Troy, a straightforward, chivalrous, but +somewhat barbarous prince, who, though he is affianced to Hermione, is +desperately in love with Andromaque. Hermione is a splendid tigress +consumed by her desire for Pyrrhus; and Oreste is a melancholy, almost +morbid man, whose passion for Hermione is the dominating principle of +his life. These are the ingredients of the tragedy, ready to explode +like gunpowder with the slightest spark. The spark is lighted when +Pyrrhus declares to Andromaque that if she will not marry him he will +execute her son. Andromaque consents, but decides secretly to kill +herself immediately after the marriage, and thus ensure both the safety +of Astyanax and the honour of Hector's wife. Hermione, in a fury of +jealousy, declares that she will fly with Oreste, on one condition--that +he kills Pyrrhus. Oreste, putting aside all considerations of honour and +friendship, consents; he kills Pyrrhus, and then returns to his mistress +to claim his reward. There follows one of the most violent scenes that +Racine ever wrote--in which Hermione, in an agony of remorse and horror, +turns upon her wretched lover and denounces his crime. Forgetful of her +own instigation, she demands who it was that suggested to him the +horrible deed--'_Qui te l'a dit?_' she shrieks: one of those astounding +phrases which, once heard, can never be forgotten. She rushes out to +commit suicide, and the play ends with Oreste mad upon the stage. + +The appearance of this exciting and vital drama, written when Racine was +twenty-eight years old, brought him immediate fame. During the next ten +years (1667-77) he produced a series of masterpieces, of which perhaps +the most interesting are _Britannicus_, where the youthful Nero, just +plunging into crime, is delineated with supreme mastery; _Bajazet_, +whose subject is a contemporary tragedy of the seraglio at +Constantinople; and a witty comedy, _Les Plaideurs_, based on +Aristophanes. Racine's character was a complex one; he was at once a +brilliant and caustic man of the world, a profound scholar, a sensitive +and emotional poet. He was extremely combative, quarrelling both with +the veteran Corneille and with the friend who had first helped him +towards success--Moliere; and he gave vent to his antipathies in some +very vigorous and cutting prose prefaces as well as in some verse +epigrams which are among the most venomous in the language. Besides +this, he was an assiduous courtier, and he also found the time, among +these various avocations, for carrying on at least two passionate +love-affairs. At the age of thirty-eight, after two years' labour, he +completed the work in which his genius shows itself in its consummate +form--the great tragedy of _Phedre_. The play contains one of the most +finished and beautiful, and at the same time one of the most +overwhelming studies of passion in the literature of the world. The +tremendous role of Phedre--which, as the final touchstone of great +acting, holds the same place on the French stage as that of Hamlet on +the English--dominates the piece, rising in intensity as act follows +act, and 'horror on horror's head accumulates'. Here, too, Racine has +poured out all the wealth of his poetic powers. He has performed the +last miracle, and infused into the ordered ease of the Alexandrine a +strange sense of brooding mystery and indefinable terror and the awful +approaches of fate. The splendour of the verse reaches its height in the +fourth act, when the ruined queen, at the culmination of her passion, +her remorse, and her despair, sees in a vision Hell opening to receive +her, and the appalling shade of her father Minos dispensing his +unutterable doom. The creator of this magnificent passage, in which the +imaginative grandeur of the loftiest poetry and the supreme force of +dramatic emotion are mingled in a perfect whole, has a right to walk +beside Sophocles in the high places of eternity. + +Owing to the intrigues of a lady of fashion, _Phedre_, when it first +appeared, was a complete failure. An extraordinary change then took +place in Racine's mind. A revulsion of feeling, the precise causes of +which are to this day a mystery, led him suddenly to renounce the world, +to retire into the solitude of religious meditation, and to abandon the +art which he had practised with such success. He was not yet forty, his +genius was apparently still developing, but his great career was at an +end. Towards the close of his life he produced two more plays--_Esther_, +a short idyllic piece of great beauty, and _Athalie_, a tragedy which, +so far from showing that his powers had declined during his long +retreat, has been pronounced by some critics to be the finest of his +works. He wrote no more for the stage, and he died eight years later, at +the age of sixty. It is difficult to imagine the loss sustained by +literature during those twenty years of silence. They might have given +us a dozen tragedies, approaching, or even surpassing, the merit of +_Phedre_. And Racine must have known this. One is tempted to see in his +mysterious mortification an instance of that strain of disillusionment +which runs like a dark thread through the brilliant texture of the +literature of the _Grand Siecle_. Racine had known to the full the uses +of this world, and he had found them flat, stale, and unprofitable; he +had found that even the triumphs of his art were all compact of +worldliness; and he had turned away, in an agony of renunciation, to +lose himself in the vision of the Saints. + +The influence and the character of that remarkable age appear nowhere +more clearly than in the case of its other great poet--LA FONTAINE. In +the Middle Ages, La Fontaine would have been a mendicant friar, or a +sainted hermit, or a monk, surreptitiously illuminating the margins of +his manuscripts with the images of birds and beasts. In the nineteenth +century, one can imagine him drifting among Paris cafes, pouring out his +soul in a random lyric or two, and dying before his time. The age of +Louis XIV took this dreamer, this idler, this feckless, fugitive, +spiritual creature, kept him alive by means of patrons in high society, +and eventually turned him--not simply into a poet, for he was a poet by +nature, but into one of the most subtle, deliberate, patient, and +exquisite craftsmen who have ever written in verse. The process was a +long one; La Fontaine was in his fifties when he wrote the greater +number of his _Fables_--where his genius found its true expression for +the first time. But the process was also complete. Among all the +wonderful and beautiful examples of masterly craftsmanship in the +poetry of France, the _Fables_ of La Fontaine stand out as _the_ models +of what perfect art should be. + +The main conception of the fables was based upon the combination of two +ideas--that of the stiff dry moral apologue of AEsop, and that of the +short story. By far the most important of these two elements was the +latter. With the old fabulists the moral was the excuse for the fable; +with La Fontaine it was the other way round. His moral, added in a +conventional tag, or even, sometimes, omitted altogether, was simply of +use as the point of departure for the telling of a charming little tale. +Besides this, the traditional employment of animals as the personages in +a fable served La Fontaine's turn in another way. It gave him the +opportunity of creating a new and delightful atmosphere, in which his +wit, his fancy, his humour, and his observation could play at their +ease. His animals--whatever injudicious enthusiasts may have said--are +not real animals; we are no wiser as to the true nature of cats and +mice, foxes and lions, after we have read the _Fables_ than before. Nor, +on the other hand, are they the mere pegs for human attributes which +they were in the hands of AEsop. La Fontaine's creatures partake both of +the nature of real animals and of human beings, and it is precisely in +this dual character of theirs that their fascination lies. In their +outward appearance they are deliciously true to life. With the fewest of +rapid strokes, La Fontaine can raise up an unmistakable vision of any +beast or bird, fish or reptile, that he has a mind to-- + + Un jour sur ses long pieds allait je ne sais ou + Le heron au long bec emmanche d'un long cou. + +Could there be a better description? And his fables are crowded with +these life-like little vignettes. But the moment one goes below the +surface one finds the frailties, the follies, the virtues and the vices +of humanity. And yet it is not quite that. The creatures of La +Fontaine's fantasy are not simply animals with the minds of human +beings: they are something more complicated and amusing; they are +animals with the minds which human beings would certainly have, if one +could suppose them transformed into animals. When the young and foolish +rat sees a cat for the first time and observes to his mother-- + + Je le crois fort sympathisant + Avec messieurs les rats: car il a des oreilles + En figure aux notres pareilles; + +this excellent reason is obviously not a rat's reason; nor is it a human +being's reason; the fun lies in its being just the reason which, no +doubt, a silly young creature of the human species would give in the +circumstances if, somehow or other, he were metamorphosed into a rat. + +It is this world of shifting lights, of queer, elusive, delightful +absurdities, that La Fontaine has made the scene of the greater number +of his stories. The stories themselves are for the most part exceedingly +slight; what gives them immortality is the way they are told. Under the +guise of an ingenuous, old-world manner, La Fontaine makes use of an +immense range of technical powers. He was an absolute master of the +resources of metre; and his rhythms, far looser and more varied than +those of his contemporaries, are marvellously expressive, while yet they +never depart from a secret and controlling sense of form. His vocabulary +is very rich--stocked chiefly with old-fashioned words, racy, +colloquial, smacking of the soil, and put together with the light +elliptical constructions of the common people. Nicknames he is +particularly fond of: the cat is Raminagrobis, or Grippeminaud, or +Rodilard, or Maitre Mitis; the mice are 'la gent trotte-menu'; the +stomach is Messer Gaster; Jupiter is Jupin; La Fontaine himself is +Gros-Jean. The charming tales, one feels, might almost have been told by +some old country crony by the fire, while the wind was whistling in the +chimney and the winter night drew on. The smile, the gesture, the +singular _naivete_--one can watch it all. But only for a moment. One +must be childish indeed (and, by an odd irony, this exquisitively +sophisticated author falls into the hands of most of his readers when +they are children) to believe, for more than a moment, that the +ingenuousness of the _Fables_ was anything but assumed. In fact, to do +so would be to miss the real taste of the work. There is a kind of art, +as every one knows, that conceals itself; but there is another--and this +is less often recognized--that displays itself, that _just_ shows, +charmingly but unmistakably, how beautifully contrived it is. And La +Fontaine's art is of the latter sort. He is like one of those +accomplished cooks in whose dishes, though the actual secret of their +making remains a mystery, one can trace the ingredients which have gone +to the concoction of the delicious whole. As one swallows the rare +morsel, one can just perceive how, behind the scenes, the oil, the +vinegar, the olive, the sprinkling of salt, the drop of lemon were +successively added, and, at the critical moment, the simmering delicacy +served up, done to a turn. + +It is indeed by an infinity of small touches that La Fontaine produces +his effects. And his effects are very various. With equal ease, +apparently, he can be playful, tender, serious, preposterous, eloquent, +meditative, and absurd. But one quality is always present in his work; +whatever tune he may be playing, there is never a note too much. Alike +in his shortest six-lined anecdote and his most elaborate pieces, in +which detail follows detail and complex scenes are developed, there is +no trace of the superfluous; every word has its purpose in the general +scheme. This quality appears most clearly, perhaps, in the adroit +swiftness of his conclusions. When once the careful preliminary +foundation of the story has been laid, the crisis comes quick and +pointed--often in a single line. Thus we are given a minute description +of the friendship of the cat and the sparrow; all sorts of details are +insisted on; we are told how, when the sparrow teased the cat-- + + En sage et discrete personne, + Maitre chat excusait ces jeux. + +Then the second sparrow is introduced and his quarrel with the first. +The cat fires up-- + + Le moineau du voisin viendra manger le notre? + Non, de par tous les chats!--Entrant lors au combat, + Il croque l'etranger. Vraiment, dit maitre chat, + Les moineaux ont un gout exquis et delicat! + +And now in one line the story ends-- + + Cette reflexion fit aussi croquer l'autre. + +One more instance of La Fontaine's inimitable conciseness may be given. +When Bertrand (the monkey) has eaten the chestnuts which Raton (the cat) +has pulled out of the fire, the friends are interrupted; the fable ends +thus-- + + Une servante vint; adieu, mes gens! Raton + N'etait pas content, ce dit-on. + +How admirable are the brevity and the lightness of that 'adieu, mes +gens'! In three words the instantaneous vanishing of the animals is +indicated with masterly precision. One can almost see their tails +whisking round the corner. + +Modern admirers of La Fontaine have tended to throw a veil of sentiment +over his figure, picturing him as the consoling beatific child of +nature, driven by an unsympathetic generation to a wistful companionship +with the dumb world of brutes. But nothing could be farther from the +truth than this conception. La Fontaine was as unsentimental as Moliere +himself. This does not imply that he was unfeeling: feelings he +had--delicate and poignant ones; but they never dominated him to the +exclusion of good sense. His philosophy--if we may call so airy a thing +by such a name--was the philosophy of some gentle whimsical follower of +Epicurus. He loved nature, but unromantically, as he loved a glass of +wine and an ode of Horace, and the rest of the good things of life. As +for the bad things--they were there; he saw them--saw the cruelty of the +wolf, and the tyranny of the lion, and the rapacity of man--saw that-- + + Jupin pour chaque etat mit deux tables au monde; + L'adroit, le vigilant, et le fort sont assis + A la premiere; et les petits + Mangent leur reste a la seconde. + +Yet, while he saw them, he could smile. It was better to smile--if only +with regret; better, above all, to pass lightly, swiftly, gaily over the +depths as well as the surface of existence; for life is short--almost as +short as one of his own fables-- + + Qui de nous des clartes de la voute azuree + Doit jouir le dernier? Est-il aucun moment + Qui vous puisse assurer d'un second seulement? + +The age was great in prose as well as in poetry. The periods of +BOSSUET, ordered, lucid, magnificent, reflect its literary ideals as +clearly as the couplets of Racine. Unfortunately, however, in the case +of Bossuet, the splendour and perfection of the form is very nearly all +that a modern reader can appreciate: the substance is for the most part +uninteresting and out-of-date. The truth is that Bossuet was too +completely a man of his own epoch to speak with any great significance +to after generations. His melodious voice enters our ears, but not our +hearts. The honest, high-minded, laborious bishop, with his dignity and +his enthusiasm, his eloquence and his knowledge of the world, represents +for us the best and most serious elements in the Court of Louis. The +average good man of those days must have thought on most subjects as +Bossuet thought--though less finely and intensely; and Bossuet never +spoke a sentence from his pulpit which went beyond the mental vision of +the most ordinary of his congregation. He saw all round his age, but he +did not see beyond it. Thus, in spite of his intelligence, his view of +the world was limited. The order of things under Louis XIV was the one +order: outside that, all was confusion, heresy, and the work of Satan. +If he had written more often on the great unchanging fundamentals of +life, more of his work would have been enduring. But it happened that, +while by birth he was an artist, by profession he was a theologian; and +even the style of Bossuet can hardly save from oblivion the theological +controversies of two hundred years ago. The same failing mars his +treatment of history. His _Histoire Universelle_ was conceived on broad +and sweeping lines, and contains some perspicacious thinking; but the +dominating notion of the book is a theological one--the illustration, +by means of the events of history, of the divine governance of the +world; and the fact that this conception of history has now become +extinct has reduced the work to the level of a finely written curiosity. + +Purely as a master of prose Bossuet stands in the first rank. His style +is broad, massive, and luminous; and the great bulk of his writing is +remarkable more for its measured strength than for its ornament. Yet at +times the warm spirit of the artist, glowing through the well-ordered +phrases, diffuses an extraordinary splendour. When, in his _Meditations +sur l'Evangile_ or his _Elevations sur les Mysteres_, Bossuet unrolls +the narratives of the Bible or meditates upon the mysteries of his +religion, his language takes on the colours of poetry and soars on the +steady wings of an exalted imagination. In his famous _Oraisons +Funebres_ the magnificent amplitude of his art finds its full +expression. Death, and Life, and the majesty of God, and the +transitoriness of human glory--upon such themes he speaks with an +organ-voice which reminds an English reader of the greatest of his +English contemporaries, Milton. The pompous, rolling, resounding +sentences follow one another in a long solemnity, borne forward by a +vast movement of eloquence which underlies, controls, and animates them +all. + + O nuit desastreuse! O nuit effroyable, ou retentit tout-a-coup + comme un eclat de tonnerre, cette etonnante nouvelle: Madame se + meurt, Madame est morte!... + +--The splendid words flow out like a stream of lava, molten and glowing, +and then fix themselves for ever in adamantine beauty. + +We have already seen that one of the chief characteristics of French +classicism was compactness. The tragedies of Racine are as closely knit +as some lithe naked runner without an ounce of redundant flesh; the +_Fables_ of La Fontaine are airy miracles of compression. In prose the +same tendency is manifest, but to an even more marked degree. La +Rochefoucauld and La Bruyere, writing the one at the beginning, the +other towards the close, of the classical period, both practised the art +of extreme brevity with astonishing success. The DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD +was the first French writer to understand completely the wonderful +capacities for epigrammatic statement which his language possessed; and +in the dexterous precision of pointed phrase no succeeding author has +ever surpassed him. His little book of _Maxims_ consists of about five +hundred detached sentences, polished like jewels, and, like jewels, +sparkling with an inner brilliance on which it seems impossible that one +can gaze too long. The book was the work of years, and it contains in +its small compass the observations of a lifetime. Though the reflections +are not formally connected, a common spirit runs through them all. +'Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!' such is the perpetual burden of La +Rochefoucauld's doctrine: but it is vanity, not in the generalized sense +of the Preacher, but in the ordinary personal sense of empty egotism and +petty self-love which, in the eyes of this bitter moralist, is the +ultimate essence of the human spirit and the secret spring of the world. +The case is overstated, no doubt; but the strength of La Rochefoucauld's +position can only be appreciated when one has felt for oneself the keen +arrows of his wit. As one turns over his pages, the sentences strike +into one with a deadly force of personal application; sometimes one +almost blushes; one realizes that these things are cruel, that they are +humiliating, and that they are true. 'Nous avons tous assez de force +pour supporter les maux d'autrui.'--'Quelque bien qu'on nous dise de +nous, on ne nous apprend rien de nouveau.'--'On croit quelquefois hair +la flatterie, mais on ne hait que le maniere de flatter.'--'Le refus de +la louange est un desir d'etre loue deux fois.'--'Les passions les plus +violentes nous laissent quelquefois du relache, mais la vanite nous +agite toujours.' No more powerful dissolvent for the self-complacency of +humanity was ever composed. + +Unlike the majority of the writers of his age, La Rochefoucauld was an +aristocrat; and this fact gives a peculiar tone to his work. In spite of +the great labour which he spent upon perfecting it, he has managed, in +some subtle way, to preserve all through it an air of slight disdain. +'Yes, these sentences are all perfect,' he seems to be saying; 'but +then, what else would you have? Unless one writes perfect sentences, why +should one trouble to write?' In his opinion, 'le vrai honnete homme est +celui qui ne se pique de rien'; and it is clear that he followed his own +dictum. His attitude was eminently detached. Though what he says reveals +so intensely personal a vision, he himself somehow remains impersonal. +Beneath the flawless surface of his workmanship, the clever Duke eludes +us. We can only see, as we peer into the recesses, an infinite ingenuity +and a very bitter love of truth. + +A richer art and a broader outlook upon life meet us in the pages of LA +BRUYERE. The instrument is still the same--the witty and searching +epigram--but it is no longer being played upon a single string. La +Bruyere's style is extremely supple; he throws his apothegms into an +infinite variety of moulds, employing a wide and coloured vocabulary, +and a complete mastery of the art of rhetorical effect. Among these +short reflections he has scattered a great number of somewhat lengthier +portraits or character-studies, some altogether imaginary, others +founded wholly or in part on well-known persons of the day. It is here +that the great qualities of his style show themselves most clearly. +Psychologically, these studies are perhaps less valuable than has +sometimes been supposed: they are caricatures rather than +portraits--records of the idiosyncrasies of humanity rather than of +humanity itself. What cannot be doubted for a moment is the supreme art +with which they have been composed. The virtuosity of the language--so +solid and yet so brilliant, so varied and yet so pure--reminds one of +the hard subtlety of a Greek gem. The rhythm is absolutely perfect, and, +with its suspensions, its elaborations, its gradual crescendos, its +unerring conclusions, seems to carry the sheer beauty of expressiveness +to the farthest conceivable point. Take, as one instance out of a +multitude, this description of the crank who devotes his existence to +the production of tulips-- + + Vous le voyez plante et qui a pris racine au milieu de ses tulipes + et devant la _Solitaire_: il ouvre de grands yeux, il frotte ses + mains, il se baisse, il la voit de plus pres, il ne l'a jamais vue + si belle, il a le coeur epanoui de joie: il la quitte pour + l'_Orientale_; de la, il va a la _Veuve_; il passe au _Drap d'or_, + de celle-ci a _l'Agathe_, d'ou il revient enfin a la _Solitaire_, + ou il se fixe, ou il se lasse, ou il s'assied, ou il oublie de + diner: aussi est-elle nuancee, bordee, huilee a pieces emportees; + elle a un beau vase ou un beau calice; il la contemple, il + l'admire; Dieu et la nature sont en tout cela ce qu'il n'admire + point! il ne va pas plus loin que l'oignon de sa tulipe, qu'il ne + livrerait pas pour mille ecus, et qu'il donnera pour rien quand les + tulipes seront neligees et que les oeillets auront prevalu. Cet + homme raisonnable qui a une ame, qui a un culte et une religion, + revient chez soi fatigue affame, mais fort content de sa journee: + il a vu des tulipes. + +_Les Caracteres_ is the title of La Bruyere's book; but its +sub-title--'Les Moeurs de ce Siecle'--gives a juster notion of its +contents. The whole of society, as it appeared to the subtle and +penetrating gaze of La Bruyere, flows through its pages. In them, +Versailles rises before us, less in its outward form than in its +spiritual content--its secret, essential self. And the judgement which +La Bruyere passes on this vision is one of withering scorn. His +criticism is more convincing than La Rochefoucauld's because it is based +upon a wider and a deeper foundation. The vanity which _he_ saw around +him was indeed the vanity of the Preacher--the emptiness, the +insignificance, the unprofitableness, of worldly things. There was +nothing too small to escape his terrible attention, and nothing too +large. His arraignment passes from the use of rouge to the use of +torture, from the hypocrisies of false devotion to the silly absurdities +of eccentrics, from the inhumanity of princes to the little habits of +fools. The passage in which he describes the celebration of Mass in the +Chapel of Versailles, where all the courtiers were to be seen turning +their faces to the king's throne and their backs to the altar of God, +shows a spirit different indeed from that of Bossuet--a spirit not far +removed from the undermining criticism of the eighteenth century itself. +Yet La Bruyere was not a social reformer nor a political theorist: he +was simply a moralist and an observer. He saw in a flash the condition +of the French peasants-- + + Certains animaux farouches, des males et des femelles, repandus par + la campagne, noirs, livides, et tout brules du soleil, attaches a + la terre qu'ils fouillent et qu'ils remuent avec une opiniatrete + invincible; ils out comme une voix articulee, et, quand ils se + levent sur leurs pieds, ils montrent une face humaine: et en effet + ils sont des hommes-- + +saw the dreadful fact, noted it with all the intensity of his genius, +and then passed on. He was not concerned with finding remedies for the +evils of a particular society, but with exposing the underlying evils of +all societies. He would have written as truthful and as melancholy a +book if he had lived to-day. + +La Bruyere, in the darkness of his pessimism, sometimes suggests Swift, +especially in his sarcastically serious treatment of detail; but he was +without the virulent bitterness of the great Dean. In fact his +indictment owes much of its impressiveness to the sobriety with which it +is presented. There is no rage, no strain, no over-emphasis; one feels +as one reads that this is an impartial judge. And, more than that, one +feels that the judge is not only a judge, but also a human being. It is +the human quality in La Bruyere's mind which gives his book its rare +flavour, so that one seems to hear, in these printed words, across the +lapse of centuries, the voice of a friend. At times he forgets his gloom +and his misanthropy, and speaks with a strange depth of feeling on +friendship or on love. 'Un beau visage,' he murmurs, 'est le plus beau +de tous les spectacles, et l'harmonie la plus douce est le son de voix +de celle que l'on aime.' And then--'Etre avec les gens qu'on aime, cela +suffit; rever, leur parler, ne leur parler point, penser a eux, penser a +des choses plus indifferentes, mais aupres d'eux tout est egal.' How +tender and moving the accent, yet how restrained? And was ever more +profundity of intimacy distilled into a few simple words than here--'Il +y a du plaisir a rencontrer les yeux de celui a qui l'on vient de +donner'? But then once more the old melancholy seizes him. Even love +itself must end.--'On guerit comme on se console; on n'a pas dans le +coeur de quoi toujours pleurer et toujours aimer.' He is overwhelmed by +the disappointments of life.--'Les choses les plus souhaitees n'arrivent +point; ou, si elles arrivent, ce n'est ni dans le temps ni dans les +circonstances ou elles auraient fait un extreme plaisir.' And life +itself, what is it? how does it pass?--'Il n'y a pour l'homme que trois +evenements: naitre, vivre, et mourir; il ne se sent pas naitre, il +souffre a mourir, et il oublie de vivre.' + +The pages of La Bruyere--so brilliant and animated on the surface, so +sombre in their fundamental sense--contain the final summary--we might +almost say the epitaph--of the great age of Louis XIV. Within a few +years of the publication of his book in its complete form (1694), the +epoch, which had begun in such a blaze of splendour a generation +earlier, entered upon its ultimate phase of disaster and humiliation. +The political ambitions of the overweening king were completely +shattered; the genius of Marlborough annihilated the armies of France; +and when peace came at last it came in ruin. The country was not only +exhausted to the farthest possible point, its recuperation had been made +well-nigh impossible by the fatal Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, +which, in circumstances of the utmost cruelty, had driven into exile the +most industrious and independent portion of the population. Poverty, +discontent, tyranny, fanaticism--such was the legacy that Louis left to +his country. Yet that was not quite all. Though, during the last years +of the reign, French literature achieved little of lasting value, the +triumphs of the earlier period threw a new and glorious lustre over the +reputation of France. The French tongue became the language of culture +throughout Europe. In every department of literature, French models and +French taste were regarded as the supreme authorities. Strange as it +would have seemed to him, it was not as the conqueror of Holland nor as +the defender of the Church, but as the patron of Racine and the +protector of Moliere that the superb and brilliant Louis gained his +highest fame, his true immortality. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY + +The eighteenth century in France began with Louis XIV and ended with the +Revolution. It is the period which bridges the gulf between autocracy +and self-government, between Roman Catholicism and toleration, between +the classical spirit and the spirit of the Romantic Revival. It is thus +of immense importance in the history not only of France, but of the +civilized world. And from the point of view of literature it is also +peculiarly interesting. The vast political and social changes which it +inaugurated were the result of a corresponding movement in the current +of ideas; and this movement was begun, developed, and brought to a +triumphant conclusion by a series of great French writers, who +deliberately put their literary abilities to the service of the causes +which they had at heart. Thus the literature of the epoch offers a +singular contrast to that of the preceding one. While the masterpieces +of the _Grand Siecle_ served no ulterior purpose, coming into being and +into immortality simply as works of beauty and art, those of the +eighteenth century were works of propaganda, appealing with a practical +purpose to the age in which they were written--works whose value does +not depend solely upon artistic considerations. The former were static, +the latter dynamic. As the century progressed, the tendency deepened; +and the literature of the age, taken as a whole, presents a spectacle of +thrilling dramatic interest, in which the forces of change, at first +insignificant, gradually gather in volume, and at last, accumulated into +overwhelming power, carry all before them. In pure literature, the +writers of the eighteenth century achieved, indeed, many triumphs; but +their great, their peculiar, triumphs were in the domain of thought. + +The movement had already begun before the death of Louis. The evils at +which La Bruyere had shuddered had filled the attention of more +practical minds. Among these the most remarkable was FENELON, Archbishop +of Cambray, who combined great boldness of political thought with the +graces of a charming and pellucid style. In several writings, among +which was the famous _Telemaque_--a book written for the edification of +the young Duc de Bourgogne, the heir to the French throne--Fenelon gave +expression to the growing reaction against the rigid autocracy of the +government, and enunciated the revolutionary doctrine that a monarch +existed for no other purpose than the good of his people. The Duc de +Bourgogne was converted to the mild, beneficent, and open-minded views +of his tutor; and it is possible that if he had lived a series of +judicious reforms might have prevented the cataclysm at the close of the +century. But in one important respect the mind of Fenelon was not in +accord with the lines on which French thought was to develop for the +next eighty years. Though he was among the first to advocate religious +toleration, he was an ardent, even a mystical, Roman Catholic. Now one +of the chief characteristics of the coming age was its scepticism--its +elevation of the secular as opposed to the religious elements in +society, and its utter lack of sympathy with all forms of mystical +devotion. Signs of this spirit also had appeared before the end of +Louis's reign. As early as 1687--within a year of the Revocation of the +Edict of Nantes--FONTENELLE, the nephew of Corneille, in his _Histoire +des Oracles_, attacked the miraculous basis of Christianity under the +pretence of exposing the religious credulity of the ancient Greeks and +Romans. In its mingling of the sprightly and the erudite, and in the +subdued irony of its apparent submission to orthodoxy, this little book +forestalled a method of controversy which came into great vogue at a +later date. But a more important work, published at the very end of the +seventeenth century, was the _Dictionary_ of BAYLE, in which, amid an +enormous mass of learning poured out over a multitude of heterogeneous +subjects, the most absolute religious scepticism is expressed with +unmistakable emphasis and unceasing reiteration. The book is an +extremely unwieldy one--very large and very discursive, and quite devoid +of style; but its influence was immense; and during the long combat of +the eighteenth century it was used as a kind of armoury, supplying many +of their sharpest weapons to the writers of the time. + +It was not, however, until a few years after the death of the great king +that a volume appeared which contained a complete expression of the new +spirit, in all its aspects. In the _Lettres Persanes_ of MONTESQUIEU +(published 1721) may be discerned the germs of the whole thought of the +eighteenth century in France. The scheme of this charming and remarkable +book was not original: some Eastern travellers were supposed to arrive +in Paris, and to describe, in a correspondence with their countrymen in +Persia, the principal features of life in the French capital. But the +uses to which Montesquieu put this borrowed plot were all his own. He +made it the base for a searching attack on the whole system of the +government of Louis XIV. The corruption of the Court, the privileges of +the nobles, the maladministration of the finances, the stupidities and +barbarisms of the old autocratic regime--these are the topics to which +he is perpetually drawing his reader's attention. But he does more than +this: his criticism is not merely particular, it is general; he points +out the necessarily fatal effects of all despotisms, and he indicates +his own conception of what a good constitution should be. All these +discussions are animated by a purely secular spirit. He views religion +from an outside standpoint; he regards it rather as one of the functions +of administration than as an inner spiritual force. As for all the +varieties of fanaticism and intolerance, he abhors them utterly. + +It might be supposed that a book containing such original and +far-reaching theories was a solid substantial volume, hard to master and +laborious to read. The precise opposite is the case. Montesquieu has +dished up his serious doctrines into a spicy story, full of epigrams and +light topical allusions, and romantic adventures, and fancy visions of +the East. Montesquieu was a magistrate; yet he ventured to indulge here +and there in reflections of dubious propriety, and to throw over the +whole of his book an airy veil of voluptuous intrigue. All this is +highly typical of the literature of the age which was now beginning. The +serious, formal tone of the classical writers was abandoned, and was +replaced by a gay, unemphatic, pithy manner, in which some grains of +light-hearted licentiousness usually gave a flavour to the wit. The +change was partly due to the shifting of the centre of society from the +elaborate and spectacular world of Versailles to the more intimate +atmosphere of the drawing-rooms of Paris. With the death of the old +king the ceremonial life of the Court fell into the background; and the +spirits of the time flew off into frivolity with a sense of freedom and +relief. But there was another influence at work. Paradoxical as it may +sound, it was the very seriousness of the new writers which was the real +cause of their lack of decorum. Their great object was to be read--and +by the largest possible number of readers; the old select circle of +literary connoisseurs no longer satisfied them; they were eager to +preach their doctrines to a wider public--to the brilliant, inquisitive, +and increasingly powerful public of the capital. And with this public no +book had a chance of success unless it was of the kind that could be run +through rapidly, pleasantly, on a sofa, between dinner and the opera, +and would furnish the material for spicy anecdotes and good talk. Like +the jesters of the Middle Ages, the philosophers of the eighteenth +century found in the use of pranks and buffoonery the best way of +telling the truth. + +Until about the middle of the century, Montesquieu was the dominating +figure in French thought. His second book--_Considerations sur la +Grandeur et la Decadence des Romains_--is an exceedingly able work, in +which a series of interesting and occasionally profound historical +reflections are expressed in a style of great brilliance and +incisiveness. Here Montesquieu definitely freed history from the +medieval fetters which it had worn even in the days of Bossuet, and +considered the development of events from a purely secular point of +view, as the result of natural causes. But his greatest work, over which +he spent the greater part of his life, and on which his reputation must +finally rest, was _L'Esprit des Lois_ (published in 1748). The +discussion of this celebrated book falls outside the domain of +literature, and belongs rather to the history of political thought. It +is enough to say that here all Montesquieu's qualities--his power of +generalization, his freedom from prejudice, his rationalism, his love of +liberty and hatred of fanaticism, his pointed, epigrammatic +style--appear in their most characteristic form. Perhaps the chief fault +of the book is that it is too brilliant. When Madame du Deffand said +that its title should have been _De l'Esprit sur les Lois_ she put her +finger on its weak spot. Montesquieu's generalizations are always bold, +always original, always fine; unfortunately, they are too often unsound +into the bargain. The fluid elusive facts slip through his neat +sentences like water in a sieve. His treatment of the English +constitution affords an illustration of this. One of the first +foreigners to recognize the importance and to study the nature of +English institutions, Montesquieu nevertheless failed to give an +accurate account of them. He believed that he had found in them a signal +instance of his favourite theory of the beneficial effects produced by +the separation of the three powers of government--the judicial, the +legislative, and the executive; but he was wrong. In England, as a +matter of fact, the powers of the legislative and the executive were +intertwined. This particular error has had a curious history. +Montesquieu's great reputation led to his view of the constitution of +England being widely accepted as the true one; as such it was adopted by +the American leaders after the War of Independence; and its influence is +plainly visible in the present constitution of the United States. Such +is the strange power of good writing over the affairs of men! + +At about the same time as the publication of the _Lettres Persanes_, +there appeared upon the scene in Paris a young man whose reputation was +eventually destined far to outshine that of Montesquieu himself. This +young man was Francois Arouet, known to the world as VOLTAIRE. Curiously +enough, however, the work upon which Voltaire's reputation was +originally built up has now sunk into almost complete oblivion. It was +as a poet, and particularly as a tragic poet, that he won his fame; and +it was primarily as a poet that +he +continued to be known to his contemporaries during the first sixty years +of his life (1694-1754). But to-day his poetry--the serious part of it, +at least,--is never read, and his tragedies--except for an occasional +revival--are never acted. As a dramatist Voltaire is negligible for the +very reasons that made him so successful in his own day. It was not his +object to write great drama, but to please his audience: he did please +them; and, naturally enough, he has not pleased posterity. His plays are +melodramas--the melodramas of a very clever man with a great command of +language, an acute eye for stage-effect, and a consummate knowledge of +the situations and sentiments which would go down with his Parisian +public. They are especially remarkable for their wretched psychology. It +seems well-nigh incredible that Voltaire's pasteboard imitations of +humanity should ever have held a place side by side with the profound +presentments of Racine; yet so it was, and Voltaire was acclaimed as the +equal--or possibly the triumphant rival--of his predecessor. All through +the eighteenth century this singular absence of psychological insight +may be observed. + +The verse of the plays is hardly better than the character-drawing. It +is sometimes good rhetoric; it is never poetry. The same may be said of +_La Henriade_, the National Epic which placed Voltaire, in the eyes of +his admiring countrymen, far above Milton and Dante, and, at least, on a +level with Virgil and Homer. The true gifts displayed in this unreadable +work were not poetical at all, but historical. The notes and +dissertations appended to it showed that Voltaire possessed a real grasp +of the principles of historical method--principles which he put to a +better use a few years later in his brilliant narrative, based on +original research, of the life of Charles XII. + +During this earlier period of his activity Voltaire seems to have been +trying--half unconsciously, perhaps--to discover and to express the +fundamental quality of his genius. What was that quality? Was he first +and foremost a dramatist, or an epic poet, or a writer of light verse, +or an historian, or even perhaps a novelist? In all these directions he +was working successfully--yet without absolute success. For, in fact, at +bottom, he was none of these things: the true nature of his spirit was +not revealed in them. When the revelation did come, it came as the +result of an accident. At the age of thirty he was obliged, owing to a +quarrel with a powerful nobleman, to leave France and take up his +residence in England. The three years that he passed there had an +immense effect upon his life. In those days England was very little +known to Frenchmen; the barrier which had arisen during the long war +between the two peoples was only just beginning to be broken down; and +when Voltaire arrived, it was almost in the spirit of a discoverer. What +he found filled him with astonishment and admiration. Here, in every +department of life, were to be seen all the blessings so conspicuously +absent in France. Here were wealth, prosperity, a contented people, a +cultivated nobility, a mild and just administration, and a bursting +energy which manifested itself in a multitude of ways--in literature, in +commerce, in politics, in scientific thought. And all this had come into +existence in a nation which had curbed the power of the monarchy, done +away with priestcraft, established the liberty of the Press, set its +face against every kind of bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and, through +the means of free institutions, taken up the task of governing itself. +The inference was obvious: in France also, like causes would lead to +like results. When he was allowed to return to his own country, Voltaire +published the outcome of his observations and reflections in his +_Lettres Philosophiques_, where for the first time his genius displayed +itself in its essential form. The book contains an account of England as +Voltaire saw it, from the social rather than from the political point of +view. English life is described in its actuality, detailed, vivid, and +various; we are shown Quakers and members of Parliament, merchants and +philosophers; we come in for the burial of Sir Isaac Newton; we go to a +performance of _Julius Caesar_; inoculation is explained to us; we are +given elaborate discussions of English literature and English science, +of the speculations of Bolingbroke and the theories of Locke. The +Letters may still be read with pleasure and instruction; they are +written in a delightful style, running over with humour and wit, +revealing here and there remarkable powers of narrative, and impregnated +through and through with a wonderful mingling of gaiety, irony, and +common sense. They are journalism of genius; but they are something more +besides. They are informed with a high purpose, and a genuine love of +humanity and the truth. The French authorities soon recognized this; +they perceived that every page contained a cutting indictment of their +system of government; and they adopted their usual method in such a +case. The sale of the book was absolutely prohibited throughout France, +and a copy of it solemnly burnt by the common hangman. + + +It was only gradually that the new views, of which Montesquieu and +Voltaire were the principal exponents, spread their way among the +public; and during the first half of the century many writers remained +quite unaffected by them. Two of these--resembling each other in this +fact alone, that they stood altogether outside the movement of +contemporary thought--deserve our special attention. + +The mantle of Racine was generally supposed to have fallen on to the +shoulders of Voltaire--it had not: if it had fallen on to anyone's +shoulders it was on to those of MARIVAUX. No doubt it had become +diminished in the transit. Marivaux was not a great tragic writer; he +was not a poet; he worked on a much smaller scale, and with far less +significant material. But he was a true dramatist, a subtle +psychologist, and an artist pure and simple. His comedies, too, move +according to the same laws as the tragedies of Racine; they preserve the +same finished symmetry of design, and leave upon the mind the same sense +of unity and grace. But they are slight, etherealized, fantastic; they +are Racine, as it were, by moonlight. All Marivaux's dramas pass in a +world of his own invention--a world curiously compounded of imagination +and reality. At first sight one can see nothing there but a kind of +conventional fantasy, playing charmingly round impossible situations +and queer delightful personages, who would vanish in a moment into thin +air at the slightest contact with actual flesh and blood. But if +Marivaux had been simply fantastic and nothing more, his achievement +would have been insignificant; his great merit lies in his exquisite +instinct for psychological truth. His plays are like Watteau's pictures, +which, for all the unreality of their atmosphere, produce their effect +owing to a mass of accurate observation and a profound sense of the +realities of life. His characters, like Watteau's, seem to possess, not +quite reality itself, but the very quintessence of rarefied reality--the +distilled fragrance of all that is most refined, delicate and enchanting +in the human spirit. His Aramintes, his Silvias, his Lucidors are purged +of the grossnesses of existence; their minds and their hearts are +miraculously one; in their conversations the subtleties of +metaphysicians are blended with the airy clarities of birds. _Le Jeu de +l'Amour et du Hasard_ is perhaps the most perfect example of his work. +Here the lady changes places with her waiting-maid, while the lover +changes places with his valet, and, in this impossible framework of +symmetrical complications, the whole action spins itself out. The beauty +of the little piece depends upon the infinitely delicate art which +depicts each charmingly absurd, minute transition in the process of +delusion, misunderstanding, bewilderment, and explanation, with all the +varieties of their interactions and shimmering personal shades. It would +be difficult to find a more exquisite example of tender and +discriminating fidelity to the loveliest qualities in human nature than +the scene in which Silvia realizes at last that she is in love--and with +whom. 'Ah! je vois clair dans mon coeur!' she exclaims at the supreme +moment; and the words might stand as the epitome of the art of +Marivaux. Through all the superfine convolutions of his fancies and his +coquetries he never loses sight for a moment of the clear truth of the +heart. + + +While Marivaux, to use Voltaire's phrase for him, was 'weighing nothings +in scales of gossamer', a writer of a very different calibre was engaged +upon one of the most forcible, one of the most actual, and one of the +hugest compositions that has ever come from pen of man. The DUC DE +SAINT-SIMON had spent his youth and middle life in the thick of the +Court during the closing years of Louis XIV and the succeeding period of +the Regency; and he occupied his old age with the compilation of his +_Memoires_. This great book offers so many points of striking contrast +with the mass of French literature that it falls into a category of its +own; no other work of the same outstanding merit can quite be compared +to it; for it was the product of what has always been, in France, an +extremely rare phenomenon--an amateur in literature who was also a +genius. Saint-Simon was so far from being a professional man of letters +that he would have been shocked to hear himself described as a man of +letters at all; indeed, it might be said with justice that his only +profession was that of a duke. It was as a duke--or, more correctly, as +a _Duc et Pair_--that, in his own eyes at any rate, he lived and moved +and had his being. It was round his position as a duke that the whole of +his active existence had revolved; it was with the consciousness of his +dukedom dominating his mind that he sat down in his retirement to write +his memoirs. It might seem that no book produced in such circumstances +and by such a man could possibly be valuable or interesting. But, +fortunately for the world, the merit of books does not depend upon the +enlightenment of authors. Saint-Simon was a man of small intellect, with +medieval ideas as to the structure of society, with an absurd belief in +the fundamental importance of the minutest class distinctions, and with +an obsession for dukedoms almost amounting to mania: but he had in +addition an incredibly passionate temperament combined with an +unparalleled power of observation; and these two qualities have made his +book immortal. + +Besides the intrinsic merits of the work, it has the additional +advantage of being concerned with an age which, of enthralling interest +on its own account, also happened to be particularly suited to the +capacities of the writer. If Saint-Simon had lived at any other time, +his memoirs would have been admirable, no doubt, but they would have +lacked the crowning excellence which they actually possess. As it was, a +happy stroke of fortune placed him in the one position where he could +exercise to the full his extraordinary powers: never, before or since, +has there been so much to observe; never, before or since, so miraculous +an observer. For, at Versailles, in the last years of Louis, Saint-Simon +had before him, under his very eyes as a daily and hourly spectacle, the +whole accumulated energy of France in all its manifestations; that was +what he saw; and that, by the magic of his pen, is what he makes us see. +Through the endless succession of his pages the enormous panorama +unrolls itself, magnificent, palpitating, alive. What La Bruyere saw +with the spiritual gaze of a moralist rushed upon the vision of +Saint-Simon in all the colour, the detail, the intensity, the frenzy, of +actual fact. He makes no comments, no reflections--or, if he does, they +are ridiculous; he only sees and feels. Thus, though in the profundity +of his judgement he falls so infinitely below La Bruyere, in his +character-drawing he soars as high above him. His innumerable portraits +are unsurpassed in literature. They spring into his pages bursting with +life--individual, convincing, complete, and as various as humanity +itself. He excels in that most difficult art of presenting the outward +characteristics of persons, calling up before the imagination not only +the details of their physical appearance, but the more recondite effects +of their manner and their bearing, so that, when he has finished, one +almost feels that one has met the man. But his excellence does not stop +there. It is upon the inward creature that he expends his most lavish +care--upon the soul that sits behind the eyelids, upon the purpose and +the passion that linger in a gesture or betray themselves in a word. The +joy that he takes in such descriptions soon infects the reader, who +finds before long that he is being carried away by the ardour of the +chase, and that at last he seizes upon the quivering quarry with all the +excitement and all the fury of Saint-Simon himself. Though it would, +indeed, be a mistake to suppose that Saint-Simon was always furious--the +wonderful portraits of the Duchesse de Bourgogne and the Prince de Conti +are in themselves sufficient to disprove that--yet there can be no doubt +that his hatreds exceeded his loves, and that, in his character-drawing, +he was, as it were, more at home when he detested. Then the victim is +indeed dissected with a loving hand; then the details of incrimination +pour out in a multitudinous stream; then the indefatigable brush of the +master darkens the deepest shadows and throws the most glaring +deformities into still bolder relief; then disgust, horror, pity, and +ridicule finish the work which scorn and indignation had begun. Nor, in +spite of the virulence of his method, do his portraits ever sink to the +level of caricatures. His most malevolent exaggerations are yet so +realistic that they carry conviction. When he had fashioned to his +liking his terrific images--his Vendome, his Noailles, his +Pontchartrain, his Duchesse de Berry, and a hundred more--he never +forgot, in the extremity of his ferocity, to commit the last insult, and +to breathe into their nostrils the fatal breath of life. + +And it is not simply in detached portraits that Saint-Simon's +descriptive powers show themselves; they are no less remarkable in the +evocation of crowded and elaborate scenes. He is a master of movement; +he can make great groups of persons flow and dispose themselves and +disperse again; he can produce the effect of a multitude under the +dominion of some common agitation, the waves of excitement spreading in +widening circles, amid the conflicting currents of curiosity and +suspicion, fear and hope. He is assiduous in his descriptions of the +details of places, and invariably heightens the effect of his emotional +climaxes by his dramatic management of the physical _decor._ Thus his +readers get to know the Versailles of that age as if they had lived in +it; they are familiar with the great rooms and the long gallery; they +can tell the way to the king's bedchamber, or wait by the mysterious +door of Madame de Maintenon; or remember which prince had rooms opening +out on to the Terrace near the Orangery, and which great family had +apartments in the new wing. More than this, Saint-Simon has the art of +conjuring up--often in a phrase or two--those curious intimate visions +which seem to reveal the very soul of a place. How much more one knows +about the extraordinary palace--how one feels the very pulse of the +machine--when Saint-Simon has shown one in a flash a door opening, on a +sudden, at dead of night, in an unlighted corridor, and the haughty Duc +d'Harcourt stepping out among a blaze of torches, to vanish again, as +swiftly as he had come, into the mysterious darkness!--Or when one has +seen, amid the cold and snow of a cruel winter, the white faces of the +courtiers pressed against the window-panes of the palace, as the +messengers ride in from the seat of war with their dreadful catalogues +of disasters and deaths! + +Saint-Simon's style is the precise counterpart of his matter. It is +coloured and vital to the highest degree. It is the style of a writer +who does not care how many solecisms he commits--how disordered his +sentences may be, how incorrect his grammar, how forced or undignified +his expressions--so long as he can put on to paper in black and white +the passionate vision that is in his mind. The result is something +unique in French literature. If Saint-Simon had tried to write with +academic correctness--and even if he had succeeded--he certainly would +have spoilt his book. Fortunately, academic correctness did not interest +him, while the exact delineament of his observations did. He is not +afraid of using colloquialisms which every critic of the time would have +shuddered at, and which, by their raciness and flavour, add enormously +to his effects. His writing is also extremely metaphorical; technical +terms are thrown in helter-skelter whenever the meaning would benefit; +and the boldest constructions at every turn are suddenly brought into +being. In describing the subtle spiritual sympathy which existed +between Fenelon and Madame de Guyon he strikes out the unforgettable +phrase--'leur sublime s'amalgama', which in its compression, its +singularity, its vividness, reminds one rather of an English Elizabethan +than a French writer of the eighteenth century. The vast movement of his +sentences is particularly characteristic. Clause follows clause, image +is piled upon image, the words hurry out upon one another's heels in +clusters, until the construction melts away under the burning pressure +of the excitement, to reform as best it may while the agitated period +still expands in endless ramifications. His book is like a tropical +forest--luxuriant, bewildering, enormous--with the gayest humming-birds +among the branches, and the vilest monsters in the entangled grass. + + +Saint-Simon, so far as the influence of his contemporaries was +concerned, might have been living in the Middle Ages or the moon. At a +time when Voltaire's fame was ringing through Europe, he refers to him +incidentally as an insignificant scribbler, and misspells his name. But +the combination of such abilities and such aloofness was a singular +exception, becoming, indeed, more extraordinary and improbable every +day. For now the movement which had begun in the early years of the +century was entering upon a new phase. The change came during the decade +1750-60, when, on the one hand, it had become obvious that all the worst +features of the old regime were to be perpetuated indefinitely under the +incompetent government of Louis XV, and when, on the other hand, the +generation which had been brought up under the influence of Montesquieu +and Voltaire came to maturity. A host of new writers, eager, positive, +and resolute, burst upon the public, determined to expose to the +uttermost the evils of the existing system, and, if possible, to end +them. Henceforward, until the meeting of the States-General closed the +period of discussion and began that of action, the movement towards +reform dominated French literature, gathering in intensity as it +progressed, and assuming at last the proportions and characteristics of +a great organized campaign. + +The ideals which animated the new writers--the _Philosophes_, as they +came to be called--may be summed up in two words: Reason and Humanity. +They were the heirs of that splendid spirit which had arisen in Europe +at the Renaissance, which had filled Columbus when he sailed for the New +World, Copernicus when he discovered the motion of the earth, and Luther +when he nailed his propositions to the church door at Wittenberg. They +wished to dispel the dark mass of prejudice, superstition, ignorance and +folly by the clear rays of knowledge and truth; and to employ the forces +of society towards the benefit of all mankind. They found in France an +incompetent administration, a financial system at once futile and +unjust, a barbarous judicial procedure, a blind spirit of religious +intolerance--they found the traces of tyranny, caste-privilege and +corruption in every branch of public life; and they found that these +enormous evils were the result less of viciousness than of stupidity, +less of the deliberate malice of kings or ministers than of a long, +ingrained tradition of narrow-mindedness and inhumanity in the +principles of government. Their great object, therefore, was to produce, +by means of their writings, such an awakening of public opinion as +would cause an immense transformation in the whole spirit of national +life. With the actual processes of political change, with the practical +details of political machinery, very few of them concerned themselves. +Some of them--such as the illustrious Turgot--believed that the best way +of reaching the desired improvement was through the agency of a +benevolent despotism; others--such as Rousseau--had in view an +elaborate, _a priori_, ideal system of government; but these were +exceptions, and the majority of the _Philosophes_ ignored politics +proper altogether. This was a great misfortune; but it was inevitable. +The beneficent changes which had been introduced so effectively and with +such comparative ease into the government of England had been brought +about by men of affairs; in France the men of affairs were merely the +helpless tools of an autocratic machine, and the changes had to owe +their origin to men uninstructed in affairs--to men of letters. Reform +had to come from the outside, instead of from within; and reform of that +kind spells revolution. Yet, even here, there were compensating +advantages. The changes in England had been, for the most part, +accomplished in a tinkering, unspeculative, hole-and-corner spirit; +those in France were the result of the widest appeal to first +principles, of an attempt, at any rate, to solve the fundamental +problems of society, of a noble and comprehensive conception of the +duties and destiny of man. This was the achievement of the +_Philosophes_. They spread far and wide, not only through France, but +through the whole civilized world, a multitude of searching +interrogations on the most vital subjects; they propounded vast +theories, they awoke new enthusiasms, and uplifted new ideals. In two +directions particularly their influence has been enormous. By their +insistence on the right of free opinion and on the paramount necessity +of free speculation, untrammelled by the fetters of orthodoxy and +tradition, they established once for all as the common property of the +human race that scientific spirit which has had such an immense effect +on modern civilization, and whose full import we are still only just +beginning to understand. And, owing mainly to their efforts also, the +spirit of humanity has come to be an abiding influence in the world. It +was they who, by their relentless exposure of the abuses of the French +judicial system--the scandal of arbitrary imprisonment, the futile +barbarism of torture, the medieval abominations of the penal +code--finally instilled into public opinion a hatred of cruelty and +injustice in all their forms; it was they who denounced the horrors of +the slave-trade; it was they who unceasingly lamented the awful evils of +war. So far as the actual content of their thought was concerned, they +were not great originators. The germs of their most fruitful theories +they found elsewhere--chiefly among the thinkers of England; and, when +they attempted original thinking on their own account, though they were +bold and ingenious, they were apt also to be crude. In some +sciences--political economy, for instance, and psychology--they led the +way, but attained to no lasting achievement. They suffered from the same +faults as Montesquieu in his _Esprit des Lois_. In their love of pure +reason, they relied too often on the swift processes of argument for the +solution of difficult problems, and omitted that patient investigation +of premises upon which the validity of all argument depends. They were +too fond of systems, and those neatly constructed logical theories into +which everything may be fitted admirably--except the facts. In addition, +the lack of psychological insight which was so common in the eighteenth +century tended to narrow their sympathies; and in particular they failed +to realize the beauty and significance of religious and mystical states +of mind. These defects eventually produced a reaction against their +teaching--a reaction during which the true value of their work was for a +time obscured. For that value is not to be looked for in the enunciation +of certain definite doctrines, but in something much wider and more +profound. The _Philosophes_ were important not so much for the answers +which they gave as for the questions which they asked; their real +originality lay not in their thought, but in their spirit. They were the +first great popularizers. Other men before them had thought more +accurately and more deeply; they were the first to fling the light of +thought wide through the world, to appeal, not to the scholar and the +specialist, but to the ordinary man and woman, and to proclaim the +glories of civilization as the heritage of all humanity. Above all, they +instilled a new spirit into the speculations of men--the spirit of hope. +They believed ardently in the fundamental goodness of mankind, and they +looked forward into the future with the certain expectation of the +ultimate triumph of what was best. Though in some directions their +sympathies were limited, their love of humanity was a profound and +genuine feeling which moved them to a boundless enthusiasm. Though their +faith in creeds was small, their faith in mankind was great. The spirit +which filled them was well shown when, during the darkest days of the +Terror, the noble Condorcet, in the hiding-place from which he came +forth only to die, wrote his historical _Sketch of the Progress of the +Human Mind_, with its final chapter foretelling the future triumphs of +reason, and asserting the unlimited perfectibility of man. + +The energies of the _Philosophes_ were given a centre and a +rallying-point by the great undertaking of the _Encyclopaedia_, the +publication of which covered a period of thirty years (1751-80). The +object of this colossal work, which contained a survey of human activity +in all its branches--political, scientific, artistic, philosophical, +commercial--was to record in a permanent and concentrated form the +advance of civilization. A multitude of writers contributed to it, of +varying merit and of various opinions, but all animated by the new +belief in reason and humanity. The ponderous volumes are not great +literature; their importance lies in the place which they fill in the +progress of thought, and in their immense influence in the propagation +of the new spirit. In spite of its bulk the book was extremely +successful; edition after edition was printed; the desire to know and to +think began to permeate through all the grades of society. Nor was it +only in France that these effects were visible; the prestige of French +literature and French manners carried the teaching of the _Philosophes_ +all over Europe; great princes and ministers--Frederick in Prussia, +Catherine in Russia, Pombal in Portugal--eagerly joined the swelling +current; enlightenment was abroad in the world. + +The _Encyclopaedia_ would never have come into existence without the +genius, the energy, and the enthusiasm of one man--DIDEROT. In him the +spirit of the age found its most typical expression. He was indeed _the +Philosophe_--more completely than all the rest universal, brilliant, +inquisitive, sceptical, generous, hopeful, and humane. It was he who +originated the _Encyclopaedia_, who, in company with Dalembert, +undertook its editorship, and who, eventually alone, accomplished the +herculean task of bringing the great production, in spite of obstacle +after obstacle--in spite of government prohibitions, lack of funds, +desertions, treacheries, and the mischances of thirty years--to a +triumphant conclusion. This was the work of his life; and it was work +which, by its very nature, could leave--except for that long row of +neglected volumes--no lasting memorial. But the superabundant spirit of +Diderot was not content with that: in the intervals of this stupendous +labour, which would have exhausted to their last fibre the energies of a +lesser man, he found time not only to pour out a constant flow of +writing in a multitude of miscellaneous forms--in dramas, in art +criticism, in philosophical essays, and in a voluminous +correspondence--but also to create on the sly as it were, and without a +thought of publication, two or three finished masterpieces which can +never be forgotten. Of these, the most important is _Le Neveu de +Rameau_, where Diderot's whole soul gushes out in one clear, strong, +sparkling jet of incomparable prose. In the sheer enchantment of its +vitality this wonderful little book has certainly never been surpassed. +It enthrals the reader as completely as the most exciting romance, or +the talk of some irresistibly brilliant _raconteur_. Indeed, the +writing, with its ease, its vigour, its colour, and its rapidity, might +almost be taken for what, in fact, it purports to be--conversation put +into print, were it not for the magical perfection of its form. Never +did a style combine more absolutely the movement of life with the +serenity of art. Every sentence is exciting, and every sentence is +beautiful. The book must have been composed quickly, without effort, +almost off-hand; but the mind that composed it was the mind of a master, +who, even as he revelled in the joyous manifestation of his genius, +preserved, with an instinctive power, the master's control. In truth, +beneath the gay galaxies of scintillating thoughts that strew the pages, +one can discern the firm, warm, broad substance of Diderot's very self, +underlying and supporting all. That is the real subject of a book which +seems to have taken all subjects for its province--from the origin of +music to the purpose of the universe; and the central figure--the queer, +delightful, Bohemian Rameau, evoked for us with such a marvellous +distinctness--is in fact no more than the reed with many stops through +which Diderot is blowing. Of all his countrymen, he comes nearest, in +spirit and in manner, to the great Cure of Meudon. The rich, exuberant, +intoxicating tones of Rabelais vibrate in his voice. He has--not all, +for no son of man will ever again have that; but he has _some_ of +Rabelais' stupendous breadth, and he has yet more of Rabelais' enormous +optimism. His complete materialism--his disbelief in any Providence or +any immortality--instead of depressing him, seems rather to have given +fresh buoyancy to his spirit; if this life on earth were all, that only +served, in his eyes, to redouble the intensity of its value. And his +enthusiasm inspired him with a philanthropy unknown to Rabelais--an +active benevolence that never tired. For indeed he was, above all else, +a man of his own age: a man who could think subtly and work nobly as +well as write splendidly; who could weep as well as laugh. He is, +perhaps, a smaller figure than Rabelais; but he is much nearer to +ourselves. And, when we have come to the end of his generous pages, the +final impression that is left with us is of a man whom we cannot choose +but love. + + +Besides Diderot, the band of the _Philosophes_ included many famous +names. There was the brilliant and witty mathematician, Dalembert; there +was the grave and noble statesman, Turgot; there was the psychologist, +Condillac; there was the light, good-humoured Marmontel; there was the +penetrating and ill-fated Condorcet. Helvetius and D'Holbach plunged +boldly into ethics and metaphysics; while, a little apart, in learned +repose, Buffon advanced the purest interests of science by his +researches in Natural History. As every year passed there were new +accessions to this great array of writers, who waged their war against +ignorance and prejudice with an ever-increasing fury. A war indeed it +was. On one side were all the forces of intellect; on the other was all +the mass of entrenched and powerful dullness. In reply to the brisk fire +of the _Philosophes_--argument, derision, learning, wit--the authorities +in State and Church opposed the more serious artillery of censorships, +suppressions, imprisonments, and exiles. There was hardly an eminent +writer in Paris who was unacquainted with the inside of the Conciergerie +or the Bastille. It was only natural, therefore, that the struggle +should have become a highly embittered one, and that at times, in the +heat of it, the party whose watchword was a hatred of fanaticism should +have grown itself fanatical. But it was clear that the powers of +reaction were steadily losing ground; they could only assert themselves +spasmodically; their hold upon public opinion was slipping away. Thus +the efforts of the band of writers in Paris seemed about to be crowned +with success. But this result had not been achieved by their efforts +alone. In the midst of the conflict they had received the aid of a +powerful auxiliary, who had thrown himself with the utmost vigour into +the struggle, and, far as he was from the centre of operations, had +assumed supreme command. + +It was Voltaire. This great man had now entered upon the final, and by +far the most important, period of his astonishing career. It is a +curious fact that if Voltaire had died at the age of sixty he would now +only be remembered as a writer of talent and versatility, who had given +conspicuous evidence, in one or two works, of a liberal and brilliant +intelligence, but who had enjoyed a reputation in his own age, as a poet +and dramatist, infinitely beyond his deserts. He entered upon the really +significant period of his activity at an age when most men have already +sought repose. Nor was this all; for, by a singular stroke of fortune, +his existence was prolonged far beyond the common span; so that, in +spite of the late hour of its beginning, the most fruitful and important +epoch of his life extended over a quarter of a century (1754-78). That +he ever entered upon this last period of his career seems in itself to +have depended as much on accident as his fateful residence in England. +After the publication of the _Lettres Philosophiques_, he had done very +little to fulfil the promise of that work. He had retired to the country +house of Madame du Chatelet, where he had devoted himself to science, +play-writing, and the preparation of a universal history. His reputation +had increased; for it was in these years that he produced his most +popular tragedies--_Zaire, Merope, Alzire_, and _Mahomet_--while a +correspondence carried on in the most affectionate terms with Frederick +the Great yet further added to his prestige; but his essential genius +still remained quiescent. Then at last Madame du Chatelet died and +Voltaire took the great step of his life. At the invitation of Frederick +he left France, and went to live as a pensioner of the Prussian king in +the palace at Potsdam. But his stay there did not last long. It seemed +as if the two most remarkable men in Europe liked each other so well +that they could not remain apart--and so ill that they could not remain +together. After a year or two, there was the inevitable explosion. +Voltaire fled from Prussia, giving to the world before he did so one of +the most amusing _jeux d'esprit_ ever written--the celebrated _Diatribe +du Docteur Akakia_--and, after some hesitation, settled down near the +Lake of Geneva. A few years later he moved into the _chateau_ of Ferney, +which became henceforward his permanent abode. + +Voltaire was now sixty years of age. His position was an enviable one. +His reputation was very great, and he had amassed a considerable +fortune, which not only assured him complete independence, but enabled +him to live in his domains on the large and lavish scale of a country +magnate. His residence at Ferney, just on the border of French +territory, put him beyond the reach of government interference, while he +was yet not too far distant to be out of touch with the capital. Thus +the opportunity had at last come for the full display of his powers. And +those powers were indeed extraordinary. His character was composed of a +strange amalgam of all the most contradictory elements in human nature, +and it would be difficult to name a single virtue or a single vice which +he did not possess. He was the most egotistical of mortals, and the +most disinterested; he was graspingly avaricious, and profusely +generous; he was treacherous, mischievous, frivolous, and mean, yet he +was a firm friend and a true benefactor, yet he was profoundly serious +and inspired by the noblest enthusiasms. Nature had carried these +contradictions even into his physical constitution. His health was so +bad that he seemed to pass his whole life on the brink of the grave; +nevertheless his vitality has probably never been surpassed in the +history of the world. Here, indeed, was the one characteristic which +never deserted him: he was always active with an insatiable activity; it +was always safe to say of him that, whatever else he was, he was not at +rest. His long, gaunt body, frantically gesticulating, his skull-like +face, with its mobile features twisted into an eternal grin, its +piercing eyes sparkling and darting--all this suggested the appearance +of a corpse galvanized into an incredible animation. But in truth it was +no dead ghost that inhabited this strange tenement, but the fierce and +powerful spirit of an intensely living man. + +Some signs had already appeared of the form which his activity was now +about to take. During his residence in Prussia he had completed his +historical _Essai sur les Moeurs_, which passed over in rapid review the +whole development of humanity, and closed with a brilliant sketch of the +age of Louis XIV. This work was highly original in many ways. It was the +first history which attempted to describe the march of civilization in +its broadest aspects, which included a consideration of the great +Eastern peoples, which dealt rather with the progress of the arts and +the sciences than with the details of politics and wars. But its chief +importance lay in the fact that it was in reality, under its historical +trappings, a work of propaganda. It was a counterblast to Bossuet's +_Histoire Universelle_. That book had shown the world's history as a +part of the providential order--a grand unfolding of design. Voltaire's +view was very different. To him, as to Montesquieu, natural causes alone +were operative in history; but this was not all; in his eyes there was +one influence which, from the earliest ages, had continually retarded +the progress of humanity, and that influence was religious belief. Thus +his book, though far more brilliant and far more modern than that of +Bossuet, was nevertheless almost equally biased. It was history with a +thesis, and the gibe of Montesquieu was justifiable. 'Voltaire,' he +said, 'writes history to glorify his own convent, like any Benedictine +monk.' Voltaire's 'convent' was the philosophical school in Paris; and +his desire to glorify it was soon to appear in other directions. + +The _Essai sur les Moeurs_ is an exceedingly amusing narrative, but it +is a long and learned work filling several volumes, and the fruit of +many years of research. Voltaire was determined henceforward to distil +its spirit into more compendious and popular forms. He had no more time +for elaborate dissertations; he must reach the public by quicker and +surer ways. Accordingly there now began to pour into Paris a flood of +short light booklets--essays, plays, poems, romances, letters, tracts--a +multitude of writings infinitely varied in form and scope, but all +equally irresistible and all equally bearing the unmistakable signs of +their origin at Ferney. Voltaire's inimitable style had at last found a +medium in which it could display itself in all its charm and all its +brilliance. The pointed, cutting, mocking sentences laugh and dance +through his pages like light-toed, prick-eared elves. Once seen, and +there is no help for it--one must follow, into whatever dangerous and +unknown regions those magic imps may lead. The pamphlets were of course +forbidden, but without effect; they were sold in thousands, and new +cargoes, somehow or other, were always slipping across the frontier from +Holland or Geneva. Whenever a particularly outrageous one appeared, +Voltaire wrote off to all his friends to assure them that he knew +nothing whatever of the production, that it was probably a translation +from the work of an English clergyman, and that, in short, everyone +would immediately see from the style alone that it was--_not_ his. An +endless series of absurd pseudonyms intensified the farce. Oh no! +Voltaire was certainly not the author of this scandalous book. How could +he be? Did not the title-page plainly show that it was the work of Frere +Cucufin, or the uncle of Abbe Bazin, or the Comte de Boulainvilliers, or +the Emperor of China? And so the game proceeded; and so all France +laughed; and so all France read. + +Two forms of this light literature Voltaire made especially his own. He +brought the Dialogue to perfection; for the form suited him exactly, +with its opportunities for the rapid exposition of contrary doctrines, +for the humorous stultification of opponents, and for witty repartee. +Into this mould he has poured some of his finest materials; and in such +pieces as _Le Diner du Comte de Boulainvilliers_ and _Frere Rigolet et +l'Empereur de la Chine_ one finds the concentrated essence of his whole +work. Equally effective and equally characteristic is the _Dictionnaire +Philosophique_, which contains a great number of very short +miscellaneous articles arranged in alphabetical order. This plan gave +Voltaire complete freedom both in the choice of subjects and in their +manipulation; as the spirit seized him he could fly out into a page of +sarcasm or speculation or criticism or buffoonery, and such liberty was +precisely to his taste; so that the book which had first appeared as a +pocket dictionary--'ce diable de portatif', he calls it in a letter +proving quite conclusively that _he_, at any rate, was not responsible +for the wretched thing--were there not Hebrew quotations in it? and who +could accuse him of knowing Hebrew?--had swollen to six volumes before +he died. + +The subjects of these writings were very various. Ostensibly, at least, +they were by no means limited to matters of controversy. Some were +successful tragedies, others were pieces of criticism, others were +historical essays, others were frivolous short stories, or _vers de +societe_. But, in all of them, somewhere or other, the cloven hoof was +bound to show itself at last. Whatever disguises he might assume, +Voltaire in reality was always writing for his 'convent'; he was +pressing forward, at every possible opportunity, the great movement +against the old regime. His attack covers a wide ground. The abuses of +the financial system, the defects in the administration of justice, the +futility of the restraints upon trade--upon these and a hundred similar +subjects he poured out an incessant torrent of gay, penetrating, +frivolous and remorseless words. But there was one theme to which he was +perpetually recurring, which forms the subject for his bitterest jests, +and which, in fact, dominates the whole of his work, 'Ecrasez l'infame!' +was his constant exclamation; and the 'infamous thing' which he wished +to see stamped underfoot was nothing less than religion. The +extraordinary fury of his attack on religion has, in the eyes of many, +imprinted an indelible stigma upon his name; but the true nature of his +position in this matter has often been misunderstood, and deserves some +examination. + +Voltaire was a profoundly irreligious man. In this he resembled the +majority of his contemporaries; but he carried the quality perhaps to a +further pitch than any man of his age. For, with him, it was not merely +the purely religious and mystical feelings that were absent; he lacked +all sympathy with those vague, brooding, emotional states of mind which +go to create the highest forms of poetry, music, and art, and which are +called forth into such a moving intensity by the beauties of Nature. +These things Voltaire did not understand; he did not even perceive them; +for him, in fact, they did not exist; and the notion that men could be +influenced by them, genuinely and deeply, he considered to be so absurd +as hardly to need discussion. This was certainly a great weakness in +him--a great limitation of spirit. It has vitiated a large part of his +writings; and it has done more than that--it has obscured, to many of +his readers, the real nature and the real value of his work. For, +combined with this inability to comprehend some of the noblest parts of +man's nature, Voltaire possessed other qualities of high importance +which went far to compensate for his defects. If he was blind to some +truths, he perceived others with wonderful clearness; if his sympathies +in some directions were atrophied, in others they were sensitive to an +extraordinary degree. In the light of these considerations his attitude +towards religion becomes easier to understand. All the highest elements +of religion--the ardent devotion, the individual ecstasy, the sense of +communion with the divine--these things he simply ignored. But, +unfortunately, in his day there was a side of religion which, with his +piercing clear-sightedness, he could not ignore. The spirit of +fanaticism was still lingering in France; it was the spirit which had +burst out on the Eve of St. Bartholomew, and had dictated the fatal +Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In every branch of life its influence +was active, infusing prejudice, bitterness, and strife; but its effects +were especially terrible in the administration of justice. It so +happened that while Voltaire was at Ferney some glaring instances of +this dreadful fact came to light. A young Protestant named Calas +committed suicide in Toulouse, and, owing to the blind zealotry of the +magistrates of the town, his father, completely innocent, was found +guilty of his murder and broken on the wheel. Shortly afterwards, +another Protestant, Sirven, was condemned in similar circumstances, but +escaped to Ferney. A few years later, two youths of seventeen were +convicted at Abbeville for making some profane jokes. Both were +condemned to have their tongues torn out and to be decapitated; one +managed to escape, the other was executed. That such things could happen +in eighteenth-century France seems incredible; but happen they did, and +who knows how many more of a like atrocity? The fact that these three +came to light at all was owing to Voltaire himself. But for his +penetration, his courage, and his skill, the terrible murder of Calas +would to this day have remained unknown, and the dreadful affair of +Abbeville would have been forgotten in a month. Different men respond +most readily to different stimuli: the spectacle of cruelty and +injustice bit like a lash into the nerves of Voltaire, and plunged him +into an agony of horror. He resolved never to rest until he had not only +obtained reparation for these particular acts of injustice, but had +rooted out for ever from men's minds the superstitious bigotry which +made them possible. It was to attain this end that he attacked with such +persistence and such violence all religion and all priestcraft in +general, and, in particular, the orthodox dogmas of the Roman Catholic +Church. It became the great object of his life to convince public +opinion that those dogmas were both ridiculous and contemptible in +themselves, and abominable in their results. In this we may think him +right or we may think him wrong; our judgement will depend upon the +nature of our own opinions. But, whatever our opinions, we cannot think +him wicked; for we cannot doubt that the one dominating motive in all +that he wrote upon the subject of religion was a passionate desire for +the welfare of mankind. + +Voltaire's philosophical views were curious. While he entirely discarded +the miraculous from his system, he nevertheless believed in a Deity--a +supreme First Cause of all the phenomena of the universe. Yet, when he +looked round upon the world as it was, the evil and the misery in it +were what seized his attention and appalled his mind. The optimism of so +many of his contemporaries appeared to him a shallow crude doctrine +unrelated to the facts of existence, and it was to give expression to +this view that he composed the most famous of all his works--_Candide_. +This book, outwardly a romance of the most flippant kind, contains in +reality the essence of Voltaire's maturest reflections upon human life. +It is a singular fact that a book which must often have been read simply +for the sake of its wit and its impropriety should nevertheless be one +of the bitterest and most melancholy that was ever written. But it is a +safe rule to make, that Voltaire's meaning is deep in proportion to the +lightness of his writing--that it is when he is most in earnest that he +grins most. And, in _Candide_, the brilliance and the seriousness alike +reach their climax. The book is a catalogue of all the woes, all the +misfortunes, all the degradations, and all the horrors that can afflict +humanity; and throughout it Voltaire's grin is never for a moment +relaxed. As catastrophe follows catastrophe, and disaster succeeds +disaster, not only does he laugh himself consumedly, but he makes his +reader laugh no less; and it is only when the book is finished that the +true meaning of it is borne in upon the mind. Then it is that the +scintillating pages begin to exercise their grim unforgettable effect; +and the pettiness and misery of man seem to borrow a new intensity from +the relentless laughter of Voltaire. + +But perhaps the most wonderful thing about _Candide_ is that it +contains, after all, something more than mere pessimism--it contains a +positive doctrine as well. Voltaire's common sense withers the Ideal; +but it remains common sense. 'Il faut cultiver notre jardin' is his +final word--one of the very few pieces of practical wisdom ever uttered +by a philosopher. + +Voltaire's style reaches the summit of its perfection in _Candide_; but +it is perfect in all that he wrote. His prose is the final embodiment of +the most characteristic qualities of the French genius. If all that that +great nation had ever done or thought were abolished from the world, +except a single sentence of Voltaire's, the essence of their achievement +would have survived. His writing brings to a culmination the tradition +that Pascal had inaugurated in his _Lettres Provinciales_: clarity, +simplicity and wit--these supreme qualities it possesses in an +unequalled degree. But these qualities, pushed to an extreme, have also +their disadvantages. Voltaire's style is narrow; it is like a +rapier--all point; with such neatness, such lightness, the sweeping +blade of Pascal has become an impossibility. Compared to the measured +march of Bossuet's sentences, Voltaire's sprightly periods remind one +almost of a pirouette. But the pirouette is Voltaire's--executed with +all the grace, all the ease, all the latent strength of a consummate +dancer; it would be folly to complain; yet it was clear that a reaction +was bound to follow--and a salutary reaction. Signs of it were already +visible in the colour and passion of Diderot's writing; but it was not +until the nineteenth century that the great change came. + +Nowhere is the excellence of Voltaire's style more conspicuous than in +his Correspondence, which forms so large and important a portion of his +work. A more delightful and a more indefatigable letter-writer never +lived. The number of his published letters exceeds ten thousand; how +many more he may actually have written one hardly ventures to imagine, +for the great majority of those that have survived date only from the +last thirty years of his long life. The collection is invaluable alike +for the light which it throws upon Voltaire's career and character, and +for the extent to which it reflects the manners, sentiments, and thought +of the age. For Voltaire corresponded with all Europe. His reputation, +already vast before he settled at Ferney, rose after that date to a +well-nigh incredible height. No man had wielded such an influence since +the days when Bernard of Clairvaux dictated the conduct of popes and +princes from his monastic cell. But, since then, the wheel had indeed +come full circle! The very antithesis of the Middle Ages was personified +in the strange old creature who in his lordly retreat by the Lake of +Geneva alternately coquetted with empresses, received the homage of +statesmen and philosophers, domineered over literature in all its +branches, and laughed Mother Church to scorn. As the years advanced, +Voltaire's industry, which had always been astonishing, continually +increased. As if his intellectual interests were not enough to occupy +him, he took to commercial enterprise, developed the resources of his +estates, and started a successful colony of watchmakers at Ferney. Every +day he worked for long hours at his desk, spinning his ceaseless web of +tracts, letters, tragedies, and farces. In the evening he would +discharge the functions of a munificent host, entertain the whole +neighbourhood with balls and suppers, and take part in one of his own +tragedies on the stage of his private theatre. Then a veritable frenzy +would seize upon him; shutting himself up in his room for days together, +he would devote every particle of his terrific energies to the +concoction of some devastating dialogue, or some insidious piece of +profanation for his _Dictionnaire Philosophique_. At length his fragile +form would sink exhausted--he would be dying--he would be dead; and next +morning he would be up again as brisk as ever, directing the cutting of +the crops. + +One day, quite suddenly, he appeared in Paris, which he had not visited +for nearly thirty years. His arrival was the signal for one of the most +extraordinary manifestations of enthusiasm that the world has ever +seen. For some weeks he reigned in the capital, visible and glorious, +the undisputed lord of the civilized universe. The climax came when he +appeared in a box at the Theatre Francais, to witness a performance of +the latest of his tragedies, and the whole house rose as one man to +greet him. His triumph seemed to be something more than the mere +personal triumph of a frail old mortal; it seemed to be the triumph of +all that was noblest in the aspirations of the human race. But the +fatigue and excitement of those weeks proved too much even for Voltaire +in the full flush of his eighty-fourth year. An overdose of opium +completed what Nature had begun; and the amazing being rested at last. + +French literature during the latter half of the eighteenth century was +rich in striking personalities. It might have been expected that an age +which had produced both Diderot and Voltaire would hardly be able to +boast of yet another star of equal magnitude. But, in JEAN-JACQUES +ROUSSEAU, there appeared a man in some ways even more remarkable than +either of his great contemporaries. The peculiar distinction of Rousseau +was his originality. Neither Voltaire nor Diderot possessed this quality +in a supreme degree. Voltaire, indeed, can only claim to be original by +virtue of his overwhelming common sense, which enabled him to see +clearly what others could only see confusedly, to strike without fear +where others were only willing to wound; but the whole bulk of his +thought really rested on the same foundation as that which supported the +ordinary conceptions of the average man of the day. Diderot was a far +bolder, a far more speculative thinker; but yet, though he led the very +van of the age, he was always in it; his originality was never more than +a development--though it was often an extreme development--of the ideas +that lay around him. Rousseau's originality went infinitely further than +this. He neither represented his age, nor led it; he opposed it. His +outlook upon the world was truly revolutionary. In his eyes, the reforms +which his contemporaries were so busy introducing into society were +worse than useless--the mere patching of an edifice which would never be +fit to live in. He believed that it was necessary to start altogether +afresh. And what makes him so singularly interesting a figure is that, +in more than one sense, he was right. It _was_ necessary to start +afresh; and the new world which was to spring from the old one was to +embody, in a multitude of ways, the visions of Rousseau. He was a +prophet, with the strange inspiration of a prophet--and the dishonour in +his own country. + +But inspiration and dishonour are not the only characteristics of +prophets: as a rule, they are also highly confused in the delivery of +their prophecies; and Rousseau was no exception. In his writings, the +true gist of his meaning seems to be only partially revealed; and it is +clear that he himself was never really aware of the fundamental notions +that lay at the back of his thought. Hence nothing can be easier than to +pull his work to pieces, and to demonstrate beyond a doubt that it is +full of fallacies, inconsistencies, and absurdities. It is very easy to +point out that the _Control Social_ is a miserable piece of +logic-chopping, to pour scorn on the stilted sentiment and distorted +morality of _La Nouvelle Heloise_, and finally to draw a cutting +comparison between Rousseau's preaching and his practice, as it stands +revealed in the _Confessions_--the lover of independence who never +earned his own living, the apostle of equality who was a snob, and the +educationist who left his children in the Foundling Hospital. All this +has often been done, and no doubt will often be done again; but it is +futile. Rousseau lives, and will live, a vast and penetrating influence, +in spite of all his critics. There is something in him that eludes their +foot-rules. It is so difficult to take the measure of a soul! + +Difficult, indeed; for, if we examine the doctrine that seems to be +Rousseau's fundamental one--that, at least, on which he himself lays +most stress--here, too, we shall find a mass of error. Rousseau was +perpetually advocating the return to Nature. All the great evils from +which humanity suffers are, he declared, the outcome of civilization; +the ideal man is the primitive man--the untutored Indian, innocent, +chaste, brave, who adores the Creator of the universe in simplicity, and +passes his life in virtuous harmony with the purposes of Nature. If we +cannot hope to reach quite that height of excellence, let us at least +try to get as near it as we can. So far from pressing on the work of +civilization, with the _Philosophes_, let us try to forget that we are +civilized and be natural instead. This was the burden of Rousseau's +teaching, and it was founded on a complete misconception of the facts. +The noble Indian was a myth. The more we find out about primitive man, +the more certain it becomes that, so far from being the ideal creature +of Rousseau's imagination, he was in reality a savage whose whole life +was dominated, on the one hand by the mere brute necessities of +existence, and on the other by a complicated and revolting system of +superstitions. Nature is neither simple nor good; and all history shows +that the necessary condition for the production of any of the really +valuable things of life is the control of Nature by man--in fact, +civilization. So far, therefore, the _Philosophes_ were right; if the +Golden Age was to have any place at all in the story of humanity, it +must be, not at the beginning, but the end. + +But Rousseau was not, at bottom, concerned with the truth of any +historical theory at all. It was only because he hated the present that +he idealized the past. His primitive Golden Age was an imaginary refuge +from the actual world of the eighteenth century. What he detested and +condemned in that world was in reality not civilization, but the +conventionality of civilization--the restrictions upon the free play of +the human spirit which seemed to be inherent in civilized life. The +strange feeling of revolt that surged up within him when he contemplated +the drawing-rooms of Paris, with their brilliance and their philosophy, +their intellect and their culture, arose from a profounder cause than a +false historical theory, or a defective logical system, or a mean +personal jealousy and morbid pride. All these elements, no doubt, +entered into his feeling--for Rousseau was a very far from perfect human +being; but the ultimate source was beyond and below them--in his +instinctive, overmastering perception of the importance and the dignity +of the individual soul. It was in this perception that Rousseau's great +originality lay. His revolt was a spiritual revolt. In the Middle Ages +the immense significance of the human spirit had been realized, but it +had been inextricably involved in a mass of theological superstition. +The eighteenth century, on the other hand, had achieved the great +conception of a secular system of society; but, in doing so, it had left +out of account the spiritual nature of man, who was regarded simply as a +rational animal in an organized social group. Rousseau was the first to +unite the two views, to revive the medieval theory of the soul without +its theological trappings, and to believe--half unconsciously, perhaps, +and yet with a profound conviction--that the individual, now, on this +earth, and in himself, was the most important thing in the world. + +This belief, no doubt, would have arisen in Europe, in some way or +other, if Rousseau had never lived; but it was he who clothed it with +the splendour of genius, and, by the passion of his utterance, sowed it +far and wide in the hearts of men. In two directions his influence was +enormous. His glowing conception of individual dignity and individual +rights as adhering, not to a privileged few, but to the whole mass of +humanity, seized upon the imagination of France, supplied a new and +potent stimulus to the movement towards political change, and produced a +deep effect upon the development of the Revolution. But it is in +literature, and those emotions of real life which find their natural +outlet in literature, that the influence of Rousseau's spirit may be +most clearly seen. + +It is often lightly stated that the eighteenth century was an +unemotional age. What, it is asked, could be more frigid than the poetry +of Pope? Or more devoid of true feeling than the mockery of Voltaire? +But such a view is a very superficial one; and it is generally held by +persons who have never given more than a hasty glance at the works they +are so ready to condemn. It is certainly true that at first sight Pope's +couplets appear to be cold and mechanical; but if we look more closely +we shall soon find that these apparently monotonous verses have been +made the vehicle for some of the most passionate feelings of disgust and +animosity that ever agitated a human breast. As for Voltaire, we have +already seen that to infer lack of feeling from his epigrams and +laughter would be as foolish as to infer that a white-hot bar of molten +steel lacked heat because it was not red. The accusation is untenable; +the age that produced--to consider French literature alone--a Voltaire, +a Diderot, and a Saint-Simon cannot be called an age without emotion. +Yet it is clear that, in the matter of emotion, a distinction of some +sort does exist between that age and this. The distinction lies not so +much in the emotion itself as in the _attitude towards_ emotion, adopted +by the men of those days and by ourselves. In the eighteenth century men +were passionate--intensely passionate; but they were passionate almost +unconsciously, in a direct unreflective way. If anyone had asked +Voltaire to analyse his feelings accurately, he would have replied that +he had other things to think about; the notion of paying careful +attention to mere feelings would have seemed to him ridiculous. And, +when Saint-Simon sat down to write his Memoirs, it never occurred to him +for a moment to give any real account of what, in all the highly +personal transactions that he describes, he intimately felt. He tells us +nothing of his private life; he mentions his wife once, and almost +apologizes for doing so; really, could a gentleman--a duke--dwell upon +such matters, and preserve his self-respect? But, to us, it is precisely +such matters that form the pivot of a personality--the index of a soul. +A man's feelings are his very self, and it is around them that all that +is noblest and profoundest in our literature seems naturally to centre. +A great novelist is one who can penetrate and describe the feelings of +others; a great poet is one who can invest his own with beauty and +proclaim them to the world. We have come to set a value upon +introspection which was quite unknown in the eighteenth +century--unknown, that is, until Rousseau, in the most valuable and +characteristic of his works--his _Confessions_--started the vast current +in literature and in sentiment which is still flowing to-day. The +_Confessions_ is the detailed, intimate, complete history of a soul. It +describes Rousseau's life, from its beginning until its maturity, from +the most personal point of view, with no disguises or reticences of any +kind. It is written with great art. Rousseau's style, like his matter, +foreshadows the future; his periods are cast in a looser, larger, more +oratorical mould than those of his contemporaries; his sentences are +less fiery and excitable; though he can be witty when he wishes, he is +never frivolous; and a tone of earnest intimate passion lingers in his +faultless rhythms. With his great powers of expression he combined a +wonderful aptitude for the perception of the subtlest shades of feeling +and of mood. He was sensitive to an extraordinary degree--with the +sensitiveness of a proud, shy nature, unhardened by the commerce of the +world. There is, indeed, an unpleasant side to his _Confessions_. +Rousseau, like most explorers, became obsessed by his own discoveries; +he pushed the introspective method to its farthest limits; the sanctity +of the individual seemed to him not only to dignify the slightest +idiosyncrasies of temperament and character, but also, in some sort of +way, to justify what was positively bad. Thus his book contains the +germs of that Byronic egotism which later became the fashion all over +Europe. It is also, in parts, a morbid book. Rousseau was not content +to extenuate nothing; his failings got upon his nerves; and, while he +was ready to dilate upon them himself with an infinite wealth of detail, +the slightest hint of a reflection on his conduct from any other person +filled him with an agony and a rage which, at the end of his life, +developed into madness. To strict moralists, therefore, and to purists +in good taste, the _Confessions_ will always be unpalatable. More +indulgent readers will find in those pages the traces of a spirit which, +with all its faults, its errors, its diseases, deserves something more +than pity--deserves almost love. At any rate, it is a spirit singularly +akin to our own. Out of the far-off, sharp, eager, unpoetical, +unpsychological eighteenth century, it speaks to us in the familiar +accents of inward contemplation, of brooding reminiscence, of +subtly-shifting temperament, of quiet melancholy, of visionary joy. +Rousseau, one feels, was the only man of his age who ever wanted to be +alone. He understood that luxury: understood the fascination of silence, +and the loveliness of dreams. He understood, too, the exquisite +suggestions of Nature, and he never wrote more beautifully than when he +was describing the gentle process of her influences on the solitary +human soul. He understood simplicity: the charm of little happinesses, +the sweetness of ordinary affections, the beauty of a country face. The +paradox is strange; how was it that it should have been left to the +morbid, tortured, half-crazy egoist of the _Confessions_ to lead the way +to such spiritual delicacies, such innocent delights? + +The paradox was too strange for Rousseau's contemporaries. They could +not understand him. His works were highly popular; he was received into +the most brilliant circles in Paris; he made friends with the most +eminent men of the day; and then ensued misunderstandings, accusations, +quarrels, and at last complete disaster. Rousseau vanished from society, +driven out, according to his account, by the treacheries of his friends; +the victim, according to their account, of his own petty jealousies and +morbid suspicions. At every point in the quarrel, his friends, and such +great and honest men as Diderot and Hume were among them, seem to have +been in the right; but it seems no less clear that they were too anxious +to proclaim and emphasize the faults of a poor, unfortunate, demented +man. We can hardly blame them; for, in their eyes, Rousseau appeared as +a kind of mad dog--a pest to society, deserving of no quarter. They did +not realize--they _could_ not--that beneath the meanness and the frenzy +that were so obvious to them was the soul of a poet and a seer. The +wretched man wandered for long in Switzerland, in Germany, in England, +pursued by the ever-deepening shadows of his maniacal suspicions. At +last he returned to France, to end his life, after years of lingering +misery, in obscurity and despair. + + +Rousseau and Voltaire both died in 1778--hardly more than ten years +before the commencement of the Revolution. Into that last decade of the +old regime there seemed to be concentrated all the ardour, all the hope, +all the excitement, all the brilliance of the preceding century. Had not +Reason and Humanity triumphed at last? Triumphed, at any rate, in +spirit; for who was not converted? All that remained now was the final, +quick, easy turn which would put into action the words of the +philosophers and make this earth a paradise. And still new visions kept +opening out before the eyes of enthusiasts--strange speculations and +wondrous possibilities. The march of mind seemed so rapid that the most +advanced thinkers of yesterday were already out of date. 'Voltaire est +bigot: il est deiste,' exclaimed one of the wits of Paris, and the +sentiment expressed the general feeling of untrammelled mental freedom +and swift progression which was seething all over the country. It was at +this moment that the production of BEAUMARCHAIS' brilliant comedy, _Le +Mariage de Figaro_, electrified the intellectual public of Versailles +and the capital. In that play the old regime was presented, not in the +dark colours of satire, but under the sparkling light of frivolity, +gaiety, and idleness--a vision of endless intrigue and vapid love-making +among the antiquated remains of feudal privileges and social caste. In +this fairyland one being alone has reality--Figaro, the restless, +fiendishly clever, nondescript valet, sprung from no one knows where, +destined to no one knows what, but gradually emerging a strange and +sinister profile among the laughter and the flowers. 'What have you +done, Monsieur le Comte,' he bursts out at last to his master, 'to +deserve all these advantages?--I know. _Vous vous etes donne la peine de +naitre_!' In that sentence one can hear--far off, but distinct--the +flash and snap of the guillotine. To those happy listeners, though, no +such sound was audible. Their speculations went another way. All was +roseate, all was charming as the coaches dashed through the narrow +streets of Paris, carrying their finely-powdered ladies and gentlemen, +in silks and jewels, to the assemblies of the night. Within, the candles +sparkled, and the diamonds, and the eyes of the company, sitting round +in gilded delicate chairs. And then there was supper, and the Marquise +was witty, and the Comte was sententious, while yet newer vistas opened +of yet happier worlds, dancing on endlessly through the floods of +conversation and champagne. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT + +The French Revolution was like a bomb, to the making of which every +liberal thinker and writer of the eighteenth century had lent a hand, +and which, when it exploded, destroyed its creators. After the smoke had +rolled away, it became clear that the old regime, with its despotisms +and its persecutions, had indeed been abolished for ever; but the spirit +of the _Philosophes_ had vanished likewise. Men's minds underwent a +great reaction. The traditions of the last two centuries were violently +broken. In literature, particularly, it seemed as if the very +foundations of the art must be laid anew; and, in this task, if men +looked at all for inspiration from the Past, it was towards that age +which differed most from the age of their fathers--towards those distant +times before the Renaissance, when the medieval Church reigned supreme +in Europe. + +But before examining these new developments more closely, one glance +must be given at a writer whose qualities had singularly little to do +with his surroundings. ANDRE CHENIER passed the active years of his +short life in the thick of the revolutionary ferment, and he was +guillotined at the age of thirty-two; but his most characteristic poems +might have been composed in some magic island, far from the haunts of +men, and untouched by 'the rumour of periods'. He is the only French +writer of the eighteenth century in whom the pure and undiluted spirit +of poetry is manifest. For this reason, perhaps, he has often been +acclaimed as the forerunner of the great Romantic outburst of a +generation later; but, in reality, to give him such a title is to +misjudge the whole value of his work. For he is essentially a classic; +with a purity, a restraint, a measured and accomplished art which would +have delighted Boileau, and which brings him into close kinship with +Racine and La Fontaine. If his metrical technique is somewhat looser +than the former poet's, it is infinitely less loose than the latter's; +and his occasional departures from the strict classical canons of +versification are always completely subordinated to the controlling +balance of his style. In his _Eglogues_ the beauty of his workmanship +often reaches perfection. The short poems are Attic in their serenity +and their grace. It is not the rococo pseudo-classicism of the later +versifiers of the eighteenth century, it is the delicate flavour of true +Hellenism that breathes from them; and, as one reads them, one is +reminded alternately of Theocritus and of Keats. Like Keats, Chenier was +cut off when he had hardly more than given promise of what his +achievement might have been. His brief and tragic apparition in the +midst of the Revolution is like that of some lovely bird flitting on a +sudden out of the darkness and the terror of a tempest, to be overcome a +moment later, and whirled to destruction. + +The lines upon which the Romantic Movement was to develop had no +connexion whatever with Chenier's exquisite art. Throughout French +Literature, it is easy to perceive two main impulses at work, which, +between them, have inspired all the great masterpieces of the language. +On the one hand, there is that positive spirit of searching and +unmitigated common sense which has given French prose its peculiar +distinction, which lies at the root of the wonderful critical powers of +the nation, and which has produced that remarkable and persistent strain +of Realism--of absolute fidelity to the naked truth--common to the +earliest _Fabliaux_ of the Middle Ages and the latest Parisian novel of +to-day. On the other hand, there is in French literature a totally +different--almost a contradictory--tendency, which is no less clearly +marked and hardly less important--the tendency towards pure Rhetoric. +This love of language for its own sake--of language artfully ordered, +splendidly adorned, moving, swelling, irresistible--may be seen alike in +the torrential sentences of Rabelais, in the sonorous periods of +Bossuet, and in the passionate _tirades_ of Corneille. With the great +masters of the seventeenth century--Pascal, Racine, La Fontaine, La +Bruyere--the two influences met, and achieved a perfect balance. In +their work, the most penetrating realism is beautified and ennobled by +all the resources of linguistic art, while the rhetorical instinct is +preserved from pomposity and inflation by a supreme critical sense. With +the eighteenth century, however, a change came. The age was a critical +age--an age of prose and common sense; the rhetorical impulse faded +away, to find expression only in melodramatic tragedy and dull verse; +and the style of Voltaire, so brilliant and yet so colourless, so +limited and yet so infinitely sensible, symbolized the literary +character of the century. The Romantic Movement was an immense reaction +against the realism which had come to such perfection in the acid prose +of Voltaire. It was a reassertion of the rhetorical instinct in all its +strength and in all its forms. There was no attempt simply to redress +the balance; no wish to revive the studied perfection of the classical +age. The realistic spirit was almost completely abandoned. The pendulum +swung violently from one extreme to the other. + +The new movement had been already faintly discernible in Diderot's +bright colouring and the oratorical structure of Rousseau's writing. But +it was not until after the Revolution, in the first years of the +nineteenth century, that the Romantic spirit completely declared +itself--in the prose of CHATEAUBRIAND. Chateaubriand was, at bottom, a +rhetorician pure and simple--a rhetorician in the widest sense of the +word. It was not merely that the resources of his style were enormous in +colour, movement, and imagery, in splendour of rhythm, in descriptive +force; but that his whole cast of mind was in itself rhetorical, and +that he saw, felt, and thought with the same emphasis, the same +amplitude, the same romantic sensibility with which he wrote. The three +subjects which formed the main themes of all his work and gave occasion +for his finest passages were Christianity, Nature, and himself. His +conception of Christianity was the very reverse of that of the +eighteenth century. In his _Genie du Christianisme_ and his _Martyrs_ +the analytical and critical spirit of his predecessors has entirely +vanished; the religion which they saw simply as a collection of +theological dogmas, he envisioned as a living creed, arrayed in all the +hues of poetry and imagination, and redolent with the mystery of the +past. Yet it may be doubted whether Chateaubriand was essentially more +religious than Voltaire. What Voltaire dissected in the dry light of +reason, Chateaubriand invested with the cloak of his own eloquence--put +it up, so to speak, on a platform, in a fine attitude, under a tinted +illumination. He lacked the subtle intimacy of Faith. In his +descriptions of Nature, too, the same characteristics appear. Compared +with Rousseau's, they are far bolder, far richer, composed on a more +elaborate and imposing scale; but they are less convincing; while +Rousseau's landscapes are often profoundly moving, Chateaubriand's are +hardly ever more than splendidly picturesque. There is a similar +relation between the egoisms of the two men. Chateaubriand was never +tired of writing about himself; and in his long _Memoires +d'Outre-Tombe_--the most permanently interesting of his works--he gave a +full rein to his favourite passion. His conception of himself was +Byronic. He swells forth, in all his pages, a noble, melancholy, proud, +sentimental creature whom every man must secretly envy and every woman +passionately adore. He had all the vanity of Rousseau, but none of his +honesty. Rousseau, at any rate, never imposed upon himself; and +Chateaubriand always did. Thus the vision that we have of him is of +something wonderful but empty, something striking but unreal. It is the +rhetorician that we see, and not the man. + +Chateaubriand's influence was very great. Beside his high-flowing, +romantic, imaginative writings, the tradition of the eighteenth century +seemed to shrivel up into something thin, cold and insignificant. A new +and dazzling world swam into the ken of his readers--a world in which +the individual reigned in glory amid the glowing panorama of Nature and +among the wondrous visions of a remote and holy past. His works became +at once highly popular, though it was not until a generation later that +their full effect was felt. Meanwhile, the impetus which he had started +was continued in the poems of LAMARTINE. Here there is the same love of +Nature, the same religious outlook, the same insistence on the +individual point of view; but the tints are less brilliant, the emphasis +is more restrained; the rhetorical impulse still dominates, but it is +the rhetoric of elegiac tenderness rather than of picturesque pomp. A +wonderful limpidity of versification which, while it is always perfectly +easy, is never weak, and a charming quietude of sentiment which, however +near it may seem to come to the commonplace, always just escapes +it--these qualities give Lamartine a distinguished place in the +literature of France. They may be seen in their perfection in the most +famous of his poems, _Le Lac_, a monody descriptive of his feelings on +returning alone to the shores of the lake where he had formerly passed +the day with his mistress. And throughout all his poetical work +precisely the same characteristics are to be found. Lamartine's lyre +gave forth an inexhaustible flow of melody--always faultless, always +pellucid, and always, in the same key. + + * * * * * + +During the Revolution, under the rule of Napoleon, and in the years +which followed his fall, the energies of the nation were engrossed by +war and politics. During these forty years there are fewer great names +in French literature than in any other corresponding period since the +Renaissance. At last, however, about the year 1830, a new generation of +writers arose who brought back all the old glories and triumphantly +proved that the French tongue, so far from having exhausted its +resources, was a fresh and living instrument of extraordinary power. +These writers--as has so often been the case in France--were bound +together by a common literary creed. Young, ardent, scornful of the +past, dazzled by the possibilities of the future, they raised the +standard of revolt against the traditions of Classicism, promulgated a +new aesthetic doctrine, and, after a sharp struggle and great +excitement, finally succeeded in completely establishing their view. The +change which they introduced was of enormous importance, and for this +reason the date 1830 is a cardinal one in the literature of France. +Every sentence, every verse that has been written in French since then +bears upon it, somewhere or other, the imprint of the great Romantic +Movement which came to a head in that year. What it was that was then +effected--what the main differences are between French literature before +1830 and French literature after--deserves some further consideration. + +The Romantic School--of which the most important members were VICTOR +HUGO, ALFRED DE VIGNY, THEOPHILE GAUTIER, ALEXANDRE DUMAS, and ALFRED DE +MUSSET--was, as we have said, inspired by that supremely French love of +Rhetoric which, during the long reign of intellect and prose in the +eighteenth century, had been almost entirely suppressed. The new spirit +had animated the prose of Chateaubriand and the poetry of Lamartine; but +it was the spirit only: the _form_ of both those writers retained most +of the important characteristics of the old tradition. It was new wine +in old bottles. The great achievement of the Romantic School was the +creation of new bottles--of a new conception of form, in which the vast +rhetorical impulse within them might find a suitable expression. Their +actual innovations, however, were by no means sweeping. For instance, +the numberless minute hard-and-fast metrical rules which, since the +days of Malherbe, had held French poetry in shackles, they only +interfered with to a very limited extent. They introduced a certain +number of new metres; they varied the rhythm of the Alexandrine; but a +great mass of petty and meaningless restrictions remained untouched, and +no real attempt was made to get rid of them until more than a generation +had passed. Yet here, as elsewhere, what they had done was of the +highest importance. They had touched the ark of the covenant and they +had not been destroyed. They had shown that it was possible to break a +'rule' and yet write good poetry. This explains the extraordinary +violence of the Romantic controversy over questions of the smallest +detail. When Victor Hugo, in the opening lines of _Hernani_, ventured to +refer to an 'escalier derobe', and to put 'escalier' at the end of one +line, and 'derobe' at the beginning of the next, he was assailed with +the kind of virulence which is usually reserved for the vilest of +criminals. And the abuse had a meaning in it: it was abuse of a +revolutionary. For in truth, by the disposition of those two words, +Victor Hugo had inaugurated a revolution. The whole theory of 'rules' in +literature--the whole conception that there were certain definite +traditional forms in existence which were, absolutely and inevitably, +the best--was shattered for ever. The new doctrine was triumphantly +vindicated--that the form of expression must depend ultimately, not upon +tradition nor yet upon _a priori_ reasonings, but simply and solely on +the thing expressed. + +The most startling and the most complete of the Romantic innovations +related to the poetic Vocabulary. The number of words considered +permissible in French poetry had been steadily diminishing since the +days of Racine. A distinction had grown up between words that were +'noble' and words that were 'bas'; and only those in the former class +were admitted into poetry. No word could be 'noble' if it was one +ordinarily used by common people, or if it was a technical term, or if, +in short, it was peculiarly expressive; for any such word would +inevitably produce a shock, introduce mean associations, and destroy the +unity of the verse. If the sense demanded the use of such a word, a +periphrasis of 'noble' words must be employed instead. Racine had not +been afraid to use the word 'chien' in the most exalted of his +tragedies; but his degenerate successors quailed before such an +audacity. If you must refer to such a creature as a dog, you had better +call it 'de la fidelite respectable soutien'; the phrase actually occurs +in a tragedy of the eighteenth century. It is clear that, with such a +convention to struggle against, no poetry could survive. Everything +bold, everything vigorous, everything surprising became an impossibility +with a diction limited to the vaguest, most general, and most feebly +pompous terms. The Romantics, in the face of violent opposition, threw +the doors of poetry wide open to every word in the language. How great +the change was, and what was the nature of the public opinion against +which the Romantics had to fight, may be judged from the fact that the +use of the word 'mouchoir' during a performance of _Othello_ a few years +before 1830 produced a riot in the theatre. To such a condition of +narrowness and futility had the great Classical tradition sunk at last! + +The enormous influx of words into the literary vocabulary which the +Romantic Movement brought about had two important effects. In the first +place, the range of poetical expression was infinitely increased. +French literature came out of a little, ceremonious, antiquated +drawing-room into the open air. With the flood of new words, a thousand +influences which had never been felt before came into operation. +Strangeness, contrast, complication, immensity, curiosity, +grotesqueness, fantasy--effects of this kind now for the first time +became possible and common in verse. But, one point must be noticed. The +abolition of the distinction between words that were 'bas' and 'noble' +did not at first lead (as might have been expected) to an increase of +realism. Rather the opposite took place. The Romantics loved the new +words not because they made easier the expression of actual facts, but +for their power of suggestion, for the effects of remoteness, contrast, +and multiplicity which could be produced by them--in fact, for their +rhetorical force. The new vocabulary came into existence as an engine of +rhetoric, not as an engine of truth. Nevertheless--and this was the +second effect of its introduction--in the long run the realistic impulse +in French literature was also immensely strengthened. The vocabulary of +prose widened at the same time as that of verse; and the prose of the +first Romantics remained almost completely rhetorical. But the realistic +elements always latent in prose--and especially in French prose--soon +asserted themselves; the vast opportunities for realistic description +which the enlarged vocabulary opened out were eagerly seized upon; and +it was not long before there arose in French literature a far more +elaborate and searching realism than it had ever known before. + + * * * * * + +It was, perhaps, unfortunate that the main struggle of the Romantic +controversy should have been centred in the theatre. The fact that this +was so is an instance of the singular interest in purely literary +questions which has so often been displayed by popular opinion in +France. The controversy was not simply an academic matter for +connoisseurs and critics to decide upon in private; it was fought out in +all the heat of popular excitement on the public stage. But the wild +enthusiasm aroused by the triumphs of Dumas and Hugo in the theatre +shows, in a no less striking light, the incapacity of contemporaries to +gauge the true significance of new tendencies in art. On the whole, the +dramatic achievement of the Romantic School was the least valuable part +of their work. _Hernani_, the first performance of which marked the +turning-point of the movement, is a piece of bombastic melodrama, full +of the stagiest clap-trap and the most turgid declamation. Victor Hugo +imagined when he wrote it that he was inspired by Shakespeare; if he was +inspired by anyone it was by Voltaire. His drama is the old drama of the +eighteenth century, repainted in picturesque colours; it resembles those +grotesque country-houses that our forefathers were so fond of, where the +sham-Gothic turrets and castellations ill conceal the stucco and the +pilasters of a former age. Of true character and true passion it has no +trace. The action, the incidents, the persons--all alike are dominated +by considerations of rhetoric, and of rhetoric alone. The rhetoric has, +indeed, this advantage over that of _Zaire_ and _Alzire_--it is bolder +and more highly coloured; but then it is also more pretentious. All the +worst tendencies of the Romantic Movement may be seen completely +displayed in the dramas of Victor Hugo. + +For throughout his work that wonderful writer expressed in their +extreme forms the qualities and the defects of his school. Above all, he +was the supreme lord of words. In sheer facility, in sheer abundance of +language, Shakespeare alone of all the writers of the world can be +reckoned his superior. The bulk of his work is very great, and the +nature of it is very various; but every page bears the mark of the same +tireless fecundity, the same absolute dominion over the resources of +speech. Words flowed from Victor Hugo like light from the sun. Nor was +his volubility a mere disordered mass of verbiage: it was controlled, +adorned, and inspired by an immense technical power. When one has come +under the spell of that great enchanter, one begins to believe that his +art is without limits, that with such an instrument and such a science +there is no miracle which he cannot perform. He can conjure up the +strangest visions of fancy; he can evoke the glamour and the mystery of +the past; he can sing with exquisite lightness of the fugitive beauties +of Nature; he can pour out, in tenderness or in passion, the melodies of +love; he can fill his lines with the fire, the stress, the culminating +fury, of prophetic denunciation; he can utter the sad and secret +questionings of the human spirit, and give voice to the solemnity of +Fate. In the long roll and vast swell of his verse there is something of +the ocean--a moving profundity of power. His sonorous music, with its +absolute sureness of purpose, and its contrapuntal art, recalls the +vision in _Paradise Lost_ of him who-- + + with volant touch + Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue. + +What kind of mind, what kind of spirit, must that have been, one asks in +amazement, which could animate with such a marvellous perfection the +enormous organ of that voice? + +But perhaps it would be best to leave the question unasked--or at least +unanswered. For the more one searches, the clearer it becomes that +the intellectual scope and the spiritual quality of Victor Hugo were +very far from being equal to his gifts of expression and imagination. +He had the powers of a great genius and the soul of an ordinary +man. But that was not all. There have been writers of the highest +excellence--Saint-Simon was one of them--the value of whose productions +have been unaffected, or indeed even increased, by their personal +inferiority. They could not have written better, one feels, if they had +been ten times as noble and twenty times as wise as they actually were. +But unfortunately this is not so with Victor Hugo. His faults--his +intellectual weakness, his commonplace outlook, his lack of humour, his +vanity, his defective taste--cannot be dismissed as irrelevant and +unimportant, for they are indissolubly bound up with the very substance +of his work. It was not as a mere technician that he wished to be +judged; he wrote with a very different intention; it was as a +philosopher, as a moralist, as a prophet, as a sublime thinker, as a +profound historian, as a sensitive and refined human being. With a poet +of such pretensions it is clearly most relevant to inquire whether his +poetry does, in fact, reveal the high qualities he lays claim to, or +whether, on the contrary, it is characterized by a windy inflation of +sentiment, a showy superficiality of thought, and a ridiculous and petty +egoism. These are the unhappy questions which beset the mature and +reflective reader of Victor Hugo's works. To the young and enthusiastic +one the case is different. For him it is easy to forget--or even not to +observe--what there may be in that imposing figure that is +unsatisfactory and second-rate. _He_ may revel at will in the voluminous +harmonies of that resounding voice; by turns thrilling with indignation, +dreaming in ecstasy, plunging into abysses, and soaring upon +unimaginable heights. Between youth and age who shall judge? Who decide +between rapture and reflection, enthusiasm and analysis? To determine +the precise place of Victor Hugo in the hierarchy of poets would be +difficult indeed. But this much is certain: that at times the splendid +utterance does indeed grow transfused with a pure and inward beauty, +when the human frailties vanish, and all is subdued and glorified by the +high purposes of art. Such passages are to be found among the lyrics of +_Les Feuilles d'Automne, Les Rayons et Les Ombres, Les Contemplations_, +in the brilliant descriptions and lofty imagery of _La Legende des +Siecles_, in the burning invective of _Les Chatiments_. None but a place +among the most illustrious could be given to the creator of such a +stupendous piece of word-painting as the description of the plain of +Waterloo in the latter volume, or of such a lovely vision as that in _La +Legende des Siecles_, of Ruth looking up in silence at the starry +heaven. If only the wondrous voice had always spoken so! + + * * * * * + +The romantic love of vastness, richness, and sublimity, and the romantic +absorption in the individual--these two qualities appear in their +extremes throughout the work of Hugo: in that of ALFRED DE VIGNY it is +the first that dominates; in that of ALFRED DE MUSSET, the second. Vigny +wrote sparingly--one or two plays, a few prose works, and a small volume +of poems; but he produced some masterpieces. A far more sober artist +than Hugo, he was also a far profounder thinker, and a sincerer man. His +melancholy, his pessimism, were the outcome of no Byronic +attitudinizing, but the genuine intimate feelings of a noble spirit; and +he could express them in splendid verse. His melancholy was touched with +grandeur, his pessimism with sublimity. In his _Moise_, his _Colere de +Samson_, his _Maison du Berger_, his _Mont des Oliviers_, and others of +his short reflective poems, he envisions man face to face with +indifferent Nature, with hostile Destiny, with poisoned Love, and the +lesson he draws is the lesson of proud resignation. In _La Mort du +Loup_, the tragic spectacle of the old wolf driven to bay and killed by +the hunters inspires perhaps his loftiest verses, with the closing +application to humanity--'Souffre et meurs sans parler'--summing up his +sad philosophy. No less striking and beautiful are the few short stories +in his _Servitude et Grandeur Militaires_, in which some heroic +incidents of military life are related in a prose of remarkable strength +and purity. In the best work of Vigny there are no signs of the strain, +the over-emphasis, the tendency towards the grotesque, always latent in +Romanticism; its nobler elements are alone preserved; he has achieved +the grand style. + +Alfred de Musset presents a complete contrast. He was the spoilt child +of the age--frivolous, amorous, sensuous, charming, unfortunate, and +unhappy; and his poetry is the record of his personal feelings, his +varying moods, his fugitive loves, his sentimental despairs. + + Le seul bien qui me reste au monde + Est d'avoir quelquefois pleure, + +he exclaims, with an accent of regretful softness different indeed from +that of Vigny. Among much that is feeble, ill constructed, and +exaggerated in his verse, strains of real beauty and real pathos +constantly recur. Some of his lyrics are perfect; the famous song of +Fortunio in itself entitles him to a high place among the masters of the +language; and in his longer pieces--especially in the four _Nuits_--his +emotion occasionally rises, grows transfigured, and vibrates with a +strange intensity, a long, poignant, haunting note. But doubtless his +chief claim to immortality rests upon his exquisite little dramas (both +in verse and prose), in which the romance of Shakespeare and the fantasy +of Marivaux mingle with a wit, a charm, an elegance, which are all +Musset's own. In his historical drama, _Lorenzaccio_, he attempted to +fill a larger canvas, and he succeeded. Unlike the majority of the +Romantics, Musset had a fine sense of psychology and a penetrating +historical vision. In this brilliant, vivacious, and yet subtle tragedy +he is truly great. + + +We must now glance at the effects which the Romantic Movement produced +upon the art which was destined to fill so great a place in the +literature of the nineteenth century--the art of prose fiction. With the +triumph of Classicism in the seventeenth century, the novel, like all +other forms of literature, grew simplified and compressed. The huge +romances of Mademoiselle de Scudery were succeeded by the delicate +little stories of Madame de Lafayette, one of which--_La Princesse de +Cleves_--a masterpiece of charming psychology and exquisite art, +deserves to be considered as the earliest example of the modern novel. +All through the eighteenth century the same tendency is visible. _Manon +Lescaut_, the passionate and beautiful romance of l'Abbe Prevost, is a +very small book, concerned, like _La Princesse de Cleves_, with two +characters only--the lovers, whose varying fortunes make up the whole +action of the tale. Precisely the same description applies to the subtle +and brilliant _Adolphe_ of Benjamin Constant, produced in the early +years of the nineteenth century. Even when the framework was larger--as +in Le Sage's _Gil Blas_ and Marivaux's _Vie de Marianne_--the spirit was +the same; it was the spirit of selection, of simplification, of delicate +skill. Both the latter works are written in a prose style of deliberate +elegance, and both consist rather of a succession of small +incidents--almost of independent short stories--than of one large +developing whole. The culminating example of the eighteenth-century form +of fiction may be seen in the _Liaisons Dangereuses_ of Laclos, a witty, +scandalous and remarkably able novel, concerned with the interacting +intrigues of a small society of persons, and revealing on every page a +most brilliant and concentrated art. Far more modern, both in its +general conception and in the absolute realism of its treatment, was +Diderot's _La Religieuse_; but this masterpiece was not published till +some years after the Revolution; and the real honour of having +originated the later developments in French fiction--as in so many other +branches of literature--belongs undoubtedly to Rousseau. _La Nouvelle +Heloise_, faulty as it is as a work of art, with its feeble psychology +and loose construction, yet had the great merit of throwing open whole +new worlds for the exploration of the novelist--the world of nature on +the one hand, and on the other the world of social problems and all the +living forces of actual life. The difference between the novels of +Rousseau and those of Hugo is great; but yet it is a difference merely +of degree. _Les Miserables_ is the consummation of the romantic +conception of fiction which Rousseau had adumbrated half a century +before. In that enormous work, Hugo attempted to construct a prose epic +of modern life; but the attempt was not successful. Its rhetorical cast +of style, its ceaseless and glaring melodrama, its childish presentments +of human character, its endless digressions and--running through all +this--its evidences of immense and disordered power, make the book +perhaps the most magnificent failure--the most 'wild enormity' ever +produced by a man of genius. Another development of the romantic spirit +appeared at about the same time in the early novels of George Sand, in +which the ardours of passionate love are ecstatically idealized in a +loose and lyric flow of innumerable words. + +There can be little doubt that if the development of fiction had stopped +at this point the infusion into it of the romantic spirit could only +have been judged a disaster. From the point of view of art, such novels +as those of Victor Hugo and the early works of George Sand were a +retrogression from those of the eighteenth century. _Manon Lescaut_, +tiny, limited, unambitious as it is, stands on a far higher level of +artistic achievement than the unreal and incoherent _Les Miserables_. +The scale of the novel had indeed been infinitely enlarged, but the +apparatus for dealing adequately with the vast masses of new material +was wanting. It is pathetic to watch the romantic novelists trying to +infuse beauty and significance into their subjects by means of fine +writing, lyrical outbursts, impassioned philosophical dissertations, and +all the familiar rhetorical devices so dear to them. The inevitable +result was something lifeless, formless, fantastic; they were on the +wrong track. The true method for the treatment of their material was not +that of rhetoric at all; it was that of realism. This fact was +discovered by STENDHAL, who was the first to combine an enlarged view of +the world with a plain style and an accurate, unimpassioned, detailed +examination of actual life. In his remarkable novel, _Le Rouge et Le +Noir_, and in some parts of his later work, _La Chartreuse de Parme_, +Stendhal laid down the lines on which French fiction has been developing +ever since. The qualities which distinguish him are those which have +distinguished all the greatest of his successors--a subtle psychological +insight, an elaborate attention to detail, and a remorseless fidelity to +the truth. + + +Important as Stendhal is in the history of modern French fiction, he is +dwarfed by the colossal figure of BALZAC. By virtue of his enormous +powers, and the immense quantity and variety of his output, Balzac might +be called the Hugo of prose, if it were not that in two most important +respects he presents a complete contrast to his great contemporary. In +the first place, his control of the technical resources of the language +was as feeble as Hugo's was mighty. Balzac's style is bad; in spite of +the electric vigour that runs through his writing, it is formless, +clumsy, and quite without distinction; it is the writing of a man who +was highly perspicacious, formidably powerful, and vulgar. But, on the +other hand, he possessed one great quality which Hugo altogether +lacked--the sense of the real. Hugo was most himself when he was soaring +on the wings of fancy through the empyrean; Balzac was most himself when +he was rattling in a hired cab through the streets of Paris. He was of +the earth earthy. His coarse, large, germinating spirit gave forth, like +the earth, a teeming richness, a solid, palpable creation. And thus it +was he who achieved what Hugo, in _Les Miserables_, had in vain +attempted. _La Comedie Humaine_, as he called the long series of his +novels, which forms in effect a single work, presents, in spite of its +limitations and its faults, a picture of the France of that age drawn on +the vast scale and in the grand manner of an epic. + +The limitations and the faults of Balzac's work are, indeed, +sufficiently obvious and sufficiently grave. The same coarseness of +fibre which appears in his style made him incapable of understanding the +delicacies of life--the refined shades of emotion, the subtleties of +human intercourse. He probably never read Jane Austen; but if he had he +certainly would have considered her an utterly pointless writer; and he +would have been altogether at sea in a novel by Henry James. The elusive +things that are so important, the indecisive things that are so curious, +the intimate things that are so thrilling--all these slipped through his +rough, matter-of-fact grasp. His treatment of the relations between the +sexes is characteristic. The subject fills a great place in his novels; +he approaches it with an unflinching boldness, and a most penetrating +gaze; yet he never succeeds in giving a really satisfactory presentment +of the highest of those relations--love. That eluded him: its essence +was too subtle, too private, too transcendental. No one can describe +love who has not the makings of a poet in him. And a poet was the very +last thing that Balzac was. + +But his work does not merely suffer from the absence of certain good +qualities; it is also marred by the presence of positively bad ones. +Balzac was not simply a realist. There was a romantic vein in him, which +occasionally came to the surface with unfortunate results. When that +happened, he plunged into the most reckless melodrama, revelled in the +sickliest sentiment, or evolved the most grotesque characters, the most +fantastic plots. And these lapses occur quite indiscriminately. Side by +side with some detailed and convincing description, one comes upon +glaring absurdities; in the middle of some narrative of extraordinary +actuality, one finds oneself among hissing villains, disguises, poisons, +and all the paraphernalia of a penny novelette. Balzac's lack of +critical insight into his own work is one of the most singular of his +characteristics. He hardly seems to have known at all what he was about. +He wrote feverishly, desperately, under the impulsion of irresistible +genius. His conceptions crowded upon him in vivid, serried +multitudes--the wildest visions of fantasy mixed pell-mell with the most +vital realizations of fact. It was not for him to distinguish; his +concern was simply, somehow or other, to get them all out: good, bad, or +indifferent, what did it matter? The things were in his brain; and they +must be expressed. + +Fortunately, it is very easy for the reader to be more discriminating +than Balzac. The alloy is not inextricably mingled with the pure +metal--the chaff may be winnowed off, and the grain left. His errors and +futilities cannot obscure his true achievement--his evocation of +multitudinous life. The whole of France is crammed into his pages, and +electrified there into intense vitality. The realism of the classical +novelists was a purely psychological realism; it was concerned with the +delicately shifting states of mind of a few chosen persons, and with +nothing else. Balzac worked on a very different plan. He neglected the +subtleties of the spirit, and devoted himself instead to, displaying the +immense interest that lay in those prosaic circumstances of existence +which the older writers had ignored. He showed with wonderful force that +the mere common details of everyday life were filled with drama, that, +to him who had eyes to see, there might be significance in a ready-made +suit of clothes, and passion in the furniture of a boarding-house. Money +in particular gave him an unending theme. There is hardly a character in +the whole vast range of his creation of whose income we are not exactly +informed; and it might almost be said that the only definite moral that +can be drawn from _La Comedie Humaine_ is that the importance of money +can never be over-estimated. The classical writers preferred to leave +such matters to the imagination of the reader; it was Balzac's great +object to leave nothing to the imagination of the reader. By ceaseless +effort, by infinite care, by elaborate attention to the minutest +details, he would describe _all_. He brought an encyclopaedic knowledge +to bear upon his task; he can give an exact account of the machinery of +a provincial printing-press; he can write a dissertation on the methods +of military organization; he can reveal the secret springs in the +mechanism of Paris journalism; he is absolutely at home in the +fraudulent transactions of money-makers, the methods of usurers, the +operations of high finance. And into all this mass of details he can +infuse the spirit of life. Perhaps his masterpiece in realistic +description is his account of La Maison Vauquer--a low boarding-house, +to which he devotes page after page of minute particularity. The result +is not a mere dead catalogue: it is a palpitating image of lurid truth. +Never was the sordid horror which lurks in places and in things evoked +with a more intense completeness. + +Undoubtedly it is in descriptions of the sordid, the squalid, the ugly, +and the mean that Balzac particularly excels. He is at his greatest when +he is revealing the horrible underside of civilization--the indignities +of poverty, the low intrigues of parasites, the long procession of petty +agonies that embitter and ruin a life. Over this world of shadow and +grime he throws strange lights. Extraordinary silhouettes flash out and +vanish; one has glimpses of obscure and ominous movements on every side; +and, amid all this, some sudden vision emerges from the darkness, of +pathos, of tenderness, of tragic and unutterable pain. + +Balzac died in 1850, and at about that time the Romantic Movement came +to an end. Victor Hugo, it is true, continued to live and to produce for +more than thirty years longer; but French literature ceased to be +dominated by the ideals of the Romantic school. That school had +accomplished much; it had recreated French poetry, and it had +revolutionized French prose. But, by the very nature of its achievement, +it led the way to its own supersession. The spirit which animated its +doctrines was the spirit of progress and of change; it taught that there +were no fixed rules for writing well; that art, no less than science, +lived by experiment; that a literature which did not develop was dead. +Therefore it was inevitable that the Romantic ideal itself should form +the stepping-stone for a fresh advance. The complex work of Balzac +unites in a curious way many of the most important elements of the old +school and of the new. Alike by his vast force, his immense variety, +his formlessness, his lack of critical and intellectual power, he was a +Romantic; but he belonged to the future in his enormous love of prosaic +detail, his materialist cast of mind, and his preoccupation with actual +facts. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE AGE OF CRITICISM + + +With the generation of writers who rose to eminence after the death of +Balzac, we come within the reach of living memory, so that a just +estimate of their work is well-nigh impossible: it is so close to us +that it is bound to be out of focus. And there is an additional +difficulty in the extreme richness and variety of their accomplishment. +They explored so many fields of literature, and produced so much of +interest and importance, that a short account of their work can hardly +fail to give a false impression of it. Only its leading characteristics +and its most remarkable manifestations can be touched upon here. + +The age was before all else an age of Criticism. A strong reaction set +in against the looseness of construction and the extravagance of thought +which had pervaded the work of the Romantics; and a new ideal was set +up--an ideal which was to combine the width and diversity of the latter +with the precision of form and the deliberate artistic purpose of the +Classical age. The movement affected the whole of French literature, but +its most important results were in the domain of Prose. Nowhere were the +defects of the Romantics more obvious than in their treatment of +history. With a very few exceptions they conceived of the past as a +picturesque pageant--a thing of contrasts and costumes, an excuse for +rhetorical descriptions, without inner significance or a real life of +its own. One historian of genius they did indeed produce--MICHELET; and +the contrast between his work and that of his successors, TAINE and +RENAN, is typical of the new departure. The great history of Michelet, +with its strange, convulsive style, its capricious and imaginative +treatment of facts, and its undisguised bias, shows us the spectacle of +the past in a series of lurid lightning-flashes--a spectacle at once +intensely vivid and singularly contorted; it is the history of a poet +rather than of a man of science. With Taine and Renan the personal +element which forms the very foundation of Michelet's work has been +carefully suppressed. It is replaced by an elaborate examination of +detail, a careful, sober, unprejudiced reconstruction of past +conditions, an infinitely conscientious endeavour to tell the truth and +nothing but the truth. Nor is their history merely the dead bones of +analysis and research; it is informed with an untiring sympathy; and--in +the case of Renan especially--a suave and lucid style adds the charm and +amenity which art alone can give. + +The same tendencies appear to a still more remarkable degree in +Criticism. With SAINTE-BEUVE, in fact, one might almost say that +criticism, as we know it, came into existence for the first time. Before +him, all criticism had been one of two things: it had been either a +merely personal expression of opinion, or else an attempt to establish +universal literary canons and to judge of writers by the standards thus +set up. Sainte-Beuve realized that such methods--the slap-dash +pronouncements of a Johnson or the narrow generalizations of a +Boileau--were in reality not critical at all. He saw that the critic's +first duty was not to judge, but to understand; and with this object he +set himself to explore all the facts which could throw light on the +temperament, the outlook, the ideals of his author; he examined his +biography, the society in which he lived, the influences of his age; +and with the apparatus thus patiently formed he proceeded to act as the +interpreter between the author and the public. His _Causeries du +Lundi_--short critical papers originally contributed to a periodical +magazine and subsequently published in a long series of +volumes--together with his _Port Royal_--an elaborate account of the +movements in letters and philosophy during the earlier years of Louis +XIV's reign--contain a mass of material of unequalled value concerning +the whole of French literature. His analytical and sympathetic mind is +reflected in the quiet wit and easy charm of his writing. Undoubtedly +the lover of French literature will find in Sainte-Beuve's _Lundis_ at +once the most useful and the most agreeable review of the subject in all +its branches; and the more his knowledge increases, the more eagerly +will he return for further guidance and illumination to those delightful +books. + +But the greatest prose-writer of the age devoted himself neither to +history nor to criticism--though his works are impregnated with the +spirit of both--but to Fiction. In his novels, FLAUBERT finally +accomplished what Balzac had spasmodically begun--the separation of the +art of fiction from the unreality, the exaggeration, and the rhetoric of +the Romantic School. Before he began to write, the movement towards a +greater restraint, a more deliberate art, had shown itself in a few +short novels by GEORGE SAND--the first of the long and admirable series +of her mature works--where, especially in such delicate masterpieces as +_La Mare au Diable, La Petite Fadette_, and _Francois le Champi_, her +earlier lyricism and incoherence were replaced by an idyllic sentiment +strengthened and purified by an exquisite sense of truth. Flaubert's +genius moved in a very different and a far wider orbit: but it was no +less guided by the dictates of deliberate art. In his realism, his love +of detail, and his penetrating observation of facts, Flaubert was the +true heir of Balzac; while in the scrupulosity of his style and the +patient, laborious, and sober treatment of his material he presented a +complete contrast to his great predecessor. These latter qualities make +Flaubert the pre-eminent representative of his age. The critical sense +possessed him more absolutely and with more striking results than all +the rest of his contemporaries. His watchfulness over his own work was +almost infinite. There has never been a writer who took his art with +such a passionate seriousness, who struggled so incessantly towards +perfection, and who suffered so acutely from the difficulties, the +disappointments, the desperate, furious efforts of an unremitting toil. +His style alone cost him boundless labour. He would often spend an +entire day over the elaboration and perfection of a single sentence, +which, perhaps, would be altogether obliterated before the publication +of the book. He worked in an apoplectic fervour over every detail of his +craft--eliminating repetitions, balancing rhythms, discovering the +precise word for every shade of meaning, with an extraordinary, an +almost superhuman, persistence. And in the treatment of his matter his +conscientiousness was equally great. He prepared for his historical +novels by profound researches in the original authorities of the period, +and by personal visits to the localities he intended to describe. When +he treated of modern life he was no less scrupulously exact. One of his +scenes was to pass in a cabbage-garden by moonlight. But what did a +cabbage-garden by moonlight really look like? Flaubert waited long for +a propitious night, and then went out, notebook in hand, to take down +the precise details of what he saw. Thus it was that his books were +written very slowly, and his production comparatively small. He spent +six years over the first and most famous of his works--_Madame Bovary_; +and he devoted no less than thirteen to his encyclopedic _Bouvard et +Pecuchet_, which was still unfinished when he died. + +The most abiding impression produced by the novels of Flaubert is that +of solidity. This is particularly the case with his historical books. +The bric-a-brac and fustian of the Romantics has disappeared, to be +replaced by a clear, detailed, profound presentment of the life of the +past. In _Salammbo_, ancient Carthage rises up before us, no crazy +vision of a picturesque and disordered imagination, but in all the +solidity of truth; coloured, not with the glaring contrasts of rhetoric, +but with the real blaze of an eastern sun; strange, not with an imported +fantastic strangeness manufactured in nineteenth-century Paris, but with +the strangeness--so much more mysterious and significant--of the actual, +barbaric Past. + +The same characteristics appear in Flaubert's modern novels. _Madame +Bovary_ gives us a picture of life in a French provincial town in the +middle of the last century--a picture which, with its unemphatic tones, +its strong, sensitive, and accurate drawing, its masterly design, +produces an effect of absolutely convincing veracity. The character and +the fate of the wretched woman who forms the central figure of the story +come upon us, amid the grim tepidity of their surroundings, with +extraordinary force. Flaubert's genius does not act in sudden flashes, +but by the method of gradual accumulation. The effects which it +produces are not of the kind that overwhelm and astonish, but of the +more subtle sort that creep into the mind by means of a thousand +details, an infinitude of elaborated fibres, and which, once there, are +there for ever. + +The solidity of Flaubert's work, however, was not unaccompanied with +drawbacks. His writing lacks fire; there is often a sense of effort in +it; and, as one reads his careful, faultless, sculpturesque sentences, +it is difficult not to long, at times, for some of the irregular +vitality of Balzac. Singularly enough, Flaubert's correspondence--one of +the most interesting collections of letters in the language--shows that, +so far as his personal character was concerned, irregular vitality was +precisely one of his dominating qualities. But in his fiction he +suppressed this side of himself in the interests, as he believed, of +art. It was his theory that a complete detachment was a necessary +condition for all great writing; and he did his best to put this theory +into practice. But there was one respect in which he did not succeed in +his endeavour. His hatred and scorn of the mass of humanity, his +conception of them as a stupid, ignorant, and vulgar herd, appears +throughout his work, and in his unfinished _Bouvard et Pecuchet_ reaches +almost to the proportion of a monomania. The book is an infinitely +elaborate and an infinitely bitter attack on the ordinary man. There is +something tragic in the spectacle of this lonely, noble, and potent +genius wearing out his life at last over such a task--in a mingled agony +of unconscious frenzied self-expression and deliberate misguided +self-immolation. + +In poetry, the reaction against Romanticism had begun with the _Emaux et +Camees_ of THEOPHILE GAUTIER--himself in his youth one of the leaders +of the Romantic School; and it was carried further in the work of a +group of writers known as the _Parnassiens_--the most important of whom +were LECONTE DE LISLE, SULLY PRUDHOMME, and HEREDIA. Their poetry bears +the same relation to that of Musset as the history of Renan bears to +that of Michelet, and the prose of Flaubert to that of Hugo. It is +restrained, impersonal, and polished to the highest degree. The bulk of +it is not great; but not a line of it is weak or faulty; and it +possesses a firm and plastic beauty, well expressed by the title of +Gautier's volume, and the principles of which are at once explained and +exemplified in his famous poem beginning-- + + Oui, l'oeuvre sort plus belle + D'une forme au travail + Rebelle, + --Vers, marbre, onyx, email. + +The _Parnassiens_ particularly devoted themselves to classical subjects, +and to descriptions of tropical scenes. Their rich, sonorous, +splendidly-moulded language invests their visions with a noble fixity, +an impressive force. Among the gorgeous descriptive pieces of Leconte de +Lisle, the exquisite lyrics of Sully Prudhomme, and the chiselled +sonnets of Heredia some of the finest and weightiest verse of the +century is to be found. + +The age produced one other poet who, however, by the spirit of his work, +belongs rather to the succeeding epoch than to his own. This was +BAUDELAIRE, whose small volume--_Les Fleurs du Mal_--gives him a unique +place among the masters of the poetic art. In his form, indeed, he is +closely related to his contemporaries. His writing has all the care, the +balance, the conscientious polish of the _Parnassiens_; it is in his +matter that he differs from them completely. He was not interested in +classical imaginations and impersonal descriptions; he was concerned +almost entirely with the modern life of Paris and the actual experiences +of a disillusioned soul. As intensely personal as the _Parnassiens_ were +detached, he poured into his verse all the gloom of his own character, +all the bitterness of his own philosophy, all the agony of his own +despair. Some poets--such as Keats and Chenier--in spite of the +misfortunes of their lives, seem to distil nothing but happiness and the +purest beauty into their poetry; they only come to their true selves +amid the sunlight and the flowers. Other writers--such as Swift and +Tacitus--rule supreme over the kingdom of darkness and horror, and their +finest pages are written in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Writers +of this kind are very rarely poets; and it is Baudelaire's great +distinction that he was able to combine the hideous and devastating +conceptions of complete pessimism with the passion, the imagination, and +the formal beauty that only live in magnificent verse. He is the Swift +of poetry. His vision is black and terrible. Some of his descriptions +are even more disgusting than those of Swift, and most of his pages are +no fit reading for the young and ignorant. But the wise reader will find +in this lurid poetry elements of profundity and power which are rare +indeed. Above all, he will find in it a quality not common in French +poetry--a passionate imagination which clothes the thought with +splendour, and lifts the strange words of this unhappy mortal into the +deathless regions of the sublime. + + + + +CONCLUSION + + +With the death of Flaubert in 1880, French literature entered upon a new +phase--a phase which, in its essential qualities, has lasted till +to-day, and which forms a suitable point for the conclusion of the +present sketch. + +This last phase has been dominated by two men of genius. In prose, +MAUPASSANT carried on the work of Flaubert with a sharper manner and +more vivid style, though with a narrower range. He abandoned the exotic +and the historical visions of his predecessor, and devoted himself +entirely, in his brilliant novels and yet more brilliant short stories, +to an almost fiendishly realistic treatment of modern life. A precisely +contrary tendency marks the poetry of VERLAINE. While Maupassant +completely disengaged prose from every alien element of poetry and +imagination, pushing it as far as it could go in the direction of +incisive realism, Verlaine and his fellow-workers in verse attempted to +make poetry more truly poetical than it had ever been before, to +introduce into it the vagueness and dreaminess of individual moods and +spiritual fluctuations, to turn it away from definite fact and bring it +near to music. + +It was with Verlaine and his successors that French verse completely +broke away from the control of those classical rules, the infallibility +of which had been first attacked by the Romantics. In order to express +the delicate, shifting, and indecisive feelings which he loved so well, +Verlaine abolished the last shreds of rhythmical regularity, making his +verse a perfectly fluid substance, which he could pour at will into the +subtle mould of his feeling and his thought. The result justified the +means. Verlaine's poetry exhales an exquisite perfume--strange, +indistinct, and yet, after the manner of perfume, unforgettable. +Listening to his enchanting, poignant music, we hear the trembling voice +of a soul. This last sad singer carries us back across the ages, and, +mingling his sweet strain with the distant melancholy of Villon, +symbolizes for us at once the living flower and the unchanging root of +the great literature of France. + + * * * * * + +We have now traced the main outlines of that literature from its dim +beginnings in the Dark Ages up to the threshold of the present time. +Looking back over the long line of writers, the first impression that +must strike us is one of extraordinary wealth. France, it is true, has +given to the world no genius of the colossal stature and universal power +of Shakespeare. But, then, where is the equal of Shakespeare to be +found? Not even in the glorious literature of Greece herself. Putting +out of account such an immeasurable magnitude, the number of writers of +the first rank produced by France can be paralleled in only one other +modern literature--that of England. The record is, indeed, a splendid +one which contains, in poetry and drama, the names of Villon, Ronsard, +Corneille, Moliere, Racine, La Fontaine, Chenier, Lamartine, Hugo, +Vigny, Gautier, Baudelaire, Verlaine; and in prose those of Froissart, +Rabelais, Montaigne, Pascal, Bossuet, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, +Montesquieu, Saint-Simon, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Chateaubriand, +Balzac, Flaubert, and Maupassant. And, besides this great richness and +variety, another consideration gives a peculiar value to the literature +of France. More than that of any other nation in Europe, it is +distinctive and individual; if it had never existed, the literature of +the world would have been bereft of certain qualities of the highest +worth which France alone has been able to produce. Where else could we +find the realism which would replace that of Stendhal and Balzac, +Flaubert and Maupassant? Where else should we look for the brilliant +lucidity and consummate point which Voltaire has given us? Or the force +and the precision that glow in Pascal? Or the passionate purity that +blazes in Racine? + +Finally, if we would seek for the essential spirit of French literature, +where shall we discover it? In its devotion to truth? In its love of +rhetoric? In its clarity? In its generalizing power? All these qualities +are peculiarly its own, but, beyond and above them, there is another +which controls and animates the rest. The one high principle which, +through so many generations, has guided like a star the writers of +France is the principle of deliberation, of intention, of a conscious +search for ordered beauty; an unwavering, an indomitable pursuit of the +endless glories of art. + + + + +CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF AUTHORS AND THEIR PRINCIPAL WORKS + +I. _Middle Ages_ + +CHANSONS DE GESTE, eleventh to thirteenth centuries. + _Chanson de Roland, circa_ 1080. + +ROMANS BRETONS, twelfth and thirteenth centuries. + +CHRETIEN DE TROYES, wrote _circa_ 1170-80. + +FABLIAUX, twelfth and thirteenth centuries. + _Roman de Renard_, thirteenth century. + _Aucassin et Nicolete, circa_ thirteenth century. + +VILLEHARDOUIN, _d_. 1213. + _Conquete de Constantinople_, 1205-13. + +GUILLAUME DE LORRIS (?). + _La Roman de la Rose_ (first part), _circa_ 1237. + +JEAN DE MEUNG, _d_. 1305. + _La Roman de la Rose_ (second part), 1277. + +JOINVILLE, 1224-1319. + _Vie de Saint Louis_, 1309. + +FROISSART, 1337-_circa_ 1410. + _Chroniques_, 1373-1400. + +VILLON, 1431-(?). + _Grand Testament_, 1461. + +COMMYNES, 1445-1509. + _Memoires_, 1488-98. + + +II. _Renaissance_ + +MAROT, 1496-1544. + +RABELAIS, _circa_ 1494-1553. + +RONSARD, 1524-85. + +DU BELLAY, 1522-60. + _Defense et Illustration de la Langue Francaise_, 1549. + +JODELLE, 1532-73. + _Cleopatre_, 1552. + +MONTAIGNE, 1533-92. + _Essays_, 1580-88. + + +III. _Age of Transition_ + +MALHERBE, 1555-1628. + _Odes_, 1607-28. + +HARDY, 1570-1631 (_circa_). + _Tragedies_, 1593-1630. + +ACADEMY, founded 1629. + +CORNEILLE, 1606-84. + _Le Cid_, 1636. + _Les Horaces_, 1640. + _Cinna_, 1640. + _Polyeucte_, 1643. + +PASCAL, 1623-62. + _Lettres Provinciales_, 1656-57. + _Pensees_, first edition 1670, first complete edition 1844. + + +IV. _Age of Louis XIV_ + +MOLIERE, 1622-73. + _Les Precieuses Ridicules_, 1659. + _L'Ecole des Femmes_, 1662. + _Tartufe_, 1664. + _Le Misanthrope_, 1666. + _Le Malade Imaginaire_, 1673. + +LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, 1613-80. + _Maximes_, 1665. + +BOILEAU, 1636-1711. + _Satires_, 1666. + _Art Poetique_, 1674. + +RACINE, 1639-99. + _Andromaque_, 1667. + _Phedre_, 1677. + _Athalie_, 1691. + +LA FONTAINE, 1621-95. + _Fables_, 1668-92. + +BOSSUET, 1627-1704. + _Oraisons Funebres_, 1669-87. + _Histoire Universelle_, 1681. + +MADAME DE SEVIGNE, 1626-96. + _Letters_, 1671-96. + +MADAME DE LAFAYETTE, 1634-93. + _La Princesse de Cleves_, 1678. + +LA BRUYERE, 1645-96. + _Les Caracteres_, 1688-94. + + +V. _Eighteenth Century_ + +FONTENELLE, 1657-1757. + _Histoire des Oracles_, 1687. + +BAYLE, 1647-1706. + _Dictionnaire Historique et Critique_, 1697. + +FENELON, 1651-1715. + _Telemaque_, 1699. + +MONTESQUIEU, 1689-1755. + _Lettres Persanes_, 1721. + _L'Esprit des Lois_, 1748. + +VOLTAIRE (1694-1778). + _La Henriade_, 1723. + _Zaire_, 1732. + _Lettres Philosophiques_, 1734. + _Essai sur les Moeurs_, 1751-56. + _Candide_, 1759. + _Dictionnaire Philosophique_, 1764. + _Dialogues_, etc., 1755-78. + +LE SAGE, 1668-1747. + _Gil Blas_, 1715-35. + +MARIVAUX, 1688-1763. + _Vie de Marianne_, 1731-41. + _Les Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard_, 1734. + +SAINT-SIMON, 1675-1755. + _Memoires_, begun 1740, first edition 1830. + +DIDEROT, 1713-84. + _Encyclopedie_, 1751-80. + _La Religieuse_, first edition 1796. + _Le Neveu de Rameau_, first edition 1823. + +ROUSSEAU, 1712-78. + _La Nouvelle Heloise_, 1761. + _Contrat Social_, 1762. + _Confessions_, first edition 1781-88. + +BEAUMARCHAIS, 1732-99. + _Le Mariage de Figaro_, 1784. + +CONDORCET, 1743-94. + _Progres de l'Esprit Humain_, 1794. + +CHENIER, 1762-94. + _Poems_, 1790-94, first edition 1819. + + +VI. _Nineteenth Century_--I + +CHATEAUBRIAND, 1768-1848. + _Atala_, 1801. + _Genie du Christianisme_, 1802. + _Memoires d'Outre-Tombe_, published 1849. + +LAMARTINE, 1790-1869. + _Meditations_, 1820. + +HUGO, 1802-85. + _Hernani_, 1830. + _Les Feuilles d'Automne_, 1831. + _Notre-Dame de Paris_, 1831. + _Les Chatiments_, 1852. + _Les Contemplations_, 1856. + _La Legende des Siecles_, 1859. + _Les Miserables_, 1862. + +VIGNY, 1797-1863. + _Poemes Antiques et Modernes_, 1826. + _Servitude et Grandeur Militaires_, 1835. + +MUSSET, 1810-57. + _Caprices de Marianne_, 1833. + _Lorenzaccio_, 1834. + _Les Nuits_, 1835-40. + +GEORGE SAND, 1804-76. + _Indiana_, 1832. + _Francois le Champi_, 1850. + +STENDHAL, 1783-1842. + _Le Rouge et le Noir_, 1831. + +BALZAC, 1799-1850. + _La Comedie Humaine_, 1829-50. + +MICHELET, 1798-1874. + _History_, 1833-67. + + +VII. _Nineteenth Century_--II + +SAINTE-BEUVE, 1804-69. + _Lundis_, 1850-69. + +RENAN, 1833-92. + _Vie de Jesus_, 1863. + +TAINE, 1828-93. + +FLAUBERT, 1821-80. + _Madame Bovary_, 1857. + _Salammbo_, 1862. + +GAUTIER, 1811-72. + _Emaux et Camees_, 1852. + +BAUDELAIRE, 1821-67. + _Les Fleurs du Mal_, 1857. + +LECONTE DE LISLE, 1818-94. + _Poems_, 1853-84. + +SULLY PRUDHOMME, 1839-1907. + _Poems_, 1865-88. + +HEREDIA, 1842-1905. + _Les Trophees_, 1893. + +MAUPASSANT, 1850-93. + +VERLAINE, 1844-96. + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE + +The number of works dealing with the history and criticism of French +literature is very large indeed. The following are the most useful +reviews of the whole subject:-- + +PETIT DE JULLEVILLE. _Histoire de la Langue et de la Litterature +francaise_ (8 vols.). + +LANSON. _Histoire de la Litterature francaise_ (1 vol.). + +BRUNETIERE. _Manuel de l'histoire de la Litterature francaise_ (1 vol.). + +DOWDEN. _History of French Literature_ (1 vol.). + +An excellent series of biographies of the principal authors, by the +leading modern critics, is that of _Les Grands Ecrivains Francais_ +(published by Hachette). + +The critical essays of Sainte-Beuve are particularly valuable. They are +contained in his _Causeries du Lundi, Premiers Lundis, Nouveaux Lundis, +Portraits de Femmes, Portraits Litteraires_, and _Portraits +Contemporains_. + +Some interesting criticisms of modern writers are to be found in _La Vie +Litteraire_, by Anatole France. + +Editions of the principal authors are very numerous. The monumental +series of _Les Grands Ecrivains de la France_ (Hachette) contains +complete texts of most of the great writers, with elaborate and +scholarly commentaries of the highest value. Cheaper editions of the +masterpieces of the language are published by Hachette, La Bibliotheque +Nationale, Jean Gillequin, Nelson, Dent, Gowans & Gray. + +There are also numerous lyrical anthologies, of which two of the best +are _Les Chefs-d'oeuvre de la Poesie lyrique francaise_ (Gowans & Gray) +and _The Oxford Book of French Verse_ (Clarendon Press). But it must be +remembered that the greater part of what is most characteristic in +French literature appears in its poetic drama and its prose, and is +therefore necessarily excluded from such collections. + + + + +INDEX + +Academy, the French, 34-36 +Aesop, 80 +Aristotle, 67 +Arnold, Matthew, 64 +_Aucassin et Nicolete_, 11-12, 13 +Austen, Jane, 161 + +Balzac, Honore de (1799-1850), 160-164, 166, 168, 171, 175, 176 + _La Comedie Humaine_, 161-164 +Baudelaire, Charles (1821-67), 172-173, 175 + _Les Fleurs du Mal_, 172 +Bayle, Pierre (1647-1706) + _Dictionnaire Historique et Critique_, 96 +Beaumarchais, De [_pseud. of_ Pierre Auguste Caron] (1732-99), 140-141 + _Le Mariage de Figaro_, 140-141 +Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153), 130 +Boileau, Nicolas (1636-1711), 53-55, 143, 167 + _Art Poetique_, 53 + _A son Esprit_, 54 +Bolingbroke, 102 +Bossuet, Jacques Benigne (1627-1704), 85-86, 122, 129, 144, 175 + _Elevations sur les Mysteres_, 86 + _Histoire Universelle_, 85, 122 + _Meditations sur l'Evangile_, 86 + _Oraisons Funebres_, 86 +Bourgogne, Duc de, 95 +Browne, Sir Thomas, 35 +Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de (1707-88), 118 +Byron, 35, 137, 146, 156 + +Calas, Jean (1698-1762), 126 +Catherine of Russia, 115 +Cervantes, 56 +_Chanson de Roland_, 8, 12 +_Chansons de Geste_, 8, 9 +Chapelain, Jean (1595-1674), 55 +Chateaubriand, Francois Rene, Vicomte de (1768-1848), 145-146, 148, 175 + _Genie du Christianisme_, 145 + _Martyrs_, 145 + _Memoires d'Outre-Tombe_, 146 +Chenier, Andre (1762-94), 142-143, 173, 175 + _Eglogues_, 143 +Chretien de Troyes (12th century), 14 +Columbus, 111 +Commynes, Philippe de (1445-1509), 17-18 + _Memoires_, 17 +Condillac, Etienne Bonnot de Mably de (1715-80), 118 +Condorcet, Marquis de (1743-94), 114, 118 + _Progres de l'Esprit Humain_, 115 +Congreve, 35 +Constant, Benjamin (1845-1902), 158 + _Adolphe_, 158 +Copernicus, 44, 111 +Corneille, Pierre (1606-84), 36-41, 48, 55, 77, 144, 175 + _Le Cid_, 36, 37, 39 + _Cinna_, 39 + _Les Horaces_, 39 + _Polyeucte_, 39 +Cotin, l'Abbe (1604-82), 55 + +Dalembert, Jean le Rond (1717-83), 118 +Dante, 8, 56, 101 +Diderot, Denis (1713-84), 35, 116, 118, 131, 136, 139, 145, 158, 175 + _Le Neveu de Rameau_, 116-117 + _La Religieuse_, 158 +Dryden, 64 +Du Bellay, Joachim (1522-60), 22 + _Les Antiquites de Rome_, 24 + _La Defense et Illustration de la Langue Francaise_, 22 +Du Chatelet, Mme., 119-120 +Du Deffand, Mme. (1697-1780), 99 +Dumas, Alexandra (1824-95), 148 + +_Encyclopedie_, 115-116 + +_Fabliaux_, 10, 144 +Fenelon, Francois (1651-1715), 95, 110 + _Telemaque_, 95 +Flaubert, Gustave (1821-80), 35, 168-171, 172, 174, 175, 176 + _Bouvard et Pecuchet_, 170 + _Madame Bovary_, 170 + _Salammbo_, 170 +Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovyer de (1657-1757), 95-96 + _Histoire des Oracles_, 96 +Francis I, 21 +Frederick the Great, 115, 120 +Froissart, Jean (_c._ 1337-_c_. 1410), 16-17, 41, 175 + _Chroniques_, 16-17 + +Gautier, Theophile, (1811-72), 148, 171-172, 175 + _Emaux et Camees_, 171-172 +Gray, Thomas, 35 + +Hardy, Alexandra (_c._ 1570-_c_. 1631), 36, 37 +Helvetius, Claude Adrien (1715-71), 118 +Heredia, Jose-Maria de (1842-1905), 172 +Holbach, Baron d' (1723-89), 118 +Homer, 101 +Hugo, Victor (1802-85), 37, 148, 149-155, 158, 159, 160, 161, 164, + 172, 175 + _Les Chatiments_, 155 + _Les Contemplations_, 155 + _Les Feuilles d'Automne_, 155 + _Hernani_, 149, 152 + _La Legende des Siecles_, 155 + _Les Miserables_, 159, 161 + _Les Rayons et Les Ombres_, 155 +Hume, David, 139 + +James, Henry, 161 +Jodelle, Etienne (1532-73), 36, 37 + _Cleopatre_, 36 +Johnson, Samuel, 167 +Joinville, Jean, Sire de (1224-1319), 13-14, 41 + _Vie de Saint Louis_, 13-14 + +Keats, John, 143, 173 + +Labe, Louise (_c._ 1520-66), 24 +La Bruyere, Jean de (1645-96), 87, 88-92, 106-107, 144, 175 + _Les Caracteres_, 89-91 +Laclos, Pierre Choderlos de (1741-1803), 158 + _Liaisons Dangereuses_, 158 +Lafayette, Mme. de (1634-93), 157, 158 + _La Princess de Cleves_, 157, 158 +La Fontaine, Jean de (1621-95), 11, 53, 79-84, 87, 143, 144, 175 +Lamartine, Alphonse (1790-1869), 147, 148, 175 + _Le Lac_, 147 +La Rochefoucauld, Duc de (1613-80), 87-88, 175 +Leconte de Lisle, Charles Marie (1818-94), 172 +Le Sage, Alain-Rene (1668-1747), 158 + _Gil Blas_, 158 +Locke, John, 102 +Lorris, Guillaume de (_fl._ 13th century), 14-15 + _La Roman de la Rose_, 14-15 +Louis IX, 13-14 +Louis XI, 17 +Louis XIII, 32 +Louis XIV, 31, 33, 41, 45-93, 94-95, 97, 105, 106, 168 +Louis XV, 110 +Luther, Martin, 111 + +Machiavelli, 17 +Malherbe, Francois de (1555-1628), 32-34, 38, 41, 149 +Marivaux, Pierre (1688-1763), 103-105, 157, 158 + _Les Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard_, 104 + _Vie de Marianne_, 158 +Marlowe, Christopher, 37 +Marmontel, Jean Francois (1723-99), 118 +Marot, Clement (1496-1544), 21-22 +Maupassant, Guy de (1850-93), 174, 175, 176 +Meung, Jean de (_c._ 1250-1305), 14-15, 25 + _La Roman de la Rose_, 15 +Michelet, Jules (1798-1874), 166-167, 172 +Milton, 62, 101, 153 +Moliere [_pseud. of_ Jean-Baptiste Poquelin] (1622-73), 35, 53, + 55-64, 77, 84, 93, 175 + _Don Juan_, 61, 62 + _L'Ecole des Femmes_, 57 + _Les Femmes Savantes_, 61 + _Le Malade Imaginaire_, 58 + _Le Misanthrope_, 59, 61, 63 + _Les Precieuses Ridicules_, 57, 62 + _Tartufe_, 60, 62 +Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de (1533-92), 27-30, 31, 41, 175 + _Apologie de Raimond Sebond_, 28 +Montesquieu, Baron de (1689-1755), 96-100, 103, 110, 122, 175 + _Considerations sur la Grandeur et la Decadence des Romains_, 98 + _L'Esprit des Lois_, 98-99, 113 + _Lettres Persanes_, 96-98, 100 +Musset, Alfred de (1810-57), 148, 155, 156-157, 172 + _Lorenzaccio_, 157 + _Les Nuits_, 157 + +_Parnassiens, Les_, 172, 173 +Pascal, Blaise (1623-62), 41-44, 129, 144, 175, 176 + _Lettres Provinciales_, 41-42, 43, 129 + _Pensees_, 43-44 +_Philosophes, Les_, 111-115, 118, 133, 134 +_Pleiade, La_, 22-24, 31, 32 +Pombal, 115 +Pope, Alexander, 135 +Pradon, Nicolas (1632-98), 55 +_Precieux, Les_, 33-34, 41, 55 +Prevost, l'Abbe (1697-1763), 157-158 + _Manon Lescaut_, 157-158, 159 + +Rabelais, Francois (_c._ 1494-_c._ 1553), 24-27, 28, 31, 117, 175 +Racine, Jean (1639-99), 37, 48, 53, 55, 56, 64-79, 85, 87, 93, 100, + 103, 143, 144, 150, 175, 176 + _Andromaque_, 76 + _Bajazet_, 77 + _Berenice_, 68, 70-71 + _Britannicus_, 77 + _Phedre_, 77-79 + _Les Plaideurs_, 77 +Renan, Ernest (1823-92), 167, 172 +Richelieu, Cardinal de (1585-1642), 32, 36 +_Romans Bretons_, 9, 10 +_Roman de Renard_, 10 +_Roman de la Rose_, 14-16 +Ronsard, Pierre de (1524-85), 22, 23-34, 175 + _La Franciade_, 23 + _Odes_, 23 +Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-78), 112, 131-139, 145, 146, 158, 159, 175 + _Confessions_, 133, 137-138 + _Le Contrat Social_, 132 + _La Nouvelle Heloise_, 132, 158 + +Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustin (1804-69), 167-168 + _Causeries du Lundi_, 168 + _Port-Royal_, 168 +Saint-Simon, Duc de (1675-1755), 105-110, 136, 153, 175 + _Memoires_, 105-110, 136 +Sand, George [_pseud. of_ Amandine Lucile Aurore Dupin] (1804-76), + 159, 168 + _Francois le Champi_, 168 + _La Mare au Diable_, 168 + _La Petite Fadette_, 168 +Scott, Sir Walter, 35 +Scudery, Madeleine de (1607-1701), 157 +Sevigne, Mme. de (1626-96), 48 +Shakespeare, 35, 56, 60, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 102, 152, + 153, 157, 175 +Sirven (1709-64), 126 +Sophocles, 78 +Stendhal [_pseud, of_ Marie-Henri Beyle] (1783-1842), 160, 176 + _La Chartreuse de Parme_, 160 + _Le Rouge et Le Noir_, 160 +Sully Prudhomme, Rene Francois Armand (1839-1907), 172 +Swift, Jonathan, 173 + +Tacitus, 173 +Taine, Henri (1828-93), 167 +Theocritus, 143 +Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques (1727-81), 112, 118 + +Verlaine, Paul (1844-96), 174-175 +Versailles, 45-47, 106 +Vigny, Alfred de (1797-1863), 148, 155-156, 175 + _Colere de Samson_, 156 + _Maison du Berger_, 156 + _Moise_, 156 + _Monts des Oliviers_, 156 + _La Mort du Loup_, 156 + _Servitude et Grandeur Militaires_, 156 +Villehardouin, Geoffroi de (_c._ 1160-1213), 13, 14 + _La Conquete de Constantinople_, 12-13 +Villon, Francois (1431-1463 or after), 18-19, 20, 24, 175 + _Grand Testament_, 18 + _Petit Testament_, 18 +Virgil, 8, 101 +Voltaire, Francois Marie Arouet de (1694-1778), 35, 100-103, 105, + 110, 119-131, 135, 136, 139, 140, 144, 145, 152, 175, 176 + _Alzire_, 119, 152 + _Candide_, 127-128 + Correspondence, 129 + _Diatribe du Docteur Akakia_, 120 + _Dictionnaire Philosophique_, 123, 130 + _Le Diner du Comte de Boulainvilliers_, 123 + _Essai sur les Moeurs_, 121-122 + _Frere Rigolet et l'Empereur de la Chine_, 123 + _La Henriade_, 101 + _Lettres Philosophiques_, 102, 119 + _Life of Charles XII_, 101 + _Mahomet_, 119 + _Merope_, 119 + _Zaire_, 119, 152 + +Watteau, Antoine, 104 +Wordsworth, William, 74 + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LANDMARKS IN FRENCH LITERATURE*** + + +******* This file should be named 12670.txt or 12670.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/6/7/12670 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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