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diff --git a/24700.txt b/24700.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7624e1e --- /dev/null +++ b/24700.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13875 @@ +Project Gutenberg's A History of French Literature, by Edward Dowden + +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: A History of French Literature + Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. + +Author: Edward Dowden + +Editor: Edmund Gosse + +Release Date: February 27, 2008 [EBook #24700] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE *** + + + + +Produced by Ron Swanson + + + + + +Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. +Edited by Edmund Gosse + + + + +A History of +FRENCH LITERATURE + + +BY + +EDWARD DOWDEN +D.LITT., LL.D. (DUB.), D.C.L. (OXON.), LL.D. (EDIN.) +LL.D. (PRINCETON) +PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN + + + + +London +WILLIAM HEINEMANN +MCMXIV + + + + +_First Edition_, 1897 +_New Impressions_, 1899, 1904, 1907, 1911, 1914 + + + + +_Copyright, London_ 1897, _by William Heinemann_ + + + + +PREFACE + + +French prose and French poetry had interested me during so many years +that when Mr. Gosse invited me to write this book I knew that I was +qualified in one particular--the love of my subject. Qualified in +knowledge I was not, and could not be. No one can pretend to know +the whole of a vast literature. He may have opened many books and +turned many pages; he cannot have penetrated to the soul of all books +from the _Song of Roland_ to _Toute la Lyre_. Without reaching its +spirit, to read a book is little more than to amuse the eye with printed +type. + +An adequate history of a great literature can be written only by +collaboration. Professor Petit de Julleville, in the excellent +_Histoire de la Langue et de la Litterature Francaise_, at present +in process of publication, has his well-instructed specialist for +each chapter. In this small volume I too, while constantly exercising +my own judgment, have had my collaborators--the ablest and most +learned students of French literature--who have written each a part +of my book, while somehow it seems that I have written the whole. +My collaborators are on my shelves. Without them I could not have +accomplished my task; here I give them credit for their assistance. +Some have written general histories of French literature; some have +written histories of periods--the Middle Ages, the sixteenth, +seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth centuries; some have studied +special literary fields or forms--the novel, the drama, tragedy, +comedy, lyrical poetry, history, philosophy; many have written +monographs on great authors; many have written short critical studies +of books or groups of books. I have accepted from each a gift. But +my assistants needed to be controlled; they brought me twenty thousand +pages, and that was too much. Some were accurate in statement of fact, +but lacked ideas; some had ideas, but disregarded accuracy of +statement; some unjustly depreciated the seventeenth century, some +the eighteenth. For my purposes their work had to be rewritten; and +so it happens that this book is mine as well as theirs. + +The sketch of mediaeval literature follows the arrangement of matter +in the two large volumes of M. Petit de Julleville and his +fellow-labourers, to whom and to the writings of M. Gaston Paris I +am on almost every page indebted. Many matters in dispute have here +to be briefly stated in one way; there is no space for discussion. +Provencal literature does not appear in this volume. It is omitted +from the History of M. Petit de Julleville and from that of M. Lanson. +In truth, except as an influence, it forms no part of literature in +the French language. + +The reader who desires guidance in bibliography will find it at the +close of each chapter of the History edited by M. Petit de Julleville, +less fully in the notes to M. Lanson's History, and an excellent table +of critical and biographical studies is appended to each volume of +M. Lintilhac's _Histoire de la Litterature Francaise_. M. Lintilhac, +however, omits many important English and German titles--among +others, if I am not mistaken, those of Birsch-Hirschfeld's +_Geschichte der Franzosichen Litteratur: die Zeit der Renaissance_, +of Lotheissen's important _Geschichte der Franzosichen Litteratur +im XVII. Jahrhundert_, and of Professor Flint's learned _Philosophy +of History_ (1893). + +M. Lanson's work has been of great service in guiding me in the +arrangement of my subjects, and in giving me courage to omit many +names of the second or third rank which might be expected to appear +in a history of French literature. In a volume like the present, +selection is important, and I have erred more by inclusion than by +exclusion. The limitation of space has made me desire to say no word +that does not tend to bring out something essential or characteristic. + +M. Lanson has ventured to trace French literature to the present +moment. I have thought it wiser to close my survey with the decline +of the romantic movement. With the rise of naturalism a new period +opens. The literature of recent years is rather a subject for current +criticism than for historical study. + +I cannot say how often I have been indebted to the writings of M. +Brunetiere, M. Faguet, M. Larroumet, M. Paul Stapfer, and other living +critics: to each of the volumes of _Les Grands Ecrivains Francais_, +and to many of the volumes of the _Classiques Populaires_. M. +Lintilhac's edition of Merlet's _Etudes Litteraires_ has also often +served me. But to name my aids to study would be to fill some pages. + +While not unmindful of historical and social influences, I desire +especially to fix my reader's attention on great individuals, their +ideas, their feelings, and their art. The general history of ideas +should, in the first instance, be discerned by the student of +literature through his observation of individual minds. + +That errors must occur where so many statements are made, I am aware +from past experience; but I have taken no slight pains to attain +accuracy. It must not be hastily assumed that dates here recorded +are incorrect because they sometimes differ from those given in other +books. For my errors I must myself bear the responsibility; but by +the editorial care of Mr. Gosse, in reading the proof-sheets of this +book, the number of such errors has been reduced. + + EDWARD DOWDEN. + +DUBLIN, _June_ 1897. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +_BOOK THE FIRST_--_THE MIDDLE AGES_ + +CHAPTER PAGE + I. NARRATIVE RELIGIOUS POETRY--THE NATIONAL EPIC--THE EPIC OF + ANTIQUITY--ROMANCES OF LOVE AND COURTESY . . . . . . . . 3 + + II. LYRICAL POETRY--FABLES, AND RENARD THE FOX--FABLIAUX--THE + ROMANCE OF THE ROSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 + + III. DIDACTIC LITERATURE--SERMONS--HISTORY . . . . . . . . . . 40 + + IV. LATEST MEDIAEVAL POETS--THE DRAMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . +58 + + +_BOOK THE SECOND_--_THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY_ + + I. RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 + + II. FROM THE PLEIADE TO MONTAIGNE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 + + +_BOOK THE THIRD_--_THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY_ + + I. LITERARY FREEDOM AND LITERARY ORDER . . . . . . . . . . . 131 + + II. THE FRENCH ACADEMY--PHILOSOPHY (DESCARTES)--RELIGION + (PASCAL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 + + III. THE DRAMA (MONTCHRESTIEN TO CORNEILLE) . . . . . . . . . . 160 + + IV. SOCIETY AND PUBLIC LIFE IN LETTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 + + V. BOILEAU AND LA FONTAINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 + + VI. COMEDY AND TRAGEDY--MOLIERE--RACINE . . . . . . . . . . . 196 + + VII. BOSSUET AND THE PREACHERS--FENELON . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 + +VIII. TRANSITION TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY . . . . . . . . . . . 235 + + +_BOOK THE FOURTH_--_THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY_ + + I. MEMOIRS AND HISTORY--POETRY--THE THEATRE--THE NOVEL . . . 251 + + II. MONTESQUIEU--VAUVENARGUES--VOLTAIRE . . . . . . . . . . . 273 + + III. DIDEROT AND THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA--PHILOSOPHERS, ECONOMISTS, + CRITICS--BUFFON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294 + + IV. ROUSSEAU--BEAUMARCHAIS--BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE--ANDRE + CHENIER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 + + +_BOOK THE FIFTH_--1789-1850 + + I. THE REVOLUTION AND THE EMPIRE--MADAME DE STAEL-- + CHATEAUBRIAND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 + + II. THE CONFLICT OF IDEAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354 + + III. POETRY OF THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 + + IV. THE NOVEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396 + + V. HISTORY--LITERARY CRITICISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 + + + BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429 + + INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437 + + + + +BOOK THE FIRST +_THE MIDDLE AGES_ + + + + +CHAPTER I +NARRATIVE RELIGIOUS POETRY--THE NATIONAL EPIC--THE EPIC OF +ANTIQUITY--ROMANCES OF LOVE AND COURTESY + + +The literature of the Middle Ages is an expression of the spirit of +feudalism and of the genius of the Church. From the union of feudalism +and Christianity arose the chivalric ideals, the new courtesy, the +homage to woman. Abstract ideas, ethical, theological, and those of +amorous metaphysics, were rendered through allegory into art. +Against these high conceptions, and the overstrained sentiment +connected with them, the positive intellect and the mocking temper +of France reacted; a literature of satire arose. By degrees the +bourgeois spirit encroached upon and overpowered the chivalric +ideals. At length the mediaeval conceptions were exhausted. +Literature dwindled as its sources were impoverished; ingenuities +and technical formalities replaced imagination. The minds of men were +prepared to accept the new influences of the Renaissance and the +Reformation. + + +I +NARRATIVE RELIGIOUS POETRY + +The oldest monument of the French language is found in the Strasburg +Oaths (842); the oldest French poem possessing literary merit is the +_Vie de Saint Alexis_, of which a redaction belonging to the middle +of the eleventh century survives. The passion of piety and the passion +of combat, the religious and the warrior motives, found early +expression in literature; from the first arose the Lives of Saints +and other devout writings, from the second arose the _chansons de +geste_. They grew side by side, and had a like manner of development. +If one takes precedence of the other, it is only because by the chances +of time _Saint Alexis_ remains to us, and the forerunners of the +_Chanson de Roland_ are lost. With each species of poetry +_cantilenes_--short lyrico-epic poems--preceded the narrative form. +Both the profane and what may be called the religious _chanson de +geste_ were sung or recited by the same jongleurs--men of a class +superior to the vulgar purveyors of amusement. Gradually the poems +of both kinds expanded in length, and finally prose narrative took +the place of verse. + +The Lives of Saints are in the main founded on Latin originals; the +names of their authors are commonly unknown. _Saint Alexis_, a tale +of Syriac origin, possibly the work of Tedbalt, a canon of Vernon, +consists of 125 stanzas, each of five lines which are bound together +by a single assonant rhyme. It tells of the chastity and poverty of +the saint, who flies from his virgin bride, lives among beggars, +returns unrecognised to his father's house, endures the insults of +the servants, and, dying at Rome, receives high posthumous honours; +finally, he is rejoined by his wife--the poet here adding to the +legend--in the presence of God, among the company of the angels. Some +of the sacred poems are derived from the Bible, rhymed versions of +which were part of the jongleur's equipment; some from the apocryphal +gospels, or legends of Judas, of Pilate, of the Cross, or, again, +from the life of the Blessed Virgin. The literary value of these is +inferior to that of the versified Lives of the Saints. About the tenth +century the marvels of Eastern hagiography became known in France, +and gave a powerful stimulus to the devout imagination. A certain +rivalry existed between the claims of profane and religious +literature, and a popular audience for narrative poems designed for +edification was secured by their recital in churches. Wholly fabulous +some of these are--as the legend of St. Margaret--but they were not +on this account the less welcome or the less esteemed. In certain +instances the tale is dramatically placed in the mouth of a narrator, +and thus the way was in a measure prepared for the future +mystery-plays. + +More than fifty of these Lives of Saints are known, composed generally +in octosyllabic verse, and varying in length from some hundreds of +lines to ten thousand. In the group which treats of the national saints +of France, an element of history obscured by errors, extravagances, +and anachronisms may be found. The purely legendary matter occupies +a larger space in those derived from the East, in which the religious +ideal is that of the hermit life. The celebrated _Barlaam et Joasaph_, +in which Joasaph, son of a king of India, escaping from his father's +restraints, fulfils his allotted life as a Christian ascetic, is +traceable to a Buddhist source. The narratives of Celtic origin--such +as those of the Purgatory of St. Patrick and the voyages of St. +Brendan--are coloured by a tender mysticism, and sometimes charm us +with a strangeness of adventure, in which a feeling for external +nature, at least in its aspects of wonder, appears. The Celtic saints +are not hermits of the desert, but travellers or pilgrims. Among the +lives of contemporary saints, by far the most remarkable is that of +our English Becket by Garnier de Pont-Sainte-Maxence. Garnier had +himself known the archbishop; he obtained the testimony of witnesses +in England; he visited the places associated with the events of +Becket's life; his work has high value as an historical document; +it possesses a personal accent, rare in such writings; a genuine +dramatic vigour; and great skill and harmonious power in its stanzas +of five rhyming lines. + +A body of short poems, inspired by religious feeling, and often +telling of miracles obtained by the intercession of the Virgin or +the saints, is known as _Contes pieux_. Many of these were the work +of Gautier de Coinci (1177-1236), a Benedictine monk; he translates +from Latin sources, but with freedom, adding matter of his own, and +in the course of his pious narratives gives an image, far from +flattering, of the life and manners of his own time. It is he who +tells of the robber who, being accustomed to commend himself in his +adventures to our Lady, was supported on the gibbet for three days +by her white hands, and received his pardon; and of the illiterate +monk who suffered shame because he knew no more than his _Ave Maria_, +but who, when dead, was proved a holy man by the five roses that came +from his mouth in honour of the five letters of Maria's name; and +of the nun who quitted her convent to lead a life of disorder, yet +still addressed a daily prayer to the Virgin, and who, returning after +long years, found that the Blessed Mary had filled her place, and +that her absence was unknown. The collection known as _Vies des Peres_ +exhibits the same naivete of pious feeling and imagination. Man is +weak and sinful; but by supernatural aid the humble are exalted, +sinners are redeemed, and the suffering innocent are avenged. Even +Theophile, the priest who sold his soul to the devil, on repentance +receives back from the Queen of Heaven the very document by which +he had put his salvation in pawn. The sinner (_Chevalier au barillet_) +who endeavours for a year to fill the hermit's little cask at running +streams, and endeavours in vain, finds it brimming the moment one +tear of true penitence falls into the vessel. Most exquisite in its +feeling is the tale of the _Tombeur de Notre-Dame_--a poor acrobat--a +jongleur turned monk--who knows not even the _Pater noster_ or the +_Credo_, and can only offer before our Lady's altar his tumbler's +feats; he is observed, and as he sinks worn-out and faint before the +shrine, the Virgin is seen to descend, with her angelic attendants, +and to wipe away the sweat from her poor servant's forehead. If there +be no other piety in such a tale as this, there is at least the piety +of human pity. + + +II +THE NATIONAL EPIC + +Great events and persons, a religious and national spirit, and a +genius for heroic narrative being given, epic literature arises, as +it were, inevitably. Short poems, partly narrative, partly lyrical, +celebrate victories or defeats, the achievements of conquerors or +defenders, and are sung to relieve or to sustain the passion of the +time. The French epopee had its origin in the national songs of the +Germanic invaders of Gaul, adopted from their conquerors by the +Gallo-Romans. With the baptism of Clovis at Reims, and the acceptance +of Christianity by the Franks (496), a national consciousness began +to exist--a national and religious ideal arose. Epic heroes--Clovis, +Clotaire, Dagobert, Charles Martel--became centres for the popular +imagination; an echo of the Dagobert songs is found in _Floovent_, +a poem of the twelfth century; eight Latin lines, given in the _Vie +de Saint Faron_ by Helgaire, Bishop of Meaux, preserve, in their +ninth-century rendering, a fragment of the songs which celebrated +Clotaire II. Doubtless more and more in these lost _cantilenes_ the +German element yielded to the French, and finally the two streams +of literature--French and German--separated; gradually, also, the +lyrical element yielded to the epic, and the _chanson de geste_ was +developed from these songs. + +In Charlemagne, champion of Christendom against Islam, a great epic +figure appeared; on his person converged the epic interest; he may +be said to have absorbed into himself, for the imagination of the +singers and the people, the persons of his predecessors, and even, +at a later time, of his successors; their deeds became his deeds, +their fame was merged in his; he stood forth as the representative +of France. We may perhaps regard the ninth century as the period of +the transformation of the _cantilenes_ into the _chansons de geste_; +in the fragment of Latin prose of the tenth century--reduced to prose +from hexameters, but not completely reduced--discovered at La Haye +(and named after the place of its discovery), is found an epic episode +of Carlovingian war, probably derived from a _chanson de geste_ of +the preceding century. In each _chanson_ the _gesta_,[1] the deeds +or achievements of a heroic person, are glorified, and large as may +be the element of invention in these poems, a certain historical basis +or historical germ may be found, with few exceptions, in each. Roland +was an actual person, and a battle was fought at Roncevaux in 778. +William of Orange actually encountered the Saracens at Villedaigne +in 793. Renaud de Montauban lived and fought, not indeed against +Charlemagne, but against Charles Martel. Ogier, Girard de Roussillon, +Raoul de Cambrai, were not mere creatures of the fancy. Even when +the narrative records no historical series of events, it may express +their general significance, and condense into itself something of +the spirit of an epoch. In the course of time, however, fantasy made +a conquest of the historical domain; a way for the triumph of fantasy +had been opened by the incorporation of legend into the narrative, +with all its wild exaggerations, its reckless departures from truth, +its conventional types of character, its endlessly-repeated +incidents of romance--the child nourished by wild beasts, the combat +of unrecognised father and son, the hero vulnerable only in one point, +the vindication of the calumniated wife or maiden; and by the +over-labour of fantasy, removed far from nature and reality, the epic +material was at length exhausted. + +[Footnote 1: _Gestes_ meant (1) deeds, (2) their history, (3) the +heroic family.] + +The oldest surviving _chanson de geste_ is the SONG OF ROLAND, and +it is also the best. The disaster of Roncevaux, probably first sung +in _cantilenes_, gave rise to other chansons, two of which, of earlier +date than the surviving poem, can in a measure be reconstructed from +the Chronicle of Turpin and from a Latin _Carmen de proditione +Guenonis_. These, however, do not detract from the originality of +the noble work in our possession, some of the most striking episodes +of which are not elsewhere found. The oldest manuscript is at Oxford, +and the last line has been supposed to give the author's +name--Touroude (Latinised "Turoldus")--but this may have been the +name of the jongleur who sang, or the transcriber who copied. The +date of the poem lies between that of the battle of Hastings, 1066, +where the minstrel Taillefer sang in other words the deeds of Roland, +and the year 1099. The poet was probably a Norman, and he may have +been one of the Norman William's followers in the invasion of England. + +More than any other poem, the _Chanson de Roland_ deserves to be named +the Iliad of the Middle Ages. On August 15, 778, the rearguard of +Charlemagne's army, returning from a successful expedition to the +north of Spain, was surprised and destroyed by Basque mountaineers +in the valley of Roncevaux. Among those who fell was Hrodland (Roland), +Count of the march of Brittany. For Basques, the singers substituted +a host of Saracens, who, after promise of peace, treacherously attack +the Franks, with the complicity of Roland's enemy, the traitor Ganelon. +By Roland's side is placed his companion-in-arms, Olivier, brave but +prudent, brother of Roland's betrothed, _la belle Aude_, who learns +her lover's death, and drops dead at the feet of Charlemagne. In fact +but thirty-six years of age, Charlemagne is here a majestic old man, +_a la barbe fleurie_, still full of heroic vigour. Around him are +his great lords--Duke Naime, the Nestor of this Iliad; Archbishop +Turpin, the warrior prelate; Oger the Dane; the traitor Ganelon. And +overhead is God, who will send his angels to bear heavenwards the +soul of the gallant Roland. The idea of the poem is at once national +and religious--the struggle between France, as champion of +Christendom, and the enemies of France and of God. Its spirit is that +of the feudal aristocracy of the eleventh century. The characters +are in some degree representative of general types, but that of Roland +is clearly individualised; the excess of soldierly pride which will +not permit him, until too late, to sound his horn and recall +Charlemagne to his aid, is a glorious fault. When all his comrades +have fallen, he still continues the strife; and when he dies, it is +with his face to the retreating foe. His fall is not unavenged on +the Saracens and on the traitor. The poem is written in decasyllabic +verse--in all 4000 lines--divided into sections or _laisses_ of +varying length, the lines of each _laisse_ being held together by +a single assonance.[2] And such is the form in which the best _chansons +de geste_ are written. The decasyllabic line, derived originally from +popular Latin verse, rhythmical rather than metrical, such as the +Roman legionaries sang, is the favourite verse of the older chansons. +The alexandrine,[3] first seen in the _Pelerinage de Jerusalem_ of +the early years of the twelfth century, in general indicates later +and inferior work. The _laisse_, bound in one by its identical +assonance, might contain five lines or five hundred. In chansons of +late date the full rhyme often replaces assonance; but inducing, as +it did in unskilled hands, artificial and feeble expansions of the +sense, rhyme was a cause which co-operated with other causes in the +decline of this form of narrative poetry. + +[Footnote 2: _Assonance_, _i.e._ vowel-rhyme, without an agreement +of consonants.] + +[Footnote 3: Verse of twelve syllables, with cesura after the sixth +accented syllable. In the decasyllabic line the cesura generally +followed the fourth, but sometimes the sixth, tonic syllable.] + +Naturally the chansons which celebrated the achievements of one epic +personage or one heroic family fell into a group, and the idea of +cycles of songs having arisen, the later poets forced many independent +subjects to enter into the so-called cycle of the king (Charlemagne), +or that of William of Orange, or that of Doon of Mayence. The second +of these had, indeed, a genuine cyclic character: it told of the +resistance of the south of France to the Mussulmans. The last cycle +to develop was that of the Crusades. Certain poems or groups of poems +may be distinguished as _gestes_ of the provinces, including the +_Geste des Lorrains_, that of the North (_Raoul de Cambrai_), that +of Burgundy, and others.[4] Among these may be placed the beautiful +tale of _Amis et Amiles_, a glorification of friendship between man +and man, which endures all trials and self-sacrifices. Other poems, +again, are unconnected with any of these cycles; and, indeed, the +cyclic division is more a convenience of classification than a fact +in the spontaneous development of this form of art. The entire period +of the evolution of epic song extends from the tenth or eleventh to +the fifteenth century, or, we might say, from the _Chanson de Roland_ +to the _Chronique de Bertrand Duguesclin_. The eleventh century +produced the most admirable work; in the twelfth century the chansons +are more numerous, but nothing was written of equal merit with the +Song of Roland; after the death of Louis VII. (1180) the old epic +material was rehandled and beaten thin--the decadence was already +in progress. + +[Footnote 4: The epopee composed in Provencal, sung but not +transcribed, is wholly lost. The development of lyric poetry in the +South probably checked the development of the epic.] + +The style in which the _chansons de geste_ are written is something +traditional, something common to the people and to the time, rather +than characteristic of the individual authors. They show little of +the art of arranging or composing the matter so as to produce an unity +of effect: the narrative straggles or condenses itself as if by +accident; skill in transitions is unknown. The study of character +is rude and elementary: a man is either heroic or dastard, loyal or +a traitor; wholly noble, or absolutely base. Yet certain types of +manhood and womanhood are presented with power and beauty. The feeling +for external nature, save in some traditional formulae, hardly +appears. The passion for the marvellous is everywhere present: St. +Maurice, St. George, and a shining company, mounted on white steeds, +will of a sudden bear down the hordes of the infidel; an angel stands +glorious behind the throne of Charlemagne; or in narrative of Celtic +origin angels may be mingled with fays. God, the great suzerain, to +whom even kings owe homage, rules over all; Jesus and Mary are watchful +of the soldiers of the cross; Paradise receives the souls of the +faithful. As for earth, there is no land so gay or so dear as _la +douce France_. The Emperor is above all the servant and protector +of the Church. As the influence of the great feudal lords increased, +they are magnified often at the expense of the monarchy; yet even +when in high rebellion, they secretly feel the duty of loyalty. The +recurring poetic epithet and phrase of formula found in the _chansons +de geste_ often indicate rather than veil a defect of imagination. +Episodes and adventures are endlessly repeated from poem to poem with +varying circumstances--the siege, the assault, the capture, the duel +of Christian hero and Saracen giant, the Paynim princess amorous of +a fair French prisoner, the marriage, the massacre, and a score of +other favourite incidents. + +The popularity of the French epopee extended beyond France. Every +country of Europe translated or imitated the _chansons de geste_. +Germany made the fortunate choice of _Roland_ and _Aliscans_. In +England two of the worst examples, _Fierabras_ and _Otinel_, were +special favourites. In Norway the chansons were applied to the purpose +of religious propaganda. Italy made the tales of Roland, Ogier, Renaud, +her own. Meanwhile the national epopee declined in France; a breath +of scepticism touched and withered the leafage and blossom of +imagination; it even became possible to parody--as in _Audigier_--the +heroic manner. The employment of rhyme in place of assonance, and of +the alexandrine in place of the decasyllabic line, encouraged what may +be called poetical padding. The influence of the Breton romances +diverted the _chansons de geste_ into ways of fantasy; "We shall never +know," writes M. Leon Gautier, "the harm which the Round Table has +done us." Finally, verse became a weariness, and was replaced by +prose. The decline had progressed to a fall. + + +III +THE EPIC OF ANTIQUITY + +Later to develop than the national epopee was that which formed the +cycle of antiquity. Their romantic matter made the works of the +Greco-Roman decadence even more attractive than the writings of the +great classical authors to poets who would enter into rivalry with +the singers of the _chansons de geste_. These poems, which +mediaevalise ancient literature--poems often of portentous +length--have been classified in three groups--epic romances, +historical or pseudo-historical romances, and mythological tales, +including the imitations of Ovid. The earliest in date of the first +group (about 1150-1155) is the ROMANCE OF THEBES, the work of an +unknown author, founded upon a compendium of the Thebaid of Statius, +preceded by the story of OEdipus. It opened the way for the vast +ROMANCE OF TROY, written some ten years later, by Benoit de +Sainte-More. The chief sources of Benoit were versions, probably more +or less augmented, of the famous records of the Trojan war, ascribed +to the Phrygian Dares, an imaginary defender of the city, and the +Cretan Dictys, one of the besiegers. Episodes were added, in which, +on a slender suggestion, Benoit set his own inventive faculty to work, +and among these by far the most interesting and admirable is the story +of Troilus and Briseida, known better to us by her later name of +Cressida. Through Boccaccio's _Il Filostrato_ this tale reached our +English Chaucer, and through Chaucer it gave rise to the strange, +half-heroic, half-satirical play of Shakespeare. + +Again, ten years later, an unknown poet was adapting Virgil to the +taste of his contemporaries in his _Eneas_, where the courtship of +the Trojan hero and Lavinia is related in the chivalric manner. All +these poems are composed in the swift octosyllabic verse; the _Troy_ +extends to thirty thousand lines. While the names of the personages +are classical, the spirit and life of the romances are wholly +mediaeval: Troilus, and Hector, and AEneas are conceived as if knights +of the Middle Ages; their wars and loves are those of gallant +chevaliers. The _Romance of Julius Caesar_ (in alexandrine verse), +the work of a certain Jacot de Forest, writing in the second half +of the thirteenth century, versifies, with some additions from the +Commentaries of Caesar, an earlier prose translation by Jehan de Thuin +(about 1240) of Lucan's Pharsalia--the oldest translation in prose +of any secular work of antiquity. Caesar's passion for Cleopatra in +the Romance is the love prescribed to good knights by the amorous +code of the writer's day, and Cleopatra herself has borrowed something +of the charm of Tristram's Iseult. + +If _Julius Caesar_ may be styled historical, the ROMAN D'ALEXANDRE, +a poem of twenty thousand lines (to the form of which this romance +gave its name--"alexandrine" verse), the work of Lambert le Tort and +Alexandre de Bernay, can only be described as legendary. All--or +nearly all--that was written during the Middle Ages in French on the +subject of Alexander may be traced back to Latin versions of a Greek +compilation, perhaps of the first century, ascribed to Callisthenes, +the companion of Alexander on his Asiatic expedition.[5] It is +uncertain how much the _Alexandre_ may owe to a Provencal poem on +the same subject, written in the early years of the twelfth century, +probably by Alberic de Briancon, of which only a short fragment, but +that of high merit, has been preserved. From his birth, and his +education by Aristotle and the enchanter Nectanebus, to the division, +as death approaches, of his empire between his twelve peers, the story +of Alexander is a series of marvellous adventures; the imaginary +wonders of the East, monstrous wild beasts, water-women, +flower-maidens, Amazons, rain of fire, magic mountains, magic +fountains, trees of the sun and of the moon, are introduced with a +liberal hand. The hero is specially distinguished by the virtue of +liberality; a jongleur who charms him by lays sung to the flute, is +rewarded with the lordship of Tarsus, a worthy example for the +twelfth-century patrons of the poet. The romance had a resounding +fame. + +[Footnote 5: Not quite all, for certain borrowings were made from +the correspondence of Alexander with Dindimus, King of the Brahmans, +and from the _Alexandri Magni iter ad Paradisum_.] + +Of classical poets, Ovid ranked next to Virgil in the esteem of the +Middle Ages. The mythology of paganism was sanctified by the +assumption that it was an allegory of Christian mysteries, and thus +the stories might first be enjoyed by the imagination, and then be +expounded in their spiritual meaning. The _Metamorphoses_ supplied +Chretien de Troyes with the subject of his _Philomena_; other writers +gracefully dealt with the tales of _Piramus_ and of _Narcissus_. But +the most important work founded upon Ovid was a versified translation +of the _Metamorphoses_ (before 1305) by a Franciscan monk, Chretien +Legouais de Sainte-Maure, with appended interpretations, scientific, +historical, moral, or religious, of the mythological fables. Ovid's +_Art of Love_, of which more than one rendering was made, aided in +the formation or development of the mediaeval theory of love and the +amorous casuistry founded upon that theory. + + +IV +ROMANCES OF LOVE AND COURTESY + +Under the general title of the _Epopee courtoise_--the Epopee of +Courtesy--may be grouped those romances which are either works of +pure imagination or of uncertain origin, or which lead us back to +Byzantine or to Celtic sources. They include some of the most +beautiful and original poems of the Middle Ages. Appearing first about +the opening of the twelfth century, later in date than the early +_chansons de geste_, and contemporary with the courtly lyric poetry +of love, they exhibit the chivalric spirit in a refined and graceful +aspect; their marvels are not gross wonders, but often surprises of +beauty; they are bright in colour, and varied in the play of life; +the passions which they interpret, and especially the passion of love, +are felt with an exquisite delicacy and a knowledge of the workings +of the heart. They move lightly in their rhymed or assonanced verse; +even when they passed into the form of prose they retained something +of their charm. Breton harpers wandering through France and England +made Celtic themes known through their _lais_; the fame of King Arthur +was spread abroad by these singers and by the _History_ of Geoffrey +of Monmouth. French poets welcomed the new matter of romance, infused +into it their own chivalric spirit, made it a receptacle for their +ideals of gallantry, courtesy, honour, grace, and added their own +beautiful inventions. With the story of King Arthur was connected +that of the sacred vessel--the graal--in which Joseph of Arimathea +at the cross had received the Saviour's blood. And thus the rude Breton +_lais_ were elevated not only to a chivalric but to a religious +purpose. + +The romances of Tristan may certainly be named as of Celtic origin. +About 1150 an Anglo-Norman poet, BEROUL, brought together the +scattered narrative of his adventures in a romance, of which a large +fragment remains. The secret loves of Tristan and Iseut, their +woodland wanderings, their dangers and escapes, are related with fine +imaginative sympathy; but in this version of the tale the fatal +love-philtre operates only for a period of three years; Iseut, with +Tristan's consent, returns to her husband, King Marc; and then a +second passion is born in their hearts, a passion which is the +offspring not of magic but of natural attraction, and at a critical +moment of peril the fragment closes. About twenty years later (1170) +the tale was again sung by an Anglo-Norman named THOMAS. Here--again +in a fragment--we read of Tristan's marriage, a marriage only in name, +to the white-handed Iseut of Brittany, his fidelity of heart to his +one first love, his mortal wound and deep desire to see the Queen +of Cornwall, the device of the white or black sails to announce the +result of his entreaty that she should come, his deception, and the +death of his true love upon her lover's corpse. Early in the thirteenth +century was composed a long prose romance, often rehandled and +expanded, upon the same subject, in which Iseut and Tristan meet at +the last moment and die in a close embrace. + +_Le Chevrefeuille_ (The Honeysuckle), one of several _lais_ by a +twelfth-century poetess, MARIE, living in England, but a native of +France, tells gracefully of an assignation of Tristan and Iseut, their +meeting in the forest, and their sorrowful farewell. Marie de France +wrote with an exquisite sense of the generosities and delicacy of +the heart, and with a skill in narrative construction which was rare +among the poets of her time. In _Les Deux Amants_, the manly pride +of passion, which in a trial of strength declines the adventitious +aid of a reviving potion, is rewarded by the union in death of the +lover and his beloved. In _Yonec_ and in _Lanval_ tales of love and +chivalry are made beautiful by lore of fairyland, in which the element +of wonder is subdued to beauty. But the most admirable poem by Marie +de France is unquestionably her _Eliduc_. The Breton knight Eliduc +is passionately loved by Guilliadon, the only daughter of the old +King of Exeter, on whose behalf he had waged battle. Her tokens of +affection, girdle and ring, are received by Eliduc in silence; for, +though her passion is returned, he has left in Brittany, unknown to +Guilliadon, a faithful wife. Very beautiful is the self-transcending +love of the wife, who restores her rival from seeming death, and +herself retires into a convent. The lovers are wedded, and live in +charity to the poor, but with a trouble at the heart for the wrong +that they have done. In the end they part; Eliduc embraces the +religious life, and the two loving women are united as sisters in +the same abbey. + +Wace, in his romance of the _Brut_ (1155), which renders into verse +the _Historia_ of Geoffrey of Monmouth, makes the earliest mention +of the Round Table. Whether the Arthurian legends be of Celtic or +of French origin--and the former seems probable--the French romances +of King Arthur owe but the crude material to Celtic sources; they +may be said to begin with CHRETIEN DE TROYES, whose lost poem on +Tristan was composed about 1160. Between that date and 1175 he wrote +his _Erec et Enide_ (a tale known to us through Tennyson's idyll of +Geraint and Enid, derived from the Welsh _Mabinogion_), _Cliges_, +_Le Chevalier de la Charrette_, _Le Chevalier au Lion_, and _Perceval_. +In _Cliges_ the maidenhood of his beloved Fenice, wedded in form to +the Emperor of Constantinople, is guarded by a magic potion; like +Romeo's Juliet, she sleeps in apparent death, but, happier than Juliet, +she recovers from her trance to fly with her lover to the court of +Arthur. The _Chevalier de la Charrette_, at first unknown by name, +is discovered to be Lancelot, who, losing his horse, has condescended, +in order that he may obtain sight of Queen Guenievre, and in passionate +disregard of the conventions of knighthood, to seat himself in a cart +which a dwarf is leading. After gallant adventures on the Queen's +behalf, her indignant resentment of his unknightly conduct, +estrangement, and rumours of death, he is at length restored to her +favour.[6] While _Perceval_ was still unfinished, Chretien de Troyes +died. It was continued by other poets, and through this romance the +quest of the holy graal became a portion of the Arthurian cycle. A +_Perceval_ by ROBERT DE BORON, who wrote in the early part of the +thirteenth century, has been lost; but a prose redaction of the +romance exists, which closes with the death of King Arthur. The great +_Lancelot_ in prose--a vast compilation--(about 1220) reduces the +various adventures of its hero and of other knights of the King to +their definitive form; and here the achievement of the graal is +assigned, not to Perceval, but to the saintly knight Sir Galaad; +Arthur is slain in combat with the revolter Mordret; and Lancelot +and the Queen enter into the life of religion. Passion and piety are +alike celebrated; the rude Celtic legends have been sanctified. The +earlier history of the sacred vase was traced by Robert de Boron in +his _Joseph d'Arimathie_ (or the _Saint-Graal_), soon to be rehandled +and developed in prose; and he it was who, in his _Merlin_--also +presently converted into prose--on suggestions derived from Geoffrey +of Monmouth, brought the great enchanter into Arthurian romance. By +the middle of the thirteenth century the cycle had received its full +development. Towards the middle of the fourteenth century, in +_Perceforest_, an attempt was made to connect the legend of Alexander +the Great with that of King Arthur. + +[Footnote 6: Chretien de Troyes is the first poet to tell of the love +of Lancelot for the Queen.] + +Beside the so-called Breton romances, the _Epopee courtoise_ may be +taken to include many poems of Greek, of Byzantine, or of uncertain +origin, such as the _Roman de la Violette_, the tale of a wronged +wife, having much in common with that novel of Boccaccio with which +Shakespeare's _Cymbeline_ is connected, the _Floire et +Blanchefleur_; the _Partenopeus de Blois_, a kind of "Cupid and +Psyche" story, with the parts of the lovers transposed, and others. +In the early years of the thirteenth century the prose romance +rivalled in popularity the romance in verse. The exquisite +_chante-fable_ of _Aucassin et Nicolette_, of the twelfth century, +is partly in prose, partly in assonanced _laisses_ of seven-syllable +verse. It is a story of the victory of love: the heir of Count Garin +of Beaucaire is enamoured of a beautiful maiden of unknown birth, +purchased from the Saracens, who proves to be daughter of the King +of Carthage, and in the end the lovers are united. In one remarkable +passage unusual sympathy is shown with the hard lot of the peasant, +whose trials and sufferings are contrasted with the lighter troubles +of the aristocratic class. + +In general the poems of the _Epopee courtoise_ exhibit much of the +brilliant external aspect of the life of chivalry as idealised by +the imagination; dramatic situations are ingeniously devised; the +emotions of the chief actors are expounded and analysed, sometimes +with real delicacy; but in the conception of character, in the +recurring incidents, in the types of passion, in the creation of +marvel and surprise, a large conventional element is present. Love +is independent of marriage, or rather the relation of wedlock excludes +love in the accepted sense of the word; the passion is almost +necessarily illegitimate, and it comes as if it were an irresistible +fate; the first advance is often made by the woman; but, though at +war with the duty of wedlock, love is conceived as an ennobling +influence, prompting the knight to all deeds of courage and +self-sacrifice. Through the later translation of the Spanish _Amadis +des Gaules_, something of the spirit of the mediaeval romances was +carried into the chivalric and pastoral romances of the seventeenth +century. + + + + +CHAPTER II +LYRICAL POETRY--FABLES, AND RENARD THE FOX--FABLIAUX--THE ROMANCE +OF THE ROSE + + +I +LYRICAL POETRY + +Long before the date of any lyrical poems that have come down to us, +song and dance were a part of the life of the people of the North +as well as of the South of France; religious festivals were celebrated +with a gaiety which had its mundane side; love and malicious sport +demanded an expression as well as pious joy. But in tracing the forms +of lyrical verse anterior to the middle of the twelfth century, when +the troubadour influence from the South began to be felt, we must +be guided partly by conjecture, derived from the later poetry, in +which--and especially in the refrains--earlier fragments have been +preserved. + +The common characteristic which distinguishes the earlier lyrics is +the presence in them of an objective element: they do not merely render +an emotion; they contain something of a story, or they suggest a +situation. In this literature of sentiment, the singer or imagined +singer is commonly a woman. The _chanson d'histoire_ is also known +as _chanson de toile_, for the songs were such as suited "the spinsters +and the knitters in the sun." Their inspiring motive was a girl's +joy or grief in love; they lightly outline or suggest the facts of +a miniature drama of passion, and are aided by the repeated lyrical +cry of a refrain. As yet, love was an affair for the woman; it was +she alone who made a confession of the heart. None of these poems +are later than the close of the twelfth century. If the author be +represented as actor or witness, the poem is rather a _chanson a +personnages_ than a _chanson d'histoire_; most frequently it is a +wife who is supposed to utter to husband, or lover, or to the poet, +her complaint of the grievous servitude of marriage. The _aube_ is, +again, a woman's song, uttered as a parting cry when the lark at +daybreak, or the watcher from his tower, warns her lover to depart. +In the _pastourelle_--a form much cultivated--a knight and a +shepherdess meet; love proposals are made, and find a response +favourable or the reverse; witnesses or companions may be present, +and take a part in the action. The _rondet_ is a dancing-song, in +which the refrain corresponds with one of the movements of the dance; +a solo-singer is answered by the response of a chorus; in the progress +of time the _rondet_ assumed the precise form of the modern triolet; +the theme was still love, at first treated seriously if not tragically, +but at a later time in a spirit of gaiety. It is conjectured that +all these lyrical forms had their origin in the festivities of May, +when the return of spring was celebrated by dances in which women +alone took part, a survival from the pagan rites of Venus. + +The _poesie courtoise_, moulded in form and inspired in its sentiment +by the Provencal lyrics, lies within the compass of about one hundred +and thirty years, from 1150 to 1280. The Crusade of 1147 served, +doubtless, as a point of meeting for men of the North and of the South; +but, apart from this, we may bear in mind the fact that the mediaeval +poet wandered at will from country to country and from court to court. +In 1137, Louis VII. married Eleonore of Aquitaine, who was an ardent +admirer of the poetry of courtesy. Her daughters inherited her taste, +and themselves became patronesses of literature at the courts of their +husbands, Henri de Champagne and Thibaut de Blois. From these courts, +and that of Paris, this poetry of culture spread, and the earlier +singers were persons of royal or noble rank and birth. The chief period +of its cultivation was probably from 1200 to 1240. During the +half-century before its sudden cessation, while continuing to be a +fashion in courts and high society, it reached the wealthy bourgeoisie +of the North. At Arras, where Jacques Bretel and Adam de la Halle, +the hunchback, were eminent in song, it had its latest moments of +splendour. + +It is essentially a poetry of the intellect and of the imagination, +dealing with an elaborated theory of love; the simple and spontaneous +cry of passion is rarely heard. According to the amorous doctrine, +love exists only between a married woman and the aspirant to her heart, +and the art of love is regulated by a stringent code. Nothing can +be claimed by the lover as a right; the grace of his lady, who is +placed far above him, must be sought as a favour; for that favour +he must qualify himself by all knightly virtues, and chief among these, +as the position requires, are the virtues of discretion and patience. +Hence the poet's ingenuities of adoration; hence often the monotony +of artificial passion; hence, also, subtleties and curiosities of +expression, and sought-out delicacies of style. In the earlier +chansons some outbreak of instinctive feeling may be occasionally +present; but, as the amorous metaphysics developed, what came to be +admired was the skill shown in manipulating a conventional sentiment; +the lady became an abstraction of exalted beauty, the lover an +interpreter of the theory of love; the most personal of passions lost +the character of individuality. Occasionally, as in the poems of the +Chatelain de Couci, of Conon de Bethune, of Thibaut de Champagne, +and of Adam de la Halle, something personal to the writer may be +discerned; but in general the poetry is that of a doctrine and of +a school. + +In some instances the reputation of the lyrical trouvere was founded +rather on his music than his verse. The metrical forms were various, +and were gradually reduced to rule; the _ballette_, of Provencal +origin, was a more elaborate _rondet_, consisting of stanzas and +refrain; the _estampie_ (_stampon_, to beat the ground with the foot) +was a dancing-song; the lyric _lai_, virtually identical with the +_descort_, consisted of stanzas which varied in structure; the +_motet_, a name originally applied to pieces of church music, was +freer in versification, and occasionally dealt with popular themes. +Among forms which cannot be included under the general title of +chansons, are those in dialogue derived from the Provencal +literature; in the _tenson_ or _debat_ the two interlocutors put forth +their opinions on what theme they may please; in the _jeu parti_ one +of the imagined disputants proposes two contrary solutions of some +poetical or amorous question, and defends whichever solution his +associate refuses to accept; the earliest _jeu parti_, attributed +to Gace Brule and Count Geoffroi of Brittany, belongs to the second +half of the twelfth century. The _serventois_ were historical poems, +and among them songs of the crusades, or moral, or religious, or +satirical pieces, directed against woman and the worship of woman. +To these various species we should add the songs in honour of the +saints, the sorrows of the Virgin uttered at the foot of the cross, +and other devout lyrics which lie outside the _poesie courtoise_. +With the close of the thirteenth century this fashion of artificial +love-lyric ceased: a change passed over the modes of thought and +feeling in aristocratic society, and other forms took the place of +those found in the _poesie courtoise_. + + +II +FABLES, AND RENARD THE FOX + +The desire of ecclesiastical writers in the Middle Ages to give +prominence to that part of classical literature which seemed best +suited to the purpose of edification caused the fables of Phaedrus +and Avianus to be regarded with special honour. Various renderings +from the thirteenth century onwards were made under the title of +_Isopets_,[1] a name appropriated to collections of fables whether +derived from AEsop or from other sources. The twelfth-century fables +in verse of Marie de France, founded on an English collection, include +apologues derived not only from classical authors but from the tales +of popular tradition. A great collection made about 1450 by +Steinhoewel, a physician of Ulm, was translated into French, and +became the chief source of later collections, thus appearing in the +remote ancestry of the work of La Fontaine. The aesthetic value of +the mediaeval fables, including those of Marie de France, is small; +the didactic intention was strong, the literary art was feeble. + +[Footnote 1: The earlier "Romulus" was the name of the supposed author +of the fables of Phaedrus, while that of Phaedrus was still unknown.] + +It is far otherwise with the famous beast-epic, the ROMAN DE RENARD. +The cycle consists of many parts or "branches" connected by a common +theme; originating and obscurely developed in the North, in Picardy, +in Normandy, and the Isle of France, it suddenly appeared in +literature in the middle of the twelfth century, and continued to +receive additions and variations during nearly two hundred years. +The spirit of the _Renard_ poems is essentially bourgeois; the heroes +of the _chansons de geste_ achieve their wondrous deeds by strength +and valour; Renard the fox is powerful by skill and cunning; the +greater beasts--his chief enemy the wolf, and others--are no match +for his ingenuity and endless resources; but he is powerless against +smaller creatures, the cock, the crow, the sparrow. The names of the +personages are either significant names, such as Noble, the lion, +and Chanticleer, the cock, or proper names, such as Isengrin, the +wolf, Bruno, the bear, Tibert, the cat, Bernard, the ass; and as +certain of these proper names are found in the eastern district, it +has been conjectured that a poet of Lotharingia in the tenth century +first told in Latin the wars of fox and wolf, and that through +translations the epic matter, derived originally from popular +tradition, reached the trouveres of the North. While in a certain +degree typical figures, the beasts are at the same time individual; +Renard is not the representative merely of a species; he is Renard, +an individual, with a personality of his own; Isengrin is not merely +a wolf, he is the particular wolf Isengrin; each is an epic individual, +heroic and undying. Classical fable remotely exerted an influence +on certain branches of the Romance; but the vital substance of the +epic is derived from the stores of popular tradition in which material +from all quarters--the North of Europe and the Eastern world--had +been gradually fused. In the artistic treatment of such material the +chief difficulty lies in preserving a just measure between the +beast-character and the imported element of humanity. Little by +little the anthropomorphic features were developed at the expense +of verisimilitude; the beast forms became a mere masquerade; the +romances were converted into a satire, and the satire lost rather +than gained by the inefficient disguise. + +The earliest branches of the cycle have reached us only in a +fragmentary way, but they can be in part reconstructed from the Latin +_Isengrinus_ of Nivard of Ghent (about 1150), and from the German +_Reinhart Fuchs_, a rendering from the French by an Alsatian, Henri +le Glichezare (about 1180). The wars of Renard and Isengrin are here +sung, and the failure of Renard's trickeries against the lesser +creatures; the spirit of these early branches is one of frank gaiety, +untroubled by a didactic or satirical intention. In the branches of +the second period the parody of human society is apparent; some of +the episodes are fatiguing in their details; some are intolerably +gross, but the poem known as the Branch of the Judgment is masterly--an +ironical comedy, in which, without sacrifice of the primitive +character of the beast-epic, the spirit of mediaeval life is +transported into the animal world. Isengrin, the accuser of Renard +before King Noble and his court, is for a moment worsted; the fox +is vindicated, when suddenly enters a funeral cortege--Chanticleer +and his four wives bear upon a litter the dead body of one of their +family, the victim of Renard's wiles. The prayers for the dead are +recited, the burial is celebrated with due honour, and Renard is +summoned to justice; lie heaped upon lie will not save him; at last +he humbles himself with pious repentance, and promising to seek God's +pardon over-sea, is permitted in his pilgrim's habit to quit the court. +It is this Judgment of Renard which formed the basis of the _Reineke +Fuchs_, known to us through the modernisation of Goethe. + +From the date of the Branch of the Judgment the Renard Romances +declined. The Judgment was imitated by inferior hands, and the beasts +were more and more nearly transformed to men; the spirit of gaiety +was replaced by seriousness or gloom; Renard ceased to be a +light-footed and ingenious rogue; he became a type of human fraud +and cruelty; whatever in society was false and base and merciless +became a form of "renardie," and by "renardie" the whole world seemed +to be ruled. Such is the temper expressed in _Le Couronnement Renard_, +written in Flanders soon after 1250, a satire directed chiefly against +the mendicant orders, in which the fox, turned friar for a season, +ascends the throne. _Renard le Nouveau_, the work of a poet of Lille, +Jacquemart Gelee, nearly half a century later, represents again the +triumph of the spirit of evil; although far inferior in execution +to the _Judgment_, it had remarkable success, to which the allegory, +wearying to a modern reader, no doubt contributed at a time when +allegory was a delight. The last of the Renard romances, _Renard le +Contrefait_, was composed at Troyes before 1328, by an ecclesiastic +who had renounced his profession and turned to trade. In his leisure +hours he spun, in discipleship to Jean de Meun, his interminable poem, +which is less a romance than an encyclopaedia of all the knowledge +and all the opinions of the author. This latest _Renard_ has a value +akin to that of the second part of _Le Roman de la Rose_; it is a +presentation of the ideas and manners of the time by one who freely +criticised and mocked the powers that be, both secular and sacred, +and who was in sympathy with a certain movement or tendency towards +social, political, and intellectual reform. + + +III +FABLIAUX + +The name _fabliaux_ is applied to short versified tales, comic in +character, and intended rather for recitation than for song. Out of +a far larger number about one hundred and fifty have survived. The +earliest--_Richeut_--is of the year 1159. From the middle of the +twelfth century, together with the heroic or sentimental poetry of +feudalism, we find this bourgeois poetry of realistic observation; +and even in the _chansons de geste_, in occasional comic episodes, +something may be seen which is in close kinship with the fabliaux. +Many brief humorous stories, having much in common under their various +disguises, exist as part of the tradition of many lands and peoples. +The theory which traces the French fabliaux to Indian originals is +unproved, and indeed is unnecessary. The East, doubtless, +contributed its quota to the common stock, but so did other quarters +of the globe; such tales are ubiquitous and are undying, only the +particular form which they assume being determined by local +conditions. + +The fabliaux, as we can study them, belong especially to the north +and north-east of France, and they continued to be put forth by their +rhymers until about 1340, the close of the twelfth and the beginning +of the thirteenth century being the period of their greatest +popularity. Simple and obvious jests sufficed to raise a laugh among +folk disposed to good humour; by degrees something of art and skill +was attained. The misfortunes of husbands supplied an inexhaustible +store of merriment; if woman and the love of woman were idealised +in the romances, the fabliaux took their revenge, and exhibited her +as the pretty traitress of a shameless comedy. If religion was +honoured in the age of faith, the bourgeois spirit found matter of +mirth in the adventures of dissolute priests and self-indulgent monks. +Not a few of the fabliaux are cynically gross--ribald but not +voluptuous. To literary distinction they made small pretence. It +sufficed if the tale ran easily in the current speech, thrown into +rhyming octosyllables; but brevity, frankness, natural movement are +no slight or common merits in mediaeval poetry, and something of the +social life of the time is mirrored in these humorous narratives. + +To regard them as a satire of class against class, inspired by +indignation, is to misconceive their true character; they are rather +miniature comedies or caricatures, in which every class in turn +provides material for mirth. It may, however, be said that with the +writers of the fabliaux to hold woman in scorn is almost an article +of faith. Among these writers a few persons of secular rank or +dignified churchmen occasionally appeared; but what we may call the +professional rhymers and reciters were the humbler jongleurs +addressing a bourgeois audience--degraded clerics, unfrocked monks, +wandering students, who led a bohemian life of gaiety alternating +with misery. In the early part of the fourteenth century these errant +jongleurs ceased to be esteemed; the great lord attached a minstrel +to his household, and poetry grew more dignified, more elaborate in +its forms, more edifying in its intention, and in its dignity grew +too often dull. Still for a time fabliaux were written; but the age +of the jongleurs was over. _Virelais_, _rondeaux_, _ballades_, +_chants royaux_ were the newer fashion; and the old versified tale +of mirth and ribaldry was by the middle of the century a thing of +the past. + + +IV +THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE + +The most extraordinary production in verse of the thirteenth century +is undoubtedly _Le Roman de la Rose_. It is indeed no single +achievement, but two very remarkable poems, written at two different +periods, by two authors whose characters and gifts were not only alien, +but opposed--two poems which reflect two different conditions of +society. Of its twenty-two thousand octosyllabic lines, upwards of +four thousand are the work of GUILLAUME DE LORRIS; the remainder is +the work of a later writer, JEAN DE MEUN. + +Lorris is a little town situated between Orleans and Montargis. Here, +about the year 1200, the earlier poet was born. He was a scholar, +at least as far as knowledge of Latin extends, and learned above all +in the lore of love. He died young, probably before 1230, and during +the five years that preceded his death the first part of _Le Roman +de la Rose_ was composed. Its subject is an allegorised tale of love, +his own or imagined, transferred to the realm of dreams. The writer +would fain win the heart of his beloved, and at the same time he would +instruct all amorous spirits in the art of love. He is twenty years +of age, in the May-morn of youth. He has beheld his beautiful lady, +and been charmed by her fairness, her grace, her courtesy; she has +received him with gentleness, but when he declares his love she grows +alarmed. He gains at last the kiss which tells of her affection; but +her parents intervening, throw obstacles between the lovers. Such, +divested of ornament, allegory, and personification, is the theme +of the poem. + +To pluck the rose in the garden of delight is to win the maiden; her +fears, her virgin modesty and pride, her kindness, her pity, are the +company of friends or foes by whom the rose is surrounded; and to +harmonise the real and the ideal, all the incidents are placed in +the setting of a dream. Wandering one spring morning by the +river-banks, the dreamer finds himself outside the walls of a fair +orchard, owned by Deduit (Pleasure), of which the portress is Oiseuse +(Idleness); on the walls are painted figures of Hatred, Envy, Sadness, +Old Age, Poverty, and other evil powers; but unterrified by these, +he enters, and finds a company of dancers on the turf, among whom +is Beauty, led by the god of Love. Surrounded by a thorny hedge is +the rosebud on which all his desire now centres. He is wounded by +the arrows of Love, does homage to the god, and learns his commandments +and the evils and the gains of love. Invited by Bel-Accueil, the son +of Courtoisie, to approach the rose, he is driven back by Danger and +his companions, the guardians of the blossom. Raison descends from +a tower and discourses against the service of Love; Ami offers his +consolations; at length the lover is again admitted to the flowery +precinct, finds his rosebud half unclosed, and obtains the joy of +a kiss. But Jealousy raises an unscalable wall around the rose; the +serviceable Bel-Accueil is imprisoned, and with a long lament of the +lover, the poem (line 4068) closes. + +Did Guillaume de Lorris ever complete his poem, or did he die while +it was still but half composed? We may conjecture that it wanted little +to reach some denouement--perhaps the fulfilment of the lover's +hopes; and it is not impossible that a lost fragment actually brought +the love-tale to its issue. But even if the story remained without +an end, we possess in Guillaume's poem a complete mediaeval Art of +Love; and if the amorous metaphysics are sometimes cold, conventional, +or laboured, we have gracious allegories, pieces of brilliant +description, vivid personifications, and something of ingenious +analysis of human passion. Nevertheless the work of this Middle-Age +disciple of Ovid and of Chretien de Troyes owes more than half its +celebrity to the continuation, conceived in an entirely opposite +spirit, by his successor, Jean de Meun. + +The contrast is striking: Guillaume de Lorris was a refined and +graceful exponent of the conventional doctrine of love, a seemly +celebrant in the cult of woman, an ingenious decorator of accepted +ideas; Jean de Meun was a passionate and positive spirit, an ardent +speculator in social, political, and scientific questions, one who +cared nothing for amorous subtleties, and held woman in scorn. +Guillaume addressed an aristocratic audience, imbued with the +sentiments of chivalry; Jean was a bourgeois, eager to instruct, to +arouse, to inflame his fellows in a multitude of matters which +concerned the welfare of their lives. He was little concerned for +the lover and his rose, but was deeply interested in the condition +of society, the corruptions of religion, the advance of knowledge. +He turned from ideals which seemed spurious to reason and to nature; +he had read widely in Latin literature, and found much that suited +his mood and mind in Boethius' _De Consolatione Philosophiae_ and +in the _De Planctu Naturae_ of the "universal doctor" of the twelfth +century, Alain de Lille, from each of which he conveyed freely into +his poem. Of his life we know little; Jean Clopinel was born at Meun +on the Loire about the year 1240; he died before the close of 1305; +his continuation of Guillaume's _Roman_ was made about 1270. His later +poems, a _Testament_, in which he warned and exhorted his +contemporaries of every class, the _Codicille_, which incited to +almsgiving, and his numerous translations, prove the unabated energy +of his mind in his elder years. + +The rose is plucked by the lover in the end; but lover and rose are +almost forgotten in Jean's zeal in setting forth his views of life, +and in forming an encyclopaedia of the knowledge of his time. Reason +discourses on the dangers of passion, commends friendship or +universal philanthropy as wiser than love, warns against the +instability of fortune and the deceits of riches, and sets charity +high above justice; if love be commendable, it is as the device of +nature for the continuation of the species. The way to win woman and +to keep her loyalty is now the unhappy way of squandered largess; +formerly it was not so in the golden age of equality, before private +property was known, when all men held in common the goods of the earth, +and robber kings were evils of the future. The god of Love and his +barons, with the hypocrite monk Faux-Semblant--a bitter satirist of +the mendicant orders--besiege the tower in which Bel-Accueil is +imprisoned, and by force and fraud an entrance is effected. The old +beldame, who watches over the captive, is corrupted by promises and +gifts, and frankly exposes her own iniquities and those of her sex. +War is waged against the guardians of the rose, Venus, sworn enemy +of chastity, aiding the assailants. Nature, devoted to the +continuance of the race, mourns over the violation of her laws by +man, unburdens herself of all her scientific lore in a confession +to her chaplain Genius, and sends him forth to encourage the lover's +party with a bold discourse against the crime of virginity. The +triumph of the lover closes the poem. + +The graceful design of the earlier poet is disregarded; the love-story +becomes a mere frame for setting forth the views of Jean de Meun, +his criticism of the chivalric ideal, his satire upon the monkish +vices, his revolutionary notions respecting property and government, +his advanced opinions in science, his frank realism as to the +relations of man and woman. He possesses all the learning of his time, +and an accomplished judgment in the literature which he had studied. +He is a powerful satirist, and passages of narrative and description +show that he had a poet's feeling for beauty; he handles the language +with the strength and skill of a master. On the other hand, he lacks +all sense of proportion, and cannot shape an imaginative plan; his +prolixity wearies the reader, and it cannot be denied that as a moral +reformer he sometimes topples into immorality. The success of the +poem was extraordinary, and extended far beyond France. It was +attacked and defended, and up to the time of Ronsard its influence +on the progress of literature--encouraging, as it did, to excess the +art of allegory and personification--if less than has commonly been +alleged, was unquestionably important. + + + + +CHAPTER III +DIDACTIC LITERATURE--SERMONS--HISTORY + + +I +DIDACTIC LITERATURE + +The didactic literature, moral and scientific, of the Middle Ages +is abundant, and possesses much curious interest, but it is seldom +original in substance, and seldom valuable from the point of view +of literary style. In great part it is translated or derived from +Latin sources. The writers were often clerks or laymen who had turned +from the vanities of youth--fabliau or romance--and now aimed at +edification or instruction. Science in the hands of the clergy must +needs be spiritualised and moralised; there were sermons to be found +in stones, pious allegories in beast and bird; mystic meanings in +the alphabet, in grammar, in the chase, in the tourney, in the game +of chess. Ovid and Virgil were sanctified to religious uses. The +earliest versified Bestiary, which is also a Volucrary, a Herbary, +and a Lapidary, that of Philippe de Thaon (before 1135), is versified +from the Latin _Physiologus_, itself a translation from the work of +an Alexandrian Greek of the second century. In its symbolic zoology +the lion and the pelican are emblems of Christ; the unicorn is God; +the crocodile is the devil; the stones "turrobolen," which blaze when +they approach each other, are representative of man and woman. A +_Bestiaire d'Amour_ was written by Richard de Fournival, in which +the emblems serve for the interpretation of human love. A Lapidary, +with a medical--not a moral--purpose, by Marbode, Bishop of Rennes, +was translated more than once into French, and had, indeed, an +European fame. + +Bestiaries and Lapidaries form parts of the vast encyclopaedias, +numerous in the thirteenth century, which were known by such names +as _Image du Monde_, _Mappe-monde_, _Miroir du Monde_. Of these +encyclopaedias, the only one which has a literary interest is the +_Tresor_ (1265), by Dante's master, Brunetto Latini, who wrote in +French in preference to his native Italian. In it science escapes +not wholly from fantasy and myth, but at least from the allegorising +spirit; his ethics and rhetoric are derived from Latin originals; +his politics are his own. The _Somme des Vices et des Vertus_, compiled +in 1279 by Friar Lorens, is a well-composed _tresor_ of religion and +morals. Part of its contents has become familiar to us through the +Canterbury discourse of Chaucer's parson. The moral experience of +a man of the world is summed up in the prose treatise on "The Four +Ages of Man," by Philippe de Novare, chancellor of Cyprus. With this +edifying work may be grouped the so-called _Chastiements_, counsels +on education and conduct, designed for readers in general or for some +special class--women, children, persons of knightly or of humble +rank; studies of the virtues of chivalry, the rules of courtesy and +of manners.[1] Other writings, the _Etats du Monde_, present a view +of the various classes of society from a standpoint ethical, religious, +or satirical, with warnings and exhortations, which commonly +conclude with a vision of the last judgment and the pains of hell. +With such a scene of terror closes the interesting _Poeme Moral_ of +Etienne de Fougeres, in which the life of St. Moses, the converted +robber, serves as an example to monks, and that of the converted Thais +to ladies who are proud of their beauty. Its temper of moderation +contrasts with the bitter satire in the _Bible_ by Guiot de Provins, +and with many shorter satirical pieces directed against clerical +vices or the infirmities of woman. The _Besant de Dieu_, by Guillaume +le Clerc, a Norman poet (1227), preaches in verse, with eloquence +and imaginative power, the love of God and contempt of the world from +the texts of two Scripture parables--that of the Talents and that +of the Bridegroom; Guillaume anticipates the approaching end of the +world, foreshown by wars, pestilence, and famine, condemns in the +spirit of Christian charity the persecution of the Albigenses, and +mourns over the shame that has befallen the Holy Sepulchre. + +[Footnote 1: Two works of the fourteenth century, interesting in the +history of manners and ideas, may here be mentioned--the _Livre du +Chevalier de la Tour-Landry_ (1372), composed for the instruction +of the writer's daughters, and the _Menagier de Paris_, a treatise +on domestic economy, written by a Parisian bourgeois for the use of +his young wife.] + +Among the preacher poets of the thirteenth century the most +interesting personally is the minstrel RUTEBEUF, who towards the +close of his gay though ragged life turned to serious thoughts, and +expressed his penitent feelings with penetrating power. Rutebeuf, +indeed--the Villon of his age--deployed his vivid and ardent powers +in many directions, as a writer of song and satire, of allegory, of +fabliaux, of drama. On each and all he impressed his own personality; +the lyric note, imaginative fire, colour, melody, these were gifts +that compensated the poet's poverty, his conjugal miseries, his lost +eye, his faithless friends, his swarming adversaries. The +personification of vices and virtues, occasional in the _Besant_ and +other poems, becomes a system in the _Songe d'Enfer_, a pilgrim's +progress to hell, and the _Voie de Paradis_, a pilgrim's progress +to heaven, by Raoul de Houdan (after 1200). The _Pelerinage de la +Vie Humaine_--another "way to Paradise"; the _Pelerinage de +l'Ame_--a vision of hell, purgatory, and heaven; and the _Pelerinage +de Jesus-Christ_--a narrative of the Saviour's life, by Guillaume +de Digulleville (fourteenth century), have been imagined by some to +have been among the sources of Bunyan's allegories. Human life may +be represented in one aspect as a pilgrimage; in another it is a +knightly encounter; there is a great strife between the powers of +good and evil; in _Le Tornoiement Antecrist_, by Huon de Meri, Jesus +and the Knights of the Cross, among whom, besides St. Michael, St. +Gabriel, Confession, Chastity, and Alms, are Arthur, Launcelot, and +Gawain, contend against Antichrist and the infernal barons--Jupiter, +Neptune, Beelzebub, and a crowd of allegorical personages. But the +battles and _debats_ of a chivalric age were not only religious; there +are battles of wine and water, battles of fast and feasting, battles +of the seven arts. A disputation between the body and the soul, a +favourite subject for separate treatment by mediaeval poets, is found +also in one of the many sermons in verse; the _Debat des Trois Morts +et des Trois Vifs_ recalls the subject of the memorable painting in +the Campo Santo at Pisa. + + +II +SERMONS + +The Latin sermons of the Middle Ages were countless; but it is not +until Gerson and the close of the fourteenth century that we find +a series of discourses by a known preacher written and pronounced +in French. It is maintained that these Latin sermons, though prepared +in the language of the Church, were delivered, when addressed to lay +audiences, in the vernacular, and that those composite sermons in +the macaronic style, that is, partly in French, partly in Latin, which +appear in the thirteenth century and are frequent in the fifteenth, +were the work of reporters or redactors among the auditory. On the +other hand, it is argued that both Latin and French sermons were +pronounced as each might seem suitable, before the laity, and that +the macaronic style was actually practised in the pulpit. Perhaps +we may accept the opinion that the short and simple homilies designed +for the people, little esteemed as compositions, were rarely thought +worthy of preservation in a Latin form; those discourses which remain +to us, if occasionally used before an unlearned audience, seem to +have been specially intended for clerkly hearers. The sermons of St. +Bernard, which have been preserved in Latin and in a French +translation of the thirteenth century, were certainly not his +eloquent popular improvisations; they are doctrinal, with crude or +curious allegorisings of Holy Scripture. Those of Maurice de Sully, +Archbishop of Paris, probably also translated from the Latin, are +simpler in manner and more practical in their teaching; but in these +characteristics they stand apart from the other sermons of the twelfth +century. + +It was not until the mendicant orders, Franciscans and Dominicans, +began their labours that preaching, as preserved to us, was truly +laicised and popularised. During the thirteenth century the work of +the pulpit came to be conceived as an art which could be taught; +collections of anecdotes and illustrations--_exempla_--for the +enlivening of sermons, manuals for the use of preachers were formed; +rules and precepts were set forth; themes for popular discourse were +proposed and enlarged upon, until at length original thought and +invention ceased; the preacher's art was turned into an easy trade. +The effort to be popular often resulted in pulpit buffoonery. When +GERSON preached at court or to the people towards the close of the +fourteenth century, gravely exhorting high and low to practical +duties, with tender or passionate appeals to religious feeling, his +sermons were noble exceptions to the common practice. And the descent +from Gerson to even his more eminent successors is swift and steep. +The orators of the pulpit varied their discourse from burlesque mirth +or bitter invective to gross terrors, in which death and judgment, +Satan and hell-fire were largely displayed. The sermons of Michel +Menot and Olivier Maillard, sometimes eloquent in their censure of +sin, sometimes trivial or grotesque, sometimes pedantic in their +exhibition of learning, have at least an historical value in +presenting an image of social life in the fifteenth century. + +A word must be said of the humanism which preceded the Renaissance. +Scholars and students there were in France two hundred years before +the days of Erasmus and of Bude; but they were not scholars inspired +by genius, and they contented themselves with the task of translators, +undertaken chiefly with a didactic purpose. If they failed to +comprehend the spirit of antiquity, none the less they did something +towards quickening the mind of their own time and rendering the French +language less inadequate to the intellectual needs of a later age. +All that was then known of Livy's history was rendered into French +in 1356 by the friend of Petrarch, Pierre Bercuire. On the suggestion +of Charles V., Nicole Oresme translated from the Latin the Ethics, +Politics, and Economics of Aristotle. It was to please the king that +the aged Raoul de Presles prepared his version of St. Augustine's +_De Civitate Dei_, and Denis Foulechat, with very scanty scholarship, +set himself to render the _Polycraticus_ of John of Salisbury. The +dukes of Bourbon, of Berry, of Burgundy, were also patrons of letters +and encouraged their translators. We cannot say how far this movement +of scholarship might have progressed, if external conditions had +favoured its development. In Jean de Montreuil, secretary of Charles +VI., the devoted student of Cicero, Virgil, and Terence, we have an +example of the true humanist before the Renaissance. But the seeming +dawn was a deceptive aurora; the early humanism of France was clouded +and lost in the tempests of the Hundred Years' War. + + +III +HISTORY + +While the mediaeval historians, compilers, and abbreviators from +records of the past laboured under all the disadvantages of an age +deficient in the critical spirit, and produced works of little value +either for their substance or their literary style, the chroniclers, +who told the story of their own times, Villehardouin, Joinville, +Froissart, Commines, and others, have bequeathed to us, in living +pictures or sagacious studies of events and their causes, some of +the chief treasures of the past. History at first, as composed for +readers who knew no Latin, was comprised in those _chansons de geste_ +which happened to deal with matter that was not wholly--or almost +wholly--the creation of fancy. Narrative poems treating of +contemporary events came into existence with the Crusades, but of +these the earliest have not survived, and we possess only rehandlings +of their matter in the style of romance. What happened in France might +be supposed to be known to persons of intelligence; what happened +in the East was new and strange. But England, like the East, was +foreign soil, and the Anglo-Norman trouveres of the eleventh and +twelfth centuries busied themselves with copious narratives in rhyme, +such as Gaimar's _Estorie des Engles_ (1151), Wace's _Brut_ (1155) +and his _Roman de Rou_, which, if of small literary importance, remain +as monuments in the history of the language. The murder of Becket +called forth the admirable life of the saint by Garnier de +Pont-Sainte-Maxence, founded upon original investigations; Henry +II.'s conquest of Ireland was related by an anonymous writer; his +victories over the Scotch (1173-1174) were strikingly described by +Jordan Fantosme. But by far the most remarkable piece of versified +history of this period, remarkable alike for its historical interest +and its literary merit, is the _Vie de Guillaume le Marechal_--William, +Earl of Pembroke, guardian of Henry III.--a poem of nearly twenty +thousand octosyllabic lines by an unknown writer, discovered by M. +Paul Meyer in the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps. "The masterpiece +of Anglo-Norman historiography," writes M. Langlois, "is assuredly +this anonymous poem, so long forgotten, and henceforth classic." + +Prose, however, in due time proved itself to be the fitting medium +for historical narrative, and verse was given over to the +extravagances of fantasy. Compilations from the Latin, translations +from the pseudo-Turpin, from Geoffrey of Monmouth, from Sallust, +Suetonius, and Caesar were succeeded by original record and testimony. +GEOFFROY DE VILLEHARDOUIN, born between 1150 and 1164, Marshal of +Champagne in 1191, was appointed eight years later to negotiate with +the Venetians for the transport of the Crusaders to the East. He was +probably a chief agent in the intrigue which diverted the fourth +Crusade from its original destination--the Holy Land--to the assault +upon Constantinople. In the events which followed he had a prominent +part; before the close of 1213 Villehardouin was dead. During his +last years he dictated the unfinished Memoirs known as the _Conquete +de Constantinople_, which relate the story of his life from 1198 to +1207. Villehardouin is the first chronicler who impresses his own +personality on what he wrote: a brave leader, skilful in resource, +he was by no means an enthusiast possessed by the more extravagant +ideas of chivalry; much more was he a politician and diplomatist, +with material interests well in view; not, indeed, devoid of a certain +imaginative wonder at the marvels of the East; not without his moments +of ardour and excitement; deeply impressed with the feeling of feudal +loyalty, the sense of the bond between the suzerain and his vassal; +deeply conscious of the need of discipline in great adventures; +keeping in general a cool head, which could calculate the sum of profit +and loss. + +It is probable that Villehardouin knew too much of affairs, and was +too experienced a man of the world to be quite frank as a historian: +we can hardly believe, as he would have us, that the diversion of +the crusading host from its professed objects was unpremeditated; +we can perceive that he composes his narrative so as to form an +apology; his recital has been justly described as, in part at least, +"un memoire justificatif." Nevertheless, there are passages, such +as that which describes the first view of Constantinople, where +Villehardouin's feelings seize upon his imagination, and, as it were, +overpower him. In general he writes with a grave simplicity, sometimes +with baldness, disdaining ornament, little sensible to colour or +grace of style; but by virtue of his clear intelligence and his real +grasp of facts his chronicle acquires a certain literary dignity, +and when his words become vivid we know that it is because he had +seen with inquisitive eyes and felt with genuine ardour. Happily for +students of history, while Villehardouin presents the views of an +aristocrat and a diplomatist, the incidents of the same extraordinary +adventure can be seen, as they struck a simple soldier, in the record +of Robert de Clari, which may serve as a complement and a counterpoise +to the chronicle of his more illustrious contemporary. The unfinished +_Histoire de l'Empereur Henri_, which carries on the narrative of +events for some years subsequent to those related by Villehardouin, +the work of Henri de Valenciennes, is a prose redaction of what had +originally formed a _chanson de geste_. + +The versified chronicle or history in the thirteenth century declined +among Anglo-Norman writers, but was continued in Flanders and in +France. Prose translations and adaptations of Latin chronicles, +ancient and modern, were numerous, but the literary value of many +of these is slight. In the Abbey of Saint-Denis a corpus of national +history in Latin had for a long while been in process of formation. +Utilising this corpus and the works from which it was constructed, +one of the monks of the Abbey--perhaps a certain Primat--compiled, +in the second half of the century, a History of France in the +vernacular--the _Grandes Chroniques de Saint-Denis_--with which +later additions were from time to time incorporated, until under +Charles V. the _Grandes Chroniques de France_ attained their +definitive form.[2] Far more interesting as a literary composition +is the little work known as _Recits d'un Menestrel de Reims_ (1260), +a lively, graceful, and often dramatic collection of traditions, +anecdotes, dialogues, made rather for the purposes of popular +entertainment than of formal instruction, and expressing the ideas +of the middle classes on men and things. Forgotten during several +centuries, it remains to us as one of the happiest records of the +mediaeval spirit. + +[Footnote 2: The _Chroniques_ were continued by lay writers to the +accession of Louis XI.] + +But among the prose narratives to which the thirteenth century gave +birth, the _Histoire de Saint Louis_, by JEAN DE JOINVILLE, stands +pre-eminent. Joinville, born about 1224, possessed of such literary +culture as could be gained at the Court of Thibaut IV. of Champagne, +became a favoured companion of the chivalric and saintly Louis during +his six years' Crusade from 1248 to 1254. The memory of the King +remained the most precious possession of his follower's elder years. +It is probable that soon after 1272 Joinville prepared an +autobiographic fragment, dealing with that period of his youth which +had been his age of adventure. When he was nearly eighty, Jeanne of +Navarre, wife of Philippe le Bel, invited the old seneschal to put +on record the holy words and good deeds of Saint Louis. Joinville +willingly acceded to the request, and incorporating the fragment of +autobiography, in which the writer appeared in close connection with +his King, he had probably almost completed his work at the date of +Queen Jeanne's death (April 2, 1305); to her son, afterwards Louis +X., it was dedicated. His purpose was to recite the pious words and +set forth the Christian virtues of the royal Saint in one book of +the History, and to relate his chivalric actions in the other; but +Joinville had not the art of construction, he suffered from the +feebleness of old age, and he could not perfectly accomplish his +design; in 1317 Joinville died. Deriving some of his materials from +other memoirs of the King, especially those by Geoffroy de Beaulieu +and Guillaume de Nangis, he drew mainly upon his own recollections. +Unhappily the most authoritative manuscripts of the _Histoire de +Saint Louis_ have been lost; we possess none earlier than the close +of the fourteenth century; but by the learning and skill of a modern +editor the text has been substantially established. + +We must not expect from Joinville precision of chronology or +exactitude in the details of military operations. His recollections +crowd upon him; he does not marshal them by power of intellect, but +abandons himself to the delights of memory. He is a frank, amiable, +spirited talker, who has much to tell; he succeeds in giving us two +admirable portraits--his own and that of the King; and unconsciously +he conveys into his narrative both the chivalric spirit of his time, +and a sense of those prosaic realities which tempered the ideals of +chivalry. What his eyes had rested on lives in his memory, with all +its picturesque features, all its lines and colours, undimmed by time; +and his curious eyes had been open to things great and small. He +appears as a brave soldier, but, he confesses, capable of mortal fear; +sincerely devout, but not made for martyrdom; zealous for his master's +cause, but not naturally a chaser of rainbow dreams; one who enjoys +good cheer, who prefers his wine unallayed with water, who loves +splendid attire, who thinks longingly of his pleasant chateau, and +the children awaiting his return; one who will decline future +crusading, and who believes that a man of station may serve God well +by remaining in his own fields among his humble dependants. But +Joinville felt deeply the attraction of a nature more under the +control of high, ideal motives than was his own; he would not himself +wash the feet of the poor; he would rather commit thirty mortal sins +than be a leper; but a kingly saint may touch heights of piety which +are unattainable by himself. And, at the same time, he makes us feel +that Louis is not the less a man because he is a saint. Certain human +infirmities of temper are his; yet his magnanimity, his sense of +justice, his ardent devotion, his charity, his pure self-surrender +are made so sensible to us as we read the record of Joinville that +we are willing to subscribe to the sentence of Voltaire: "It is not +given to man to carry virtue to a higher point." + +During the fourteenth century the higher spirit of feudalism +declined; the old faith and the old chivalry were suffering a decay; +the bourgeoisie grew in power and sought for instruction; it was an +age of prose, in which learning was passing to the laity, or was +adapted to their uses. Yet, while the inner life of chivalry failed +day by day, and self-interest took the place of heroic self-surrender, +the external pomp and decoration of the feudal world became more +brilliant than ever. War was a trade practised from motives of vulgar +cupidity; but it was adorned with splendour, and had a show of +gallantry. The presenter in literature of this glittering spectacle +is the historian JEAN FROISSART. Born in 1338, at Valenciennes, of +bourgeois parents, Froissart, at the age of twenty-two, a +disappointed lover, a tonsured clerk, and already a poet, journeyed +to London, with his manuscript on the battle of Poitiers as an offering +to his countrywoman, Queen Philippa of Hainault. For nearly five years +he was the _ditteur_ of the Queen, a sharer in the life of the court, +but attracted before all else to those "ancient knights and squires +who had taken part in feats of arms, and could speak of them rightly." +His patroness encouraged Froissart's historical inquiries. In the +_Chroniques_ of Jean le Bel, canon of Liege, he found material ready +to his hand, and freely appropriated it in many of his most admirable +pages; but he also travelled much through England and Scotland, noting +everything that impressed his imagination, and gathering with +delight the testimony of those who had themselves been actors in the +events of the past quarter of a century. He accompanied the Black +Prince to Aquitaine, and, later, the Duke of Clarence to Milan. The +death of Queen Philippa, in 1369, was ruinous to his prospects. For +a time he supported himself as a trader in his native place. Then +other patrons, kinsfolk of the Queen, came to his aid. The first +revised redaction of the first book of his Chronicles was his chief +occupation while cure of Lestinnes; it is a record of events from +1325 to the death of Edward III., and its brilliant narrative of events +still recent or contemporary insured its popularity with +aristocratic readers. Under the influence of Queen Philippa's +brother-in-law, Robert of Namur, it is English in its sympathies and +admirations. Unhappily Froissart was afterwards moved by his patron, +Gui de Blois, to rehandle the book in the French interest; and once +again in his old age his work was recast with a view to effacing the +large debt which he owed to his predecessor, Jean le Bel. The first +redaction is, however, that which won and retained the general favour. +If his patron induced Froissart to wrong his earlier work, he made +amends, for it is to Gui de Blois that we owe the last three books +of the history, which bring the tale of events down to the +assassination of Richard II. Still the cure of Lestinnes and the canon +of Chimai pursued his early method of travel--to the court of Gaston, +Count of Foix, to Flanders, to England--ever eager in his +interrogation of witnesses. It is believed that he lived to the close +of 1404, but the date of his death is uncertain. + +Froissart as a poet wrote gracefully in the conventional modes of +his time. His vast romance _Meliador_, to which Wenceslas, Duke of +Brabant, contributed the lyric part--famous in its day, long lost +and recently recovered--is a construction of external marvels and +splendours which lacks the inner life of imaginative faith. But as +a brilliant scene-painter Froissart the chronicler is unsurpassed. +His chronology, even his topography, cannot be trusted as exact; he +is credulous rather than critical; he does not always test or control +the statements of his informants; he is misled by their prejudices +and passions; he views all things from the aristocratic standpoint; +the life of the common people does not interest him; he has no sense +of their wrongs, and little pity for their sufferings; he does not +study the deeper causes of events; he is almost incapable of +reflection; he has little historical sagacity; he accepts +appearances without caring to interpret their meanings. But what a +vivid picture he presents of the external aspects of fourteenth-century +life! What a joy he has in adventure! What an eye for the picturesque! +What movement, what colour! What a dramatic--or should we say +theatrical?--feeling for life and action! Much, indeed, of the +vividness of Froissart's narrative may be due to the eye-witnesses +from whom he had obtained information; but genius was needed to +preserve--perhaps to enhance--the animation of their recitals. If he +understood his own age imperfectly, he depicted its outward appearance +with incomparable skill; and though his moral sense was shallow, and +his knowledge of character far from profound, he painted portraits +which live in the imagination of his readers. + +The fifteenth century is rich in historical writings of every +kind--compilations of general history, domestic chronicles, such as +the _Livre des Faits du bon Messire Jean le Maingre, dit Bouciquaut_, +official chronicles both of the French and Burgundian parties, +journals and memoirs. The Burgundian Enguerrand de Monstrelet was +a lesser Froissart, faithful, laborious, a transcriber of documents, +but without his predecessor's genius. On the French side the so-called +_Chronique Scandaleuse_, by Jean de Roye, a Parisian of the time of +Louis XI., to some extent redeems the mediocrity of the writers of +his party. + +In PHILIPPE DE COMMINES we meet the last chronicler of the Middle +Ages, and the first of modern historians. Born about 1445, in Flanders, +of the family of Van den Clyte, Commines, whose parents died early, +received a scanty education; but if he knew no Latin, his acquaintance +with modern languages served him well. At first in the service of +Charles the Bold, in 1472 he passed over to the cause of Louis XI. +His treason to the Duke may be almost described as inevitable; for +Commines could not attach himself to violence and folly, and was +naturally drawn to the counsels of civil prudence. The bargain was +as profitable to his new master as to the servant. On the King's death +came a reverse of fortune for Commines: for eight months he was cramped +in the iron cage; during two years he remained a prisoner in the +Conciergerie (1487-89), with enforced leisure to think of the +preparation of his _Memoires_.[3] Again the sunshine of royal favour +returned; he followed Charles VIII. to Italy, and was engaged in +diplomatic service at Venice. In 1511 he died. + +[Footnote 3: Books I.-VI., written 1488-94; Books VII., VIII., +written 1494-95.] + +The _Memoires_ of Commines were composed as a body of material for +a projected history of Louis XI. by Archbishop Angelo Cato; the writer, +apparently in all sincerity, hoped that his unlearned French might +thus be translated into Latin, the language of scholars; happily we +possess the Memoirs as they left their author's mind. And, though +Commines rather hides than thrusts to view his own personality, every +page betrays the presence of a remarkable intellect. He was no artist +either in imaginative design or literary execution; he was before +all else a thinker, a student of political phenomena, a searcher after +the causes of events, an analyst of motives, a psychologist of +individual character and of the temper of peoples, and, after a +fashion, a moralist in his interpretation of history. He cared little, +or not at all, for the coloured surface of life; his chief concern +is to seize the master motive by which men and events are ruled, to +comprehend the secret springs of action. He is aristocratic in his +politics, monarchical, an advocate for the centralisation of power; +but he would have the monarch enlightened, constitutional, and +pacific. He values solid gains more than showy magnificence; and +knowing the use of astuteness, he knows also the importance of good +faith. He has a sense of the balance of European power, and anticipates +Montesquieu in his theory of the influence of climates on peoples. +There is something of pity, something of irony, in the view which +he takes of the joyless lot of the great ones of the earth. Having +ascertained how few of the combinations of events can be controlled +by the wisest calculation, he takes refuge in a faith in Providence; +he finds God necessary to explain this entangled world; and yet his +morality is in great part that which tries good and evil by the test +of success. By the intensity of his thought Commines sometimes becomes +striking in his expression; occasionally he rises to a grave +eloquence; occasionally his irony is touched by a bitter humour. But +in general he writes with little sentiment and no sense of beauty, +under the control of a dry and circumspect intelligence. + + + + +CHAPTER IV +LATEST MEDIAEVAL POETS--THE DRAMA + + +I +LATEST MEDIAEVAL POETS + +The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries form a period of transition +from the true Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The national epopee +was dead; the Arthurian tales were rehandled in prose; under the +influence of the _Roman de la Rose_, allegory was highly popular, +and Jean de Meun had shown how it could be applied to the +secularisation of learning; the middle classes were seeking for +instruction. In lyric poetry the free creative spirit had declined, +but the technique of verse was elaborated and reduced to rule; ballade, +chant royal, lai, virelai, rondeau were the established forms, and +lyric verse was often used for matter of a didactic, moral, or +satirical tendency. Even Ovid was tediously moralised (_c_. 1300) +in some seventy thousand lines by Chretien Legouais. Literary +societies or _puys_[1] were instituted, which maintained the rules +of art, and awarded crowns to successful competitors in poetry; a +formal ingenuity replaced lyrical inspiration; poetry accepted +proudly the name of "rhetoric." At the same time there is gain in +one respect--the poets no longer conceal their own personality behind +their work: they instruct, edify, moralise, express their real or +simulated passions in their own persons; if their art is mechanical, +yet through it we make some acquaintance with the men and manners +of the age. + +[Footnote 1: _Puy_, mountain, eminence, signifying the elevated seat +of the judges of the artistic competition.] + +The chief exponent of the new art of poetry was GUILLAUME DE MACHAUT. +Born about 1300, he served as secretary to the King of Bohemia, who +fell at Crecy. He enjoyed a tranquil old age in his province of +Champagne, cultivating verse and music with the applause of his +contemporaries. The ingenuities of gallantry are deployed at length +in his _Jugement du Roi de Navarre_; he relates with dull prolixity +the history of his patron, Pierre de Lusignan, King of Cyprus, in +his _Prise d'Alexandrie_; the _Voir dit_ relates in varying verse +and prose the course of his sexagenarian love for a maiden in her +teens, Peronne d'Armentieres, who gratified her coquetry with an old +poet's adoration, and then wedded his rival. + +In the forms of his verse EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS, also a native of +Champagne (_c_. 1345-1405), was a disciple of Machaut: if he was not +a poet, he at least interests a reader by rhymed journals of his own +life and the life of his time, written in the spirit of an honest +bourgeois, whom disappointed personal hopes and public misfortune +had early embittered. Eighty thousand lines, twelve hundred ballades, +nearly two hundred rondeaux, a vast unfinished satire on woman, the +_Miroir de Mariage_, fatigued even his own age, and the official court +poet of France outlived his fame. He sings of love in the conventional +modes; his historical poems, celebrating events of the day, have +interest by virtue of their matter; as a moralist in verse he deplores +the corruption of high and low, the cupidity in Church and State, +and, above all, applies his wit to expose the vices and infirmities +of women. The earliest Poetic in French--_L'art de dictier et de fere +chancons, balades, virelais, et rondeaulx_ (1392)--is the work of +Eustache Deschamps, in which the poet, by no means himself a master +of harmonies, insists on the prime importance of harmony in verse. + +The exhaustion of the mediaeval sources of inspiration is still more +apparent in the fifteenth-century successors of Deschamps. But +already something of the reviving influence of Italian culture makes +itself felt. CHRISTINE DE PISAN, Italian by her parentage and place +of birth (_c_. 1363), was left a widow with three young children at +the age of twenty-five. Her sorrow, uttered in verse, is a genuine +lyric cry; but when in her poverty she practised authorship as a trade, +while she wins our respect as a mother, the poetess is too often at +once facile and pedantic. Christine was zealous in maintaining the +honour of her sex against the injuries of Jean de Meun; in her prose +_Cite des Dames_ she celebrates the virtues and heroism of women, +with examples from ancient and modern times; in the _Livre des Trois +Vertus_ she instructs women in their duties. When advanced in years, +and sheltered in the cloister, she sang her swan-song in honour of +Joan of Arc. Admirable in every relation of life, a patriot and a +scholar, she only needed one thing--genius--to be a poet of +distinction. + +A legend relates that the Dauphiness, Margaret of Scotland, kissed +the lips of a sleeper who was the ugliest man in France, because from +that "precious mouth" had issued so many "good words and virtuous +sayings." The sleeper was Christine's poetical successor, ALAIN +CHARTIER. His fame was great, and as a writer of prose he must be +remembered with honour, both for his patriotic ardour, and for the +harmonious eloquence (modelled on classical examples) in which that +ardour found expression. His first work, the _Livre des Quatre Dames_, +is in verse: four ladies lament their husbands slain, captured, lost, +or fugitive and dishonoured, at Agincourt. Many of his other poems +were composed as a distraction from the public troubles of the time; +the title of one, widely celebrated in its own day, _La Belle Dame +sans Mercy_, has obtained a new meaning of romance through its +appropriation by Keats. In 1422 he wrote his prose _Quadrilogue +Invectif_, in which suffering France implores the nobles, the clergy, +the people to show some pity for her miserable state. If Froissart +had not discerned the evils of the feudal system, they were patent +to the eyes of Alain Chartier. His _Livre de l'Esperance_, where the +oratorical prose is interspersed with lyric verse, spares neither +the clergy nor the frivolous and dissolute gentry, who forget their +duty to their country in wanton self-indulgence; yet his last word, +written at the moment when Joan of Arc was leaving the pastures for +battle, is one of hope. His _Curial_ (_The Courtier_) is a satire +on the vices of the court by one who had acquaintance with its +corruption. The large, harmonious phrase of Alain Chartier was new +to French prose, and is hardly heard again until the seventeenth +century. + +The last grace and refinements of chivalric society blossom in the +poetry of CHARLES D'ORLEANS, "la grace exquise des choses freles." +He was born in 1391, son of Louis, Duke of Orleans, and an Italian +mother, Valentine of Milan. Married at fifteen to the widow of Richard +II. of England, he lost his father by assassination, his mother by +the stroke of grief, his wife in childbirth. From the battlefield +of Agincourt he passed to England, where he remained a prisoner, +closely guarded, for twenty-five years. It seems as if events should +have made him a tragic poet; but for Charles d'Orleans poetry was +the brightness or the consolation of his exile. His elder years at +the little court of Blois were a season of delicate gaiety, when he +enjoyed the recreations of age, and smiled at the passions of youth. +He died in 1465. Neither depth of reflection nor masculine power of +feeling finds expression in his verse; he does not contribute new +ideas to poetry, nor invent new forms, but he rendered the old material +and made the accepted moulds of verse charming by a gracious +personality and an exquisite sense of art. Ballade, rondeau, chanson, +each is manipulated with the skill of a goldsmith setting his gems. +He sings of the beauty of woman, the lighter joys of love, the pleasure +of springtide, the song of the birds, the gliding of a stream or a +cloud; or, as an elder man, he mocks with amiable irony the fatiguing +ardours of young hearts. When St. Valentine's day comes round, his +good physician "Nonchaloir" advises him to abstain from choosing a +mistress, and recommends an easy pillow. The influence of Charles +d'Orleans on French poetry was slight; it was not until 1734 that +his forgotten poems were brought to light. + +In the close of the mediaeval period, when old things were passing +away and new things were as yet unborn, the minds of men inclined +to fill the void with mockery and satire. Martin Lefranc (_c_. 1410-61) +in his _Champion des Dames_--a poem of twenty-four thousand lines, in +which there is much spirit and vigour of versification--balances one +against another the censure and the praise of women. Coquillard, with +his railleries assuming legal forms and phrases, laughs at love and +lovers, or at the _Droits Nouveaux_ of a happy time when licence had +become the general law. Henri Baude, a realist in his keen observation, +satirises with direct, incisive force, the manners and morals of his +age. Martial d'Auvergne (_c_. 1433-1508), chronicling events in his +_Vigiles de Charles VII._, a poem written according to the scheme of +the liturgical Vigils, is eloquent in his expression of the wrongs of +the poor, and in his condemnation of the abuses of power and station. +If the _Amant rendu Cordelier_ be his, he too appears among those who +jest at the follies and extravagance of love. His prose _Arrets +d'Amour_ are discussions and decisions of the imaginary court which +determines questions of gallantry. + +Amid such mockery of life and love, the horror of death was ever +present to the mind of a generation from which hope and faith seemed +to fail; it was the time of the _Danse Macabre_; the skeleton became +a grim humourist satirising human existence, and verses written for +the dance of women were ascribed in the manuscript which preserves +them to Martial d'Auvergne. + +Passion and the idea of death mingle with a power at once realistic +and romantic in the poetry of FRANCOIS VILLON. He was born in poverty, +an obscure child of the capital, in 1430 or 1431; he adopted the name +of his early protector, Villon; obtained as a poor scholar his +bachelor's degree in 1449, and three years later became a _maitre +es arts_; but already he was a master of arts less creditable than +those of the University. In 1455 Villon--or should we call him +Monterbier, Montcorbier, Corbueil, Desloges, Mouton (aliases +convenient for vagabondage)?--quarrelled with a priest, and killed +his adversary; he was condemned to death, and cheered his spirits +with the piteous ballade for those about to swing to the kites and +the crows; but the capital punishment was commuted to banishment. +Next winter, stung by the infidelity and insults of a woman to whom +he had abandoned himself, he fled, perhaps to Angers, bidding his +friends a jesting farewell in the bequests of his _Petit Testament_. +Betrayed by one who claimed him as an associate in robbery, Villon +is lost to view for three years; and when we rediscover him in 1461, +it is as a prisoner, whose six months' fare has been bread and water +in his cell at Meun-sur-Loire. The entry of Louis XI., recently +consecrated king, freed the unhappy captive. Before the year closed +he had composed his capital work, the _Grand Testament_, and proved +himself the most original poet of his century. And then Villon +disappears; whether he died soon after, whether he lived for half +a score of years, we do not know. + +While he handles with masterly ease certain of the fifteenth-century +forms of verse--in particular the ballade--Villon is a modern in his +abandonment of the traditional machinery of the imagination, its +convention of allegories and abstractions, and those half-realised +moralisings which were repeated from writer to writer; he is modern +in the intensity of a personal quality which is impressed upon his +work, in the complexity of his feelings, passing from mirth to despair, +from beauty to horror, from cynical grossness to gracious memories +or aspirations; he is modern in his passion for the real, and in those +gleams of ideal light which are suddenly dashed across the vulgar +surroundings of his sorry existence. While he flings out his scorn +and indignation against those whom he regarded as his ill-users, or +cries against the injuries of fortune, or laments his miserable past, +he yet is a passionate lover of life; and shadowing beauty and youth +and love and life, he is constantly aware of the imminent and +inexorable tyranny of death. The ideas which he expresses are few +and simple--ideas common to all men; but they take a special colour +from his own feelings and experiences, and he renders them with a +poignancy which is his own, with a melancholy gaiety and a desperate +imaginative sincerity. His figure is so interesting in itself--that +of the _enfant perdu_ of genius--and so typical of a class, that the +temptation to create a Villon legend is great; but to magnify his +proportions to those of the highest poets is to do him wrong. His +passionate intensity within a limited range is unsurpassed; but +Villon wanted sanity, and he wanted breadth. + +In his direct inspiration from life, co-operating with an admirable +skill and science in literary form, Villon stands alone. For +others--Georges Chastelain, Meschinot, Molinet, Cretin--poetry was +a cumbrous form of rhetoric, regulated by the rules of those arts +of poetry which during the fifteenth century appeared at not +infrequent intervals. The _grands rhetoriqueurs_ with their +complicated measures, their pedantic diction, their effete allegory, +their points and puerilities, testify to the exhaustion of the Middle +Ages, and to the need of new creative forces for the birth of a living +literature. + +There is life, however, in the work of one remarkable prose-writer +of the time--ANTOINE DE LA SALLE. His residence in Rome (1422) had +made him acquainted with the tales of the Italian _novellieri_; he +was a friend of the learned and witty Poggio; Rene of Anjou entrusted +to him the education of his son; when advanced in years he became +the author certainly of one masterpiece, probably of three. If he +was the writer of the _Quinze Joies de Mariage_, he knew how to mask +a rare power of cynical observation under a smiling face: the Church +had celebrated the fifteen joys of the Blessed Virgin; he would +ironically depict the fifteen afflictions of wedded life, in scenes +finely studied from the domestic interior. How far the _Cent Nouvelles +nouvelles_ are to be ascribed to him is doubtful; it is certain that +these licentious tales reproduce, with a new skill in narrative prose, +the spirit of indecorous mirth in their Italian models. The _Petit +Jehan de Saintre_ is certainly the work of Antoine de la Salle; the +irony of a realist, endowed with subtlety and grace, conducts the +reader through chivalric exaltations to vulgar disillusion. The +writer was not insensible to the charm of the ideals of the past, +but he presents them only in the end to cover them with disgrace. +The anonymous farce of _Pathelin_, and the _Chronique de petit Jehan +de Saintre_, are perhaps the most instructive documents which we +possess with respect to the moral temper of the close of the Middle +Ages; and there have been critics who have ventured to ascribe both +works to the same hand. + + +II +THE DRAMA + +The mediaeval drama in France, though of early origin, attained its +full development only when the Middle Ages were approaching their +term; its popularity continued during the first half of the sixteenth +century. It waited for a public; with the growth of industry, the +uprising of the middle classes, it secured its audience, and in some +measure filled the blank created by the disappearance of the _chansons +de geste_. The survivals of the drama of the twelfth and thirteenth +centuries are few; the stream, as we know, was flowing, but it ran +underground. + +The religious drama had its origin in the liturgical offices of the +Church. At Christmas and at Easter the birth and resurrection of the +Saviour were dramatically recited to the people by the clergy, within +the consecrated building, in Latin paraphrases of the sacred text; +but, as yet, neither Jesus nor His mother appeared as actors in the +drama. By degrees the vernacular encroached upon the Latin and +displaced it; the scene passed from the church to the public place +or street; the action developed; and the actors were priests supported +by lay-folk, or were lay-folk alone. + +The oldest surviving drama written in French (but with interspersed +liturgical sentences of Latin) is of the twelfth century--the +_Representation d'Adam_: the fall of man, and the first great crime +which followed--the death of Abel--are succeeded by the procession +of Messianic prophets. It was enacted outside the church, and the +spectators were alarmed or diverted by demons who darted to and fro +amidst the crowd. Of the thirteenth century, only two religious pieces +remain. Jean Bodel, of Arras, was the author of _Saint Nicholas_. +The poet, himself about to assume the cross, exhibits a handful of +Crusaders in combat with the Mussulmans; all but one, a supplicant +of the saint, die gloriously, with angelic applause and pity; +whereupon the feelings of the audience are relieved by the mirth and +quarrels of drinkers in a tavern, who would rob St. Nicholas of the +treasure entrusted to his safeguard; miracles, and general +conversion of the infidels, conclude the drama. The miracle of +_Theophile_, the ambitious priest who pawned his soul to Satan, and +through our Lady's intercession recovered his written compact, is +by the trouvere Rutebeuf. These are scanty relics of a hundred years; +yet their literary value outweighs that of the forty-two _Miracles +de Notre Dame_ of the century which followed--rude pieces, often +trivial, often absurd in their incidents, with mystic extravagance +sanctifying their vulgar realism. They formed, with two exceptions, +the dramatic repertory of some mediaeval _puy_, an association +half-literary, half-religious, devoted to the Virgin's honour; their +rhymed octosyllabic verse--the special dramatic form--at times +borders upon prose. One drama, and only one, of the fourteenth century, +chooses another heroine than our Lady--the _Histoire de Griselidis_, +which presents, with pathos and intermingling mirth, those marvels +of wifely patience celebrated for other lands by Boccaccio, by +Petrarch, and by Chaucer. + +The fifteenth-century Mystery exhibits the culmination of the +mediaeval sacred drama. The word _mystere_,[2] first appropriated +to tableaux vivants, is applied to dramatic performances in the royal +privilege which in 1402 conferred upon the association known as the +_Confrerie de la Passion_ the right of performing the plays of our +Redemption. Before this date the Blessed Virgin and the infant Jesus +had appeared upon the scene. The Mystery presents the course of sacred +story, derived from the Old and the New Testaments, together with +the lives of the saints from apostolic times to the days of St. Dominic +and St. Louis; it even includes, in an extended sense, subjects from +profane history--the siege of Orleans, the destruction of Troy--but +such subjects are of rare occurrence during the fifteenth century. + +[Footnote 2: Derived from _ministerium_ (_metier_), but doubtless +often drawing to itself a sense suggested by the _mysteries_ of +religion.] + +For a hundred years, from 1450 onwards, an unbounded enthusiasm for +the stage possessed the people, not of Paris merely, but of all France. +The _Confreres de la Passion_, needing a larger repertoire, found +in young ARNOUL GREBAN, bachelor in theology, an author whose vein +was copious. His _Passion_, written about the middle of the fifteenth +century, embraces the entire earthly life of Christ in its thirty-four +thousand verses, which required one hundred and fifty performers and +four crowded days for the delivery. Its presentation was an +unprecedented event in the history of the theatre. The work of Greban +was rehandled and enlarged by Jean Michel, and great was the triumph +when it was given at Angers in 1486. Greban was not to be outdone +either by his former self or by another dramatist; in collaboration +with his brother Simon, he composed the yet more enormous _Actes des +Apotres_, in sixty-two thousand lines, demanding the services of five +hundred performers. When presented at Bourges as late as 1536, the +happiness of the spectators was extended over no fewer than forty +days. The Mystery of the Old Testament, selecting whatever was +supposed to typify or foreshadow the coming of the Messiah, is only +less vast, and is not less incoherent. Taken together, the Mysteries +comprise over a million verses, and what remains is but a portion +of what was written. + +Though the literary value of the Mysteries is slight, except in +occasional passages of natural feeling or just characterisation, +their historical importance was great; they met a national +demand--they constituted an animated and moving spectacle of +universal interest. A certain unity they possessed in the fact that +everything revolved around the central figure of Christ and the +central theme of man's salvation; but such unity is only to be +discovered in a broad and distant view. Near at hand the confusion +seems great. Their loose construction and unwieldy length +necessarily endangered their existence when a truer feeling for +literary art was developed. The solemnity of their matter gave rise +to a further danger; it demanded some relief, and that relief was +secured by the juxtaposition of comic scenes beside scenes of gravest +import. Such comedy was occasionally not without grace--a passage +of pastoral, a song, a naive piece of gaiety; but buffoonery or vulgar +riot was more to the taste of the populace. It was pushed to the +furthest limit, until in 1548 the Parlement of Paris thought fit to +interdict the performance of sacred dramas which had lost the sense +of reverence and even of common propriety. They had scandalised +serious Protestants; the Catholics declined to defend what was +indefensible; the humanists and lovers of classical art in +Renaissance days thought scorn of the rude mediaeval drama. Though +it died by violence, its existence could hardly have been prolonged +for many years. But in the days of its popularity the performance +of a mystery set a whole city in motion; carpenters, painters, +costumiers, machinists were busy in preparation; priests, scholars, +citizens rehearsed their parts; country folk crowded to every +hostelry and place of lodging. On the day preceding the first morning +of performance the personages, duly attired--Christians, Jews, +Saracens, kings, knights, apostles, priests--defiled through the +streets on their way to the cathedral to mass. The vast stage hard +by the church presented, with primitive properties, from right to +left, the succession of places--lake, mountain, manger, prison, +banquet-chamber--in which the action should be imagined; and from +one station to another the actors passed as the play proceeded. At +one end of the stage rose heaven, where God sat throned; at the other, +hell-mouth gaped, and the demons entered or emerged. Music aided the +action; the drama was tragedy, comedy, opera, pantomime in one. The +actors were amateurs from every class of society--clergy, scholars, +tradesmen, mechanics, occasionally members of the _noblesse_. In +Paris the Confraternity of the Passion had almost an exclusive right +to present these sacred plays; in the provinces associations were +formed to carry out the costly and elaborate performance. To the +_Confreres de la Passion_--bourgeois folk and artisans--belonged the +first theatre, and it was they who first presented plays at regular +intervals. From the Hospital of the Trinity, originally a shelter +for pilgrims, they migrated in 1539 to the Hotel de Flandres, and +thence in 1548 to the Hotel de Bourgogne. Their famous place of +performance passed in time into the hands of professional actors; +but it was not until 1676 that the Confrerie ceased to exist. + +Comedy, unlike the serious drama, suffered no breach of continuity +during its long history. The jongleurs of the Middle Ages were the +immediate descendants of the Roman mimes and histrions; their +declamations, accompanied by gestures, at least tended towards the +dramatic form. Classical comedy was never wholly forgotten in the +schools; the liturgical drama and the sacred pieces developed from +it had an indirect influence as encouraging dramatic feeling, and +providing models which could be applied to other uses. The earliest +surviving _jeux_ are of Arras, the work of ADAM DE LA HALLE. In the +_Jeu d'Adam_ or _de la Feuillee_ (_c_. 1262) satirical studies of +real life mingle strangely with fairy fantasy; the poet himself, +lamenting his griefs of wedlock, his father, his friends are +humorously introduced; the fool and the physician play their +laughable parts; and the three fay ladies, for whom the citizens have +prepared a banquet under _la feuillee_, grant or refuse the wishes +of the mortal folk in the traditional manner of enchantresses amiable +or perverse. The _Jeu de Robin et Marlon_--first performed at Naples +in 1283--is a pastoral comic opera, with music, song, and dance; the +good Marion is loyal to her rustic lover, and puts his rival, her +cavalier admirer, to shame. These were happy inventions happily +executed; but they stand alone. It is not until we reach the fifteenth +century that mediaeval comedy, in various forms, attained its true +evolution. + +The Moralities, of which sixty-five survive, dating, almost all, from +1450 to 1550, differed from the Mysteries in the fact that their +purpose was rather didactic than religious; as a rule they handled +neither historical nor legendary matter; they freely employed +allegorical personification after the fashion of the _Roman de la +Rose_. The general type is well exemplified in _Bien-Avise, +Mal-Avise_, a kind of dramatic Pilgrim's Progress, with two +pilgrims--one who is instructed in the better way by all the +personified powers which make for righteousness; the other finding +his companions on the primrose path, and arriving at the everlasting +bonfire. Certain Moralities attack a particular vice--gluttony or +blasphemy, or the dishonouring of parents. From satirising the social +vices of the time, the transition was easy to political satire or +invective. In the sixteenth century both the partisans of the +Reformation and the adherents to the traditional creed employed the +Morality as a medium for ecclesiastical polemics. Sometimes treating +of domestic manners and morals, it became a kind of bourgeois drama, +presenting the conditions under which character is formed. Sometimes +again it approached the farce: two lazy mendicants, one blind, the +other lame, fear that they may suffer a cure and lose their trade +through the efficacy of the relics of St. Martin; the halt, mounted +on the other's back, directs his fellow in their flight; by ill luck +they encounter the relic-bearers, and are restored in eye and limb; +the recovered cripple swears and rages; but the man born blind, +ravished by the wonders of the world, breaks forth in praise to God. +The higher Morality naturally selected types of character for satire +or commendation. It is easy to perceive how such a comic art as that +of Moliere lay in germ in this species of the mediaeval drama. At +a late period examples are found of the historical Morality. The +pathetic _l'Empereur qui tua son Neveu_ exhibits in its action and +its stormy emotion something of tragic power. The advent of the +pseudo-classical tragedy of the Pleiade checked the development of +this species. The very name "Morality" disappears from the theatre +after 1550. + +The _sottie_, like the Morality, was a creation of the fifteenth +century. Whether it had its origin in a laicising of the irreverent +celebration of the Feast of Fools, or in that parade of fools which +sometimes preceded a Mystery, it was essentially a farce, but a farce +in which the performers, arrayed in motley, and wearing the long-eared +cap, distributed between them the several roles of human folly. +Associations of _sots_, known in Paris as _Enfants sans Souci_, known +in other cities by other names, presented the unwisdom or madness +of the world in parody. The _sottie_ at times rose from a mere +diversion to satire; like the Morality, it could readily adapt itself +to political criticism. The _Gens Nouveaux_, belonging perhaps to +the reign of Louis XI., mocks the hypocrisy of those sanguine +reformers who promise to create the world anew on a better model, +and yet, after all, have no higher inspiration than that old greed +for gold and power and pleasure which possessed their predecessors. +Louis XII., who permitted free comment on public affairs from actors +on the stage, himself employed the poet Pierre Gringoire to satirise +his adversary the Pope. In 1512 the _Jeu du Prince des Sots_ was given +in Paris; Gringoire, the _Mere-Sotte_, but wearing the Papal robes +to conceal for a time the garb of folly, discharged a principal part. +Such dangerous pleasantries as this were vigorously restrained by +Francois I. + +A dramatic monologue or a _sermon joyeux_ was commonly interposed +between the _sottie_ and the Morality or miracle which followed. The +sermon parodied in verse the pulpit discourses of the time, with text +duly announced, the customary scholastic divisions, and an +incredible licence in matter and in phrase. Among the dramatic +monologues of the fifteenth century is found at least one little +masterpiece, which has been ascribed on insufficient grounds to +Villon, and which would do no discredit to that poet's genius--the +_Franc-Archer de Bagnolet_. The francs-archers of Charles VII.--a +rural militia--were not beloved of the people; the _miles gloriosus_ +of Bagnolet village, boasting largely of his valour, encounters a +stuffed scarecrow, twisting to the wind; his alarms, humiliations, +and final triumph are rendered in a monologue which expounds the +action of the piece with admirable spirit. + +If the Mystery served to fill the void left by the national epopee, +the farce may be regarded as to some extent the dramatic inheritor +of the spirit of the fabliau. It aims at mirth and laughter for their +own sakes, without any purpose of edification; it had, like the +fabliau, the merit of brevity, and not infrequently the fault of +unabashed grossness. But the very fact that it was a thing of little +consequence allowed the farce to exhibit at times an audacity of +political or ecclesiastical criticism which transformed it into a +dramatised pamphlet. In general it chose its matter from the ludicrous +misadventures of private life: the priest, the monk, the husband, +the mother-in-law, the wife, the lover, the roguish servant are the +agents in broadly ludicrous intrigues; the young wife lords it over +her dotard husband, and makes mockery of his presumptive heirs, in +_La Cornette_ of Jean d'Abondance; in _Le Cuvier_, the husband, whose +many household duties have been scheduled, has his revenge--the list, +which he deliberately recites while his wife flounders helpless in +the great washing-tub, does not include the task of effecting her +deliverance. + +Amid much that is trivial and much that is indecent, one farce stands +out pre-eminent, and may indeed be called a comedy of manners and +of character--the merry misfortunes of that learned advocate, +_Maitre Pierre Pathelin_. The date is doubtless about 1470; the author, +probably a Parisian and a member of the Basoche, is unknown. With +all his toiling and cheating, Pathelin is poor; with infinite art +and spirit he beguiles the draper of the cloth which will make himself +a coat and his faithful Guillemette a gown; when the draper, losing +no time, comes for his money and an added dinner of roast goose, behold +Maitre Pathelin is in a raging fever, raving in every dialect. Was +the purchase of his cloth a dream, or work of the devil? To add to +the worthy tradesman's ill-luck, his shepherd has stolen his wool +and eaten his sheep. The dying Pathelin unexpectedly appears in court +to defend the accused, and having previously advised his client to +affect idiocy and reply to all questions with the senseless utterance +_bee_, he triumphantly wins the case; but the tables are turned when +Master Pathelin demands his fee, and can obtain no other response +than _bee_ from the instructed shepherd. The triumph of rogue over +rogue is the only moral of the piece; it is a satire on fair dealing +and justice, and, though the morals of a farce are not to be gravely +insisted on, such morals as _Maitre Pathelin_ presents agree well +with the spirit of the age which first enjoyed this masterpiece of +caricature. + +The actors in mediaeval comedy, as in the serious drama, were amateurs. +The members of the academic _puys_ were succeeded by the members of +guilds, or _confreries_, or _societes joyeuses_. Of these societies +the most celebrated was that of the Parisian _Enfants sans Souci_. +With this were closely associated the Basochiens, the corporation +of clerks to the _procureurs_ of the Parlement of Paris.[3] It may +be that the _sots_ of the capital were only members of the _basoche_, +assuming for the occasion the motley garb. In colleges, scholars +performed at first in Latin plays, but from the fifteenth century +in French. At the same time, troupes of performers occasionally moved +from city to city, exhibiting a Mystery, but they did not hold together +when the occasion had passed. Professional comedians were brought +from Italy to Lyons in 1548, for the entertainment of Henri II. and +Catherine de Medicis. From that date companies of French actors appear +to become numerous. New species of the drama--tragedy, comedy, +pastoral--replace the mediaeval forms; but much of the genius of +French classical comedy is a development from the Morality, the +_sottie_, and the farce. To present these newer forms the service +of trained actors was required. During the last quarter of the +sixteenth century the amateur performers of the ancient drama finally +disappear. + +[Footnote 3: This corporation, known as the _Royaume de la Basoche_ +(_basilica_), was probably as old as the fourteenth century.] + + + + +BOOK THE SECOND +_THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY_ + + + + +CHAPTER I +RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION + + +The literature of the sixteenth century is dominated by two chief +influences--that of the Renaissance and that of the Reformation. When +French armies under Charles VIII. and Louis XII. made a descent on +Italy, they found everywhere a recognition of the importance of art, +an enthusiasm for beauty, a feeling for the aesthetic as well as the +scholarly aspects of antiquity, a new joy in life, an universal +curiosity, a new confidence in human reason. To Latin culture a Greek +culture had been added; and side by side with the mediaeval master +of the understanding, Aristotle, the master of the imaginative reason, +Plato, was held in honour. Before the first quarter of the sixteenth +century closed, France had received a great gift from Italy, which +profoundly modified, but by no means effaced, the characteristics +of her national genius. The Reformation was a recovery of Christian +antiquity and of Hebraism, and for a time the religious movement made +common cause with the Renaissance; but the grave morals, the +opposition of grace to nature, and the dogmatic spirit of theology +after a time alienated the Reforming party from the mere humanism +of literature and art. An interest in general ideas and a capacity +for dealing with them were fostered by the study of antiquity both +classical and Christian, by the meeting of various tendencies, and +by the conflict of rival creeds. To embody general ideas in art under +a presiding feeling for beauty, to harmonise thought and form, was +the great work of the seventeenth century; but before this could be +effected it was necessary that France should enjoy tranquillity after +the strife of the civil wars. + +Learning had received the distinction of court patronage when Louis +XII. appointed the great scholar Bude his secretary. Around Francis +I., although he was himself rather a lover of the splendour and +ornament of the Renaissance than of its finer spirit, men of learning +and poets gathered. On the suggestion of GUILLAUME BUDE he endowed +professorships of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, to which were added those +of medicine, mathematics, and philosophy (1530-40), and in this +projected foundation of the College de France an important step was +made towards the secularisation of learned studies. The King's sister, +MARGUERITE OF NAVARRE (1492-1549), perhaps the most accomplished +woman of her time, represents more admirably than Francis the genius +of the age. She studied Latin, Italian, Spanish, German, Hebrew, and, +when forty, occupied herself with Greek. Her heart was ardent as well +as her intellect; she was gay and mundane, and at the same time she +was serious (with even a strain of mystical emotion) in her concern +for religion. Although not in communion with the Reformers, she +sympathised with them, and extended a generous protection to those +who incurred danger through their liberal opinions. Her poems, +_Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses_ (1547), show the +mediaeval influences forming a junction with those of the Renaissance. +Some are religious, but side by side with her four dramatic Mysteries +and her eloquent _Triomphe de l'Agneau_ appears the _Histoire des +Satyres et Nymphes de Diane_, imitated from the Italian of Sannazaro. +Among her latest poems, which remained in manuscript until 1896, are +a pastoral dramatic piece expressing her grief for the death of her +brother Francis I.; a second dramatic poem, _Comedie jouee au Mont +de Marsan_, in which love (human or divine) triumphs over the spirit +of the world, over superstitious asceticism, and over the wiser temper +of religious moderation. _Les Prisons_ tells in allegory of her +servitude to passion, to worldly ambition, and to the desire for human +knowledge, until at last the divine love brought her deliverance. +The union of the mundane and the moral spirit is singularly shown +in Marguerite's collection of prose tales, written in imitation of +Boccaccio, the _Heptameron des Nouvelles_ (1558). + +These tales were not an indiscretion of youth; probably Marguerite +composed them a few years before her death; perhaps their licence +and wanton mirth were meant to enliven the melancholy hours of her +beloved brother; certainly the writer is ingenious in extracting +edifying lessons from narratives which do not promise edification. +They are not so gross as other writings of the time, and this is +Marguerite's true defence; to laugh at the immoralities of monks and +priests was a tradition in literature which neither the spirit of +the Renaissance nor that of the Reformation condemned. A company of +ladies and gentlemen, detained by floods on their return from the +Pyrenean baths, beguile the time by telling these tales, and the pious +widow Dame Oisille gives excellent assistance in showing how they +tend to a moral purpose. The series, designed to equal in number the +tales of the Decameron, is incomplete. Possibly Marguerite was aided +by some one or more of the authors of whom she was the patroness and +protector; but no sufficient evidence exists for the ascription of +the _Heptameron_ to Bonaventure des Periers. + +Among the poets whom Marguerite received with favour at her court +was CLEMENT MAROT, the versifier, as characterised by Boileau, of +"elegant badinage." His predecessors and early contemporaries in the +opening years of the sixteenth century continued the manner of the +so-called _rhetoriqueurs_, who endeavoured to maintain allegory, now +decrepit or effete, with the aid of ingenuities of versification and +pedantry of diction; or else they carried on something of the more +living tradition of Villon or of Coquillard. Among the former, Jean +le Maire de Belges deserves to be remembered less for his verse than +for his prose work, _Illustrations de Gaule et Singularitez de Troie_, +in which the Trojan origin of the French people is set forth with +some feeling for beauty and a mass of crude erudition. Clement Marot, +born at Cahors in 1495 or 1496, a poet's son, was for a time in the +service of Francis I. as _valet de chambre_, and accompanied his +master to the battle of Pavia, where he was wounded and made prisoner. +Pursued by the Catholics as a heretic, and afterwards by the Genevan +Calvinists as a libertine, he was protected as long as was possible +by the King and by his sister. He died at Turin, a refugee to Italy, +in 1544. + +In his literary origins Marot belongs to the Middle Ages; he edited +the _Roman de la Rose_ and the works of Villon; his immediate masters +were the _grands rhetoriqueurs_; but the spirit of the Renaissance +and his own genius delivered him from the oppression of their +authority, and his intellect was attracted by the revolt and the +promise of freedom found in the Reforming party. A light and +pleasure-loving nature, a temper which made the prudent conduct of +life impossible, exposed him to risks, over which, aided by protectors +whom he knew how to flatter with a delicate grace, he glided without +fatal mishap. He did not bring to poetry depth of passion or solidity +of thought; he brought what was needed--a bright intelligence, a sense +of measure and proportion, grace, gaiety, _esprit_. Escaping, after +his early _Temple de Cupido_, from the allegorising style, he learned +to express his personal sentiments, and something of the gay, +bourgeois spirit of France, with aristocratic distinction. His +poetry of the court and of occasion has lost its savour; but when +he writes familiarly (as in the _Epitre au Roi pour avoir ete derobe_), +or tells a short tale (like the fable of the rat and the lion), he +is charmingly bright and natural. None of his poems--elegies, +epistles, satires, songs, epigrams, rondeaux, pastorals, +ballades--overwhelm us by their length; he was not a writer of vast +imaginative ambitions. His best epigrams are masterpieces in their +kind, with happy turns of thought and expression in which art seems +to have the ease of nature. The satirical epistle supposed to be sent, +not by Marot, but by his valet, to Marot's adversary, Sagon, is +spirited in its insolence. _L'Enfer_ is a satiric outbreak of +indignation suggested by his imprisonment in the Chatelet on the +charge of heresy. His versified translation of forty-nine Psalms +added to his glory, and brought him the honour of personal danger +from the hostility of the Sorbonne; but to attempt such a translation +is to aim at what is impossible. His gift to French poetry is +especially a gift of finer art--firm and delicate expression, +felicity in rendering a thought or a feeling, certainty and grace +in poetic evolution, skill in handling the decasyllabic line. A great +poet Marot was not, and could not be; but, coming at a fortunate moment, +his work served literature in important ways; it was a return from +laboured rhetoric to nature. In the classical age his merit was +recognised by La Bruyere, and the author of the _Fables_ and the +_Contes_--in some respects a kindred spirit--acknowledged a debt to +Marot. + +From Marot as a poet much was learned by Marguerite of Navarre. Of +his contemporaries, who were also disciples, the most distinguished +was MELIN DE SAINT-GELAIS, and on the master's death Melin passed +for an eminent poet. We can regard him now more justly, as one who +in slender work sought for elegance, and fell into a mannered +prettiness. While preserving something of the French spirit, he +suffered from the frigid ingenuities which an imitation of Italian +models suggested to him; but it cannot be forgotten that Saint-Gelais +brought the sonnet from Italy into French poetry. The school of Marot, +ambitious in little things, affected much the _blason_, which +celebrates an eyebrow, a lip, a bosom, a jewel, a flower, a precious +stone; lyrical inspiration was slender, but clearness and grace were +worth attaining, and the conception of poetry as a fine art served +to lead the way towards Ronsard and the Pleiade. + +The most powerful personality in literature of the first half of the +sixteenth century was not a poet, though he wrote verses, but a great +creator in imaginative prose, great partly by virtue of his native +genius, partly because the sap of the new age of enthusiasm for science +and learning was thronging in his veins--FRANCOIS RABELAIS. Born +about 1490 or 1495, at Chinon, in Touraine, of parents in a modest +station, he received his education in the village of Seuille and at +the convent of La Baumette. He revolted against the routine of the +schools, and longed for some nutriment more succulent and savoury. +For fifteen years he lived as a Franciscan monk in the cell and +cloisters of the monastery at Fontenay-le-Comte. In books, but not +those of a monastic library, he found salvation; mathematics, +astronomy, law, Latin, Greek consoled him during his period of +uncongenial seclusion. His criminal companions--books which might +be suspected of heresy--were sequestrated. The young Bishop of +Maillezais--his friend Geoffroy d'Estissac, who had aided his +studies--and the great scholar Bude came to his rescue, and passing +first, by favour of the Pope, to the Benedictine abbey of Maillezais, +before long he quitted the cloister, and, as a secular priest, began +his wanderings of a scholar in search of universal knowledge. In +1530-31 he was at Montpellier, studying medicine and lecturing on +medical works of Hippocrates and Galen; next year, at Lyons, one of +the learned group gathered around the great printers of that city, +he practised his art of physic in the public hospital, and was known +as a scientific author. Towards the close of 1532 he re-edited the +popular romance _Chroniques Gargantuines_, which tells the +adventures of the "enormous giant Gargantua." It was eagerly read, +and brought laughter to the lips of Master Rabelais' patients. +Learning, he held, was good, but few things in this world are +wholesomer than laughter. The success of the _Chroniques_ seems to +have moved him to write a continuation, and in 1533 appeared +_Pantagruel_, the story of the deeds and prowess of Gargantua's giant +son, newly composed by Alcofribas Nasier, an anagram which concealed +the name of Francois Rabelais. It forms the second of the five books +which make up its author's famous work. A recast or rather a new +creation of the Chronicles of Gargantua, replacing the original +_Chroniques_, followed in 1535. It was not until 1546 and 1552 that +the second and--in its complete form--the third books of _Pantagruel_ +appeared, and the authorship was acknowledged. The last book was +posthumous (1562 in part, 1564 in full), and the inferiority of style, +together with the more bitter spirit of its satire, have led many +critics to the opinion that it is only in part from the hand of the +great and wise humourist. + +Rabelais was in Rome in 1534, and again in 1535, as physician to the +French ambassador, Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Paris. He pursued his +scientific studies in medicine and botany, took lessons in Arabic, +and had all a savant's intelligent curiosity for the remains of +antiquity. Some years of his life were passed in wandering from one +French university to another. Fearing the hostility of the Sorbonne, +during the last illness of his protector Francis I., he fled to the +imperial city of Metz. He was once again in Rome with Cardinal du +Bellay, in 1549. Next year the author of _Pantagruel_ was appointed +cure of Meudon, near Paris, but, perhaps as a concession to public +opinion, he resigned his clerical charges on the eve of the +publication of his fourth book. Rabelais died probably in 1552 or +1553, aged about sixty years. + +On his death it might well have been said that the gaiety of nations +was eclipsed; but to his contemporaries Rabelais appeared less as +the enormous humourist, the buffoon Homer, than as a great scholar +and man of science, whose bright temper and mirthful conversation +were in no way inconsistent with good sense, sound judgment, and even +a habit of moderation. It is thus that he should still be regarded. +Below his laughter lay wisdom; below his orgy of grossness lay a noble +ideality; below the extravagances of his imagination lay the +equilibrium of a spirit sane and strong. The life that was in him +was so abounding and exultant that it broke all dikes and dams; and +laughter for him needed no justification, it was a part of this +abounding life. After the mediaeval asceticism and the intellectual +bondage of scholasticism, life in Rabelais has its vast outbreak and +explosion; he would be no fragment of humanity, but a complete man. +He would enjoy the world to the full, and yet at the same time there +is something of stoicism in his philosophy of life; while gaily +accepting the good things of the earth, he would hold himself detached +from the gifts of fortune, and possess his soul in a strenuous sanity. +Let us return--such is his teaching--to nature, honouring the body, +but giving higher honour to the intellect and to the moral feeling; +let us take life seriously, and therefore gaily; let us face death +cheerfully, knowing that we do not wholly die; with light in the +understanding and love in the heart, we can confront all dangers and +defy all doubts. + +He is the creator of characters which are types. His +giants--Grandgousier, Gargantua, Pantagruel--are giants of good +sense and large benevolence. The education of Pantagruel presents +the ideal pedagogy of the Renaissance, an education of the whole +man--mind and body--in contrast with the dwarfing subtleties and +word-spinning of the effete mediaeval schools. Friar John is the monk +whose passion for a life of activity cannot be restrained; his +violence is the overflow of wholesome energy. It is to his care that +the Abbey of Thelema is confided, where young men and maidens are +to be occupied with every noble toil and every high delight, an abbey +whose rule has but a single clause (since goodness has no rule save +freedom), "Do what you will." Of such a fraternity, love and marriage +are the happiest outcome. Panurge, for whom the suggestion was derived +from the macaronic poet Folengo, is the fellow of Shakespeare's +Falstaff, in his lack of morals, his egoism, his inexhaustible wit; +he is the worst and best of company. We would dispense with such a +disreputable associate if we could, but save that he is a "very wicked +lewd rogue," he is "the most virtuous man in the world," and we cannot +part with him. Panurge would marry, but fears lest he may be the victim +of a faithless wife; every mode of divination, every source of +prediction except one is resorted to, and still his fate hangs +threatening; it only remains to consult the oracle of La Dive +Bouteille. The voyaging quest is long and perilous; in each island +at which the adventurers touch, some social or ecclesiastical abuse +is exhibited for ridicule; the word of the oracle is in the end the +mysterious "Drink"--drink, that is, if one may venture to interpret +an oracle, of the pure water of wisdom and knowledge, and let the +unknown future rest. + +The obscenity and ordure of Rabelais were to the taste of his time; +his severer censures of Church and State were disguised by his +buffoonery; flinging out his good sense and wise counsels with a +liberal hand, he also wields vigorously the dunghill pitchfork. If +he is gross beyond what can be described, he is not, apart from the +evil of such grossness, a corrupter of morals, unless morals be +corrupted by a belief in the goodness of the natural man. The graver +wrongs of his age--wars of ambition, the abuse of public justice, +the hypocrisies, cruelties, and lethargy of the ecclesiastics, +distrust of the intellectual movement, spurious ideals of life--are +vigorously condemned. Rabelais loves goodness, charity, truth; he +pleads for the right of manhood to a full and free development of +all its powers; and if questions of original sin and divine grace +trouble him little, and his creed has some of the hardihood of the +Renaissance, he is full of filial gratitude to _le bon Dieu_ for His +gift of life, and of a world in which to live strongly should be to +live joyously. + +The influence of Rabelais is seen in the writers of prose tales who +were his contemporaries and successors; but they want his broad good +sense and real temperance. BONAVENTURE DES PERIERS, whom Marguerite +of Navarre favoured, and whose _Nouvelles Recreations_, with more +of the tradition of the French fabliaux and farces and less of the +Italian manner, have something in common with the stories of the +_Heptameron_, died in desperation by his own hand about 1543. His +Lucianic dialogues which compose the _Cymbalum Mundi_ show the +audacity of scepticism which the new ideas of the Renaissance +engendered in ill-balanced spirits. With all his boldness and ardour +Rabelais exercised a certain discretion, and in revising his own text +clearly exhibited a desire to temper valour with prudence. + +It is remarkable that just at the time when Rabelais published the +second and best book of his _Pantagruel_, in which the ideality and +the realism of the Renaissance blossom to the full, there was a certain +revival of the chivalric romance. The Spanish _Amadis des Gaules_ +(1540-48), translated by Herberay des Essarts, was a distant echo +of the Romances of the Round Table. The gallant achievements of +courtly knights, their mystical and platonic loves, were a delight +to Francis I., and charmed a whole generation. Thus, for the first +time, the literature of Spain reached France, and the influence of +_Amadis_ reappears in the seventeenth century in the romances of +d'Urfe and Mdlle. de Scudery. + +If the genius of the Renaissance is expressed ardently and amply in +the writings of Rabelais, the genius of the Reformation finds its +highest and most characteristic utterance through one whom Rabelais +describes as the "demoniacle" of Geneva--JEAN CALVIN (1509-64). The +pale face and attenuated figure of the great Reformer, whose life +was a long disease, yet whose indomitable will sustained him amid +bodily infirmities, present a striking contrast to the sanguine +health and overflowing animal spirits of the good physician who +reckoned laughter among the means of grace. Yet Calvin was not merely +a Reformer: he was also a humanist, who, in his own way, made a profound +study of man, and who applied the learning of a master to the +determination of dogma. His education was partly theological, partly +legal; and in his body of doctrine appear some of the rigour, the +severity, and the formal procedures of the law. Indignation against +the imprisonment and burning of Protestants, under the pretence that +they were rebellious anabaptists, drew him from obscurity; silence, +he thought, was treason. He addressed to the King an eloquent letter, +in which he maintained that the Reformed faith was neither new nor +tending towards schism, and next year (1536) he published his lucid +and logical exposition of Protestant doctrine--the _Christianae +Religionis Institutio_. It placed him, at the age of twenty-seven, +as leader in the forefront of the new religious movement. + +But the movement was not merely learned, it was popular, and Calvin +was resolved to present his work to French readers in their own tongue. +His translation--the _Institution_--appeared probably in 1541. +Perhaps no work by an author of seven-and-twenty had ever so great +an influence. It consists of four books--of God, of Jesus as a Mediator, +of the effects of His mediatorial work, and of the exterior forms +of the Church. The generous illusion of Rabelais, that human nature +is essentially good, has no place in Calvin's system. Man is fallen +and condemned under the law; all his righteousness is as filthy rags; +God, of His mere good pleasure, from all eternity predestinated some +men to eternal life and others to eternal death; the Son of God came +to earth to redeem the elect; through the operation of the Holy Spirit +in the gift of faith they are united to Christ, are justified through +His righteousness imputed to them, and are sanctified in their hearts; +the Church is the body of the faithful in every land; the officers +of the Church are chosen by the people; the sacraments are +two--baptism and the Lord's Supper. In his spirit of system, his +clearness, and the logical enchainment of his ideas, Calvin is +eminently French. On the one side he saw the Church of Rome, with--as +he held--its human tradition, its mass of human superstitions, +intervening between the soul and God; on the other side were the +scepticism, the worldliness, the religious indifference of the +Renaissance. Within the Reforming party there was the conflict of +private opinions. Calvin desired to establish once for all, on the +basis of the Scriptures, a coherent system of dogma which should +impose itself upon the minds of men as of divine authority, which +should be at once a barrier against the dangers of superstition and +the dangers of libertine speculation. As the leaders of the French +Revolution propounded political constitutions founded on the idea +of the rights of man, so Calvin aimed at setting forth a creed +proceeding, if we may so put it, from a conception of the absolute +rights of God. Through the mere good pleasure of our Creator, Ruler, +Judge, we are what we are. + +It is not perhaps too much to say that Calvin is the greatest writer +of the sixteenth century. He learned much from the prose of Latin +antiquity. Clearness, precision, ordonnance, sobriety, intellectual +energy are compensations for his lack of grace, imagination, +sensibility, and religious unction. He wrote to convince, to impress +his ideas upon other minds, and his austere purpose was attained. +In the days of the pagan Renaissance, it was well for France that +there should also be a Renaissance of moral rigour; if freedom was +needful, so also was discipline. On the other hand, it may be admitted +that Calvin's reason is sometimes the dupe of Calvin's reasoning. + +His _Life_ was written in French by his fellow-worker in the +Reformation, Theodore de Beze, who also recorded the history of the +Reformed Churches in France (1580). Beze and Viret, together with +their leader Calvin, were eminent in pulpit exposition and +exhortation, and in Beze the preacher was conjoined with a poet. At +Calvin's request he undertook his translation of the Psalms, to +complete that by Marot, and in 1551 his sacred drama the _Tragedie +Francaise du sacrifice d'Abraham_, designed to inculcate the duty +of entire surrender to the divine will, and written with a grave and +restrained ardour, was presented at the University of Lausanne. + + + + +CHAPTER II +FROM THE PLEIADE TO MONTAIGNE + + +The classical Renaissance was not necessarily opposed to high ethical +ideals; it was not wholly an affair of the sensuous imagination; it +brought with it the conception of Roman virtue, and this might well +unite itself (as we see afterwards in Corneille) with Christian faith. +Among the many translators of the sixteenth century was Montaigne's +early friend--the friend in memory of all his life--ETIENNE DE LA +BOETIE (1530-63). It is not, however, for his fragments of Plutarch +or his graceful rendering of Xenophon's Economics (named by him the +_Mesnagerie_) that we remember La Boetie; it is rather for his +eloquent pleading on behalf of freedom in the _Discours de la +Servitude Volontaire_ or _Contr'un_, written at sixteen--revised +later--in which, with the rhetoric of youth, he utters his invective +against tyranny. Before La Boetie's premature death the morals of +antiquity as seen in action had been exhibited to French readers in +the pages of Amyot's delightful translation of Plutarch's Lives +(1559), to be followed, some years later, by his _OEuvres Morales +de Plutarque_. JACQUES AMYOT (1513-93), from an ill-fed, ragged boy, +rose to be the Bishop of Auxerre. His scholarship, seen not only in +his Plutarch, but in his rendering of the _Daphnis et Chloe_ of Longus, +and other works, was exquisite; but still more admirable was his sense +of the capacities of French prose. He divined with a rare instinct +the genius of the language; he felt the affinities between his Greek +original and the idioms of his own countrymen; he rather re-created +than translated Plutarch. "We dunces," wrote Montaigne, "would have +been lost, had not this book raised us from the mire; thanks to it, +we now venture to speak and write; ... it is our breviary." The life +and the ideas of the ancient world became the possession, not of +scholars only, but of all French readers. The book was a school of +manners and of thought, an inspirer of heroic deeds. "To love +Plutarch," said the greatest Frenchman of the century, Henry of +Navarre, "is to love me, for he was long the master of my youth." + +It was such an interest in the life and ideas of antiquity as Amyot +conveyed to the general mind of France that was wanting to Ronsard +and the group of poets surrounding him. Their work was concerned +primarily with literary form; of the life of the world and general +ideas, apart from form, they took too little heed. The transition +from Marot to Ronsard is to be traced chiefly through the school of +Lyons. In that city of the South, letters flourished side by side +with industry and commerce; Maurice Sceve celebrated his mistress +Delie, "object of the highest virtue," with Petrarchan ingenuities; +and his pupil LOUISE LABE, "la belle Cordiere," sang in her sonnets +of a true passion felt, as she declares, "en ses os, en son sang, +en son ame." The Lyonese poets, though imbued with Platonic ideas, +rather carry on the tradition of Marot than announce the Pleiade. +PIERRE DE RONSARD, born at a chateau a few leagues from Vendome, in +the year 1524, was in the service of the sons of Francis I. as page, +was in Scotland with James V., and later had the prospect of a +distinguished diplomatic career, when deafness, consequent on a +serious malady, closed for him the avenue to public life. He threw +himself ardently into the study of letters; in company with the boy +Antoine de Baif he received lessons from an excellent Hellenist, Jean +Daurat, soon to be principal of the College Coqueret. At the College +a group of students--Ronsard, Baif, Joachim du Bellay, Remi +Belleau--gathered about the master. The "Brigade" was formed, which, +by-and-by, with the addition of Jodelle and Pontus de Thyard, and +including Daurat, became the constellation of the Pleiade. The seven +associates read together, translated and imitated the classics; a +common doctrine of art banded them in unity; they thought scorn of +the vulgar ways of popular verse; poetry for them was an arduous and +exquisite toil; its service was a religion. At length, in 1549, they +flung out their manifesto--the _Defense et Illustration de la Langue +Francaise_ by Du Bellay, the most important study in literary +criticism of the century. With this should be considered, as less +important manifestoes, the later _Art Poetique_ of Ronsard, and his +prefaces to the _Franciade_. To formulate principles is not always +to the advantage of a movement in literature; but champions need a +banner, reformers can hardly dispense with a definite creed. Against +the popular conception of the ignorant the Pleiade maintained that +poetry was a high and difficult form of art; against the pedantry +of humanism they maintained that the native tongue of France admitted +of literary art worthy to take its place beside that of Greece or +Rome. The French literary vocabulary, they declared, has excellences +of its own, but it needs to be enriched by technical terms, by words +of local dialects, by prudent adoptions from Greek and Latin, by +judicious developments of the existing families of words, by the +recovery of words that have fallen into disuse. + +It is unjust to the Pleiade to say that they aimed at overloading +poetic diction with neologisms of classical origin; they sought to +innovate with discretion; but they unquestionably aimed at the +formation of a poetic diction distinct from that of prose; they turned +away from simplicity of speech to ingenious periphrasis; they desired +a select, aristocratic idiom for the service of verse; they +recommended a special syntax in imitation of the Latin; for the elder +forms of French poetry they would substitute reproductions or +re-creations of classical forms. Rondeaux, ballades, virelais, +chants royaux, chansons are to be cast aside as _epiceries_; and their +place is to be taken by odes like those of Pindar or of Horace, by +the elegy, satire, epigram, epic, or by newer forms justified by the +practice of Italian masters. Rich but not over-curious rhymes are +to be cultivated, with in general the alternation of masculine and +feminine rhymes; the caesura is to fall in accordance with the meaning. +Ronsard, more liberal than Du Bellay, permits, on the ground of +classical example, the gliding from couplet to couplet without a pause. +"The alexandrine holds in our language the place of heroic verse among +the Greeks and Romans"--in this statement is indicated the chief +service rendered to French poetry by Ronsard and the rest of the +Pleiade; they it was who, by their teaching and example, imposed on +later writers that majestic line, possessing the most varied powers, +capable of the finest achievements, which has yielded itself alike +to the purposes of Racine and to those of Victor Hugo. + +Ronsard and Du Bellay broke with the tradition of the Middle Ages, +and inaugurated the French classical school; it remained for Malherbe, +at a later date, to reform the reformation of the Pleiade, and to +win for himself the glory which properly belongs to his predecessors. +Unfortunately from its origin the French classical school had in it +the spirit of an intellectual aristocracy, which removed it from +popular sympathies; unfortunately, also, the poets of the Pleiade +failed to perceive that the masterpieces of Greece and Rome are +admirable, not because they belong to antiquity, but because they +are founded on the imitation of nature and on ideas of the reason. +They were regarded as authorities equal with nature or independent +of it; and thus while the school of Ronsard did much to renew literary +art, its teaching involved an error which eventually tended to the +sterilisation of art. That error found its correction in the +literature of the seventeenth century, and expressly in the doctrine +set forth by Boileau; yet under the correction some of the +consequences of the error remained. Ronsard and his followers, on +the other hand, never made the assumption, common enough in the +seventeenth century, that poetry could be manufactured by observance +of the rules, nor did they suppose that the total play of emotion +must be rationalised by the understanding; they left a place for the +instinctive movements of poetic sensibility. + +During forty years Ronsard remained the "Prince of Poets." Tasso +sought his advice; the Chancellor Michel de l'Hospital wrote in his +praise; Brantome placed him above Petrarch; Queen Elizabeth and Mary +Stuart sent him gifts; Charles IX. on one occasion invited him to +sit beside the throne. In his last hours he was still occupied with +his art. His death, at the close of 1585, was felt as a national +calamity, and pompous honours were awarded to his tomb. Yet Ronsard, +though ambitious of literary distinction, did not lose his true self +in a noisy fame. His was the delicate nature of an artist; his deafness +perhaps added to his timidity and his love of retirement; we think +of him in his garden, cultivating his roses as "the priest of Flora." + +His work as a poet falls into four periods. From 1550 to 1554 he was +a humanist without discretion or reserve. In the first three books +of the _Odes_ he attempted to rival Pindar; in the _Amours de +Cassandre_ he emulates the glory of Petrarch. From 1554 to 1560, +abandoning his Pindarism, he was in discipleship to Anacreon[1] and +Horace. It is the period of the less ambitious odes found in the fourth +and fifth books, the period of the _Amours de Marie_ and the _Hymnes_. +From 1560 to 1574 he was a poet of the court and of courtly occasions, +an eloquent declaimer on public events in the _Discours des Miseres +de ce Temps_, and the unfortunate epic poet of his unfinished +_Franciade_. During the last ten years of his life he gave freer +expression to his personal feelings, his sadness, his gladness; and +to these years belong the admirable sonnets to Helene de Surgeres, +his autumnal love. + +[Footnote 1: _i.e._ the Anacreontic poems, found, and published in +1554, by Henri Estienne.] + +Ronsard's genius was lyrical and elegiac, but the tendencies of a +time when the great affair was the organisation of social life, and +as a consequence the limitation of individual and personal passions, +were not favourable to the development of lyrical poetry. In his +imitations of Pindar a narrative element checks the flight of song, +and there is a certain unreality in the premeditated attempt to +reproduce the passionate fluctuations and supposed disorder of his +model. The study of Pindar, however, trained Ronsard in the handling +of sustained periods of verse, and interested him in complex lyrical +combinations. His Anacreontic and Horatian odes are far happier; +among these some of his most delightful work is found. If he was +deficient in great ideas, he had delicacy of sentiment and an +exquisite sense of metrical harmony. The power which he possessed +as a narrative poet appears best in episodes or epic fragments. His +ambitious attempt to trace the origin of the French monarchy from +the imaginary Trojan Francus was unfortunate in its subject, and +equally unfortunate in its form--the rhyming decasyllabic verse. + +In pieces which may be called hortatory, the pulpit eloquence, as +it were, of a poet addressing his contemporaries on public matters, +the utterances of a patriot and a citizen moved by pity for his fellows, +such poetry as the _Discours des Miseres de ce Temps_ and the +_Institution pour l'Adolescence du Roi, Charles IX._, Ronsard is +original and impressive, a forerunner of the orator poets of the +seventeenth century. His eclogues show a true feeling for external +nature, touched at times by a tender sadness. When he escapes from +the curiosities and the strain of his less happy Petrarchism, he is +an admirable poet of love in song and sonnet; no more beautiful +variation on the theme of "gather the rosebuds while ye may" exists +than his sonnet _Quand vous serez bien vieille_, unless it be his +dainty ode _Mignonne, allons voir si la Rose_. Passionate in the +deepest and largest sense Ronsard is not; but it was much to be sincere +and tender, to observe just measure, to render a subtle phase of +emotion. In the fine melancholy of his elegiac poetry he is almost +modern. Before all else he is a master of his instrument, an inventor +of new effects and movements of the lyre; in his hands the entire +rhythmical system was renewed or was purified. His dexterity in +various metres was that of a great virtuoso, and it was not the mere +dexterity which conquers difficulties, it was a skill inspired and +sustained by the sentiment of metre. + +Of the other members of the Pleiade, one--Jodelle--is remembered +chiefly in connection with the history of the drama. Baif (1532-89), +son of the French ambassador at Venice, translated from Sophocles +and Terence, imitated Plautus, Petrarchised in sonnets, took from +Virgil's Georgics the inspiration of his _Meteores_, was guided by +the Anacreontic poems in his _Passe-Temps_, and would fain rival +Theognis in his most original work _Les Mimes_, where a moral or +satiric meaning masks behind an allegory or a fable. He desired to +connect poetry more closely with music, and with this end in view +thought to reform the spelling of words and to revive the quantitative +metrical system of classical verse.[2] REMI BELLEAU (1528-77) +practised the Horatian ode and the sonnet; translated Anacreon; +followed the Neapolitan Sannazaro in his _Bergerie_ of connected +prose and verse, where the shepherds are persons of distinction +arrayed in a pastoral disguise; and adapted the mediaeval _lapidary_ +(with imitations of the pseudo-Orpheus) to the taste of the +Renaissance in his _Amours et Nouveaux Eschanges des Pierres +Precieuses_. These little myths and metamorphoses of gems are +ingenious and graceful. The delicate feeling for nature which Belleau +possessed is seen at its best in the charming song _Avril_, included +in his somewhat incoherent _Bergerie_. Among his papers was found, +after his death, a comedy, _La Reconnue_, which, if it has little +dramatic power, shows a certain instinct for satire. + +[Footnote 2: The "Baifin verse," French not classical, is of fifteen +syllables, divided into hemistichs of seven and eight syllables.] + +These are minor lights in the poetical constellation; but the star +of JOACHIM DU BELLAY shines with a ray which, if less brilliant than +that of Ronsard, has a finer and more penetrating influence. Du Bellay +was born about 1525, at Lire, near Angers, of an illustrious family. +His youth was unhappy, and a plaintive melancholy haunts his verse. +Like Ronsard he suffered from deafness, and he has humorously sung +its praises. _Olive_, fifty sonnets in honour of his Platonic or +Petrarchan mistress, Mlle. de Viole (the letters of whose name are +transposed to Olive), appeared almost at the same moment as the +earliest _Odes_ of Ronsard; but before long he could mock in sprightly +stanzas the fantasies and excesses of the Petrarchan style. It was +not until his residence in Rome (1551) as intendant of his cousin +Cardinal du Bellay, the French ambassador, that he found his real +self. In his _Antiquites de Rome_ he expresses the sentiment of ruins, +the pathos of fallen greatness, as it had never been expressed before. +The intrigues, corruption, and cynicism of Roman society, his broken +health, an unfortunate passion for the Faustina of his Latin verses, +and the longing for his beloved province and little Lire depressed +his spirits; in the sonnets of his _Regrets_ he embodied his intimate +feelings, and that lively spirit of satire which the baseness of the +Pontifical court summoned into life. This satiric vein had, indeed, +already shown itself in his mocking counsel to _le Poete courtisan_: +the courtier poet is to be a gentleman who writes at ease; he is not +to trouble himself with study of the ancients; he is to produce only +pieces of occasion, and these in a negligent style; the rarer and +the smaller they are the better; and happily at last he may cease +to bring forth even these. Possibly his _poete courtisan_ was Melin +de Saint-Gelais. As a rural poet Du Bellay is charming; his _Jeux +Rustiques_, while owing much to the _Lusus_ of the Venetian poet +Navagero, have in them the true breath of the fields; it is his _douce_ +province of Anjou which inspires him; the song to _Venus_ in its +happiest stanzas is only less admirable than the _Vanneur de Ble_, +with which more than any other single poem the memory of Du Bellay +is associated. The personal note, which is in general absent from +the poetry of Ronsard, is poignantly and exquisitely audible in the +best pieces of Du Bellay. He did not live long enough to witness the +complete triumph of the master; in 1560 he died exhausted, at the +age of thirty-five. + +The Pleiade served literature by their attention to form, by their +skill in poetic instrumentation; but they were incapable of +interpreting life in any large and original way. In the hands of their +successors poetry languished for want of an inspiring theme. PHILIPPE +DESPORTES (1546-1606) was copious and skilful in his reproduction +and imitation of Italian models; as a courtier poet he reduced +literary flattery to a fine art; but his mannered graces are cold, +his pretence of passion is a laboured kind of _esprit_. A copy of +his works annotated by the hand of Malherbe survives; the comments, +severe and just, remained unpublished, probably because the writer +was unwilling to pursue an adversary whom death had removed from his +way. Jean Bertaut, his disciple, is a lesser Desportes. Satire was +developed by Jean Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, and to him we owe an _Art +Poetique_ (1575) which adapts to his own time the teaching of +Aristotle and Horace. More interesting than these is JEAN PASSERAT +(1534-1602), whose spirit is that of old France in its mirth and +mockery, and whose more serious verse has the patriotism of French +citizenship; his field was small, but he tilled his field gaily and +courageously. The villanelle _J'ai perdu ma tourterelle_ and the ode +on May-day show Passerat's art in its happiest moments. + +The way for a reform in dramatic poetry had been in some degree +prepared by plays of the sixteenth century, written in Latin--the +work of Buchanan, Muret, and others--by translations from Terence, +Sophocles, Euripides, translations from Italian comedy, and +renderings of one Spanish model, the highly-popular _Celestina_ of +Fernando de Rojas. The Latin plays were acted in schools. The first +performance of a play in French belonging to the new tendency was +that of Ronsard's translation of the Plutus of Aristophanes, in 1549, +by his friends of the College de Coqueret. It was only by amateurs, +and before a limited scholarly group of spectators, that the new +classical tragedies could be presented. Gradually both tragedy and +comedy came to be written solely with a view to publication in print. +The mediaeval drama still held the stage. + +JODELLE'S _Cleopatre_ (1552), performed with enthusiasm by amateurs, +was therefore a false start; it was essentially literary, and not +theatrical. Greek models were crudely imitated, with a lack of almost +everything that gave life and charm to the Greek drama. Seneca was +more accessible than Sophocles, and his faults were easy to +imitate--his moralisings, his declamatory passages, his excess of +emphasis. The so-called Aristotelian dramatic canons, formulated by +Scaliger in his Poetic, were rigorously applied. Unity of place is +preserved in _Cleopatre_; the time of the action is reduced to twelve +hours; there are interminable monologues, choral moralities, a ghost +(in Seneca's manner), a narration of the heroine's death; of action +there is none, the stage stands still. If Jodelle's _Didon_ has some +literary merit, it has little dramatic vitality. The oratorical +energy of Grevin's _Jules Cesar_, the studies of history in _La Mort +de Daire_ and _La Mort d'Alexandre_, by Jacques de La Taille, do not +compensate their deficiency in the qualities required by the theatre. +One tragedy alone, _La Sultane_, by Gabriel Bounin (1561), amid its +violences and extravagances, shows a feeling for dramatic action and +scenic effect. + +Could the mediaeval mystery and classical tragedy be reconciled? The +Protestant Reformer Beze, in his _Sacrifice d'Abraham_, attempted +something of the kind; his sacred drama is a mystery by its subject, +a tragedy in the conduct of the action. Three tragedies on the life +of David--one of them admirable in its rendering of the love of Michol, +daughter of Saul--were published in 1556 by Loys Des-Masures: the +stage arrangements are those of the mediaeval drama, but the unity +of time is observed, and chorus and semi-chorus respond in alternate +strains. No junction of dramatic systems essentially opposed proved +in the end possible. When Jean de La Taille wrote on a biblical subject +in his _Saul le Furieux_, a play remarkable for its impressive +conception and development of the character of Saul, he composed it +_selon l'art_, and in the manner of "the old tragic authors." He is +uncompromising in his classical method; the mediaeval drama seemed +inartificial to him in the large concessions granted by the spectators +to the authors and actors; he would have what passes on the stage +approximate, at least, to reality; the unities were accepted not +merely on the supposed authority of Aristotle, but because they were +an aid in attaining verisimilitude. + +The most eminent name in the history of French tragedy of the sixteenth +century is that of ROBERT GARNIER (1534-90). His discipleship to +Seneca was at first that of a pupil who reproduces with exaggeration +his master's errors. Sensible of the want of movement in his scenes, +he proceeded in later plays to accumulate action upon action without +reducing the action to unity. At length, in _Les Juives_ (1583), which +exhibits the revolt of the Jewish King and his punishment by +Nabuchodonosor, he attained something of true pity and terror, beauty +of characterisation, beauty of lyrical utterance in the plaintive +songs of the chorus. Garnier was assuredly a poet; but even in _Les +Juives_, the best tragedy of his century, he was not a master of +dramatic art. If anywhere he is in a true sense dramatic, it is in +his example of the new form of tragi-comedy. _Bradamante_, derived +from the _Orlando Furioso_ of Ariosto, shows not only poetic +imagination, but a certain feeling for the requirements of the +theatre. + +Comedy in the sixteenth century, dating from Jodelle's _Eugene_, is +either a development of the mediaeval farce, indicated in point of +form by the retention of octosyllabic verse, or an importation from +the drama of Italy. Certain plays of Aristophanes, of Terence, of +Plautus were translated; but, in truth, classical models had little +influence. Grevin, while professing originality, really follows the +traditions of the farce. Jean de La Taille, in his prose comedy _Les +Corrivaux_, prepared the way for the easy and natural dialogue of +the comic stage. The most remarkable group of sixteenth-century +comedies are those translated in prose from the Italian, with such +obvious adaptations as might suit them to French readers, by PIERRE +DE LARIVEY (1540 to after 1611). Of the family of the Giunti, he had +gallicised his own name (_Giunti_, i.e. _Arrives_); and the +originality of his plays is of a like kind with that of his name; +they served at least to establish an Italian tradition for comedy, +which was not without an influence in the seventeenth century; they +served to advance the art of dialogue. If any comedy of the period +stands out as superior to its fellows, it is _Les Contents_ (1584), +by Odet de Turnebe, a free imitation of Italian models united with +something imported from the Spanish _Celestina_. Its intrigue is an +Italian imbroglio; but there are lively and natural scenes, such as +can but rarely be found among the predecessors of Moliere. In general +the comedy of the sixteenth century is wildly confused in plot, +conventional in its types of character, and too often as grossly +indecent as the elder farces. Before the century closed, the pastoral +drama had been discovered, and received influences from both Italy +and Spain; the soil was being prepared for that delicate flower of +poetry, but as yet its nurture was little understood, nor indeed can +it be said to have ever taken kindly to the climate of France. + +While on the one hand the tendencies of the Pleiade may be described +as exotic, going forth, as they did, to capture the gifts of classical +and Italian literature, on the other hand they pleaded strenuously +that thus only could French literature attain its highest +possibilities. In the scholarship of the time, side by side with the +humanism which revived and restored the culture of Greece and Rome, +was another humanism which was essentially national. The historical +origins of France were studied for the first time with something of +a critical spirit by CLAUDE FAUCHET in his _Antiquites Gauloises et +Francoises_ (1579-1601). His _Recueil de l'Origine de la Langue et +Poesie Francoise_, in spite of its errors, was an effort towards +French philology; and in calling attention to the trouveres and their +works, Fauchet may be considered a remote master of the school of +modern literary research. ESTIENNE PASQUIER (1529-1615), the jurist +who maintained in a famous action the cause of the University against +the Jesuits, in his _Recherches de la France_ treated with learning +and vigour various important points in French history--civil and +ecclesiastical--language, literary history, and the foundation of +universities. HENRI ESTIENNE (1531-98), who entered to the full into +the intoxication of classical humanism, was patriotic in his +reverence for his native tongue. In a trilogy of little treatises +(1565-79), written with much spirit, he maintained that of modern +languages the French has the nearest affinity to the Greek, attempted +to establish its superiority to Italian, and much more to Spanish, +and mocked the contemporary fashion of Italianised French. + +The study of history is supported on the one hand by such erudite +research as that of Fauchet and Pasquier; on the other hand it is +supported by political philosophy and speculation. To philosophy, +in the wider sense of the word, the sixteenth century made no large +and coherent contribution; the Platonism, Pyrrhonism, Epicureanism, +Stoicism of the Renaissance met and clashed together; the rival +theologies of the Roman and Reformed Churches contended in a struggle +for life. PIERRE DE LA RAMEE (1515-72) expressed the revolt of +rationalism against the methods of the schoolmen and the authority +of Aristotle; but he ordinarily wrote in Latin, and his _Dialectique_, +the first philosophical work in the vulgar tongue, hardly falls within +the province of literary history. + +The philosophy of politics is represented by one great name, that +of JEAN BODIN (1529-96), whose _Republique_ may entitle him to be +styled the Montesquieu of the Renaissance. In an age which tended +towards the formation of great monarchies he was vigorously +monarchical. The patriarchal power of the sovereign might well be +thought needful, in the second half of the century, as a barrier +against anarchy; but Bodin was no advocate of tyranny; he condemned +slavery, and held that religious persecution can only lead to a +dissolution of religious belief. A citizen is defined by Bodin as +a free man under the supreme government of another; like Montesquieu, +he devotes attention to the adaptation of government to the varieties +of race and climate. The attempts at a general history of France in +the earlier part of the sixteenth century preserved the arid methods +and unilluminated style of the mediaeval chronicles;[3] in the second +half of the century they imitated with little skill the models of +antiquity. Histories of contemporary events in Europe were written +with conscientious impartiality by Lancelot de la Popeliniere, and +with personal and party passion, struggling against his well-meant +resolves, by Agrippa d'Aubigne. The great _Historia mei Temporis_ +of De Thou, faithful and austere in its record of fact, was a +highly-important contribution to literature, but it is written in +Latin. + +[Footnote 3: The narrative of the life of Bayard, by his secretary, +writing under the name of "Le Loyal Serviteur" (1527), is admirable +for its clearness, grace, and simplicity.] + +With a peculiar gift for narrative, the French have been long +pre-eminent as writers of memoirs, and already in the sixteenth +century such personal recitals are numerous. The wars of Francois +I. and of Henri II. gave abundant scope for the display of individual +enterprise and energy; the civil wars breathed into the deeds of men +an intensity of passion; the actors had much to tell, and a motive +for telling it each in his own interest. + +The _Commentaires_ of BLAISE DE MONLUC (1502-77) are said to have +been named by Henri IV. "the soldier's Bible"; the Bible is one which +does not always inculcate mercy or peace. Monluc, a Gascon of +honourable birth and a soldier of fortune, had the instinct of battle +in his blood; from a soldier he rose through every rank to be the +King's lieutenant of Guyenne and a Marshal of France; during fifty +years he fought, as a daring captain rather than as a great general, +amorous of danger, and at length, terribly disfigured by wounds, he +sat down, not to rest, but to wield his pen as if it were a sword +of steel. His _Commentaires_ were meant to be a manual for hardy +combatants, and what model could he set before the young aspirant +so animating as himself? In his earlier wars against the foreign foes +of his country, Monluc was indeed a model of military prowess; the +civil wars added cruelty to his courage; after a fashion he was +religious, and a short shrift and a cord were good enough for heretics +and adversaries of his King. An unlettered soldier, Monluc, by virtue +of his energy of character and directness of speech, became a most +impressive and spirited narrator. His Memoirs close with a sigh for +stern and inviolable solitude. Among the Pyrenean rocks he had +formerly observed a lonely monastery, in view at once of Spain and +France; there it was his wish to end his days. + +From the opposite party in the great religious and political strife +came the temperate Memoirs of Lanoue, the simple and beautiful record +of her husband's life by Madame de Mornay, and that of his own career, +written in an old age of gloom and passion, by D'Aubigne. The ideas +of Henri IV.--himself a royal author in his _Lettres missives_--are +embodied in the _OEconomies Royales_ of the statesman Sully, whose +secretaries were employed for the occasion in laboriously reciting +his words and deeds as they had learnt them from their chief. The +superficial aspects of the life of society, the manners and morals--or +lack of morals--of the time, are lightly and brightly exhibited by +PIERRE DE BOURDEILLE, lord of BRANTOME, Catholic abbe, soldier and +courtier, observer of the great world, gossip of amorous secrets. +His _Vies des Hommes Illustres et des Grands Capitaines_, his _Vies +des Dames Illustres et des Dames Galantes_, and his _Memoires_ +contained matter too dangerous, perhaps, for publication during his +lifetime, but the author cherished the thought of his posthumous +renown. Brantome, wholly indifferent to good and evil, had a vivid +interest in life; virtue and vice concerned him alike and equally, +if only they had vivacity, movement, colour; and although, as with +Monluc, it was a physical calamity that made him turn to authorship, +he wrote with a naive art, an easy grace, and abundant spirit. To +correct and complete Brantome's narrative as it related to herself, +Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, first wife of Henri IV., prepared her +unfinished Memoirs, which opens the delightful series of +autobiographies and reminiscences of women. Her account of the night +of St. Bartholomew is justly celebrated; the whole record, indeed, +is full of interest; but there were passages of her life which it +was natural that she should pass over in silence; her sins of omission, +as Bayle has observed, are many.[4] + +[Footnote 4: The _Memoires-Journeaux_ of Pierre de l'Estoile are a +great magazine of the gains of the writer's disinterested curiosity. +The _Lettres_ of D'Ossat and the _Negotiations_ of the President +Jeannin are of importance in the records of diplomacy.] + +The controversies of the civil wars produced a militant literature, +in which the extreme parties contended with passion, while between +these a middle party, the aspirants to conciliation, pleaded for the +ways of prudence, and, if possible, of peace. FRANCOIS HOTMAN, the +effect of whose Latin _Franco-Gallia_, a political treatise +presenting the Huguenot demands, has been compared to that of +Rousseau's _Contrat Social_, launched his eloquent invective against +the Cardinal de Lorraine, in the _Epistre envoyee au Tigre de la +France_. Hubert Languet, the devoted friend of Philip Sidney, in his +_Vindiciae contra Tyrannos_, justified rebellion against princes who +violate by their commands the laws of God. D'Aubigne, in his +_Confession de Sancy_, attacked with characteristic ardour the +apostates and waverers of the time, above the rest that threefold +recanter of his faith, Harlay de Sancy. Marnix de Sainte-Aldegonde, +in his _Tableau des Differands de la Religion_, mingles theological +erudition with his raillery against the Roman communion. Henri +Estienne applied the spirit and learning of a great humanist to +religious controversy in the second part of his _Apologie pour +Herodote_; the marvellous tales of the Greek historian may well be +true, he sarcastically maintains, when in this sixteenth century the +abuses of the Roman Church seem to pass all belief. On the other hand, +Du Perron, a cardinal in 1604, replied to the arguments and citations +of the heretics. As the century drew towards its close, violence +declined; the struggle was in a measure appeased. In earlier days +the Chancellor, Michel de l'Hospital, had hoped to establish harmony +between the rival parties; grief for the massacre of St. Bartholomew +hastened his death. The learned Duplessis-Mornay, leader and guide +of the Reformed Churches of France, a devoted servant of Henri of +Navarre, while fervent in his own beliefs, was too deeply attached +to the common faith of Christianity to be an extreme partisan. The +reconciliation of Henri IV. with the Church of Rome, which delivered +France from anarchy, was, however, a grief to some of his most loyal +supporters, and of these Duplessis-Mornay was the most eminent. + +The cause of Henri against the League was served by the manuscript +circulation of a prose satire, with interspersed pieces of verse, +the work of a group of writers, moderate Catholics or converted +Protestants, who loved their country and their King, the _Satire +Menipee_.[5] When it appeared in print (1594; dated on the title-page +1593) the cause was won; the satire rose upon a wave of success, like +a gleaming crest of bitter spray. It is a parody of the Estates of +the League which had been ineffectually convoked to make choice of +a king. Two Rabelaisian charlatans, one from Spain, one from Lorraine, +offer their drugs for sale in the court of the Louvre; the virtues +of the Spanish Catholicon, a divine electuary, are manifold--it will +change the blackest criminal into a spotless lamb, it will transform +a vulgar bonnet to a cardinal's hat, and at need can accomplish a +score of other miracles. Presently the buffoon Estates file past to +their assembly; the hall in which they meet is tapestried with +grotesque scenes from history; the order of the sitting is determined, +and the harangues begin, harangues in which each speaker exposes his +own ambitions, greeds, hypocrisies, and egoism, until Monsieur +d'Aubray, the orator of the _tiers etat_, closes the debate with a +speech in turn indignant, ironical, or grave in its commiseration +for the popular wrongs--an utterance of bourgeois honesty and good +sense. The writers--Canon Pierre Leroy; Gillot, clerk-advocate of +the Parliament of Paris; Rapin, a lettered combatant at Ivry; Jean +Passerat, poet and commentator on Rabelais; Chrestien and Pithou, +two Protestants discreetly converted by force of events--met in a +room of Gillot's house, where, according to the legend, Boileau was +afterwards born, and there concocted the venom of their pamphlet. +Its wit, in spite of some extravagances and the tedium of certain +pages, is admirable; farce and comedy, sarcasm and moral prudence +alternate; and it had the great good fortune of a satire, that of +coming at the lucky moment. + +[Footnote 5: Varro, who to a certain extent copied from Menippus the +Gadarene, had called his satires _Saturae Menippeae_; hence the +title.] + +The French Huguenots were not without their poets. Two of +these--Guillaume Saluste, Seigneur du Bartas, and Agrippa +d'Aubigne--are eminent. The fame of DU BARTAS (1544-90) was indeed +European. Ronsard sent him a pen of gold, and feared at a later time +the rivalry of his renown; Tasso drew inspiration from his verse; +the youthful Milton read him with admiration in the rendering by +Sylvester; long afterwards Goethe honoured him with praise beyond +his deserts. To read his poems now, notwithstanding passages of vivid +description and passages of ardent devotional feeling, would need +rare literary fortitude. His originality lies in the fact that while +he was a disciple of the Pleiade, a disciple crude, intemperate, and +provincial, he deserted Greece and Rome, and drew his subjects from +Hebraic sources. His _Judith_ (1573), composed by the command of +Jeanne d'Albret, has more of Lucan than of Virgil in its over-emphatic +style. _La Sepmaine, ou la Creation en Sept Journees_, appeared in +1578, and within a few years had passed through thirty editions. Du +Bartas is always copious, sometimes brilliant, sometimes majestic; +but laboured and rhetorical description, never ending and still +beginning, fatigues the mind; an encyclopaedia of the works of +creation weighs heavily upon the imagination; we sigh for the arrival +of the day of rest. + +THEODORE-AGRIPPA D'AUBIGNE (1550-1630) was not among the admirers +of Du Bartas. His natural temper was framed for pleasure; at another +time he might have been known only as a poet of the court, of lighter +satire, and of love; the passions of the age transformed him into +an ardent and uncompromising combatant. His classical culture was +wide and exact; at ten years old he translated the _Crito_; Latin, +Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish were at his command. He might, had +France been at peace with herself, have appeared in literature as +a somewhat belated Ronsardist; but his hereditary cause became his +own. While still a child he accepted from his father, in presence +of the withering heads of the conspirators of Amboise, the oath of +immitigable vengeance. Pursuits, escapes, the camp, the battle-field, +the prison, the court made up no small part of his life of vicissitude +and of unalterable resolve. He roused Henri of Navarre from the +lethargy of pleasure; he warned the King against the crime of +apostasy; he dreaded the mass, but could cheerfully have accepted +the stake. Extreme in his rage of party, he yet in private affairs +could show good sense and generosity. His elder years were darkened +by what he regarded as treason in his King, and by the falling away +from the faith of that son who, by an irony of fate, became the father +of Madame de Maintenon. Four times condemned to death, he died in +exile at the age of eighty. + +D'Aubigne's satirical tale, _Les Aventures du Baron de Faeneste_, +contrasts the man who _appears_--spreading his plumes in the sunshine +of the court--with the man who _is_, the man who lives upon his estate, +among his rustic neighbours, tilling his fields and serving his people +and his native land. As an elegiac poet D'Aubigne is little more than +a degenerate issue from the Pleiade. It is in his vehement poem of +mourning and indignation and woe, _Les Tragiques_, begun in 1577 but +not published till 1616, that his power is fully manifested. To +D'Aubigne, as its author, the characterisation of Sainte-Beuve +exactly applies: "Juvenal du xvi. siecle, apre, austere, inexorable, +herisse d'hyperboles, etincelant de beautes, rachetant une rudesse +grossiere par une sublime energie." In seven books it tells of the +misery of France, the treachery of princes, the abuse of public law +and justice, the fires and chains of religious persecution, the +vengeance of God against the enemies of the saints, and the final +judgment of sinners, when air and fire and water become the accusers +of those who have perverted the powers of nature to purposes of cruelty. +The poem is ill composed, its rhetoric is often strained or hard and +metallic, its unrelieved horrors oppress the heart; but the cry of +true passion is heard in its finer pages; from amid the turmoil and +smoke, living tongues of flame seem to dart forth which illuminate +the gloom. The influence of _Les Tragiques_ may still be felt in +passages of Victor Hugo's fulgurant eloquence. + +In the midst of strife, however, there were men who pursued the +disinterested service of humanity and whose work made for peace. The +great surgeon Ambroise Pare, full of tolerance and deeply pious, +advanced his healing art on the battle-field or amid the ravages of +pestilence, and left a large contribution to the literature of science. +Bernard Palissy, a devout Huguenot, was not only the inventor of +"rustic figulines," the designer of enamelled cups and platters, but +a true student of nature, who would substitute the faithful +observation of phenomena for vain and ambitious theory. Olivier de +Serres, another disciple of Calvin, cultivated his fields, helped +to enrich France by supporting Henri IV. in the introduction of the +industry in silk, and amassed his knowledge and experience in his +admirably-written _Theatre d'Agriculture_. At a later date Antoine +de Montchrestien, adventurous and turbulent in his Protestant zeal, +the writer of tragedies which connect the sixteenth century with the +classical school of later years, became the advocate of a +protectionist and a colonial policy in his _Traicte de l'OEconomie +Politique_; the style of his essay towards economic reform has some +of the passion and enthusiasm of a poet. + +A refuge from the troubles and vicissitudes of the time was sought +by some in a Christianised Stoicism. Guillaume du Vair (1556-1621), +eminent as a magistrate, did not desert his post of duty; he pleaded +eloquently, as chief orator of the middle party of conciliation, on +behalf of unity under Henri of Navarre. In his treatise on French +eloquence he endeavoured to elevate the art of public speaking above +laboured pedantry to true human discourse. But while taking part in +the contentious progress of events, he saw the flow of human affairs +as from an elevated plateau. In the conversations with friends which +form his treatise _De la Constance et Consolation es Calamites +Publiques_, Du Vair's counsels are those of courage and resignation, +not unmingled with hope. He rendered into French the stoical morals +of Epictetus; and in his own _Sainte Philosophie_ and _Philosophie +Morale des Stoiques_ he endeavoured, with honest purpose, rather than +with genius, to ally speculation to religion, and to show how human +reason can lead the way to those ethical truths which are the guiding +lights of conduct. + +Perhaps certitude sufficient for human life may be found by +limitation; a few established truths will, after all, carry us from +the cradle to the grave; and beyond the bounds of certitude lies a +limitless and fascinating field for observation and dubious +conjecture. Amid the multitude of new ideas which the revival of +antiquity brought with it, amid the hot disputes of the rival churches, +amid the fierce contentions of civil war, how delightful to possess +one's soul in quiet, to be satisfied with the needful knowledge, small +though it be, which is vouchsafed to us, and to amuse the mind with +every opinion and every varying humour of that curious and wayward +creature man! And who so wayward, who so wavering as one's self in +all those parts of our composite being which are subject to the play +of time and circumstance? Such, in an age of confusion working towards +clearness, an age of belligerency tending towards concord, were the +reflections of a moralist, the most original of his century--Michel +de Montaigne. + +MICHEL EYQUEM, SEIGNEUR DE MONTAIGNE, was born at a chateau in +Perigord, in the year 1533. His father, whom Montaigne always +remembered with affectionate reverence, was a man of original ideas. +He entrusted the infant to the care of peasants, wishing to attach +him to the people; educated him in Latin as if his native tongue; +roused him at morning from sleep to the sound of music. From his sixth +to his thirteenth year Montaigne was at the College de Guyenne, where +he took the leading parts in Latin tragedies composed by Muret and +Buchanan. In 1554 he succeeded his father as councillor in the court +_des aides_ of Perigueux, the members of which were soon afterwards +incorporated in the Parliament of Bordeaux. But nature had not +destined Montaigne for the duties of the magistracy; he saw too many +sides of every question; he chose rather to fail in justice than in +humanity. In 1565 he acquired a large fortune by marriage, and having +lost his father, he retired from public functions in 1570, to enjoy +a tranquil existence of meditation, and of rambling through books. +He had published, a year before, in fulfilment of his father's desire, +a translation of the _Theologia Naturalis_ of Raimond de Sebonde, +a Spanish philosopher of the fifteenth century; and now he occupied +himself in preparing for the press the writings of his dead friend +La Boetie. Love for his father and love for his friend were the two +passions of Montaigne's life. From 1571 to 1580 he dwelt in retreat, +in company with his books and his ideas, indulging his humour for +tranquil freedom of the mind. It was his custom to enrich the margins +of his books with notes, and his earliest essays may be regarded as +an extension of such notes; Plutarch and Seneca were, above all, his +favourites; afterwards, the volume which he read with most enjoyment, +and annotated most curiously, was that of his own life. + +And, indeed, Montaigne's daily life, with outward monotony and +internal variety, was a pleasant miscellany on which to comment. He +was of a middle temperament, "between the jovial and the melancholic"; +a lover of solitude, yet the reverse of morose; choosing bright +companions rather than sad; able to be silent, as the mood took him, +or to gossip; loyal and frank; a hater of hypocrisy and falsehood; +a despiser of empty ceremony; disposed to interpret all things to +the best; cheerful among his children; careless of exercising +authority; incapable of household management; trustful and kind +towards his neighbours; indulgent in his judgments, yet warm in his +admiration of old, heroic virtue. His health, which in boyhood had +been robust, was shaken in middle life by an internal malady. He +travelled in the hope of finding strength, visiting Germany, +Switzerland, Italy, Tyrol, and observing, with a serious amusement, +the varieties of men and manners. While still absent from France, +in 1581, he learned that he had been elected mayor of Bordeaux; he +hesitated in accepting an honourable but irksome public office; the +King permitted no dallying, and Montaigne obeyed. Two years later +the mayor was re-elected; it was a period of difficulty; a Catholic +and a Royalist, he had a heretic brother, and himself yielded to the +charm of Henri of Navarre; "for the Ghibelline I was a Guelph, for +the Guelph a Ghibelline." When, in 1585, pestilence raged in Bordeaux, +Montaigne's second period of office had almost expired; he quitted +the city, and the election of his successor took place in his absence. +His last years were brightened by the friendship--almost filial--of +Mlle. de Gournay, an ardent admirer, and afterwards editor, of the +_Essais_. In 1592 Montaigne died, when midway in his sixtieth year. + +The first two books of the _Essais_ were published by their author +in 1580; in 1588 they appeared in an augmented text, with the addition +of the third book. The text superintended by Mlle. de Gournay, based +upon a revised and enlarged copy left by Montaigne, is of the year +1595. + +The unity of the book, which makes no pretence to unity, may be found +in the fact that all its topics are concerned with a common +subject--the nature of man; that the writer accepts himself as the +example of humanity most open to his observation; and that the same +tranquil, yet insatiable curiosity is everywhere present. Man, as +conceived by Montaigne, is of all creatures the most variable, +unstable, inconstant. The species includes the saint and the brute, +the hero and the craven, while between the extremes lies the average +man, who may be anything that nature, custom, or circumstances make +him. And as the species varies indefinitely, so each individual varies +endlessly from himself: his conscience controls his temperament; his +temperament betrays his conscience; external events transform him +from what he was. Do we seek to establish our moral being upon the +rock of philosophical dogma? The rock gives way under our feet, and +scatters as if sand. Such truth as we can attain by reason is relative +truth; let us pass through knowledge to a wise acceptance of our +ignorance; let us be contented with the probabilities which are all +that our reason can attain. The truths of conduct, as far as they +are ascertainable, were known long since to the ancient moralists. +Can any virtue surpass the old Roman virtue? We believe in God, +although we know little about His nature or His operations; and why +should we disbelieve in Christianity, which happens to be part of +the system of things under which we are born? But why, also, should +we pay such a compliment to opinions different from our own as to +burn a heretic because he prefers the Pope of Geneva to the Pope of +Rome? Let each of us ask himself, "Que sais-je?"--"What do I really +know?" and the answer will serve to temper our zeal. + +While Montaigne thus saps our confidence in the conclusions of the +intellect, when they pass beyond a narrow bound, he pays a homage +to the force of will; his admiration for the heroic men of Plutarch +is ardent. An Epicurean by temperament, he is a Stoic through his +imagination; but for us and for himself, who are no heroes, the +appropriate form of Stoical virtue is moderation within our sphere, +and a wise indifference, or at most a disinterested curiosity, in +matters which lie beyond that sphere. Let us resign ourselves to life, +such as it is; let us resign ourselves to death; and let the +resignation be cheerful or even gay. To spend ourselves in attempted +reforms of the world, of society, of governments, is vain. The world +will go its own way; it is for us to accept things as they are, to +observe the laws of our country because it is ours, to smile at them +if we please, and to extract our private gains from a view of the +reformers, the enthusiasts, the dogmatists, the credulous, the +combatants; there is one heroism possible for us--the heroism of good +sense. "It is an absolute perfection, and as it were divine," so we +read on the last page of Florio's translation of the _Essais_, "for +a man to know how to enjoy his being loyally. We seek for other +conditions because we understand not the use of ours; and go out of +ourselves, forasmuch as we know not what abiding there is. We may +long enough get upon stilts, for be we upon them, yet must we go with +our legs. And sit we upon the highest throne of the world, yet sit +we upon our own tail. The best and most commendable lives, and best +pleasing me are (in my conceit), those which with order are fitted, +and with decorum are ranged, to the common mould and human model; +but without wonder or extravagancy. Now hath old age need to be handled +more tenderly. Let us recommend it unto that God who is the protector +of health and fountain of all wisdom; but blithe and social." And +with a stanza of Epicurean optimism from Horace the Essay closes. + +Such, or somewhat after this fashion, is the doctrine of Montaigne. +It is conveyed to the reader without system, in the most informal +manner, in a series of discourses which seem to wander at their own +will, resembling a bright and easy conversation, vivid with imagery, +enlivened by anecdote and citation, reminiscences from history, +observations of curious manners and customs, offering constantly to +view the person of Montaigne himself in the easiest undress. The style, +although really carefully studied and superintended, has an air of +light facility, hardly interposing between the author and his reader; +the book is of all books the most sociable, a living companion rather +than a book, playful and humorous, amiable and well bred, learned +without pedantry, and wise without severity. + +During the last three years of his life Montaigne enjoyed the +friendship of a disciple who was already celebrated for his eloquence +as a preacher. PIERRE CHARRON (1541-1603), legist and theologian, +under the influence of Montaigne's ideas, aspired to be a philosopher. +It was as a theologian that he wrote his book of the _Trois Verites_, +which attempts to demonstrate the existence of God, the truth of +Christianity, and the exclusive orthodoxy of the Roman communion. +It was as a philosopher, in the _Traite de la Sagesse_, that he +systematised the informal scepticism of Montaigne. Instead of +putting the question, "Que sais-je?" Charron ventures the assertion, +"Je ne sais." He exhibits man's weakness, misery, and bondage to the +passions; gives counsel for the enfranchisement of the mind; and +studies the virtues of justice, prudence, temperance, and valiance. +God has created man, says Charron, to know the truth; never can he +know it of himself or by human means, and one who despairs of reason +is in the best position for accepting divine instruction; a Pyrrhonist +at least will never be a heretic; even if religion be regarded as +an invention of man, it is an invention which has its uses. Not a +few passages of the _Sagesse_ are directly borrowed, with slight +rehandling, from Montaigne and from Du Vair; but, instead of +Montaigne's smiling agnosticism, we have a grave and formal +indictment of humanity; we miss the genial humour and kindly temper +of the master; we miss the amiable egotism and the play of a versatile +spirit; we miss the charm of an incomparable literary style. + + + + +BOOK THE THIRD +_THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY_ + + + + +CHAPTER I +LITERARY FREEDOM AND LITERARY ORDER + + +With the restoration of order under Henri IV. the delights of peace +began to be felt; a mundane society, polished and pleasure-loving, +began to be constituted, and before many years had passed the +influence of women and of the _salon_ appeared in literature. Should +such a society be permitted to remain oblivious to spiritual truth, +or to repose on the pillow of scepticism provided by Charron and +Montaigne? Might it not be captured for religion, if religion were +presented in its most gracious aspect, as a source of peace and joy, +a gentle discipline of the heart? If one who wore the Christian armour +should throw over his steel some robe of courtly silk, with floral +adornments, might he not prove a persuasive champion of the Cross? +Such was the hope of FRANCOIS DE SALES (1567-1622), Bishop of Geneva, +when, in 1608, he published his _Introduction a la Vie Devote_. The +angelic doctor charmed by his mere presence, his grace of person, +his winning smile, his dove's eyes; he showed how amiable piety might +be; his eloquence was festooned with blossoms; he strewed the path +to heaven with roses; he conquered by docility; yet under his +sweetness lay strength, and to methodise and popularise moral +self-superintendence was to achieve much. The _Traite de l'Amour de +Dieu_ (1616), while it expounds the highest reaches of mystical +devotion, yet presents religion as accessible to every child of God. +With his tender and ardent devotion, something of a poet's sentiment +for nature was united; but mysticism and poetry were both subservient +to his aim of regulating the conduct of the heart; he desired to show +how one may remain in the world, and yet not be of the world; by personal +converse and by his spiritual letters he became the director of +courtiers and of ladies. The motto of the literary Academy which he +founded at Annecy expresses his spirit--_flores fructusque +perennes_--flowers for their own sake, but chiefly for the sake of +fruit. Much of the genius for holiness of the courtly saint has passed +into the volume of reminiscences by Bishop Camus, his companion and +disciple--_l'Esprit de Saint Francois de Sales_. + +A mundane society, however, where fine gentlemen and ladies meet to +admire and be admired, needs other outlets for its imagination than +that of the primrose way to Paradise. The labour of the fields had +inspired Olivier de Serres with the prose Georgics of his _Theatre +d'Agriculture_, a work directed towards utility; the romance of the +fields, and the pastoral, yet courtly, loves of a French Arcady, were +the inspiration of the endless prose bucolics found in the _Astree_ +of HONORE D'URFE. The Renaissance delight in the pastoral had passed +from Italy to Spain; through the _Diana_ of the Spanish Montemayor +it passed to France. After a period of turbulent strife there was +a fascination in visions of a peace, into which, if warfare entered, +the strange irruption only enhanced an habitual calm. A whole +generation waited long to learn the issue of the passion of Celadon +and Astree. The romance, of which the earliest part appeared in 1610, +or earlier, was not completely published until 1627, when its author +was no longer living.[1] The scene is laid in the fields of d'Urfe's +familiar Forez and on the banks of the Lignon; the time is of +Merovingian antiquity. The shepherd Celadon, banished on suspicion +of faithlessness from the presence of his beloved Astree, seeks death +beneath the stream; he is saved by the nymphs, escapes the amorous +pursuit of Galatea, assumes a feminine garb, and, protected by the +Druid Adamas, has the felicity of daily beholding his shepherdess. +At length he declares himself, and is overwhelmed with reproaches; +true lover that he is, when he offers his body to the devouring lions +of the Fountain of Love, the beasts refuse their prey; the venerable +Druid discreetly guides events; Celadon's fidelity receives its +reward in marriage, and the banks of the Lignon become a scene of +universal joy. The colours of the _Astree_ are faded now as those +of some ancient tapestry, but during many years its success was +prodigious. D'Urfe's highest honour, of many, is the confession of +La Fontaine:-- + + "_Etant petit garcon je lisais son roman, + Et je le lis encore ayant la barbe grise._" + +The _Astree_ won its popularity, in part because it united the old +attraction of a chivalric or heroic strain with that of the newer +pastoral; in part because it idealised the gallantries and developed +the amorous casuistry of the day, not without a real sense of the +power of love; in part because it was supposed to exhibit ideal +portraits of distinguished contemporaries. It was the parent of a +numerous progeny; and as the heroic romance of the seventeenth century +is derived in direct succession from the loves of Celadon and Astree, +so the comic romance, beside all that it owes to the tradition of +the _esprit gaulois_, owes something to the mocking gaiety with which +d'Urfe exhibits the adventures and emotional vicissitudes of his +inconstant shepherd Hylas. + +[Footnote 1: It should be noted that the close of the _Astree_ is +by D'Urfe's secretary Baro.] + +In the political and social reconstruction which followed the civil +and religious wars, the need of discipline and order in literature +was felt; in this province, also, unity under a law was seen to be +desirable. The work of the Pleiade had in a great measure failed; +they had attempted to organise poetry and its methods, and poetry +was still disorganised. To reduce the realm of caprice and fantasy +to obedience to law was the work of FRANCOIS DE MALHERBE. Born at +Caen in 1555, he had published in 1587 his _Larmes de Saint Pierre_, +an imitation of the Italian poem by Tansillo, in a manner which his +maturer judgment must have condemned. It was not until about his +fortieth year that he found his true direction. Du Vair, with whom +he was acquainted, probably led him to a true conception of the nature +of eloquence. Vigorous of character, clear in understanding, with +no affluence of imagination and no excess of sensibility, Malherbe +was well qualified for establishing lyrical poetry upon the basis +of reason, and of general rather than individual sentiment. He chose +the themes of his odes from topics of public interest, or founded +them on those commonplaces of emotion which are part of the possession +of all men who think and feel. If he composed his verses for some +great occasion, he sought for no curiosities of a private imagination, +but considered in what way its nobler aspects ought to be regarded +by the community at large; if he consoled a friend for losses caused +by death, he held his personal passion under restraint; he generalised, +and was content to utter more admirably than others the accepted +truths about the brevity and beauty of life, and the inevitable doom +of death. What he gained by such a process of abstraction, he lost +in vivid characterisation; his imagery lacks colour; the movement +of his verse is deliberate and calculated; his ideas are rigorously +enchained one to another. + +It has been said that poetry--the overflow of individual emotion--is +overheard; while oratory--the appeal to an audience--is heard. The +processes of Malherbe's art were essentially oratorical; the lyrical +cry is seldom audible in his verse; it is the poetry of eloquence +thrown into studied stanzas. But the greater poetry of the seventeenth +century in France--its odes, its satires, its epistles, its noble +dramatic scenes--and much of its prose literature are of the nature +of oratory; and for the progress of such poetry, and even of such +prose, Malherbe prepared a highway. He aimed at a reformation of the +language, which, rejecting all words either base, provincial, +archaic, technical, or over-learned and over-curious, should employ +the standard French, pure and dignified, as accepted by the people +of Paris. In his hands language became too exclusively an instrument +of the intelligence; yet with this instrument great things were +achieved by his successors. He methodised and regulated +versification, insisting on rich and exact rhymes, condemning all +licence and infirmity of structure, condemning harshness of sound, +inversion, hiatus, negligence in accommodating the cesura to the +sense, the free gliding of couplet into couplet. It may be said that +he rendered verse mechanical; but within the arrangement which he +prescribed, admirable effects were attainable by the mastery of +genius. He pondered every word, weighed every syllable, and thought +no pains ill-spent if only clearness, precision, the logic of +ordonnance, a sustained harmony were at length secured; and until +the day of his death, in 1628, no decline in his art can be perceived. + +Malherbe fell far short of being a great poet, but in the history +of seventeenth-century classicism, in the effort of the age to +rationalise the forms of art, his name is of capital importance. It +cannot be said that he founded a school. His immediate disciples, +MAYNARD and RACAN, failed to develop the movement which he had +initiated. Maynard laid verse by the side of verse with exact care, +and sometimes one or the other verse is excellent, but he lacked +sustained force and flight. Racan had genuine inspiration; a true +feeling for nature appears in his dramatic pastoral, the _Bergeries_ +(1625); unhappily he had neither the culture nor the patience needed +for perfect execution; he was rather an admirable amateur than an +artist. But if Malherbe founded no school, he gave an eminent example, +and the argument which he maintained in the cause of poetic art was +at a later time carried to its conclusion by Boileau. + +Malherbe's reform was not accepted without opposition. While he +pleaded for the supremacy of order, regularity, law, the voice of +MATHURIN REGNIER (1573-1613) was heard on behalf of freedom. A nephew +of the poet Desportes, Regnier was loyal to his uncle's fame and to +the memory of the Pleiade; if Malherbe spoke slightingly of Desportes, +and cast aside the tradition of the school of Ronsard, the retort +was speedy and telling against the arrogant reformer, tyrant of words +and syllables, all whose achievement amounted to no more than _proser +de la rime et rimer de la prose_. Unawares, indeed, Regnier, to a +certain extent, co-operated with Malherbe, who recognised the genius +of his younger adversary; he turned away from languid elegances to +observation of life and truth of feeling; if he imitated his masters +Horace and Ovid, or the Italian satiric poets, with whose writings +he had become acquainted during two periods of residence in Rome, +his imitations were not obsequious, like those of the Pleiade, but +vigorous and original, like those of Boileau; in his sense of comedy +he anticipates some of Moliere's feeling for the humorous +perversities of human character; his language is vivid, plain, and +popular. The classical school of later years could not reject Regnier. +Boileau declared that no poet before Moliere was so well acquainted +with the manners and characters of men; through his impersonal study +of life he is indeed classic. But his ardent nature rebelled against +formal rule; he trusted to the native force of genius, and let his +ideas and passions lead him where they would. His satires are those +of a painter whose eye is on his object, and who handles his brush +with a vigorous discretion; they are criticisms of society and its +types of folly or of vice, full of force and colour, yet general in +their intention, for, except at the poet who had affronted his uncle, +"le bon Regnier" struck at no individual. Most admirable, amid much +that is admirable, is the picture of the old worldling Macette, whose +veil of pretended piety is gradually dropped as she discourses with +growing wantonness to the maiden whom she would lead in the way she +should not go: Macette is no unworthy elder of the family of Tartufe. +Regnier confesses freely the passions of his own irregular life; had +it been wisely conducted, his genius might have carried him far; as +it was, he passed away prematurely at the age of forty, the victim +of his own intemperate pursuit of pleasure. + +Still more unfortunate was the life of a younger poet, who, while +honouring the genius of Malherbe, pronounced, like Regnier, for +freedom rather than order, and maintained that each writer of genius +should be a law to himself--a poet whom his contemporaries esteemed +too highly, and whom Malherbe, and afterwards Boileau, unjustly +depreciated--THEOPHILE DE VIAU. A Huguenot who had abjured his faith, +afterwards pursued as a libertine in conduct and as a freethinker, +Theophile was hunted, imprisoned, exiled, condemned to execution, +and died exhausted in 1626, when only six-and-thirty years old. He +has been described as the last lyrical poet of his age, and the first +of the poetical exponents of the new preciosity. His dramatic _Pyrame +et Thisbe_, though disfigured by those _concetti_ which the Italian +Marini--an honoured guest at the French court--and the invasion of +Spanish tastes had made the mode, is not without touches of genuine +pathos. The odes of Theophile are of free and musical movement, his +descriptions of natural beauty are graciously coloured, his judgment +in literary matters was sound and original; but he lacked the patient +workmanship which art demands, and in proclaiming himself on the side +of freedom as against order, he was retrograding from the position +which had been secured for poetry under the leadership of Malherbe. + +With social order came the desire for social refinement, and following +the desire for refinement came the prettinesses and affectations of +over-curious elegance. Peace returned to France with the monarchy +of Henri IV., but the Gascon manners of his court were rude. Catherine +de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet, whose mother was a great Roman +lady, and whose father had been French ambassador at Rome, young, +beautiful, delicately nurtured, retired in 1608 from the court, and +a few years later opened her _salon_ of the Hotel de Rambouillet to +such noble and cultivated persons as were willing to be the courtiers +of womanly grace and wit and taste. The rooms were arranged and +decorated for the purposes of pleasure; the _chambre bleue_ became +the sanctuary of polite society, where Arthenice (an anagram for +"Catherine") was the high priestess. To dance, to sing, to touch the +lute was well; to converse with wit and refinement was something more +admirable; the _salon_ became a mart for the exchange of ideas; the +fashion of Spain was added to the fashion of Italy; Platonism, +Petrarchism, Marinism, Gongorism, the spirit of romance and the +daintinesses of learning and of pedantry met and mingled. Hither came +Malherbe, Racan, Chapelain, Vaugelas; at a later time Balzac, Segrais, +Voiture, Godeau; and again, towards the mid-years of the century, +Saint-Evremond and La Rochefoucauld. Here Corneille read his plays +from the _Cid_ to _Rodogune_; here Bossuet, a marvellous boy, +improvised a midnight discourse, and Voiture declared he had never +heard one preach so early or so late. + +As Julie d'Angennes and her sister Angelique attained an age to divide +their mother's authority in the _salon_, its sentiment grew +quintessential, and its taste was subtilised well-nigh to inanity. +They censured _Polyeucte_; they found Chapelain's unhappy epic +"perfectly beautiful, but excessively tiresome"; they laid their +heads together over Descartes' _Discours de la Methode_, and +profoundly admired the philosopher; they were enraptured by the +madrigals on flowers, more than three score in number, offered as +the _Guirlande de Julie_ on Mademoiselle's fete; they gravely debated +the question which should be the approved spelling, _muscadin_ or +_muscardin_. In 1649 they were sundered into rival parties--_Uranistes_ +and _Jobelins_--tilting in literary lists on behalf of the respective +merits of a sonnet by Voiture and a sonnet by Benserade. The word +_precieux_ is said to date from 1650. The Marquise de Rambouillet +survived Moliere's satiric comedy _Les Precieuses Ridicules_ (1659) by +several years. Mme. de Sevigne, Mme. de la Fayette, Flechier, the +preacher of fashion, were among the illustrious personages of the +decline of her _salon_. We smile at its follies and affectations; but, +while it harmed literature by magnifying things that were petty, it did +something to refine manners, to quicken ideas, to encourage clearness +and grace of expression, and to make the pursuit of letters an avenue +to social distinction. Through the Hotel de Rambouillet, and the +_salons_ which both in Paris and the provinces imitated its modes, and +pushed them to extravagance, the influence of women on literature +became a power for good and for evil. + +The "Works," as they were styled, of VINCENT VOITURE +(1598-1648)--posthumously published--represent one side of the +spirit of the _salon_. Capable of something higher, he lived to +exhibit his ingenuity and wit in little ways, now by a cleverly-turned +verse, now by a letter of gallantry. Although of humble origin, he +was for long a presiding genius in the _chambre bleue_ of Arthenice. +His play of mind was unhappily without a subject, and to be witty +on nothings puts a strain on wit. Voiture expends much labour on being +light, much serious effort in attaining vanities. His letters were +admired as models of ingenious elegance; the life has long since +passed from their raillery and badinage, but Voiture may be credited +with having helped to render French prose pliant for the uses of +pleasure. + +The dainty trifles of the school of preciosity fluttered at least +during the sunshine of a day. Its ambitious epics, whatever attention +they may have attracted in their time, cannot be said to have ever +possessed real life. The great style is not to be attained by tagging +platitudes with points. The _Saint Louis_ of Lemoyne, the _Clovis_ +of Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, the _Alaric_ of Scudery, the +_Charlemagne_ of Louis le Laboureur remain only as evidences of the +vanity of misplaced ambition. During twenty years JEAN CHAPELAIN, +a man of no mean ability in other fields, was occupied with his _La +Pucelle d'Orleans_; twelve cantos at length appeared magnificently +in 1656, and won a brief applause; the remaining twelve cantos lie +still inedited. The matter of history was too humble for Chapelain's +genius; history is ennobled by an allegorical intention; France +becomes the soul of man; Charles, swayed between good and evil, is +the human will; the Maid of Orleans is divine grace. The satire of +Boileau, just in its severity, was hardly needed to slay the slain. + +In the prose romances, which are epics emancipated from the trammels +of verse, there was more vitality. Bishop Camus, the friend of +Francois de Sales, had attempted to sanctify the movement which d'Urfe +had initiated; but the spirit of the _Astree_ would not unite in a +single stream with the spirit of the _Introduction a la Vie Devote_. +Gomberville is remembered rather for the remorseless war which he +waged against the innocent conjunction _car_, never to be admitted +into polite literature, than for his encyclopaedic romance +_Polexandre_, in which geography is illustrated by fiction, as +copious as it is fantastic; yet it was something to annex for the +first time the ocean, with all its marvels, to the scenery of adventure. +Gombauld, the _Beau Tenebreux_ of the Hotel de Rambouillet, secured +a reading for his unreadable _Endymion_ by the supposed transparence +of his allusions to living persons. Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin +relieved the amorous exaltations of his _Ariane_, a tale of the time +of Nero, by excursions which touch the borders of comedy. These are +books on which the dust gathers thick in ancient libraries. + +But the romances of LA CALPRENEDE and of GEORGES and MADELEINE DE +SCUDERY might well be taken down by any lover of literature who +possesses the virtue of fortitude. Since d'Urfe's day the taste for +pastoral had declined; the newer romance was gallant and heroic. +Legend or history supplied its framework; but the central motive was +ideal love at odds with circumstance, love the inspirer of limitless +devotion and daring. The art of construction was imperfectly +understood; the narratives are of portentous length; ten, twelve, +twenty volumes were needed to deploy the sentiments and the adventures. +In _Cassandre_, in _Cleopatre_, in _Pharamond_, La Calprenede +exhibits a kind of universal history; the dissolution of the +Macedonian empire, the decline of the empire of Rome, the beginnings +of the French monarchy are successively presented. But the chief +personages are idealised portraits drawn from the society of the +author's time. The spirit of the Hotel de Rambouillet is transferred +to the period when the Scythian Oroondate was the lover of Statira, +daughter of Darius; the Prince de Conde masks in _Cleopatre_ as +Coriolan; Pharamond is the Grand Monarch in disguise. Notwithstanding +the faded gallantries and amorous casuistry of La Calprenede's +interminable romances, a certain spirit of real heroism, offspring of +the writer's ardent imagination and bright southern temper, breathes +through them. They were the delight of Mme. de Sevigne and of La +Fontaine; even in the eighteenth century they were the companions of +Crebillon, and were not forgotten by Rousseau. + +Still more popular was _Artamene, ou le Grand Cyrus_. Mdlle. de +Scudery, the "Sapho" of her Saturday _salon_, a true _precieuse_, +as good of heart and quick of wit as she was unprepossessing of person, +supplied the sentiment and metaphysics of love to match the +gasconading exploits of her brother's invention. It was the time not +only of preciosity, but of the Fronde, with its turbulent adventures +and fantastic chivalry. Under the names of Medes and Persians could +be discovered the adventurers, the gallants, the fine ladies of the +seventeenth century. In _Clelie_ an attempt is made to study the +curiosities of passion; it is a manual of polite love and elegant +manners; in its _carte de Tendre_ we can examine the topography of +love-land, trace the routes to the three cities of "Tendre," and learn +the dangers of the way. Thus the heroic romance reached its term; +its finer spirit became the possession of the tragic drama, where +it was purified and rendered sane. The modern novel had wandered in +search of its true self, and had not succeeded in the quest. When +_Gil Blas_ appeared, it was seen that the novel of incident must also +be the novel of character, and that in its imitation of real life +it could appropriate some of the possessions which by that time comedy +had lost. + +The extravagances of sentiment produced a natural reaction. Not a +few of the intimates of the Hotel de Rambouillet found a relief from +their fatigue of fine manners and high-pitched emotions in the +unedifying jests and merry tales of the tavern. A comic, convivial, +burlesque or picaresque literature became, as it were, a parody of +the literature of preciosity. Saint-Amand (1594-1661) was at once +a disciple of the Italian Marini, the admired "Sapurnius" of the +_salon_, author of at least one beautiful ode--_La Solitude_--breathing +a gentle melancholy, and a gay singer of bacchic chants. Desmarets de +Saint-Sorlin, in his comedy _Les Visionnaires_ (1637), mocked the +_precieuses_, and was applauded by the spectators of the theatre. One +of his heroines is hopelessly enamoured of Alexander the Great; one is +enamoured of poetry, and sees life as if it were material for the +stage; and the third is enamoured of her own beauty, with its imagined +potency over the hearts of men. As early as 1622 CHARLES SOREL +expressed, in his _Histoire Comique de Francion_, a Rabelaisian and +picaresque tale of low life, the revolt of the _esprit gaulois_ against +the homage of the imagination to courtly shepherdesses and pastoral +cavaliers. It was reprinted more than forty times. In _Le Berger +Extravagant_ (1628) he attempted a kind of Don Quixote for his own +day--an "anti-romance"--which recounts the pastoral follies of a young +Parisian bourgeois, whose wits have been set wandering by such dreams +as the _Astree_ had inspired; its mirth is unhappily overloaded with +pedantry. + +The master of this school of seventeenth-century realism was PAUL +SCARRON (1610-60), the comely little abbe, unconcerned with +ecclesiastical scruples or good manners, who, when a paralytic, +twisted and tortured by disease, became the husband of D'Aubigne's +granddaughter, destined as Madame de Maintenon to become the most +influential woman in all the history of France. In his _Virgile +Travesti_ he produced a vulgar counterpart to the heroic epics, which +their own dead-weight would have speedily enough borne downwards to +oblivion. His _Roman Comique_ (1651), a short and lively narrative +of the adventures of a troupe of comedians strolling in the provinces, +contrasted with the exaltations, the heroisms, the delicate +distresses of the ideal romance. The _Roman Bourgeois_ (1666) of +ANTOINE FURETIERE is a belated example of the group to which +_Francion_ belongs. The great event of its author's life was his +exclusion from the Academy, of which he was a member, on the ground +that he had appropriated for the advantage of his Dictionary the +results of his fellow-members' researches for the Dictionary, then +in progress, of the learned company. His _Roman_ is a remarkable study +of certain types of middle-class Parisian life, often animated, exact, +effective in its satire; but the analysis of a petty and commonplace +world needs some relief of beauty or generosity to make its triviality +acceptable, and such relief Furetiere will not afford. + +Somewhat apart from this group of satiric tales, yet with a certain +kinship to them, lie the more fantastic satires of that fiery +swashbuckler--"demon des braves"--CYRANO DE BERGERAC (1619-55), +_Histoire Comique des Etats et Empires de la Lune_, and _Histoire +Comique des Etats et Empires du Soleil_. Cyrano's taste, caught by +the mannerisms of Italy and extravagances of Spain, was execrable. +To his violences of temper he added a reputation for irreligion. His +comedy _Le Pedant Joue_ has the honour of having furnished Moliere +with the most laughable scene of the _Fourberies de Scapin_. The +voyages to the moon and the sun, in which the inhabitants, their +manners, governments, and ideas, are presented, mingle audacities +and caprices of invention with a portion of satiric truth; they lived +in the memories of the creator of Gulliver and the creator of +Micromegas. + + + + +CHAPTER II +THE FRENCH ACADEMY--PHILOSOPHY (DESCARTES)--RELIGION (PASCAL) + + +The French Academy, an organised aristocracy of letters, expressed +the growing sense that anarchy in literature must end, and that +discipline and law must be recognised in things of the mind. It is +one of the glories of RICHELIEU that he perceived that literature +has a public function, and may indeed be regarded as an affair of +the State. His own writings, or those composed under his +direction--memoirs; letters; the _Succincte Narration_, which sets +forth his policy; the _Testament_, which embodies his counsel in +statecraft--belong less to literature than to French history. But +he honoured the literary art; he enjoyed the drama; he devised plots +for plays, and found docile poets--his Society of five--to carry out +his designs. + +In 1629 Valentin Conrart, secretary to the King, and one of the +frequenters of the Hotel de Rambouillet, was accustomed to receive +weekly a group of distinguished men of letters and literary amateurs, +who read their manuscripts aloud, discussed the merits of new works, +and considered questions of criticism, grammar, and language. +Tidings of these reunions having reached Richelieu, he proposed that +the society should receive an official status. By the influence of +Chapelain the objections of certain members were overcome. The +_Academie Francaise_ held its first sitting on March 13, 1634; three +years later the letters patent were registered; the number of members +was fixed at forty; when vacancies occurred, new members were co-opted +for life. Its history to the year 1652 was published in the following +year by Pellisson, and obtained him admission to a chair. The +functions of the learned company were to ascertain, as far as possible, +the French language, to regulate grammar, and to act as a literary +tribunal if members consented to submit their works to its examination. +There were hopes that authoritative treatises on rhetoric and poetics +might be issued with its sanction; but these hopes were not fulfilled. +A dictionary, of which Chapelain presented the plan in 1638, was, +however, undertaken; progressing by slow degrees, the first edition +appeared in 1694. Its aim was not to record every word of which an +example could be found, but to select those approved by the usage +of cultivated society and of the best contemporary or recent authors. +Thus it tended to establish for literary use an aristocracy of words; +and while literary expression gained in dignity and intellectual +precision, gained as an instrument of reason and analysis, such +regulation created a danger that it might lose in elements that have +affinities with the popular mind--vivacity, colour, picturesqueness, +variety. At its commencement no one was more deeply interested in +the dictionary than Vaugelas (1585-1650), a gentleman of Savoie, +whose concern for the purity of the language, as determined by the +best usage, led him to resist innovations and the invasion of foreign +phraseology. His _Remarques sur la Langue Francaise_ served as a guide +to his fellow-members of the Academy. Unhappily he was wholly ignorant +of the history of the language. With the erudite Chapelain he mediated +between the scholarship and the polite society of the time. But while +Vaugelas was almost wholly occupied with the vocabulary and grammar, +Chapelain did much to enforce the principles of the classical school +upon literary art. The Academy took up the work which the _salons_ +had begun; its spirit was more robust and masculine than theirs; it +was freer from passing fashions, affectations, prettinesses; it +leaned on the side of intellect rather than of sentiment. + +In what may be called the regulation of French prose the influence +of JEAN-LOUIS GUEZ DE BALZAC (1594-1654) was considerable. He had +learnt from Malherbe that a literary craftsman should leave nothing +to chance, that every effect should be exactly calculated. It was +his task to apply to prose the principles which had guided his master +in verse. His _Lettres_, of which a first series appeared in 1624, +and a second twelve years later, are not the spontaneous intercourse +of friend with friend, but rather studious compositions which deal +with matters of learning, literature, morals, religion, politics, +events, and persons of the time. Their contents are of little +importance; Balzac was not an original thinker, but he had the art +of arranging his ideas, and of expressing them in chosen words +marshalled in ample and sonorous sentences. A certain fire he had, +a limited power of imagination, a cultivated judgment, a taste, which +suffered from bad workmanship; a true affection for rural life. These +hardly furnished him with matter adequate to support his elevated +style. His letters were regarded as models of eloquence; but it is +eloquence manufactured artificially and applied to subjects, not +proceeding from them. His _Prince_, a treatise on the virtues of kings, +with a special reference to Louis XIII., was received coldly. His +_Aristippe_, which dealt with the manners and morals of a court, and +his _Socrate Chretien_, a study in ethics and theology, were efforts +beyond his powers. His gift to literature was a gift of method and +of style; others who worked in marble learned something from his +studious modellings in clay. + +To regulate thought required an intellect of a different order from +that of Balzac, "emperor of orators." It was the task of RENE DESCARTES +(1596-1650). A child of delicate health, born at La Haye, near Tours, +he became, under Jesuit teachers, a precocious student both in +languages and science. But truth, not erudition, was the demand and +the necessity of his mind. Solitary investigations in mathematics +were for a time succeeded by the life of a soldier in the Netherlands +and Holland. The stream of thought was flowing, however, underground. +Suddenly it emerged to light. In 1619, when the young volunteer was +in winter quarters at Neuburg, on the Danube, on a memorable day the +first principles of a new philosophical method presented themselves +to his intellect, and, as it were, claimed him for their interpreter. +After wanderings through various parts of Europe, and a period of +studious leisure in Paris, he chose Holland for his place of abode +(1629), and though often shifting his residence, little disturbed +save by the controversies of philosophy and the orthodox zeal of Dutch +theologians, he gave his best hours during twenty years to thought. +An invitation from Queen Christina to the Swedish court was accepted +in 1649. The change in his habits and the severity of a northern winter +proved fatal to the health which Descartes had carefully cherished; +in February of 1650 he was dead. + +The mathematical cycle in the development of Descartes' system of +thought preceded the metaphysical. His great achievements in +analytical geometry, in optics, in physical research, his +explanation of the laws of nature, and their application in his theory +of the material universe, belong to the history of science. Algebra +and geometry led him towards his method in metaphysical speculation. +How do all primary truths verify themselves to the human mind? By +the fact that an object is clearly and distinctly conceived. The +objects of knowledge fall into certain groups or series; in each +series there is some simple and dominant element which may be +immediately apprehended, and in relation to which the subordinate +elements become intelligible. Let us accept nothing on hearsay or +authority; let us start with doubt in order to arrive at certitude; +let us test the criterion of certitude to the uttermost. There is +one fact which I cannot doubt, even in doubting all--I think, and +if I think, I exist--"Je pense, donc je suis." No other evidence of +this is needed than that our conception is clear and distinct; in +this clearness and distinctness we find the principle of certitude. +Mind, then, exists, and is known to us as a thinking substance. But +the idea of an infinite, perfect Being is also present to our +intellect; we, finite, imperfect beings, could not have made it; +unmake it we cannot; and in the conception of perfection that of +existence is involved. Therefore God exists, and therefore the laws +of our consciousness, which are His laws, cannot deceive us. We have +seen what mind or spirit signifies--a thinking substance. Reduce our +idea of matter to clearness and distinctness, and what do we find? +The idea of an extended substance. Our complex humanity, made up of +soul and body, comprises both kinds of substance. But thought and +extension have nothing in common; their union can only be conceived +as the collocation at a single point of a machine with that which +raises it above a mere machine. As for the lower animals, they are +no more than automata. + +Descartes' _Principia_ and his _Meditationes_ were written in Latin. +The _Discours de la Methode_ (1637) and the later _Traite des +Passions_ showed how the French language could be adapted to the +purposes of the reason. Such eloquence as is found in Descartes is +that of thought illuminating style. The theory of the passions +anticipates some of the tendencies of modern psychology in its +physical investigations. No one, however, affirmed more absolutely +than Descartes the freedom of the will--unless, indeed, we regard +it as determined by God: it cannot directly control the passions, +but it can indirectly modify them with the aid of imagination; it +is the supreme mistress of action, however the passions may oppose +its fiat. Spiritualist as he was, Descartes was not disposed to be +the martyr of thought. Warned by the example of Galileo, he did not +desire to expose himself to the dangers attending heretical opinions. +He separated the province of faith from that of reason: "I revere +our theology," he said; but he held that theology demanded other +lights than those of the unaided powers of man. In its own province, +he made the reason his absolute guide, and with results which +theologians might regard as dangerous. + +The spirit of Descartes' work was in harmony with that of his time, +and reacted upon literature. He sought for general truths by the light +of reason; he made clearness a criterion of truth; he proclaimed man +a spirit; he asserted the freedom of the will. The art of the classical +period sought also for general truths, and subordinated imagination +to reason. It turned away from ingenuities, obscurities, mysteries; +it was essentially spiritualist; it represented the crises and heroic +victories of the will. + +Descartes' opponent, Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), epicurean in his +physics, an empiricist, though an inconsistent one, in philosophy, +chose the Latin language as the vehicle for his ideas. A group of +writers whose tendencies were towards sensualism or scepticism, +viewed him as their master. Chapelle in verse, La Mothe le Vayer in +prose, may serve as representatives of art surrendering itself to +vulgar pleasures, and thought doubting even its doubts, and finding +repose in indifference. + +The true successor of Descartes in French philosophy, eminent in the +second half of the century, was NICOLAS DE MALEBRANCHE (1638-1715). +Soul and body, Descartes had shown, are in their very nature alien +each from the other. How then does the soul attain a knowledge of +the external world? In God, the absolute substance, are the ideas +of all things; in God we behold those ideas which matter could never +convey to us, and which we could never ourselves originate; in God +we see and know all things. The _Recherche de la Verite_ (1674-75) +was admirably written and was widely read. The theologians found it +dangerous; and when six years later Malebranche published his _Traite +de la Nature et de la Grace_, characterised briefly and decidedly +by Bossuet as "pulchra, nova, falsa," at Bossuet's request both +Arnauld and Fenelon attempted to refute "the extravagant Oratorian." +His place in the evolution of philosophy lies between Descartes and +Spinoza, who developed and completed the doctrine of Descartes. In +the transition from dualism to monism Malebranche served as a +mediator. + +Religious thought in the seventeenth century, wedded to an austere +morality, is expressed by the writers of Port-Royal, and those who +were in sympathy with them. They could not follow the flowery path +of piety--not the less the narrow path because it was cheerful--pointed +out by St. Francois de Sales. Between nature and grace they saw a deep +and wide abyss. In closest connection with them was one man of the +highest genius--author of the _Provinciales_ and the _Pensees_--whose +spiritual history was more dramatic than any miracle-play or morality +of the Middle Ages. + +BLAISE PASCAL was born at Clermont-Ferrand in 1623. His father, a +president of the Court of Aids at Clermont, a man of intellect and +character, guided his education in languages, natural science, and +mathematics. The boy's precocity was extraordinary; at sixteen he +had written a treatise on Conic Sections, which excited the +astonishment of Descartes. But the intensity of study, preying upon +a nervous constitution, consumed his health and strength; at an early +age he suffered from temporary paralysis. When about twenty-three +he fell under the religious influences of certain disciples of St. +Cyran, read eagerly in the writings of Jansen and Arnauld, and +resolved to live for God alone. But to restore his health he was urged +to seek recreation, and by degrees the interests and pleasures of +the world took hold upon him; the master of his mind was the sceptical +Montaigne; he moved in the mundane society of the capital; and it +has been conjectured from hints in his _Discours sur les Passions +de l'Amour_ that he loved the sister of his friend, the Duc de Roannez, +and had the vain hope of making her his wife. + +The spirit of religion, however, lived within his heart, and needed +only to be reawakened. The reawakening came in 1654 through the +persuasions of his sister, Jacqueline, who had abandoned the world +two years previously, and entered the community of Port-Royal. The +abbey of Port-Royal, situated some seven or eight miles from +Versailles, was presided over by Jacqueline Arnauld, the Mere +Angelique, and a brotherhood of solitaries, among whom were several +of the Arnauld family, had settled in the valley in the year 1637. +With this unvowed brotherhood Pascal, though never actually a +solitary, associated himself at the close of 1654. An escape from +sudden danger in a carriage accident, and a vision or ecstasy which +came to him, co-operated in his conversion. After his death, copies +of a fragmentary and passionate writing referring to this period--the +so-called "amulet" of Pascal--were found upon his person; its words, +"renonciation totale et douce," and "joie, joie, joie, pleurs de +joie," express something of his resolution and his rapture. + +The affair of the _Provinciales_, and the design of an apology for +Christianity with which his _Pensees_ are connected, together with +certain scientific studies and the deepening passion of religion, +make up what remained of Pascal's life. His spirit grew austere, but +in his austerity there was an inexpressible joy. Exhausted by his +ascetic practices and the inward flame of his soul, Pascal died on +August 19, 1662. "May God never leave me" were his last words. + +With Pascal's work as a mathematician and a physicist we are not here +concerned. In it "we see," writes a scientific authority, "the +strongest marks of a great original genius creating new ideas, and +seizing upon, mastering, and pursuing further everything that was +fresh and unfamiliar in his time. After the lapse of more than two +hundred years, we can still point to much in exact science that is +absolutely his; and we can indicate infinitely more which is due to +his inspiration." + +Jansenism and Jesuitism, opposed as they were, have this in common, +that both were movements in that revival of Roman Catholicism which +was stimulated by the rivalry of the Protestant Reformation. But the +Jesuits sought to win the world to religion by an art of piety, in +which a system of accommodation was recognised as a means of drawing +worldlings to the Church; the Jansenists held up a severe moral ideal, +and humbled human nature in presence of the absolute need and +resistless omnipotence of divine grace. Like the Jesuits, but in a +different spirit, the Port-Royalists devoted themselves much to the +task of education. They honoured classical studies; they honoured +science, dialectics, philosophy. Their grammar, logic, geometry were +substantial additions to the literature of pedagogy. Isaac le Maistre +de Sacy and others translated and annotated the Bible. Their +theologian, moralist, and controversialist, Pierre Nicole (1625-95), +author of _Essais de Morale_ (1671), if not profound or brilliant, +was the possessor of learning, good sense, good feeling, and religious +faith. Under the influence of St. Cyran, the Port-Royalists were in +close sympathy with the teaching of Jansen, Bishop of Ypres; the +writings of their great theologian Antoine Arnauld were vigorously +anti-Jesuitical. In 1653 five propositions, professedly extracted +from Jansen's _Augustinus_, were condemned by a Papal bull. The +insulting triumph of the Jesuits drew Arnauld again into controversy; +and on a question concerning divine grace he was condemned in January +1656 by the Sorbonne. "You who are clever and inquiring" (_curieux_), +said Arnauld to Pascal, "you ought to do something." Next day was +written the first of Pascal's _Lettres a un Provincial_, and on 23rd +January it was issued to the public; a second followed within a week; +the success was immense. The writer concealed his identity under the +pseudonym "Louis de Montalte." + +The _Lettres Provinciales_ are eighteen in number. The first three +and the last three deal with the affair of Arnauld and the Sorbonne, +and the questions under discussion as to the nature and the need of +divine grace. In the opening letters the clearest intellectual +insight and the deepest seriousness of spirit are united with the +finest play of irony, and even with the temper of comedy. The supposed +Louis de Montalte, seeking theological lights from a doctor of the +Sorbonne, finds only how hopelessly divided in opinion are the +opponents of Arnauld, and how grotesquely they darken counsel with +speech. In the twelve letters intervening between the third and the +sixteenth, Pascal takes the offensive, and deploys an incomparably +skilful attack on the moral theology of the Jesuits. For the rigid +they may have a stricter morality, but for the lax their casuistry +supplies a pliable code of morals, which, by the aid of ingenious +distinctions, can find excuses for the worst of crimes. With force +of logic, with fineness of irony, with energy of moral indignation, +with a literary style combining strength and lightness, Pascal +presses his irresistible assault. The effect of the "Provincial +Letters" was to carry the discussion of morals and theology before +a new court of appeal--not the Sorbonne, but the public intelligence +and the unsophisticated conscience of men. To French prose they added +a masterpiece and a model. + +The subject of the _Provinciales_ is in part a thing of the past; +the _Pensees_ deal with problems which can never lose their interest. +Among Pascal's papers were found, after his early death, many +fragments which his sister, Madame Perier, and his friends recognised +as of rare value; but the editors of the little volume which appeared +in 1670, imagining that they could safeguard its orthodoxy, and even +amend its style, freely omitted and altered what Pascal had written. +It was not until 1844 that a complete and genuine text was established +in the edition of M. Faugere. We can hardly hope to arrange the +fragments so as to exhibit the design of that apology for Christianity, +with which many of them were doubtless connected, but the main +outlines of Pascal's body of thought can be clearly discerned. + +The intellect of Pascal, so powerful in its grasp of scientific truth, +could find by its own researches no certitude in the sphere of +philosophy and religion. He had been deeply influenced by the +sceptical mind of Montaigne. He found within him a passionate craving +for certitude; man is so constituted that he can never be at rest +until he rests in knowledge of the truth; but man, as he now exists, +is incapable of ascertaining truth; he is weak and miserable, and +yet the very consciousness of his misery is evidence of his greatness; +"Nature confounds the Pyrrhonist, and reason the dogmatist;" "Man +is but a reed, the feeblest of created things, but a reed which +thinks." How is this riddle of human nature to be explained? Only +in one way--by a recognition of the truth taught by religion, that +human nature is fallen from its true estate, that man is a dethroned +king. And how is the dissonance in man's nature to be overcome? Only +in one way--through union with God made man; with Jesus Christ, the +centre in which alone we find our weakness and the divine strength. +Through Christ man is abased and lifted up--abased without despair, +and lifted up without pride; in Him all contradictions are reconciled. +Such, in brief, is the vital thought from which Pascal's apologetic +proceeds. It does not ignore any of the external evidences of +Christianity; but the irresistible evidence is that derived from the +problem of human nature and the essential needs of the spirit--a +problem which religion alone can solve, and needs which Christ alone +can satisfy. Pascal's "Thoughts" are those of an eminent intelligence. +But they are more than thoughts; they are passionate lyrical cries +of a heart which had suffered, and which had found more than +consolation; they are the interpretation of the words of his +amulet--"Joie, joie, joie, pleurs de joie." The union of the ardour +of a poet or a saint with the scientific rigour of a great geometer, +of wit and brilliance with a sublime pathos, is among the rarest +phenomena in literature; all this and more is found in Pascal. + + + + +CHAPTER III +THE DRAMA (MONTCHRESTIEN TO CORNEILLE) + + +The classical and Italian drama of the sixteenth century was literary, +oratorical, lyrical; it was anything but dramatic. Its last +representative, ANTOINE DE MONTCHRESTIEN (1575-1621), a true poet, +and one whose life was a series of strange adventures, wrote, like +his predecessors, rather for the readers of poetry than for the +theatre. With a gift for style, and a lyrical talent, seen not only +in the chants of the chorus, but in the general character of his dramas, +he had little feeling for life and movement; his personages expound +their feelings in admirable verse; they do not act. He attempted a +tragedy--L'Ecossaise--on the story of Mary, Queen of Scots, a theme +beyond his powers. In essentials he belonged rather to the past, whose +traditions he inherited, than to the future of the stage. But his +feeling for grandeur of character, for noble attitudes, for the +pathetic founded on admiration, and together with these the firm +structure of his verse, seem to warrant one in thinking of him as +in some respects a forerunner of Corneille. + +At the Hotel de Bourgogne, until 1599, the Confreres de la Passion +still exhibited the mediaeval drama. It passed away when their theatre +was occupied by the company of Valleran Lecomte, who had in his pay +a dramatist of inexhaustible fertility--ALEXANDRE HARDY (_c_. 1560 +to _c_. 1630). During thirty years, from the opening of the +seventeenth century onwards, Hardy, author of some six or seven +hundred pieces, of which forty-one remain, reigned as master of the +stage.[1] A skilful improvisor, devoid of genius, devoid of taste, +he is the founder of the French theatre; he first made a true appeal +to the people; he first showed a true feeling for theatrical effects. +Wherever material suitable for his purposes could be caught +at--ancient or modern, French, Italian, or Spanish--Hardy made it +his own. Whatever form seemed likely to win the popular favour, this +he accepted or divined. The _Astree_ had made pastoral the fashion; +Hardy was ready with his pastoral dramas. The Italian and Spanish +novels were little tragi-comedies waiting to be dramatised; +forthwith Hardy cast them into a theatrical mould. Writing for the +people, he was not trammelled by the unities of time and place; the +mediaeval stage arrangements favoured romantic freedom. In his +desire to please a public which demanded animation, action, variety, +Hardy allowed romantic incident to predominate over character; hence, +though he produced tragedies founded on legendary or historical +subjects, his special talent is seen rather in tragi-comedy. He +complicated the intrigue, he varied the scenes, he shortened the +monologues, he suppressed or reduced the chorus--in a word, the drama +in his hands ceased to be oratorical or lyrical, and became at length +dramatic. The advance was great; and it was achieved by a hack +playwright scrambling for his crusts of bread. + +[Footnote 1: Or thirty-four pieces, if _Theagene et Cariclee_ be +reckoned as only one.] + +But to dramatic life and movement it was necessary that order, +discipline, regulation should be added. The rules of the unities were +not observed by Hardy--were perhaps unknown to him. But they were +known to others. Jean de Schelandre (the pseudonym formed from the +letters of his name being Daniel d'Ancheres), in his vast drama in +two parts, _Tyr et Sidon_, claimed all the freedom of the mysteries +in varying the scene, in mingling heroic matter with buffoonery. In +the edition of 1628 a preface appears by Francois Ogier, a learned +churchman, maintaining that the modern stage, in accordance with +altered circumstances, should maintain its rights to complete +imaginative liberty against the authority of the Greeks, who +presented their works before different spectators under different +conditions. Ogier's protest was without effect. Almost immediately +after its appearance the _Sophonisbe_ of Jean de Mairet was given, +and the classical tragedy of France was inaugurated on a popular stage. +In the preface to his pastoral tragi-comedy _Sylvanire_, Mairet in +1631 formulated the doctrine of the unities. The adhesion of Richelieu +and the advocacy of Chapelain insured their triumph. The "rules" came +to be regarded as the laws of a literary species. + +The influence of the Spanish drama, seen in the writings of Rotrou +and others, might be supposed to make for freedom. It encouraged +romantic inventions and ambitious extravagances of style. Much that +is rude and unformed is united with a curiosity for points and laboured +ingenuity in the dramatic work of Scudery, Du Ryer, Tristan l'Hermite. +A greater dramatist than these showed how Spanish romance could +coalesce with French tragedy in a drama which marks an epoch--the +_Cid_; and the _Cid_, calling forth the judgment of the Academy, +served to establish the supremacy of the so-called rules of Aristotle. + +PIERRE CORNEILLE, son of a legal official, was born at Rouen in 1606. +His high promise as a pupil of the Jesuits was not confirmed when +he attempted to practise at the bar; he was retiring, and spoke with +difficulty. At twenty-three his first dramatic piece, _Melite_, a +comedy, suggested, it is told, by an adventure of his youth, was given +with applause in Paris; it glitters with points, and is of a +complicated intrigue, but to contemporaries the plot appeared less +entangled and the style more natural than they seem to modern readers. +The tragi-comedy, _Clitandre_, which followed (1632), was a romantic +drama, crowded with extravagant incidents, after the manner of Hardy. +In _La Veuve_ he returned to the style of _Melite_, but with less +artificial brilliance and more real vivacity; it was published with +laudatory verses prefixed, in one of which Scudery bids the stars +retire for the sun has risen. The scene is laid in Paris, and some +presentation of contemporary manners is made in _La Galerie du Palais_ +and _La Place Royale_. It was something to replace the nurse of elder +comedy by the soubrette. The attention of Richelieu was attracted +to the new dramatic author; he was numbered among the five _garcons +poetes_ who worked upon the dramatic plans of the Cardinal; but he +displeased his patron by his imaginative independence. Providing +himself with a convenient excuse, Corneille retired to Rouen. + +These early works were ventures among which the poet was groping for +his true way. He can hardly be said to have found it in _Medee_ (1635), +but it was an advance to have attempted tragedy; the grandiose style +of Seneca was a challenge to his genius; and in the famous line-- + + "_Dans un si grand revers, que vous reste-t-il? Moi!_" + +we see the flash of his indomitable pride of will, we hear the sudden +thunder of his verse. An acquaintance, M. de Chalon, who had been +one of the household of Marie de Medicis, directed Corneille to the +Spanish drama. The _Illusion Comique_, the latest of his tentative +plays, is a step towards the _Cid_; its plot is fantastical, but in +some of the fanfaronades of the braggart Matamore, imported from Spain, +are pseudo-heroics which only needed a certain transposition to +become the language of chivalric heroism. The piece closes with a +lofty eulogy of the French stage. + +The sun had indeed risen and the stars might disappear when in the +closing days of 1636 the _Cid_ was given in Paris at the Theatre du +Marais; the eulogy of the stage was speedily justified by its author. +His subject was found by Corneille in a Spanish drama, _Las Mocedades +del Cid_, by Guilhem de Castro; the treatment was his own; he reduced +the action from that of a chronicle-history to that of a tragedy; +he centralised it around the leading personages; he transferred it +in its essential causes from the external world of accident to the +inner world of character; the critical events are moral events, +victories of the soul, triumphs not of fortune but of the will. And +thus, though there are epic episodes and lyric outbreaks in the play, +the _Cid_ definitely fixed, for the first time in France, the type +of tragedy. The central tragic strife here is not one of rival houses. +Rodrigue, to avenge his father's wrong, has slain the father of his +beloved Chimene; Chimene demands from the King the head of her beloved +Rodrigue. In the end Rodrigue's valour atones for his offence. The +struggle is one of passion with honour or duty; the fortunes of the +hero and heroine are affected by circumstance, but their fate lies +in their own high hearts. + +The triumph of Corneille's play was immense. The Cardinal, however, +did not join in it. Richelieu's intractable poet had glorified Spain +at an inconvenient moment; he had offered an apology for the code +of honour when edicts had been issued to check the rage of the duel; +yet worse, he had not been crushed by the great man's censure. The +quarrel of the _Cid_, in which Mairet and Scudery took an embittered +part, was encouraged by Richelieu. He pressed the Academy, of which +Corneille was not a member until 1647, for a judgment upon the piece, +and at length he was partially satisfied by a pronouncement, drawn +up by Chapelain, which condemned its ethics and its violation of +dramatic proprieties, yet could not deny the author's genius. +Corneille was deeply discouraged, but prepared himself for future +victories. + +Until 1640 he remained silent. In that illustrious year _Horace_ and +_Cinna_ were presented in rapid succession. From Spain, the land of +chivalric honour, the dramatist passed to antique Rome, the mother +and the nurse of heroic virtue. In the _Cid_ the dramatic conflict +is between love and filial duty; in _Horace_ it is between love, on +the one side, united with the domestic affections, and, on the other, +devotion to country. In both plays the inviolable will is arbiter +of the contention. The story of the Horatii and Curiatii, as told +by Livy, is complicated by the union of the families through love +and marriage; but patriotism requires the sacrifice of the tenderer +passions. It must be admitted that the interest declines after the +third act, and that our sympathies are alienated from the younger +Horace by the murder of a sister; we are required to feel that a private +crime, the offence of overstrained patriotism, is obliterated in the +glory of the country. In _Cinna_ we pass from regal to imperial Rome; +the commonwealth is represented by Augustus; a great monarchy is +glorified, but in the noblest way, for the highest act of empire is +to wield supreme power under the sway of magnanimity, and to remain +the master of all self-regarding passions. The conspiracy of Cinna +is discovered; it is a prince's part to pardon, and Augustus rises +to a higher empire than that of Rome by the conquest of himself. In +both _Horace_ and _Cinna_ there are at times a certain overstrain, +an excess of emphasis, a resolve to pursue heroism to all extremities; +but the conception of moral grandeur is genuine and lofty; the error +of Corneille was the error of an imagination enamoured of the sublime. + +But are there not heroisms of religion as pure as those of patriotism? +And must we go back to pagan days to find the highest virtue? Or can +divine grace effect no miracles above those of the natural will? +Corneille gives his answer to such a challenge in the tragedy of +_Polyeucte_ (1643). It is the story of Christian martyrdom; a homage +rendered to absolute self-devotion to the ideal; a canticle intoned +in celebration of heavenly grace. Polyeucte, the martyr, sacrifices +to his faith not only life, but love; his wife, who, while she knew +him imperfectly, gave him an imperfect love, is won both for God and +for her husband by his heroism; she is caught away from her tenderness +for Severe into the flame of Polyeucte's devout rapture; and through +her Severe himself is elevated to an unexpected magnanimity. The +family, the country, the monarchy, religion--these in turn were +honoured by the genius of Corneille. He had lifted the drama from +a form of loose diversion to be a great art; he had recreated it as +that noblest pastime whose function is to exercise and invigorate +the soul. + +The transition from _Polyeucte_ to _Le Menteur_, of the same year, +is among the most surprising in literature.[2] From the most elevated +of tragedies we pass to a comedy, which, while not belonging to the +great comedy of character, is charmingly gay. We expect no grave +moralities here, nor do we find them. The play is a free and original +adaptation from a work of the Spanish dramatist Alarcon, but in +Corneille's hands it becomes characteristically French. Young +Dorante, the liar, invents his fictions through an irresistible +genius for romancing. His indignant father may justly ask, Has he +a heart? Is he a gentleman? But how can a youth with such a pretty +wit resist the fascination of his own lies? He is sufficiently +punished by the fact that they do not assist, but rather trouble, +the course of his love adventure, and we demand no further poetical +justice. In Corneille's art, tragedy had defined itself, and comedy +was free to be purely comic; but it is also literary--light, yet solid +in structure; easy, yet exact in style. The _Suite du Menteur_, +founded on a comedy by Lope de Vega, has a curious attraction of its +own, half-fantastic as it is, and half-realistic; yet it has shared +the fate of all continuations, and could not attain the popularity +of its predecessor. It lacks gaiety; the liar has sunk into a rascal, +and we can hardly lend credence to the amendment in his mendacious +habit when he applies the art of dissimulation to generous purposes. + +[Footnote 2: _Polyeucte_ may possibly be as early as 1641.] + +These are the masterpieces of Corneille. Already in _Pompee_, +although its date is that of _Polyeucte_, while the great dramatist +is present throughout, he is not always present at his best. It should +not surprise us that Corneille preferred Lucan to Virgil. Something +of the over-emphasis of the _Pharsalia_, his original, has entered +into the play; but the pomp of the verse is no vulgar pomp. A graver +fault is the want of a dramatic centre for the action, which tends +too much towards the epic. Pompey is the presiding power of the +tragedy; his spirit dominates the lesser characters; but he does not +appear in person. The political interest develops somewhat to the +subordination of the personal interest. Corneille's unhappy theory +of later years, that love is unworthy of a place in high tragedy, +save as an episode, is here exemplified in the passion of Caesar for +Cleopatra; but, in truth, love is too sovereign a power to admit of +its being tagged to tragedy as an ornament. + +Until 1636 Corneille was seeking his way. From 1636 to 1644 his genius +soared on steady pinions. During the eight years that followed he +triumphed, but he also faltered. _Rodogune_ (1644), which he +preferred to all his other plays, is certainly, by virtue of the +enormity of the characters, the violence of the passions, the vastness +of its crimes, the most romantic of his tragedies; it is constructed +with the most skilful industry; from scene to scene the emotion is +intensified and heightened until the great fifth act is reached; but +if by incomparable audacity the dramatist attains the ideal, it is +an ideal of horror. _Theodore_, a second play of martyrdom, fell far +below _Polyeucte_. _Heraclius_ is obscure through the complication +of its intrigue. _Don Sanche d'Aragon_, a romantic tragi-comedy, is +less admirable as a whole than in the more brilliant scenes. In the +historical drama _Nicomede_ (1651), side by side with tragic +solemnities appears matter of a familiar kind. It was the last great +effort of its author's genius. The failure of _Pertharite_, in 1652, +led to the withdrawal of Corneille from the theatre during seven years. +He completed during his seclusion a rendering into verse of the +_Imitation of Jesus Christ_. When he returned to the stage it was +with enfeebled powers, which were overstrained by the effort of his +will; yet he could still write noble lines, and in the tragedy-ballet +of _Psyche_, in which Quinault and Moliere were his collaborators, +the most charming verses are those of Corneille. His young rival +Racine spoke to the hearts of a generation less heroic and swayed +by tenderer passion, and the old man resented the change. Domestic +sorrows were added to the grief of ill success in his art. Living +simply, his means were narrow for his needs. The last ten years of +his life were years of silence. He died in 1684, at the age of +seventy-eight. + +The drama of Corneille deals with what is extraordinary, but in what +is extraordinary it seeks for truth. He finds the marvellous in the +triumphs of the human will. His great inventive powers were applied +to creating situations for the manifestation of heroic energy. +History attracted him, because a basis of fact seemed to justify what +otherwise could not be accepted as probable. Great personages suited +his purpose, because they can deploy their powers on the amplest scale. +His characters, men and women, act not through blind, instinctive +passion, but with deliberate and intelligent force; they reason, and +too often with casuistical subtlety, about their emotions. At length +he came to glorify the will apart from its aims and ends, when tending +even to crime, or acting, as it were, in the void. He thought much +of the principles of his art, and embodied his conclusions in critical +dissertations and studies of his own works. He accepted the rule of +the unities of place and time (of which at first he was ignorant) +as far as his themes permitted, as far as the rules served to +concentrate action and secure verisimilitude. His mastery in verse +of a masculine eloquence is unsurpassed; his dialogue of rapid +statement and swift reply is like a combat with Roman short swords; +in memorable single lines he explodes, as it were, a vast charge of +latent energy, and effects a clearance for the progress of his action. +His faults, like his virtues, are great; and though faults and virtues +may be travestied, both are in reality alike inimitable. + +Alone among Corneille's dramatic rivals, if they deserve that +name--Du Ryer, Tristan, Scudery, Boisrobert, and others--JEAN ROTROU +(1610-50) had the magnanimity to render homage to the master of his +art. While still a boy he read Sophocles, and resolved that he would +live for the dramatic art. His facility was great, and he had the +faults of a facile writer, who started on his career at the age of +nineteen. He could not easily submit to the regulation of the +classical drama, and squandered his talents in extravagant +tragi-comedies; but his work grew sounder and stronger towards the +close. _Saint Genest_ (1645), which is derived, but in no servile +fashion, from Lope de Vega, recalls _Polyeucte_; an actor of the time +of Diocletian, in performing the part of a Christian martyr, is +penetrated by the heroic passion which he represents, confesses his +faith, and receives its crown in martyrdom. The tragi-comedy _Don +Bernard de Cabrere_ and the tragedy _Venceslas_ of the following year +exhibit the romantic and passionate sides of Rotrou's genius. The +intemperate yet noble Ladislas has rashly and in error slain his +brother; he is condemned to death by his father Venceslas, King of +Poland, and he accepts his doom. The situation is such as Corneille +might have imagined; but Rotrou's young hero in the end is pardoned +and receives the kingdom. If their careless construction and unequal +style in general forbade the dramas of Rotrou to hold the stage, they +remained as a store from which greater artists than he could draw +their material. His death was noble: the plague having broken out +at Dreux, he hastened from Paris to the stricken town, disregarding +all affectionate warnings, there to perform his duty as a magistrate; +within a few days the inhabitants followed Rotrou's coffin to the +parish church. + +THOMAS CORNEILLE, the faithful and tender brother of "le grand +Corneille," and his successor in the Academy, belongs to a younger +generation. He was born in 1625, and did not die until near the close +of the first decade of the eighteenth century. As an industrious +playwright he imitated his brother's manner, and reproduced his +situations with a feebler hand. Many of his dramas are of Spanish +origin, comic imbroglios, tragic extravagances; they rather diverted +dramatic art from its true way than aided its advance. Perhaps for +this reason they were the more popular. His _Timocrate_ (1656), drawn +from the romance of _Cleopatre_, and itself a romance written for +the stage, had a success rarely equalled during the century. The hero +is at once the enemy and the lover of the Queen of Argos; under one +name he besieges her, under another he repels his own attack; he is +hated and adored, the conquered and the conqueror. The languors of +conventional love and the plaintive accents of conventional grief +suited the powers of the younger Corneille. His _Ariane_ (1672) +presents a heroine, Ariadne, abandoned by Theseus, who reminds us +of one of Racine's women, drawn with less certain lines and fainter +colours. In _Le Comte d'Essex_ history is transformed to a romance. +Perhaps the greatest glory of Thomas Corneille is that his reception +as an Academician became the occasion for a just and eloquent tribute +to the genius of his brother uttered by Racine, when the bitterness +of rivalry was forgotten and the offences of Racine's earlier years +were nobly repaired. + + + + +CHAPTER IV +SOCIETY AND PUBLIC LIFE IN LETTERS + + +Before noticing the theories of classical poetry in the writings of +its master critic, Boileau, we must glance at certain writers who +belonged rather to the world of public life and of society than to +the world of art, but who became each a master in literary craft, +as it were, by an irresistible instinct. Memoirs, maxims, epistolary +correspondence, the novel, in their hands took a distinguished place +in the hierarchy of literary art. + +FRANCOIS VI., DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, Prince de Marsillac, was born +in 1613, of one of the greatest families of France. His life is divided +into two periods--one of passionate activity, when with romantic +ardour he threw himself into the struggles of the Fronde, only to +be foiled and disillusioned; and the other of bitter reflection, +consoled by certain social successes, loyal friendships, and an +unique literary distinction. His _Maximes_ are the brief confession +of his experience of life, an utterance of the pessimism of an +aristocratic spirit, moulded into a form proper to the little world +of the _salon_--each maxim a drop of the attar not of roses but of +some more poignant and bitterly aromatic blossom. In the circle of +Mme. de Sable, now an elderly _precieuse_, a circle half-Epicurean, +half-Jansenist, frivolously serious and morosely gay, the +composition of maxims and "sentences" became a fashion. Those of La +Rochefoucauld were submitted to her as to an oracle; five years were +given to shaping a tiny volume; fifteen years to rehandling and +polishing every phrase. They are like a collection of medals struck +in honour of the conquests of cynicism. The first surreptitious +edition, printed in Holland in 1664, was followed by an authorised +edition in 1665; the number of maxims, at first 317, rose finally +in 1678 to 504; some were omitted; many were reduced to the extreme +of concision; under the influence of Mme. de la Fayette, in the later +texts the indictment of humanity was slightly attenuated. "Il m'a +donne de l'esprit," said Mme. de la Fayette, "mais j'ai reforme son +coeur." + +The motto of the book, "Our virtues are commonly vices in disguise," +expresses its central idea. La Rochefoucauld does not absolutely deny +disinterested goodness; there may be some such instinctive virtue +lying below all passions which submit to be analysed; he does not +consider the love of God, the parental or the filial affections; but +wherever he applies analysis, it is to reduce each apparently +disinterested feeling to self-love. "We all have strength enough to +endure the misfortunes of another;" "When vices desert us, we flatter +ourselves with the belief that it is we who desert them;" "With true +love it is as with apparitions--every one talks of them, but few +persons have seen them;" "Virtues lose themselves in self-interest +as rivers lose themselves in the sea;" "In the adversity of our best +friends we always find something which does not displease us"--such +are the moral comments on life graven in ineffaceable lines by La +Rochefoucauld. He is not a philosophic thinker, but he is a +penetrating and remorseless critic, who remains at one fixed point +of view; self-interest is assuredly a large factor in human conduct, +and he exposes much that is real in the heart of man; much also that +is not universally true was true of the world in which he had moved; +whether we accept or reject his doctrine, we are instructed by a +statement so implacable and so precise of the case against human +nature as he saw it. Pitiless he was not himself; perhaps his artistic +instinct led him to exclude concessions which would have marred the +unity of his conception; possibly his vanity co-operated in producing +phrases which live and circulate by virtue of the shock they +communicate to our self-esteem. The merit of his _Maximes_ as examples +of style--a style which may be described as lapidary--is +incomparable; it is impossible to say more, or to say it more +adequately, in little; but one wearies in the end of the monotony +of an idea unalterably applied, of unqualified brilliance, of +unrelieved concision; we anticipate our surprise, and its purpose +is defeated. Traces of preciosity are found in some of the earliest +sentences; that infirmity was soon overcome by La Rochefoucauld, and +his utterances become as clear and as hard as diamond. + +He died at the age of sixty-seven, in the arms of Bossuet. His +_Memoires_,[1] relating to the period of the Fronde, are written with +an air of studied historical coldness, which presents a striking +contrast to the brilliant vivacity of Retz. + +[Footnote 1: Ed. 1662, surreptitious and incomplete; complete ed., +1868-1884.] + +The most interesting figure of the Fronde, its portrait-painter, its +analyst, its historian, is CARDINAL DE RETZ (1614-1679). Italian by +his family, and Italian in some features of his character, he had, +on a scale of grandeur, the very genius of conspiracy. When his first +work, _La Conjuration de Fiesque_, was read by Richelieu, the judgment +which that great statesman pronounced was penetrating--"Voila un +dangereux esprit." Low of stature, ugly, ill-made, short-sighted, +Retz played the part of a gallant and a duellist. Never had any one +less vocation for the spiritual duties of an ecclesiastic; but, being +a churchman, he would be an illustrious actor on the ecclesiastical +stage. There was something demoniac in his audacity, and with the +spirit of turbulence and intrigue was united a certain power of +self-restraint. When fallen, he still tried to be magnificent, though +in disgrace: he would resign his archbishopric, pay his enormous debts, +resign his cardinalate, exhibit himself as the hero in misfortune. +"Having lived as a Catiline," said Voltaire, "he lived as an Atticus." +In retirement, as his adventurous life drew towards its close, he +wrote, at the request of Madame de Caumartin, those Memoirs which +remained unpublished until 1717, and which have insured him a place +in literature only second to Saint-Simon. + +It was an age remarkable for its memoirs; those of Mlle. de Montpensier, +of Mme. de Motteville, of Bussy-Rabutin are only a few of many. The +_Memoires_ of Retz far surpass the rest not only in their historical +interest, but in their literary excellence. Arranging facts and dates +so that he might superbly figure in the drama designed for future +generations, he falsifies the literal truth of things; but he lays +bare the inner truth of politics, of life, of character, with +incomparable mastery. He exposes the disorder of his conduct in early +years with little scruple. The origins of the Fronde are expounded +in pages of profound sagacity. His narrative has all the impetuosity, +all the warmth and hues of life, all the tumult and rumour of action; +he paints, but in painting he explains; he touches the hidden springs +of passion; his portraits of contemporaries are not more vivid in +their colours than they are searching in their psychology: and in +his style there is that negligent grandeur which belongs rather to +the days of Louis XIII. than to the age of his successor, when language +grew more exact for the intelligence, but lost much of its passion +and untamed energy. + +The epistolary art, in which the art itself is nature, may be said +to have reached perfection, with scarcely an historical development, +in the letters of MME. DE SEVIGNE. The letters of Balzac are rhetorical +exercises; those of Voiture are often, to use a word of Shakespeare, +"heavy lightness, serious vanity." Mme. de Sevigne entered into the +gains of a cultivated society, in which graceful converse had become +a necessity of existence. She wrote delightfully, because she +conveyed herself into her letters, and because she conversed freely +and naturally by means of her pen. Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, born +in 1626, deprived of both parents in her earliest years, was carefully +trained in literary studies--Latin, Italian, French--under the +superintendence of her uncle, "le bien bon," the Abbe de Coulanges. +Among her teachers were the scholar Menage and the poet Chapelain. +Married at eighteen to an unworthy husband, the Marquis Henri de +Sevigne, she was left at twenty-five a widow with two children, the +daughter whom she loved with excess of devotion, and a son, who +received from his mother a calmer affection. She saw the life of the +court, she was acquainted with eminent writers, she frequented the +Hotel de Rambouillet (retaining from it a touch of preciosity, "one +superfluous ribbon," says Nisard, "in a simple and elegant toilet"), +she knew and loved the country and its rural joys, she read with +excellent judgment and eager delight the great books of past and +present times. + +When her daughter, "the prettiest girl in France," was married in +1669 to M. de Grignan, soon to be Lieutenant-General of Provence, +Mme. de Sevigne, desiring to be constantly one with her, at least +in thought, transferred into letters her whole life from day to day, +together with much of the social life of the time during a period +of nearly thirty years. She allowed her pen to trot, throwing the +reins, as she says, upon its neck; but if her letters are +improvisations, they are improvisations regulated by an exquisite +artistic instinct. Her imagination is alert in discovering, +combining, and presenting the happiest meanings of reality. She is +gay, witty, ironical, malicious, and all this without a trace of +malignity; amiable rather than passionate, except in the ardour of +her maternal devotion, which sometimes proved oppressive to a +daughter who, though not unloving, loved with a temperate heart; +faithful to friends, loyal to those who had fallen into misfortune, +but neither sentimental nor romantic, nor disposed to the +generosities of a universal humanity; a woman of spirit, energy, and +good sense; capable of serious reflection, though not of profound +thought; endowed with an exquisite sense of the power of words, and, +indeed, the creator of a literary style. While her interests were +in the main of a mundane kind, she was in sympathy with Port-Royal, +admired the writings of Pascal, and deeply reverenced Nicole. +Domestic affairs, business (concern for her children having involved +her in financial troubles), the aristocratic life of Paris and +Versailles, literature, the pleasures and tedium of the country, the +dulness or gaiety of a health-resort, the rise and fall of those in +power, the petty intrigues and spites and follies of the day--these, +and much besides, enter into Mme. de Sevigne's records, records made +upon the moment, with all the animation of an immediate impression, +but remaining with us as one of the chief documents for the social +history of the second half of the seventeenth century. In April 1696 +Mme. de Sevigne died. + +Beside the letters addressed to her daughter are others--far fewer +in number--to her cousin Bussy-Rabutin, to her cousin Mme. de +Coulanges, to Pomponne, and other correspondents. In Bussy's +_Memoires et Correspondance_ (1696-97) first appeared certain of her +letters; a collection, very defective and inaccurate, was published +in 1726; eight years later the first portion of an authorised text +was issued under the sanction of the writer's grand-daughter; +gradually the material was recovered, until it became of vast extent; +even since the appearance of the edition among the _Grands Ecrivains +de la France_ two volumes of _Lettres inedites_ have been published. + +Among the other letter-writers of the period, perhaps the most +distinguished were Mme. de Sevigne's old and attached friend Mme. +de la Fayette, and the woman of supreme authority with the King, Mme. +de Maintenon. A just view of Mme. de Maintenon's character has been +long obscured by the letters forged under her name by La Beaumelle, +and by the bitter hostility of Saint-Simon. On a basis of ardour and +sensibility she built up a character of unalterable reason and good +sense. Her letters are not creations of genius, unless practical +wisdom and integrity of purpose be forms of genius. She does not gossip +delightfully; at times she may seem a little hard or dry; but her +reason is really guided by human kindness. "Her style," wrote a high +authority, Dollinger, "is clear, terse, refined, often sententious; +her business letters are patterns of simplicity and pregnant brevity. +They might be characterised as womanly yet manly, so well do they +combine the warmth and depth of womanly feeling with the strength +and lucidity of a masculine mind." The foundation of Saint-Cyr, for +the education of girls wellborn but poor, was the object of her +constant solicitude; there she put out her talents as a teacher and +guide of youth to the best interest; there she found play for her +best affections: "C'est le lieu," she said, "de delices pour moi." + +The friend of Madame de Sevigne, the truest woman whom La +Rochefoucauld had ever known, MADAME DE LA FAYETTE was the author +of two historical works, of which one is exquisite--a memorial of +her friend the Duchess of Orleans, and of two--perhaps +three--romances, the latest of which, in the order of chronology, +is the masterpiece of seventeenth-century fiction. Marie de la Vergne, +born in 1634, a pupil of Menage, married at twenty-one to M. de la +Fayette, became the trusted companion of the bright and gracious +Henrietta of England. It is not that part of Madame's life, when she +acted as intermediary between Louis XIV. and her brother, Charles +II., that is recorded by her friend: it is the history of her heart. +Nothing is more touching in its simplicity than the narrative of +Madame's last moments; it serves as the best possible comment on the +pathetic Funeral Oration of Bossuet. We have no grounds for asserting +that the married life of Madame de la Fayette was unhappy, except +through the inadequacy of a husband whose best qualities seem to have +been of a negative kind. During the fifteen years which preceded the +death of La Rochefoucauld her friendship for him was the centre of +her existence. She seemed to bear about with her some secret grief; +something remained veiled from other friends than he, and they named +her _le Brouillard_. She outlived her friend by thirteen years, and +during ten was widowed. In 1693 she died. + +Her earliest novel, _La Princesse de Montpensier_ (1662), a tale of +the days of the Valois and of St. Bartholomew, is remarkable for its +truthful pictures of the manners of the court, its rendering of +natural and unexaggerated feeling, and for the fact that it treats +of married life, occupying itself with such themes as have been dealt +with in many of its modern successors. The _Zayde_, of eight years +later, was written in collaboration with Segrais. It is in _La +Princesse de Cleves_ (1678) that the genius and the heart of Madame +de la Fayette find a perfect expression. The Princess, married to +a husband who loves her devotedly, and whom she honours, but whose +feelings she cannot return, is tempted by the brilliant Duc de Nemours +and by the weakness of her own passion, to infidelity. She resolves +to confide her struggle to her husband, and seek in him a protector +against herself. The hard confession is made, but a grievous and +inevitable change has passed over their lives. Believing himself +deceived, M. de Cleves is seized by a fever and dies, not without +the consolation of learning his error. Nemours renews his vows and +entreaties; the Princess refuses his hand, and atones for her error +in cloistered seclusion. The tale has lost none of its beauty and +pathos after a lapse of two centuries. Does it reveal the hidden grief +of the writer's life? And was her friend, the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, +delivered from his gout and more than a score of years, transformed +by Madame de la Fayette into the foiled lover of her tale? + + + + +CHAPTER V +BOILEAU AND LA FONTAINE + + +The great name in criticism of the second half of the seventeenth +century is that of Boileau. But one of whom Boileau spoke harshly, +a soldier, a man of the world, the friend of Ninon de l'Enclos, a +sceptical Epicurean, an amateur in letters, Saint-Evremond +(1613-1703), among his various writings, aided the cause of criticism +by the intuition which he had of what is excellent, by a fineness +of judgment as far removed from mere licence as from the pedantry +of rules. Fallen into disfavour with the King, Saint-Evremond was +received into the literary society of London. His criticism is that +of a fastidious taste, of balance and moderation, guided by tradition, +yet open to new views if they approved themselves to his culture and +good sense. Had his studies been more serious, had his feelings been +more generous and ardent, had his moral sense been less shallow, he +might have made important contributions to literature. As it was, +to be a man of the world was his trade, to be a writer was only an +admirable foible. + +NICOLAS BOILEAU, named DESPREAUX, from a field (pre) of his father's +property at Crosne, was born in Paris, 1636, son of the registrar +of the Grand Chambre du Palais. His choice of a profession lay between +the Church and that with which his father was connected--the law; +but though he made some study of theology, and was called to the bar, +his inclination for literature could not be resisted. His whole life, +indeed, was that of a man of letters--upright, honourable, serious, +dignified, simple; generous to the friends whose genius he could +justly applaud; merciless to books and authors condemned by his reason, +his good sense, his excellent judgment. He was allied by an ardent +admiration to Racine, and less intimately to Moliere, La Fontaine, +and Chapelle; Jansenist through his religious sympathies, and +closely attached to the venerable Arnauld; appointed historiographer +to the King (1677) together with Racine; an Academician by the King's +desire, notwithstanding the opposition of his literary enemies. In +his elder years his great position of authority in the world of letters +was assured, but he suffered from infirmities of body, and from an +increasing severity of temper. In 1711 he died, bequeathing a large +sum of money to the poor. + +Boileau's literary career falls into three periods--the first, +militant and destructive, in which he waged successful war against +all that seemed to him false and despicable in art; the second, +reconstructive, in which he declared the doctrine of what may be +termed literary rationalism, and legislated for the French +Parnassus; the third, dating from his appointment as historiographer, +a period of comparative repose and, to some extent, of decline, but +one in which the principles of his literary faith were maintained +and pressed to new conclusions. His writings include twelve satires +(of which the ninth, "A son Esprit," is the chief masterpiece); twelve +epistles (that to Racine being pre-eminent); the literary-didactic +poem, _L'Art Poetique_; a heroi-comical epic, _Le Lutrin_; +miscellaneous shorter poems (among which may be noted the admirable +epitaph on Arnauld, and an unhappy ode, _Sur la Prise de Namur_, 1693); +and various critical studies in prose, his Lucianic dialogue _Les +Heros de Roman_, satirising the extravagant novels not yet dismissed +to oblivion, and his somewhat truculent _Reflexions sur Longin_ being +specially deserving of attention. The satires preceded in date the +epistles; of the former, the first nine belong to the years 1660-67; +the first nine of the epistles to the years 1669-77; three satires +and three epistles may be described as belated. The year 1674 is +memorable as that in which were published _L'Art Poetique_ and the +first four _chants_ of _Le Lutrin_. + +The genius of Boileau was in a high degree intellectual, animated +by ideas; but it is an error to suppose that a sensuous element is +absent from his verse. It is verse of the classical school, firm and +clear, but it addresses the ear with a studied harmony, and what +Boileau saw he could render into exact, definite, and vivid expression. +His imagination was not in a large sense creative; he was wholly +lacking in tenderness and sensibility; his feeling for external +nature was no more than that of a Parisian bourgeois who enjoys for +a day the repose of the fields; but for Paris itself, its various +aspects, its life, its types, its manners, he had the eye and the +precise rendering of a realist in art; his faithful objective touch +is like that of a Dutch painter. As a moralist, he is not searching +or profound; he saw too little of the inner world of the heart, and +knew too imperfectly its agitations. When, however, he deals with +literature--and a just judgment in letters may almost be called an +element in morals--all his penetration and power become apparent. + +To clear the ground for the new school of nature, truth and reason +was Boileau's first task. It was a task which called for courage and +skill. The public taste was still uncertain. Laboured and lifeless +epics like Chapelain's _La Pucelle_, petty ingenuities in metre like +those of Cotin, violence and over-emphasis, extravagances of +sentiment, faded preciosities, inane pastoralisms, gross or vulgar +burlesques, tragedies languorous and insipid, lyrics of pretended +passion, affectations from the degenerate Italian literature, +super-subtleties from Spain--these had still their votaries. And the +conduct of life and characters of men of letters were often unworthy +of the vocation they professed. "La haine d'un sot livre" was an +inspiration for Boileau, as it afterwards was for our English satirist +Pope; and he felt deeply that dignity of art is connected with dignity +of character and rectitude of life--"Le vers se sent toujours des +bassesses de coeur." He struck at the follies and affectations of +the world of letters, and he struck with force: it was a needful duty, +and one most effectively performed. Certain of the Epistles, which +are written with less pitiless severity and with a more accomplished +mastery of verse, continue the work of the Satires. From Horace he +derived much, something from Juvenal, and something from his +predecessor Regnier; but he had not the lightness nor the _bonhomie_ +of Horace, nor his easy and amiable wisdom. + +In the _Art Poetique_ Boileau is constructive; he exhibits the true +doctrine of literature, as he conceived it. Granted genius, fire, +imagination--the gifts of heaven--what should be the self-imposed +discipline of a poet? Above all, the cultivation of that power which +distinguishes false from true, and aids every other faculty--the +reason. "Nothing," declares Boileau, "is beautiful save what is +true;" nature is the model, the aim and end of art; reason and good +sense discern reality; they test the fidelity of the artistic +imitation of nature; they alone can vouch for the correspondence of +the idea with its object, and the adequacy of the expression to the +idea. What is permanent and universal in literature lives by the aid +of no fashion of the day, but by virtue of its truth to nature. And +hence is derived the authority of the ancient classics, which have +been tried by time and have endured; these we do not accept as tyrants, +but we may safely follow as guides. + +To study nature is, however, before all else to study man--that is, +human nature--and to distinguish in human nature what is universal +and abiding from what is transitory and accidental; we cannot be +expected to discover things absolutely new; it suffices to give to +what is true a perfect expression. Unhappily, human nature, as +understood by Boileau, included little beyond the court and the town. +Unhappily his appreciation of classical literature was defective; +to justify as true and natural the mythology of Greece he has to regard +it as a body of symbols or a moral allegory. Unhappily his survey +of literature was too narrow to include the truths and the splendours +of Mediaeval poetry and art. For historical truth, indeed, he had +little sense; seeking for what is permanent and universal, he had +little regard for local colour and the truth of manners. To secure +assent from contemporary minds truth must assume what they take to +be its image, and a Greek or Roman on the stage must not shock the +demand for verisimilitude made by the courtly imagination of the days +of Louis Quatorze. Art which fails to please is no longer art. + +To the workmanship, the technique of poetry, Boileau attaches a high +importance. Its several species--idyl, elegy, ode, sonnet, epigram, +rondeau, ballade, madrigal, satire, epic, tragedy, comedy--are +separated from one another by fixed boundaries, and each is subject +to its own rules; but genius, on occasion, may transcend those rules, +and snatch an unauthorised grace. It is difficult to understand why +from among the _genres_ of poetry Boileau omitted the fable; perhaps +he did not regard its form, now in verse and now in prose, as defined; +possibly he was insensible of the perfection to which the fable in +verse had been carried by La Fontaine. The fourth _chant_ of the _Art +Poetique_ is remarkable for its lofty conception of the position of +the poet; its counsels express the dignity of the writer's own +literary life. He has been charged not only with cruelty as a satirist, +but with the baseness of a flatterer of the great. It would be more +just to notice the honourable independence which he maintained, +notwithstanding his poetical homage to the King, which was an +inevitable requisition. Boileau's influence as a critic of +literature can hardly be overrated; it has much in common with the +influence of Pope on English literature--beneficial as regards his +own time, somewhat restrictive and even tyrannical upon later +generations. + +_Le Lutrin_ (completed in 1683) is not a burlesque which degrades +a noble theme, but, like Pope's far more admirable _Rape of the Lock_, +a heroi-comic poem humorously exalting humble matter of the day. It +tells of the combats of ecclesiastics respecting the position of a +lectern, combats in which the books of a neighbouring publisher serve +as formidable projectiles. The scene is in the Sainte-Chapelle and +the Palais de Justice. Boileau's gift for the vivid presentation of +visible detail, and his skill in versification, served him here better +than did his choice of a subject. On the whole, we think of him less +as a poet than as the classical guardian and legislator of poetry. +He was an emancipator by directing art towards reason and truth; when +larger interpretations of truth and reason than his became possible, +his influence acted unfavourably as a constraint. + +All that Boileau lacked as a poet was possessed by the most easy and +natural of the singers of his time--one whose art is like nature in +its freedom, while yet it never wrongs the delicate bounds of art. +JEAN DE LA FONTAINE was born in 1621 at Chateau-Thierry, in Champagne, +son of the "maitre des eaux et forets." His education was less of +a scholastic kind than an education derived from books read for his +own pleasure, and especially from observation or reverie among the +woods and fields, with their population of bird, beast, and insect, +so dear to his heart and his imagination. Slipping away from theology +and law, he passed ten years, from twenty-three to thirty-three, in +seeming indolence, a "bon garcon," irreclaimably wayward as regards +worldly affairs, but already drawing in to himself all that fed his +genius, all sights and sounds of nature, all the lore of old poets, +story-tellers, translators, and already practising his art of verse. +Nothing that was not natural to him, and wholly to his liking, would +he or could he do; but happily he was born to write perfect verses, +and the labour of the artist was with him an instinct and a delight. +He allowed himself to be married to a pretty girl of fifteen, and +presently forgot that he had a wife and child, drifted away, and agreed +in 1659 to a division of goods; but his carelessness and egoism were +without a touch of malignity, those of an overgrown child rather than +of a man. + +In 1654 he published a translation of the _Eunuch_ of Terence of small +worth, and not long after was favoured with the patronage of Fouquet, +the superintendant of finance. To him La Fontaine presented his +_Adonis_, a narrative poem, graceful, picturesque, harmonious, +expressing a delicate feeling for external nature rarely to be found +in poetry of the time, and reviving some of the bright Renaissance +sense of antiquity. The genius of France is united in La Fontaine's +writings with the genius of Greece. But the verses written by command +for Fouquet are laboured and ineffective. His ill-constructed and +unfinished _Songe de Vaux_, partly in prose, partly in verse, was +designed to celebrate his patron's Chateau de Vaux. + +Far happier than this is the poem in dialogue _Clymene_, a dramatic +fantasy, in which Apollo on Mount Parnassus learns by the aid of the +Muses the loves of Acante (La Fontaine) and Clymene (Madame X ...), +a rural beauty, whom the god had seen wandering on the banks of +Hippocrene. On the fall of his magnificent patron La Fontaine did +not desert him, pleading in his _Elegie aux Nymphes de Vaux_ on behalf +of the disgraced minister. As a consequence, the poet retired for +a time from Paris to banishment at Limoges. But in 1664 he is again +in Paris or at Chateau-Thierry, his native place, where the Duchesse +de Bouillon, niece of Mazarin, young, gay, pleasure-loving, bestowed +on him a kind protection. His tedious paraphrase of _Psyche_, and +the poem _Quinquina_, in which he celebrates the recovery from illness +of the Duchess, were performances of duty and gratitude rather than +of native impulse; but the tendencies of her salon, restrained neither +by the proprieties of the classical doctrine in literature nor those +of religious strictness, may have encouraged him to the production +of his _Contes_. + +In Paris, from 1661 to 1664 joyous meetings took place in Boileau's +rooms in the Rue du Colombier of a distinguished group, which included +Moliere, Chapelle, Racine, and La Fontaine. La Fontaine, the +_bonhomme_, who escaped from the toil of conversation which did not +interest him in shy or indolent taciturnity, could be a charming +talker with companions of his choice. Probably to Boileau's urgency +is due the first original publication of La Fontaine, a little volume +of _Nouvelles en Vers_ (1664-1665), containing the _Joconde_, a tale +from Ariosto, and a comic story versified from Boccaccio. Almost +immediately there followed a collection of ten _Contes_, with the +author's name upon the title-page, and at various later dates were +published added tales, until five parts completed the series. The +success was great, but great also was the scandal, for the _bonhomme_, +drawing from Boccaccio, the Heptameron, the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, +Rabelais, Petronius, Athenaeus, and other sources, had exhibited no +more regard for decency than that which bestows the graces of +lightness, brightness, wit, and gaiety upon indecency. His unabashed +apology was that the artistic laws of the _conte_ obliged him to +decline the laws of modesty; and among those who applauded his tales +were the Duchess de Bouillon and Mme. de Sevigne. It is indeed +impossible not to applaud their skill in rapid and easy narrative, +and the grace, freedom, and spontaneity of the verse. + +The first six books of the _Fables_ appeared in 1668; the next five +in two parts, in 1678 and 1679; the twelfth and last book in 1694. +When the _Psyche_ was published, soon after the first group of the +_Fables_, the prose and verse were placed in a graceful setting, which +tells of the converse of the author with his friends Boileau, Racine, +and Moliere (or possibly Chapelle) in the midst of the unfinished +gardens of Versailles, where the author of _Psyche_, named happily +Polyphile (for he loved many things, and among them his friends), +will read his romance for his literary comrades. + + "_J'aime le jeu, l'amour, les livres, la musique, + La ville et la campagne, enfin tout: il n'est rien + Qui ne me soit souverain bien + Jusq'aux sombres plaisirs d'un coeur melancolique._" + +Some of his friends before long had passed away, but others came to +fill their places. For many years he was cared for and caressed by +the amiable and cultivated Mme. de Sabliere, and when she dismissed +other acquaintances she still kept "her dog, her cat, and her La +Fontaine." The Academy would have opened its doors to him sooner than +to Boileau, but the King would not have it so, and he was admitted +(1684) only when he had promised Louis XIV. henceforth to be _sage_. +When Mme. de Sabliere died, Hervart, maitre des requetes, one day +offered La Fontaine the hospitality of his splendid house. "I was +on my way there," replied the poet. After a season of conversion, +in which he expressed penitence for his "infamous book" of _Contes_, +the _bonhomme_ tranquilly died in April 1693. "He is so simple," said +his nurse, "that God will not have courage to damn him." "He was the +most sincere and candid soul," wrote his friend Maucroix, who had +been intimate with him for more than fifty years, "that I have ever +known; never a disguise; I don't know that he spoke an untruth in +all his life." + +All that is best in the genius of La Fontaine may be found in his +_Fables_. The comedies in which he collaborated, the _Captivite de +Saint Malc_, written on the suggestion of the Port-Royalists, the +miscellaneous poems, though some of these are admirable, even the +_Contes_, exhibit only a fragment of his mind; in the _Fables_ the +play of his faculties is exquisite, and is complete. His imagination +was unfitted for large and sustained creation; it operated most +happily in a narrow compass. The _Fables_, however, contain much in +little; they unite an element of drama and of lyric with narrative; +they give scope to his feeling for nature, and to his gift for the +observation of human character and society; they form, as he himself +has said-- + + "_Une ample comedie a cents actes divers + Et dont la scene est l'univers._" + +He had not to invent his subjects; he found them in all the fabulists +who had preceded him--Greek, Latin, Oriental, elder French +writers--"j'en lis qui sont du Nord et qui sont du Midi;" but he may +be said to have recreated the species. From an apologue, tending to +an express moral, he converted the fable into a _conte_, in which +narrative, description, observation, satire, dialogue have an +independent value, and the moral is little more than an accident. +This is especially true of the midmost portion of the collection--Books +vii.-ix.--which appeared ten years after the earliest group. He does +not impose new and great ideas on the reader; he does not interpret the +deepest passions; he takes life as he sees it, as an entertaining +comedy, touched at times with serious thought, with pathos, even with +melancholy, but in the main a comedy, which teaches us to smile at the +vanities, the follies, the egoisms of mankind, and teaches us at the +same time something of tenderness and pity for all that is gentle or +weak. His morality is amiable and somewhat epicurean, a morality of +indulgence, of moderation, of good sense. His eye for what is +characteristic and picturesque in animal life is infallible; but his +humanised wild creatures are also a playful, humorous, ironical +presentation of mankind and of the society of his own day, from the +grand monarch to the bourgeois or the lackey. + +La Fontaine's language escapes from the limitations of the classical +school of the seventeenth century; his manifold reading in elder +French literature enriched his vocabulary; he seems to light by +instinct upon the most exact and happiest word. Yet we know that the +perfection of his art was attained only as the result of untiring +diligence; indolent and careless as he was in worldly affairs, he +was an indefatigable craftsman in poetry. His verse is as free as +it is fine; it can accomplish whatever it intends; now it is light +and swift, but when needful it can be grave and even magnificent: + + "_Aurait-il imprime sur le front des etoiles + Ce que la nuit des temps enferme dans ses voiles?_" + +It is verse which depends on no mechanical rules imposed from without; +its life and movement come from within, and the lines vary, like a +breeze straying among blossoms, with every stress or relaxation of +the writer's mood. While La Fontaine derives much from antiquity, +he may be regarded as incarnating more than any other writer of his +century the genius of France, exquisite in the proportion of his +feeling and the expression of feeling to its source and cause. If +we do not name him, with some of his admirers, "the French Homer," +we may at least describe him, with Nisard, as a second Montaigne, +"mais plus doux, plus aimable, plus naif que le premier," and with +all the charm of verse superadded. + + + + +CHAPTER VI +COMEDY AND TRAGEDY--MOLIERE--RACINE + + +I + +The history of comedy, from Larivey to Moliere, is one of arrested +development, followed by hasty and ill-regulated growth. During the +first twenty-five years of the seventeenth century, comedy can hardly +be said to have existed; whatever tended to beauty or elevation, took +the form of tragi-comedy or pastoral; what was rude and popular became +a farce. From the farce Moliere's early work takes its origin, but +of the repertory of his predecessors little survives. Much, indeed, +in these performances was left to the improvisation of the burlesque +actors. Gros-Guillaume, Gaultier-Garguille, Turlupin, Tabarin, +rejoiced the heart of the populace; but the _farces tabariniques_ +can hardly be dignified with the name of literature. + +In 1632 the comedy of intrigue was advanced by Mairet in his +_Galanteries du Duc d'Ossone_. The genius of Rotrou, follower though +he was of Plautus, tended towards the tragic; if he is really gay, +it is in _La Soeur_ (1645), a bright tangle of extravagant incidents. +For Rotrou the drama of Italy supplied material; the way to the Spanish +drama was opened by d'Ouville, the only writer of the time devoted +specially to comedy, in _L'Esprit Follet_ (1641); once opened, it +became a common highway. Scarron added to his Spanish originals in +_Jodelet_ and _Don Japhet d'Armenie_ his own burlesque humour. The +comedy of contemporary manners appears with grace and charm in +Corneille's early plays; the comedy of character, in his admirable +_Le Menteur_. Saint-Evremond satirised literary affectations in _La +Comedie des Academistes_; these and other follies of the time are +presented with spirit in Desmaret's remarkable comedy, _Les +Visionnaires_. If we add, for sake of its study of the peasant in +the character of Mathieu Gareau, the farcical _Pedant Joue_ of Cyrano, +we have named the most notable comedies of the years which preceded +_Les Precieuses Ridicules_. + +Their general character is extravagance of resources in the plot, +extravagance of conception in the characters. Yet in both intrigue +and characters there is a certain monotony. The same incidents, +romantic and humorous, are variously mingled to produce the +imbroglio; the same typical characters--the braggart, the parasite, +the pedant, the extravagant poet, the amorous old man, the designing +woman, the knavish valet, the garrulous nurse--play their mirthful +parts. If the types are studied from real life rather than adopted +from Italian or Spanish models, they are exaggerated to absurdity. +Corneille alone is distinguished by delicacy of imagination and the +finer touch of a dexterous artist. + +JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN, who, when connected with the stage, named +himself MOLIERE, was born in January 1622, in Paris, the son of a +prosperous upholsterer, Jean Poquelin, and Marie Cresse, his wife. +Educated at the College de Clermont, he had among his fellow-pupils +the Prince de Conti, Chapelle, the future poet Hesnault, the future +traveller Bernier. There seems to be no sufficient reason to doubt +that he and some of his friends afterwards received lessons in +philosophy from Gassendi, whose influence must have tended to loosen +him from the traditional doctrines, and to encourage independence +of thought. A translation by Moliere of the great poem of Lucretius +has been lost, but a possible citation from it appears in the second +act of the _Misanthrope_. Legal studies followed those of philosophy. +But Moliere had other ends in view than either those of an advocate +or of the hereditary office of upholsterer to the King. In 1643, at +the age of twenty-one, he decided to throw in his lot with the +theatrical company in which Madeleine Bejart and her brothers were +leading members. The _Illustre Theatre_ was constituted, but Paris +looked askance at the illustrious actors; debt, imprisonment, and +release through friendly aid, formed the net result of Moliere's first +experiment. + +The troupe decided at the close of 1645 or in the early days of the +following year to try their fortune in the provinces. It is needless +to follow in detail their movements during twelve years--twelve years +fruitful in experience for one who observed life with keenest eyes, +years of toil, in which the foundations of his art were laid. At Lyons, +probably in 1655, possibly in 1653, a comedy, founded on the Italian +of Nicolo Barbieri, _L'Etourdi_, saw the light, and Moliere revealed +himself as a poet. Young Lelie, the _Etourdi_, is enamoured of the +beautiful Celie, whom the merchant Trufaldin, old and rich, has +purchased from corsairs. Lelie's valet Mascarille, who is the life +of the play, invents stratagem on stratagem to aid the lover, and +is for ever foiled by his master's indiscretions, until the inevitable +happy denouement arrives. The romantic intrigue is conventional; the +charm is in the vivacity and colour of the style. In 1656 _Le Depit +Amoureux_ was given with applause at Beziers; much is derived from +the Italian of Secchi, something perhaps from Terence; the tender +scenes of lovers' quarrels and lovers' reconciliation, contrasting +with the franker comedy of the loves of waiting-maid and valet, still +live, if the rest of the play be little remembered. + +The years of apprenticeship were over when, in 1658, Moliere and his +company once more in Paris presented, by command, before the King, +Corneille's _Nicomede_, and, leave being granted, gave his farce in +the Italian style, the _Docteur Amoureux_, before pleased spectators. +The company was now the troupe of Monsieur, the King's brother, with +the Petit-Bourbon as theatre, and there, in November 1659, was enacted +Moliere's first satiric play on contemporary manners, _Les +Precieuses Ridicules_. We do not need the legendary old man crying +from the pit "Courage, Moliere! voila la bonne comedie" to assure +us that the comic stage possessed at length a masterpiece. The +dramatist had himself known the precieuses of the provinces; through +them he might with less danger exhibit the follies of the Hotel de +Rambouillet and the _ruelles_ of the capital. The good bourgeois +Gorgibus is induced by his niece and daughter, two precieuses, to +establish himself in Paris. Their aspirant lovers, unversed in the +affectations of the salon, are slighted and repelled; in revenge they +employ their valets, Mascarille and Jodelet, to play the parts of +men of fashion and of taste. The exposure and confusion of the ladies, +with an indignant rebuke from Gorgibus, close the piece. It was a +farce raised to the dignity of comedy. Moliere's triumph was the +triumph of good sense. + +After a success in _Sganarelle_ (1660), a broad comedy of vulgar +jealousy, and a decided check--the only one in his dramatic career--in +the somewhat colourless tragi-comedy _Don Garcie de Navarre_ (1661), +Moliere found a theme, suggested by the Adelphi of Terence, which +was happily suited to his genius. _L'Ecole des Maris_ (1661) contrasts +two methods of education--one suspicious and severe, the other wisely +indulgent. Two brothers, Ariste and Sganarelle, seek the hands of +their wards, the orphan sisters Isabelle and Leonor; the amiable +Ariste, aided by the good sense of a gay soubrette, is rewarded with +happiness; the vexatious Sganarelle is put to confusion. The drama +is a plea, expressing the writer's personal thoughts, for nature and +for freedom. The comedy of manners is here replaced by the comedy +of character. Its success suggested to Fouquet that Moliere might +contribute to the amusement of the King at the fetes of the Chateau +de Vaux; in fifteen days the dramatist had his bright improvisation +_Les Facheux_ ready, a series of character sketches in scenes rather +than a comedy. The King smiled approval, and, it was whispered, hinted +to Moliere that another bore might with advantage be added to the +collection--the sportsman whose talk shall be of sport. At +Fontainebleau he duly appeared before his Majesty, and unkind +spectators recognised a portrait of the Marquis de Soyecourt. + +Next February (1662) Moliere, aged forty, was married to the actress +Armande Bejart, whose age was half his own--a disastrous union, which +caused him inexpressible anxiety and unhappiness. In _L'Ecole des +Femmes_ of the same year he is wiser than he had shown himself in +actual life. Arnolphe would train a model wife from childhood by the +method of jealous seclusion and in infantile ignorance; but love, +in the person of young Horace, finds out a way. There is pathos in +the anguish of Arnolphe; yet it is not the order of nature that +middle-aged folks should practise perverting arts upon innocent +affections. The charming Agnes belongs of right to Horace, and the +over-wise, and therefore foolish, Arnolphe must quit the scene with +his despairing cry. Some matter of offence was found by the devout +in Moliere's play; it was the opening of a long campaign; the +_precieuses_, the dainty gentle-folk, the critical disciples of +Aristotle, the rival comedians, were up in arms. Moliere for the +occasion ignored the devout; upon the others he made brilliant +reprisals in _La Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes_ (1663) and +_L'Impromptu de Versailles_ (1663). + +Among those who war against nature and human happiness, not the least +dangerous foe is the religious hypocrite. On May 12, 1664, Moliere +presented before the King the first three acts of his great +character-comedy _Tartufe_. Instantly Anne of Austria and the King's +confessor, now Archbishop of Paris, set to work; the public +performance of "The Hypocrite" was inhibited; a savage pamphlet was +directed against its author by the cure of Saint-Barthelemy. Private +representations, however, were given; _Tartufe_, in five acts, was +played in November in presence of the great Conde. In 1665 Moliere's +company was named the servants of the King; two years later a verbal +permission was granted for the public performance of the play. It +appeared under the title of _L'Imposteur_; the victory seemed won, +when again, and without delay, the blow fell; by order of the President, +M. de Lamoignon, the theatre was closed. Moliere bore up courageously. +The King was besieging Lille; Moliere despatched two of his comrades +to the camp, declaring that if the Tartufes of France should carry +all before them he must cease to write. The King was friendly, but +the Archbishop fulminated threats of excommunication against any one +who should even read the play. At length in 1669, when circumstances +were more favourable, Louis XIV. granted the desired permission; in +its proper name Moliere's play obtained complete freedom. Bourdaloue +might still pronounce condemnation; Bossuet might draw terrible +morals from the author's sudden death; an actor, armed with the sword +of the comic spirit, had proved victorious. And yet the theologians +were not wholly wrong; the tendency of Moliere's teaching, like that +of Rabelais and like that of Montaigne, is to detach morals from +religion, to vindicate whatever is natural, to regard good sense and +good feeling as sufficient guides of conduct. + +There is an accent of indignation in the play; the follies of men +and women may be subjects of sport; base egoism assuming the garb +of religion deserves a lash that draws the blood. Is it no act of +natural piety to defend the household against the designs of greedy +and sensual imposture; no service to society to quicken the +penetration of those who may be made the dupes of selfish craft? While +Organ and his mother are besotted by the gross pretensions of the +hypocrite, while the young people contend for the honest joy of life, +the voice of philosophic wisdom is heard through the sagacious Cleante, +and that of frank good sense through the waiting-maid, Dorine. +Suddenly a providence, not divine but human, intervenes in the +representative of the monarch and the law, and the criminal at the +moment of triumph is captured in his own snare. + +When the affair of _Tartufe_ was in its first tangle, Moliere produced +a kind of dramatic counterpart--_Don Juan, ou le Festin de Pierre_ +(1665). In Don Juan--whose valet Sganarelle is the faithful critic +of his master--the dramatist presented one whose cynical incredulity +and scorn of all religion are united with the most complete moral +licence; but hypocrisy is the fashion of the day, and Don Juan in +sheer effrontery will invest himself for an hour in the robe of a +penitent. Atheist and libertine as he is, there is a certain glamour +of reckless courage about the figure of his hero, recreated by Moliere +from a favourite model of Spanish origin. His comedy, while a vigorous +study of character, is touched with the light of romance. + +These are masterpieces; but neither _Tartufe_ nor _Don Juan_ +expresses so much of the mind of Moliere as does _Le Misanthrope_ +(1666). His private griefs, his public warfare, had doubtless a little +hardened and a little embittered his spirit. In many respects it is +a sorry world; and yet we must keep on terms with it. The misanthropist +Alceste is nobly fanatical on behalf of sincerity and rectitude. How +does his sincerity serve the world or serve himself? And he, too, +has his dose of human folly, for is he not enamoured of a heartless +coquette? Philinte is accommodating, and accepts the world for what +it is; and yet, we might ask, is there not a more settled misanthropy +in such cynical acquiescence than there is in the intractable virtue +of Alceste? Alone of Moliere's plays, _Le Misanthrope_ has that +Shakespearean obscurity which leaves it open to various +interpretations. It is idle to try to discover actual originals for +the characters. But we may remember that when Alceste cried to +Celimene, "C'est pour mes peches que je vous aime," the actors who +stood face to face were Moliere and the wife whom he now met only +on the stage. + +Moliere's genius could achieve nothing higher than _Tartufe_ and the +_Misanthrope_. His powers suffered no decline, but he did not again +put them to such strenuous uses. In 1668 the brilliant fantasy of +_Amphitryon_, freely derived from Plautus, was succeeded by an +admirable comedy in prose, _Georges Dandin_, in which the folly of +unequal marriage between the substantial farmer and the fine lady +is mocked with bitter gaiety. Before the year closed Moliere, +continuing to write in prose, returned to Plautus, and surpassed him +in _L'Avare_. To be rich and miserly is in itself a form of fatuity; +but Harpagon is not only miserly but amorous, as far as a ruling +passion will admit one of subordinate influence. _Le Bourgeois +Gentilhomme_ (1670), a lesson of good sense to those who suffer from +the social ambition to rise above their proper rank, is wholly +original; it mounts in the close from comedy to the extravagance of +farce, and perhaps in the uproarious laughter of the play we may +discover a touch of effort or even of spasm. The operatic _Psyche_ +(1671) is memorable as having combined the talents of Moliere, +Corneille, and Quinault, with the added musical gifts of Lulli. + +In _Les Femmes Savantes_ (1672) Moliere returned to an early theme, +with variations suited to the times. The Hotel de Rambouillet was +closed; the new tribe of _precieuses_ had learnt the Cartesian +philosophy, affected the sciences, were patronesses of physics, +astronomy, anatomy. Something of the old romantic follies survived, +and mingled strangely with the pretensions to science and the +pedantries of erudition. Trissotin (doubtless a portrait in +caricature from the Abbe Cotin) is the Tartufe of spurious culture; +Vadius (a possible satire of Menage) is a pedant, arrogant and brutal. +Shall the charming Henriette be sacrificed to gratify her mother's +domineering temper and the base designs of an impostor? The forces +are arrayed on either side; the varieties of learned and elegant folly +in woman are finely distinguished; of the opposite party are Chrysale, +the bourgeois father with his rude common-sense; the sage Ariste; +the faithful servant, Martine, whose grammar may be faulty, but whose +wit is sound and clear; and Henriette herself, the adorable, whom +to know is more of a liberal education than to have explored all the +Greek and Latin masters of Vadius and Trissotin. The final issue of +the encounter between good sense, good nature, reason and folly, +pedantry and pride, cannot be uncertain. + +_Le Malade Imaginaire_ was written when Moliere was suffering from +illness; but his energy remained indomitable. The comedy continued +that long polemic against the medical faculty which he had sustained +in _L'Amour Medecin_, _Monsieur de Pourceaugnac_, and other plays. +Moliere had little faith in any art which professes to mend nature; +the physicians were the impostors of a learned hygiene. It was the +dramatist's last jest at the profession. While playing the part of +Argan on February 17, 1673, the "Malade Imaginaire" fell dying on +the stage; he forced a laugh, but could not continue his part; at +ten o'clock he was no more. Through the exertions of his widow a +religious funeral was permitted to an actor who had died unfortified +by the rites of the Church. + +Many admirable though slighter pieces served as the relief of his +mind between the effort of his chief works. In all, gaiety and good +sense interpenetrate each other. Kindly natured and generous, +Moliere, a great observer, who looked through the deeds of men, was +often taciturn--_le contemplateur_ of Boileau--and seemingly +self-absorbed. Like many persons of artistic temperament, he loved +splendour of life; but he was liberal in his largess to those who +claimed his help. He brought comedy to nature, and made it a study +of human life. His warfare was against all that is unreal and unnatural. +He preached the worth of human happiness, good sense, moderation, +humorous tolerance. He does not indulge in heroics, and yet there +is heroism in his courageous outlook upon things. The disciple of +Moliere cannot idealise the world into a scene of fairyland; he will +conceive man as far from perfect, perhaps as far from perfectible; +but the world is our habitation; let us make it a cheerful one with +the aid of a sane temper and an energetic will. As a writer, Moliere +is not free from faults; but his defects of style are like the +accidents that happen within the bounds of a wide empire. His stature +is not diminished when he is placed among the greatest European +figures. "I read some pieces of Moliere's every year," said Goethe, +"just as from time to time I contemplate the engravings after the +great Italian masters. For we little men are not able to retain the +greatness of such things within ourselves." + +To study the contemporaries and immediate successors of Moliere in +comedy--Thomas Corneille, Quinault, Montfleury, Boursault, +Baron--would be to show how his genius dominates that of all his +fellows. The reader may well take this fact for granted.[1] + +[Footnote 1: An excellent guide will be found in Victor Fournel's +_Le Theatre au xvii. Siecle, La Comedie_.] + + +II + +With the close of the sanguinary follies of the Fronde, with the +inauguration of the personal government of Louis XIV. and the triumph +of an absolute monarchy, a period of social and political +reorganisation began. The court became the centre for literature; +to please courtiers and great ladies was to secure prosperity and +fame; the arts of peace were magnificently ordered; the conditions +were favourable to ideals of grace and beauty rather than of proud +sublimity; to isolate one's self was impossible; literature became +the pastime of a cultivated society; it might be a trivial pastime, +but in fitting hands it might become a noble pleasure. + +The easier part was chosen by PHILIPPE QUINAULT, the more arduous +by Racine. Quinault (1635-88) had given his first comedy as early +as 1653; in tragedies and tragi-comedies which followed, he heaped +up melodramatic incidents, but could not base them upon characters +strongly conceived, or passion truly felt. A frigid sentimentality +replaces passion, and this is expressed with languorous monotony. +Love reigns supreme in his theatre; but love, as interpreted by +Quinault, is a kind of dulcet gallantry. His tragedy _Astrate_ (1663) +was not the less popular because its sentiment was in the conventional +mode. One comedy by Quinault, _La Mere Coquette_, is happy in its +plot and in its easy style. But he did not find his true direction +until he declined--or should we rather say, until he rose?--into the +librettist for the operas of Lulli. His lyric gifts were considerable; +he could manipulate his light and fragile material with extraordinary +skill. The tests of truth and reality were not applied to such verse; +if it was decorative, the listeners were satisfied. The opera +flourished, and literature suffered through its pseudo-poetics. But +the libretti of Quinault and the ballets of Benserade are +representative of the time, and in his mythological or chivalric +inventions Benserade sometimes could attain to the poetry of graceful +fantasy. + +Quinault retired from the regular drama almost at the moment when +Racine appeared. Born at La Ferte-Milon in 1639, son of a procureur +and comptroller of salt, JEAN RACINE lost both parents while a child. +His widowed grandmother retired to Port-Royal in 1649. After six +years' schooling at Beauvais the boy passed into the tutelage of the +Jansenists, and among his instructors was the devout and learned +Nicole. Solitude, religion, the abbey woods, Virgil, Sophocles, +Euripides--these were the powers that fostered his genius. Already +he was experimenting in verse. At nineteen he continued his studies +in Paris, where the little abbe Le Vasseur, who knew the _salons_ +and haunted the theatre, introduced him to mundane pleasures. +Racine's sensitive, mobile character could easily adapt itself to +the world. His ode on the marriage of the King, _La Nymphe de la Seine_, +corrected by Chapelain (for to bring Tritons into a river was highly +improper), won him a gift of louis d'or. But might not the world +corrupt the young Port-Royalist's innocence? The company of ladies +of the Marais Theatre and that of La Fontaine might not tend to +edification. So thought Racine's aunts; and, with the expectation +that he would take orders, he was exiled to Uzes, where his uncle +was vicar-general, and where the nephew could study the _Summa_ of +theology, but also the Odyssey, the odes of Pindar, Petrarch, and +the pretty damsels who prayed in the cathedral church. + +In 1663 he was again in Paris, was present at royal levees, and in +Boileau's chambers renewed his acquaintance with La Fontaine, and +became a companion of Moliere. His vocation was not that of an +ecclesiastic. Two dramatic works of earlier date are lost; his first +piece that appeared before the public, _La Thebaide_, was presented +in 1664 by Moliere's company. It is a tragedy written in discipleship +to Rotrou and to Corneille, and the pupil was rather an imitator of +Corneille's infirmities than of his excellences. _Alexandre_ +followed towards the close of the ensuing year--a feeble play, in +which the mannered gallantry of the time was liberally transferred +to the kings of India and their Macedonian conqueror. But amorous +sighs were the mode, and there was a young grand monarch who might +discover himself in the person of the magnanimous hero. The success +was great, though Saint-Evremond pronounced his censures, and +Corneille found ridiculous the trophies erected upon the imagined +ruins of his own. Discontented with the performers at the Palais-Royal, +Racine offered his play to the Hotel de Bourgogne; Moliere's best +actress seceded to the rival house. Racine's ambition may excuse, +but cannot justify an injurious act; a breach between the friends +was inevitable. + +Boileau remained now, as ever, loyal--loyal for warning as well as +for encouragement. Nicole, the former guide of Racine's studies, in +his _Visionnaires_, had spoken of dramatic poets as "public +poisoners." The reproach was taken to himself by Racine, and in two +letters, written with some of the spirit of the _Provinciales_, he +turned his wit against his Jansenist friends. Thanks to Boileau's +wise and firm counsel, the second of these remained unpublished. + +Madame de Sevigne was the devoted admirer of the great Corneille, +but when she witnessed his young rival's _Andromaque_ she yielded +to its pathos six reluctant tears. On its first appearance in 1667 +a triumph almost equal to that of the _Cid_ was secured. Never before +had grace and passion, art and nature, ideality and truth, been so +united in the theatre of France. Racine did not seek for novelty in +the choice of a subject; Euripides had made Andromache familiar to +the Greek stage. The invention of Racine was of a subtler kind than +that which manufactures incidents and constructs a plot. Like Raphael +in the art of painting, he could accept a well-known theme and renew +it by the finest processes of genius. He did not need an extraordinary +action, or personages of giant proportions; the simpler the intrigue, +the better could he concentrate the interest on the states of a soul; +the more truly and deeply human the characters, the more apt were +they for betraying the history of a passion. In its purity of outline, +its harmony of proportions, _Andromaque_ was Greek; in its sentiment, +it gained something from Christian culture; in its manners, there +was a certain reflection of the Versailles of Louis XIV. It was at +once classical and modern, and there was no discordance between +qualities which had been rendered, to borrow a word from Shakespeare, +"harmonious charmingly." With _Andromaque_ French tragedy ceased to +be oratorical, and became essentially poetic. + +Adversaries there were, such as success calls forth; the irritable +poet retorted with epigrams of a kind which multiply and perpetuate +enmities. His true reprisal was another work, _Britannicus_, +establishing his fame in another province of tragedy. But before +_Britannicus_ appeared he had turned aside, as if his genius needed +recreation, to produce the comedy, or farce, or buffoonery, or +badinage, or mockery (for it is all these), _Les Plaideurs_. It may +be that his failure in a lawsuit moved Racine to have his jest at +the gentlemen of the Palais; he and his friends of the tavern of the +_Mouton Blanc_--Furetiere among them--may have put their wits +together to devise material for laughter, and discussed how far _The +Wasps_ of Aristophanes could be acclimatised in Paris. At first the +burlesque was meant for an Italian troupe, but Scaramouche left the +town, and something more carefully developed would be expected at +the Hotel de Bourgogne. The play was received with hisses, but Moliere +did not fear to laugh at what was comic, whether he laughed according +to the rules or against them. A month later, at a court performance, +Louis XIV. laughed loudly; the courtiers quickly discovered Racine's +wit, and the laughter was echoed by all loyal citizens. In truth, +there is laughing matter in the play; the professional enthusiasm +of Dandin, the judge, who wears his robe and cap even in bed, the +rage and rapture of litigation in Chicanneau and the Countess, have +in them something of nature beneath the caricature; in the buffoonery +there is a certain extravagant grace. + +_Les Plaideurs_, however, was only an interlude between graver +efforts. _Britannicus_ (1669), founded on the Annals of Tacitus, +exhibits with masterly power Nero's adolescence in crime; the young +tiger has grace and strength, but the instinct of blood needs only +to be awakened within him. Agrippine is a superb incarnation of +womanly ambition, a Roman sister of Athalie. The play was at first +coldly received; Corneille and his cabal did not spare their censures. +In a preface Racine struck back, but afterwards repented of his bitter +words and withdrew them. The critics, as he says in a later preface, +disappeared; the piece remained. His conception of tragedy in +contrast with that of Corneille was defined by him in memorable +words--what is natural should be sought rather than what is +extraordinary; the action should be simple, "chargee de peu de +matiere"; it should advance gradually towards the close, sustained +by the interests, sentiments, and passions of the personages. + +The sprightly Henrietta of England, Duchess of Orleans, seems to have +conceived the idea of bringing the rivalry between the old dramatic +poet and his young successor to a decisive test. She proposed to each, +without the other's knowledge, a subject for a tragedy--the parting, +for reasons of State policy, of two royal lovers, Titus, Emperor of +Rome, and Berenice, Queen of Palestine. Perhaps Henrietta +mischievously thought of the relations of her friend Marie de Mancini +with Louis XIV. The plays appeared almost simultaneously in November +1670; Corneille's was before long withdrawn; Racine's _Berenice_, +in which the penetrating voice of La Champmesle interpreted the +sorrows of the heroine, obtained a triumph. Yet the elegiac subject +is hardly suited to tragedy; a situation rather than an action is +presented; it needed all the poet's resources to prevent the scenes +from being stationary. In Berenice there is a suavity in grief which +gives a grace to her passion; the play, if not a drama of power, is +the most charming of elegiac tragedies. + +_Bajazet_ (1672), a tragedy of the seraglio, although the role of +the hero is feeble, has virile qualities. The fury of Eastern passion, +a love resembling hate, is represented in the Sultana Roxane. In the +Vizier Acomat, deliberate in craft, intrepid in danger, Racine proved, +as he proved by his Nero and his Joad, that he was not always doomed +to fail in his characters of men. The historical events were +comparatively recent; but in the perspective of the theatre, distance +may produce the idealising effect of time. The story was perhaps found +by Racine in _Floridon_, a tale by Segrais. The heroine of +_Mithridate_ (1673), the noble daughter of Ephesus, Monime, queen +and slave, is an ideal of womanly love, chastity, fidelity, sacrifice; +gentle, submissive, and yet capable of lofty courage. The play unites +the passions of romance with a study of large political interests +hardly surpassed by Corneille. The cabal which gathered head against +_Bajazet_ could only whisper its malignities when _Mithridate_ +appeared. + +_Iphigenie_, which is freely imitated from Euripides, was given at +the fetes of Versailles in the summer of 1674. The French Iphigenia +is enamoured of Achilles, and death means for her not only departure +from the joy of youth and the light of the sun, but the loss of love. +Here, as elsewhere, Racine complicates the moral situation with cross +and counter loves: Eriphile is created to be the jealous rival of +Iphigenie, and to be her substitute in the sacrifice of death. The +ingenious transpositions, which were necessary to adapt a Greek play +to Versailles in the second half of the seventeenth century, called +forth hostile criticisms. Through miserable intrigues a competing +_Iphigenie_, the work of Le Clerc and Coras, was produced in the spring +of 1675; it was born dead, and five days later it was buried. + +The hostilities culminated two years later. It is commonly said that +Racine wrote in the conventional and courtly taste of his own day. +In reality his presentation of tragic passions in their terror and +their truth shocked the aristocratic proprieties which were the mode. +He was an innovator, and his audacity at once conquered and repelled. +It was known that Racine was engaged on _Phedre_. The Duchesse de +Bouillon and her brother the Duc de Nevers were arbiters of elegance +in literature, and decreed that it should fail. A rival play on the +same subject was ordered from Pradon; and to insure her victory the +Duchess, at a cost of fifteen thousand livres, as Boileau declares, +engaged the front seats of two theatres for six successive +evenings--the one to be packed with applauding spectators, the other +to exhibit empty benches, diversified with creatures who could hiss. +Nothing could dignify Pradon's play, as nothing could really degrade +that of Racine. But Racine was in the highest degree sensitive, and +such a desperate plot against his fame might well make him pause and +reflect. + +_Phedre_, like _Iphigenie_, is a new creation from Euripides. Its +singular beauty has been accurately defined as a mingling of horror +and compassion, of terror and curiosity. It is less a drama than one +great part, and that part consists of a diseased state of the soul, +a morbid conflict of emotions, so that the play becomes overmuch a +study in the pathology of passion. The greatness of the role of the +heroine constitutes the infirmity of the play as a whole; the other +characters seem to exist only for the sake of deploying the inward +struggle of which Phedre is the victim. Love and jealousy rage within +her; remorse follows, for something of Christian sentiment is +conveyed by Racine into his classical fable. Never had his power as +a psychologist in art been so wonderfully exhibited; yet he had +elsewhere attained more completely the ideal of the drama. In the +succession of his profane masterpieces we may say of the last that +it is lesser than the first and greater. _Phedre_ lacks the balance +and proportion of _Andromaque_; but never had Racine exhibited the +tempest and ravage of passion in a woman's soul on so great a scale +or with force so terrible. + +The cabal might make him pause; his own play, profoundly moralised +as it was, might cause him to consider. Events of the day, crimes +of passion, adulteries, poisonings, nameless horrors, might agitate +his spirit. Had he not fed the full-blown passions of the time? What +if Nicole's word that playwrights were public poisoners should be +true? Probably various causes operated on the mobile spirit of Racine; +certainly the Christian, of Jansenist education, who had slumbered +within him, now awakened. He resolved to quit the world and adopt +the Carthusian habit. The advice of his confessor was that he should +regulate his life by marriage. Racine yielded, and found his +contentment in a wife who was ignorant of his plays, and in children +whose inclinations and training were religious. The penitent was +happy in his household, happy also in his reconciliation with Nicole +and Arnauld. To Boileau he remained attached. And he did not renounce +the court. Was not the King the anointed vicegerent of God, who could +not be too much honoured? He accepted, with Boileau as fellow-labourer, +the position of the King's historiographer, and endeavoured to fulfil +its duties. + +Twelve years after his withdrawal from the theatre, Racine, at the +request of Madame de Maintenon, composed his Biblical tragedy of +_Esther_ (1688-89) for her cherished schoolgirls at Saint-Cyr. The +subject was not unaptly chosen--a prudent and devout Esther now helped +to guide the fortunes of France, and she was surrounded at Saint-Cyr +by her chorus of young daughters of Sion. _Esther_ was rendered by +the pupils, with graceful splendours, before the King, and the delight +was great. The confidante of the Persian Queen indeed forgot her +words; at Racine's hasty complaint the young actress wept, and the +poet, weeping with her, wiped away her tears. + +_Esther_ is a melodious play, exquisite in its refined style and +delicate versification; but the characters are faintly drawn. Its +novelty lay in its lyrical movements and in the poetical uses of its +finely-imagined spectacle. Madame de Maintenon or her directors +feared that the excitement and ambitions of another play in costume +might derange the spirits of her girls, and when _Athalie_ was recited +at Versailles, in January 1691, it was little of an event; the play +passed almost unnoticed. A noisy reception, indeed, would have been +no fitting tribute to its solemn beauty. All Racine's religious +feeling, all his domestic tenderness are united in _Athalie_ with +his matured feeling for Greek art. The great protagonist is the Divine +Being; Providence replaces the fate of the ancient drama. A child +(for Racine was still an innovator in the French theatre) was the +centre of the action; the interests were political, or rather national, +in the highest sense; the events were, as formerly, the developments +of inward character; but events and characters were under the +presiding care of God. The tragedy is lyrical, not merely through +the chorus, which expresses common emotions of devout joy and fear, +indignation, praise, and rapture. The chorus is less developed here, +and its chants are less impressive than in _Esther_. There is, however, +a lyrism, personal and modern, in the prophetic inspiration of the +High Priest, and Racine anticipated that his boldness in presenting +this might be censured by his contemporaries. The unity of place, +which had been disregarded in _Esther_, is here preserved; the scene +is the temple at Jerusalem; and by its impressive grandeur, and the +awful associations of the place, the spectacle may be said to take +part in the action of the play. Perhaps it would be no exaggeration +to assert that grandeur and beauty are nowhere else so united in French +dramatic art as in _Athalie_; perhaps it might truly be described +as flawless in majesty and grace. + +A light disfavour of the King saddened, and perhaps hastened, the +close of Racine's life. Port-Royal was regarded as a centre of +rebellious heresy; and Racine's piety to his early masters was humble +and devout. He had further offended by drawing up a memorandum on +the sufferings of the French people resulting from the wars. Madame +de Maintenon assured him that the cloud would pass; but the favour +of death, accepted with tranquillity, came before the returning +favour of the poet's master. He died in April 1699, soon after he +had entered his sixtieth year. + +The highest distinction of the drama of Racine is its truth to +nature--truth, that is, in its interpretation and rendering of human +passion. Historical accuracy and local colour concerned him as far +as they were needful with his courtly spectators for verisimilitude. +The fluctuations of passion he studies to most advantage in his +characters of women. Love, in all its varieties, from the passion +of Roxane or Phedre to the pure devotion of Berenice, Iphigenie, or +Monime; maternal tenderness or the tenderness of the foster-mother +(Andromaque, Clytemnestre, Josabeth); female ambition (Agrippine, +Athalie)--these are the themes of his exposition. His style has been +justly characterised as a continual creation; its audacity underlies +its suavity; its miracles are accomplished with the simplest means. +His vocabulary is singularly small, yet with such a vocabulary he +can attain the rarest effects. From sustained dignity he can pass +suddenly, when the need arises, to the most direct familiarity. The +music of his verse is seldom rich or sonorous; it is at once a pure +vehicle for the idea and a delicate caress to the senses. + + + + +CHAPTER VII +BOSSUET AND THE PREACHERS--FENELON + + +I + +"A man set under authority"--these words, better than any other, +define Bossuet. Above him was God, represented in things spiritual +by the Catholic Church, in things temporal by the French monarchy; +below him were the faithful confided to his charge, and those who +would lead the faithful astray from the path of obedience and +tradition. Duty to what was above him, duty to those placed under +him, made up the whole of Bossuet's life. To maintain, to defend, +to extend the tradition he had received, was the first of duties. +All his powers as an orator, a controversialist, an educator were +directed to this object. He wrote and spoke to dominate the intellects +of men and to subdue their wills, not for the sake of personal power, +but for the truth as he had received it from the Church and from the +monarchy. + +JACQUES-BENIGNE BOSSUET was born in 1627, at Dijon, of a middle-class +family, distinguished in the magistracy. In his education, pursued +with resolute ardour, the two traditions of Hellenism and Hebraism +were fused together: Homer and Virgil were much to him; but the Bible, +above all, nourished his imagination, his conscience, and his will. +The celebrity of his scholarship and the flatteries of Parisian +_salons_ did not divert him from his course. At twenty-five he was +a priest and a doctor of the Sorbonne. Six years were spent at Metz, +a city afflicted by the presence of Protestants and Jews, where +Bossuet fortified himself with theological studies, preached, +panegyrised the saints, and confuted heretics. His fame drew him to +Paris, where, during ten years, his sermons were among the great +events of the time. In 1669 he was named Bishop of Condom, but, being +appointed preceptor to the Dauphin, he resigned his bishopric, and +devoted himself to forming the mind of a pupil, indolent and dull, +who might one day be the vicegerent of God for his country. Bishop +of Meaux in 1681, he opened the assembly of French clergy next year +with his memorable sermon on the unity of the Church, and by his +authority carried, in a form decisive for freedom while respectful +towards Rome, the four articles which formulated the liberties of +the Gallican Church. The duties of his diocese, controversy against +Protestantism, the controversy against Quietism, in which Fenelon +was his antagonist, devotional writings, strictures upon the stage, +controversy against the enlightened Biblical criticism of Richard +Simon, filled his energetic elder years. He ceased from a life of +glorious labour and resolute combat in April 1704. + +The works of Bossuet, setting aside his commentaries on Holy Scripture, +devotional treatises, and letters, fall into three chief groups: the +eloquence of the pulpit, controversial writings, and writings +designed for the instruction of the Dauphin. + +Political eloquence could not exist where power was grasped by the +hands of one great ruler. Judicial eloquence lacked the breadth and +elevation which come with political freedom; it contented itself with +subtleties of argument, decked with artificial flowers of style. The +pulpit was the school of oratory. St. Vincent de Paul had preached +with unction and a grave simplicity, and Bossuet, his disciple, felt +his influence. But the offering which Bossuet laid upon the altar +must needs be costly, an offering of all his powers. While an +unalterable good sense regulates all he wrote, the sweep of his +intellect demanded plenitude of expression; his imagination, if it +dealt with life and death, must needs deal with them at times in the +way of magnificence, which was natural to it; and his lyrical +enthusiasm, fed by the prophetic poetry of the Old Testament, could +not but find an escape in words. He sought no literary fame; his +sermons were acts of faith, acts of duty. Out of the vast mass of +his discourses he printed one, a sermon of public importance--that +on the unity of the Church. + +At the request of friends, some of the Funeral Orations were published. +These, with his address on the profession of Louise de La Valliere, +were all that could be read of Bossuet's pulpit oratory by his +contemporaries. His sermons were carefully meditated and prepared, +but he would not check his power of lofty improvisation by following +the words of a manuscript. After his death his papers had perilous +adventures. By the devotion of his first editor, Deforis, nearly two +hundred sermons were after many years recovered; later students have +presented them with as close an approximation as is possible to their +original form. Bossuet's first manner--that of the years at Metz--is +sometimes marred by scholastic subtleties, a pomp of quotations, too +curious imagery, and a temper rather aggressive than conciliating. +During the period when he preached in Paris he was master of all his +powers, which move with freedom and at the same time with a majestic +order; his grandeur grows out of simplicity. As Bishop of Meaux he +exhorted his flock out of the abundance of his heart, often without +the intermediary of written preparation. + +He is primarily a doctor of the faith: dogma first, determined by +authority, and commending itself to human reason; morality, not +independent, but proceeding from or connected with dogma, and while +truly human yet resting upon divine foundations. But neither dogma +nor morals are presented in the manner of the schools; both are made +living powers by the preacher's awe, adoration, joy, charity, +indignation, pity; in the large ordonnance of his discourse each +passion finds its natural place. His eloquence grows out of his theme; +his logic is the logic of clear and natural ideas; he is lucid, rapid, +energetic; then suddenly some aspect of his subject awakens a lyrical +emotion, and the preacher rises into the prophet. + +Bossuet's panegyrics of the saints are sermons in which doctrine and +morals are enforced by great examples. His _Oraisons Funebres_ preach, +for the uses of the living, the doctrine of death. Nowhere else does +he so fill the mind with a sense of the greatness and the glory of +life as when he stands beside the bier and reviews the achievements +or presents the characters of the illustrious deceased. Observing +as he did all the decorum of the occasion, his discourses do not +degenerate into mere adulation; some are historic surveys, +magnificent in their breadth of view and mastery of events. He +presents things as he saw them, and he did not always see aright. +Cromwell is a hypocrite and an impostor; the revocation of the edict +of Nantes is the laudable act of a king who is a defender of the faith. +The intolerance of Bossuet proceeds not so much from his heart as +from the logic of his orthodoxy. His heart had a tenderness which +breaks forth in many places, and signally in the discourse occasioned +by the death of the Duchess of Orleans. This, and the eloquent +memorials of her mother, Henrietta, Queen of England, and of the +Prince de Conde, touch the heights and depths of the passions proper +to the grave. + +Bossuet's polemic against Protestantism is sufficiently represented +by his _Exposition de la Doctrine Catholique_ (published 1671) and +the _Histoire des Variations des Eglises Protestantes_ (1688). The +latter, in its fifteen books, is an attempt to overwhelm the +contending Protestant communions by one irresistible attack. Their +diversities of error are contrasted with the one, unchanging faith +of the infallible Church. Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, the +Albigenses, the Hussites, the Wicliffites are routed and slain, as +opponents are slain in theological warfare--to rise again. History +and theology co-operate in the result. The characters of the +Protestant Reformers are studied with a remorseless scrutiny, and +an art which can bring into relief what the work of art requires. +Why the children of the infallible Church rose up in disobedience +against their mother is left unexplained. The great heresy, Bossuet +was persuaded, had almost reached its term; the intellectual chaos +would soon be restored to universal order under the successors of +Innocent XI. + +In the embittered controversy with his brother-Bishop of Cambrai, +on the significance of which the singular autobiography of Madame +Guyon[1] throws much light, Bossuet remained the victor. It was a +contention between dogmatic rectitude and the temper of emotional +religion. Bossuet was at first unversed in the writings of the +Catholic mystics. Being himself a fully-formed will, watchful and +armed for obedience and command--the "man under authority"--he +rightly divined the dangers to dogmatic faith arising from +self-abandonment to God within the heart. The elaborate structure +of orthodoxy seemed to dissolve in the ardour of a personal emotion; +it seemed to him another form of the individualism which he condemned. +The Church was a great objective reality; it had laid down a system +of belief. A love of God which ignored the method of God, was but +a spurious love, leading to destruction. + +[Footnote 1: Translated into English for the first time in full, 1897, +by T. T. Allen.] + +Protestant self-will, mystical private emotion--these were in turn +met by the champion of tradition, and, as he trusted, were subdued. +Another danger he perceived, not in the unregenerate will or wandering +heart, but in the critical intelligence. Bossuet again was right in +viewing with alarm the Biblical studies of Richard Simon. But his +scholarship was here defective. He succeeded in suppressing an +edition of the _Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament_. There were +printers in Holland beyond the reach of Bossuet's arm; and Simon +continued the work which others have carried further with the aids +of more exact science. + +To doubt the government of His world by the Divine Ruler, who assigns +us our duty and our place, is to sap the principles of authority and +of obedience. The doctrine of God's providence is at the centre of +all Bossuet's system of thought, at the heart of his loyal passions. +On earth, the powers that be; in France, the monarch; in heaven, a +greater Monarch (we will not say a magnified Louis XIV.) presiding +over all the affairs of this globe. When Bossuet tried to educate +his indocile pupil the Dauphin, he taught him how God is above man, +as man is above the brute. Monarchy--as he showed in his _Politique +Tiree de l'Ecriture Sainte_--is hereditary and absolute; but +absolute power is not arbitrary power; the King is God's subject, +and his laws must conform to those of his Divine Ruler. The _Discours +sur l'Histoire Universelle_ (1681) was written in the first instance +for the Dauphin; but its purpose was partly apologetic, and Bossuet, +especially in the second part of the book, had the errors of +free-thinkers--Spinoza and Simon--before his mind. + +The seventeenth century had not contributed largely to historical +literature, save in the form of memoirs. Mezeray, in the first half +of the century, Fleury, in the second, cannot be ranked among those +writers who illuminate with profound and just ideas. The Cartesian +philosophy viewed historical studies with haughty indifference. +Bossuet's _Discours_ is a vindication of the ways of God in history, +a theology of human progress. He would exhibit the nations and +generations of human-kind bound each to each under the Providential +government. The life of humanity, from Adam to Charlemagne, is mapped +into epochs, ages, periods--the periods of nature, of the law, and +of grace. In religion is found the unity of human history. By religion +is meant Judaism and Christianity; by Christianity is meant the +Catholicism of Rome. + +Having expounded the Divine policy in the government of the world, +Bossuet is free to study those secondary causes which have determined +the rise and fall of empires. With magisterial authority, and with +majestic skill, he presents the movements of races and peoples. His +sympathy with the genius of ancient Rome proceeds not only from his +comprehensive grasp of facts, but from a kinship between his own and +the Roman type of character. The magnificent design of Bossuet was +magnificently accomplished. He hoped to extend his studies, and apply +his method to other parts of his vast subject, but the hope was not +to be fulfilled. A disinterested student of the philosophy of history +he is not; he is the theologian who marshals facts under an accepted +dogma. A conception of Providence may indeed emerge from the +researches of a devout investigator of the life of humanity as their +last result; but towards that conception the secular life and the +various religions of the world will contribute; the ways of the Divine +Spirit will appear other than those of the anthropomorphic Ruler of +Bossuet's imagination. He was not an original thinker; he would have +scorned such a distinction--"l'heretique est celui qui a une +opinion"; he had received the truth, and only gave it extended +applications. He is "le sublime orateur des idees communes." + +More than an orator, before all else he was a combatant. Falling at +his post as the eighteenth century opened, he is like some majestic, +white-haired paladin of old romances which tell of the strife between +French chivalry and the Saracenic hordes. Bossuet fell; the age of +growing incredulity and novel faiths was inaugurated; the infidels +passed over the body of the champion of conservative tradition. + + +II + +Bossuet's contemporaries esteemed him as a preacher less highly than +they esteemed the Jesuit Bourdaloue. The life of LOUIS BOURDALOUE +(1632-1704) is told in the words of Vinet: "He preached, confessed, +consoled, and then he died." It does credit to his hearers that they +valued him aright--a modest man of simple probity. He spoke, with +downcast eyes and full harmonious voice, as a soul to souls; his +eloquence was not that of the rhetorician; his words were grave and +plain and living, and were pressed home with the force of their reality. +He aimed never at display, but always at conviction. When the crowd +at St. Sulpice was moved as he entered the church and ascended the +pulpit, "Silence!" cried the Prince de Conde, "there is our enemy!" +Bourdaloue marshalled his arguments and expositions with the +elaborate skill of a tactician; he sought to capture the judgment; +he reached the heart through a wise director's knowledge of its inmost +processes. When his words were touched with emotion, it was the +involuntary manifestation of the life within him. His studies of +character sometimes tended to the form of portraits of moral types, +features in which could be identified with actual persons; but in +these he was the moralist, not the satirist. During four-and-thirty +years Bourdaloue distributed, to those who would take it, the bread +of life--plain, wholesome, prepared skilfully and with clean hands, +never varying from the evenness and excellence of its quality. He +does not startle or dazzle a reader; he does what is better--he +nourishes. + +Bourdaloue pronounced only two _Oraisons Funebres_, and those under +the constraint of duty. He thought the Christian pulpit was meant +for less worldly uses than the eulogy of mortal men. The _Oraison +Funebre_ was more to the taste of Mascaron (1634-1703), whose unequal +rhetoric was at its best in his panegyric of Turenne; more to the +taste of the elegant FLECHIER, Bishop of Nimes. All the literary +graces were cultivated by Flechier (1632-1710), and his eloquence +is unquestionable; but it was not the eloquence proper to the pulpit. +He was a man of letters, a man of the world, formed in the school +of preciosity, a haunter of the Hotel de Rambouillet; knowing the +surface of society, he knew as a moralist how to depict its manners +and the evil that lay in them. He did not apply doctrine to life like +Bossuet, nor search the heart with Bourdaloue's serious zeal; to save +souls was indeed important; to exhibit his talents before the King +was also important. But the true eloquence of the pulpit has deeper +springs than lay in Flechier's mundane spirit. Already the decadence +has begun. + +Protestantism had its preacher in JACQUES SAURIN (1677-1730), clear, +logical, energetic, with negligences of style and sudden flashes of +genius. But he belongs to London, to Geneva, to the Hague more perhaps +than to France. An autumnal colouring, bright and abundant, yet +indicative of the decline, is displayed in the discourses of the +latest of the great pulpit orators, JEAN-BAPTISTE MASSILLON +(1663-1742), who belongs more to the eighteenth than to the +seventeenth century. "He must increase," said Bourdaloue, "but I must +decrease." Massillon, with gifts of person and of natural grace, +sensitive, tender, a student and professor of the rhetorical art, +sincerely devout, yet with waverings towards the world, had something +in his genius that resembled Racine. A pathetic sentiment, a feeling +for human passions, give his sermons qualities which contrast with +the severer manner of Bourdaloue. They are simple in plan; the +preacher's art lay in deploying and developing a few ideas, and +infusing into them an imaginative sensibility; he is facile and +abundant; faultless in amenity, but deficient in force and fire. Yet +the opening words of the Funeral Oration on Louis XIV.--"God alone +is great, my brethren"--are noble in their simplicity; and the thought +of Jesus suddenly appearing in "the most august assembly of the +world"--in the chapel at Versailles--startled the hearers of the +sermon on the "small number of the elect." "There is an orator!" cried +the actor Baron, "we are only comedians;" but no actor would have +instituted a comparison between himself and Bourdaloue. "When one +enters the avenue at Versailles," said Massillon, "one feels an +enervating air." + +He was aware of the rising tide of luxury and vice around him; he +tried to meet it, tracing the scepticism of the time to its +ill-regulated passions; but he met scepticism by morality detached +from dogma. The _Petit Careme_, preached before Louis XV. when a child +of eight, expresses the sanguine temper of the moment: the young King +would grow into the father of his people; the days of peace would +return. Great and beneficent kings are not effeminately amiable; it +were better if Massillon had preached "Be strong" than "Be tender." +Voltaire kept on his desk the sermons of Massillon, and loved to hear +the musical periods of the _Petit Careme_ read aloud at meal-time. +To be the favourite preacher of eighteenth-century philosophers is +a distinction somewhat compromising to an exponent of the faith. + + +III + +Bossuet's great antagonist in the controversy concerning Quietism +might have found the approval of the philosophers for some of his +political opinions. His religious writings would have spoken to them +in an unknown tongue. + +FRANCOIS DE SALIGNAC DE LA MOTHE-FENELON was born in Perigord (1651), +of an ancient and illustrious family. Of one whose intellect and +character were infinitely subtle and complex, the blending of all +opposites, it is possible to sustain the most conflicting opinions, +and perhaps in the end no critic can seize this Proteus. Saint-Simon +noticed how in his noble countenance every contrary quality was +expressed, and how all were harmonised: "Il fallait faire effort pour +cesser de le regarder." During the early years of his clerical career +he acted as superior to female converts from Protestantism, and as +missionary among the unconverted Calvinists. In 1689 he was appointed +tutor to the King's grandson, the Duc de Bourgogne, and from a +passionate boy he transformed his pupil into a youth too blindly +docile. Fenelon's nomination to the Archbishopric of Cambrai (1695), +which removed him from the court, was in fact a check to his ambition. +His religious and his political views were regarded by Louis XIV. +as dangerous for the Church and the monarchy. + +Through his personal interest in Mme. Guyon, and his sympathy with +her mystical doctrine in religion--one which inculcated complete +abnegation of the will, and its replacement by absolute surrender +to the Divine love--he came into conflict with Bossuet, and after +a fierce war of diplomacy and of pamphlets, in which Fenelon displayed +the utmost skill and energy as tactician and dialectician, he received +a temperate condemnation from Rome, and submitted. The death of the +Dauphin (1711), which left his former pupil heir to the throne, +revived Fenelon's hopes of political influence, but in the next year +these hopes disappeared with the decease of the young Duc de Bourgogne. +At Cambrai, where he discharged his episcopal duties like a saint +and a _grand seigneur_, Fenelon died six months before Louis XIV., +in 1715. + +"The most original intellect--if we set Pascal aside--of the +seventeenth century"--so Fenelon is described by one excellent +critic. "Antique and modern," writes his biographer, M. Paul Janet, +"Christian and profane, mystical and diplomatic, familiar and noble, +gentle and headstrong, natural and subtle, fascinating the +eighteenth century as he had fascinated the seventeenth, believing +like a child, and daring as Spinoza, Fenelon is one of the most +original figures which the Catholic Church has produced." His first +publication was the treatise _De l'Education des Filles_ (written +1681, published 1687), composed at the request of his friends the +Duc and Duchesse de Beauvilliers. It is based on a recognition of +the dignity of woman and the duty of a serious effort to form her +mind. It honours the reason, opposes severity, would make instruction, +as far as possible, a delight, and would exhibit goodness in a gracious +aspect; commends object-lessons in addition to book-learning, +indicates characteristic feminine failings (yet liveliness of +disposition is not regarded as one of these), exhorts to a dignified +simplicity in dress. The range of studies recommended is narrow, but +for Fenelon's time it was liberal; the book marks an epoch in the +history of female education. + +For his pupil the Duc de Bourgogne, Fenelon wrote his graceful prose +_Fables_ (which also include under that title short tales, allegories, +and fairy stories), the _Dialogues des Morts_, aiming at the +application of moral principles to politics, and his _Telemaque_, +named in the first (incomplete) edition _Suite du IVe Livre de +l'Odyssee_ (1699). In this, for long the most popular of tales for +the young, Fenelon's imaginative devotion to antiquity finds ample +expression; it narrates the wanderings of Telemachus in search of +his father Ulysses, under the warning guidance and guardianship of +Minerva disguised as Mentor. Imitations and borrowings from +classical authors are freely and skilfully made. It is a poem in prose, +a romance of education, designed at once to charm the imagination +and to inculcate truths of morals, politics, and religion. The +didactic purpose is evident, yet it remains a true work of art, full +of grace and colour, occasionally, indeed, languid, but often vivid +and forcible. + +Fenelon's views on politics were not so much fantastic as those of +an idealist. He dreamed of a monarchy which should submit to the +control of righteousness; he mourned over the pride and extravagance +of the court; he constantly pleaded against wars of ambition; he +desired that a powerful and Christian nobility should mediate between +the crown and the people; he conceived a system of decentralisation +which should give the whole nation an interest in public affairs; +in his ecclesiastical views he was Ultramontane rather than Gallican. +These ideas are put forth in his _Direction pour la Conscience d'un +Roi_ and the _Plan de Gouvernement_. Louis XIV. suspected the +political tendency of _Telemaque_, and caused the printing of the +first edition to be suspended. Fenelon has sometimes been regarded +as a forerunner of the Revolutionary movement; but he would rather, +by ideas in which, as events proved, there may have been something +chimerical, have rendered revolution impossible. + +Into his controversy with Bossuet he threw himself with a combative +energy and a skill in defence and attack that surprise one who knows +him only through his _Lettres Spirituelles_, which tend towards the +effacement of the will in a union with God through love. Bossuet +pleaded against the dangers for morals and for theology of a false +mysticism; Fenelon, against confounding true mysticism with what is +false. In his _Traite de l'Existence de Dieu_ he shows himself a bold +and subtle thinker: the first part, which is of a popular character, +attempts to prove the existence of the Deity by the argument from +design in nature and from the reason in man; the second part--of a +later date--follows Descartes in metaphysical proofs derived from +our idea of an infinite and a perfect being. To his other distinctions +Fenelon added that of a literary critic, unsurpassed in his time, +unless it be by Boileau. His _Dialogues sur l'Eloquence_ seek to +replace the elaborate methods of logical address, crowded with +divisions and subdivisions, and supported with a multitude of +quotations, by a style simple, natural, and delicate in its fervency. + +The admirable _Lettre a l'Academie_, Fenelon's latest gift to +literature, states the case of the ancients against the moderns, and +of the moderns against the ancients, with an attempt at impartiality, +but it is evident that the writer's love was chiefly given to his +favourite classical authors; simplicity and natural beauty attracted +him more than ingenuity or wit or laboured brilliance. He feared that +the language was losing some of its richness and flexibility; he +condemns the use of rhyme; he is hardly just to Racine, but honours +himself by his admiration of Moliere. In dealing with historical +writings he recognises the importance of the study of governments, +institutions, and social life, and at the same time values highly +a personal, vivid, direct manner, and a feeling for all that is real, +concrete, and living. To his rare gifts of intellect and of the soul +was added an inexpressible personal charm, in which something that +was almost feminine was united with the reserved power and authority +of a man. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII +TRANSITION TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY + + +The spiritual life was interpreted from within by Fenelon. The facts +of the moral world, as seen in society, were studied, analysed, and +portrayed by La Bruyere and Saint-Simon. + +JEAN DE LA BRUYERE (1645-96), a Parisian of the _bourgeoisie_, +appointed preceptor in history to the grandson of the great Conde, +saw with the keen eyes of a disenchanted observer the spectacle of +seventeenth-century society. In 1688, appended to his translation +of the Characters of Theophrastus, appeared his only important work, +_Les Caracteres ou les Moeurs de ce Siecle_; revised and enlarged +editions followed, until the ninth was published in 1696. "I restore +to the public," he wrote, "what the public lent me." In a series of +sixteen chapters, each consisting of detached paragraphs, his +studies of human life and of the social environment are presented +in the form of maxims, reflections, observations, portraits. For the +maxims a recent model lay before him in the little volume of La +Rochefoucauld; portraits, for which the romances of Mlle. de Scudery +had created a taste, had been exhibited in a collection formed by +Mlle. de Montpensier--the growth of her _salon_--in collaboration +with Segrais (_Divers Portraits_, 1659). Aware of his mastery as a +painter of character, La Bruyere added largely to the number of his +portraits in the later editions. Keys, professing to identify his +character-sketches with living persons, enhanced the interest +excited by the work; but in many instances La Bruyere aims at +presenting a type rather than an individual, a type which had been +individualised by his observation of actual persons. + +A profound or an original thinker he was not. Incapable of employing +base means to attain worldly success, his honourable failure left +a certain bitterness in his spirit; he regarded the life around him +as a looker-on, who enjoyed the spectacle, and enjoyed also to note +the infirmities of those who took part in the game which he had +declined. He is neither a determined pessimist, nor did he see +realities through a roseate veil; he neither thinks basely of human +nature nor in a heroic fashion: he studies its weakness with a view, +he declares, to reformation, but actually, perhaps, more in the way +of an observer than of a moral teacher. He is before all else a +"naturalist," a naturalist with a sufficient field for investigation, +though the life of the provinces and that of the fields (save in their +more obvious aspect of mournful toil) lie beyond his sphere. The value +of his criticisms of men and manners arises partly from the fact that +he is not pledged to a system, that he can take up various points +of view, and express the results of many moods of mind. Now he is +severe, and again he is indulgent; now he appears almost a cynic, +and presently we find that his heart is tender; now he is grave, and +in a moment mirthful; while for every purpose and in every mood he +has irony at his command. He divines the working of the passions with +a fine intelligence, and is a master in noting every outward betrayal +or indication of the hidden processes of the heart. + +The successive chapters deal with the intellect and authorship, +personal merit, women, the heart, society and conversation, the gifts +of fortune, the town, the court, men in high station, the King and +commonwealth, the nature of man, judgments and criticism, fashion, +customs, the pulpit; and under each head are grouped, without formal +system, those notes on life and studies of society that had gradually +accumulated in the author's mind. A final chapter, "Des Esprits +Forts," expresses a vague spiritual philosophy, which probably was +not insincere, and which at least served to commend the mundane +portion of his book to pious readers. The special attraction of the +whole lies in its variety. A volume merely of maxims would have been +too rigid, too oracular for such a versatile spirit as that of La +Bruyere. "Different things," he says, "are thought out by different +methods, and explained by diverse expressions, it may be by a sentence, +an argument, a metaphor or some other figure, a parallel, a simple +comparison, a complete fact, a single feature, by description, or +by portraiture." His book contains all these, and his style +corresponds with the variety of matter and method--a style, as +Voltaire justly characterises it, rapid, concise, nervous, +picturesque. "Among all the different modes in which a single thought +may be expressed," wrote La Bruyere, "only one is correct." To find +this exact expression he sometimes over-labours his style, and +searches the vocabulary too curiously for the most striking word. +In his desire for animation the periodic structure of sentence yields +to one of interruptions, suspensions, and surprises. He is at once +a moralist and a virtuoso in the literary art. + +The greater part of Saint-Simon's life and the composition of his +_Memoires_ belong to the eighteenth century; but his mind was moulded +during his early years, and retained its form and lineaments. He may +be regarded as a belated representative of the great age of Louis +XIV. If he belongs in some degree to the newer age by virtue of his +sense that political reform was needed, his designs of political +reform were derived from the past rather than pointed towards the +future. LOUIS DE ROUVRAY, DUC DE SAINT-SIMON, was born at Versailles +in 1675. He cherished the belief that his ancestry could be traced +to Charlemagne. His father, a page of Louis XIII., had been named +a duke and peer of France in 1635; from his father descended to the +son a devotion to the memory of Louis XIII., and a passionate +attachment to the dignity of his own order. + +Saint-Simon's education was narrow, but he acquired some Latin, and +was a diligent reader of French history. In 1691 he was presented +to the King and was enrolled as a soldier in the musketeers. He +purchased by-and-by what we should now call the colonelcy of a cavalry +regiment, but was ill-pleased with the system which had transformed +a feudal army into one where birth and rank were subjected to official +control; and in 1702, when others received promotion and he was passed +over, he sent in his resignation. Having made a fortunate and happy +marriage, Saint-Simon was almost constantly at Versailles until the +death of the King, and obtained the most intimate acquaintance with +what he terms the mechanics of the court. He had many grievances +against Louis XIV., chief among them the insult shown to the nobility +in the King's legitimatising his natural offspring; and he justly +regarded Madame de Maintenon as his enemy. + +The death of the Duc de Bourgogne, to whose party he belonged, was +a blow to Saint-Simon's hopes; but the Regent remained his friend. +He helped, on a diplomatic mission to Spain, to negotiate the marriage +of Louis XV.; yet still was on fire with indignation caused by the +wrongs of the dukes and peers, whom he regarded as entitled on +historical grounds to form the great council of the monarchy, and +almost as rightful partners in the supreme power. His political life +closed in 1723 with the death of the Regent. He lived in retirement +at his chateau of La Ferte-Vidame, sorrowfully surviving his wife +and his sons. In Paris, at the age of eighty (1755), Saint-Simon died. + +When nineteen years old, reading Bassompierre's _Memoires_ in a +soldier's hour of leisure, he conceived the idea of recording his +own experiences, and the _Memoires_ of Saint-Simon were begun. During +later years, in the camp or at the court, notes accumulated in his +hands, but the definitive form which they took was not determined +until, in his retirement at La Ferte-Vidame, the _Journal_ of Dangeau +came into his hands. Dangeau's _Journal_ is dry, colourless, +passionless, without insight and without art; but it is a +well-informed and an exact chronicle, extending over the years from +1684 to 1720. Saint-Simon found it "d'une fadeur a faire vomir"; its +servility towards the King and Madame de Maintenon enraged him; but +it exhibited facts in an orderly sequence; it might serve as a guide +and a clue among his own reminiscences; on the basis of Dangeau's +literal transcript of occurrences he might weave his own brilliant +recitals and passionate presentations of character. Thus +Saint-Simon's _Memoires_ came to be written. + +He himself saw much, and his eye had a demonic power of observation; +nothing escaped his vision, and his passions enabled him to penetrate +through what he saw to its secret meanings. He had gathered +information from those who knew the mysteries of the palace and the +court; great persons, court ladies, even valets and waiting-women, +had been sought and searched to satisfy his insatiable curiosity. +It is true that the passions which often lit up the truth sometimes +obscured it; any gossip discreditable to those whom he hated was +welcome to him; he confesses that he did not pique himself on his +impartiality, and it is certain that he did not always verify details. +Nevertheless he did not consciously falsify facts; he had a sense +of the honour of a gentleman; his spirit was serious, and his feeling +of duty and of religion was sincere. Without his impetuosity, his +violence, his exaggerations, we might not have had his vividness, +like that of life itself, his incomparable portraits, more often +inspired by hatred than by love, his minuteness and his breadth of +style, the phrases which ineffaceably brand his victims, the lyrical +outcry of triumph over enemies of his order. His style is the large +style of seventeenth-century prose, but alive with words that sparkle +and gleam, words sometimes created by himself to express the intensity +of his imagination. + +The _Memoires_, the final preparation of which was the work of his +elder years, cover the period from 1691 to 1723. His manuscripts were +bequeathed to his cousin, the Bishop of Metz; a lawsuit arose with +Saint-Simon's creditors, and in the end the papers were buried among +the public archives. Considerable fragments saw the light before the +close of the eighteenth century, but it was not until 1829-31 that +a true _editio princeps_, substantially correct, was published. The +violences and irregularities of Saint-Simon's style offered no +obstacle to the admiration of readers at a time when the romantic +movement was dominant. He was hailed as the Tacitus of French history, +and had his manner something more of habitual concentration the +comparison would not be unjust. + +The eighteenth century may be said to have begun before the year 1701 +with the quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns. If we can speak +of any one idea as dominant during the age of the philosophers, it +is the idea of human progress. Through an academic disputation that +idea emerged to the light. At first a religious question was +complicated with a question relating to art; afterwards the religious +question was replaced by one of philosophy. As early as 1657, +Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, turned pietist after a youth of licence, +maintained in theory, as well as by the examples of his unreadable +epic poems, that Christian heroism and Christian faith afforded +material for imaginative handling more suitable to a Christian poet +than the history and fables of antiquity. Boileau, in the third +_chant_ of his _Art Poetique_, replied--the mysteries of the +Christian faith are too solemn, too awful, to be tricked out to gratify +the fancy. + +Desmarets dying, bequeathed his contention to CHARLES PERRAULT +(1628-1703), who had burlesqued the _AEneid_, written light and +fragile pieces of verse, and occupied himself as a dilettante in +patristic and historical studies. In 1687, after various skirmishes +between partisans on either side, the quarrel assumed a new importance. +The King had recovered after a painful operation; it was a moment +for gratulation. Perrault, at a sitting of the Academy, read his poem +_Le Siecle de Louis le Grand_, in which the revolt against the +classical tyranny was formulated, and contemporary authors were +glorified at the expense of the poets of antiquity. Boileau murmured, +indignant; Racine offered ironical commendations; other +Academicians patriotically applauded their own praises. +Light-feathered epigrams sped to and fro. + +Fontenelle, in his _Discours sur l'Eglogue_ and a _Digression sur +les Anciens et les Modernes_, widened the field of debate. Were trees +in ancient days taller than those in our own fields? If not, why may +not modern men equal Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes? "Nothing checks +the progress of things, nothing confines the intelligence so much +as admiration of the ancients." Genius is bestowed by Nature on every +age, but knowledge grows from generation to generation. In his +dialogues entitled the _Parallele des Anciens et des Modernes_ +(1688-97), Perrault maintained that in art, in science, in literature, +the law of the human mind is a law of progress; that we are the true +ancients of the earth, wise with inherited science, more exact in +reasoning, more refined in psychological distinctions, raised to a +higher plane by Christianity, by the invention of printing, and by +the favour of a great monarch. La Fontaine in his charming _Epitre_ +to Huet, La Bruyere in his _Caracteres_, Boileau in his ill-tempered +_Reflexions sur Longin_, rallied the supporters of classicism. +Gradually the fires smouldered or were assuaged; Boileau and Perrault +were reconciled. + +Perrault, if he did not honour antiquity in classical forms, paid +a homage to popular tradition in his delightful _Contes de ma Mere +l'Oie_ (if, indeed, the tales be his), which have been a joy to +generations of children. With inferior art, Madame d'Aulnoy added +to the golden treasury for the young. When, fifteen or twenty years +after the earlier war, a new campaign began between the Ancients and +the Moderns, the philosophical discussion of the idea of progress +had separated itself from the literary quarrel. But in the tiltings +of Lamotte-Houdart, the champion of the moderns, against a +well-equipped female knight, the learned Madame Dacier--indignant +at Lamotte's _Iliade_, recast in the eighteenth-century taste--a new +question was raised, and one of significance for the eighteenth +century--that of the relative merits of prose and verse. + +Lamotte, a writer of comedy, tragedy, opera, fables, eclogues, odes, +maintained that the highest literary form is prose, and he versified +none the less. The age was indeed an age of prose--an age when the +_salons_ discussed the latest discovery in science, the latest +doctrine in philosophy or politics. Its imaginative enthusiasm +passed over from art to speculation, and what may be called the poetry +of the eighteenth century is to be found less in its odes or dramas +or elegies than in the hopes and visions which gathered about that +idea of human progress emerging from a literary discussion, idle, +perhaps, in appearance, but in its inner significance no unfitting +inauguration of an era which looked to the future rather than to the +past. + +BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE (1657-1757), a son of Corneille's +sister, whose intervention in the quarrel of Ancients and Moderns +turned the discussion in the direction of philosophy, belongs to both +the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. In the hundred years +which made up his life, there was indeed time for a second Fontenelle +to develop from the first. The first Fontenelle, satirised as the +Cydias of La Bruyere, "un compose du pedant et du precieux," was an +aspirant poet, without vision, without passion, who tried to +compensate his deficiencies by artificial elegances of style. The +origin of hissing is maliciously dated by Racine from his tragedy +_Aspar_. His operas fluttered before they fell; his _Eglogues_ had +not life enough to flutter. The _Dialogues des Morts_ (1683) is a +young writer's effort to be clever by paradox, an effort to show his +wit by incongruous juxtapositions, and a cynical levelling of great +reputations. But there was another Fontenelle, the untrammelled +disciple of Descartes, a man of universal interests, passionless, +but curious for all knowledge, an assimilator of new ideas, a +dissolver of old beliefs, an intermediary between science and the +world of fashion, a discreet insinuator of doubts, who smiled but +never condescended to laugh, an intelligence supple, subtle, and +untiring. + +In 1686 he published his _Entretiens sur la Pluralite des Mondes_, +evening conversations between an astronomer and a marchioness, +half-scientific, half-gallant, learned coquetries with science, for +which he asked no more serious attention than a novel might require, +while he communicated the theories of Descartes and the discoveries +of Galileo, suggested that science is our safest way to truth, and +that truth at best is not absolute but relative to the human +understanding. The _Histoire des Oracles_, in which the cargo of Dutch +erudition that loaded his original by Van Dale is skilfully lightened, +glided to the edge of theological storm. Fontenelle would show that +the pagan oracles were not delivered by demons, and did not cease +at the coming of Jesus Christ; innocent opinions, but apt to +illustrate the origins and growth of superstitions, from which we +too may not be wholly free in spite of all our advantages of true +religion and sound philosophy. Of course God's chosen people are not +like unguided Greeks or Romans; and yet human beings are much the +same in all times and places. The Jesuit Baltus scented heresy, and +Fontenelle was very ready to admit that the devil was a prophet, since +Father Baltus wished it so to be, and held the opinion to be orthodox. + +Appointed perpetual secretary of the _Academie des Sciences_ in 1697, +Fontenelle pronounced during forty years the panegyrics of those who +had been its members. These _Eloges des Academiciens_ are +masterpieces in a difficult art, luminous, dignified, generous +without ostentation, plain without poverty of thought or expression. +The discreet Fontenelle loved tranquillity--"If I had my hand full +of truths, I should take good care before I opened it." He never lost +a friend, acting on two prudent maxims, "Everything is possible," +and "Every one is right." "It is not a heart," said Madame de Tencin, +"which you have in your breast; it is a brain." It was a kindly brain, +which could be for a moment courageous. And thus it was possible for +him to enter his hundredth year, still interested in ideas, still +tranquil and alert. + +A great arsenal for the uses of eighteenth-century philosophy was +constructed and stored by PIERRE BAYLE (1647-1706) in his +_Dictionnaire Historique et Critique_, of which the first edition +was published in 1697. Science, which found its popular interpreter +in Fontenelle, was a region hardly entered by Bayle; the general +history of Europe, from the close of the mediaeval period, and +especially the records in every age of mythologies, religions, +theologies, philosophies, formed his province, and it was one of wide +extent. Born in 1647, son of a Protestant pastor, educated by Jesuits, +converted by them and reconverted, professor of philosophy at Sedan, +a fugitive to Rotterdam, professor there of history and philosophy, +deprived of his position for unorthodox opinions, Bayle found rest +not in cessation from toil, but in the research of a sceptical scholar, +peaceably and endlessly pursued. + +His early zeal of proselytism languished and expired. In its place +came a boundless curiosity, a penetrating sagacity. His vast +accumulations of knowledge were like those of the students of the +Renaissance. The tendencies of his intellect anticipate the +tendencies of the eighteenth century, but with him scepticism had +not become ambitious or dogmatic. He followed tranquilly where reason +and research led, and saw no cause why religion and morals more than +any other subjects should not be submitted to the scrutiny of rational +inquiry. Since men have held all beliefs, and are more prone to error +than apt to find the truth, why should any opinions be held sacred? +Let us ascertain and expose the facts. In doing so, we shall learn +the lesson of universal tolerance; and if the principle of authority +in matters of religion be gently sapped, can this be considered an +evil? Morals, which have their foundation in the human understanding, +remain, though all theologies may be in doubt. If the idea of +Providence be a superstition, why should not man guide his life by +good sense and moderation? Bayle did not attack existing beliefs with +the battering-ram: he quietly removed a stone here and a stone there +from the foundations. If he is aggressive, it is by means of a tranquil +irony. The errors of human-kind are full of curious interest; the +disputes of theologians are both curious and amusing; the moral +licences of men and women are singular and often diverting. Why not +instruct and entertain our minds with the facts of the world? + +The instruction is delivered by Bayle in the dense and sometimes heavy +columns of his text; the entertainment will be found in the rambling +gossip, interspersed with illuminating ideas, of his notes. Almost +every eminent writer of the eighteenth century was a debtor to Bayle's +Dictionary. He kept his contemporaries informed of all that was added +to knowledge in his periodical publication, _Nouvelles de la +Republique des Lettres_ (begun in 1684). He called himself a +cloud-compeller: "My gift is to create doubts; but they are no more +than doubts." Yet there is light, if not warmth, in such a genius +for criticism as his; and it was light not only for France, but for +Europe. + + + + +BOOK THE FOURTH +_THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY_ + + + + +CHAPTER I +MEMOIRS AND HISTORY--POETRY--THE THEATRE--THE NOVEL + + +I + +The literature of the second half of the seventeenth century was +monarchical, Christian, classical. The eighteenth century was to +lose the spirit of classical art while retaining many of its forms, +to overthrow the domination of the Church, to destroy the monarchy. +It was an age not of great art but of militant ideas, which more and +more came to utilise art as their vehicle. Political speculation, +criticism, science, sceptical philosophy invaded literature. The +influence of England--of English free-thinkers, political writers, +men of science, essayists, novelists, poets--replaced the influence +of Italy and Spain, and for long that of the models of ancient Greece +and Rome. The century of the philosophers was eminently social and +mundane; the _salons_ revived; a new preciosity came into fashion; +but as time went on the _salons_ became rather the mart of ideas +philosophical and scientific than of the daintinesses of letters and +of art. Journalism developed, and thought tended to action, applied +itself directly to public life. While the work of destructive +criticism proceeded, the bases of a moral reconstruction were laid; +the free play of intellect was succeeded by a great enfranchisement +of the passions; the work of Voltaire was followed by the work of +Rousseau. + +Before the close of the reign of Louis XIV. the old order of things +had suffered a decline. War, famine, public debt, oppressive taxation +had discredited the monarchy. A dull hypocrisy hardly disguised the +gross licentiousness of the times. The revocation of the edict of +Nantes had exiled those Protestants who formed a substantial part +of the moral conscience of France. The bitter feud of brother-bishops, +Bossuet and Fenelon, hurling defiance against each other for the love +of God, had made religion a theme for mockery. Port-Royal, once the +refuge of serious faith and strict morals, was destroyed. The bull +_Unigenitus_ expelled the spiritual element from French Christianity, +reduced the clergy to a state of intellectual impotence, and made +a lasting breach between them and the better part of the laity. +Meanwhile the scientific movement had been proving its power. Science +had come to fill the place left void by religion. The period of the +Regency (1715-23) is one of transition from the past to the newer +age, shameless in morals, degraded in art; the period of Voltaire +followed, when intellect sapped and mined the old beliefs; with +Rousseau came the explosion of sentiment and an effort towards +reconstruction. A great political and social revolution closed the +century. + +The life of the time is seen in many memoirs, and in the correspondence +of many distinguished persons, both men and women. Among the former +the _Memoires_ of Mdlle. Delaunay, afterwards Mme. de Staal +(1684-1750) are remarkable for the vein of melancholy, subdued by +irony, underlying a style which is formed for fine and clear exactness. +The Duchesse du Maine's lady-in-waiting, daughter of a poor painter, +but educated with care, drew delicately in her literary art with an +etcher's tool, and her hand was controlled by a spirit which had in +it something of the Stoic. The _Souvenirs_ of Mme. de Caylus +(1673-1729), niece of Mme. de Maintenon--"jamais de creature plus +seduisante," says Saint-Simon--give pictures of the court, charming +in their naivete, grace, and mirth. Mme. d'Epinay, designing to tell +the story of her own life, disguised as a piece of fiction, became +in her _Memoires_ the chronicler of the manners of her time. The +society of the _salons_ and the men of letters is depicted in the +Memoirs of Marmontel. These are but examples from an abundant +literature constantly augmented to the days of Mme. de Campan and +Mme. Roland. The general aspect of the social world in the mid-century +is presented by the historian Duclos (1704-1772) in his +_Considerations sur les Moeurs de ce Siecle_, and with reparation +for his previous neglect of the part played in society by women in +his _Memoires pour servir a l'Histoire du XVIIIe Siecle_. + +As much or more may be learnt from the letter-writers as from the +writers of memoirs. If Voltaire did not take the first place by his +correspondence, so vast, so luminous, so comprehensive, it might +justly be assigned to his friend Mme. du Deffand (1697-1780), whose +lucid intelligence perceived everything, whose disabused heart +seemed detached until old age from all that most interested her +understanding. For clear good sense we turn to the Marquise de Lambert, +for bourgeois worth and kindliness to Mme. Geoffrin, for passion which +kindles the page to Mdlle. de Lespinasse, for sensibility and romance +ripening to political ardour and strenuous convictions to Mme. Roland. +Among the philosophers Diderot pours the torrent, clear or turbid, +of his genius into his correspondence with affluent improvisation; +D'Alembert is grave, temperate, lucid; the Abbe Galiani, the little +Machiavel--"a pantomime from head to foot," said Diderot--the gay +Neapolitan punchinello, given the freedom of Paris, that "capital +of curiosity," is at once wit, cynic, thinker, scholar, and buffoon. +These, again, are but examples from an epistolary swarm. + +While the eighteenth century thus mirrored itself in memoirs and +letters, it did not forget the life of past centuries. The studious +Benedictines, who had already accomplished much, continued their +erudite labours. Nicolas Freret (1688-1749), taking all antiquity +for his province, illuminated the study of chronology, geography, +sciences, arts, language, religion. Daniel and Velly narrated the +history of France. Vertot (1655-1735), with little of the spirit of +historical fidelity, displayed certain gifts of an historical artist. +The school of scepticism was represented by the Jesuit Hardouin, who +doubted the authenticity of all records of the past except those of +his own numismatic treasures. Questions as to the principles of +historical certitude occupied the Academy of Inscriptions during +many sittings from 1720 onwards, and produced a body of important +studies. While the Physiocrats were endeavouring to demonstrate that +there is a natural order in social circumstances, a philosophy of +history, which bound the ages together, was developed in the writings +of Montesquieu and Turgot, if not of Voltaire. The _Esprit des Lois_, +the _Essai sur les Moeurs_, and Turgot's discourses, delivered in +1750 at the Sorbonne, contributed in different degrees and ways +towards a new and profounder conception of the life of societies or +of humanity. By Turgot for the first time the idea of progress was +accepted as the ruling principle of history. It cannot be denied that, +as regards the sciences of inorganic nature, he more than foreshadowed +Comte's theory of the three states, theological, metaphysical, and +positive, through which the mind of humanity is alleged to have +travelled. + +In the second half of the century, history tended to become +doctrinaire, aggressive, declamatory--a pamphlet in the form of +treatise or narrative. Morelly wrote in the interest of socialistic +ideas, which correspond to those of modern collectivism. Mably, +inspired at first by enthusiasm for the ancient republics, advanced +to a communistic creed. Condorcet, as the century drew towards a close, +bringing together the ideas of economists and historians, traced +human progress through the past, and uttered ardent prophecies of +human perfectibility in the future. + + +II + +Poetry other than dramatic grew in the eighteenth century upon a +shallow soil. The more serious and the more ardent mind of the time +was occupied with science, the study of nature, the study of society, +philosophical speculation, the criticism of religion, of government, +and of social arrangements. The old basis of belief upon which reposed +the great art of the preceding century had given way. The analytic +intellect distrusted the imagination. The conventions of a brilliant +society were unfavourable to the contemplative mood of high poetry. +The tyranny of the "rules" remained when the enthusiasm which found +guidance and a safeguard in the rules had departed. The language +itself had lost in richness, variety, harmony, and colour; it was +an admirable instrument for the intellect, but was less apt to render +sensations and passions; when employed for the loftier purposes of +art it tended to the oratorical, with something of over-emphasis and +strain. The contention of La Motte-Houdart that verse denaturalises +and deforms ideas, expresses the faith of the time, and La Motte's +own cold and laboured odes did not tend to refute his theory. + +Chaulieu (1639-1720), the "poete de la bonne compagnie," an +anacreontic senior, patriarch of pleasure, survived the classical +century, and sang his songs of facile, epicurean delights; his friend +La Fare (1644-1712) survived, but slept and ate more than a songster +should. Anthony Hamilton (1646?-1720) wrote graceful verses, and in +his brilliant _Memoires de la Vie du Comte de Gramont_ became the +historian of the amorous intrigues of the court of Charles II. +Jean-Baptiste Rousseau (1670-1741), who in the days of Mme. de +Maintenon's authority had in his sacred _Cantates_ been pious by +command, recompensed himself by retailing unbecoming epigrams--and +for epigram he had a genuine gift--to the Society of the Temple. He +manufactured odes with skill in the mechanism of verse, and carefully +secured the fine disorder required in that form of art by factitious +enthusiasm and the abuse of mythology and allegory. When Rousseau +died, Lefranc de Pompignan mourned for "le premier chantre du monde," +reborn as the Orpheus of France, in a poem which alone of Lefranc's +numerous productions--and by virtue of two stanzas--has not that +sanctity ascribed to them by Voltaire, the sanctity which forbids +any one to touch them. Why name their fellows and successors in the +eighteenth-century art of writing poems without poetry? + +Louis Racine (1692-1763), son of the author of _Athalie_, in his +versified discourses on _La Grace_ and _La Religion_ was devout and +edifying, but with an edification which promotes slumber. If a poet +in sympathy with the philosophers desired to edify, he described the +phenomena of nature as Saint-Lambert (1716-1803) did in his +_Saisons_--"the only work of our century," Voltaire assured the +author, "which will reach posterity." To describe meant to draw out +the inventory of nature's charms with an eye not on the object but +on the page of the Encyclopaedia, and to avoid the indecency of naming +anything in direct and simple speech. The _Seasons_ of Saint-Lambert +were followed by the _Months_ (_Mois_) of Roucher (1745-94)--"the +most beautiful poetic shipwreck of the century," said the malicious +Rivarol--and by the _Jardins_ of Delille (1738-1813). When Delille +translated the _Georgics_ he was saluted by Voltaire as the Abbe +Virgil.[1] The _salons_ heard him with rapture recite his verses as +from the tripod of inspiration. He was the favourite of +Marie-Antoinette. Aged and blind, he was a third with Homer and Milton. +In death they crowned his forehead, and for three days the mourning +crowd gazed on all that remained of their great poet. And yet Delille's +_Jardins_ is no better than a patchwork of carpet-gardening, in which +the flowers are theatrical paper-flowers. If anything lives from the +descriptive poetry of the eighteenth century, it is a few detached +lines from the writings of Lemierre. + +[Footnote 1: Or was this Rivarol's ironical jest?] + +The successor of J.-B. Rousseau in the grand ode was Ecouchard Lebrun +(1729-1807), rival of Pindar. All he wanted to equal Pindar was some +forgetfulness of self, some warmth, some genuine enthusiasm, some +harmony, a touch of genius; a certain dignity of imagination he +exhibits in his best moments. If we say that he honoured Buffon and +was the friend of Andre Chenier, we have said in his praise that which +gives him the highest distinction; yet it may be added that if he +often falsified the ode, he, like Rousseau, excelled in epigram. It +was not the great lyric but _le petit lyrisme_ which blossomed and +ran to seed in the thin poetic soil. The singers of fragile loves +and trivial pleasures are often charming, and as often they are merely +frivolous or merely depraved. Grecourt; Piron; Bernard, the curled +and powdered Anacreon; Bernis, Voltaire's "Babet la Bouquetiere," +King Frederick's poet of "sterile abundance"; Dorat, who could +flutter at times with an airy grace; Bertin, born in the tropics, +and with the heat of the senses in his verse; Parny, an estray in +Paris from the palms and fountains of the Isle Bourbon, the "dear +Tibullus" of Voltaire--what a swarm of butterflies, soiled or +shining! + +If two or three poets deserve to be distinguished from the rest, one +is surely JEAN-BAPTISTE-LOUIS GRESSET (1709-77), whose parrot +_Vert-Vert_, instructed by the pious Sisters, demoralised by the +boatmen of the Loire, still edifies and scandalises the lover of happy +badinage in verse; one is the young and unfortunate +NICOLAS-JOSEPH-LAURENT GILBERT (1751-80), less unfortunate and less +gifted than the legend makes him, yet luckless enough and embittered +enough to become the satirist of Academicians and philosophers and +the society which had scorned his muse; and the third is JEAN-PIERRE +CLARIS DE FLORIAN (1755-94), the amiable fabulist, who, lacking La +Fontaine's lyric genius, fine harmonies, and penetrating good sense, +yet can tell a story with pleasant ease, and draw a moral with gentle +propriety. + +In every poetic form, except comedy, that he attempted, Voltaire +stands high among his contemporaries; they give us a measure of his +range and excellence. But the two greatest poets of the eighteenth +century wrote in prose. Its philosophical poet was the naturalist +Buffon; its supreme lyrist was the author of _La Nouvelle Heloise_. + + +III + +In the history of French tragedy only one name of importance--that +of Crebillon--is to be found in the interval between Racine and +Voltaire. Campistron feebly, Danchet formally and awkwardly, +imitated Racine; Duche followed him in sacred tragedy; La +Grange-Chancel (author of the _Philippiques_, directed against the +Regent) followed him in tragedies on classical subjects. If any piece +deserves to be distinguished above the rest, it is the _Manlius_ +(1698) of La Fosse, a work--suggestive rather of Corneille than of +Racine--which was founded on the _Venice Preserved_ of Otway. The +art of Racine languished in inferior hands. The eighteenth century, +while preserving its form, thought to reanimate it by the provocatives +of scenic decoration and more rapid and more convulsive action. + +PROSPER JOLYOT DE CREBILLON (1674-1762), a diligent reader of +seventeenth-century romances, transported the devices of romance, +its horrors, its pathetic incidents, its disguises, its surprises, +its discoveries, into the theatre, and substituted a tragedy of +violent situations for the tragedy of character. His _Rhadamiste et +Zenobie_ (1711), which has an air of Corneillean grandeur and heroism, +notwithstanding a plot so complicated that it is difficult to follow, +was received with unmeasured enthusiasm. To be atrocious within the +rules was to create a new and thrilling sensation. Torrents of tears +flowed for the unhappy heroine of La Motte's _Ines de Castro_ (1723), +secretly married to the Prince of Portugal, and pardoned only when +the fatal poison is in her veins. Voltaire's effort to renovate +classical tragedy was that of a writer who loved the theatre, first +for its own sake, afterwards as an instrument for influencing public +opinion, who conceived tragedy aright as the presentation of +character and passion seen in action. His art suffered from his +extreme facility, from his inability (except it be in _Zaire_) to +attain dramatic self-detachment, from the desire to conquer his +spectators in the readiest ways, by striking situations, or, at a +later date, by the rhetoric of philosophical doctrine and sentiment. + +There is no one, with all his faults, to set beside Voltaire. Piron +and Gresset are remembered, not by their tragedies, but each by a +single comedy. Marmontel's Memoirs live; his tales have a faded glory; +as for his tragedies, the ingenious stage asp which hissed as the +curtain fell on his _Cleopatre_, was a sound critic of their +mediocrity. Lemierre, with some theatrical talent, wrote ill; as the +love of spectacle grew, he permitted his William Tell to shoot the +apple, and his widow of Malabar to die in flames upon the stage. + +Saurin in _Spartacus_ (1760) declaimed and dissertated in the manner +of Voltaire. De Belloy at a lucky moment showed, in his _Siege de +Calais_ (1765), that rhetorical patriotism had survived the Seven +Years' War; he was supposed to have founded that national, historic +drama which the President Henault had projected; but with the _Siege +de Calais_ the national drama rose and fell. Laharpe (1739-1803) was +the latest writer who compounded classical tragedy according to the +approved recipe. In the last quarter of the century Shakespeare became +known to the French public through the translation of Letourneur. +Before that translation began to appear, JEAN-FRANCOIS DUCIS +(1733-1816), the patron of whose imagination was his "Saint +Guillaume" of Stratford, though he knew no English, had in a fashion +presented Hamlet (1769) and Romeo and Juliet to his countrymen; King +Lear, Macbeth, King John, Othello (1792) followed. But Ducis came +a generation too soon for a true Shakespearian rendering; simple and +heroic in his character as a man, he belonged to an age of philosophers +and sentimentalists, an age of "virtue" and "nature." Shakespeare's +translation is as strange as that of his own Bottom. Ophelia is the +daughter of King Claudius; the Queen dies by her own hand; old Montague +is a Montague-Ugolino who has devoured his sons; Malcolm is believed +to be a mountaineer's child; Lear is borne on the stage, sleeping +on a bed of roses, that he may behold a sunrise; Hedelmone (Desdemona) +is no longer Othello's wife; Iago disappears; Desdemona's +handkerchief is not among the properties; and Juliet's lark is +voiceless. Eighteenth-century tragedy is indeed a city of tombs. + +Comedy made some amends. Before the appearance of Regnard, the actor +Baron, Moliere's favourite pupil, had given a lively play--_L'Homme +a bonne Fortune_ (1686). JEAN-FRANCOIS REGNARD (1655-1709) escaped +from his corsair captors and slavery at Algiers, made his sorry +company of knaves and fools acceptable by virtue of inexhaustible +gaiety, bright fantasy, and the liveliest of comic styles. His +_Joueur_ (1696) is a scapegrace, possessed by the passion of gaming, +whose love of Angelique is a devotion to her dowry, but he will console +himself for lost love by another throw of the dice. His _Legataire +Universel_, greedy, old, and ailing, is surrounded by pitiless rogues, +yet the curtain falls on a general reconciliation. Regnard's morals +may be doubtful, but his mirth is unquestionable. + +Dancourt (1661-1725), with a far less happy style, had a truer power +of observation, and as quick an instinct for theatrical effects; he +exhibits in the _Chevalier a la Mode_ and the _Bourgeoises a la Mode_, +if not with exact fidelity, at least in telling caricature, the +struggle of classes in the society around him, wealth ambitious for +rank, rank prepared to sell itself for wealth. The same spirit of +cynical gaiety inspires the _Double Veuvage_ of Charles Riviere +Dufresny (1655?-1724), where husband and wife, each disappointed in +false tidings of the other's death, exhibit transports of feigned +joy on meeting, and assist in the marriage of their respective lovers, +each to accomplish the vexation of the other. Among such plays as +these the _Turcaret_ (1709) of Lesage appears as the creation of a +type, and a type which verifies itself as drawn with a realism powerful +and unfaltering. + +In striking contrast with Lesage's bold and bitter satire are the +comedies of Marivaux, delicate indeed in observation of life and +character, skilled in their exploration of the byways of the heart, +brilliant in fantasy, subtle in sentiment, lightly touched by the +sensuality of the day. Philippe Nericault Destouches (1680-1754) had +the ambition to revive the comedy of character, and by its means to +read moral lessons on the stage; unfortunately what he lacked was +comic power. In his most celebrated piece, _Le Glorieux_, he returns +to the theme treated by Dancourt of the struggle between the ruined +noblesse and the aspiring middle class. Pathos and something of +romance are added to comedy. + +Already those tendencies which were to produce the so-called _comedie +larmoyante_ were at work. Piron (1689-1773), who regarded it with +hostility, undesignedly assisted in its creation; _Les Fils Ingrats_, +named afterwards _L'Ecole des Peres_, given in 1728, the story of +a too generous father of ungrateful children, a play designed for +mirth, was in fact fitter to draw tears than to excite laughter. +Piron's special gift, however, was for satire. In _La Metromanie_ +he smiles at the folly of the aspirant poet with all his cherished +illusions; yet young Damis with his folly, the innocent error of a +generous spirit, wins a sympathy to which the duller representatives +of good sense can make no claim. It is satire also which gives whatever +comic force it possesses to the one comedy of Gresset that is not +forgotten: _Le Mechant_ (1747), a disloyal comrade, would steal the +heart of his friend's beloved; soubrette and valet conspire to expose +the traitor; but Cleon, who loves mischief in the spirit of sport, +though unmasked, is little disconcerted. Brilliant in lines and +speeches, _Le Mechant_ is defective in its composition as a whole. + +The decline in a feeling for composition, for art, for the severity +of outline, was accompanied by a development of the emotional or +sentimental element in drama. As sensibility was quickened, and +wealth and ease increased, little things came to be felt as important. +The middle class advanced in prosperity and power. Why should emperors +and kings, queens and princesses occupy the stage? Why neglect the +joys and griefs of every-day domestic life? If "nature" and "virtue" +were to be honoured, why not seek them here? Man, the new philosophy +taught, is essentially good; human nature is of itself inclined to +virtue; if it strays through force of circumstance into vice or folly, +should not its errors be viewed with sympathy, with tenderness? Thus +comedy grew serious, and tragedy put off its exalted airs; the genius +of tragedy and the genius of comedy were wedded, and the _comedie +larmoyante_, which might be named more correctly the bourgeois drama, +was born of this union. + +In the plays of NIVELLE DE LA CHAUSEE (1692-1754) the new type is +already formed. The relations of wife and husband, of father and child, +form the theme of all his plays. In _Melanide_, father and son, +unrecognised, are rivals in love; the wife and mother, supposed to +be dead, is discovered; the husband returns to her arms, and is +reconciled to his son. It is the victory of nature and of innate +goodness; comic intention and comic power are wholly absent. La +Chausee's morals are those of an optimist; but those modern domestic +tragedies, the ethics of which do not err by over-sanguine views of +human nature, may trace their ancestry to _Melanide_. + +For such serious comedy or bourgeois drama the appropriate vehicle, +so Diderot maintained, is prose. Diderot, among his many gifts, did +not possess a talent for dramatic writing. But as a critic his +influence was considerable. Midway between tragedy and comedy he +perceived a place for the serious drama; to right and left, on either +side of the centre, were spaces for forms approximating, the one to +tragedy, the other to comedy. The hybrid species of tragi-comedy he +wholly condemned; each genre, as he conceived it, is a unity +containing its own principle of life. The function of the theatre +is less to represent character fully formed than to study the natural +history of character, to exhibit the environments which determine +character. Its purpose is to moralise life, and the chief means of +moralisation is that effusive sensibility which is the outflow of +the inherent goodness of human nature. + +Diderot attempted to justify his theory by examples, and only proved +his own incapacity as a writer for the stage. His friend SEDAINE +(1719-97) was more fortunate. Of the bourgeois drama of the eighteenth +century, _Le Philosophe sans le savoir_ alone survives. It is little +more than a domestic anecdote rendered dramatic, but it has life and +reality. The merchant Vanderk's daughter is to be married; but on +the same day his son, resenting an insult to his father, must expose +his life in a duel. Old Antoine, the intendant, would take his young +master's place of danger; Antoine's daughter, Victorine, +half-unawares has given her heart to the gallant duellist. Hopes and +fears, joy and grief contend in the Vanderk habitation. Sedaine made +a true capture of a little province of nature. When Mercier +(1740-1814) tried to write in the same vein, his "nature" was that +of declamatory sentiment imposed upon trivial incidents. +Beaumarchais, in his earlier pieces, was tearful and romantic; +happily he repented him of his lugubrious sentiment, and restored +to France its old gaiety in the _Barbier de Seville_ and the inimitable +_Mariage de Figaro_; but amid the mirth of _Figaro_ can be heard the +detonation of approaching revolutionary conflict. + + +IV + +The history of the novel in the eighteenth century corresponds with +the general movement of ideas; the novel begins as art, and proceeds +to propagandism. ALAIN-RENE LESAGE, born at Sarzeau, near Vannes, +in 1668, belongs as much to the seventeenth as to the eighteenth +century. His life of nearly eighty years (died 1747) was the +honourable life of a bourgeois, who was also a man of genius, and +who maintained his own independence and that of his wife and children +by the steadfast diligence of his pen. He was no passionate reformer, +no preacher of ideas; he observed life and human nature with shrewd +common-sense, seeing men in general as creatures in whom good and +evil are mixed; his imagination combined and vivified all he had +observed; and he recorded the results of his study of the world in +a style admirable for naturalness and ease, though these were not +attained without the careful practice of literary art. + +From translations for the readers of fiction and for the theatre, +he advanced to free adaptations, and from these to work which may +be called truly original. Directed by the Abbe de Lyonne to Spanish +literature, he endeavoured in his early plays to preserve what was +brilliant and ingenious in the works of Spanish dramatists, and to +avoid what was strained and extravagant. In his _Crispin Rival de +son Maitre_ (1707), in which the roguish valet aspires to carry off +his master's betrothed and her fortune, he borrows only the idea of +Mendoza's play; the conduct of the action, the dialogue, the +characters are his own. His prose story of the same year, _Le Diable +Boiteux_, owes but little to the suggestion derived from Guevara; +it is, in fact, more nearly related to the _Caracteres_ of La Bruyere; +when Asmodeus discloses what had been hidden under the house-roofs +of the city, a succession of various human types are presented, and, +as in the case of La Bruyere, contemporaries attempted to identify +these with actual living persons. + +In his remarkable satiric comedy _Turcaret_, and in his realistic +novel _Gil Blas_, Lesage enters into full possession of his own genius. +_Turcaret, ou le Financier_, was completed early in 1708; the efforts +of the financiers to hinder its performance served in the end to +enhance its brief and brilliant success. The pitiless amasser of +wealth, Turcaret, is himself the dupe of a coquette, who in her turn +is the victim of a more contemptible swindler. Lesage, presenting +a fragment of the manners and morals of his day, keeps us in +exceedingly ill company, but the comic force of the play lightens +the oppression of its repulsive characters. It is the first +masterpiece of the eighteenth-century _comedie de moeurs_. + +Much of Lesage's dramatic work was produced only for the hour or the +moment--pieces thrown off, sometimes with brilliance and wit, for +the _Theatres de la Foire_, where farces, vaudevilles, and comic opera +were popular. They served to pay for the bread of his household. His +great comedy, however, a comedy in a hundred acts, is the story of +_Gil Blas_. Its composition was part of his employment during many +years; the first volumes appeared in 1715, the last volume in 1735. +The question of a Spanish original for the story is settled--there +was none; but from Spanish fiction and from Spanish history Lesage +borrowed what suited his purpose, without in any way compromising +his originality. To the picaresque tales (and among these may be noted +a distant precursor of _Gil Blas_ in the _Francion_ of Charles Sorel) +he added his own humanity, and in place of a series of vulgar +adventures we are given a broad picture of social life; the comedy +of manners and intrigue grows, as the author proceeds, into a comedy +of character, and to this something of the historical novel is added. +The unity of the book is found in the person of Gil Blas himself: +he is far from being a hero, but he is capable of receiving all +impressions; he is an excellent observer of life, his temper is bright, +he is free from ill-nature; we meet in him a pleasant companion, and +accompany him with sympathy through the amusing Odyssey of his varied +career. + +As a moralist Lesage is the reverse of severe, but he is far from +being base. "All is easy and good-humoured," wrote Sir Walter Scott, +"gay, light, and lively; even the cavern of the robbers is illuminated +with a ray of that wit with which Lesage enlightens his whole narrative. +It is a work which renders the reader pleased with himself and with +mankind, where faults are placed before him in the light of follies +rather than vices, and where misfortunes are so interwoven with the +ludicrous that we laugh in the very act of sympathising with them." +In the earlier portion incidents preponderate over character; in the +close, some signs of the writer's fatigue appear. Of Lesage's other +tales and translations, _Le Bachelier de Salamanque_ (1736) takes +deservedly the highest rank. + +With PIERRE CARLET DE CHAMBLAIN DE MARIVAUX (1688-1763) the novel +ceases to be primarily a study of manners or a romance of adventures; +it becomes an analysis of passions to which manners and adventures +are subordinate. As a journalist he may be said to have proceeded +from Addison; by his novels he prepared the way for Richardson and +for Rousseau. His early travesties of Homer and of Fenelon's +_Telemaque_ seem to indicate a tendency towards realism, but +Marivaux's realism took the form not so much of observation of society +in its breadth and variety as of psychological analysis. If he did +not know the broad highway of the heart, he traversed many of its +secret paths. His was a feminine spirit, delicate, fragile, curious, +unconcerned about general ideas; and yet, while untiring in his +anatomy of the passions, he was not truly passionate; his heart may +be said to have been in his head. + +In the opening of the eighteenth century there was a revival of +preciosity, which Moliere had never really killed, and in the _salon_ +of Madame de Lambert, Marivaux may have learned something of his +metaphysics of love and something of his subtleties or affectations +of style. He anticipates the sensibility of the later part of the +century; but sensibility with Marivaux is not profound, and it is +relieved by intellectual vivacity. His conception of love has in it +not a little of mere gallantry. Like later eighteenth-century writers, +he at once exalts "virtue," and indulges his fancy in a licence which +does not tend towards good morals or manners. His _Vie de Marianne_ +(1731-41), which occupied him during many years, is a picture of +social life, and a study, sometimes infinitely subtle, of the emotions +of his heroine; her genius for coquetry is finely allied to her maiden +pride; the hypocrite, M. de Climal--old angel fallen--is a new variety +of the family of Tartufe. _Le Paysan Parvenu_ (1735-36), which tells +of the successes of one whom women favour, is on a lower level of +art and of morals. Both novels were left unfinished; and while both +attract, they also repel, and finally weary the reader.[2] Their +influence was considerable in converting the romance of adventures +into the romance of emotional incident and analysis. + +[Footnote 2: The twelfth part of _Marianne_ is by Madam Riccoboni. +Only five parts of the _Paysan_ are by Marivaux.] + +The work of Marivaux for the stage is more important than his work +in prose fiction. His comedy has been described as the tragedy of +Racine transposed, with love leading to marriage, not to death. Love +is his central theme--sometimes in conflict with self-love--and +women are his protagonists. He discovers passion in its germ, and +traces it through its shy developments. His plays are little romances +handled in dramatic fashion; each records some delicate adventure +of the heart. He wrote much for the Comedie-Italienne, where he did +not suffer from the tyranny of rules and models, and where his graceful +fancy had free play. Of his large repertoire, the most admirable +pieces are _Le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard_ (1730) and _Les Fausses +Confidences_ (1732). In the former the heroine and her chambermaid +exchange costumes; the hero and his valet make a like exchange; yet +love is not misled, and heroine and hero find each other through their +disguises. In _Les Fausses Confidences_ the young widow Araminte is +won to a second love in spite of her resolve, and becomes the happy +victim of her own tender heart and of the devices of her assailants. +The "marivaudage" of Marivaux is sometimes a refined and novel mode +of expressing delicate shades and half-shades of feeling; sometimes +an over-refined or over-subtle attempt to express ingenuities of +sentiment, and the result is then frigid, pretentious, or pedantic. +No one excelled him in the art, described by Voltaire, of weighing +flies' eggs in gossamer scales. + +The Abbe A.-F. PREVOST D'EXILES (1697-1763) is remembered by a single +tale of rare power and beauty, _Manon Lescaut_, but his work in +literature was voluminous and varied. Having deserted his +Benedictine monastery in 1728, he led for a time an irregular and +wandering life in England and Holland; then returning to Paris, he +gained a living by swift and ceaseless production for the booksellers. +In his journal, _Le Pour et le Contre_, he did much to inform his +countrymen respecting English literature, and among his translations +are those of Richardson's _Pamela_, _Sir Charles Grandison_, and +_Clarissa Harlowe_. Many of his novels are melodramatic narratives +of romantic adventure, having a certain kinship to our later romances +of Anne Radcliffe and Matthew Gregory Lewis, in which horror and pity, +blood and tears abound. Sometimes, however, when he writes of passion, +we feel that he is engaged in no sport of the imagination, but +transcribing the impulsive speech of his own tumultuous heart. The +_Memoires d'un Homme de Qualite_, _Cleveland_, _Le Doyen de +Killerine_ are tragic narratives, in which love is the presiding +power. + +_Manon Lescaut_, which appeared in 1731, as an episode of the first +of these, is a tale of fatal and irresistible passion. The heroine +is divided in heart between her mundane tastes for luxury and her +love for the Chevalier des Grieux. He, knowing her inconstancy and +infirmity, yet cannot escape from the tyranny of the spell which has +subdued him; his whole life is absorbed and lost in his devotion to +Manon, and he is with her in the American wilds at the moment of her +piteous death. The admirable literary style of _Manon Lescaut_ is +unfelt and disappears, so directly does it bring us into contact with +the motions of a human heart. + +In the second half of the eighteenth century, philosophy, on the one +hand, invaded the novel and the short tale; on the other hand it was +invaded by a flood of sentiment. An irritated and irritating +sensuality could accommodate itself either to sentiment or to +philosophy. Voltaire's tales are, in narrative form, criticisms of +belief or opinion which scintillate with ironic wit. His disciple, +Marmontel, would "render virtue amiable" in his _Contes Moraux_ +(1761), and cure the ravage of passion with a canary's song. His more +ambitious _Belisaire_ seems to a modern reader a masterpiece in the +_genre ennuyeux_. His _Incas_ is exotic without colour or credibility. +Florian, with little skill, imitated the _Incas_ and _Telemaque_, +or was feebly idyllic and conventionally pastoral as a follower of +the Swiss Gessner. Restif de la Bretonne could be gross, corrupt, +declamatory, sentimental, humanitarian in turns or all together. +Three names are eminent--that of Diderot, who flung his good and evil +powers, mingling and fermenting, into his novels as into all else; +that of Rousseau, who interpreted passion, preached its restraints, +depicted the charms of the domestic interior, and presented the +glories of external nature in _La Nouvelle Heloise_; that of Bernardin +de Saint-Pierre, who reaches a hand to Rousseau on the one side, and +on the other to Chateaubriand. + + + + +CHAPTER II +MONTESQUIEU--VAUVENARGUES--VOLTAIRE + + +I + +The author of _De l'Esprit des Lois_ was as important in the history +of European speculation as in that of French literature; but +inevitable changes of circumstances and ideas have caused his +influence to wane. His life was one in which the great events were +thoughts. Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de MONTESQUIEU, was born +in 1689 at La Brede, near Bordeaux. After his years of education by +the Oratorians, which left him with something of scepticism in his +intellect, and something of stoicism in his character, he pursued +legal studies, and in 1716 became President of the Parliament of +Bordeaux. The scientific researches of his day attracted him; +investigating anatomy, botany, natural philosophy, the history of +the earth, he came to see man as a portion of nature, or at least +as a creature whose life is largely determined by natural laws. With +a temper of happy serenity, and an admirable balance of faculties, +he was possessed by an eager intellectual curiosity. "I spend my +life," he said, "in examining; everything interests, everything +surprises me." + +Nothing, however, interested him so much as the phenomena of human +society; he had no aptitude for metaphysical speculations; his +feeling for literature and art was defective; he honoured the antique +world, but it was the Greek and Latin historians and the ideals of +Roman virtue and patriotism which most deeply moved him. At the same +time he was a man of his own generation, and while essentially serious, +he explored the frivolous side of life, and yielded his imagination +to the licence of the day. + +With enough wit and enough wantonness to capture a multitude of +readers, the _Lettres Persanes_ (1721) contain a serious criticism +of French society in the years of the Regency. It matters little that +the idea of the book may have been suggested by the Siamese travellers +of Dufresny's _Amusements_; the treatment is essentially original. +Things Oriental were in fashion--Galland had translated the _Arabian +Nights_ (1704-1708)--and Montesquieu delighted in books of travel +which told of the manners, customs, religions, governments of distant +lands. His Persians, Usbek and Rica, one the more philosophical, the +other the more satirical, visit Europe, inform their friends by letter +of all the aspects of European and especially of French life, and +receive tidings from Persia of affairs of the East, including the +troubles and intrigues of the eunuchs and ladies of the harem. The +spirit of the reaction against the despotism of Louis XIV. is +expressed in Montesquieu's pages; the spirit also of religious +free-thought, and the reaction against ecclesiastical tyranny. A +sense of the dangers impending over society is present, and of the +need of temperate reform. Brilliant, daring, ironical, licentious +as the _Persian Letters_ are, the prevailing tone is that of judicious +moderation; and already something can be discerned of the large views +and wise liberality of the _Esprit des Lois_. The book is valuable +to us still as a document in the social history of the eighteenth +century. + +In Paris, Montesquieu formed many distinguished acquaintances, among +others that of Mlle. de Clermont, sister of the Duke de Bourbon. +Perhaps it was in homage to her that he wrote his prose-poem, which +pretends to be a translation from the Greek, _Le Temple de Gnide_ +(1725). Its feeling for antiquity is overlaid by the artificialities, +long since faded, of his own day--"naught remains," writes M. Sorel, +"but the faint and subtle perfume of a _sachet_ long hidden in a +_rococo_ cabinet." Although his publications were anonymous, +Montesquieu was elected a member of the Academy in 1728, and almost +immediately after this he quitted France for a long course of travel +throughout Europe, undertaken with the purpose of studying the +manners, institutions, and governments of foreign lands. At Venice +he gained the friendship of Lord Chesterfield, and they arrived +together in England, where for nearly two years Montesquieu remained, +frequently hearing the parliamentary debates, and studying the +principles of English politics in the writings of Locke. His thoughts +on government were deeply influenced by his admiration of the British +constitution with its union of freedom and order attained by a balance +of the various political powers of the State. On Montesquieu's return +to La Brede he occupied himself with that great work which resumes +the observations and meditations of twenty years, the _Esprit des +Lois_. In the history of Rome, which impressed his imagination with +its vast moral, social, and political significance, he found a signal +example of the causes which lead a nation to greatness and the causes +which contribute to its decline. The study made at this point of view +detached itself from the more comprehensive work which he had +undertaken, and in 1734 appeared his _Considerations sur les Causes +de la Grandeur et de la Decadence des Romains_. + +Bossuet had dealt nobly with Roman history, but in the spirit of a +theologian expounding the course of Divine Providence in human +affairs. Montesquieu studied the operation of natural causes. His +knowledge, indeed, was incomplete, but it was the knowledge afforded +by the scholarship of his own time. The love of liberty, the patriotic +pride, the military discipline, the education in public spirit +attained by discussion, the national fortitude under reverses, the +support given to peoples against their rulers, the respect for the +religion of conquered tribes and races, the practice of dealing at +one time with only a single hostile power, are pointed out as +contributing to the supremacy of Rome in the ancient world. Its +decadence is explained as the gradual result of its vast overgrowth, +its civil wars, the loss of patriotism among the soldiery engaged +in remote provinces, the inroads of luxury, the proscription of +citizens, the succession of unworthy rulers, the division of the +Empire, the incursion of the barbarians; and in treating this portion +of his subject Montesquieu may be said to be wholly original. A short +_Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate_ may be viewed as a pendant to the +_Considerations_, discussing a fragment of the subject in dramatic +form. Montesquieu's desire to arrive at general truths sometimes led +him to large conclusions resting on too slender a basis of fact; but +the errors in applying his method detract only a little from the +service which he rendered to thought in a treatment of history at +least tending in the direction of philosophic truth. + +The whole of his mind--almost the whole of his existence--is embodied +in the _Esprit des Lois_ (1748). It lacks the unity of a ruling idea; +it is deficient in construction, in continuity, in cohesion; much +that it contains has grown obsolete or is obsolescent; yet in the +literature of eighteenth-century thought it takes, perhaps, the +highest place; and it must always be precious as the self-revealment +of a great intellect--swift yet patient, ardent yet temperate, +liberal yet the reverse of revolutionary--an intellect that before +all else loved the light. It lacks unity, because its author's mind +was many-sided, and he would not suppress a portion of himself to +secure a factitious unity. Montesquieu was a student of science, who +believed in the potency of the laws of nature, and he saw that human +society is the product of, or at least is largely modified by, natural +law; he was also a believer in the power of human reason and human +will, an admirer of Roman virtue, a citizen, a patriot, and a reformer. +He would write the natural history of human laws, exhibit the +invariable principles from which they proceed, and reduce the study +of governments to a science; but at the same time he would exhibit +how society acts upon itself; he would warn and he would exhort; he +would help, if possible, to create intelligent and patriotic citizens. +To these intentions we may add another--that of a criticism, touched +with satire, of the contemporary political and social arrangements +of France. + +And yet again, Montesquieu was a legist, with some of the curiosity +of an antiquary, not without a pride in his rank, interested in its +origins, and desirous to trace the history of feudal laws and +privileges. The _Esprit des Lois_ is not a doctrinaire exposition +of a theory, but the record of a varied life of thought, in which +there are certain dominant tendencies, but no single absolute idea. +The forms of government, according to Montesquieu, are +three--republic (including both the oligarchical republic and the +democratic), monarchy, despotism. Each of these structural +arrangements requires a principle, a moral spring, to give it force +and action: the popular republic lives by virtue of patriotism, public +spirit, the love of equality; the aristocratic republic lives by the +spirit of moderation among the members of the ruling class; monarchy +lives by the stimulus of honour, the desire of superiority and +distinction; despotism draws its vital force from fear; but each of +these principles may perish through its corruption or excess. The +laws of each country, its criminal and civil codes, its system of +education, its sumptuary regulations, its treatment of the relation +of the sexes, are intimately connected with the form of government, +or rather with the principle which animates that form. + +Laws, under the several forms of government, are next considered in +reference to the power of the State for purposes of defence and of +attack. The nature of political liberty is investigated, and the +requisite separation of the legislative, judicial, and +administrative powers is exhibited in the example set forth in the +British constitution. But political freedom must include the liberty +of the individual; the rights of the citizen must be respected and +guaranteed; and, as part of the regulation of individual freedom, +the levying and collection of taxes must be studied. + +From this subject Montesquieu passes to his theory, once celebrated, +of the influence of climate and the soil upon the various systems +of legislation, and especially the influence of climate upon the slave +system, the virtual servitude of woman, and the growth of political +despotism. Over against the fatalism of climate and natural +conditions he sets the duty of applying the reason to modify the +influences of external nature by wise institutions. National +character, and the manners and customs which are its direct expression, +if they cannot be altered by laws, must be respected, and something +even of direction or regulation may be attained. Laws in relation +to commerce, to money, to population, to religion, are dealt with +in successive books. + +The duty of religious toleration is urged from the point of view of +a statesman, while the discussions of theology are declined. Very +noteworthy is the humble remonstrance to the inquisitors of Spain +and Portugal ascribed to a Jew of eighteen, who is supposed to have +perished in the last _auto-da-fe_. The facts of the civil order are +not to be judged by the laws of the religious order, any more than +the facts of the religious order are to be judged by civil laws. Here +the great treatise might have closed, but Montesquieu adds what may +be styled an historical appendix in his study of the origin and +development of feudal laws. At a time when antiquity was little +regarded, he was an ardent lover of antiquity; at a time when mediaeval +history was ignored, he was a student of the forgotten centuries. + +Such in outline is the great work which in large measure modified +the course of eighteenth-century thought. Many of its views have been +superseded; its collections of facts are not critically dealt with; +its ideas often succeed each other without logical sequence; but +Montesquieu may be said to have created a method, if not a science; +he brought the study of jurisprudence and politics, in the widest +sense, into literature, laicising and popularising the whole +subject; he directed history to the investigation of causes; he led +men to feel the greatness of the social institution; and, while +retiring from view behind his work, he could not but exhibit, for +his own day and for ours, the spectacle of a great mind operating +over a vast field in the interests of truth, the spectacle of a great +nature that loved the light, hating despotism, but fearing revolution, +sane, temperate, wisely benevolent. In years tyrannised over by +abstract ideas, his work remained to plead for the concrete and the +historical; among men devoted to the absolute in theory and the +extreme in practice, it remained to justify the relative, to demand +a consideration of circumstances and conditions, to teach men how +large a field of reform lay within the bounds of moderation and good +sense. + +The _Esprit des Lois_ was denounced by Jansenists and Jesuits; it +was placed in the Index, but in less than two years twenty-two editions +had appeared, and it was translated into many languages. The author +justified it brilliantly in his _Defense_ of 1750. His later writings +are of small importance. With failing eyesight in his declining years, +he could enjoy the society of friends and the illumination of his +great fame. He died tranquilly (1755) at the age of sixty-six, in +the spirit of a Christian Stoic. + + +II + +The life of society was studied by Montesquieu; the inward life of +the heart was studied by a young moralist, whose premature loss was +lamented with tender passion by Voltaire. + +Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de VAUVENARGUES, though neither a thinker +nor a writer of the highest order, attaches us by the beauty of his +character as seen through his half-finished work, more than any other +author of the earlier part of the eighteenth century. He was born +(1715) at Aix, in Provence, received a scanty education, served in +the army during more than ten years, retired with broken health and +found no other employment, lived on modest resources, enjoyed the +acquaintance of the Marquis de Mirabeau and the friendship and high +esteem of Voltaire, and died in 1747, at the early age of thirty-two. +His knowledge of literature hardly extended beyond that of his French +predecessors of the seventeenth century. The chief influences that +reached him came from Pascal, Bossuet, and Fenelon. His learning was +derived from action, from the observation of men, and from +acquaintance with his own heart. + +The writings of Vauvenargues are the fragmentary _Introduction a la +Connaissance de l'Esprit Humain_, followed by _Reflexions et +Maximes_ (1746), and a few short pieces of posthumous publication. +He is a moralist, who studies those elements of character which tend +to action, and turns away from metaphysical speculations. His early +faith in Christianity insensibly declined and disappeared, but his +spirit remained religious; he believed in God and immortality, and +he never became a militant philosopher. He thought generously of human +nature, but without extravagant optimism. The reason, acting alone, +he distrusted; he found the source of our highest convictions and +our noblest practice in the emotions, in the heart, in the obscure +depths of character and of nature. Here, indeed, is Vauvenargues' +originality. In an age of ill living, he conceived a worthy ideal +of conduct; in an age tending towards an exaggerated homage to reason, +he honoured the passions: "Great thoughts come from the heart"; "We +owe, perhaps, to the passions the greatest gains of the intellect"; +"The passions have taught men reason." + +Vauvenargues, with none of the violences of Rousseau's temperament, +none of the excess of his sensibility, by virtue of his recognition +of the potency of nature, of the heart, may be called a precursor +of Rousseau. Into his literary criticism he carries the same +tendencies: it is far from judicial criticism; its merit is that it +is personal and touched with emotion. His total work seems but a +fragment, yet his life had a certain completeness; he knew how to +act, to think, to feel, and after great sufferings, borne with +serenity, he knew how to die. + + +III + +The movement of Voltaire's mind went with that of the general mind +of France. During the first half of the century he was primarily a +man of letters; from about 1750 onwards he was the aggressive +philosopher, the social reformer, using letters as the vehicle of +militant ideas. + +Born in Paris in 1694, the son of a notary of good family, +FRANCOIS-MARIE AROUET, who assumed the name VOLTAIRE (probably an +anagram formed from the letters of _Arouet l.j._, that is _le jeune_), +was educated by the Jesuits, and became a precocious versifier of +little pieces in the taste of the time. At an early age he was +introduced to the company of the wits and fine gentlemen who formed +the sceptical and licentious Society of the Temple. Old Arouet +despaired of his son, who was eager for pleasure, and a reluctant +student of the law. A short service in Holland, in the household of +the French ambassador, produced no better result than a fruitless +love-intrigue. + +Again in Paris, where he ill endured the tedium of an attorney's office, +Voltaire haunted the theatres and the _salons_, wrote light verse +and indecorous tales, planned his tragedy _OEdipe_, and, inspired +by old M. de Caumartin's enthusiasm for Henri IV., conceived the idea +of his _Henriade_. Suspected of having written defamatory verses +against the Regent, he was banished from the capital, and when +readmitted was for eleven months, on the suspicion of more atrocious +libels, a prisoner in the Bastille. Here he composed--according to +his own declaration, in sleep--the second canto of the _Henriade_, +and completed his _OEdipe_, which was presented with success before +the close of 1718. The prisoner of the Bastille became the favourite +of society, and repaid his aristocratic hosts by the brilliant sallies +of his conversation. + +A second tragedy, _Artemire_, afterwards recast as _Mariamne_, was +ill received in its earlier form. Court pensions, the death of his +father, and lucky financial speculations brought Voltaire +independence. He travelled in 1722 to Holland, met Jean-Baptiste +Rousseau on the way, and read aloud for his new acquaintance _Le Pour +et le Contre_, a poem of faith and unfaith--faith in Deism, disbelief +in Christianity. The meeting terminated with untimely wit at +Rousseau's expense and mutual hostility. Unable to obtain the +approbation for printing his epic, afterwards named _La Henriade_, +Voltaire arranged for a secret impression, under the title _La Ligue_, +at Rouen (1723), whence many copies were smuggled into Paris. The +young Queen, Marie Lecszinska, before whom his _Mariamne_ and the +comedy _L'Indiscret_ were presented, favoured Voltaire. His +prospects were bright, when sudden disaster fell. A quarrel in the +theatre with the Chevalier de Rohan, followed by personal violence +at the hands of the Chevalier's bullies, ended for Voltaire, not with +the justice which he demanded, but with his own lodgment in the +Bastille. When released, with orders to quit Paris, he thought of +his acquaintance and admirer Bolingbroke, and lost no time in taking +refuge on English soil. + +Voltaire's residence in England extended over three years (1726-29). +Bolingbroke, Peterborough, Chesterfield, Pope, Swift, Gay, Thomson, +Young, Samuel Clarke were among his acquaintances. He discovered the +genius of that semi-barbarian Shakespeare, but found the only +reasonable English tragedy in Addison's "Cato." He admired the epic +power of Milton, and scorned Milton's allegory of Sin and Death. He +found a master of philosophy in Locke. He effected a partial entrance +into the scientific system of Newton. He read with zeal the writings +of those pupils of Bayle, the English Deists. He honoured English +freedom and the spirit of religious toleration. In 1728 the _Henriade_ +was published by subscription in London, and brought the author +prodigious praise and not a little pelf. He collected material for +his _Histoire de Charles XII._, and, observing English life and +manners, prepared the _Lettres Philosophiques_, which were to make +the mind of England favourably known to his countrymen. + +_Charles XII._, like _La Ligue_, was printed at Rouen, and smuggled +into Paris. The tragedies _Brutus_ and _Eriphyle_, both of which show +the influence of the English drama, were coldly received. Voltaire +rose from his fall, and produced _Zaire_ (1732), a kind of +eighteenth-century French "Othello," which proved a triumph; it was +held that Corneille and Racine had been surpassed. In 1733 a little +work of mingled verse and prose, the _Temple du Gout_, in which recent +and contemporary writers were criticised, gratified the self-esteem +of some, and wounded the vanity of a larger number of his +fellow-authors. The _Lettres Philosophiques sur les Anglais_, which +followed, were condemned by the Parliament to be burnt by the public +executioner. With other audacities of his pen, the storm increased. +Voltaire took shelter (1734) in Champagne, at Cirey, the chateau of +Madame du Chatelet. + +Voltaire was forty years of age; Madame, a woman of intellect and +varied culture, was twelve years younger. During fifteen years, when +he was not wandering abroad, Cirey was the home of Voltaire, and Madame +du Chatelet his sympathetic, if sometimes his exacting companion. +To this period belong the dramas _Alzire_, _Zulime_, _L'Enfant +Prodigue_, _Mahomet_, _Merope_, _Nanine_. The divine Emilie was +devoted to science, and Voltaire interpreted the Newtonian +philosophy to France or discussed questions of physics. Many +admirable pieces of verse--ethical essays in the manner of Pope, +lighter poems of occasion, _Le Mondain_, which contrasts the golden +age of simplicity with the much more agreeable age of luxury, and +many besides--were written. Progress was made with the shameless +burlesque on Joan of Arc, _La Pucelle_. In _Zadig_ Voltaire gave the +first example of his sparkling tales in prose. Serious historical +labours occupied him--afterwards to be published--the _Siecle de +Louis XIV._ and the great _Essai sur les Moeurs_. In 1746, with the +support of Madame de Pompadour, he entered the French Academy. The +death of Madame du Chatelet, in 1749, was a cruel blow to Voltaire. +He endeavoured in Paris to find consolation in dramatic efforts, +entering into rivalry with the aged Crebillon. + +Among Voltaire's correspondents, when he dwelt at Cirey, was the Crown +Prince of Prussia, a royal _philosophe_ and aspirant French poet. +Royal flatteries were not more grateful to Voltaire than philosophic +and literary flatteries were to Frederick. Personal acquaintance +followed; but Frederick would not receive Madame du Chatelet, and +Voltaire would not desert his companion. Now when Madame was dead, +when the Pompadour ceased from her favours to the poet, when Louis +turned his back in response to a compliment, Frederick was to secure +his philosopher. In July 1750 Voltaire was installed at Berlin. For +a time that city was "the paradise of _philosophes_." + +The _Siecle de Louis XIV._ was published next year. Voltaire's +insatiable cupidity, his tricks, his tempers, his vindictiveness, +shown in the _Diatribe du Docteur Akakia_ (an embittered attack on +Maupertuis), alienated the King; when "the orange" of Voltaire's +genius "was sucked" he would "throw away the rind." With unwilling +delays, and the humiliation of an arrest at Frankfort, Voltaire +escaped from the territory of the royal "Solomon" (1753), and +attracted to Switzerland by its spirit of toleration, found himself +in 1755 tenant of the chateau which he named Les Delices, near Geneva, +his "summer palace," and that of Monrion, his "winter palace," in +the neighbourhood of Lausanne. His pen was busy: the tragedy +_L'Orphelin de la Chine_, tales, fugitive verses, the poem on the +earthquake at Lisbon, with its doubtful assertion of Providence as +a slender counterpoise to the certainty of innumerable evils in the +world, pursued one another in varied succession. Still keeping in +his hands Les Delices, he purchased in 1758 the chateau and demesne +of Ferney on French soil, and became a kind of prince and patriarch, +a territorial lord, wisely benevolent to the little community which +he made to flourish around him, and at the same time the intellectual +potentate of Europe. + +Never had his brain been more alert and indefatigable. The years from +1760 to 1778 were years of incessant activity. Tragedy, comedy, opera, +epistles, satires, tales in verse, _La Pucelle_,[1] _Le Pauvre +Diable_ (admirable in its malignity), literary criticism, a +commentary on Corneille (published for the benefit of the great +dramatist's grandniece), brilliant tales in prose, the _Essai sur +les Moeurs et l'Esprit des Nations_, the _Histoire de l'Empire de +Russie sous Pierre le Grand_, with other voluminous historical works, +innumerable writings in philosophy, in religious polemics, including +many articles of the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_, in politics, in +jurisprudence, a vast correspondence which extended his influence +over the whole of Europe--these are but a part of the achievement +of a sexagenarian progressing to become an octogenarian. + +[Footnote 1: First authorised edition, 1762; surreptitiously printed, +1755.] + +His work was before all else a warfare against intolerance and in +favour of free thought. The grand enemy of intellectual liberty +Voltaire saw in the superstition of the Church; his word of command +was short and uncompromising--_Ecrasez l'Infame_. Jean Calas, a +Protestant of Toulouse, falsely accused of the murder of his son, +who was alleged to have been converted to the Roman communion, was +tortured and broken on the wheel. Voltaire, with incredible zeal, +took up the victim's cause, and finally established the dead man's +innocence. Sirven, a Protestant, declared guilty of the murder of +his Roman Catholic daughter, was beggared and banished; Voltaire +succeeded, after eight years, in effecting the reversal of the +sentence. La Barre was tortured and decapitated for alleged impiety. +Voltaire was not strong enough to overpower the French magistracy +supported now by the French monarch. He turned to Frederick with a +request that he would give shelter to a colony of _philosophes_, who +should through the printing-press make a united assault upon +_l'Infame_. + +In the early days of 1778, Voltaire, urged by friends, imprudently +consented to visit Paris. His journey was like a regal progress; his +reception in the capital was an overwhelming ovation. In March he +was ailing, but he rose from his bed, was present at a performance +of his _Irene_, and became the hero and the victim of extravagant +popular enthusiasm. In April he eagerly pleaded at the French Academy +for a new dictionary, and undertook himself to superintend the letter +A. In May he was dangerously ill; on the 26th he had the joy of learning +that his efforts to vindicate the memory of the unfortunate Count +Lally were crowned with success. It was Voltaire's last triumph; four +days later, unshriven and unhouseled, he expired. Seldom had such +a coil of electrical energy been lodged within a human brain. His +desire for intellectual activity was a consuming passion. His love +of influence, his love of glory were boundless. Subject to spasms +of intensest rage, capable of malignant trickery to gain his ends, +jealous, mean, irreverent, mendacious, he had yet a heart open to +charity and pity, a zeal for human welfare, a loyalty to his ruling +ideas, and a saving good sense founded upon his swift and clear +perception of reality. + +Voltaire's mind has been described as "a chaos of clear ideas." It +is easy to point out the inconsistencies of his opinions, yet certain +dominant thoughts can be distinguished amid the chaos. He believed +in a God; the arrangements of the universe require a designer; the +idea of God is a benefit to society--if He did not exist, He must +be invented. But to suppose that the Deity intervenes in the affairs +of the world is superstition; He rules through general laws--His +executive; He is represented in the heart of man by His +viceroy--conscience. The soul is immortal, and God is just; therefore +let wrong-doers beware. In _L'Histoire de Jenni_ the youthful hero +is perverted by his atheistic associates, and does not fear to murder +his creditor; he is reconverted to theism, and becomes one of the +best men in England. As to the evil which darkens the world, we cannot +understand it; let us not make it worse by vain perplexities; let +us hope that a future life will right the balance of things; and, +meanwhile, let us attend to the counsels of moderation and good sense; +let the narrow bounds of our knowledge at least teach us the lesson +of toleration. + +Applied to history, such ideas lead Voltaire, in striking contrast +with Bossuet, to ignore the supernatural, to eliminate the +Providential order, and to seek the explanation of events in human +opinion, in human sentiments, in the influence of great men, even +in the influence of petty accident, the caprice of _sa Majeste le +Hasard_. In the epoch of classical antiquity--which Voltaire +understood ill--man had advanced from barbarism to a condition of +comparative well-being and good sense; in the Christian and mediaeval +period there was a recoil and retrogression; in modern times has begun +a renewed advance. In fixing attention on the _esprit et moeurs_ of +nations--their manners, opinions, institutions, sentiments, +prejudices--Voltaire was original, and rendered most important +service to the study of history. Although his blindness to the +significance of religious phenomena is a grave defect, his historical +scepticism had its uses. As a writer of historical narrative he is +admirably lucid and rapid; nor should the ease of his narration +conceal the fact that he worked laboriously and carefully among +original sources. With his _Charles XII._, his _Pierre le Grand_, +his _Siecle de Louis XIV._, we may class the _Henriade_ as a piece +of history; its imaginative power is not that of an epic, but it is +an interpretation of a fragment of French history in the light of +one generous idea--that of religious toleration. + +Filled with destructive passion against the Church, Voltaire, in +affairs of the State, was a conservative. His ideal for France was +an intelligent despotism. But if a conservative, he was one of a +reforming spirit. He pleaded for freedom in the internal trade of +province with province, for legal and administrative uniformity +throughout the whole country, for a reform of the magistracy, for +a milder code of criminal jurisprudence, for attention to public +hygiene. His programme was not ambitious, but it was reasonable, and +his efforts for the general welfare have been justified by time. + +As a literary critic he was again conservative. He belonged to the +classical school, and to its least liberal section. He regarded +literary forms as imposed from without on the content of poetry, not +as growing from within; passion and imagination he would reduce to +the strict bounds of uninspired good sense; he placed Virgil above +Homer, and preferred French tragedy to that of ancient Greece; from +his involuntary admiration of Shakespeare he recoiled in alarm; if +he admired Corneille, it was with many reservations. Yet his taste +was less narrow than that of some of his contemporaries; he had a +true feeling for the genius of the French language; he possessed, +after the manner of his nation and his time, _le grand gout_; he +honoured Boileau; he exalted Racine in the highest degree; and, to +the praise of his discernment, it may be said that he discovered +_Athalie_. + +The spectacular effects of _Athalie_ impressed Voltaire's +imagination. In his own tragedies, while continuing the +seventeenth-century tradition, he desired to exhibit more striking +situations, to develop more rapid action, to enhance the dramatic +spectacle, to add local colour. His style and speech in the theatre +have the conventional monotonous pomp, the conventional monotonous +grace, without poetic charm, imaginative vision, or those flashes +which spring from passionate genius. When, as was frequently the case, +he wrote for the stage to advocate the cause of an idea, to preach +tolerance or pity, he attained a certain height of eloquence. Whatever +sensibility there was in Voltaire's heart may be discovered in _Zaire_. +_Merope_ has the distinction of being a tragedy from which the passion +of love is absent; its interest rests wholly on maternal affection. +_Tancrede_ is remarkable as an eighteenth-century treatment of the +chivalric life and spirit. The Christian temper of tolerance and +humanity is honoured in _Alzire_. + +Voltaire's incomparable gift of satirical wit did not make him a +writer of high comedy: he could be grotesque without lightness or +brightness. But when a sentimental element mingles with the comic, +and almost obscures it, as in _Nanine_ (a dramatised tale derived +from Richardson's _Pamela_), the verse acquires a grace, and certain +scenes an amiable charm. _Nanine_, indeed, though in dramatic form, +lies close to those tales in verse in which Voltaire mingled happily +his wisdom and his wit. "The philosophy of Horace in the language +of La Fontaine, this," writes a critic, "is what we find from time +to time in Voltaire." In his lighter verses of occasion, epigram, +compliment, light mockery, half-playful, half-serious sentiment, he +is often exquisite. + +No part of Voltaire's work has suffered so little at the hands of +time as his tales in prose. In his contributions to the satire of +human-kind he learned something from Rabelais, something from Swift. +It is the satire of good sense impatient against folly, and armed +with the darts of wit. Voltaire does not esteem highly the wisdom +of human creatures: they pretend to knowledge beyond their powers; +they kill one another for an hypothesis; they find ingenious reasons +for indulging their base or petty passions; their lives are under +the rule of _sa Majeste le Hasard_. But let us not rage in Timon's +manner against the human race; if the world is not the best of all +possible worlds, it is not wholly evil. Let us be content to mock +at the absurdity of the universe, and at the diverting, if irritating, +follies of its inhabitants. Above all, let us find support in work, +even though we do not see to what it tends; "Il faut cultiver notre +jardin"--such is Voltaire's word, and the final word of Candide. With +light yet effective irony, Voltaire preaches the lesson of good sense. +When bitter, he is still gay; his sad little philosophy of existence +is uttered with an accent of mirth; his art in satirical narrative +is perfect; he is not resigned; he is not enraged; he is indignant, +but at the same time he smiles; there is always the last resource +of blindly cultivating our garden. + +In Voltaire's myriad-minded correspondence the whole man may be +found--his fire, his sense, his universal curiosity, his wit, his +malignity, his goodness, his Protean versatility, his ruling ideas; +and one may say that the whole of eighteenth-century Europe presses +into the pages. He is not only the man of letters, the student of +science, the philosopher; he is equally interested in politics, in +social reform, in industry, in agriculture, in political economy, +in philology, and, together with these, in the thousand incidents +of private life. + + + + +CHAPTER III +DIDEROT AND THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA--PHILOSOPHERS, ECONOMISTS, +CRITICS--BUFFON + + +I + +"When I recall Diderot," wrote his friend Meister, "the immense +variety of his ideas, the amazing multiplicity of his knowledge, the +rapid flight, the warmth, the impetuous tumult of his imagination, +all the charm and all the disorder of his conversation, I venture +to liken his character to Nature herself, exactly as he used to +conceive her--rich, fertile, abounding in germs of every sort ... +without any dominating principle, without a master, and without a +God." No image more suitable could be found; and his works resemble +the man, in their richness, their fertility, their variety, and their +disorder. A great writer we can hardly call him, for he has left no +body of coherent thought, no piece of finished art; but he was the +greatest of literary improvisators. + +DENIS DIDEROT, son of a worthy cutler of Langres, was born in 1713. +Educated by the Jesuits, he turned away from the regular professions, +and supported himself and his ill-chosen wife by hack-work for the +Paris booksellers--translations, philosophical essays directed +against revealed religion, stories written to suit the appetite for +garbage. From deism he advanced to atheism. Arguing in favour of the +relativity of human knowledge in his _Lettre sur les Aveugles_ (1749), +he puts his plea for atheism into the lips of an English man of science, +but the device did not save him from an imprisonment of three months. + +In 1745 the booksellers, contemplating a translation of the English +"Cyclopaedia" of Chambers, applied to Diderot for assistance. He +readily undertook the task, but could not be satisfied with a mere +translation. In a Prospectus (1750) he indicated the design of the +"Encyclopaedia" as he conceived it: the order and connection of the +various branches of knowledge should be set forth, and in dictionary +form the several sciences, liberal arts, and mechanical arts should +be dealt with by experts. The homage which he rendered to science +expressed the mind of his time; in the honour paid to mechanical toil +and industry he was in advance of his age, and may be called an +organiser of modern democracy. At his request JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT +(1717-83) undertook the direction of the mathematical articles, and +wrote the _Discours Preliminaire_, which classified the departments +of human knowledge on the basis of Bacon's conceptions, and gave a +survey of intellectual progress. It was welcomed with warm applause. +The aid of Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Buffon, Turgot, Quesnay, +and a host of less illustrious writers was secured; but the vast +enterprise excited the alarms of the ecclesiastical party; the +Jesuits were active in rivalry and opposition; Rousseau deserted and +became an enemy; D'Alembert, timid, and a lover of peace, withdrew. +In 1759 the privilege of publication was revoked, but the Government +did not enforce its own decree. Through all difficulties and dangers +Diderot held his ground. One day he wrote a fragment of the history +of philosophy; the next he was in a workshop examining the +construction of some machine: nothing was too great or too small for +his audacity or his patience. To achieve the work, tact was needed +as well as courage; at times he condescended to disguise his real +opinions, striving to weather the storm by yielding to it. In 1765 +his gigantic labours were substantially accomplished, though the +last plates of the _Encyclopedie_ were not issued until 1772. When +all was finished, the scientific movement of the century was +methodised and popularised; a barrier against the invasion of the +past was erected; the rationalist philosophy, with all its truths +and all its errors, its knowledge and its ignorance, had obtained +its _Summa_. + +But, besides this co-operative work, Diderot did much, and in many +directions, single-handed, flinging out his thoughts with ardent +haste, and often leaving what he had written to the mercies of chance; +a prodigal sower of good and evil seed. Several of his most remarkable +pieces came to light, as it were, by accident, and long after his +death. His novel _La Religieuse_--influenced to some extent by +Richardson, whom he superstitiously admired--is a repulsive exposure +of conventual life as it appeared to him, and of its moral disorder. +_Jacques le Fataliste_, in which the manner is coarsely imitated from +Sterne, a book ill-composed and often malodorous, contains, among +its heterogeneous tales, one celebrated narrative, the _Histoire de +Mme. de la Pommeraye_, relating a woman's base revenge on a faithless +lover. If anything of Diderot's can be named a masterpiece, it is +certainly _Le Neveu de Rameau_, a satire and a character-study of +the parasite, thrown into the form of dialogue, which he handled with +brilliant success; it remained unknown until the appearance of a +German version (1805), made by Goethe from a manuscript copy. + +In his _Salons_, Diderot elevated and enlarged the criticism of the +pictorial art in France. His eye for colour and for contour was +admirable; but it is less the technique of paintings that he studies +than the subjects, the ideas, and the moral significance. Such +criticism may be condemned as literary rather than artistic; it was, +however, new and instructive, and did much to quicken the public taste. +Diderot pleaded for a return to nature in the theatre; for a bourgeois +drama, domestic tragedy and serious comedy, touched with pathos, +studied from real life, and inspired by a moral purpose; for the +presentation on the stage of "conditions" rather than individual +types--that is, of character as modified by social environments and +the habits which they produce. He maintained that the actor should +rather possess than be possessed by his theme, should be the master +rather than the slave of his sensibility. + +The examples of dramatic art which Diderot gave in his own plays, +the _Pere de Famille_ and the _Fils Naturel_, are poor affectations +of a style supposed to be natural, and are patently doctrinaire in +their design, laboured developments of a moral thesis. One piece in +which he paints himself, _Est-il bon? Est-il mechant?_ and this alone, +falls little short of being admirable, and yet it fails of true +success. + +A coherent system of thought cannot be found in Diderot's writings, +but they are pregnant with ideas. He is deist, pantheist, atheist; +he is a materialist--one, however, who conceives matter not as inert, +but quick with force. He is edifying and sincere in his morality; +and presently his morals become the doctrines of an anarchical licence. +All the ideas of his age struggle within him, and are never reduced +to unity or harmony; light is never separate in his nature from heat, +and light and warmth together give rise to thoughts which are +sometimes the anticipations of scientific genius; he almost leaps +forward to some of the conclusions of Darwin. His great powers and +his incessant energy were not directed to worldly prosperity. Diderot +was never rich. The Empress Catherine of Russia magnificently +purchased his library, and entrusted him with the books, as her +librarian, providing a salary which to him was wealth. He travelled +to St. Petersburg to thank her in person for her generous and delicate +gift. But her imperial generosity was not greater than his own; he +was always ready to lavish the treasures of his knowledge and thought +in the service of others; no small fragment of his work was a free +gift to his friends, and passed under their name; Holbach and Raynal +were among his debtors. + +His correspondence presents a vivid image of the man and of the group +of philosophers to which he belonged; the letters addressed to Mlle. +Volland, to whom he was devotedly attached during many years, are +frank betrayals of his character and his life. Her loss saddened his +last days, but the days of sorrow were few. In July 1784, Diderot +died. His reputation and influence were from time to time enhanced +by posthumous publications. Other writers of his century impressed +their own personalities more distinctly and powerfully upon society; +no other writer mingled his genius so completely with external things, +or responded so fully and variously to the stimulus of the spirit +of his age. + + +II + +The French philosophical movement--the "Illumination"--of the +eighteenth century, proceeds in part from the empiricism of Locke, +in part from the remarkable development of physical and natural +science; it incorporated the conclusions of English deism, and +advanced from deism to atheism. An intellectual centre for the +movement was provided by the _Encyclopedie_; a social centre was found +in Parisian _salons_. It was sustained and invigorated by the passion +for freedom and for justice asserting itself against the despotism +and abuses of government and against the oppressions and abuses of +the Church. The opposing forces were feeble, incompetent, +disorganised. The methods of government were, in truth, +indefensible; religion had surrendered dogma, and lost the austerity +of morals; within the citadel of the Church were many professed and +many secret allies of the philosophers. + +While in England an apologetic literature arose, profound in thought +and adequate in learning, in France no sustained resistance was +offered to the inroad of free thought. Episcopal fulminations rolled +like stage thunder; the Bastille and Vincennes were holiday retreats +for fatigued combatants; imprisonment was tempered with cajoleries; +the censors of the press connived with their victims. The Chancellor +D'AGUESSEAU (1668-1751), an estimable magistrate, a dignified orator, +maintained the old seriousness of life and morals, and received the +reward of exile. The good ROLLIN (1661-1741) dictated lessons to youth +drawn from antiquity and Christianity, narrated ancient history, and +discoursed admirably on a plan of studies with a view to form the +heart and mind; an amiable Christian Nestor, he was not a man-at-arms. +The Abbe Guenee replied to Voltaire with judgment, wit, and erudition, +in his _Lettres de quelques Juifs_ (1769), but it was a single victory +in a campaign of many battles. The satire of Gilbert, _Le Dix-huitieme +Siecle_, is rudely vigorous; but Gilbert was only an angry youth, +disappointed of his fame. Freron, the "Wasp" (_frelon_) of Voltaire's +_L'Ecossaise_, might sting in his _Annee Litteraire_, but there were +sharper stings in satire and epigram which he must endure. Palissot +might amuse the theatrical spectators of 1760 with his ridiculous +philosophers; the _Philosophes_ was taken smilingly by Voltaire, and +was sufficiently answered by Morellet's pamphlet and the +_bouts-rimes_ of Marmontel or Piron. The _Voltairomanie_ of +Desfontaines is only the outbreak of resentment of the accomplished +and disreputable Abbe against a benefactor whose offence was to have +saved him from the galleys. + +The sensationalist philosophy is inaugurated by JULIEN OFFRAY DE LA +METTRIE (1709-51) rather than by Condillac. A physician, making +observations on his own case during an attack of fever, he arrived +at the conclusion that thought is but a result of the mechanism of +the body. Man is a machine more ingeniously organised than the brute. +All ideas have their origin in sensation. As for morals, they are +not absolute, but relative to society and the State. As for God, +perhaps He exists, but why should we worship this existence more than +any other? The law of our being is to seek happiness; the law of society +is that we should not interfere with the happiness of others. The +pleasure of the senses is not the only pleasure, but it has the +distinction of being universal to our species. + +La Mettrie, while opposing the spiritualism of Descartes, is more +closely connected with that great thinker, through his doctrine that +brutes are but machines, than with Locke. It is from Locke--though +from Locke mutilated--that ETIENNE BONNOT DE CONDILLAC (1715-80) +proceeds. All ideas are sensations, but sensations transformed. +Imagine a marble statue endowed successively with the several human +senses; it will be seen how perceptions, consciousness, memory, ideas, +comparison, judgment, association, abstraction, pleasure, desire +are developed. The _ego_ is but the bundle of sensations experienced +or transformed and held in recollection. Yet the unity of the _ego_ +seems to argue that it is not composed of material particles. +Condillac's doctrine is sensationalist, but not materialistic. +Condillac's disciple, the physician Cabanis (1757-1808), proceeded +to investigate the nature of sensibility itself, and to develop the +physiological method of psychology. The unnecessary soul which +Condillac preserved was suppressed by Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836); +his ideology was no more than a province of zoology. + +The morals of the sensationalist school were expressed by +CLAUDE-ADRIEN HELVETIUS (1715-71), a worthy and benevolent +farmer-general. The motive of all our actions is self-love, that +tendency which leads us to seek for pleasure and avoid pain; but, +by education and legislation, self-love can be guided and trained +so that it shall harmonise with the public good. It remained for a +German acclimatised to Paris to compile the full manifesto of +atheistic materialism. At Holbach's hospitable table the +philosophers met, and the air was charged with ideas. To condense +these into a system was Holbach's task. Diderot, Lagrange, Naigeon +may have lent their assistance, but PAUL-HENRY THIRY, BARON D'HOLBACH +(1723-89) must be regarded as substantially the author of the _Systeme +de la Nature_ (1770), which the title-page prudently attributed to +the deceased Mirabaud. What do we desire but that men should be happy, +just, benevolent? That they may become so, it is necessary to deliver +them from those errors on which political and spiritual despotism +is founded, from the chains of tyrants and the chimeras of priests, +and to lead them back from illusions to nature, of which man is a +part. We find everywhere matter and motion, a chain of material causes +and effects, nor can we find aught beside these. An ever-circulating +system of motions connects inorganic and organic nature, fire and +air and plant and animal; free-will is as much excluded as God and +His miraculous providence. The soul is nothing but the brain receiving +and transmitting motions; morals form a department of physiology. +Religions and governments, as they exist, are based on error, and +drive men into crime. But though Holbach "accommodated atheism," as +Grimm puts it, "to chambermaids and hairdressers," he would not hurry +forward a revolution. All will come in good time; in some happier +day Nature and her daughters Virtue, Reason, and Truth will alone +receive the adoration of mankind.[1] + +[Footnote 1: The Swiss naturalist Charles Bonnet (1720-93) +endeavoured to reconcile his sensationalism with a religious faith +and a private interpretation of Christianity.] + +Among the friends of Holbach and Helvetius was C.-F. de Chasseboeuf, +Count de VOLNEY (1757-1820), who modified and developed the ethics +of Helvetius. An Orientalist by his studies, he travelled in Egypt +and Syria, desiring to investigate the origins of ancient religions, +and reported what he had seen in colourless but exact description. +In _Les Ruines, ou Meditations sur les Revolutions des Empires_, he +recalls the past like "an Arab Ossian," monotonous and grandiose, +and expounds the history of humanity with cold and superficial +analysis clothed in a pomp of words. His faith in human progress, +founded on nature, reason, and justice, sustained Volney during the +rise and fall of the Girondin party. + +A higher and nobler spirit, who perished in the Revolution, but ceased +not till his last moment to hope and labour for the good of men, was +J.-A.-N. de Caritat, Marquis de CONDORCET (1743-94). Illustrious in +mathematical science, he was interested by Turgot in political +economy, and took a part in the polemics of theology. While lying +concealed from the emissaries of Robespierre he wrote his _Esquisse +d'un Tableau Historique des Progres de l'Esprit Humain_. It is a +philosophy of the past, and almost a hymn in honour of human +perfectibility. The man-statue of Condillac, receiving, retaining, +distinguishing, and combining sensations, has gradually developed, +through nine successive epochs, from that of the hunter and fisher +to the citizen of 1789, who comprehends the physical universe with +Newton, human nature with Locke and Condillac, and society with Turgot +and Rousseau. In the vision of the future, with its progress in +knowledge and in morals, its individual and social improvement, its +lessening inequalities between nations and classes, the philosopher +finds his consolation for all the calamities of the present age. +Condorcet died in prison, poisoned, it is believed, by his own hand. + +The economists, or, as Dupont de Nemours named them, the physiocrats, +formed a not unimportant wing of the philosophic phalanx, now in +harmony with the Encyclopaedic party, now in hostility. The sense +of the misery of France was present to many minds in the opening of +the century, and with the death of Louis XIV. came illusive hopes +of amelioration. The Abbe de Saint-Pierre (1658-1743), filled with +ardent zeal for human happiness, condemned the government of the +departed Grand Monarch, and dreamed of a perpetual peace; among his +dreams arose projects for the improvement of society which were +justified by time. Boisguillebert, and Vauban, marshal of France and +military engineer, were no visionary spirits; they pleaded for a +serious consideration of the general welfare, and especially the +welfare of the agricultural class, the wealth-producers of the +community. To violate economic laws, Boisguillebert declared, is to +violate nature; let governments restrain their meddling, and permit +natural forces to operate with freedom. + +Such was the doctrine of the physiocratic school, of which FRANCOIS +QUESNAY (1694-1774) was the chief. Let human institutions conform +to nature; enlarge the bounds of freedom; give play to the spirit +of individualism; diminish the interference of government--"laissez +faire, laissez passer."[2] Agriculture is productive, let its +burdens be alleviated; manufactures are useful but "sterile": honour, +therefore, above all, to the tiller of the fields, who hugs nature +close, and who enriches humankind! The elder Mirabeau--"ami des +hommes"--who had anticipated Quesnay in some of his views, and himself +had learnt from Cantillon, met Quesnay in 1757, and thenceforth +subordinated his own fiery spirit, as far as that was possible, to +the spirit of the master. From the physiocrats--Gournay and +Quesnay--the noble-minded and illustrious TURGOT (1727-81) derived +many of those ideas of reform which he endeavoured to put into action +when intendant of Limoges, and later, when Minister of Finance. By +his _Reflexions sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses_, +Turgot prepared the way for Adam Smith. + +[Footnote 2: This phrase had been used by Boisguillebert and by the +Marquis d'Argenson before Gournay made it a power. On D'Argenson +(1694-1757), whose _Considerations sur le Gouvernement de la France_ +were not published until 1764, see the study by Mr. Arthur Ogle +(1893).] + +In 1770 the Abbe Galiani, as alert of brain as he was diminutive of +stature, attacked the physiocratic doctrines in his _Dialogues sur +le Commerce des Bles_, which Plato and Moliere--so Voltaire +pronounced--had combined to write. The refutation of the _Dialogues_ +by Morellet was the result of no such brilliant collaboration, and +Galiani, proposed that his own unstatuesque person should be honoured +by a statue above an inscription, declaring that he had wiped out +the economists, who were sending the nation to sleep. The fame of +his _Dialogues_ was perhaps in large measure due to the party-spirit +of the Encyclopaedists, animated by a vivacious attack upon the +physiocrats. The book was applauded, but reached no second edition. + +An important body of articles on literature was contributed to the +_Encyclopedie_ by JEAN-FRANCOIS MARMONTEL. As early as 1719 a +remarkable study in aesthetics had appeared--the _Reflexions +Critiques sur la Poesie et la Peinture_, by the Abbe Dubos. Art is +conceived as a satisfaction of the craving for vivid sensations and +emotions apart from the painful consequences which commonly attend +these in actual life. That portion of Dubos' work which treats of +"physical causes in the progress of art and literature," anticipates +the views of Montesquieu on the influence of climate, and studies +the action of environment on the products of the imagination. In 1746 +Charles Batteux, in his treatise _Les Beaux-Arts reduits a un meme +Principe_, defined the end of art as the imitation of nature--not +indeed of reality, but of nature in its actual or possible beauty; +of nature not as it is, but as it may be. The articles of Marmontel, +revised and collected in the six volumes of his _Elements de +Litterature_ (1787), were full of instruction for his own time, +delicate and just in observation, as they often were, if not +penetrating or profound. In his earlier _Poetique Francaise_--"a +petard," said Mairan, "laid at the doors of the Academy to blow them +up if they should not open"--he had shown himself strangely +disrespectful towards the fame of Racine, Boileau, and the poet +Rousseau. + +The friend of Marmontel, Antoine-Leonard Thomas (1732-85), +honourably distinguished by the dignity of his character and conduct, +a composer of _Eloges_ on great men, somewhat marred by strain and +oratorical emphasis, put his best work into an _Essai sur les Eloges_. +At a time when Bossuet was esteemed below his great deserts, +Thomas--almost alone--recognised his supremacy in eloquence. As the +century advanced, and philosophy developed its attack on religion +and governments, the classical tradition in literature not only +remained unshaken, but seemed to gain in authority. The first +lieutenant of Voltaire, his literary "son," LAHARPE (1739-1803) +represents the critical temper of the time. In 1786 he began his +courses of lectures at the Lycee, before a brilliant audience composed +of both sexes. For the first time in France, instruction in literature, +not trivial and not erudite, but suited to persons of general culture, +was made an intellectual pleasure. For the first time the history +of literature was treated, in its sequence from Homer to modern times, +as a totality. Laharpe's judgments of his contemporaries were often +misled by his bitterness of spirit; his mind was not capacious, his +sympathies were not liberal; his knowledge, especially of Greek +letters, was defective. But he knew the great age of Louis XIV., and +he felt the beauty of its art. No one has written with finer +intelligence of Racine than he in his _Lycee, ou Cours de Litterature_. +As the Revolution approached he sympathised with its hopes and fears; +the professor donned the _bonnet rouge_. The storm which burst +silenced his voice for a time; in 1793 he suffered imprisonment; and +when he occupied his chair again, it was a converted Laharpe who +declaimed against philosophers, republicans, and atheists, the +tyrants of reason, morals, art and letters. + +The finest and surest judgment in contemporary literature was that +of a gallicised German--MELCHIOR GRIMM (1723-1807). As Laharpe was +bound in filial loyalty to Voltaire, so Grimm was in fraternal +attachment to the least French of eighteenth-century French +authors--Diderot. From a basis of character in which there was a +measure of Teutonic enthusiasm and romance, his intellect rose clear, +light, and sure, with no mists of sentiment about it, and no clouds +of fancy. During thirty-seven years, as a kind of private journalist, +he furnished princely and royal persons of Germany, Russia, Sweden, +Poland, with "Correspondence," which reflected as from a mirror all +the lights of Paris to the remote North and East. His own philosophy, +his political views, were cheerless and arid; but he could judge the +work of others generously as well as severely. No one of his generation +so intelligently appreciated Shakespeare; no one more happily +interpreted Montaigne. By swift _apercu_, by criticism, by anecdote, +by caustic raillery, or serious record, he makes the intellectual +world of his day pass before us and expound its meanings. The +Revolution, the dangers of which he divined early, drove him from +Paris. In bidding it farewell he wished that he were in his grave. + + +III + +Buffon, whose power of wing was great, and who did not love the heat +and dust of combat, soared smoothly above the philosophic strife. +Born in 1707, at Montbard, in Burgundy, GEORGE-LOUIS LECLERC, created +Comte de BUFFON by Louis XV., fortunate in the possession of riches, +health, and serenity of heart and brain, lived in his domestic circle, +apart from the coteries of Paris, pursuing with dignity and infinite +patience his proper ends. The legend describes him as a pompous +Olympian even in his home; in truth, if he was majestic--like a marshal +of France, as Hume describes him--he was also natural, genial, and +at times gay. His appointment, in 1739, as intendant of the Royal +Garden, now the _Jardin des Plantes_, turned his studies from +mathematical science to natural history. + +The first volumes of his vast _Histoire Naturelle_ appeared in 1749; +aided by Daubenton and others, he was occupied with the succeeding +volumes during forty years, until death terminated his labours in +1788. The defects of his work are obvious--its want of method, its +disdain of classification, its abuse of hypotheses, its humanising +of the animal world, its pomp of style. But the progress of science, +which lowered the reputation of Buffon, has again re-established his +fame. Not a few of his disdained hypotheses are seen to have been +the divinations of genius; and if he wrote often in the ornate, +classical manner, he could also write with a grave simplicity. + +In his _Discours de Reception_, pronounced before the French Academy +in 1753, he formulated his doctrine of literary style, insisting that +it is, before all else, the manifestation of order in the evolution +of ideas; ideas alone form the basis and inward substance of style. +Rejecting merely abstract conceptions as an explanation of natural +phenomena, viewing classifications as no more than a convenience of +the human intellect, refusing to regard final causes as a subject +of science, he envisaged nature with a tranquil and comprehensive +gaze, and with something of a poet's imagination. He perceived that +the globe, in its actual condition, is the result of a long series +of changes, and thereby he gave an impulse to sound geological study; +he expounded the geography of species, and almost divined the theory +of their transformation or variability; he recognised in some degree +the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest; he +regarded man as a part of nature, but as its noblest part, capable +of an intellectual and moral progress which is not the mere result +of physical laws. + +Whatever may have been Buffon's errors as a thinker, he enlarged the +bounds of literature by annexing the province of natural history as +Montesquieu had annexed that of political science. His vision of the +universe was unclouded by passion, and part of its grandeur is derived +from this serenity. He studied and speculated with absolute freedom, +prepared to advance from his own ideas to others more in accordance +with observed phenomena. "He desired to be," writes a critic, "and +almost became, a pure intelligence in presence of eternal things." +How could he concern himself with the strifes and passions of a day +to whom the centuries were moments in the vast process of evolving +change? In Andre Chenier he found a disciple who would fain have been +the Lucretius of the new system of nature. + + + + +CHAPTER IV +ROUSSEAU--BEAUMARCHAIS--BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE--ANDRE CHENIER + + +I + +JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU the man is inseparable from Rousseau the +writer; his works proceed directly from his character and his life. +Born at Geneva in 1712, he died at Ermenonville in 1778. His childhood +was followed by years of vagabondage. From 1732, the date of his third +residence with Madame de Warens, until 1741, though his vagabondage +did not wholly cease, he was collecting his powers and educating his +mind with studies ardently pursued. During nine subsequent years in +Paris, in Venice, and elsewhere, he was working his way towards the +light; it was the period of his gayer writings, ballet, opera, comedy, +and of the articles on music contributed to the _Encyclopedie_: he +had not yet begun to preach and prophesy to his age. The great fourth +period of his life, from 1749 to 1762, includes all his masterpieces +except the _Confessions_. From 1762 until his death, while his temper +grew darker and his reason was disturbed, Rousseau was occupied with +apologetic and autobiographic writings. + +His mother died in giving birth to Jean-Jacques. His father, a +watchmaker, filled the child's head with the follies of romances, +which they read together, and gave him through Plutarch's Lives a +sense of the exaltations of virtue. The boy's feeling for nature was +quickened and fostered in the garden of the pastor of Bossey. From +a notary's office, where he seemed an incapable fool, he passed under +the harsh rule of an engraver of watches, learning the vices that +grow from fear. At sixteen he fled, and found protection at Annecy, +under Madame de Warens, a young and comely lady, recently converted +to the Roman communion, frank, kind, gay, and as devoid of moral +principles as any creature in the Natural History. Sent to Turin for +instruction, Rousseau renounced his Protestant faith, and soon after +found in the good Abbe Gaime the model in part of his Savoyard vicar. +Some experience of domestic service was followed by a year at Annecy, +during which Rousseau's talent as a musician was developed. From +eighteen to twenty he led a wandering life--"starved, feasted, +despaired, was happy." Rejoining Madame de Warens at Chambery in 1732, +he interested himself in music, physics, botany, and was more and +more drawn towards the study of letters. He methodised his reading +(1738-41), and passionately pursued a liberal system of +self-education, literary, scientific, and philosophical. + +Rousseau's relations with his _bonne maman_, Madame de Warens, had +been troubled by the latest of her other loves. In 1741 he set off +for Paris, bearing with him the manuscript of a new system of musical +notation, which was offered to the Academie des Sciences, and was +declared neither new nor useful for instrumentalists. An experiment +in life as secretary to the French Ambassador at Venice closed, after +fourteen months, with his abrupt dismissal. Again in Paris, Rousseau +obtained celebrity by his operas and comedies, was received in the +_salons_, and associated joyously with Diderot, Marmontel, and Grimm. +He arranged his domestic life by taking an illiterate and vulgar +drudge, Therese Le Vasseur, for his companion; their children were +abandoned to the care of the Foundling Hospital. + +In 1749 Diderot was a prisoner at Vincennes. Rousseau, on the road +to visit his friend, read in the _Mercure de France_ that the Academy +of Dijon had proposed as the subject for a prize to be awarded next +year the question, "Has the progress of arts and sciences contributed +to purify morals?" Suddenly a tumult of ideas arose in his brain and +overwhelmed him; it was an ecstasy of the intellect and the passions. +With Diderot's encouragement he undertook his indictment of +civilisation; in 1750 the _Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts_ +was crowned. In accordance with his theory he proceeded to simplify +his own life, intensifying his self-consciousness by singularities +of assumed austerity, and playing the part (not wholly a fictitious +one) of a moral reformer. Famous as author of the _Discours_ and the +opera _Le Devin de Village_, presented before the King, he returned +to his native Switzerland, and there re-entered the Protestant +communion. In 1754 he again competed for a prize at Dijon, on the +question, "What is the origin of inequality among men, and is it +authorised by the law of nature?" Rousseau failed to obtain the prize, +but the _Discours sur l'Inegalite_ was published (1755) with a +dedication to the Republic of Geneva. He had discovered in private +property the source of all the evils of society. + +In Switzerland Rousseau prepared a first redaction of his political +treatise, the _Contrat Social_, and filled his heart with the beauty +of those prospects which form an environment for the lovers in his +Heloise. In 1756 he was established, through the kindness of Madame +d'Epinay, in the Hermitage, near the borders of the forest of +Montmorency. His delight in the woods and fields was great; his +delight in Madame d'Houdetot, kinswoman of his hostess, was a more +troubled passion. Quarrels with Madame d'Epinay, quarrels with Grimm +and Diderot, estrangement from Madame d'Houdetot, closed the scene +at the Hermitage. + +Authorship, however, had its joys and consolations. The _Lettre a +D'Alembert_, a censure of the theatre (1758), was succeeded by _La +Nouvelle Heloise_ (1761), by the _Contrat Social_ (1762), and _Emile_ +(1762). The days at Montmorency which followed his departure from +the Hermitage passed in calm. With the publication of _Emile_ the +storms began again. The book, condemned by the Sorbonne, was ordered +by the Parliament to be burnt by the common executioner. Rousseau +escaped imprisonment by flight. In Switzerland he could not settle +near Voltaire. A champion for the doctrine of a providential order +of the world, an enemy of the stage--especially in republican +Geneva--Rousseau had flung indignant words against Voltaire, and +Voltaire had tossed back words of bitter scorn. Geneva had followed +Paris in its hostility towards Rousseau's recent publications; whose +doing could it be except Voltaire's? He fled from his persecutors +to Motiers, where the King of Prussia's governor afforded him +protection. Renewed quarrels with his countrymen, clerical +intolerance, mob violence, an envenomed pamphlet from Voltaire, once +more drove him forth. He took refuge on an island in the lake of Bienne, +only to be expelled by the authorities of Berne. Encouraged by +Hume--"le bon David"--he arrived in January 1766 in London. + +At Wootton, in the Peak of Derbyshire, Rousseau prepared the first +five books of his _Confessions_. Within a little time he had assured +himself that Hume was joined with D'Alembert and Voltaire in a +triumvirate of persecutors to defame his character and render him +an outcast; the whole human race had conspired to destroy him. Again +Rousseau fled, sojourned a year at Trye-Chateau under an assumed name, +and after wanderings hither and thither, took refuge in Paris, where, +living meanly, he completed his _Confessions_, wrote other eloquent +pieces of self-vindication, and relieved his morbid cerebral +excitement by music and botanising rambles. The hospitality of M. +de Girardin at Ermenonville was gladly accepted in May 1778; and there, +on July 2, he suddenly died; suicide was surmised; the seizure was +probably apoplectic. + +Rousseau was essentially an idealist, but an idealist whose dreams +and visions were inspired by the play of his sensibility upon his +intellect and imagination, and therefore he was the least impersonal +of thinkers. Generous of heart, he was filled with bitter suspicions; +inordinately proud, he nursed his pride amid sordid realities; +cherishing ideals of purity and innocence, he sank deep in the mire +of imaginative sensuality; effeminate, he was also indomitable; an +uncompromising optimist, he saw the whole world lying in wickedness; +a passionate lover of freedom, he aimed at establishing the most +unqualified of tyrannies; among the devout he was a free-thinker, +among the philosophers he was the sentimentalist of theopathy. He +stands apart from his contemporaries: they did homage to the +understanding; he was the devotee of the heart: they belonged to a +brilliant society; he was elated, suffered, brooded, dreamed in +solitude: they were aristocratic, at least by virtue of the +intellectual culture which they represented; he was plebeian in his +origin, and popular in his sympathies. + +He became a great writer comparatively late in life, under the +compulsion of a ruling idea which lies at the centre of all his more +important works, excepting such as are apologetic and autobiographical: +Nature has made man good and happy; society has made him evil and +miserable. Are we, then, to return to a state of primitive savagery? +No: society cannot retrograde. But in many ways we can ameliorate +human life by approximating to a natural condition. + +In the _Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts_, the _Discours sur +l'Inegalite_, and the _Lettre a D'Alembert sur les Spectacles_, +Rousseau pleads against the vices, the artificiality, the +insincerities, the luxuries, the false refinements, the factitious +passions, the dishonest pleasures of modern society. "You make one +wish," wrote Voltaire, "to walk on all fours." By nature all men are +born free and equal; society has rendered them slaves, and impounded +them in classes of rich and poor, powerful and weak, master and servant, +peasant and peer. Rousseau's conception of the primitive state of +nature, and the origin of society by a contract, may not be +historically exact--this he admits; nevertheless, it serves well, +he urges, as a working hypothesis to explain the present state of +things, and to point the way to a happier state. It exhibits property +as the confiscation of natural rights; it justifies the sacred cause +of insurrection; it teaches us to honour man as man, and the simple +citizen more than the noble, the scientific student, or the artist. +Plain morals are the only safe morals. We are told that the theatre +is a school of manners, purifying the passions; on the contrary, it +irritates and perverts them; or it offers to ridicule the man of +straightforward virtue, as Moliere was not ashamed to do in his +_Misanthrope_. + +Having developed his destructive criticism against society as it is, +Rousseau would build up. In the _Contrat Social_ he would show how +freedom and government may be conciliated; how, through the +arrangements of society, man may in a certain sense return to the +law of nature. "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains;" +yet social order, Rousseau declares, is sacred. Having resigned his +individual liberty by the social pact, how may man recover that +liberty? By yielding his individual rights absolutely to a +self-governing community of which he forms a part. The _volonte +generale_, expressing itself by a plurality of votes, resumes the +free-will of every individual. If any person should resist the general +will, he thereby sacrifices his true freedom, and he must be "forced +to be free." Thus the dogma of the sovereignty of the people is +formulated by Rousseau. Government is merely a delegation of power +made by the people as sovereign for the uses of the people as subjects. +In Rousseau's system, if the tyranny of the majority be established +without check or qualification, at least equality is secured, for, +in the presence of the sovereign people and its manifested will, each +individual is reduced to the level of all his fellows. + +_La Nouvelle Heloise_, in the form of a romance, considers the +purification of domestic manners. Richardson's novels are followed +in the epistolary style of narration, which lends itself to the +exposition of sentiment. The story is simple in its incidents. +Saint-Preux's crime of passion against his pupil Julie resembles that +of Abelard against Eloisa. Julie, like Eloisa, has been a consenting +party. Obedient to her father's will, Julie marries Wolmar. In despair +Saint-Preux wanders abroad. Wolmar offers him his friendship and a +home. The lovers meet, are tried, and do not yield to the temptation. +Julie dies a victim to her maternal devotion, and not too +soon--"Another day, perhaps, and I were guilty!" + +In 1757 Rousseau conceived the design of his romance. It might have +been coldly edifying had not the writer's consuming passion for Madame +d'Houdetot, awakening all that he had felt as the lover of Madame +de Warens, filled it with intensity of ardour. In the first part of +the romance, passion asserts the primitive rights of nature; in the +second part, those rights are shown to be no longer rights in an +organised society. But the ideal of domestic life exhibited is one +far removed from the artificialities of the world of fashion: it is +a life of plain duties, patriarchal manners, and gracious beneficence. +Rousseau the moralist is present to rebuke Rousseau the +sentimentalist; yet the sentimentalist has his own persuasive power. +The emotion of the lovers is reinforced by the penetrating influences +of the beauty of external nature; and both are interpreted with +incomparable harmonies of style and poignant lyrical cries, in which +the violin note outsoars the orchestra. + +A reform of domestic life must result in a reform of education. +Rousseau's ideal of education, capable of adaptations and +modifications according to circumstances, is presented in his +_Emile_. How shall a child be formed in accordance, not with the +vicious code of an artificial society, but in harmony with nature? +Rousseau traces the course of Emile's development from birth to adult +years. Unconstrained by swaddling-bands, suckled by his mother, the +child enjoys the freedom of nature, and at five years old passes into +the care of his father or his tutor. During the earlier years his +education is to be negative: let him be preserved from all that is +false or artificial, and enter upon the heritage of childhood, the +gladness of animal life, vigorous delights in sunshine and open air; +at twelve he will hardly have opened a book, but he will have been +in vital relation with real things, he will unconsciously have laid +the foundations of wisdom. When the time for study comes, that study +should be simple and sound--no Babel of words, but a wholesome +knowledge of things; he may have learnt little, but he will know that +little aright; a sunrise will be his first lesson in cosmography; +he may watch the workman in his workshop; he may practise the +carpenter's trade; he may read _Robinson Crusoe_, and learn the lesson +of self-help. Let him ask at every moment, "What is the good of this?" +Unpuzzled by questions of morals, metaphysics, history, he will have +grown up laborious, temperate, patient, firm, courageous. + +At fifteen the passions are awake; let them be gently and wisely guided. +Let pity, gratitude, benevolence be formed within the boy's heart, +so that the self-regarding passions may fall into a subordinate place. +To read Plutarch is to commune with noble spirits; to read Thucydides +is almost to come into immediate contact with facts. The fables of +La Fontaine will serve as a criticism of the errors of the passions. + +And now Emile, at eighteen, may learn the sublime mysteries of that +faith which is professed by Rousseau's Savoyard vicar. A Will moves +the universe and animates nature; that Will, acting through general +laws, is guided by supreme intelligence; if the order of Providence +be disturbed, it is only through the abuse of man's free-will; the +soul is immaterial and survives the body; conscience is the voice +of God within the soul; "dare to confess God before the philosophers, +dare to preach humanity before the intolerant;" God demands no other +worship than that of the heart. With such a preparation as this, Emile +may at length proceed to aesthetic culture, and find his chief delight +in those writers whose genius has the closest kinship to nature. +Finally, in Sophie, formed to be the amiable companion and helpmate +of man, Emile should find a resting-place for his heart. Alas, if +she should ever betray his confidence! + +The _Confessions_, with its sequels in the _Dialogues, ou Rousseau +juge de Jean-Jacques_, and the _Reveries du Promeneur Solitaire_, +constitute an autobiographical romance. The sombre colours of the +last six Books throw out the livelier lights and shades of the +preceding Books. While often falsifying facts and dates, Rousseau +writes with all the sincerity of one who was capable of boundless +self-deception. He will reserve no record of shame and vice and +humiliation, confident that in the end he must appear the most +virtuous of men. As the utterance of a soul touched and thrilled by +all the influences of nature and of human life, the _Confessions_ +affects the reader like a musical symphony in which various movements +are interpreted by stringed and breathing instruments. If Rousseau +here is less of the prophet than in his other writings, he is more +of the great enchanter. Should a moral be drawn from the book, the +author would have us learn that nature has made man good, that society +has the skill to corrupt him, and finally that it is in his power +to refashion himself to such virtue as the world most needs and most +impatiently rejects. + +The influence of Rousseau cannot easily be over-estimated. He +restored the sentiment of religion in an age of abstract deism or +turbid materialism. He inaugurated a moral reform. He tyrannised over +France in the person of his disciple Robespierre. He emancipated the +passions from the domination of the understanding. He liberated the +imagination. He caught the harmonies of external nature, and gave +them a new interpretation.[1] He restored to French prose, colour, +warmth, and the large utterance which it had lost. He created a +literature in which all that is intimate, personal, lyrical asserted +its rights, and urged extravagant claims. He overthrew the classical +ideal of art, and enthroned the _ego_ in its room. + +[Footnote 1: Among writers who fostered the new feeling for external +nature, Ramond (1755-1827), who derived his inspiration, partly +scientific, partly imaginative, from the Swiss Alps and the Pyrenees, +deserves special mention.] + + +II + +The fermentation of ideas was now quickened by the new life of +passion--passion social and democratic as the days of Revolution +approached; passion also personal and private, which, welcomed as +a sacred fire, too often made the inmost being of the individual a +scene of agitating and desolating conflict. + +The Abbe Raynal (1713-96) made his _Histoire des Deux Indes_ a +receptacle not only for just views and useful information, but for +every extravagance of thought and sentiment. "Insert into my book," +he said to his brother philosophers, "everything that you choose +against God, against religion, and against government." In the third +edition appears a portrait of the author, posing theatrically, with +the inscription, "To the defender of humanity, of truth, of liberty!" +The _salons_ caught the temper of the time. Voltairean as they were, +disposed to set down Rousseau as an enthusiast or a charlatan, they +could not resist the invasion of passion or of sensibility. It mingled +with a swarm of incoherent ideas and gave them a new intensity of +life. The incessant play of intellect flashed and glittered for many +spirits over a moral void; the bitter, almost misanthropic temper +of Chamfort's maxims and _pensees_ may testify to the vacuity of faith +and joy; sentiment and passion came to fill the void; to desire, to +love, to pity, to suffer, to weep, was to live the true life of the +heart. + +Madame du Deffand (1697-1780) might oppose the demon of ennui with +the aid of a cool temperament and a brilliant wit; at sixty-eight, +whatever ardour had been secretly stored up in her nature escaped +to lavish itself half-maternally on Horace Walpole. Her young +companion and reader, who became a rival and robbed her _salon_ of +its brilliance, Mlle. de Lespinasse (1732?-76) might cherish a calm +friendship for D'Alembert. When M. de Guibert came to succeed M. de +Mora in her affections, she poured out the lava torrent of passion +in those Letters which have given her a place beside Sappho and beside +Eloisa. Madame Roland in her girlhood had been the ardent pupil of +Rousseau, whose _Nouvelle Heloise_ was to her as a revelation from +heaven. The first appearance in literature of Madame Necker's amazing +daughter was as the eulogist of Rousseau. + +The intellect untouched by emotion may be aristocratic; passion and +sentiment have popular and democratic instincts. "The Revolution was +already in action," said Napoleon, "when in 1784 Beaumarchais's +_Mariage de Figaro_ appeared upon the stage." If Napoleon's words +overstate the fact, we may at least name that masterpiece of comedy +a symptom of the coming explosion, or even, in Sainte-Beuve's words, +an armed Fronde. + +Pierre-Augustin Caron, who took the name of BEAUMARCHAIS (1732-99), +son of a watchmaker of Paris, was born under a merry star, with a +true genius for comedy, yet his theatrical pieces were only the +recreations of a man of affairs--a demon of intrigue--determined to +build up his fortune by financial adventures and commercial +enterprises. Suddenly in 1774-75 he leaped into fame. Defeated in +a trial in which his claim to fifteen thousand livres was disputed, +Beaumarchais, in desperate circumstances, made his appeal to public +opinion in four _Memoires_, which admirably united seriousness, +gaiety, argument, irony, eloquence, and dramatic talent. "I am a +citizen," he cried--"that is to say, something wholly new, unknown, +unheard of in France. I am a citizen--that is to say, what you should +have been two hundred years ago, what perhaps you will be twenty years +hence." The word "citizen" sounded strange in 1774; it was soon to +become familiar. + +Before this incident Beaumarchais had produced two dramas, _Eugenie_ +and _Les Deux Amis_, of the tearful, sentimental, bourgeois type, +yet with a romantic tendency, which distinguishes at least _Eugenie_ +from the bourgeois drama of Diderot and of Sedaine. The failure of +the second may have taught their author the wisdom of mirth; he +abandoned his high dramatic principles to laugh and to evoke laughter. +_Le Barbier de Seville_, developed from a comic opera to a comedy +in five acts, was given, after long delays, in 1775. The spectators +manifested fatigue; instantly the play reappeared in four acts, +Beaumarchais having lost no time in removing the fifth wheel from +his carriage. It delighted the public by the novelty of its abounding +gaiety, a gaiety full and free, yet pointed with wit, a revolving +firework scattering its dazzling spray. The old comic theme of the +amorous tutor, the charming pupil, the rival lover, adorned with the +prestige of youth, the intriguing attendant, was renewed by a dialogue +which was alive with scintillating lights. + +From the success of the _Barbier_ sprang _Le Mariage de Figaro_. +Completed in 1778, the royal opposition to its performance was not +overcome until six years afterwards. By force of public opinion the +watchmaker's son had triumphed over the King. The subject of the play +is of a good tradition--a daring valet disputes the claim of a +libertine lord to the possession of his betrothed. Spanish colour +and Italian intrigue are added to the old mirth of France. From Regnard +the author had learnt to entangle a varied intrigue; from Lesage he +borrowed his Spanish costumes and decoration--Figaro himself is a +Gil Blas upon the stage; in Marivaux he saw how women may assert +themselves in comic action with a bright audacity. The _Mariage de +Figaro_ resumes the past; it depicts the present, as a social satire, +and a painting of manners; it conveys into art the experience, the +spirit, the temerity of Beaumarchais's adventurous life as a man of +the world; it creates characters--Almaviva, Suzanne, Figaro himself, +the budding Cherubin. It is at the same time--or, rather, became +through its public reception--a pamphlet in comedy which announces +the future; it ridicules the established order with a sprightly +insolence; it pleads for social equality; it exposes the iniquity +of aristocratic privilege, the venality of justice, the greed of +courtiers, the chicanery of politicians. Figaro, since he appeared +in "The Barber of Seville," has grown somewhat of a moralist and a +pedant; he must play the part of censor of society, he must represent +the spirit of independent criticism, he must maintain the cause of +intelligence against the authority of rank and station. Beaumarchais +may have lacked elevation and delicacy, but he knew his craft as a +dramatist, and left a model of prose comedy from which in later years +others of his art and mystery made profitable studies. He restored +mirth to the stage; he rediscovered theatrical intrigue; he created +a type, which was Beaumarchais himself, and was also the lighter +genius of France; he was the satirist of society; he was the +nimble-feathered bird that foretells the storm. + + +III + +BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE connects Rousseau with Chateaubriand and +the romantic school of the nineteenth century. The new feeling for +external nature attained through him a wider range, embracing the +romance of tropic lands; it acquired an element of the exotic; at +the same time, descriptive writing became more vivid and picturesque, +and the vocabulary for the purposes of description was enlarged. He +added to French literature a tale in which human passion and the +sentiment of nature are fused together by the magic of genius; he +created two figures which live in the popular imagination, encircled +with a halo of love and sorrow. + +Born at Havre in 1737, Bernardin, through his imagination, was an +Utopian visionary, an idyllic dreamer; through his temper, an angry +disputant with society. His life was a fantastic series of adventures. +Having read as a boy the story of Crusoe, and listened to the heroic +record of the travels and sufferings of Jesuit missionaries, his fancy +caught fire; he would seek some undiscovered island in mid-ocean, +he would found some colony of the true children of nature, far from +a corrupt civilisation, peaceable, virtuous, and free. + +In France, in Russia, he was importunate in urging his extravagant +designs upon persons of influence. When the French Government in 1767 +commissioned him to work in Madagascar, he believed that his dream +was to come true, but a rude awakening and the accustomed quarrels +followed. He landed on the Isle of France, purposing to work as an +engineer, and there spent his days in gazing at the sea, the skies, +the mountains, the tropical forests. All forms and colours and sounds +and scents impressed themselves on his brain, and were transferred +to his collection of notes. When, on returning to Paris, he published +(1773) his _Voyage a l'Ile de France_, the literature of picturesque +description may be said to have been founded. Already in this volume +his feeling for nature is inspired by an emotional theism, and is +burdened by his sentimental science, which would exhibit a fantastic +array of evidences of the designs for human welfare of an amiable +and ingenious Author of nature. Before the book appeared, Bernardin +had made the acquaintance of Rousseau, then living in retirement, +tormented by his diseased suspicions and cloudy indignations. To his +new disciple Rousseau was in general gracious, and they rambled +together, botanising in the environs of Paris. + +For a time Bernardin himself was in a condition bordering upon +insanity; but the crisis passed, and he employed himself on the +_Etudes de la Nature_, which appeared in three volumes in 1784. The +tale of _Paul et Virginie_ was not included; for when the author had +read it aloud, though ladies wept, the sterner auditors had been +contemptuous; Thomas slumbered, and Buffon called for his carriage. +The _Etudes_ accumulate the grotesque notions of Bernardin with +reference to final causes in nature: nature is benevolent and +harmonious; society is corrupt and harsh; scientific truth is to be +discovered by sentiment, and not by reason; the whole universe is +planned for the happiness of man; the melon is large because it was +designed for the family; the pumpkin is larger, because Providence +intended that it should be shared with our neighbours. Providence, +indeed, in a sceptical and mocking generation, suffered cruelly at +the hands of its advocate. Yet Bernardin conveyed into his book a +feeling of the rich and obscure life and energy of nature; his +descriptive power is admirable. "He desired," says M. Barine, "to +open the door for Providence to enter; in fact he opened the door +for the great Pan," and in this he was a precursor of much that followed +in literature. + +Bernardin's fame was now established. In the sentimental reaction +against the dryness of sceptical philosophy, in the return to a +feeling for the poetical aspect of things, he was looked upon as a +leader. In the fourth volume of _Etudes_ (1788) he had courage to +print the tale of _Paul et Virginie_. It is an idyll of the tropics, +written with the moral purpose of contrasting the beneficent +influence of nature and of feeling with the dangers and evils of +civilised society and of the intellect. The children grow up side +by side in radiant innocence and purest companionship; then passion +makes its invasion of their hearts. The didactic commonplaces and +the faded sentimentalities of the idyll may veil, but cannot hide, +the genuine power of those pages which tell of the modest ardours +of first love. An element of melodrama mingles with the tragic close. +Throughout we do more than see the landscape of the tropics: we feel +the life of external nature throbbing in sympathy with human emotion. +Something was gained by Bernardin from the _Daphnis and Chloe_ of +Longus in the motives and the details of his story, but it is +essentially his own. It had a resounding success, and among its most +ardent admirers was Napoleon. + +Bernardin married at fifty-five, and became the father of a Paul and +a Virginie. On the death of his wife, whom he regarded as a faithful +housekeeper, he married again, and his life was divided between the +devotion of an old man's love and endless quarrels with his colleagues +of the _Institut_. His later writings added nothing to his fame. _La +Chaumiere Indienne_--the story of a pariah who learns wisdom from +nature and from the heart--has a certain charm, but it lacks the power +of the better portions of _Paul et Virginie_. The _Harmonies de la +Nature_ is a feeble reflection of the _Etudes_. Chateaubriand, to +whom Bernardin was personally known, gave a grudging recognition of +the genius of his precursor. Lamartine, in after years, was a more +generous disciple. In January 1814 Bernardin died, murmuring the name +of God; among the great events of the time his death was almost +unnoticed. + + +IV + +In the second half of the eighteenth century, aided by the labours +of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, came a revival +of the study of antiquity and of the sentiment for classical art. +The Count de Caylus (1692-1765), travelling in Italy and the East +with the enthusiasm of an archaeologist, presented in his writings +an ideal of beauty and grace which was new to sculptors and painters +of the time. The discovery of Pompeii followed, after an interval, +the discovery of Herculaneum. The Abbe BARTHELEMY (1716-95) embodied +the erudite delights of a lifetime in his _Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis +en Grece_ (1788), which seemed a revelation of the genius of Hellenism +as it existed four centuries prior to the Christian era. It was an +ideal Greece--the Greece of Winckelmann and Goethe--unalterably +gracious, radiantly calm, which was discovered by the eighteenth +century; but it served the imaginative needs of the age. We trace +its influence in the harmonious forms of Bernardin's and +Chateaubriand's imagining, and in the marbles of Canova. A poet, the +offspring of a Greek mother and a French father--Andre Chenier--a +latter-day Greek or demi-Greek himself, and yet truly a man of his +own century, interpreted this new ideal in literary art. + +Born at Constantinople in 1762, ANDRE CHENIER was educated in France, +travelled in Switzerland and Italy, resided as secretary to the French +Ambassador for three weary years in England--land of mists, land of +dull aristocrats--returned to France in 1790, ardent in the cause +of constitutional freedom, and defended his opinions and his friends +as a journalist. The violences of the Revolution drove him into +opposition to the Jacobin party. In March 1794 he was arrested; on +the 25th July, two days before the overthrow of Robespierre, Andre +Chenier's head fell on the scaffold. + +Only two poems, the _Jeu de Paume_ and the _Hymne aux Suisses_, were +published by Chenier; after his death appeared in journals the _Jeune +Captive_ and the _Jeune Tarentine_; his collected poems, already +known in manuscript to lovers of literature, many of them fragmentary, +were issued in 1819. The romantic school had come into existence +without his aid; but under Sainte-Beuve's influence it chose to regard +him as a predecessor, and during the years about 1830 he was studied +and imitated as a master. + +He belongs, however, essentially to the eighteenth century, to its +graceful sensuality, its revival of antiquity, its faith in human +reason, its comprehensive science of nature and of society. In certain +of his poems suggested by public occasions he is little more than +a disciple of Lebrun. His _Elegies_ are rather Franco-Roman than +Greek; these, together with beauties of their own, have the +characteristic rhetoric, the conventional graces, the mundane +voluptuousness of their age. His philosophical poem _Hermes_, of +which we have designs and fragments, would have been the _De Rerum +Natura_ of an admiring student of Buffon. + +In his _Eglogues_ and his epic fragments he is a Greek or a demi-Greek, +who has learnt directly from Homer, from the pastoral and idyllic +poets of antiquity, and from the Anthology. The Greece of Chenier's +imagination is the ideal Greece of his time, more finely outlined, +more delicately coloured, more exquisitely felt by him than was +possible with his contemporaries in an age of prose. "It is the +landscape-painter's Greece," writes M. Faguet, "the Greece of fair +river-banks, of gracious hill-slopes, of comely groups around a +well-head or a stream, of harmonious theories beside the voiceful +sea, of dancing choirs upon the luminous heights, under the blue +heavens, which lift to ecstasy his spirit, light as the light +breathing of the Cyclades." + +In the _Iambes_, inspired by the emotions of the Revolution during +his months of imprisonment, Chenier united modern passion with the +beauty of classic form; satire in these loses its critical temper, +and becomes truly lyrical. In his versification he attained new and +alluring harmonies; he escaped from the rhythmical uniformity of +eighteenth-century verse, gliding sinuously from line to line and +from strophe to strophe. He did over again for French poetry the work +of the Pleiade, but he did this as one who was a careful student and +a critic of Malherbe. + + + + +BOOK THE FIFTH +1789-1850 + + + + +CHAPTER I +THE REVOLUTION AND THE EMPIRE--MADAME DE STAEL--CHATEAUBRIAND + + +I + +The literature of the Revolution and the Empire is that of a period +of transition. Madame de Stael and Chateaubriand announce the future; +the writers of an inferior rank represent with declining power the +past, and give some faint presentiment of things to come. The great +political concussion was not favourable to art. Abstract ideas united +with the passions of the hour produced poetry which was of the nature +of a declamatory pamphlet. Innumerable pieces were presented on the +stage, but their literary value is insignificant. + +Marie-Joseph Chenier (1764-1811), brother of the great poet who +perished on the scaffold, attempted to inaugurate a school of national +tragedy in his _Charles IX._; neither he nor the public knew history +or possessed the historical sentiment--his tragedy was a +revolutionary "school of kings." Arnault, Legouve, Nepomucene +Lemercier were applauded for their classic dignity, or their depth +of characterisation, or their pomp of language. The true tragedy of +the time was enacted in the streets and in the clubs. Comedy was +welcome in days of terror as at all other times. Collin d'Harleville +drew mirth from the infirmities and follies of old age in _Le Vieux +Celibataire_ (1792); Fabre d'Eglantine moralised Moliere to the +taste of Rousseau by exhibiting a Philante debased by egoism and +accommodations with the world; Louis Laya, during the trial of the +King, satirised the pretenders to patriotism in _L'Ami des Lois_, +yet escaped the vengeance of the Jacobins. + +Historical comedy, a novelty in art, was seen in Lemercier's _Pinto_ +(1799), where great events are reduced to petty dimensions, and the +destiny of nations is satirically viewed as a vulgar game of +trick-track. In his _Christophe Colomb_ of 1809 he dared to despise +the unities of time and place, and excited a battle, not bloodless, +among the spectators. Exotic heroes suited the imperial regime. +Baour-Lormian, the translator of _Ossian_ (1801), converted the +story of Joseph in Egypt into a frigid tragedy; Hector and Tippoo +Sahib, Mahomet II., and Ninus II. (with scenes of Spanish history +transported to Assyria) diversified the stage. The greatest success +was that of Raynouard's _Les Templiers_ (1805); the learned author +wisely applied his talents in later years to romance philology. Among +the writers of comedy--Andrieux, Etienne, Duval, and others--Picard +has the merit of reproducing the life of the day, satirising social +classes and conditions with vivacity and careless mirth. In melodrama, +Pixerecourt contributed unconsciously to prepare the way for the +romantic stage. Desaugiers, with his gift for gay plebeian song, was +the master of the vaudeville. + +Song of a higher kind had been heard twice or thrice during the +Revolution. The lesser Chenier's _Chanson du Depart_ has in it a +stirring rhetoric for soldiers of the Republic sent forth to war with +the acclaim of mother and wife and maiden, old men and little children. +Lebrun-_Pindare_, in his ode _Sur le Vaisseau le Vengeur_, does not +quite stifle the sense of heroism under his flowers of classical +imagery. Rouget de Lisle's improvised verse and music, _La +Marseillaise_ (1792), was an inspiration which equally lent itself +to the enthusiasm of victory and the gallantries of despair. The +pseudo-epics and the descriptive poetry of the Empire are laboured +and lifeless. But Creuze de Lesser, in his _Chevaliers de la +Table-Ronde_ (1812) and other poems, and Baour-Lormian, in his +_Poesies Ossianiques_, widened the horizons of literature. The +_Panhypocrisiade_ of Lemercier, published in 1819, but written +several years earlier--an "infernal comedy of the sixteenth +century"--is an amazing chaos of extravagance, incompetence, and +genius; it bears to Hugo's _Legende des Siecles_ the relation which +the megatherium or mastodon may bear to some less monstrous analogues. + +If we are to look for a presentiment of Lamartine's poetry, we may +find it in the harmonious melancholy of Chenedolle, in the grace of +Fontanes' stanzas, in the timid elegiac strains of Millevoye. The +special character of the poetry of the Empire lies in its combination +of the tradition derived from the eighteenth century, with a certain +reaching-forth to an ideal, by-and-by to be realised, which it could +not attain. Its comparative sterility is not to be explained solely +or chiefly by the vigilance of the imperial censure of publications. +The preceding century had lost the large feeling for composition, +for beauty and severity of form; attention was fixed upon details. +If invention ceased to create, it must necessarily trick out what +was commonplace in ingenuities of decorative periphrasis. Literature +in the eighteenth century had almost ceased to be art, and had become +a social and political weapon; under the imperial rule this militant +function was withdrawn; what remained for literature but frigid +ambitions or petty adornments, until a true sense of art was once +again recovered? + +The Revolution closed the _salons_ and weakened the influence of +cultivated society upon literature. Journalism and the pamphlet +filled the place left vacant by the _salons_. The _Decade +Philosophique_ was the organ of the ideologists, who applied the +conceptions of Condillac and his followers to literary and +philosophical criticism. In 1789 the _Journal des Debats_ was founded. +Much ardour of feeling, much vigour of intellect was expended in the +columns of the public press. Among the contributors were Andre Chenier, +Mallet du Pin, Suard, Rivarol. With a little ink and a guillotine, +Camille Desmoulins hoped to render France happy, prosperous, and +republican. Heady, vain, pleasure-loving, gay, bitter, sensitive, +with outbreaks of generosity and moments of elevation, he did +something to redeem his crimes and follies by pleas for justice and +mercy in his journal, _Le Vieux Cordelier_, and died, with Danton +as his companion, after a frenzy of resistance and despair. + +The orators of the Revolution glorified doctrinaire abstractions, +overflowed with sentimental humanity, and decorated their harangues +with heroic examples of Roman virtue. The most abstract, colourless, +and academic was Rousseau's disciple, who took the "Supreme Being" +under his protection, Robespierre. The fervid spirit of the Girondins +found its highest expression in Vergniaud, who, with infirm character, +few ideas, and a hesitating policy, yet possessed a power of vibrating +speech. Danton, the Mirabeau of the populace, was richer in ideas, +and with sudden accesses of imagination thundered in words which +tended to action; but in general the Mountain cared more for deeds +than words. The young Saint-Just thrilled the Convention with icy +apothegms which sounded each, short and sharp, like the fall of the +knife. Barnave, impetuous in his temper, was clear and measured in +discourse, and once in opposition to Mirabeau, defending the royal +prerogative, rose beyond himself to the height of a great occasion. + +But it was MIRABEAU, and Mirabeau alone, who possessed the genius +of a great statesman united with the gifts of an incomparable orator. +Born in 1749, of the old Riquetti family, impulsive, proud, romantic, +yet clear of intellect and firmly grasping facts, a thinker and a +student, calmly indifferent to religion, irregular in his conduct, +the passionate foe of his father, the passionate lover of his Sophie +and of her child, he had conceived, and in a measure comprehended, +the Revolution long before the explosion came. Already he was a +copious author on political subjects. He knew that France needed +individual liberty and individual responsibility; he divined the +dangers of a democratic despotism. He hoped by the decentralisation +of power to balance Paris by the provinces, and quicken the political +life of the whole country; he desired to balance the constitution +by playing off the King against the Assembly, and the Assembly against +the King, and to control the action of each by the force of public +opinion. From Montesquieu he had learnt the gains of separating the +legislative, the executive, and the judicial functions. His hatred +of aristocracy, enhanced by the hardship of imprisonment at Vincennes, +led him to ignore an influence which might have assisted in the +equilibration of power. As an orator his ample and powerful rhetoric +rested upon a basis of logic; slow and embarrassed as he began to +speak, he warmed as he proceeded, negligent of formal correctness, +disdainful of the conventional classical decorations, magnificent +in gesture, weaving together ideas, imagery, and passion. His speech, +said Madame de Stael, was "like a powerful hammer, wielded by a skilful +artist, and fashioning men to his will." At the sitting of the Assembly +on April 2, 1791, the President announced, amid murmurs, "Ah! il est +mort," which anticipated his words, that Gabriel-Honore Riquetti was +dead. + +"The 18th Brumaire," writes M. Lanson, "silenced the orators. For +fifteen years a solitary voice was heard, imperious but eloquent.... +Napoleon was the last of the great Revolutionary orators." As he +advanced in power he dropped the needless ornaments of rhetoric, and +condensed his summons to action into direct, effective words, now +simple and going straight at some motive of self-interest, now +grandiose to seduce the imagination to his side. Speech with Napoleon +was a means of government, and he knew the temper of the men whom +he addressed. His own taste in literature was touched with +sentimentality; _Ossian_ and _Werther_ were among his favourite +books; but what may be styled the official literature of the Empire +was of the decaying classical or neo-classical tradition. + +Yet while the democratic imperialism was the direct offspring of the +Revolution with its social contract and its rights of man, it was +necessary to combat eighteenth-century ideas and defend the throne +and the altar. Great scientific names--Laplace, Bichat, Cuvier, +Lamarck--testify to the fact that a movement which made the eighteenth +century illustrious had not spent its force. Scholarship was laying +the bases for future constructions; Ginguene published in 1811 the +first volumes of his _Histoire Litteraire de l'Italie_; Fauriel and +Raynouard accumulated the materials for their historical, literary, +and philological studies. Philosophy was turning away from +sensationalism, which seemed to have said its final word, towards +spiritualist conceptions. Maine de Biran (1766-1824) found in the +primitive fact of consciousness--the _nisus_ of the will--and in the +self-recognition of the _ego_ as a cause, an escape from materialism. +Royer-Collard (1763-1845), afterwards more distinguished in +politics than he was in speculation, read for his class at the Sorbonne +from the Scottish philosophy of Reid, and turned it by his commentary +as a siege-train against the positions of Condillac. + +The germs of new literary growths were in the soil; but the spring +came slowly, and after the storms of Revolution were spent, a chill +was in the air. Measureless hopes, and what had come of them? infinite +desire, and so poor an attainment! A disciple of Rousseau, who shared +in his sentiment without his optimistic faith, and who, like Rousseau, +felt the beauty of external nature without Rousseau's sense of its +joy, Etienne Pivert de SENANCOURT published in 1799 his _Reveries_, +a book of disillusion, melancholy atheism, and stoical resistance +to sadness, a resistance which he was unable to sustain. It was +followed in 1804 by _Obermann_, a romance in epistolary form, in which +the writer, disguised in the character of his hero, expresses a fixed +and sterile grief, knowing not what he needs, nor what he loves, nor +what he wills, lamenting without a cause and desiring without an +object. The glories of Swiss landscape, which quicken his imagination, +do not suffice to fill the void that is in his soul; yet perhaps in +old age--if ever it come--he may resign himself to the infinite +illusion of life. It is an indication of the current of the time that +fifteen years later, when the _Libres Meditations_ appeared, +Senancourt had found his way through a vague theopathy to autumnal +brightness, late-born hope, and tranquil reconcilement with +existence. + +The work of the professional critics of the time--Geoffroy, De Feletz, +Dussault, Hoffman--counts now for less than the words of one who was +only an amateur of letters, and a moralist who never moralised in +public. JOSEPH JOUBERT (1754-1824), the friend of Fontanes and of +Chateaubriand, a delicate spirit, filled with curiosity for ideas, +and possessing the finest sense of the beauty of literature, lacked +the strength and self-confidence needful in a literary career. He +read everything; he published nothing; but the _Pensees_, which were +collected from his manuscripts by Chateaubriand, and his letters +reveal a thinker who loved the light, a studious dilettante charmed +by literary grace, a writer tormented by the passion to put a volume +in a page, a page in a phrase, a phrase in a word. Plato in philosophy, +Virgil in poetry, satisfy his feeling for beauty and refinement of +style. From Voltaire and Rousseau he turns away, offended by their +lack of moral feeling, of sanity, of wisdom, of delicacy. A man of +the eighteenth century, Joubert had lifted himself into thin clear +heights of middle air, where he saw much of the past and something +of the future; but the middle air is better suited for speculation +than for action. + + +II + +The movement towards the romantic theory and practice of art was +fostered in the early years of the nineteenth century by two eminent +writers--one a woman with a virile intellect, the other a man with +more than a woman's imaginative sensibility--by GERMAINE DE STAEL +and by Chateaubriand. The one exhibits the eighteenth century passing +into the nineteenth, receiving new developments, yet without a breach +of continuity; the other represents a reaction against the ideas of +the age of the philosophers. Both opened new horizons--one, by the +divinations of her ardent intelligence; the other, by his creative +genius. Madame de Stael interpreted new ideas and defined a new theory +of art. Chateaubriand was himself an extraordinary literary artist. +The style of the one is that of an admirable improvisator, a brilliant +and incessant converser; that of the other is at its best a miracle +of studied invention, a harmony of colour and of sound. The genius +of the one was quickened in brilliant social gatherings; a Parisian +_salon_ was her true seat of empire. The genius of the other was nursed +in solitude by the tempestuous sea or on the wild and melancholy moors. + +Germaine Necker, born in 1766, daughter of the celebrated Swiss banker +and future minister of France, a child of precocious intelligence +and eager sympathies, reared amid the brilliant society of her +mother's _salon_, a girl whose demands on life were large--demands +of the intellect, demands of the heart--enamoured of the writings +of Rousseau, married at twenty to the Swedish Ambassador, the Baron +de Stael-Holstein, herself a light and an inspirer of the +constitutional party of reform in the early days of the Revolution, +in her literary work opened fresh avenues for nineteenth-century +thought. She did not recoil from the eighteenth century, but rather +carried forward its better spirit. The Revolution, as a social +upheaval, she failed to understand; her ideal was liberty, not +equality; and Necker's daughter was assured that all would be well +were liberty established in constitutional forms of government. A +republican among aristocrats, she was an aristocrat among +republicans. During the years of Revolutionary trouble, the years +of her flights from Paris, her returns, excursions, and retreats, +she was sustained by her zeal for justice, her pity for the oppressed, +and her unquenchable faith in human progress. + +A crude panegyric of Rousseau, certain political pamphlets, an _Essai +sur les Fictions_, a treatise on the Influence of the Passions upon +the Happiness of Individuals and Nations (1796), were followed in +1800 by her elaborate study, _De la Litterature consideree dans ses +Rapports avec les Institutions Sociales_. Its central idea is that +of human progress: freedom, incarnated in republican institutions, +will assure the natural development of the spirit of man; a great +literature will be the offspring of progress and of freedom; and each +nation will lend its lights to other nations to illuminate the general +advance. Madame de Stael hoped to cast the spell of her intellect +over the young conqueror Bonaparte; Bonaparte regarded a political +meteor in feminine form with cold and haughty aversion. In 1802 the +husband, whom she had never loved, was dead. Her passion for Benjamin +Constant had passed through various crises in its troubled career--a +series of attractions ending in repulsions, and repulsions leading +to attractions, such as may be discovered in Constant's remarkable +novel _Adolphe_. They could neither decide to unite their lives, nor +to part for ever. Adolphe, in Constant's novel, after a youth of +pleasure-seeking, is disenchanted with life; his love of Ellenore +is that of one whose passions are exhausted, who loves for vanity +or a new indulgence of egoism; but Ellenore, whose youth is past, +will abandon all for him, and she imposes on him the tyranny of her +devotion. Each is the other's torturer, each is the other's +consolation. In the mastery of his cruel psychology Constant +anticipates Balzac. + +Madame de Stael lightened the stress of inward storm by writing +_Delphine_, the story of a woman of genius, whose heroic follies bring +her into warfare with the world. The lover of Delphine, violent and +feeble, sentimental and egoistic, is an accomplice of the world in +doing her wrong, and Delphine has no refuge but death in the wilds +of America.[1] + +[Footnote 1: In the first edition, Delphine dies by her own hand.] + +In 1803 Madame de Stael received orders to trouble Paris with her +torrent of ideas and of speech no longer. The illustrious victim of +Napoleon's persecution hastened to display her ideas at Weimar, where +Goethe protected his equanimity, as well as might be, from the storm +of her approach, and Schiller endured her literary enthusiasm with +a sense of prostration. August Wilhelm von Schlegel, tutor to her +sons, became the interpreter of Germany to her eager and apprehensive +mind. Having annexed Germany to her empire, she advanced to the +conquest of Italy, and had her Roman triumph. England, which she had +visited in her Revolutionary flights, and Italy conspired in the +creation of her novel _Corinne_ (1807). It is again the history of +a woman of genius, beautiful, generous, enthusiastic, whom the world +understands imperfectly, and whom her English lover, after his fit +of Italian romance, discards with the characteristic British phlegm. +The paintings of Italian nature are rhetorical exercises; the +writer's sympathy with art and history is of more value; the +interpretation of a woman's heart is alive with personal feeling. +Madame de Stael's novels are old now, which means that they once were +young, and for her own generation they had the freshness and charm +of youth. + +Her father's death had turned her thoughts towards religion. A +Protestant and a liberal, her spiritualist faith now found support +in the moral strength of Christianity. She was not, like Chateaubriand, +an epicurean and a Catholic; she did not care to decorate religion +with flowers, or make it fragrant with incense; it spoke to her not +through the senses, but directly to the conscience, the affections, +and the will. In the chapters of her book on Germany which treat of +"the religion of enthusiasm," her devout latitudinarianism finds +expression. + +The book _De l'Allemagne_, published in London in 1813, after the +confiscation and destruction of the Paris edition by the imperial +police, prepared the way by criticism for the romantic movement. It +treats of manners, letters, art, philosophy, religion, interpreting +with astonishing insight, however it may have erred in important +details, the mind of Germany to the mind of France. It was a Germany +of poets, dreamers, and metaphysicians, loyal and sincere, but +incapable of patriotic passion, disqualified for action and for +freedom, which she in 1804 had discovered. The life of society +produces literature in France; the genius of inward meditation and +sentiment produces literature in Germany. The literature and art of +the South are classical, those of the North are romantic; and since +the life of our own race and the spirit of our own religion are infused +into romantic art, it has in it possibilities of indefinite growth. +Madame de Stael advanced criticism by her sense that art and +literature are relative to ages, races, governments, environments. +She dreamed of an European or cosmopolitan literature, in which each +nation, while retaining its special characteristics, should be in +fruitful communication with its fellows. + +In 1811 Madame de Stael, when forty-five, became the wife of Albert +de Rocca, a young Swiss officer, more than twenty years her junior. +Their courage was rewarded by six years of happiness. Austria, Poland, +Russia, Sweden, England were visited. Upon the fall of Napoleon Madame +de Stael was once more in Paris, and there in 1817 she died. The _Dix +Annees d'Exil_, posthumously published, records a portion of her +agitated life, and exhales her indignation against her imperial +persecutor. The unfinished _Considerations sur la Revolution +Francaise_, designed originally as an apology for Necker, defends +the Revolution while admitting its crimes and errors; its true object, +as the writer conceived--political liberty--had been in the end +attained; her ideal of liberty was indeed far from that of a +revolutionary democracy; England, liberal, constitutional, with a +system at once popular and aristocratic, was the country in which +she saw her political aspirations most nearly realised. + + +III + +FRANCOIS-RENE DE CHATEAUBRIAND was born in 1768, at St.-Malo, of an +ancient Breton family. Except for the companionship of an elder sister, +of fragile health and romantic temper, his childhood was solitary. +The presence of the old count his father inspired terror. The boy's +society was with the waves and winds, or at the old chateau of Combourg, +with lonely woods and wilds. Horace, Tibullus, _Telemaque_, the +sermons of Massillon, nourished his imagination or stimulated his +religious sentiment; but solitude and nature were his chief +inspirers. + +At seventeen he already seemed worn with the fatigue of unsatisfied +dreaming, before he had begun to know life. A commission in the army +was procured for him. He saw, interested yet alien in heart, something +of literary life in Paris; then in Revolution days (1791) he quitted +France, and, with the dream of discovering the North-West Passage, +set sail to America. If he did not make any geographical discovery, +Chateaubriand found his own genius in the western world. The news +of the execution of Louis XVI. decided him to return; a Breton and +a royalist should show himself among the ranks of the emigrants. To +gratify the wish of his family, he married before crossing the +frontier. Madame de Chateaubriand had the dignity to veil her sorrow +caused by an imperfect union, and at a later time she won such a portion +of her husband's regard as he could devote to another than himself. + +The episode of war having soon closed--not without a wound and a +serious illness--he found a refuge in London, enduring dire poverty, +but possessing the consolation of friendship with Joubert and +Fontanes, and there he published in 1797 his first work, the _Essai +sur les Revolutions_. The doctrine of human progress had been part +of the religion of the eighteenth century; Chateaubriand in 1797 had +faith neither in social, nor political, nor religious progress. Why +be deceived by the hopes of revolution, since humanity can only circle +for ever through an exhausting round of illusions? The death of his +mother and words of a dying sister awakened him from his melancholy +mood; he resolved to write a second book, which should correct the +errors of the first, and exhibit a source of hope and joy in religion. +To the eighteenth century Christianity had appeared as a gross and +barbarous superstition; he would show that it was a religion of beauty, +the divine mother of poetry and of art, a spring of poetic thought +and feeling alike through its dogma and its ritual; he would convert +literature from its decaying cult of classicism, and restore to honour +the despised Middle Ages. + +The _Genie du Christianisme_, begun during its author's residence +in London, was not completed until four years later. In 1801, +detaching a fragment from his poetic apology for religion, he +published his _Atala, ou les Amours de Deux Sauvages dans le Desert_. +It is a romance, or rather a prose poem, in which the magic of style, +the enchantment of descriptive power, the large feeling for nature, +the sensibility to human passion, conceal many infirmities of design +and of feeling. Chateaubriand suddenly entered into his fame. + +On April 18, 1802, the Concordat was celebrated with high solemnities; +the Archbishop of Paris received the First Consul within the portals +of Notre-Dame. It was the fitting moment for the publication of the +_Genie du Christianisme_. Its value as an argumentative defence of +Christianity may not be great; but it was the restoration of religion +to art, it contained or implied a new system of aesthetics, it was +a glorification of devout sentiment, it was a pompous manifesto of +romanticism, it recovered a lost ideal of beauty. From Ronsard to +Chenier the aim of art had been to imitate the ancients, while +imitating or interpreting life. Let us be national, let us be modern, +let us therefore be Christians, declared Chateaubriand, and let us +seek for our tradition in the great Christian ages. It was a revolution +in art for which he pleaded, and throughout the first half of the +nineteenth century the revolution was in active progress. + +The episode of _Rene_, which was included in the _Genie_, and +afterwards published separately, has been described as a +Christianised _Werther_; its passion is less frank, and even more +remote from sanity of feeling, than that of Goethe's novel, but the +sadness of the hero is more magnificently posed. A sprightly English +lady described Chateaubriand as "wearing his heart in a sling"; he +did so during his whole life; and through Rene we divine the inventor +of Rene carrying his wounded heart, as in the heroine we can discern +some features of his sister Lucile. In all his writings his feelings +centre in himself: he is a pure egoist through his sensibility; but +around his own figure his imagination, marvellous in its expansive +power, can deploy boundless perspectives. + +Both _Atala_ and _Rene_, though brought into connection with the +_Genie du Christianisme_, are in fact more closely related to the +prose epic _Les Natchez_, written early, but held in reserve until +the publication of his collected works in 1826-31. _Les Natchez_, +inspired by Chateaubriand's American travels, idealises the life of +the Red Indian tribes. The later books, where he escapes from the +pseudo-epic manner, have in them the finest spirit of his early years, +his splendour and delicacy of description, his wealth of imaginative +reverie. Famous as the author of the _Genie_, Chateaubriand was +appointed secretary to the embassy at Rome. The murder of the Duc +d'Enghien alienated him from Napoleon. Putting aside the _Martyrs_, +on which he had been engaged, he sought for fresh imagery and local +colour to enrich his work, in a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a record +of which was published in his (1811) _Itineraire de Paris a +Jerusalem_. + +The _Martyrs_ appeared in 1809. It was designed as a great example +of that art, inspired by Christianity, on behalf of which he had +contended in the _Genie_; the religion of Christ, he would prove, +can create passions and types of character better suited for noble +imaginative treatment than those of paganism; its supernatural +marvels are more than a compensation for the loss of pagan mythology. +The time chosen for his epopee in prose is the reign of the persecutor +Diocletian; Rome and the provinces of the Empire, Gaul, Egypt, the +deserts of the Thebaid, Jerusalem, Sparta, Athens, form only portions +of the scene; heaven and hell are open to the reader, but Chateaubriand, +whose faith was rather a sentiment than a passion, does not succeed +in making his supernatural habitations and personages credible even +to the fancy. Far more admirable are many of the terrestrial scenes +and narrations, and among these, in particular the story of Eudore. + +In the course of the travels which led him to Jerusalem, Chateaubriand +had visited Spain, and it was his recollections of the Alhambra that +moved him to write, about 1809, the _Aventures du Dernier des +Abencerages_, published many years later. It shows a tendency towards +self-restraint, excellent in itself, but not entirely in harmony with +his effusive imagination. With this work Chateaubriand's inventive +period of authorship closed; the rest of his life was in the main +that of a politician. From the position of an unqualified royalist +(1814-24) he advanced to that of a liberal, and after 1830 may be +described as both royalist and republican. His pamphlet of 1814, _De +Bonaparte et des Bourbons_, was declared by Louis XVIII. to be worth +an army to his cause. + +In his later years he published an _Essai sur la Litterature Anglaise_ +and a translation of "Paradise Lost." But his chief task was the +revision of the _Memoires d'Outre-Tombe_, an autobiography designed +for posthumous publication, and actually issued in the pages of the +_Presse_, through the indiscreet haste of the publishers, while +Chateaubriand was still living. Its egotism, its vanity, its +malicious wit, its fierce reprisals on those whom the writer regarded +as his enemies, its many beauties, its brilliance of style, make it +an exposure of all that was worst and much of what was best in his +character and genius. Tended by his old friend Mme. Recamier, to whom, +if to any one, he was sincerely attached, Chateaubriand died in the +summer of 1848. His tomb is on the rocky islet of Grand-Be, off the +coast of Brittany. + +Chateaubriand cannot be loved, and his character cannot be admired +without grave reserves. But an unique genius, developed at a fortunate +time, enabled him to play a most significant part in the history of +literature. He was the greatest of landscape painters; he restored +to art the sentiment of religion; he interpreted the romantic +melancholy of the age. If he posed magnificently, there were native +impulses which suggested the pose; and at times, as in the +_Itineraire_, the pose is entirely forgotten. His range of ideas is +not extraordinary; but vision, imagination, and the passion which +makes the imaginative power its instrument, were his in a supereminent +degree. + + + + +CHAPTER II +THE CONFLICT OF IDEAS + + +While the imagination of France was turning towards the romance of +the Middle Ages and the art of Christianity, Hellenic scholarship +was maintained by Jean-Francois Boissonade. The representative of +Hellenism in modern letters was Courier, a brave but undisciplined +artillery officer under Napoleon, who loved the sight of a Greek +manuscript better than he loved a victory. PAUL-LOUIS COURIER DE MERE +(1772-1825) counts for nothing in the history of French thought; in +the history of French letters his pamphlets remain as masterpieces +of Attic grace, luminous, light and bright in narrative, easy in +dialogue, of the finest irony in comment, impeccable in measure and +in malice. The translator of _Daphnis and Chloe_, wearied by war and +wanderings in Italy, lived under the Restoration among his vines at +Veretz, in Touraine. In 1816 he became the advocate of provincial +popular rights against the vexations of the Royalist reaction. He +is a vine-dresser, a rustic bourgeois, occupied with affairs of the +parish. Shall Chambord be purchased for the Duke of Burgundy? shall +an intolerant young _cure_ forbid the villagers to dance? shall +magistrates harass the humble folk? Such are the questions agitating +the country-side, which the vine-dresser Courier will resolve. The +questions have been replaced to-day by others; but nothing has quite +replaced the _Simple Discours_, the _Petition pour les Villageois_, +the _Pamphlet des Pamphlets_, in which the ease of the best sixteenth +and seventeenth century prose is united with a deft rapier-play like +that of Voltaire, and with the lucidity of the writer's classical +models. + +Chateaubriand's artistic and sentimental Catholicism was the +satisfaction of imaginative cravings. When JOSEPH DE MAISTRE +(1753-1821) revolted against the eighteenth century, it was a revolt +of the soul; when he assailed the authority of the individual reason, +it was in the name of a higher reason. Son of the President of the +Senate of Savoy, he saw his country invaded by the French Republican +soldiery in 1792, and he retired to Lausanne. He protested against +the Revolutionary aggression in his _Lettres d'un Royaliste +Savoisien_; inspired by the mystical Saint-Martin, in his +_Considerations sur la France_, he interpreted the meaning of the +great political cataclysm as the Divine judgment upon France--assigned +by God the place of the leader of Christendom, the eldest daughter of +the Church--for her faithlessness and proud self-will. The sacred +chastisement accomplished, monarchy and Catholicism must be restored +to an intact and regenerated country. During fifteen years Maistre +served the King of Sardinia as envoy and plenipotentiary at the +Russian Court, maintaining his dignity in cruel distress upon the +salary of a clerk. Amiable in his private life, he was remorseless--with +the stern charity of an inquisitor--in dogma. In a style of +extraordinary clearness and force he expounded a system of ideas, +logically connected, on which to base a complete reorganisation of +European society. Those ideas are set forth most powerfully in the +dialogues entitled _Les Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg_ and the +treatises _Du Pape_ and _De l'Eglise Gallicane_. + +He honours reason; not the individual reason, source of innumerable +errors, but the general reason, which, emanating from God, reveals +universal and immutable truth--_quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab +omnibus_. To commence philosophising we should despise the +philosophers. Of these, Bacon, to whose errors Maistre devotes a +special study, is the most dangerous; Locke is the most contemptible. +The eighteenth century spoke of nature; Maistre speaks of God, the +Grand Monarch who rules His worlds by laws which are flexible in His +hands. To punish is the prime duty of authority; the great Justiciary +avenges Himself on the whole offending race of men; there is no +government without an executioner. But God is pitiful, and allows +us the refuge of prayer and sacrifice. Without religion there is no +society; without the Catholic Church there is no religion; without +the sovereign Pontiff there is no Catholic Church. The sovereignty +of the Pope is therefore the keystone of civilisation; his it is to +give and take away the crowns of kings. Governments absolute over +the people, the Pontiff absolute over governments--such is the +earthly reflection of the Divine monarchy in heaven. To suppose that +men can begin the world anew from a Revolutionary year One, is the +folly of private reason; society is an organism which grows under +providential laws; revolutions are the expiation for sins. Such are +the ideas which Maistre bound together in serried logic, and deployed +with the mastery of an intellectual tactician. The recoil from +individualism to authority could not have found a more absolute +expression. + +The Vicomte de Bonald (1754-1840), whose theocratic views have much +in common with those of Maistre, and of his teacher Saint-Martin, +dwelt on the necessity of language as a condition of thought, and +maintained that language is of divine origin. Ballanche (1776-1847), +half poet, half philosopher, connected theocratic ideas with a theory +of human progress--a social and political palingenesis--which had +in it the elements of political liberalism. Theocracy and liberalism +met in the genius of FELICITE-ROBERT DE LAMENNAIS (1782-1854); they +engaged after a time in conflict, and in the end the victory lay with +his democratic sympathies. A Breton and a priest, Lamennais, endowed +with imagination, passion, and eloquence, was more a prophet than +a priest. He saw the world around him perishing through lack of faith; +religion alone could give it life and health; a Church, freed from +political shackles, in harmony with popular tendencies, governed by +the sovereign Pontiff, might animate the world anew. The voice of +the Catholic Church is the voice of humanity, uttering the general +reason of mankind. When the _Essai sur l'Indifference en Matiere de +Religion_ appeared, another Bossuet seemed to have arisen. But was +a democratic Catholicism possible? Lamennais trusted that it might +be so, and as the motto of the journal _L'Avenir_ (1830), in which +Lacordaire and Montalembert were his fellow-labourers, he chose the +words _Dieu et Liberte_. + +The orthodoxy of the _Avenir_ was suspected. Lamennais, with his +friends, journeyed to Rome "to consult the Lord in Shiloh," and in +the _Affaires de Rome_ recorded his experiences. The Encyclical of +1832 pronounced against the doctrines dearest to his heart and +conscience; he bowed in submission, yet he could not abandon his +inmost convictions. His hopes for a democratic theocracy failing, +he still trusted in the peoples. But the democracy of his desire and +faith was one not devoted to material interests; to spiritualise the +democracy became henceforth his aim. In the _Paroles d'un Croyant_ +he announced in rhythmical prose his apocalyptic visions. "It is," +said a contemporary, "a _bonnet rouge_ planted on a cross." In his +elder years Lamennais believed in a spiritual power, a common thought, +a common will directing society, as the soul directs the body, but, +like the soul, invisible. His metaphysics, in which it is attempted +to give a scientific interpretation and application to the doctrine +of the Trinity, are set forth in the _Esquisse d'une Philosophie_. +His former associates, Lacordaire, the eloquent Dominican, and +Montalembert, the historian, learned and romantic, of Western +monasticism, remained faithful children of the Church. Lamennais, +no less devout in spirit than they, died insubmissive, and above his +grave, among the poor of Pere-Lachaise, no cross was erected. + +The antagonism to eighteenth-century thought assumed other forms +than those of the theocratic school. VICTOR COUSIN (1792-1867), a +pupil of Maine de Biran and Royer-Collard, became at the age of +twenty-three a lecturer on philosophy at the Sorbonne. He was +enthusiastic, ambitious, eloquent; with scanty knowledge he spoke +as one having authority, and impressed his hearers with the force +of a ruling personality. Led on from Scotch to German philosophy, +and having the advantage of personal acquaintance with Hegel, he +advanced through psychology to metaphysics. Not in the senses but +in the reason, impersonal in its spontaneous activity, he recognised +the source of absolute truth; in the first act of consciousness are +disclosed the finite, the infinite, and their mutual relations. In +the history of philosophy, in its four great systems of sensationalism, +idealism, scepticism, mysticism, he recognised the substance of +philosophy itself undergoing the process of evolution; each system +is true in what it affirms, false in what it denies. With psychology +as a starting-point, and eclecticism as a method, Cousin attempted +to establish a spiritualist doctrine. A young leader in the domain +of thought, he became at a later time too imperious a ruler. In the +writings of his disciple and friend THEODORE JOUFFROY (1796-1842) +there is a deeper accent of reality. Doubting, and contending with +his doubts, Jouffroy brooded upon the destiny of man, made inquisition +into the problems of psychology, refusing to identify mental science +with physiology, and applied his remarkable powers of patient and +searching thought to the solution of questions in morals and +aesthetics. The school of Cousin has been named eclectic; it should +rather be named spiritualist. The tendencies to which it owed its +origin extended beyond philosophy, and are apparent in the literary +art of Cousin's contemporaries. + +As a basis for social reconstruction the spiritualist philosophy was +ineffectual. Another school of thought issuing from the Revolution, +yet opposing its anarchic individualism, aspired to regenerate +society by the application of the principles of positive science. +CLAUDE-HENRI DE SAINT-SIMON (1760-1825), and FRANCOIS-CHARLES +FOURIER (1772-1837), differing in many of their opinions, have a +common distinction as the founders of modern socialism. +Saint-Simon's ideal was that of a State controlled in things of the +mind by men of science, and in material affairs by the captains of +industry. The aim of society should be the exploitation of the globe +by associative effort. In his _Nouveau Christianisme_ he thought to +deliver the Christian religion from the outworn superstition, as he +regarded it, alike of Catholicism and Protestantism, and to point +out its true principle as adapted to our nineteenth century--that +of human charity, the united effort of men towards the well-being +of the poorest class. + +Saint-Simon, fantastic, incoherent, deficient in the scientific +spirit and in the power of co-ordinating his results, yet struck out +suggestive ideas. A great and systematic thinker, AUGUSTE COMTE +(1798-1857), who was associated with Saint-Simon from 1817 to 1824, +perceived the significance of these ideas, and was urged forward by +them to researches properly his own. The positivism of Comte consists +of a philosophy and a polity, in which a religion is involved. The +quickening of his emotional nature through an adoring friendship with +Mme. Clotilde de Vaux, made him sensible of the incompleteness of +his earlier efforts at an intellectual reconstruction; he felt the +need of worship and of love. Comte's philosophy proceeds from the +theory that all human conceptions advance from the primitive +theological state, through the metaphysical--when abstract forces, +occult causes, scholastic entities are invented to explain the +phenomena of nature--to the positive, when at length it is recognised +that human knowledge cannot pass beyond the region of phenomena. With +these stages corresponds the progress of society from militarism, +aggressive or defensive, to industrialism. The several abstract +sciences--those dealing with the laws of phenomena rather than with +the application of laws--are so arranged by Comte as to exhibit each +more complex science resting on a simpler, to which it adds a new +order of truths; the whole erection, ascending to the science of +sociology, which includes a dynamical as well as a statical doctrine +of human society--a doctrine of the laws of progress as well as of +the laws of order--is crowned by morals. + +In the polity of positivism the supreme spiritual power is entrusted +to a priesthood of science. Their moral influence will be chiefly +directed to reinforcing the social feeling, altruism, as against the +predominance of self-love. The object of religious reverence is not +God, but the "Great Being"--Humanity, the society of the noble living +and the noble dead, the company, or rather the unity, of all those +who contribute to the better life of man. To Humanity we pay our vows, +we yield our gratitude, we render our homage, we direct our +aspirations; for Humanity we act and live in the blessed subordination +of egoistic desire. Women--the mother, the wife, the daughter--purifying +through affection the energies of man, act, under the Great Being, as +angelic guardians, accomplishing a moral providence. + +Comte's theory of the three states, theological, metaphysical, and +positive, was accepted by PIERRE JOSEPH PROUDHON (1809-65), a far +more brilliant writer, a far less constructive thinker, and aided +him in arriving at conclusions which differ widely from those of Comte. +Son of a cooper at Besancon, Proudhon had the virtues of a true child +of the people--integrity, affection, courage, zeal, untiring energy. +Religion he would replace by morality, ardent, strict, and pure. Free +associations of workmen, subject to no spiritual or temporal +authority, should arise over all the land. _Qu'est-ce que la +Propriete?_ he asked in the title of a work published in 1840; and +his answer was, _La Propriete c'est le Vol_. Property, seizing upon +the products of labour in the form of rent or interest, and rendering +no equivalent, is theft. Justice demands that service should be repaid +by an equal service. Society, freely organising itself on the +principles of liberty and justice, requires no government; only +through such anarchy as this can true order be attained. An apostle +of modern communism, Proudhon, by ideas leavening the popular mind, +became no insignificant influence in practical politics. + + + + +CHAPTER III +POETRY OF THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL + + +I + +The eighteenth century did homage to the reason; it sought for general +truths, scientific, social, political; its art was in the main an +inheritance, diminished with lapse of time, from the classical art +of the preceding century. With Rousseau came an outburst of the +personal element in literature, an overflow of sensibility, an +enfranchisement of the passions, and of imagination as connected with +the passions; his eloquence has in it the lyrical note. The romantic +movement was an assertion of freedom for the imagination, and an +assertion of the rights of individuality. Love, wonder, hope, +measureless desire, strange fears, infinite sadness, the sentiment +of nature, aspiration towards God, were born anew. Imagination, +claiming authority, refused to submit to the rules of classic art. +Why should the several literary species be impounded each in its +separate paddock? Let them mingle at the pleasure of the artist's +genius; let the epic and the drama catch what they can of the lyric +cry; let tragedy and comedy meet and mix. Why remain in servitude +to the models of Greece and Rome? Let all epochs and every clime +contribute to the enrichment of art. The primitive age was above all +others the age of poetry. The great Christian centuries were the +centuries of miracle and marvel, of spiritual exaltation and +transcendent passion. Honour, therefore, to our mediaeval +forefathers! It is the part of reason to trust the imagination in +the imaginative sphere. Through what is most personal and intimate +we reach the truths of the universal heart of man. An image may at +the same time be a symbol; behind a historical tableau may lie a +philosophical idea. + +At first the romantic movement was Christian and monarchical. Its +assertion of freedom, its claims on behalf of the _ego_, its licence +of the imagination, were in reality revolutionary. The intellect is +more aristocratic than the passions. The great spectacle of modern +democracy deploying its forces is more moving than any pallid ideals +of the past; it has the grandeur and breadth of the large phenomena +of nature; it is wide as a sunrise; its advance is as the onset of +the sea, and has like rumours of victory and defeat. The romantic +movement, with no infidelity to its central principle, became modern +and democratic. + +Foreign life and literatures lent their aid to the romantic movement +in France--the passion and mystery of the East; the struggle for +freedom in Greece; the old ballads of Spain; the mists, the solitudes, +the young heroes, the pallid female forms of Ossian; the feudal +splendours of Scott; the melancholy Harold; the mysterious Manfred; +Goethe's champion of freedom, his victim of sensibility, his seeker +for the fountains of living knowledge; Schiller's revolters against +social law, and his adventurers of the court and camp. + +With the renewal of imagination and sentiment came a renewal of +language and of metre. The poetical diction of the eighteenth century +had grown colourless and abstract; general terms had been preferred +to particular; simple, direct, and vivid words had been replaced by +periphrases--the cock was "the domestic bird that announces the day." +The romantic poets sought for words--whether noble or vulgar--that +were coloured, concrete, picturesque. The tendency culminated with +Gautier, to whom words were valuable, like gems, for their gleam, +their iridescence, and their hardness. Lost treasures of the language +were recovered; at a later date new verbal inventions were made. By +degrees, also, grammatical structure lost some of its rigidity; +sentences and periods grew rather than were built; phrases were alive, +and learnt, if there were a need, to leap and bound. Verse was moulded +by the feeling that inspired it; the melodies were like those of an +Eolian harp, long-drawn or retracted as the wind swept or touched +the strings. Symmetry was slighted; harmony was valued for its own +sake and for its spiritual significance. Rich rhymes satisfied or +surprised the ear, and the poet sometimes suffered through his +curiosity as a virtuoso. By internal licences--the mobile cesura, +new variations and combinations--the power of the alexandrine was +marvellously enlarged; it lost its monotony and became capable of +every achievement; its external restraints were lightened; verse +glided into verse as wave overtaking wave. The accomplishment of these +changes was a gradual process, of which Hugo and Sainte-Beuve were +the chief initiators. Gautier and, in his elder years, Hugo +contributed to the later evolution of romantic verse. The influence +on poetical form of Lamartine, Vigny, Musset, was of minor importance. + +The year 1822 is memorable; it saw the appearance of Vigny's _Poemes_, +the _Odes_ of Hugo, which announced a new power in literature, though +the direction of that power was not yet defined, and almost to the +same moment belongs the indictment of classical literature by Henri +Beyle ("Stendhal") in his study entitled _Racine et Shakespeare_. +Around Charles Nodier, in the library of the Arsenal, gathered the +young revolters--among them Vigny, Sainte-Beuve, Emile Deschamps, +afterwards the translator of _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Macbeth_, his +brother Antony, afterwards the translator of the _Divine Comedy_. +The first Cenacle was formed; in the _Muse Francaise_ and in the +_Globe_ the principles of the new literary school were expounded and +illustrated. Victor Hugo looked on with friendly intentions, but +still held aloof. + +JEAN-PIERRE DE BERANGER (1780-1857) was not one of this company of +poets. A child of Paris, of humble parentage, he discovered, after +various experiments, that his part was not that of a singer of large +ambitions. In 1815 his first collection of _Chansons_ appeared; the +fourth appeared in 1833. Standing between the bourgeoisie and the +people, he mediated between the popular and the middle-class +sentiment. His songs flew like town sparrows from garret to garden; +impudent or discreet, they nested everywhere. They seemed to be the +embodied wisdom of good sense, good temper, easy morals, love without +its ardours, poverty without its pains, patriotism without its +fatigues, a religion on familiar terms with the _Dieu des bonnes gens_. +In his elder years a Beranger legend had evolved itself; he was the +sage of democracy, the Socrates of the people, the patriarch to whom +pilgrims travelled to receive the oracles of liberal and benevolent +philosophy. Notwithstanding his faults in the pseudo-classic taste, +Beranger was skilled in the art of popular song; he knew the virtue +of concision; he knew how to evolve swiftly his little lyric drama; +he knew how to wing his verses with a volant refrain; he could catch +the sentiment of the moment and of the multitude; he could be gay +with touches of tenderness, and smile through a tear reminiscent of +departed youth and pleasure and Lisette. For the good bourgeois he +was a liberal in politics and religion; for the people he was a +democrat who hated the Restoration, loved equality more than liberty, +and glorified the legendary Napoleon, representative of democratic +absolutism. In the history of politics the songs of Beranger count +for much; in the history of literature the poet has a little niche +of his own, with which one may be content who, if he had not in elder +years supposed himself the champion of a literary revolution, might +be called modest. + + +II + +Among the members of the Cenacle was to be seen a poet already famous, +their elder by several years, who might have been the master of a +school had he not preferred to dwell apart; one who, born for poetry, +chose to look on verse as no more than an accident of his existence. +In the year 1820 had appeared a slender volume entitled _Meditations +Poetiques_. The soul, long departed, returned in this volume to French +poetry. Its publication was an event hardly less important than that +of the _Genie du Christianisme_. The well-springs of pure inspiration +once more flowed. The critics, indeed, were not all enthusiastic; +the public, with a surer instinct, recognised in Lamartine the singer +they had for many years desired, and despaired to find. + +ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE, born at Macon in 1790, of royalist parents, +had passed his childhood among the tranquil fields and little hills +around his homestead at Milly. From his mother he learned to love +the Bible, Tasso, Bernardin, and a christianised version of the +Savoyard Vicar's faith; at a later time he read Chateaubriand, +Rousseau, Milton, Byron, and was enchanted by the wandering gleams +and glooms of Ossian. From the melancholy of youth he was roused by +Italian travel, and by that Italian love romance of Graziella, the +circumstances of which he has dignified for the uses of idealised +autobiography. A deeper passion of love and grief followed; Madame +Charles, the "Julie" of Lamartine's _Raphael_, the "Elvire" of his +_Meditations_, died. Lamartine had versified already in a manner +which has affinities with that of those eighteenth-century poets and +elegiac singers of the Empire whom he was to banish from public regard. +Love and grief evoked finer and purer strains; his deepest feelings +flowed into verse with perfect sincerity and perfect spontaneity. +Without an effort of the will he had become the most illustrious poet +of France. + +Lamartine had held and had resigned a soldier's post in the body-guard +of Louis XVIII. He now accepted the position of attache to the embassy +at Naples; published in 1823 his _Nouvelles Meditations_, and two +years later _Le Dernier Chant du Pelerinage d'Harold_ (Byron's Childe +Harold); after which followed a long silence. Secretary in 1824 to +the legation at Florence, he abandoned after a time the diplomatic +career, and on the eve of the Revolution of July (1830) appeared again +as a poet in his _Harmonies Poetiques et Religieuses_; travelled in +the East in company with his wife, and recorded his impressions in +the _Voyage en Orient_; entered into political life, at first a +solitary in politics as he had been in literature, but by degrees +finding himself drawn more and more towards democratic ideas. "Where +will you sit?" he was asked on his presentation in the Chamber. His +smiling reply, "On the ceiling," was symbolical of the fact; but from +"the ceiling" his exalted oratory, generous in temper, sometimes wise +and well informed, descended with influence. _Jocelyn_ (1836), _La +Chute d'un Ange_ (1838), the _Recueillements Poetiques_ (1839), +closed the series of his poetical works, though he did not wholly +cease from song. + +In 1847 Lamartine's idealising _Histoire des Girondins_, brilliant +in its romantic portraiture, had the importance of a political event. +The Revolution of February placed him for a little time at the head +of affairs; as he had been the soul of French poetry, so for a brief +hour he was the soul of the political life of France. With the victory +of imperialism Lamartine retired into the shade. He was more than +sixty years of age; he had lost his fortune and was burdened with +debt. His elder years were occupied with incessant improvisations +for the booksellers--histories, biographies, tales, criticism, +autobiographic confidences flowed from his pen. It was a gallant +struggle and a sad one. Through the delicate generosity of Napoleon +III. he was at length relieved without humiliating concessions. In +1869 Lamartine died in his eightieth year. + +He was a noble dreamer in practical affairs, and just ideas formed +a portion of his dreams. Nature had made him an irreclaimable +optimist; all that is base and ugly in life passed out of view as +he soared above earth in his luminous ether. Sadness and doubt indeed +he knew, but his sadness had a charm of its own, and there were +consolations in maternal nature, in love, in religious faith and +adoration. His power of vision was not intense or keen; his +descriptions are commonly vague or pale; but no one could mirror more +faithfully a state of feeling divested of all material circumstance. +The pure and ample harmonies of his verse do not attack the ear, but +they penetrate to the soul. All the great lyric themes--God, nature, +death, glory, melancholy, solitude, regret, desire, hope, love--he +interpreted on his instrument with a musician's inspiration. +Unhappily he lacked the steadfast force of will, the inexhaustible +patience, which go to make a complete artist; he improvised admirably; +he refused to labour as a master of technique; hence his diffuseness, +his negligences; hence the decline of his powers after the first +spontaneous inspiration was exhausted. + +Lamartine may have equalled but he never surpassed the best poems +of his earliest volume. But the elegiac singer aspired to be a +philosophic poet, and, infusing his ideas into sentiment and +narrative, became the author of _Jocelyn_ and _La Chute d'un Ange_. +Recalling and idealising an episode in the life of his friend the +Abbe Dumont, he tells how Jocelyn, a child of humble parents--not +yet a priest--takes shelter among the mountains from the +Revolutionary terror; how a proscribed youth, Laurence, becomes his +companion; how Laurence is found to be a girl; how friendship passes +into love; how, in order that he may receive the condemned bishop's +last confession, Jocelyn submits to become a priest; how the lovers +part; how Laurence wanders into piteous ways of passion; how Jocelyn +attends her in her dying hours, and lays her body among the hills +and streams of their early love. It is Jocelyn who chronicles events +and feelings in his journal of joy and of sorrow. Lamartine +acknowledges that he had before him as a model the idyl dear to him +in childhood--Bernardin's _Paul et Virginie_. + +The poem is complete in itself, but it was designed as a fragment +of that vast modern epopee, with humanity for the hero, of which _La +Chute d'un Ange_ was another fragment. The later poem, vast in +dimensions, fantastic in subject, negligent in style, is a work of +Lamartine's poetic decline. We are among the mountains of Lebanon, +where dwell the descendants of Cain. The angel, enamoured of the +maiden Daidha, becomes human. Through gigantic and incoherent +inventions looms the idea of humanity which degrades itself by +subjugation to the senses, as in _Jocelyn_ we had seen the type of +humanity which ascends by virtue of aspirations of the soul. It was +a poor jest to say that the title of his poem _La Chute d'un Ange_ +described its author. Lamartine had failed; he could not handle so +vast a subject with plastic power; but in earlier years he had +accomplished enough to justify us in disregarding a late failure--he +had brought back the soul to poetry. + + +III + +Among the romantic poets who made themselves known between 1820 and +1830, ALFRED DE VIGNY is distinguished by the special character of +his genius, and by the fact that nothing in his poetry is derived +from his contemporaries. Lamartine, Hugo, and, at a later date, Musset, +found models or suggestions in his writings. He, though for a time +closely connected with the romantic school, really stands apart and +alone. Born in 1797, he followed the profession of his father, that +of arms, and knew the hopes, the illusions, and the disappointments +of military service at the time of the fall of the Empire and the +Bourbon restoration. He read eagerly in Greek literature, in the Old +Testament, and among eighteenth-century philosophers. As early as +1815 he wrote his admirable poem _La Dryade_, in which, before Andre +Chenier's verse had appeared, Chenier's fresh and delicate feeling +for antiquity was anticipated. In 1822 his first volume, _Poemes_, +was published, including the _Helena_, afterwards suppressed, and +groups of pieces classified as _Antiques_, _Judaiques_, and +_Modernes_. Already his _Moise_, majestic in its sobriety, was +written, though it waited four years for publication in the volume +of _Poemes Antiques et Modernes_ (1826). Moses climbing the slopes +of Nebo personifies the solitude and the heavy burden of genius; his +one aspiration now is for the sleep of death; and it is the lesser +leader Joshua who will conduct the people into the promised land. +The same volume included _Eloa_, a romance of love which abandons +joy through an impulse of divine pity: the radiant spirit Eloa, born +from a tear of Christ, resigns the happiness of heaven to bring +consolation to the great lost angel suffering under the malediction +of God. Other pieces were inspired by Spain, with its southern +violence of passion, and by the pass of Roncesvalles, with its +chivalric associations. + +The novel of _Cinq-Mars_, which had a great success, is a free +treatment of history; but Vigny's best work is rather the embodiment +of ideas than the rendering of historical matter. His _Stello_ in +its conception has something of kinship with _Moise_; in three prose +tales relating the sufferings of Chatterton, Chenier, and Gilbert, +it illustrates the sorrows of the possessors of genius. Vigny's +military experience suggested another group of tales, the _Servitude +et Grandeur Militaires_; the soldier in accepting servitude finds +his consolation in the duty at all costs of strenuous obedience. + +In 1827 Vigny quitted the army, and next year took place his +marriage--one not unhappy, but of imperfect sympathy--to an English +lady, Lydia Bunbury. His interest in English literature was shown +by translations of _Othello_ and the _Merchant of Venice_. The former +was acted with the applause of the young romanticists, who worshipped +Shakespeare ardently if not wisely, and who bore the shock of hearing +the unclassical word _mouchoir_ valiantly pronounced on the French +stage. The triumph of his drama of _Chatterton_ (1835) was +overwhelming, though its glory to-day seems in excess of its deserts. +Ten years later Vigny was admitted to the Academy. But with the +representation of _Chatterton_, and at the moment of his highest fame, +he suddenly ceased from creative activity. Never was his mind more +energetic, never was his power as an artist so mature; but, except +a few wonderful poems contributed to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, +and posthumously collected, nothing was given by him to the world +from 1835 to 1863, the year of his death. + +He had always been a secluded spirit; external companionship left +him inwardly solitary; secret--so Sainte-Beuve puts it--in his +"tower of ivory"; touching some mountain-summit for a moment--so +Dumas describes him--if he folded his wings, as a concession to +humanity. A great disillusion of passion had befallen him; but, apart +from this, he must have retreated into his own sphere of ideas and +of images, which seemed to him to be almost wronged by an attempt +at literary expression. He looked upon the world with a disenchanted +eye; he despaired of the possibilities of life for himself and for +all men; without declamation or display, he resigned himself to a +silent and stoical acceptance of the lot of man; but out of this calm +despair arose a passionate pity for his fellows, a pity even for things +evil, such as his Eloa felt for the lost angel. _La Colere de Samson_ +gives majestic utterance to his despair of human love; his _Mont des +Oliviers_, where Jesus seeks God in vain, and where Judas lurks near, +expresses his religious despair. Nature, the benevolent mother, says +Vigny, is no mother, but a tomb. Yet he would not clamour against +the heavens or the earth; he would meet death silently when it comes, +like the dying wolf of his poem (_La Mort du Loup_), suffering but +voiceless. Wealth and versatility of imagination were not Vigny's +gifts. His dominant ideas were few, but he lived in them; for them +he found apt imagery or symbol; and in verse which has the dignity +of reserve and of passion controlled to sobriety, he let them as it +were involuntarily escape from the seclusion of his soul. He is the +thinker among the poets of his time, and when splendours of colour +and opulence of sound have passed away, the idea remains. In fragments +from his papers, published in 1867, with the title _Journal d'un +Poete_, the inner history of Vigny's spirit can be traced. + + +IV + +To present VICTOR HUGO in a few pages is to carve a colossus on a +cherry-stone. His work dominates half a century. In the years of exile +he began a new and greater career. During the closing ten years his +powers had waned, but still they were extraordinary. Even with death +he did not retire; posthumous publications astonished and perhaps +fatigued the world. + +Victor-Marie Hugo was born at Besancon on February 26, 1802, son of +a distinguished military officer-- + + "_Mon pere vieux soldat, ma mere Vendeenne._" + +Mother and children followed Commandant Hugo to Italy in 1807; in +Spain they halted at Ernani and at Torquemada--names remembered by +the poet; at Madrid a Spanish Quasimodo, their school servant, alarmed +the brothers Eugene and Victor. A schoolboy in Paris, Victor Hugo +rhymed his chivalric epic, his tragedy, his melodrama--"les betises +que je faisais avant ma naissance." In 1816 he wrote in his manuscript +book the words, "I wish to be Chateaubriand or nothing." At fifteen +he was the laureate of the Jeux Floraux, the "enfant sublime" of +Chateaubriand's or of Soumet's praise. + +Founder, with his brothers, of the _Conservateur Litteraire_, he +entered into the society of those young aspirants who hoped to renew +the literature of France. In 1822 he published his _Odes et Poesies +Diverses_, and, obtaining a pension from Louis XVIII., he married +his early playfellow Adele Foucher. Romances, lyrics, dramas +followed in swift succession. Hugo, by virtue of his genius, his +domineering temper, his incessant activity, became the acknowledged +leader of the romantic school. In 1841 he was a member of the Academy; +four years later he was created a peer. Elected deputy of Paris in +1848, the year of revolution, he sat on the Right in the Constituant, +on the Left in the Legislative Assembly, tending more and more towards +socialistic democracy. The Empire drove him into exile--exile first +at Brussels, then in Jersey, finally in Guernsey, where Hugo, in his +own imagination, was the martyred but unsubdued demi-god on his +sea-beaten rock. In 1870, on the fall of the Empire, he returned to +Paris, witnessed the siege, was elected to the National Assembly, +urged a continuance of the war, spoke in favour of recognising +Garibaldi's election, and being tumultuously interrupted by the +Right, sent in his resignation. Occupied at Brussels in the interests +of his orphaned grandchildren, he was requested to leave, on the +ground of his zeal on behalf of the fallen Communists; he returned +to Paris, and pleaded in the _Rappel_ for amnesty. In 1875 he was +elected a senator. His eightieth birthday was celebrated with +enthusiasm. Three years later, on May 23, 1885, Victor Hugo died. +His funeral pomps were such that one might suppose the genius of France +itself was about to be received at the Pantheon. + +In Victor Hugo an enormous imagination and a vast force of will +operated amid inferior faculties. His character was less eminent than +his genius. If it is vanity to take a magnified Brocken-shadow for +one's self and to admire its superb gestures upon the mist, never +was vanity more complete or more completely satisfied than his. He +was to himself the hero of a Hugo legend, and did not perceive when +the sublime became the ridiculous. Generous to those beneath him, +charitable to universal humanity, he was capable of passionate +vindictiveness against individuals who had wounded his self-esteem; +and, since whatever opposed him was necessarily an embodiment of the +power of evil, the contest rose into one of Ormuzd against Ahriman. +His intellect, the lesser faculty, was absorbed by his imagination. +Vacuous generalities, clothed in magnificent rhetoric, could pass +with him for ideas; but his visions are sometimes thoughts in images. +The voice of his passions was leonine, but his moral sensibility +wanted delicacy. His laughter was rather boisterous than fine. He +is a poet who seldom achieved a faultless rendering of the subtle +psychology of lovers' hearts; there was in him a vein of robust +sensuality. Children were dear to him, and he knew their pretty ways; +a cynical critic might allege that he exploited overmuch the tender +domesticities. His eye seized every form, vast or minute, defined +or vague; his feeling for colour was rather strong than delicate; +his vision was obsessed by the antithesis of light and shade; his +ear was awake to every utterance of wind or wave; phantoms of sound +attacked his imagination; he lent the vibrations of his nerves, his +own sentiments, to material objects; he took and gave back the soul +of things. Words for him were living powers; language was a moving +mass of significant myths, from which he chose and which he +aggrandised; sensations created images and words, and images and +words created ideas. He was a master of all harmonies of verse; now +a solitary breather through pipe or flute; more often the conductor +of an orchestra. + +To say that Hugo was the greatest lyric poet of France is to say too +little; the claim that he was the greatest lyric poet of all literature +might be urged. The power and magnitude of his song result from the +fact that in it what is personal and what is impersonal are fused +in one; his soul echoed orchestrally the orchestrations of nature +and of humanity-- + + "_Son ame aux mille voix, que le Dieu qu'il adore + Mit au centre de tout comme un echo sonore._" + +And thus if his poetry is not great by virtue of his own ideas, it +becomes great as a reverberation of the sensations, the passions, +and the thoughts of the world. He did not soar tranquilly aloft and +alone; he was always a combatant in the world and wave of men, or +borne joyously upon the flood. The evolution of his genius was a long +process. The _Odes_ of 1822 and 1824, the _Odes et Ballades_ of 1826, +Catholic and royalist in their feeling, show in their form a +struggling originality oppressed by the literary methods of his +predecessors--J.-B. Rousseau, Lebrun, Casimir Delavigne. This +originality asserts itself chiefly in the _Ballades_. His early prose +romances, _Han d'Islande_ (1823) and _Bug-Jargal_ (1826)--the one +a tale of the seventeenth-century man-beast of Norway, the other a +tale of the generous St. Domingo slave--are challenges of youthful +and extravagant romanticism. _Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamne_ (1829) +is a prose study in the pathology of passion. The same year which +saw the publication of the last of these is also the year of _Les +Orientales_. These poems are also studies--amazing studies in colour, +in form, in all the secrets of poetic art. The East was popular--Hugo +was ever passionate for popularity--and Spain, which he had seen, +is half-Oriental. But of what concern is the East? he had seen a sunset +last summer, and the fancy took him; the East becomes an occasion +for marvellous combinations of harmony and lustrous tinctures; art +for its own sake is precious. + +From 1827, when _Cromwell_ appeared, to 1843, when the epic in drama +_Les Burgraves_ failed, Hugo was a writer for the stage, diverting +tragedy from its true direction towards lyrical melodrama.[1] In the +operatic libretto _La Esmeralda_ (1836) his lyrical virtuosity was +free to display itself in an appropriate dramatic form. The libretto +was founded on his own romance _Notre-Dame de Paris_ (1831), an +evocation, more imaginative than historical, of the old city of the +fifteenth century, its tragic passions, its strangeness, its horrors, +and its beauty; it is a marvellous series of fantasies in black and +white; things live in it more truly than persons; the cathedral, by +its tyrannous power and intenser life, seems to overshadow the other +actors. The tale is a juxtaposition of violent contrasts, an +antithesis of darkness and light. Through Quasimodo afflicted +humanity appeals for pity. + +[Footnote 1: See section VII, this chapter.] + +In the volume of verse which followed _Les Orientales_ after an +interval of two years, _Les Feuilles d'Automne_ (1831), Hugo is a +master of his instrument, and does not need to display his miracles +of skill; he is freer from faults than in the poetry of later years, +but not therefore more to be admired. His noblest triumphs were almost +inevitably accompanied by the excesses of his audacity. Here the +lyrism is that of memory and of the heart--intimate, tender, grave, +with a feeling for the hearth and home, a sensibility to the +tranquillising influences of nature, a charity for human-kind, a +faith in God, a hope of immortality. Now and again, as in the epilogue, +the spirit of public indignation breaks forth-- + + "_Et j'ajoute a ma lyre une corde d'airain._" + +The spirit of the _Chants du Crespuscule_ (1835) is one of doubt, +trouble, almost of gloom. Hugo's faith in the bourgeois monarchy is +already waning; he is a satirist of the present; he sees two things +that are majestic--the figure of Napoleon in the past, the popular +flood-tide in the future which rises to threaten the thrones of kings. +But this tide is discerned, as it were, through a dimness of weltering +mist. _Les Voix Interieures_ (1837) resumes the tendencies of the +two preceding volumes; the dead Charles X. is reverently saluted; +the legendary Napoleon is magnified; the faith in the people grows +clearer; the inner whispers of the soul are caught with heedful ear; +the voice of the sea now enters into Hugo's poetry; Nature, in the +symbolic _La Vache_, is the mother and the exuberant nurse of all +living things. In _Les Rayons et les Ombres_ (1840), Nature is not +only the nurse, but the instructress and inspirer of the soul, +mingling spirit with spirit. Lamartine's _Le Lac_ and Musset's +_Souvenir_ find a companion, not more pure, but of fuller harmonies, +in the _Tristesse d'Olympio_; reminiscences of childhood are +magically preserved in the poem of the _Feuillantines_. + +From 1840 to 1853 Hugo as a lyrical poet was silent. Like Lamartine, +he had concerned himself with politics. A private grief oppressed +his spirits. In 1843 his daughter Leopoldine and her husband of a +few short months were drowned. In 1852 the poet who had done so much +to magnify the first Napoleon in the popular imagination was the exile +who launched his prose invective _Napoleon le Petit_. A year later +appeared _Les Chatiments_, in which satire, with some loss of critical +discernment, is infused with a passionate lyrical quality, +unsurpassed in literature, and is touched at times with epic grandeur. +The Empire, if it severed Hugo from the soil of France, restored him +to himself with all his superb power and all his violences and errors +of genius. + +The volumes of _Les Contemplations_ (1856) mark the culmination of +Hugo's powers as a lyrical poet. The earlier pieces are of the past, +from 1830 to 1843, and resemble the poems of the past. A group of +poems, sacred to the memory of his daughter, follow, in which beauty +and pathos are interpenetrated by a consoling faith in humanity, in +nature, and in God. The concluding pieces are in a greater manner. +The visionary Hugo lives and moves amid a drama of darkness and of +light; gloom is smitten by splendour, splendour collapses into gloom; +and darkness and light seem to have become vocal in song. + +But a further development lay before him. The great lyric poet was +to carry all his lyric passion into an epic presentation, in detached +scenes, of the life of humanity. The first part of _La Legende des +Siecles_ was published in 1859 (later series, 1877, 1883). From the +birth of Eve to the trumpet of judgment the vast cycle of ages and +events unrolls before us; gracious episodes relieve the gloom; beauty +and sublimity go hand in hand; in the shadow the great criminals are +pursued by the great avengers. The spirit of _Les Chatiments_ is +conveyed into a view of universal history; if kings are tyrants and +priests are knaves, the people is a noble epic hero. This poem is +the epopee of democratic passions. + +The same spirit of democratic idealism inspires Hugo's romance _Les +Miserables_ (1862). The subject now is modern; the book is rather +the chaos of a prose epic than a novel; the hero is the high-souled +outcast of society; everything presses into the pages; they are turn +by turn historical, narrative, descriptive, philosophical (with such +philosophy as Hugo has to offer), humanitarian, lyrical, dramatic, +at times realistic; a vast invention, beautiful, incredible, sublime, +absurd, absorbing in its interest, a nightmare in its tedium. + +We have passed beyond the mid-century, but Hugo is not to be presented +as a torso. In the tale _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_ (1866) the choral +voices of the sea cover the thinness and strain of the human voices; +if the writer's genius is present in _L'Homme qui Rit_ (1869), it +often chooses to display its most preposterous attitudes; the better +scenes of _Quatre-vingt Treize_ (1874) beguile our judgment into the +generous concessions necessary to secure an undisturbed delight. +These are Hugo's later poems in prose. In verse he revived the feelings +of youth with a difference, and performed happy caprices of style +in the _Chansons des Rues et des Bois_ (1865); sang the incidents +and emotions of his country's sorrow and glory in _L'Annee Terrible_ +(1872), and--strange contrast--the poetry of babyland in _L'Art +d'etre Grandpere_ (1877). Volume still followed volume--_Le Pape_, +_La Pitie Supreme_, _Religions et Religion_, _L'Ane_, _Les Quatre +Vents de l'Esprit_, the drama _Torquemada_. The best pages in these +volumes are perhaps equal to the best in any of their author's +writings; the pages which force antithesis, pile up synonyms, develop +commonplaces in endless variations, the pages which are hieratic, +prophetic, apocalyptic, put a strain upon the loyalty of our +admiration. The last legend of Hugo's imagination was the Hugo legend: +if theism was his faith, autotheism was his superstition. Yet it is +easy to restore our loyalty, and to rediscover the greatest lyric +poet, the greatest master of poetic counterpoint that France has +known. + + +V + +ALFRED DE MUSSET has been reproached with having isolated himself +from the general interests and affairs of his time. He did not isolate +himself from youth or love, and the young of two generations were +his advocates. Born in 1810, son of the biographer of Rousseau, he +was a Parisian, inheriting the sentiment and the scepticism of the +eighteenth century. Impressionable, excitable, greedy of sensations, +he felt around him the void left by the departed glories of the Empire, +the void left by the passing away of religious faiths. One thing was +new and living--poetry. Chenier's remains had appeared; Vigny, Hugo, +Lamartine had opened the avenues for the imagination; Byron was dead, +but Harold and Manfred and Don Juan survived. Musset, born a poet, +was ready for imaginative ventures; he had been introduced, while +still a boy, to the Cenacle. Spain and Italy were the regions of +romance; at nineteen he published his first collection of poems, +_Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie_, and--an adolescent Cherubin-Don Juan +of song--found himself famous. + +He gave his adhesion to the romantic school, rather with the light +effrontery of youth than with depth of conviction; he was impertinent, +ironical, incredulous, blasphemous, despairing, as became an elegant +Byron minor of the boulevards, aged nineteen. But some of the pieces +were well composed; all had the "form and feature of blown youth"; +the echoes of southern lands had the fidelity and strangeness of +echoes tossed from Paris backwards; certain passages and lines had +a classic grace; it might even be questioned whether the _Ballade +a la Lune_ was a challenge to the school of tradition, or a jest at +the expense of his own associates. + +A season of hesitation and of transition followed. Musset was not +disposed to play the part of the small drummer-boy inciting the +romantic battalion to the double-quick. He began to be aware of his +own independence. He was romantic, but he had wit and a certain +intellectual good-sense; he honoured Racine together with Hugo; he +could not merge his individuality in a school. Yet, with an infirmity +characteristic of him, Musset was discouraged. It was not in him to +write great poetry of an impersonal kind; his _Nuit Venitienne_ had +been hissed at the Odeon; and what had he to sing out of his own heart? +He resolved to make the experiment. Three years after his first volume +a second appeared, which announced by its title that, while still +a dramatic poet, he had abandoned the stage; the _Spectacle dans un +Fauteuil_ declared that, though his glass was small, it was from his +own glass that he would drink. + +The glass contained the wine of love and youth mingled with a grosser +potion. In the drama _La Coupe et les Levres_ he exhibited libertine +passion seeking alliance with innocence and purity, and incapable +of attaining self-recovery; in _Namouna_, hastily written to fit the +volume for publication, he presented the pursuit of ideal love as +conducting its victim through all the lures of sensual desire; the +comedy _A quoi revent les jeunes Filles_, with its charm of fantasy, +tells of a father's device to prepare his daughters for the good prose +of wedlock by the poetry of invented romance. Musset had emancipated +himself from the Cenacle, and would neither appeal to the eye with +an overcharge of local colour, nor seduce the ear with rich or curious +rhymes. Next year (1833) in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ appeared +_Rolla_, the poem which marks the culmination of Musset's early manner, +and of Byron's influence on his genius; the prodigal, beggared of +faith, debased by self-indulgence, is not quite a disbeliever in love; +through passion he hastens forward in desperation to the refuge of +death. + +At the close of 1833 Musset was with George Sand in Italy. The hours +of illusion were followed by months of despair. He knew suffering, +not through the imagination, but in his own experience. After a time +calm gradually returned, and the poet, great at length by virtue of +the sincerity of genius, awoke. He is no longer frivolously despairing +and elegantly corrupt. In _Les Nuits_--two of these (_Mai_, +_Octobre_) inspired by the Italian joy and pain--he speaks simply +and directly from the heart in accents of penetrating power. Solitude, +his constant friend, the Muse, and love rising from the grave of love, +shall be his consolers-- + + "_Apres avoir souffert, il faut souffrir encore; + Il faut aimer sans cesse, apres avoir aime._" + +Musset's powers had matured through suffering; the _Lettre a +Lamartine_, the _Espoir en Dieu_, the _Souvenir_, the elegy _A la +Malibran_, the later stanzas _Apres une Lecture_ (1842), are +masterpieces of the true Musset--the Musset who will live. + +At thirty Musset was old. At rare intervals came the flash and outbreak +of a fiery mind; but the years were years of lassitude. His patriotic +song, _Le Rhin Allemand_, is of 1841. In 1852 the Academy received +him. "Musset s'absente trop," observed an Academician; the +ungracious reply, "Il s'absinthe trop," told the truth, and it was +a piteous decline. In 1857, attended by the pious Sister Marceline, +Musset died. + +Passion, the spirit of youth, sensibility, a love of beauty, +intelligence, _esprit_, fantasy, eloquence, graceful converse--these +were Musset's gifts. He lacked ideas; he lacked the constructive +imagination; with great capacities as a writer, he had too little of +an artist's passion for perfection. His longest narrative in prose, +the _Confession d'un Enfant du Siecle_, has borne the lapse of time +ill. "J'y ai vomi la verite," he said. It is not the happiest way of +communicating truth, and the moral of the book, that debauchery ends +in cynicism, was not left for Musset to discover. Some of his shorter +tales have the charm of fancy or the charm of tenderness, with +breathings of nature here, and there the musky fragrance of a +Louis-Quinze boudoir. _Pierre et Camille_, with its deaf-and-dumb +lovers, and their baby, who babbles in the presence of the relenting +grandfather "Bonjour, papa," has a pretty innocence. _Le Fils de +Titien_ returns to the theme of fallen art, the ruin of self-indulgence. +_Frederic et Bernerette_ and _Mimi Pinson_ may be said to have created +the poetic literature of the grisette--gay and good, or erring and +despairful--making a flower of what had blossomed in the stories of +Paul de Kock as a weed. + +Next to the most admirable of his lyric and elegiac poems, Musset's +best _Comedies_ and _Proverbes_ (proverbial sayings exemplified in +dramatic action), deserve a place. Written in prose for readers of +the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, their scenic qualities were discovered +only in 1847, when the actress Madame Allan presented _Un Caprice_ +and _Il faut qu'une Porte soit ouverte ou fermee_ at St. Petersburg. +The ambitious Shakespearian drama of political conspiracy, +_Lorenzaccio_, was an effort beyond the province and the powers of +Musset. His _Andre del Sarto_, a tragic representation of the great +painter betrayed by his wife and his favourite pupil, needed the +relief of his happier fantasy. It is in such delicate creations of +a world of romance, a world of sunshine and of perpetual spring, as +_On ne badine pas avec l'Amour_, _Les Caprices de Marianne_, _Le +Chandelier_, _Il ne faut jurer de rien_, that Musset showed how +romantic art could become in a high sense classic by the balance of +sensibility and intelligence, of fantasy and passion. The graces of +the age of Madame de Pompadour ally themselves here with the freer +graces of the Italian Renaissance. Something of the romance of +Shakespeare's more poetic comedies mingles with the artificial +elegance of Marivaux. Their subject is love, and still repeated love; +sentiment is relieved by the play of gaiety; the grotesque approaches +the beautiful; we sail in these light-timbered barques to a land that +lies not very far from the Illyria and Bohemia and Arden forest of +our own great enchanter. + + +VI + +Lyrical self-confession reached its limit in the poetry of Musset. +Detachment from self and complete surrender to the object is the law +of Gautier's most characteristic work; he is an eye that sees, a hand +that moulds and colours--that is all. A child of the South, born at +Tarbes in 1811, THEOPHILE GAUTIER was a pupil in the painter Rioult's +studio till the day when, his friend the poet Gerard de Nerval having +summoned him to take part in the battle of _Hernani_, he swore by +the skull from which Byron drank that he would not be a defaulter. +His first volume, _Poesies_, appeared in 1830, and was followed in +two years by _Albertus_, a fantastic manufacture of strangeness and +horror, amorous sorcery, love-philtres, witches' Sabbaths. The +_Comedie de la Mort_ evokes the illustrious shades of Raphael, Faust, +Don Juan to testify to the vanity of knowledge and glory and art and +love. Gautier's romantic enthusiasm was genuine and ardent. The +_Orientales_ was his poetic gospel; but the _Orientales_ is precisely +the volume in which Hugo is least effusive, and pursues art most +exclusively for art's sake. Love and life and death in these early +poems of Gautier are themes into which he works coloured and +picturesque details; sentiment, ideas are of value to him so far as +they can be rendered in images wrought in high relief and tinctured +with vivid pigments. + +It was the sorrow of Gautier's life, that born, as he believed, for +poetry, he was forced to toil day after day, year after year, as a +critic of the stage and of the art-exhibitions. He performed his task +in workman-like fashion, seeking rather to communicate impressions +than to pronounce judgments. His most valuable pieces of literary +criticism are his exhumations of the earlier seventeenth-century +poets--Theophile, Cyrano, Saint-Amant, Scarron, and others--published +in 1844, together with a study of Villon, under the title _Les +Grotesques_, and the memoir of 1867, drawn up in compliance with the +request of the Minister of Public Instruction, on _Les Progres de la +Poesie Francaise depuis 1830_. A reader of that memoir to-day will +feel, with Swift, that literary reputations are dislimned and shifted +as quickly and softly as the forms of clouds when the wind plays aloft. + +In 1840 Gautier visited Spain; afterwards he saw Italy, Algeria, +Constantinople, Russia, Greece. He travelled not as a student of life +or as a romantic sentimentalist. He saw exactly, and saw all things +in colour; the world was for him so much booty for the eye. Endowed +with a marvellous memory, an unwearied searcher of the vocabulary, +he could transfer the visual impression, without a faltering outline +or a hue grown dim, into words as exact and vivid as the objects which +he beheld. If his imagination recomposed things, it was in the manner +of some admired painter; he looked on nature through the medium of +a Zurbaran or a Watteau. The dictionary for Gautier was a collection +of gems that flashed or glowed; he chose and set them with the skill +and precision of a goldsmith enamoured of his art. At Athens, in one +of his latest wanderings, he stood in presence of the Parthenon, and +found that he was a Greek who had strayed into the Middle Ages; on +the faith of _Notre-Dame de Paris_ he had loved the old cathedrals; +"the Parthenon," he writes, "has cured me of the Gothic malady, which +with me was never very severe." + +Gautier's tales attained one of their purposes, that of astonishing +the bourgeois; yet if he condescended to ideas, his ideas on all +subjects except art had less value than those of the philistine. +_Mademoiselle de Maupin_ has lost any pretensions it possessed to +supereminent immorality; its sensuality is that of a dream of youth; +such purity as it possesses, compared with books of acrid grossness, +lies in the fact that the young author loved life and cared for beauty. +In shorter tales he studiously constructs strangeness--the sense of +mystery he did not in truth possess--on a basis of exactly carved +and exactly placed material. His best invention is the tale of actors +strolling in the time most dear to his imagination, the old days of +Louis XIII., _Le Capitaine Fracasse_, suggested doubtless by +Scarron's _Roman Comique_, and patiently retouched during a quarter +of a century. + +Gautier as a poet found his true self in the little pieces of the +_Emaux et Camees_. He is not without sensibility, but he will not +embarrass himself with either feelings or ideas. He has emancipated +himself from the egoism of the romantic tendency. He sees as a painter +or a gem-engraver sees, and will transpose his perceptions into +coloured and carven words. That is all, but that is much. He values +words as sounds, and can combine them harmoniously in his little +stanzas. Life goes on around him; he is indifferent to it, caring +only to fix the colour of his enamel, to cut his cameo with unfaltering +hand. When the Prussian assault was intended to the city, when +Regnault gave away his life as a soldier, Gautier in the Muses' bower +sat pondering his epithets and filing his phrases. Was it strength, +or was it weakness? His work survives and will survive by virtue of +its beauty--beauty somewhat hard and material, but such as the artist +sought. In 1872 Gautier died. By directing art to what is impersonal +he prepared the way for the Parnassien school, and may even be +recognised as one of the lineal predecessors of naturalism. + +These--Lamartine, Vigny, Hugo, Musset, Gautier--are the names which +represent the poetry of nineteenth-century romance; four stars of +varying magnitudes, and one enormous cometary apparition. There was +also a _via lactea_, from which a well-directed glass can easily +disentangle certain orbs, pallid or fiery: Sainte-Beuve, a critic +and analyst of moral disease and disenchantment in the _Vie, Poesies +et Pensees de Joseph Delorme_; a singer of spiritual reverie, modest +pleasures, modest griefs, and tender memories in the _Consolations_ +and the _Pensees d'Aout_; a virtuoso always in his metrical +researches; Auguste Barbier, eloquent in his indignant satires the +_Iambes_, lover of Italian art and nature in _Il Pianto_; Auguste +Brizeux, the idyllist, in his _Marie_, of Breton wilds and provincial +works and ways; Gerard de Nerval, Hegesippe Moreau, Madame +Desbordes-Valmore, and paler, lessening lights. These and others +dwindle for the eye into a general stream of luminous atoms. + + +VII + +The weaker side of the romantic school is apparent in the theatre. +It put forth a magnificent programme of dramatic reform, which it +was unable to carry out. The preface to Victor Hugo's _Cromwell_ +(1827) is the earliest and the most important of its manifestoes. +The poetry of the world's childhood, we are told, was lyrical; that +of its youth was epic; the poetry of its maturity is dramatic. The +drama aims at truth before all else; it seeks to represent complete +manhood, beautiful and revolting, sublime and grotesque. Whatever +is found in nature should be found in art; from multiple elements +an aesthetic whole is to be formed by the sovereignty of imagination; +unity of time, unity of place are worthless conventions; unity of +action remains, and must be maintained. The play meant to exemplify +the principles of Hugo's preface is of vast dimensions, incapable +of presentation on the stage; the large painting of life for which +he pleaded, and which he did not attain, is of a kind more suitable +to the novel than to the drama. _Cromwell_, which departs little from +the old rules respecting time and place, is a flux and reflux of action, +or of speeches in place of action, with the question of the hero's +ambition for kingship as a centre; its personages are lay figures +draped in the costumes of historical romance. + +The genius of Hugo was pre-eminently lyrical; the movement to which +he belonged was also essentially lyrical, a movement for the +emancipation of the personal element in art; it is by qualities which +are non-dramatic that his dramas are redeemed from dishonour. When, +in 1830, his _Hernani_ was presented at the Theatre Francais, a +strange, long-haired, bearded, fantastically-attired brigade of +young supporters engaged in a melee with those spectators who +represented the tyranny of tradition. "Kill him! he is an +Academician," was heard above the tumult. Gautier's truculent +waistcoat flamed in the thickest of the fight. The enthusiasm of +Gautier's party was justified by splendours of lyrism and of oratory; +but Hugo's play is ill-constructed, and the characters are beings +of a fantastic world. In _Marion Delorme_, in _Le Roi s'amuse_, in +the prose-tragedy _Lucrece Borgia_, Victor Hugo develops a favourite +theme by a favourite method--the moral antithesis of some purity of +passion surviving amid a life of corruption, the apotheosis of virtue +discovered in a soul abandoned to vice, and exhibited in violent +contrasts. Marion is ennobled by the sacrifice of whatever remains +to her of honour; the moral deformity of Lucrece is purified by her +instinct of maternal love; the hideous Triboulet is beautiful by +virtue of his devotion as a father. The dramatic study of character +is too often replaced by sentimental rhetoric. _Ruy Blas_, like +_Marion Delorme_ and _Hernani_, has extraordinary beauties; yet the +whole, with its tears and laughter, its lackey turned minister of +state, its amorous queen, is an incredible phantasmagoria. _Angelo_ +is pure melodrama; _Marie Tudor_ is the melodrama of history. _Les +Burgraves_ rises from declamation to poetry, or sinks from poetry +to declamation; it is grandiose, epic, or, if the reader please, +symbolic; it is much that it ought not to be, much that is admirable +and out of place; failing in dramatic truth, it fails with a certain +sublimity. The logic of action, truth of characterisation, these in +tragic creation are essentials; no heights or depths of poetry which +is non-dramatic can entirely justify works which do not accept the +conditions proper to their kind. + +The tragedy of _Torquemada_, strange in conception, wonderful--and +wonderfully unequal--in imaginative power, was an inspiration of +Hugo's period of exile, wrought into form in his latest years. The +dramas of the earlier period, opening with an historical play too +enormous for the stage, closed in 1843 with _Les Burgraves_, which +is an epic in dialogue. Aspiring to revolutionary freedom, the +romantic drama disdained the bounds of art; epic, lyric, tragedy, +comedy met and mingled, with a result too often chaotic. The desired +harmony of contraries was not attained. Past ages were to be revived +upon the stage. The historic evocation possessed too often neither +historic nor human truth; it consisted in "local colour," and local +colour meant a picturesque display of theatrical bric-a-brac. Yet +a drama requires some centre of unity. Failing of unity in coherent +action and well-studied character, can a centre be provided by some +philosophical or pseudo-philosophical idea? Victor Hugo, wealthy in +imagery, was not wealthy in original ideas; in grandiose prefaces +he attempted to exhibit his art as the embodiment of certain abstract +conceptions. A great poet is not necessarily a philosophical poet. +Hugo's interpretations of his own art are only evidence of the fact +that a writer's vanity can practise on his credulity. + +Among the romantic poets the thinker was Vigny. But it is not by its +philosophical symbolism that his _Chatterton_ lives; it is by virtue +of its comparative strength of construction, by what is sincere in +its passion, what is genuine in its pathos, and by the character of +its heroine, Kitty Bell. In the instincts of a dramaturgist both Vigny +and Hugo fell far short of ALEXANDRE DUMAS (1803-70). Before the +battle of _Hernani_ he had unfolded the romantic banner in his _Henri +III. et sa Cour_ (1829); it dazzled by its theatrical inventions, +its striking situations, its ever-changing display of the stage +properties of historical romance. His _Antony_, of two years later, +parent of a numerous progeny, is a domestic tragedy of modern life, +exhaling Byronic passion, misanthropy, crime, with a bastard, a +seducer, a murderer for its hero, and for its ornaments all those +atrocities which fascinate a crowd whose nerves can bear to be +agreeably shattered. Something of abounding vitality, of tingling +energy, of impetuosity, of effrontery, secured a career for _Antony_, +the _Tour de Nesle_, and his other plays. The trade in horrors lost +its gallant freebooting airs and grew industriously commercial in +the hands of Frederic Soulie. When in 1843--the year of Hugo's +unsuccessful _Les Burgraves_--a pseudo-classical tragedy, the +_Lucrece_ of Ponsard, was presented on the stage, the enthusiasm was +great; youth and romance, if they had not vanished, were less militant +than in the days of _Hernani_; it seemed as if good sense had returned +to the theatre.[2] + +[Footnote 2: The influence of the great actress Rachel helped to +restore to favour the classical theatre of Racine and Corneille.] + +Casimir Delavigne (1793-1843) is remembered in lyric poetry by his +patriotic odes, _Les Messeniennes_, suggested by the military +disasters of France. His dramatic work is noteworthy, less for the +writer's talent than as indicating the influence of the romantic +movement in checking the development of classical art. Had he been +free to follow his natural tendencies, Delavigne would have remained +a creditable disciple of Racine; he yielded to the stream, and timidly +approached the romantic leaders in historical tragedy. Once in comedy +he achieved success; _L'Ecole des Vieillards_ has the originality +of presenting an old husband who is generous in heart, and a young +wife who is good-natured amid her frivolity. Comedy during the second +quarter of the century had a busy ephemeral life. The name of Eugene +Scribe, an incessant improvisator during forty years, from 1811 +onwards, in comedy, vaudeville, and lyric drama, seems to recall that +of the seventeenth-century Hardy. His art was not all commerce; he +knew and he loved the stage; a philistine writing for philistines, +Scribe cared little for truth of character, for beauty of form; the +theatrical devices became for him ends in themselves; of these he +was as ingenious a master as is the juggler in another art when he +tosses his bewildering balls, or smiles at the triumph of his +inexplicable surprises. + + + + +CHAPTER IV +THE NOVEL + + +I + +The novel in the nineteenth century has yielded itself to every +tendency of the age; it has endeavoured to revive the past, to paint +the present, to embody a social or political doctrine, to express +private and personal sentiment, to analyse the processes of the heart, +to idealise life in the magic mirror of the imagination. The +literature of prose fiction produced by writers who felt the influence +of the romantic movement tended on the one hand towards lyrism, the +passionate utterance of individual emotion--George Sand's early +tales are conspicuous examples; on the other hand it turned to history, +seeking to effect a living and coloured evocation of former ages. +The most impressive of these evocations was assuredly Hugo's +_Notre-Dame de Paris_. It was not the earliest; Vigny's _Cinq-Mars_ +preceded _Notre-Dame_ by five years. The writer had laboriously +mastered those details which help to make up the romantic _mise en +scene_; but he sought less to interpret historical truth by the +imagination than to employ the material of history as a vehicle for +what he conceived to be ideal truth. In Merimee's _Chronique de +Charles IX._ (1829), which also preceded Hugo's romance, the +historical, or, if not this, the archaeological spirit is present; +it skilfully sets a tale of the imagination in a framework of history. + +Hugo's narratives are eminent by virtue of his imagination as a poet; +they are lyrical, dramatic, epic; as a reconstitution of history their +value is little or is none. The historical novel fell into the hands +of Alexandre Dumas. No one can deny the brilliance, the animation, +the bustle, the audacity, the inexhaustible invention of _Les Trois +Mousquetaires_ and its high-spirited fellows. There were times when +no company was so inspiriting to us as that of the gallant Athos, +Porthos, and Aramis. Let the critics assure us that Dumas' history +is untrue, his characters superficial, his action incredible; we +admit it, and we are caught again by the flash of life, the fanfaronade +of adventure. We throw Eugene Sue to the critics that we may save +Alexandre Dumas. But Dumas' brain worked faster than his hand--or +any human hand--could obey its orders; the mine of his inventive +faculty needed a commercial company and an army of diggers for its +exploitation. He constituted himself the managing director of this +company; twelve hundred volumes are said to have been the output of +the chief and his subordinates; the work ceased to be literature, +and became mere commerce. The money that Dumas accumulated he +recklessly squandered. Half genius, half charlatan, his genius +decayed, and his charlatanry grew to enormous proportions. Protected +by his son, he died a poor man amid the disasters of the +Franco-Prussian war. + + +II + +HENRI BEYLE, who wrote under the pseudonym of Stendhal, not popular +among his contemporaries, though winning the admiration of Merimee +and the praise of Balzac, predicted that he would be understood about +1880. If to be studied and admired is to be understood, the prediction +has been fulfilled. Taine pronounced him the greatest psychologist +of the century; M. Zola, doing violence to facts, claimed him as a +literary ancestor; M. Bourget discovered in him the author of a +nineteenth-century Bible and a founder of cosmopolitanism in letters. +During his lifetime Beyle was isolated, and had a pride in isolation. +Born at Grenoble in 1783, he had learnt, during an unhappy childhood, +to conceal his natural sensibility; in later years this reserve was +pushed to affectation. He served under Napoleon with coolness and +energy; he hated the Restoration, and, a lover of Italian manners +and Italian music, he chose Milan for his place of abode. The +eighteenth-century materialists were the masters of his intellect; +"the only excuse for God," he declared, "is that he does not exist"; +in man he saw a being whose end is pleasure, whose law is egoism, +and who affords a curious field for studying the dynamics of the +passions. He honoured Napoleon as an incarnation of force, the +greatest of the _condottieri_. He loved the Italian character because +the passions in Italy manifest themselves with the sudden outbreaks +of nature. He indulged his own passions as a refuge from ennui, and +turned the scrutiny of his intelligence upon every operation of his +heart. Fearing to be duped, he became the dupe of his own philosophy. +He aided the romantic movement by the paradox that all the true +classical writers were romantic in their own day--they sought to +please their time; the pseudo-classical writers attempt to maintain +a lifeless tradition. But he had little in common with the romantic +school, except a love for Shakespeare, a certain feeling for local +colour, and an interest in the study of passion; the effusion and +exaltation of romance repelled him; he laboured to be "dry," and often +succeeded to perfection. + +His analytical study _De l'Amour_, resting on a sensual basis, has +all the depth and penetration which is possible to a shallow +philosophy. His notes on travel and art anticipate in an informal +way the method of criticism which became a system in the hands of +Taine; in a line, in a phrase, he resolves the artist into the +resultant of environing forces. His novels are studies in the +mechanics of the passions and the will. Human energy, which had a +happy outlet in the Napoleonic wars, must seek a new career in +Restoration days. Julien Sorel, the low-born hero of _Le Rouge et +le Noir_, finding the red coat impossible, must don the priestly black +as a cloak for his ambition. Hypocrite, seducer, and assassin, he +ends his career under the knife of the guillotine. _La Chartreuse +de Parme_ exhibits the manners, characters, intrigues of +nineteenth-century Italy, with a remarkable episode which gives a +soldier's experiences of the field of Waterloo. In the artist's +plastic power Beyle was wholly wanting; a collection of ingenious +observations in psychology may be of rare value, but it does not +constitute a work of art. His writings are a whetstone for the +intelligence, but we must bring intelligence to its use, else it will +grind down or break the blade. In 1842 he died, desiring to perpetuate +his expatriation by the epitaph which names him Arrigo Beyle Milanese. + + +III + +Lyrical and idealistic are epithets which a critic is tempted to affix +to the novels of George Sand; but from her early lyrical manner she +advanced to perfect idyllic narrative; and while she idealised, she +observed, incorporating in her best work the results of a patient +and faithful study of reality. A vaguer word may be applied to whatever +she wrote; offspring of her idealism or her realism, it is always +in a true sense poetic. + +LUCILE-AURORE DUPIN, a descendant of Marshal Saxe, was born in Paris +in 1804, the daughter of Lieutenant Dupin and a mother of humble +origin--a child at once of the aristocracy and of the people. Her +early years were passed in Berri, at the country-house of her +grandmother. Strong, calm, ruminating, bovine in temperament, she +had a large heart and an ardent imagination. The woods, the flowers, +the pastoral heights and hollows, the furrows of the fields, the +little peasants, the hemp-dressers of the farm, their processes of +life, their store of old tales and rural superstitions made up her +earliest education. Already endless stories shaped themselves in her +brain. At thirteen she was sent to be educated in a Paris convent; +from the boisterous moods which seclusion encouraged, she sank of +a sudden into depths of religious reverie, or rose to heights of +religious exaltation, not to be forgotten when afterwards she wrote +_Spiridion_. The country cooled her devout ardour; she read widely, +poets, historians, philosophers, without method and with boundless +delight; the _Genie du Christianisme_ replaced the _Imitation_; +Rousseau and Byron followed Chateaubriand, and romance in her heart +put on the form of melancholy. At eighteen the passive Aurore was +married to M. Dudevant, whose worst fault was the absence of those +qualities of heart and brain which make wedded union a happiness. +Two children were born; and having obtained her freedom and a scanty +allowance, Madame Dudevant in 1831, in possession of her son and +daughter, resolved upon trying to obtain a livelihood in the capital. + +Perhaps she could paint birds and flowers on cigar-cases and +snuff-boxes; happily her hopes received small encouragement. Perhaps +she could succeed in journalism under her friend Delatouche; she +proved wholly wanting in cleverness; her imagination had wings; it +could not hop on the perch; before she had begun the beginning of +an article the column must end. With her compatriot Jules Sandeau, +she attempted a novel--_Rose et Blanche_. "Sand" and Sandeau were +fraternal names; a countryman of Berri was traditionally George. +Henceforth the young Bohemian, who traversed the _quais_ and streets +in masculine garb, should be GEORGE SAND. + +To write novels was to her only a process of nature; she seated herself +before her table at ten o'clock, with scarcely a plot, and only the +slightest acquaintance with her characters; until five in the evening, +while her hand guided a pen, the novel wrote itself. Next day and +the next it was the same. By-and-by the novel had written itself in +full, and another was unfolding. Not that she composed mechanically; +her stories were not manufactured; they grew--grew with facility and +in free abundance. At first, a disciple of Rousseau and Chateaubriand, +her theme was the romance of love. In _Indiana_, _Valentine_, _Lelia_, +_Jacques_, she vindicated the supposed rights of passion. These +novels are lyrical cries of a heart that had been wounded; protests +against the crime of loveless marriage, against the tyranny of man, +the servitude of woman; pleas for the individualism of the +soul--superficial in thought, ill-balanced in feeling, unequal in +style, yet rising to passages of rare poetic beauty, and often +admirable in descriptive power. The imagination of George Sand had +translated her private experiences into romance; yet she, the +spectator of her own inventions, possessed of a fund of sanity which +underlay the agitations of her genius, while she lent herself to her +creations, plied her pen with a steady hand from day to day. Unwise +and blameful in conduct she might be for a season; she wronged her +own life, and helped to ruin the life of Musset, who had neither her +discretion nor her years; but when the inevitable rupture came she +could return to her better self. + +Through _Andre_, _Simon_, _Mauprat_--the last a tale of love subduing +and purifying the savage instincts in man--her art advanced in +sureness and in strength. Singularly accessible to external +influences, singularly receptive of ideas, the full significance and +relations of which she failed to comprehend, she felt the force of +intelligences stronger than her own--of Lamennais, of Ledru-Rollin, +of Jean Raynaud, of Pierre Leroux. Mystical religious sentiment, an +ardent enthusiasm of humanity, mingled in her mind with all the +discordant formulas of socialism. From 1840 to 1848 her love and large +generosity of nature found satisfaction in the ideals and the hopes +of social reform. Her novels _Consuelo_, _Jeanne_, _Le Meunier +d'Angibault_, _Le Peche de M. Antoine_, become expositions of a thesis, +or are diverted from their true development to advocate a cause. The +art suffers. _Jeanne_, so admirable in its rural heroine, wanders +from nature to humanitarian symbolism; _Consuelo_, in which the +writer studies so happily the artistic temperament, too often loses +itself in a confusion of ill-understood ideas and tedious declamation. +But the gain of escape from the egoism of passion to a more +disinterested, even if a doctrinaire, view of life was great. George +Sand was finding her way. + +Indeed, while writing novels in this her second manner, she had found +her way; her third manner was attained before the second had lost +its attraction. _La Mare au Diable_ belongs to the year 1846; _La +Petite Fadette_, to the year of Revolution, 1848, which George Sand, +ever an optimist, hailed with joy; _Francois le Champi_ is but two +years later. In these delightful tales she returns from humanitarian +theories to the fields of Berri, to humble walks, and to the huts +where poor men lie. The genuine idyll of French peasant life was new +to French literature; the better soul of rural France, George Sand +found deep within herself; she had read the external circumstances +and incidents of country life with an eye as faithful in observation +as that of any student who dignifies his collection of human documents +with the style and title of realism in art; with a sense of beauty +and the instincts of affection she merged herself in what she saw; +her feeling for nature is realised in gracious art, and her art seems +itself to be nature. + +In the novels of her latest years she moved from Berri to other regions +of France, and interpreted aristocratic together with peasant life. +Old, experienced, infinitely good and attaching, she has tales for +her grandchildren, and romances--_Jean de la Roche_, _Le Marquis de +Villemer_, and the rest--for her other grandchildren the public. The +soul of the peasant, of the artist, of the man who must lean upon +a stronger woman's arm, of the girl--neither child nor fully +adult--she entered into with deepest and truest sympathy. The simple, +austere, stoical, heroic man she admired as one above her. Her style +at its best, flowing without impetuosity, full and pure without +commotion, harmonious without complex involutions, can mirror beauty +as faithfully and as magically as an inland river. "Calme, toujours +plus calme," was a frequent utterance of her declining years. "Ne +detruisez pas la verdure" were her latest words. In 1876 George Sand +died. Her memoirs and her correspondence make us intimate with a +spirit, amid all its errors, sweet, generous, and gaining through +experience a wisdom for the season of old age. + + +IV + +George Sand may be described as an "idealist," if we add the words +"with a remarkable gift for observation." Her great contemporary +HONORE DE BALZAC is named a realist, but he was a realist haunted +or attacked by phantasms and nightmares of romance. Born in 1799 at +Tours, son of an advocate turned military commissariat-agent, Honore +de Balzac, after some training in the law, resolved to write, and, +if possible, not to starve. With his robust frame, his resolute will, +manifest in a face coarsely powerful, his large good-nature, his large +egoism, his audacity of brain, it seemed as if he might shoulder his +way through the crowd to fortune and to fame. But fortune and fame +were hard to come at. His tragedy _Cromwell_ was condemned by all +who saw the manuscript; his novels were published, and lie deep in +their refuge under the waters of oblivion. He tried the trades of +publisher, printer, type-founder, and succeeded in encumbering +himself with debt. At length in 1829 _Le Dernier Chouan_, a +half-historical tale of Brittany in 1800, not uninfluenced by Scott, +was received with a measure of favour. + +Next year Balzac found his truer self, overlaid with journalism, +pamphleteering, and miscellaneous writing, in a Dutch painting of +bourgeois life, _Le Maison du Chatqui-pelote_, which relates the +sorrows of the draper's daughter, Augustine, drawn from her native +sphere by an artist's love. From the day that Balzac began to wield +his pen with power to the day, in 1850, when he died, exhausted by +the passion of his brain, his own life was concentrated in that of +the creatures of his imagination. He had friends, and married one +of the oldest of them, Madame Hanska, shortly before his death. +Sometimes for a little while he wandered away from his desk. More +than once he made wild attempts to secure wealth by commercial +enterprise or speculation. These were adventures or incidents of his +existence. That existence itself is summed up in the volumes of his +_Human Comedy_. He wrote with desperate resolve and a violence of +imagination; he attacked the printer's proof as if it were crude +material on which to work. At six in the evening he retired to sleep; +he rose at the noon of night, urged on his brain with cups of coffee, +and covered page after page of manuscript, until the noon of day +released him. So it went on for nearly twenty years, until the +intemperance of toil had worn the strong man out. + +There is something gross in Balzac's genius; he has little wit, little +delicacy, no sense of measure, no fine self-criticism, no lightness +of touch, small insight into the life of refined society, an imperfect +sense of natural beauty, a readiness to accept vulgar marvels as the +equivalent of spiritual mysteries; he is monarchical without the +sentiment of chivalric loyalty, a Catholic without the sentiment of +religion; he piles sentence on sentence, hard and heavy as the +accumulated stones of a cairn. Did he love his art for its own sake? +It must have been so; but he esteemed it also as an implement of power, +as the means of pushing towards fame and grasping gold. + +Within the gross body of his genius, however, an intense flame burnt. +He had a vivid sense of life, a perception of all that can be seen +and handled, an eager interest in reality, a vast passion for _things_, +an inexhaustible curiosity about the machinery of society, a feeling, +exultant or cynical, of the battle of existence, of the conflict for +wealth and power, with its triumphs and defeats, its display of fierce +volition, its pushing aside of the feeble, its trampling of the fallen, +its grandeur, its meanness, its obscure heroisms, and the cruelties +of its pathos. He flung himself on the life of society with a desperate +energy of inspection, and tried to make the vast array surrender to +his imagination. And across his vision of reality shot strange beams +and shafts of romantic illumination--sometimes vulgar theatrical +lights, sometimes gleams like those which add a new reality of wonder +to the etchings of Rembrandt. What he saw with the eyes of the senses +or those of the imagination he could evoke without the loss of any +fragment of its life, and could transfer it to the brain of his reader +as a vision from which escape is impossible. + +The higher world of aristocratic refinement, the grace and natural +delicacy of virginal souls, in general eluded Balzac's observation. +He found it hard to imagine a lady; still harder--though he tried +and half succeeded--to conceive the mystery of a young girl's mind, +in which the airs of morning are nimble and sweet. The gross bourgeois +world, which he detested, and a world yet humbler were his special +sphere. He studied its various elements in their environment; a street, +a house, a chamber is as much to him as a human being, for it is part +of the creature's shell, shaped to its uses, corresponding to its +nature, limiting its action. He has created a population of persons +which numbers two thousand. Where Balzac does not fail, each of these +is a complete individual; in the prominent figures a controlling +passion is the centre of moral life--the greed of money, the desire +for distinction, the lust for power, some instinct or mania of animal +affection. The individual exists in a group; power circulates from +inanimate objects to the living actors of his tale; the environment +is an accomplice in the action; power circulates from member to member +of the group; finally, group and group enter into correspondence or +conflict; and still above the turmoil is heard the groundswell of +the tide of Paris. + +The change from the Renes and Obermanns of melancholy romance was +great. But in the government of Louis-Philippe the bourgeoisie +triumphed; and Balzac hated the bourgeoisie. From 1830 to 1840 were +his greatest years, which include the _Peau de Chagrin_, _Eugenie +Grandet_, _La Recherche de l'Absolu_, _Le Pere Goriot_, and other +masterpieces. To name their titles would be to recite a Homeric +catalogue. At an early date Balzac conceived the idea of connecting +his tales in groups. They acquired their collective title, _La Comedie +Humaine_, in 1842. He would exhibit human documents illustrating the +whole social life of his time; "the administration, the church, the +army, the judicature, the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, the +proletariat, the peasantry, the artists, the journalists, the men +of letters, the actors, ... the shopkeepers of every degree, the +criminals," should all appear in his vast tableau of society. His +record should include scenes from private life, scenes from Parisian, +provincial, political, military, rural life, with philosophical +studies in narrative and analytic treatises on the passions. The +spirit of system took hold upon Balzac; he had, in common with Victor +Hugo, a gift for imposing upon himself with the charlatanry of +pseudo-ideas; to observe, to analyse, to evoke with his imagination +was not enough; he also would be among the philosophers--and Balzac's +philosophy is often pretentious and vulgar, it is often banal. Outside +the general scheme of the human comedy lie his unsuccessful attempts +for the theatre, and the _Contes Drolatiques_, in which the +pseudo-antique Rabelaisian manner and the affluent power do not +entirely atone for the anachronism of a grossness more natural in +the sixteenth than in the nineteenth century. + + +V + +Was it possible to be romantic without being lyrical? Was it possible +to produce purely objective work, reserving one's own personality, +and glancing at one's audience only with an occasional look of +superior irony? Such was the task essayed by PROSPER MERIMEE (1803-70). +With some points of resemblance in character to Beyle, whose ideas +were influential on his mind, Merimee possessed the plastic +imagination and the craftsman's skill, in which Beyle was deficient. +"He is a gentleman," said Cousin, and the words might serve for +Merimee's epitaph; a gentleman not of nature's making, or God +Almighty's kind, but constructed in faultless bearing according to +the rules. Such a gentleman must betray no sensibility, must express +no sentiment, must indulge no enthusiasm, must attach himself to no +faith, must be superior to all human infirmities, except the infirmity +of a pose which is impressive only by its correctness; he may be +cynical, if the cynicism is wholly free from emphasis; he may be +ironical, if the irony is sufficiently disguised; he may mystify his +fellows, if he keeps the pleasure of mystification for his private +amusement. Should he happen to be an artist, he must appear to be +only a dilettante. He must never incur ridicule, and yet his whole +attitude may be ridiculous. + +Such a gentleman was Prosper Merimee. He had the gift of imagination, +psychological insight, the artist's shaping hand. His early romantic +plays were put forth as those of Clara Gazul, a Spanish _comedienne_. +His Illyrian poems, _La Guzla_, were the work of an imaginary +Hyacinthe Maglanovich, and Merimee could smile gently at the +credulity of a learned public. He took up the short story where Xavier +de Maistre, who had known how to be both pathetic and amiably humorous, +and Charles Nodier, who had given play to a graceful fantasy, left +it. He purged it of sentiment, he reduced fantasy to the law of the +imagination, and produced such works as _Carmen_ and _Colomba_, each +one a little masterpiece of psychological truth, of temperate local +colour, of faultless narrative, of pure objective art. The public +must not suppose that he cares for his characters or what befell them; +he is an archaeologist, a savant, and only by accident a teller of +tales. Merimee had more sensibility than he would confess; it shows +itself for moments in the posthumous _Lettres a une Inconnue_; but +he has always a bearing-rein of ironical pessimism to hold his +sensibility in check. The egoism of the romantic school appears in +Merimee inverted; it is the egoism not of effusion but of disdainful +reserve.[1] + +[Footnote 1: It is one of Merimee's merits that he awakened in France +an interest in Russian literature.] + + + + +CHAPTER V +HISTORY--LITERARY CRITICISM + + +I + +The progress of historical literature in the nineteenth century was +aided by the change which had taken place in philosophical opinion; +instead of a rigid system of abstract ideas, which disdained the +thought of past ages as superstition, had come an eclecticism guided +by spiritual beliefs. The religions of various lands and various ages +were viewed with sympathetic interest; the breach of continuity from +mediaeval to modern times was repaired; the revolutionary spirit of +individualism gave way before a broader concern for society; the +temper in politics grew more cautious and less dogmatic; the great +events of recent years engendered historical reflection; literary +art was renewed by the awakening of the romantic imagination. + +The historical learning of the Empire is represented by Daunou, an +explorer in French literature; by Ginguene, the literary historian +of Italy; by Michaud, who devoted his best years to a _History of +the Crusades_. In his _De la Religion_ (1824-31) Benjamin Constant, +in Restoration days, traced the progress of the religious sentiment, +cleaving its way through dogma and ordinance to a free and full +development. Sismondi (1773-1842), in his _Histoire des Francais_, +investigated such sources as were accessible to him, studied economic +facts, and in a liberal spirit exhibited the life of the nation, and +not merely the acts of monarchs or the intrigues of statesmen. His +wide, though not profound, erudition comprehended Italy as well as +France; the _Histoire des Republiques Italiennes_ is the chart of +a difficult labyrinth. The method of disinterested narrative, which +abstains from ethical judgments, propounds no thesis, and aims at +no doctrinaire conclusion, was followed by Barante in his _Histoire +des Ducs de Bourgogne_. The precept of Quintilian expresses his rule: +"Scribitur ad narrandum, non ad probandum." + +Each school of nineteenth-century thought has had its historical +exponents. Liberal Catholicism is represented by Montalembert, +Ozanam, De Broglie; socialism, by Louis Blanc; a patriotic Caesarism, +by Thiers; the democratic school, by Michelet and Quinet; philosophic +liberalism, by Guizot, Mignet, and Tocqueville. + +AUGUSTIN THIERRY (1795-1856) nobly led the way. Some pages of +Chateaubriand, full of the sentiment of the past, were his first +inspiration; at a later time the influence of Fauriel and the novels +of Walter Scott, "the master of historical divination," confirmed +him in his sense of the uses of imagination as an aid to the scholarship +of history. For a time he acted as secretary to Saint-Simon, and under +his influence proposed a scheme for a community of European peoples +which should leave intact the nationality of each. Then he parted +from his master, to pursue his way in independence. It seemed to him +that the social condition and the revolutions of modern Europe had +their origins in the Germanic invasions, and especially in the Norman +Conquest of England. As he read the great collection of the original +historians of France and Gaul, he grew indignant against the modern +travesties named history, indignant against writers without +erudition, who could not see, and writers without imagination, who +could not depict. The conflict of races--Saxons and Normans in England, +Gauls and Franks in his own country--remained with him as a dominant +idea, but he would not lose himself in generalisations; he would +involve the abstract in concrete details; he would see, and he would +depict. There was much philosophy in abstaining from philosophy +overmuch. The _Lettres sur l'Histoire de France_ were followed in +1825 by the _Histoire de la Conquete de l'Angleterre_, in which the +art of historiography attained a perfection previously unknown. +Through charter and chronicle, Thierry had reached the spirit of the +past. He had prophesied upon the dry bones and to the wind, and the +dry bones lived. As a liberal, he had been interested in contemporary +politics. His political ardour had given him that historical +perspicacity which enabled him to discover the soul behind an ancient +text. + +In 1826 Thierry, the martyr of his passionate studies, suffered the +calamity of blindness. With the aid of his distinguished brother, +of friends, and secretaries--above all, with the aid of the devoted +woman who became his wife, he pursued his work. The _Recits des Temps +Merovingiens_ and the _Essai sur l'Histoire de la Formation du Tiers +Etat_ were the labours of a sightless scholar. His passion for +perfection was greater than ever; twenty, fifteen lines a day +contented him, if his idea was rendered clear and enduring in +faultless form. Paralysis made its steady advance; still he kept his +intellect above his infirmities, and followed truth and beauty. On +May 22, 1856, he woke his attendant at four in the morning, and +dictated with laboured speech the alteration of a phrase for the +revised _Conquete_. On the same day, "insatiable of perfection," +Thierry died. He is not, either in substance, thought, or style, the +greatest of modern French historians; but, more than any other, he +was an initiator. + +The life of FRANCOIS GUIZOT--great and venerable name--is a portion +of the history of his country. Born at Nimes in 1787, of an honourable +Protestant family, he died, with a verse of his favourite Corneille +or a text of Scripture on his lips, in 1874. Austere without severity, +simple in habit without rudeness, indomitable in courage, imperious +in will, gravely eloquent, he had at once the liberality and the +narrowness of the middle classes, which he represented when in power. +A threefold task, as he conceived, lies before the historian: he must +ascertain facts; he must co-ordinate these facts under laws, studying +the anatomy and the physiology of society; finally, he must present +the external physiognomy of the facts. Guizot was not endowed with +the artist's imagination; he had no sense of life, of colour, of +literary style; he was a thinker, who saw the life of the past through +the medium of ideas; he does not in his pages evoke a world of animated +forms, of passionate hearts, of vivid incidents; he distinguishes +social forces, with a view to arrive at principles; he considers those +forces in their play one upon another. + +The _Histoire Generale de la Civilisation en Europe_ and the _Histoire +de la Civilisation en France_ consist of lectures delivered from 1828 +to 1830 at the Sorbonne.[1] Guizot recognised that the study of +institutions must be preceded by a study of the society which has +given them birth. In the progress of civilisation he saw not merely +the development of communities, but also that of the individual. The +civilisation of Europe, he held, was most intelligibly exhibited in +that of France, where, more than in other countries, intellectual +and social development have moved hand in hand, where general ideas +and doctrines have always accompanied great events and public +revolutions. The key to the meaning of French history he found in +the tendency towards national and political unity. From the tenth +to the fourteenth century four great forces met in co-operation or +in conflict--royalty, the feudal system, the communes, the Church. +Feudalism fell; a great monarchy arose upon its ruins. The human mind +asserted its spiritual independence in the Protestant reformation. +The _tiers etat_ was constantly advancing in strength. The power of +the monarchy, dominant in the seventeenth century, declined in the +century that followed; the power of the people increased. In modern +society the elements of national life are reduced to two--the +government on the one hand, the people on the other; how to harmonise +these elements is the problem of modern politics. As a capital example +for the French bourgeoisie, Guizot, returning to an early work, made +a special study of the great English revolution of the seventeenth +century. In Germany, of the preceding century, the revolution was +religious and not political. In France, of the succeeding century, +the revolution was political and not religious. The rare good fortune +of England lay in the fact that the spirit of religious faith and +the spirit of political freedom ruled together, and co-operated +towards a common result. + +[Footnote 1: The _History of Civilisation in France_ closes with the +fourteenth century.] + +The work of FRANCOIS MIGNET (1796-1884), eminent for its research, +exactitude, clearness, ordonnance, has been censured for its +historical fatalism. In reality Mignet's mind was too studious of +facts to be dominated by a theory. He recognised the great forces +which guide and control events; he recognised also the power and +freedom of the individual will. His early _Histoire de la Revolution +Francaise_ is a sane and lucid arrangement of material that came to +his hands in chaotic masses. His later and more important writings +deal with his special province, the sixteenth century; his method, +as he advanced, grew more completely objective; we discern his ideas +through the lines of a well-proportioned architecture. + +The analytic method of Guizot, supported by a method of patient +induction, was applied by ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE (1805-59) to the study +of the great phenomenon of modern democracy. Limiting the area of +investigation to America, which he had visited on a public mission, +he investigated the political organisation, the manners and morals, +the ideas, the habits of thought and feeling of the United States +as influenced by the democratic equality of conditions. He wrote as +a liberal in whom the spirit of individualism was active. He regarded +the progress of democracy in the modern world as inevitable; he +perceived the dangers--formidable for society and for individual +character--which accompany that progress; he believed that by +foresight and wise ordering many of the dangers could be averted. +The fears and hopes of the citizen guided and sustained in Tocqueville +a philosophical intelligence. Turning from America to France, he +designed to disengage from the tangle of events the true historical +significance of the Revolution. Only one volume, _L'Ancien Regime +et la Revolution_, was accomplished. It can stand alone as a work +of capital importance. In the great upheaval he saw that all was not +progress; the centralisation of power under the old regime remained, +and was rendered even more formidable than before; the sentiment of +equality continued to advance in its inevitable career; unhappily +the spirit of liberty was not always its companion, its moderator, +or its guide. + +ADOLPHE THIERS (1797-1877) was engaged at the same time as Mignet, +his lifelong friend, upon a history of the French Revolution (1823-27). +The same liberal principles were held in common by the young authors. +Their methods differed widely: Mignet's orderly and compact +narration was luminous through its skilful arrangement; Thiers' +_Histoire_ was copious, facile, brilliant, more just in its general +conception than exact in statement, a plea for revolutionary +patriotism as against the royalist reaction of the day, and not +without influence in preparing the spirit of the country for the +approaching Revolution of July. His _Histoire du Consulat et de +l'Empire_ (1845-62) is the great achievement of Thiers' maturity; +journalist, orator, minister of state, until he became the chief of +stricken France in 1871 his highest claim to be remembered was this +vast record of his country's glory. He had an appetite for facts; +no detail--the price of bread, of soap, of candles--was a matter of +indifference to him; he could not show too many things, or show them +too clearly; his supreme quality was intelligence; his passion was +the pride of patriotism; his foible was the vanity of military success, +the zeal of a chauvinist. He was a liberal; but Napoleon summed up +France, and won her battles, therefore Napoleon, the great captain, +who "made war with his genius and politics with his passions," must +be for ever magnified. The _coup d'etat_ of the third Napoleon owed +a debt to the liberal historian who had reconstructed the Napoleonic +legend. The campaigns and battle-pieces of Thiers are unsurpassed +in their kind. His style in narrative is facile, abundant, animated, +and so transparent that nothing seems to intervene between the object +and the reader who has become a spectator; a style negligent at times, +and even incorrect, adding no charm of its own to a lucid presentation +of things. + +JULES MICHELET, the greatest imaginative restorer of the past, the +greatest historical interpreter of the soul of ancient France, was +born in 1798 in Paris, an infant seemingly too frail and nervous to +remain alive. His early years gave him experience, brave and pathetic, +of the hardships of the poor. His father, an unsuccessful printer, +often found it difficult to procure bread or fire for his household; +but he resolved that his son should receive an education. The boy, +of a fine and sensitive organisation, knew cold and hunger; he watched +his mother toiling, and from day to day declining in health. Two +sources of consolation he found--the _Imitation_, which told him of +a Divine refuge from sorrow, and the Museum of French monuments, which +made him forget all present distress in visions of the vanished +centuries. Mocked and persecuted by his schoolfellows, he never lost +courage, and had the joy of rewarding his parents with the cross won +by his schoolboy theme. In happy country days his aunt Alexis told +him legendary tales, and read to him the old chroniclers of France. +Michelet's vocation was before long revealed, and its summons was +irresistible. + +In 1827 he published his earliest works, the _Precis de l'Histoire +Moderne_, a modest survey of a wide field, in which genius illuminated +scholarship, and a translation of the _Scienza Nuova_ of Vico, the +master who impressed him with the thought that humanity is in a +constant process of creation under the influence of the Divine ideas. +The _Histoire Romaine_ and the _Introduction a l'Histoire +Universelle_ followed; the latter a little book, written with +incredible ardour under the inspiration of the days of July. His +friend Quinet had taught him to see in history an ever-broadening +combat for freedom--in Michelet's words, "an eternal July," and the +exposition of this idea was of the nature of a philosophical +entrancement. + +A teacher at the Ecole Normale, appointed chief of the historical +section of the National Archives in 1831, Guizot's substitute at the +Sorbonne in 1833, professor of history and morals at the College de +France in 1838, Michelet lived in and for the life of his people and +of his land. The _Histoire de France_, begun in 1830, was completed +thirty-seven years later. After the disasters of the war of 1870-71, +with failing strength the author resumed his labours, endeavouring +to add, as it were, an appendix on the nineteenth century. + +A passionate searcher among original sources, published and +unpublished, handling documents as if they were things of flesh and +blood, seeing the outward forms of existence with the imaginative +eye, pressing through these to the soul of each successive epoch, +possessed by an immense pity for the obscure generations of human +toilers, having, more than almost any other modern writer, Virgil's +gift of tears, ardent in admiration, ardent in indignation, with ideas +impregnated by emotions, and emotions quickened by ideas, Michelet +set himself to resuscitate the buried past. It seemed to him that +his eminent predecessors--Guizot, Mignet, Thiers, Thierry--had each +envisaged history from some special point of view. Each had too little +of the outward body or too little of the inward soul of history. +Michelet dared to hope that a resurrection of the integral life of +the dead centuries was possible. All or nothing was his word. It was +a bold venture, but it was a venture, or rather an act, of faith. +Thierry had been tyrannised by the idea of the race: the race is much, +but the people does not march in the air; it has a geographical basis; +it draws its nutriment from a particular soil. Michelet, at the moment +of his narrative when France began to have a life distinct from Germany, +enters upon a survey of its geography, in which the physiognomy and +the genius of each region are studied as if each were a separate living +creature, and the character of France itself is discovered in the +cohesion or the unity of its various parts. Reaching the tenth and +eleventh centuries, he feels the sadness of their torpor and their +violence; yet humanity was living, and soon in the enthusiasm of +Gothic art and the enthusiasm of the Crusades the sacred aspirations +of the soul had their manifestation. At the close of the mediaeval +period everything seems to droop and decay: no! it was then, during +the Hundred Years' War, that the national consciousness was born, +and patriotism was incarnated in an armed shepherdess, child of the +people. + +By the thirteenth year of his labours--1843--Michelet had traversed +the mediaeval epoch, and reached the close of the reign of Louis XI. +There he paused. Seeing one day high on the tower of Reims Cathedral, +below which the kings of France received their consecration, a group +or garland of tortured and mutilated figures carved in stone, the +thought possessed him that the soul and faith of the people should +be confirmed within his own soul before he could trust himself to +treat of the age of the great monarchy. He leaped at once the +intervening centuries, and was at work during eight years--from 1845 +to 1853--on the French Revolution. He found a hero for his +revolutionary epic in the people. + +The temper of 1848 was hardly the temper in which the earlier +Revolution could be judiciously investigated. Michelet and Quinet +had added to their democratic zeal the passions connected with an +anticlerical campaign. The violence of liberalism was displayed in +_Des Jesuites_, and _Du Pretre, de la Femme et de la Famille_. When +the historian returned to the sixteenth century his spirit had +undergone a change: he adored the Middle Ages; but was it not the +period of the domination of the Church, and how could it be other +than evil? He could no longer be a mere historian; he must also be +a prophet. The volumes which treat of the Reformation, the Renaissance, +the wars of religion, are as brilliant as earlier volumes, but they +are less balanced and less coherent. The equilibrium between +Michelet's intellect and his imagination, between his ideas and his +passions, was disturbed, if not destroyed. + +Michelet, who had been deprived of his chair in the College de France, +lost also his post in the Archives upon his refusal, in 1852, to swear +allegiance to the Emperor. Near Nantes in his tempest-beaten home, +near Genoa in a fold of the Apennines, where he watched the lizards +sleep or slide, a great appeasement came upon his spirit. He had +interpreted the soul of the people; he would now interpret the soul +of humbler kinsfolk--the bird, the insect; he would interpret the +inarticulate soul of the mountain and the sea. He studied other +documents--the documents of nature--with a passion of love, read +their meanings, and mingled as before his own spirit with theirs. +_L'Oiseau_, _L'Insecte_, _La Mer_, _La Montagne_, are canticles in +prose by a learned lover of the external world, rather than essays +in science; often extravagant in style, often extreme in sentiment, +and uncontrolled in imagination, but always the betrayals of genius. + +Michelet's faults as an historian are great, and such as readily +strike an English reader. His rash generalisations, his lyrical +outbreaks, his Pindaric excitement, his verbiage assuming the place +of ideas, his romantic excess, his violence in ecclesiastical affairs, +his hostility to our country, his mysticism touched with sensuality, +his insistence on physiological details, his quick and irregular +utterance--these trouble at times his imaginative insight, and mar +his profound science in documents. He died at Hyeres in 1874, hoping +that God would grant him reunion with his lost ones, and the joys +promised to those who have sought and loved. + +EDGAR QUINET (1803-1875), the friend and brother-in-arms of Michelet +in his attack upon the Jesuits, born at Bourg, of a Catholic father +and a Protestant mother, approached the study of literature and +history with that tendency to large _vues d'ensemble_ which was +natural to his mind, and which had been strengthened by discipleship +to Herder. Happy in temper, sound of conscience, generous of heart, +he illuminated many subjects, and was a complete master of none. A +poet of lofty intentions, in his _Ahasverus_ (1833)--the wandering +Jew, type of humanity in its endless Odyssey--in his _Napoleon_, his +_Promethee_, his vast encyclopaedic allegory _Merlin l'Enchanteur_ +(1860), his poetry lacked form, and yielded itself to the rhetoric +of the intellect. + +In the _Genie des Religions_ Quinet endeavoured to exhibit the +religious idea as the germinative power of civilisation, giving its +special character to the political and social idea. _La Revolution_, +which is perhaps his most important work, attempts to replace the +Revolutionary hero-worship, the Girondin and Jacobin legends, by a +faithful interpretation of the meaning of events. The principles of +modern society and the principles of the Roman Catholic Church, Quinet +regarded as incapable of conciliation. In the incompetence of the +leaders to perceive and apply this truth, and in the fatal logic of +their violent and anarchic methods, lay, as he believed, the causes +of the failure which followed the bright hopes of 1789. In 1848 Quinet +was upon the barricades; the Empire drove him into exile. In his elder +years, like Michelet, he found a new delight in the study of nature. +_La Creation_ (1870) exhibits the science of nature and that of human +history as presenting the same laws and requiring kindred methods. +It closes with the prophecy of science that creation is not yet fully +accomplished, and that a nobler race will enter into the heritage +of our humanity. + + +II + +Literary criticism in the eighteenth century had been the criticism +of taste or the criticism of dogma; in the nineteenth century it became +naturalistic--a natural history of individual minds and their +products, a natural history of works of art as formed or modified +by social, political, and moral environments, and by the tendencies +of races. Such criticism must inevitably have followed the growth +of the comparative study of literatures in an age dominated by the +scientific spirit. If we are to name any single writer as its founder, +we must name Mme. de Stael. The French nation, she explained in +_L'Allemagne_, inclines towards what is classical; the Teutonic +nations incline towards what is romantic. She cares not to say whether +classical or romantic art should be preferred; it is enough to show +that the difference of taste results not from accidental causes, but +from the primitive sources of imagination and of thought. + +The historical tendency, proceeding from the eighteenth century, +influenced alike the study of philosophy, of politics, and of +literature. While Cousin gave an historical interpretation of +philosophy, and Guizot applied history to the exposition of politics, +a third eminent professor, ABEL-FRANCOIS VILLEMAIN (1790-1870) was +illuminating literature with the light of history. An accomplished +classical scholar, a student of English, Italian, and Spanish authors, +Villemain, in his _Tableau de la Litterature au Moyen Age_, and his +more admirable _Tableau de la Litterature au XVIIIe Siecle_, viewed +a wide prospect, and could not apply a narrow rule to the measurement +of all that he saw. He did not formulate a method of criticism; but +instinctively he directed criticism towards history. He perceived +the correspondence between literary products and the other phenomena +of the age; he observed the movement in the spirit of a period; he +passed from country to country; he made use of biography as an aid +in the study of letters. His learning was at times defective; his +views often superficial; he suffered from his desire to entertain +his audience or to capture them by rhetoric. Yet Villemain served +letters well, and, accepted as a master by the young critics of the +_Globe_, he prepared the way for Sainte-Beuve. + +While such criticism as that of Villemain was maintained by Saint-Marc +Girardin (1801-73), professor of French poetry at the Sorbonne, the +dogmatic or doctrinaire school of criticism was represented with rare +ability by DESIRE NISARD (1806-88). His capital work, the _Histoire +de la Litterature Francaise_, the labour of many years, is +distinguished by a magisterial application of ideas to the decision +of literary questions. Criticism with Nisard is not a natural history +of minds, nor a study of historical developments, so much as the +judgment of literary art in the light of reason. He confronts each +book on which he pronounces judgment with that ideal of its species +which he has formed in his own mind: he compares it with the ideal +of the genius of France, which attains its highest ends rather through +discipline than through freedom; he compares it with the ideal of +the French language; finally, he compares it with the ideal of +humanity as seen in the best literature of the world. According to +the result of the comparison he delivers condemnation or awards the +crown. In French literature, at its best, he perceives a marvellous +equilibrium of the faculties under the control of reason; it applies +general ideas to life; it avoids individual caprice; it dreads the +chimeras of imagination; it is eminently rational; it embodies ideas +in just and measured form. Such literature Nisard found in the great +age of Louis XIV. Certain gains there may have been in the eighteenth +century, but these gains were more than counterbalanced by losses. +To disprove the saying that there is no disputing about tastes, to +establish an order and a hierarchy in letters, to regulate +intellectual pleasures, was Nisard's aim; but in attempting to +constitute an exact science founded upon general principles, he too +often derived those principles from the attractions and repulsions +of his individual taste. Criticism retrograded in his hands; yet, +in retrograding, it took up a strong position: the influence of such +a teacher was not untimely when facile sympathies required the +guidance or the check of a director. + +The admirable critic of the romantic school, CHARLES-AUGUSTIN +SAINTE-BEUVE (1804-69), developed, as time went on, into the great +critic of the naturalistic method. In his _Tableau de la Poesie +Francaise au XVIe Siecle_ he found ancestors for the romantic poets +as much older than the ancestors of classical art in France as Ronsard +is older than Malherbe. Wandering endlessly from author to author +in his _Portraits Litteraires_ and _Portraits Contemporains_, he +studied in all its details what we may term the physiology of each. +The long research of spirits connected with his most sustained work, +_Port-Royal_, led him to recognise certain types or families under +which the various minds of men can be grouped and classified. During +a quarter of a century he investigated, distinguished, defined in +the vast collection of little monographs which form the _Causeries +du Lundt_ and the _Nouveaux Lundis_. They formed, as it were, a natural +history of intellects and temperaments; they established a new method, +and illustrated that method by a multitude of examples. + +Never was there a more mobile spirit; but he was as exact and +sure-footed as he was mobile. When we have allowed for certain +personal jealousies or hostilities, and for an excessive attraction +towards what may be called the morbid anatomy of minds, we may give +our confidence with scarcely a limit to the psychologist critic +Sainte-Beuve. Poet, novelist, student of medicine, sceptic, believer, +socialist, imperialist--he traversed every region of ideas; as soon +as he understood each position he was free to leave it behind. He +did not pretend to reduce criticism to a science; he hoped that at +length, as the result of numberless observations, something like a +science might come into existence. Meanwhile he would cultivate the +relative and distrust the absolute. He would study literary products +through the persons of their authors; he would examine each detail; +he would inquire into the physical characteristics of the subject +of his investigation; view him through his ancestry and among his +kinsfolk; observe him in the process of education; discover him among +his friends and contemporaries; note the moment when his genius first +unfolded itself; note the moment when it was first touched with decay; +approach him through admirers and disciples; approach him through +his antagonists or those whom he repelled; and at last, if that were +possible, find some illuminating word which resumes the results of +a completed study. There is no "code Sainte-Beuve" by which off-hand +to pronounce literary judgments; a method of Sainte-Beuve there is, +and it is the method which has best served the study of literature +in the nineteenth century. + + * * * * * + +Here this survey of a wide field finds its limit. The course of French +literature since 1850 may be studied in current criticism; it does +not yet come within the scope of literary history. The product of +these years has been manifold and great; their literary importance +is attested by the names--among many others--of Leconte de Lisle, +Sully Prudhomme, Verlaine, in non-dramatic poetry; of Augier and the +younger Dumas in the theatre; of Flaubert, Edmond and Jules de +Goncourt, Zola, Daudet, Bourget, Pierre Loti, Anatole France, in +fiction; of Taine and Renan in historical study and criticism; of +Fromentin in the criticism of art; of Scherer, Brunetiere, Faguet, +Lemaitre, in the criticism of literature. + +The dominant fact, if we discern it aright, has been the scientific +influence, turning poetry from romantic egoism to objective art, +directing the novel and the drama to naturalism and to the study of +social environments, informing history and criticism with the spirit +of curiosity, and prompting research for laws of evolution. Whether +the spiritualist tendency observable at the present moment be a +symptom of languor and fatigue, or the indication of a new moral energy, +future years will determine. + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY + + +The following notes are designed as an indication of some books which +may be useful to students. + +Of the many Histories of French Literature the fullest and most +trustworthy is that at present in course of publication under the +editorship of M. Petit de Julleville, _Histoire de la Langue et de +la Litterature francaise_ (A. Colin et Cie.). M. Lanson's _Histoire +de la Litterature francaise_ should be in the hands of every student, +and this may be supplemented by M. Lintilhac's _Litterature +francaise_ (2 vols.). + +The works of Mr. Saintsbury, Geruzez, Demogeot, are widely known, +and have proved useful during many years. Much may be learnt and learnt +pleasantly from Paul Albert's volumes on the literature of the +sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Two +volumes out of five of M. Charles Gidel's _Histoire de la Litterature +francaise_ (Lemerre) are occupied with literature from 1815 to 1886. +M. Hermann Pergamini's _Histoire generale de la Litterature +francaise_ (Alcan) sometimes gives fresh and interesting views. For +a short school history by an accomplished scholar, none is better +than M. Petit de Julleville's _Histoire de la Litterature francaise_, +which, in 555 pages, packs a great deal of information. The _Histoire +elementaire de la Litterature francaise_, by M. Jean Fleury, has been +popular; it tells much of the contents of great books, and makes no +assumption that the reader is already acquainted with them. Dr. +Warren's _A Primer of French Literature_ (Heath, Boston, U.S.A.) is +well proportioned and well arranged, but it has room for little more +than names, dates, and the briefest characterisations. Dr. Wells's +_Modern French Literature_ (Roberts, Boston, U.S.A.) sketches French +literature to Chateaubriand, and treats with considerable fulness +the literature from Chateaubriand and Mme. de Stael to the present +time. For the present century M. G. Pellissier's _Le Mouvement +litteraire au XIXe Siecle_ is valuable. + +Of elder histories that by Nisard is by far the most distinguished, +the work of a scholar and a thinker. (See the final section of the +present volume.) + +The student will find Merlet's _Etudes litteraires sur les Classiques +francais_ (2 vols.), revised and enlarged by M. Lintilhac, highly +instructive; the second volume is wholly occupied with Corneille, +Racine, and Moliere. + +For the history of the French theatre the best introduction is M. +Petit de Julleville's _Le Theatre en France_; it may be supplemented +by M. Brunetiere's _Les Epoques du Theatre francais_. Learning wide +and exact, and original thought, characterise all the work of M. +Brunetiere; each of his many volumes should be searched by the student +for what he may need. The studies of M. Faguet on the writers of the +sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries are the +work of a critic who is penetrating in his psychological study of +authors, and who, just or unjust, is always suggestive. For numberless +little monographs the student may turn to Sainte-Beuve. Monographs +on a larger scale will be found in the admirable series of _Grands +Ecrivains francais_ (Hachette); the _Classiques populaires_ (Lecene, +Oudin et Cie.) are in some instances no less scholarly. The writings +of Scherer, of M. Jules Lemaitre, and of M. Anatole France are +especially valuable on nineteenth-century literature. The best study +of French historical literature is Professor Flint's _The Philosophy +of History_ (1893). + +Provided with such books as these the student will hardly need the +general histories of French literature by German writers. I may name +Prof. Bornhak's _Geschichte der Franzosischen Literatur_, and the +more popular history by Engel (4th ed., 1897). Lotheissen's +_Geschichte der Franzosischen Literatur im XVII. Jahrhundert_ seems +to me the best book on the period. The monographs in German are +numberless. + +The editions of authors in the _Grands Ecrivains de la France_ are +of the highest authority. The best anthology of French poetry is +Crepet's _Les Poetes francais_ (4 vols.). Small anthologies of French +poetry since the fifteenth century, and of French lyrical poets of +the nineteenth century, are published by Lemerre. + +The list which follows is taken partly from books which I have used +in writing this volume, partly from the Bibliography in M. Lintilhac's +_Histoire de la Litterature francaise_. To name English writers and +books seems unnecessary. + + +THE MIDDLE AGES + +_Histoire litteraire de la France_ (a vast repertory on mediaeval +literature). + +GASTON PARIS. _La Litterature francaise au moyen Age_. 1890. + +AUBERTIN. _Hist. de la Langue et de la Litt. francaises au moyen Age_. +2 vols. 1883. + +G. PARIS. _La Poesie du moyen Age_. 2 vols. 1887. + +LEON GAUTIER. _Les Epopees francaises_. 2nd edition. 4 vols. 1878-94. + +J. BEDIER. _Les Fabliaux, Etudes de Litt. populaire et d'Histoire +litt. du moyen Age_. 1895. + +L. SUDRE. _Les Sources du Roman de Renart_. 1893. + +LENIENT. _La Satire en France au moyen Age_. 1883. + +E. LANGLOIS. _Origines et Sources du Roman de la Rose_. 1890. + +A. DEBIDOUR. _Les Chroniqueurs_. 2 vols. 1892. (_Classiques +populaires_.) + +A. JEANROY. _Les Origines de la Poesie lyrique en France_. 1889. + +CLEDAT. _Rutebeuf_. 1891. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +MARY DARMESTETER. _Froissart_. 1894. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +A. SARRADIN. _Eustache Deschamps_. 1879. + +C. BEAUFILS. _Etude sur la Vie et les Poesies de Charles d'Orleans_. +1861. + +A. CAMPAUX. _Francois Villon_. 1859. + +A. LONGNON. _Etude biographique sur. Fr. Villon_. 1877. + +LECOY DE LA MARCHE. _La Chaire fr. au moyen Age_. 1886. + +PETIT DE JULLEVILLE. _Les Mysteres_. 2 vols. 1880. + +PETIT DE JULLEVILLE. _Les Comediens en Fr. au moyen Age_. 1885. + +PETIT DE JULLEVILLE. _La Comedie et les Moeurs en France au moyen +Age_. 1886. + +PETIT DE JULLEVILLE. _Repertoire du Theatre comique en France au moyen +Age_. 1885. + +FAGUET. _XVIe Siecle_. 1894. (On Commines.) + +MERLET. _Etudes litt._ (On Villehardouin, Froissart, Commines.) +Edited by Lintilhac. 1894. + +L. CLEDAT. _La Poesie du moyen Age_. 1893. (_Classiques populaires_.) + + +SIXTEENTH CENTURY + +A. DARMESTETER ET A. HATZFELD. _Le XVIe Siecle en France_. 1878. + +FAGUET. _XVIe Siecle_. 1894. + +SAINTE-BEUVE. _Tableau historique et critique de la Poesie fr. au +XVIe Siecle_. + +L. FEUGERE. _Caracteres et Portraits litt. du XVIe Siecle_. 1859. + +EGGER. _L'Hellenisme en France_. 1869. + +FAGUET. _La Tragedie fr. au XVIe Siecle_. 1883. + +E. CHASLES. _La Comedie en France au XVIe Siecle_. 1862. + +E. BOURCIEZ. _Les Moeurs polies et la Litt. de Cour sous Henri II._ +1886. + +P. STAPFER. _Rabelais_. 1889. + +R. MILLET. _Rabelais_. 1892. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +E. GEBHART. _Rabelais, la Renaissance et la Reforme_. 1895. + +HAAG ET BORDIER. _La France protestante_. 2nd edition. (Vols. i.-vi. +have appeared.) + +F. BUNGENER. _Calvin, sa Vie, son OEuvre et ses Ecrits_. 1862. + +A. BIRSCH-HIRSCHFELD. _Geschichte der Franzosischen Litteratur, +seit Anfang des XVI. Jahrhunderts_. Erster Band: _Das Zeitalter der +Renaissance_. 1889. + +EBERT. _Entwickelungs-Geschichte der Fr. Tragodie, vornamlich im XVI. +Jahrhundert_. 1856. + +F. GODEFROY. _Histoire de la Litt. fr. depuis le XVIe Siecle jusqu'a +nos Jours_. 1878. + +G. MERLET. _Les grands Ecrivains du XVIe Siecle_. 1875. + +C. LENIENT. _La Satire en France, ou la Litt. militante au XVIe Siecle_. +1886. + +E. COUGNY. _Guillaume du Vair_. 1857. + +A. SAYOUS. _Etudes litt. sur les Ecrivains fr. de la Reformation_. +1854. + +A. VINET. _Moralistes des XVIe et XVIIe Siecles_. 1859. + +P. STAPFER. _Montaigne_. 1895. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +P. BONNEFON. _Montaigne, l'Homme et l'OEuvre_. 1893. + +SAINT-MARC GIRARDIN. _Tableau de la Litt. fr. au XVIe Siecle_. 1862. + +CH. NORMAND. _Monluc_. (_Classiques populaires_.) + +G. BIZOS. _Ronsard_. (_Classiques populaires_.) + +GERUZEZ. _Essais d'Histoire litt._ 1853. + +P. MORILLOT. _Discours sur la Vie et les OEuvres d'Agrippa d'Aubigne_. +1884. + +H. PERGAMINI. _La Satire au XVIe Siecle et les Tragiques d'Agrippa +d'Aubigne_. 1881. + + +SEVENTEENTH CENTURY + +F. LOTHEISSEN. _Geschichte der Franzosischen Litteratur im XVII. +Jahrhundert_. 2 vols. 1897. + +A. DUPUY. _Histoire de la Litt. fr. au XVIIe Siecle_. 1892. + +LE R. PERE G. LONGHAYE. _Histoire de la Litt. fr. au XVIIe Siecle_. +1895. + +J. DEMOGEOT. _Tableau de la Litt. fr. au XVIIe Siecle avant Corneille +et Descartes_. 1859. + +LE DUC DE BROGLIE. _Malherbe_. 1897. (_Grands Ecrivains fr_.) + +V. COUSIN. _La Societe fr. au XVIIe Siecle_. 1858. + +V. COUSIN. _Mme. de Sable_. 1882. + +V. COUSIN. _Jacqueline Pascal_. 1878. + +V. COUSIN. _La Jeunesse de Mme. de Longueville_. 1853. + +V. COUSIN. _Mme. de Longueville et la Fronde_. 1859. + +G. LARROUMET. Introduction to edition of _Les Precieuses ridicules_. +1884. + +A. LE BRETON. _Le Roman au XVIIe Siecle_. 1890. + +SAINTE-BEUVE. _Portraits de Femmes_. 1855. + +A. BOURGOIN. _Valentin Conrart_. 1883. + +A. BOURGOIN. _Les Maitres de la Critique au XVIIe Siecle_. 1889. + +PELLISSON ET D'OLIVET. _Histoire de l'Academie fr._ 2 vols. 1858. + +E. ROY. _Etude sur Charles Sorel_. 1893. + +P. MORILLOT. _Scarron et le Genre burlesque_. 1888. + +P. MORILLOT. _Le Roman en France depuis 1610 jusqu'a nos Jours_. + +A. FOUILLEE. _Descartes_. 1893. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +F. BOUILLIER. _Histoire de la Philosophie cartesienne_. 2 vols. 1868. + +E. RIGAL. _Alexandre Hardy et le Theatre fr._ 1889. + +E. RIGAL. _Esquisse d'une Histoire des Theatres de Paris de 1548 a +1635_. 1887. + +GUIZOT. _Corneille et son Temps_. 1880. + +G. REYNIER. _Thomas Corneille, sa Vie et son Theatre_. 1892. + +P. MONCEAUX. _Racine_. (_Classiques populaires_.) + +SAINTE-BEUVE. _Port-Royal_. 7 vols. 1888. + +E. DESCHANEL. _Le Romantisme des Classiques_. 1883. + +P. STAPFER. _Racine et Victor Hugo_. 1887. + +G. LARROUMET. _La Comedie de Moliere_. 1889. + +H. DURAND. _Moliere_. 1889. (_Classiques populaires_.) + +MAHRENHOLTZ. _Molieres Leben und Werke_. 1881. + +V. FOURNEL. _Le Theatre au XVIIe Siecle: la Comedie_. 1888. + +H. RIGAULT. _Hist. de la Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes_. 1856. + +P. MORILLOT. _Boileau_. (_Classiques populaires_.) + +G. LANSON. _Boileau_. 1892. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +G. LAFENESTRE. _La Fontaine_. 1895. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +H. TAINE. _La Fontaine et ses Fables_. 1879. + +PREVOST-PARADOL. _Les Moralistes fr._ 1865. + +P. JANET. _Les Passions et les Caracteres dans la Litt. du XVIIe +Siecle_. 1888. + +PELLISSON. _La Bruyere_. 1892. (_Classiques populaires_.) + +JACQUINET. _Des Predicateurs du XVIIe Siecle avant Bossuet_. 1863. + +G. LANSON. _Bossuet_. 1891. (_Classiques populaires_.) + +A. FEUGERE. _Bourdaloue, sa Predication et son Temps_. 1874. + +LEHANNEUR. _Mascaron_. 1878. + +L'ABBE FABRE. _Flechier orateur_. 1885. + +L'ABBE BAYLE. _Massillon_ 1867. + +G. BIZOS. _Fenelon_. 1887. (_Classiques populaires_.) + +P. JANET. _Fenelon_. 1892. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +R. VALLERY RADOT. _Mme. de Sevigne_. 1888. (_Classiques +populaires_.) + +G. BOISSIER. _Mme. de Sevigne_. 1887. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +CTE. D'HAUSSONVILLE. _Mme. de la Fayette_. 1891. (_Grands Ecrivains +fr._) + +G. BOISSIER. _Saint-Simon_. 1892. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +J. BOURDEAU. _La Rochefoucauld_. 1895. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + + +EIGHTEENTH CENTURY + +H. HETTNER. _Literaturgeschichte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts: +Zweiter Theil_. 1872. + +VILLEMAIN. _Tableau de la Litt. au XVIIIe Siecle_. 4 vols. 1841. + +DE BARANTE. _Tableau de la Litt. fr. au XVIIIe Siecle_. 1856. + +BERSOT. _Etudes sur le XVIIIe Siecle_. 1852. + +VINET. _Hist. de la Litt. fr. au XVIIIe Siecle_. 1853. + +J. BARNI. _Hist. des Idees morales et politiques en France au XVIIIe +Siecle_. 1865. + +CARO. _La Fin du XVIIIe Siecle_. 1881. + +TAINE. _Les Origines de la France contemporaine_. 1882. (Vol. i.) + +A. SOREL. _Montesquieu_. 1889. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +H. LEBASTEUR. _Buffon_. 1888. (_Classiques populaires_.) + +M. PALEOLOGUE. _Vauvenargues_. 1890. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +G. DESNOIRESTERRES. _Voltaire et la Societe au XVIIIe Siecle_. 8 vols. +1871-76. + +E. FAGUET. _Voltaire_. 1895. (_Classiques populaires_.) + +A. CHUQUET. _J.-J. Rousseau_. 1893. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +H. BEAUDOUIN. _La Vie et les OEuvres de J.-J. Rousseau_. 1871. + +SAINT-MARC GIRARDIN. _J.-J. Rousseau, sa Vie et ses Ouvrages_. 2 vols. +1875. + +CH. LENIENT. _La Comedie en France au XVIIIe Siecle_. 2 vols. 1888. + +E. LINTILHAC. _Lesage_. 1893. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +E. LINTILHAC. _Beaumarchais et ses Ouvres_. 1887. + +A. HALLAYS. _Beaumarchais_. 1897. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +LEO CLARETIE. _Essai sur Lesage romancier_. 1890. + +LEO CLARETIE. _Florian_. 1888. (_Classiques populaires_.) + +G. LARROUMET. _Marivaux, sa Vie et ses OEuvres_. 1882. + +J. REINACH. _Diderot_. 1894. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +J. BERTRAND. _D'Alembert_. 1889. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +L. SAY. _Turgot_. 1889. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + + +REVOLUTION AND NINETEENTH CENTURY + +E. GERUZEZ. _Hist. de la Litt. fr. pendant la Revolution_. 1881. + +E. ROUSSE. _Mirabeau_. 1891. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +DE LESCURE. _Rivarol et la Societe fr. pendant la Revolution et +l'Emigration_. 1883. + +DE LESCURE. _Bernardin de Saint-Pierre_. (_Classiques populaires_.) + +DE LESCURE. _Chateaubriand_. 1892. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +G. MERLET. _Tableau de la Litt. fr._ 1800-1815. 1883. + +ARVEDE BARINE. _Bernardin de Saint-Pierre_. 1892. (_Grands Ecrivains +fr._) + +SAINTE-BEUVE. _Chateaubriand et son Groupe litt._ 2 vols. 1889. + +A. BARDOUX. _Chateaubriand_. 1893. (_Classiques populaires_.) + +A. SOREL. _Mme. de Stael_. 1893. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +G. BRANDES. _Die Hauptstromungen der Litteratur des 19 Jahrhundert_. +Vol. v. 1894. + +E. FAGUET. _Politiques et Moralistes du XIXe Siecle_. 1891. + +G. PELLISSIER. _Le Mouvement litteraire au XIXe Siecle_. 1893. + +TH. GAUTIER. _Histoire de Romantisme_. 1874. + +E. ROD. _Lamartine_. 1893. (_Classiques populaires_.) + +E. DESCHANEL. _Lamartine_. 2 vols. 1893. + +E. BIRE. _Victor Hugo avant_ 1830. 1883. + +E. DUPUY. _V. Hugo, l'Homme et le Poete_. 1887. + +M. PALEOLOGUE. _Alfred de Vigny_. 1891. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +DORISON. _Alfred de Vigny, Poete et Philosophe_. 1892. + +A. BARINE. _Alfred de Musset_. 1893. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +A. CLAVEAU. _Alfred de Musset_. (_Classiques populaires_.) + +M. DU CAMP. _Theophile Gautier_. 1890. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +G. COGORDAN. _Joseph de Maistre_. 1894. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +E. SPULLER. _Lamennais, sa Vie et ses OEuvres_. 1893. + +J. SIMON. _Victor Cousin_. 1887. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +E. CARO. _George Sand_. 1887. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +E. ROD. _Stendhal_. 1892. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +F. CORREARD. _Michelet_. 1887. (_Classiques populaires_.) + +P. DE REMUSAT. _Thiers_. 1889. (_Grands Ecrivains fr._) + +E. ZEVORT. _Thiers_. 1892. (_Classiques populaires_.) + +A. FILON. _Merimee et ses Amis_. 1894. + +BRUNETIERE. _L'Evolution de la Poesie lyrique en France au XIXe +Siecle_. 2 vols. 1894. + + + + +INDEX + + +Abondance, Jean d', 75 + +Adam de la Halle, 26, 27, 72 + +Alarcon, 167 + +Alberic de Briancon, 17 + +_Alexis, Vie de Saint_, 4 + +_Amadis des Gaules_, 23, 92 + +_Amis et Amiles_, 12 + +Amyot, Jacques, 96-97 + +Andrieux, 336 + +Anne of Austria, 201 + +Argenson, Marquis d', 304 _note_ + +Armentieres, Peronne d', 59 + +Arnauld, Antoine, 153, 156-157, 184, 185, 215 + +Arnauld, Jacqueline, 155 + +Arnault, 335 + +Arouet, _see_ Voltaire + +Aubigne, Agrippa d', 112, 113, 115, 117-119 + +_Aucassin et Nicolette_, 22 + +Aulnoy, Mme. d', 243 + +Auvergne, Martial d', 63 + + +Baif, Antoine de, 98, 103 + +Ballanche, 357 + +Baltus, 245 + +Balzac, Guez de, 149-150, 177 + +Balzac, Honore de, 404-408 + +Baour-Lormian, 336, 337 + +Barante, 412 + +Barbier, Auguste, 391 + +Barbieri, Nicolo, 198 + +_Barlaam et Joasaph_, 5 + +Barnave, 339 + +Baron, 207, 229, 262 + +Bartas, Du, 117 + +Barthelemy, Abbe, 329 + +Basoche, La, 76 + +Bassompierre, 239 + +Batteux, Charles, 306 + +Baude, Henri, 63 + +Bayle, Pierre, 245-247 + +Beaulieu, Geoffroy de, 51 + +Beaumarchais, 265, 323-325 + +Bejart, Armande, 200 + +Bejart, Madeleine, 198 + +Bellay, Jean du, 88 + +Bellay, Joachim du, 98, 99, 100, 104-105 + +Belleau, Remi, 98, 103-104 + +Benedictines, the, 254 + +Benoit de Sainte-More, 15 + +Benserade, 140, 208 + +Beranger, J.-P. de, 366-367 + +Bercuire, Pierre, 46 + +Bernard, 258 + +Bernard, Saint, 44 + +Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, 272, 325-329 + +Bernay, Alexandre de, 16 + +Bernis, 258 + +Beroul, 19 + +Bertaut, Jean, 106 + +Bertin, 258 + +Beyle, Henri, 366, 398-399 + +Beze, Theodore de, 94, 107 + +Bichat, 341 + +_Bien-Avise, Mal-Avise_, 72 + +Blanc, Louis, 412 + +Blois, Gui de, 54 + +Bodel, Jean, 67 + +Bodin, Jean, 111 + +Boetie, La, 96, 122 + +Boileau, Nicolas, 183-189, 241, 242 + +Boisguillebert, 304 + +Boissonade, J.-F., 354 + +Bolingbroke, 284 + +Bonald, Vicomte de, 357 + +Bonnet, Charles, 302 _note_ + +Bossuet, Jacques-Benigne, 139, 153, 202, 219-226, 233, 276 + +Bouillon, Duchesse de, 190, 191, 214 + +Bounin, Gabriel, 107 + +Bourdaloue, 202, 227 + +Boursault, 207 + +Brantome, 113-114 + +Bretel, Jacques, 26 + +Brizeux, Auguste, 391 + +Buchanan, 106 + +Bude, Guillaume, 82, 87 + +Buffon, 308-310, 327 + +Bunbury, Lydia, 373 + +Bussy-Rabutin, 176, 179 + + +Cabanis, 301 + +Calas, Jean, 287 + +Calvin, Jean, 92-94 + +Campan, Mme. de, 253 + +Campistron, 259 + +Camus, Bishop, 132, 141 + +Cantillon, 305 + +Cato, Angelo, 56 + +Caumartin, de, 283 + +Caumartin, Mme. de, 176 + +Caylus, Count de, 329 + +Caylus, Mme. de, 253 + +_Cent Nouvelles nouvelles_, 66 + +Chamfort, 322 + +Chapelain, Jean, 141, 147, 149, 162, 177, 186 + +Chapelle, 153, 184, 192 + +Charles, Mme., 368 + +Charron, Pierre, 126-127 + +Chartier, Alain, 60-61 + +Chastelain, Georges, 65 + +Chateaubriand, 328, 343, 348-353 + +Chatelain de Couci, the, 27 + +Chatelet, Mme. du, 285, 286 + +Chaulieu, 256 + +Chenedolle, 337 + +Chenier, Andre, 329-331, 338 + +Chenier, Marie-Joseph, 335, 337 + +Chesterfield, Lord, 275 + +Chrestien, 116 + +Chretien de Troyes, 17, 21 + +Christine de Pisan, 60 + +Clari, Robert de, 49 + +Clermont, Mlle. de, 275 + +Collin d'Harleville, 336 + +Commines, Philippe de, 55-57 + +Comte, Auguste, 255, 360-361 + +Condillac, 301 + +Condorcet, 255, 303-304 + +Confrerie de la Passion, 68, 71, 160 + +Conon de Bethune, 27 + +Conrart, Valentin, 147 + +Constant, Benjamin, 345, 411 + +Coquillard, 63 + +Coras, 214 + +Corneille, Pierre, 139, 163-170, 204 + +Corneille, Thomas, 171-172, 206 + +Cotin, 186, 205 + +Coulanges, Abbe de, 177 + +Coulanges, Mme. de, 179 + +Courier, Paul-Louis, 354-355 + +Cousin Victor, 358-359 + +Crebillon, P. J. de, 259-260 + +Cretin, 65 + +Creuse de Lesser, 337 + +Cuvier, 341 + +_Cuvier, Le_, 75 + +Cyrano de Bergerac, 145-146, 197 + + +Dacier, Mme., 243 + +D'Aguesseau, 299 + +D'Alembert, 254, 295 + +Danchet, 259 + +Dancourt, 262 + +Dangeau, 239 + +Daniel, 254 + +_Danse Macabre_, 63 + +Danton, 338, 339 + +Daubenton, 309 + +Daunou, 411 + +Daurat, Jean, 98 + +_Debats, Journal de_, 338 + +De Belloy, 261 + +De Broglie, 412 + +_Decade Philosophique_, 338 + +De Feletz, 342 + +Deffand, Mme. du, 253, 322 + +Deforis, 221 + +Delatouche, 401 + +Delavigne, Casimir, 395 + +Delille, 257-258 + +Desaugiers, 336 + +Desbordes-Valmore, Mme., 391 + +Descartes, Rene, 150-153 + +Deschamps, Antony, 366 + +Deschamps, Emile, 366 + +Desfontaines, 300 + +Desmarets de St.-Sorlin, 141, 142, 144, 197, 241 + +Des-Masures, Loys, 107 + +Desmoulins, Camille, 338 + +Desportes, Philippe, 105-106, 137 + +Despreaux, _see_ Boileau + +Destouches, 263 + +Diderot, Denis, 254, 265, 272, 294-299, 302, 313 + +Digulleville, Guillaume de, 43 + +Dollinger, 180 + +Dorat, 258 + +Dubos, Abbe, 305 + +Duche, 259 + +Ducis, 261 + +Duclos, 253 + +Dudevant, Mme., _see_ Sand, George + +Dufresny, 262, 274 + +Dumas, Alexandre, 394, 397 + +Dumont, Abbe, 370 + +Dupont de Nemours, 304 + +Duplessis-Mornay, 115 + +Du Ryer, 162, 170 + +Dussault, 342 + +Duval, 336 + + +_Eneas_, 16 + +Enfants san Souci, 74, 76 + +Epinay, Mme. d', 253, 314 + +Estienne, Henri, 101 _note_, 110, 115 + +Estissac, Geoffroy d', 87 + +Estoile, Pierre de l', 114 _note_ + +Etienne, 336 + + +Fabre d'Eglantine, 336 + +Fantosme, Jordan, 47 + +Fauchet, Claude, 110 + +Fauriel, 341 + +Fayette, Mme. de la, 174, 179, 180-182 + +Fenelon, 153, 230-234 + +Flechier, 140, 228 + +Fleury, 225 + +_Floovent_, 8 + +Florian, 259, 272 + +Fontanes, 337, 349 + +Fontenelle, 242, 243-245 + +Foucher, Adele, 375 + +Fougeres, Etienne de, 42 + +Foulechat, Denis, 46 + +Fouquet, 190, 200 + +Fourier, 359 + +Fournival, Richard de, 41 + +_Franc-Archer de Bagnolet_, 74 + +Francis I., 82 + +Frederick the Great, 286, 288 + +Freron, 300 + +Froissart, Jean, 53-55 + +Furetiere, Antoine, 145, 211 + + +Gace Brule, 27 + +Gaimar, 47 + +Gaime, Abbe, 312 + +Galiani, 254, 305 + +Galland, 274 + +Garnier, Robert, 108 + +Garnier de Pont-Sainte-Maxence, 6, 47 + +Gassendi, Pierre, 153 + +Gautier, Theophile, 365, 387-390, 392 + +Gautier de Coinci, 6 + +Gelee, Jacquemart, 31 + +_Gens Nouveaux_, 74 + +Geoffrin, Mme., 254 + +Geoffroi of Brittany, 28 + +Geoffroy, 342 + +Gerson, 44, 45 + +Gilbert, 258-259, 300 + +Gillot, 116 + +Ginguene, 341, 411 + +Girardin, M. de, 315 + +Girardin, Saint-Marc, 425 + +Godeau, 139 + +Goethe, 297, 345 + +Gombault, 142 + +Gomberville, 142 + +Gournay, 305 + +Gournay, Mlle. de, 123 + +_Grandes Chroniques_, 50 + +Greban, Arnoul, 69 + +Greban, Simon, 69 + +Grecourt, 258 + +Gresset, 258, 260, 263 + +Grevin, 107 + +Grignan, Mme. de, 178 + +Grimm, Melchior, 307 + +Gringoire, Pierre, 74 + +_Griselidis, Histoire de_, 68 + +Guenee, Abbe, 300 + +Guevara, 267 + +Guillaume le Clerc, 42 + +_Guillaume le Marechal, Vie de_, 47 + +_Guirlande de Julie_, 140 + +Guizot, Francois, 412, 414-416 + +Guyon, Mme., 224, 230 + + +Hamilton, Anthony, 256 + +Hardouin, 254 + +Hardy, Alexandre, 161 + +Helgaire, 8 + +Helvetius, 301 + +Henault, 261 + +Henri le Glichezare, 30 + +Herberay des Essarts, 92 + +Hoffman, 342 + +Holbach, Baron d', 302 + +Hospital, Michel de l', 100, 115 + +Hotman, Francois, 114 + +Houdetot, Mme. d', 314, 318 + +Huet, 242 + +Hugo, Victor, 365, 375-383, 391-393, 396 + +Hume, David, 315 + + +Jacot de Forest, 16 + +Jansen, 156 + +Jeannin, President, 114 _note_ + +Jehan de Thuin, 16 + +Jobelins, 140 + +Jodelle, 98, 103, 107 + +Joinville, Jean de, 50-52 + +Joubert, Joseph, 342-343, 349 + +Jouffroy, Theodore, 359 + + +La Barre, 288 + +Labe, Louise, 97 + +La Beaumelle, 179 + +Laboureur, Louis le, 141 + +La Bruyere, 235-238, 242 + +La Calprenede, 142, 143 + +Lacordaire, 357, 358 + +La Fare, 256 + +La Fontaine, Jean de, 189-195 + +La Fosse, 259 + +Lagrange, 302 + +La Grange-Chancel, 259 + +Laharpe, 261, 306-307 + +_La Haye, Fragment of_, 9 + +Lally, Count, 288 + +Lamarck, 341 + +Lamartine, Alphonse de, 329, 367-371 + +Lambert, Marquise de, 254, 269 + +Lambert le Tort, 16 + +Lamennais, 357-358 + +La Mettrie, 300-301 + +Lamoignon, de, 202 + +La Motte-Houdart, 243, 256, 260 + +Languet, Hubert, 114 + +Lanoue, 113 + +Laplace, 341 + +Larivey, Pierre de, 109 + +La Rochefoucauld, 173-175, 181, 182 + +Latini, Brunetto, 41 + +Laya, Louis, 336 + +Le Bel, Jean, 53 + +Lebrun, Ecouchard, 258, 337 + +Le Clerc, 214 + +Lecomte, Valleran, 160 + +Lefranc de Pompignan, 256 + +Lefranc, Martin, 62 + +Legouais, Chretien, 17, 58 + +Legouve, 335 + +Le Maire de Belges, Jean, 84 + +Lemercier, Nepomucene, 336, 337 + +Lemierre, 258, 260 + +Lemoyne, 141 + +_L'Empereur qui tua son Neveu_, 73 + +Leroy, Pierre, 116 + +Lesage, 262, 266-268 + +Lespinasse, Mlle. de, 254, 322 + +Letourneur, 261 + +Le Vasseur, Therese, 313 + +Lille, Alain de, 37 + +Lorens, Friar, 41 + +Lorris, Guillaume de, 34-36 + +Lyonne, Abbe de, 266 + + +Mably, 255 + +Machaut, Guillaume de, 59 + +Maillard, Olivier, 45 + +Maine de Biran, 341 + +Maintenon, Mme. de, 118, 145, 179-180, 216, 217 + +Mairet, Jean de, 162, 165, 196 + +Maistre, Joseph de, 355-356 + +Maistre, Xavier de, 409 + +Malebranche, Nicolas de, 153 + +Malherbe, Francois de, 100, 106, 134-136, 331 + +Mallet du Pin, 338 + +Marbode, Bishop, 41 + +Marguerite of Navarre, 82-84 + +Marguerite of Navarre (wife of Henri IV.), 114 + +Marie de France, 20, 28 + +Marivaux, 262, 269-271 + +Marmontel, 253, 260, 272, 300, 305-306 + +Marnix de Ste. Aldegonde, 115 + +Mascaron, 228 + +Massillon, J.-B., 228, 229 + +Maupertuis, 286 + +Maynard, 136 + +Melin de Saint-Gelais, 86, 105 + +Menage, 177, 205 + +_Menagier de Paris_, 41 _note_ + +Mendoza, 267 + +Menot, Michel, 45 + +Mercier, 265 + +Meri, Huon de, 43 + +Merimee, Prosper, 396, 408-410 + +Meschinot, 65 + +Meun, Jean de, 36-39 + +Mezeray, 225 + +Michaud, 411 + +Michel, Jean, 69 + +Michelet, Jules, 412, 418-422 + +Mignet, Francois, 412, 416 + +Millevoye, 337 + +Mirabeau, 339-340 + +Mirabeau (the elder), 281, 305 + +_Miracles de Notre-Dame_, 68 + +Moliere, Jean-Baptiste, 146, 169, 197-206 + +Molinet, 65 + +Monluc, Blaize de, 112-113 + +Monstrelet, 55 + +Montaigne, Michel de, 121-126 + +Montalembert, 357, 358, 412 + +Montchrestien, Antoine de, 120, 160 + +Montesquieu, 57, 111, 255, 273-280 + +Montfleury, 207 + +Montpensier, Mlle. de, 176, 235 + +Montreuil, Jean de, 46 + +Moreau, Hegesippe, 391 + +Morellet, 300, 305 + +Morelly, 255 + +Mornay, Mme. de, 113 + +Mothe le Vayer, la, 153 + +Motteville, Mme. de, 176 + +Muret, 106 + +Musset, Alfred de, 383-387 + + +Naigeon, 302 + +Namur, Robert of, 54 + +Nangis, Guillaume de, 51 + +Napoleon I., 340 + +Napoleon III., 369 + +Navagero, 105 + +Nerval, Gerard de, 388, 391 + +Nevers, Duc de, 214 + +Nicole, 156, 178, 208, 209, 215 + +Ninon, 183 + +Nisard, Desire, 425-426 + +Nivart of Ghent, 30 + +Nivelle de la Chaussee, 264 + +Nodier, Charles, 366, 409 + +Novare, Philippe de, 41 + + +Ogier, Francois, 162 + +Oresme, Nicole, 46 + +Orleans, Charles d', 61-62 + +Orleans, Duchess of, 180, 212 + +Ossat, d', 114 _note_ + +Ouville, d', 196 + +Ozanam, 412 + + +Palissot, 300 + +Palissy, Bernard, 119 + +Pare, Ambroise, 119 + +Parny, 258 + +_Partenopeus de Blois_, 22 + +Pascal, Blaise, 154-159 + +Pasquier, Estienne, 110 + +Passerat, Jean, 106, 116 + +_Pathelin, La Farce de_, 66, 75-76 + +_Pelerinage de Jerusalem_, 11 + +Pellisson, 148 + +Perier, Mme., 158 + +Periers, Bonaventure des, 84, 91 + +Perrault, Charles, 241-242, 243 + +Perron, du, 115 + +Physiocrats, the, 304 + +Picard, 336 + +Piron, 258, 260, 263, 300 + +Pithou, 116 + +Pixerecourt, 336 + +Pomponne, 179 + +Ponsard, 395 + +Popeliniere, L. de la, 112 + +Poquelin. _See_ Moliere + +Port-Royal, 155, 252 + +Pradon, 214 + +Presles, Raoul de, 46 + +Prevost, Abbe, 271-272 + +Proudhon, Pierre Joseph, 361-362 + +Provins, Guiot de, 42 + + +Quesnay, Francois, 304, 305 + +Quinault, Philippe, 169, 204, 206, 207-208 + +Quinet, Edgar, 412, 422-423 + +_Quinze Joies de Mariage_, 66 + + +Rabelais, Francois, 87-91 + +Racan, 136 + +Racine, Jean, 172, 208-218 + +Racine, Louis, 257 + +Rambouillet, Hotel de, 139 + +Ramee, Pierre de la, 111 + +Ramond, 321 _note_ + +Raoul de Houdan, 43 + +Rapin, 116 + +Raynal, Abbe, 321-322 + +Rayounard, 336, 341 + +Recamier, Mme., 352 + +_Recits d'un Menestrel de Reims_, 50 + +Regnard, 262 + +Regnier, Mathurin, 136-138 + +_Renard, Roman de_, 29 + +_Representation d'Adam_, 67 + +Restif de la Bretonne, 272 + +Retz, Cardinal de, 175-176 + +Riccoboni, Mme., 270 _note_ + +Richelieu, 147, 162, 176 + +Rivarol, 338 + +Robert de Boron, 21, 22 + +Rocca, Albert de, 347 + +Rohan, Chevalier de, 284 + +Rojas, 106 + +Roland, Mme., 253, 254, 322 + +_Roland, Song of_, 9-11 + +Rollin, 300 + +Romulus, 28 _note_ + +Ronsard, Pierre de, 97-103 + +Rotrou, Jean, 162, 170-171, 196 + +Roucher, 257 + +Rouget de Lisle, 337 + +Rousseau, Jean-Baptiste, 256, 283 + +Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 272, 311-321, 327 + +Roye, Jean de, 55 + +Royer-Collard, 341 + +Rutebeuf, 42, 43 + + +Sable, Mme. de, 173 + +Sabliere, Mme. de, 192 + +Sacy, de, 156 + +Sagon, 85 + +Saint-Amand, 144 + +Saint-Cyran, 156 + +Sainte-Beuve, 330, 365, 366, 391, 426-427 + +Saint-Evremond, 139, 183, 197, 209 + +Saint-Just, 339 + +Saint-Lambert, 257 + +Saint-Martin, 355, 357 + +Saint-Pierre, Abbe de, 304 + +Saint-Simon, Claude-Henri de, 359-360 + +Saint-Simon, Duc de, 238-241 + +Sales, Francois de, 131-132 + +Salle, Antoine de la, 65-66 + +Sand, George, 400-404 + +Sandeau, Jules, 401 + +Sannazaro, 103 + +Saurin, Bernard-Joseph, 261 + +Saurin, Jacques, 228 + +Scarron, Paul, 145, 197 + +Sceve, Maurice, 97 + +Schelandre, Jean de, 162 + +Schiller, 345 + +Schlegel, A. W. von, 346 + +Scribe, Eugene, 395 + +Scudery, Georges de, 142, 162, 163, 165, 170 + +Scudery, Mlle. de, 92, 142, 143 + +Sebonde, Raimond de, 122 + +Secchi, 199 + +Sedaine, 265 + +Segrais, 181, 213, 235 + +Senancourt, 341-342 + +Serres, Olivier de, 119, 132 + +Serviteur, Le Loyal, 112 _note_ + +Sevigne, Mme. de, 143, 177-179, 191, 210 + +Simon, Richard, 220, 224, 225 + +Sirven, 288 + +Sismondi, 411-412 + +Sorel, Charles, 144, 268 + +Soulie, Frederic, 394 + +Soyecourt, Marquis de, 200 + +Staal-Delaunay, Mme. de, 253 + +Stael, Mme. de, 343-348 + +Steinhoewel, 28 + +Stendhal. _See_ Beyle + +_Strasburg Oaths_, 4 + +Suard, 338 + +Sue, Eugene, 397 + +Sully, Maurice de, 44 + +Surgeres, Helene de, 101 + + +Tabarin, 196 + +Taille, Jacques de la, 107 + +Taille, Jean de la, 108, 109 + +Tedbalt, 4 + +Tencin, Mme. de, 245 + +Thaon, Philippe de, 40 + +_Thebes, Romance of_, 15 + +_Theophile_, 68 + +Thibaut de Champagne, 27 + +Thierry, Augustin, 412-414 + +Thiers, Adolphe, 412, 417-418 + +Thomas (Anglo-Norman poet), 19 + +Thomas, A.-L., 306, 327 + +Thou, De, 112 + +Thyard, Pontus de, 98 + +Tocqueville, A. de, 412, 416-417 + +_Tour-Landry, Livre du Chevalier de la_, 41 _note_ + +Touroude, 10 + +Tracy, Destutt de, 301 + +Tristan l'Hermite, 162, 170 + +Turgot, 255 + +Turnebe, Odet de, 109 + + +Uranistes, 140 + +Urfe, Honore d', 92, 132-134 + + +Vair, Guillaume de, 120, 127, 134 + +Valenciennes, Henri de, 49 + +Valliere, Louise de la, 221 + +Van Dale, 244 + +Vauban, 304 + +Vaugelas, 148 + +Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, Jean, 106 + +Vauvenargues, 281-282 + +Vaux, Mme. Clothilde de, 360 + +Velly, 254 + +Vergniaud, 339 + +Vertot, 254 + +Viau, Theophile de, 138 + +Vigny, Alfred de, 365, 371-374, 394, 396 + +Villehardouin, Geoffroy de, 48 + +Villemain, 424 + +Villon, Francois, 63-65, 74 + +Vincent de Paul, St., 221 + +Viole, Mlle. de, 104 + +_Violette, Roman de la_, 22 + +Viret, 94 + +Vivonne, Catherine de, 139 + +Voiture, Vincent, 139, 140-141 + +Volland, Mlle., 298 + +Volney, 303 + +Voltaire, 229, 253, 255, 260, 272, 282-293, 314 + + +Wace, 20, 47 + +Walpole, Horace, 322 + +Warens, Mme. de, 311, 312, 318 + +Wenceslas, Duke, 54 + + + + +THE END + + + + +Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co. +at Paul's Work, Edinburgh + + + + +Short Histories of the Literatures of the World +EDITED BY EDMUND GOSSE, LL.D. + +Large Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s. each Volume + +ANCIENT GREEK LITERATURE +By Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, M.A. + +FRENCH LITERATURE +By Prof. EDWARD DOWDEN, D.C.L., LL.D. + +MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE +By the EDITOR + +ITALIAN LITERATURE +By RICHARD GARNETT, C.B., LL.D. + +SPANISH LITERATURE +By JAMES FITZMAURICE-KELLY + +JAPANESE LITERATURE +By WILLIAM GEORGE ASTON, C.M.G., D.Lit. + +BOHEMIAN LITERATURE +By THE COUNT LUTZOW, D.Litt., D.Ph. + +SANSKRIT LITERATURE +By Prof. A. A. MACDONELL, M.A. + +HUNGARIAN LITERATURE +By Dr. RIEDL + +AMERICAN LITERATURE +By Prof. W. P. TRENT + +RUSSIAN LITERATURE +By K. WALISZEWSKI + +CHINESE LITERATURE +By Prof. A. GILES + +ARABIC LITERATURE +By C. HUART + +GERMAN LITERATURE +By CALVIN THOMAS, LL.D. + +_In preparation_ +LATIN LITERATURE +By MARCUS DIMSDALE, M.A. + + +LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN + + +_All rights reserved_ + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's A History of French Literature, by Edward Dowden + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE *** + +***** This file should be named 24700.txt or 24700.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/7/0/24700/ + +Produced by Ron Swanson + +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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