cherry stone." Thus Professor Dowden prefaces his ten admirable pages
on the great French poet; and with equal appropriateness we might
assign the phrase as a motto for the whole undertaking. The subject is
too vast to cope with adequately in the limits of a slender volume,
the tendencies too complex; and the appeal from human interest, which
since the days of Sainte-Beuve and Taine has formed such an important
element in scientific criticism, had to be abandoned in favor of
generalized views of literary conditions and tendencies necessarily
abstract or impersonal in character. Yet, despite these evident
restrictions which the requirements of his task imposed upon him,
Professor Dowden has produced a work of extraordinary merit, a
masterpiece indeed in its kind. If we were not assured that everything
which the eminent critic writes is its own sufficient justification,
we might be inclined to question the necessity of the present volume,
in view of the painstaking and conscientious treatise that Mr.
Saintsbury gave to the public some sixteen years ago, and which has
deservedly remained until the present time the most reliable English
text-book upon the subject of French literature. With no desire to
disparage Mr. Saintsbury's scholarly contribution, the present work
does in truth supply a need which the earlier book, in spite of its
abundant merit, failed to satisfy. It is not harsh criticism to state
that Mr. Saintsbury's volume, crammed as it is with a plethora of
dates and titles, is at best a compendium for convenient reference,
and consequently quite unreadable as a book. Professor Dowden, on the
other hand, has conquered the dry-as-dust problem with admirable
skill, and the charm of his diction and the easy sequence of his ideas
lead the reader insensibly on to the close of a delightful volume. Nor
is the book lacking in instructive value of a highly reliable kind,
for, in addition to an intimate knowledge of French criticism,
Professor Dowden is evidently familiar at first hand with all the more
important works of which he treats, and not infrequently proffers
fertile suggestions upon debated questions.
Having avowed, therefore, a genuine admiration of Professor Dowden's
book, will it be thought a graceless task if, with the proverbial
perversity of critics, I endeavor to point out here and there
questions of importance that may seem to have merited more attention
than the author was perhaps able to afford to them within his
restricted space?
The mediæval portion of Professor Dowden's book is valuable not for
its originality, but rather as the reflection of advanced modern
criticism in France. Therefore, in this brief review the mediæval
period may be neglected, and turning to the second book, which deals
with the sixteenth century, the first writer of capital importance
whom we encounter is Clément Marot. The author has justly indicated
the decrepit conditions of poetry in Marot's youth in the degenerate
hands of the Rhétoriqueurs, and also the powerful attraction which the
allegorizing mania exercised on the poet's early work. His later
manner is justly emphasized, and his prowess in the lighter familiar
forms of verse; but it is only by inference that we apprehend the
comparative neglect of his work until the later classical reaction
restored him to favor. Professor Dowden, indeed, throughout his book
has hardly conveyed a proper idea of the reactionary shocks by which
French literature has invariably advanced. Thus the Pléiade, in the
enthusiasm of their rupture with middle-age traditions, were blind to
the Renaissance elements in Marot's work, and seeking as they did to
elevate poetry to nobler themes and a nobler manner, his easy familiar
grace was distasteful to them.
Rabelais, of course, is another "colossus on a cherry stone," and the
purport of his message is epitomized in a few luminous sentences. The
elements of contrast in the man, and his full-blooded joy in living,
which was the sign-manual of the Renaissance upon him, are indicated
as follows: "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 mediæval 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."
Proceeding to the Pléiade, we find its doctrine admirably enunciated,
and one point of literary history is well brought out--namely, that to
the Pléiade, and not to Malherbe alone, belongs the honor of
establishing the bases of classicism in France, the difference chiefly
residing in the fact that the programme of the Pléiade was one of
expansion in matters of language and prosody, whereas it is precisely
in these points that Malherbe and Boileau are concerned with
restrictive refinements. Again Professor Dowden, following perhaps in
the wake of M. Brunetière, characterizes the conditions of the time as
being unfavorable to lyrical expansiveness. "Ronsard's genius was
lyrical and elegiac, but the tendencies of a time when the great
affair was the organization of social life, and as a consequence the
limitation of individual and personal passions, were not favorable to
the development of lyrical poetry." These words are ripe with
suggestiveness, and duly weighed, they afford the true solution of the
oratorical and impersonal character of French literature for two long
centuries, when the social _genres_ in prose and poetry usurped
dominion over the national mind. With our eye then upon the social
conditions in France, the often-quoted words "Malherbe a tué le
lyrisme" mean nothing more than that he struck a prostrate body.
Before turning from the sixteenth century it should perhaps be
observed that in discussing the comedy of that period the author might
have amplified his statement of Italian influences by at least a
reference to the _Commedia dell' Arte_ which we find established in
France in 1576, with its traditional repertory of stock characters,
whose antiquity ascends to the venerable times of the early Latin
farces, and whose survival the work of Molière, nay, even of
Beaumarchais, will adequately attest. The last great figure that
greets us in the sixteenth century is Montaigne, and we feel a sense
of disappointed curiosity when he is relentlessly dismissed at the end
of the five pages to which he is entitled here. This singularly modern
doubter still smiles inscrutably at us through the misty centuries
that flow between us, and we would prefer to loiter with him by the
way rather than pass him with a curt nod of recognition. But Montaigne
is more important in the history of thought than in the history of
literature, so, crossing the threshold of the sixteenth century, we
meet the great lawgiver Malherbe, a Moses who really entered the
promised land. Professor Dowden is eminently just and appreciative in
his judgment of this pedantic and unsympathetic figure, estimating his
merits and impartially noting his defects without presuming in his
character as literary historian to stamp them as such. Malherbe
undeniably eliminated personality from poetry. Shall we regard this as
a defect? A century's masterpieces of objective art survive to say us
nay, and if the critic's personal sympathies sway him to the side of
lyric eloquence, the historian of literature observing without
prejudice judges without rancor. "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."
And now in the wake of Malherbe so thick do the great names throng
that I must perforce touch swiftly only on what seems to demand
amplification rather than dwell at length, as it would be much less
difficult to do, on the many admirable views the book contains. And
first as regards the literary significance of René Descartes.
Professor Dowden places himself in accord with the customary views of
criticism in assigning to Descartes a preponderating influence on the
literary art of his century. "The spirit of Descartes's 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." This sounds reasonable, and is indeed in large measure in
accordance with the actual conditions observable in the seventeenth
century. Yet there is no doubt that the literature of Louis XIV is
more intimately penetrated by the ascetic spirit of Jansenism as
conveyed in the famous doctrines of Port-Royal, and it is to
Jansenism, and emphatically not to Cartesianism, that the literature
of the seventeenth century owes that aspect of grandeur and moral
serenity which characterizes it. To quote Brunetière: "Pendant plus de
cinquante ans, la conscience française, si l'on peut ainsi dire,
incarnée dans le jansénisme, et rendue par lui à elle-même, a fait
contre la frivolité naturelle de la race le plus grand effort qu'elle
eut fait depuis les premiers temps de la réforme ou du calvinisme."
Indeed, the tenaciously religious Jansenist spirit of the "grand
siècle" would have been universal were it not that Molière and La
Fontaine were apathetically indifferent, nay, sometimes actively
hostile, to the general enthusiasm.
Let us, however, examine in all brevity the fundamental doctrines of
Cartesianism. The terms are familiar enough. The identity of being and
of thought. The objectivity of science. The all-powerfulness of
reason. Progress to infinity. Optimism at all times. We can not fail
to observe the significance of these categories, and how they contain
the germs of almost every great subject debated by the leviathians of
the eighteenth century. Yet the nation struggled long before it had
strength to shake the incubus of Jansenism from its back, and the
stimulating work of Bayle had to be supported by events of actual
political significance before the stringent and constraining dogmas of
catholicism relaxed their grasp on thought and conduct. The revocation
of the Edict of Nantes, the Quietistic movement with its unseemly
attendant episcopal quarrels, and finally the actual persecution of
the Jansenists, all pointed inevitably in one direction, and
stimulating the anti-religious sentiment and opening the flood gates
to immorality, induced a potent reaction of Cartesianism in the
fundamental theories of the eighteenth century.
In his treatment of Corneille, Professor Dowden "opens his hands only
sufficiently to let out a portion of the truth he holds," but what he
says is admirable to a degree. Of his diction he writes: "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." This is well said, but hardly indicates how Corneille
soared so often in the region of Spanish bombast, or crept among the
insipid flowers of Italian preciosity; defects from which Racine's
severer Greek taste held him free.
It is refreshing when we come to Boileau to find an English mind
impartial enough to do justice to the much-abused "lawgiver of
Parnassus." Criticism has for so long deplored his narrowness that we
relish an encomium on his good sense. But beyond this there is an
opinion which the general reader would be reluctant to admit, but
which Professor Dowden has had the courage and the discernment to
enforce, when he writes as follows: "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." Let the incredulous merely turn to the
satires to appreciate the scope and truth of the remark. It is
difficult to imagine that a more brilliant and effective account of
Boileau's work and influence could be presented within so limited a
space; yet might not the author have added that whereas Malherbe is
the representative of the aristocratic element in literature, Boileau
is the first great incarnation in modern times of the bourgeois
spirit?
With regard to La Fontaine it need only be observed that Professor
Dowden recognizes what French critics with repeated insistence
emphasize, the cunning harmonies of his verse.
Much space is of right devoted to Molière, who with La Fontaine has
ever been a stumbling-block to English criticism. Professor Dowden
voices our national feeling in refusing to consider him as a poet,
preferring to emphasize his profound and healthy philosophy of life.
_Tartufe_ he considers to be an attack on religious hypocrisy merely.
Is not the interpretation perhaps correct which regards it as an
attack on the intolerance and Puritanism of all religion, even the
most sincere?
Once again, in dealing with Racine, the author shows that subtle
discernment in which his criticism abounds. He penetrates to the heart
of the secret reason for the cabals that harassed Racine in the later
years of his dramatic activity, and which doubtless had their
influence in enforcing his retirement. Have we ever sufficiently
realized that Boileau, Molière, and Racine were waging constant war
against a rebirth of the _précieux_ spirit which threatened not only
society with ridiculousness but literature with ruin? Such, indeed,
was the case, and in the eyes of the super-refined coterie that
grouped itself round the Duchesse de Bouillon, Boileau and his
fellow-workers were innovators of a dangerous and revolutionary order.
Does not this idea carry us far from our preconceived notions of the
narrow conservatism that dominated the leaders of classical thought?
Referring to the disastrous check of Racine's _Phèdre_, the author
writes: "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." The point of view may seem extreme to
us, and this vaunted realism may show pale and weakly when contrasted
with the grossness of much of the realism that prevails at the present
day, or with the graphic directness of the best examples of the type.
But the words ring true if we are willing to accept the refined
psychological realism of Racine as equally worthy to the title with
the physiological naturalism of our more scientific age. Our whole
conception of Racine's art falls into line with this view, and his
constant solicitude for an easy and natural intrigue in the structure
of his tragedies may be brought home to the same healthy impulse of
his mind. Was it not Faguet who maintained that so natural indeed were
the processes of his plots that a happy ending would have alone been
needed to make any of his tragedies, with some added modicum of wit,
in all essential features a comedy that Molière might have penned? Mr.
Saintsbury, on the other hand, in dealing with Racine is seemingly
swayed by some innate prejudice, or he could hardly have denied the
poet a high moral character, merely granting him the possession of
great shrewdness and discernment. True passion, he remarks, was not
popular with the crowd, but "love-making, on the contrary, would draw,
and love-making accordingly is the staple of all his plays." It is
against this view, and against Mr. Saintsbury's further opinion that
the tragedy of Racine is at the furthest remove from an imitation of
Nature, that Professor Dowden makes a strong and timely protest.
While applauding, however, the value of such novel opinions in English
criticism at least, we may suspect that in his desire to clinch his
arguments the author may have driven the nail too ruthlessly home. And
so it would appear when we seek in vain for any statement which
contains the shadow of a justification for the existence of that
powerful _précieux_ spirit against which the greater classicists
rebelled. We are too inclined to take Molière's word for it that they
were solely ridiculous, forgetting the explicit reserve of his
preface--"aussi les véritables précieuses auraient tort de se piquer
lorsqu'on joue les ridicules qui les imitent mal." So let us then give
the _Précieuses_ credit for what they did confer to the advantage of
letters amid so much folly, and, weighing the matter carefully, their
gift to literature amounts to this: First, amid much linguistic and
metaphorical pedantry they were free from the equally damaging and
ridiculous pedantry of a labored erudition which pervaded the
literature of the day. In the second place, whether we regard it as an
advantage or the contrary, their influence made directly _against_ the
licentiousness of the _esprit gaulois_, and _for_ politeness and
decency in expression; and as a third count in their favor can we
doubt that straining as they did to express the _nuances_ of sentiment
and gallantry, they were instrumental in stimulating that ardor of
mental analysis which is of all things the distinguishing mark of the
century? A word finally might have been said with a view to
elucidating the inherent divergence of the _précieux_ spirit from our
own Euphuism, from the Marinism of Italy, or the Gongorism of Spain; a
divergence due certainly to the fact that the _précieuses_ allied
themselves to, and accordingly strengthened, that spirit of social
coherence so characteristic of the life and letters of the time in
France, whereas the influences of similar movements abroad were more
transitory, inasmuch as in some degree more isolated and tentative.
The chapter devoted to the seventeenth century closes with a critical
review of the series of great preachers and theologians who have left
their mark more or less upon the development of thought, while their
literary significance can be comparatively slighted in a history of
this kind; and the chapter which discusses the transition to the
eighteenth century broaches questions of such large issue that an
exhaustive treatment of them was not to be expected. Such are the
memorable quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, and the
_philosophe_ idea of perfectibility and human progress. The chapter
closes with an account of the great protagonist and pioneer in the
warfare against Christianity, the patient, plodding, dangerous Pierre
Bayle. So effectually was his teaching absorbed by Voltaire and the
encyclopedists that he is read no longer; but low as his flame has
sunk, he remains one of the beacons lighting us over the lurid
threshold of the century of strife.
We are in safe hands when it is Professor Dowden who guides us on the
highways and bypaths of the eighteenth century, but by very reason of
his accurate knowledge of the ground whereon he treads we are
disappointed when he fails to point out to us some special feature of
the landscape. Beauties we could hardly hope to meet with on our
journey. There was not sap enough in that arid soil to nourish
flowers, or send a flush of living green over hill and valley. The
most serious omission is to have left entirely out of account the
exceedingly interesting reactionary influences that leaped back and
forth across the Channel when Marivaux's romances were devoured in
England, and Richardson's _Pamela_ was in every French pocket large
enough to hold it. It is in itself still an open question which of
these two authors exerted the initial influence on the other, although
eighteenth-century criticism invariably held that in _Marianne_
Richardson found his inspiration.
A great deal of interest attaches to an explanation of the causes of
Le Sage's decline in popularity, and this question likewise Professor
Dowden has not adequately presented. Le Sage saw the imperative need
of mediating between the stilted heroic romances _à la Scudéry_ and
the grotesque travesties of Scarron and Furetière. Inspired by the
picaroon romances of Spain, he produced, amid much inferior work, _Gil
Blas_, a masterpiece in its kind. The plot is loose-jointed, the
composition _nil_, but the book teems with such verve and vigor that
it still pulses with an abounding life when Marivaux and Richardson
slumber on our shelves. Yet we must admit that the characters are
vagabonds, and the sentiment not without coarseness. Love when not
slighted is ridiculed, and metaphysical analysis and moral
disquisitions are both refreshingly absent from the book. Hence Le
Sage's claims on our consideration as the progenitor of naturalism in
romance, but on this account also the reactionary wave against which
he had to buffet in his declining years. Marivaux, on the other hand,
saw the need of mediating between the stilted heroics of Scudéry and
what he deemed the ignoble realism of Le Sage. In this resolve he
elevated the characters to _bourgeois_ rank, and abandoning the empty
love rhetoric of the old romances, he brought the acuteness of an
analytic mind to bear on the exploitation of the tender passion; and a
conscientious though desultory effort is made to study subtle phases
of character in the light of surrounding circumstances. Despite the
artificial _précieuse_ qualities of his style, and the unfinished
condition of his novels, Marivaux enjoyed an extraordinary popularity
in his day. The same problem repeats itself on a larger scale when we
transfer our attention to Richardson, whose works, translated and
popularized by Prévost, were read with the greatest avidity in France.
Were not these such influences as Professor Dowden's profound
knowledge of English literature would have qualified him to illustrate
with more precision than has yet been brought to bear upon them; and
was it not in point of fact almost imperative for him to deal
seriously with such an important theme in the international literary
history of nations?