brother Francis I. She married first the Duke d'Alencon, then Henri
d'Albert King of Navarre. Her private character has been most unjustly
attacked. She died in 1549. Marguerite is spoken of by four surnames; de
Valois from her family; d'Angouleme from her father's title; d'Alencon
from her first husband's; and de Navarre from that of her second. In
literature, to distinguish her from her great-niece, the first wife of
Henri IV., Marguerite d'Angouleme is the term most commonly used.
[186] Ed. La Borderie. Paris, 1878. The bibliography of this book is
very curious.
[187] Ed. Hippeau. 2 vols. Paris, 1875.
[188] Ed. Roybet. Paris. In course of publication.
[189] Ed. Tricotel. 2 vols. Paris, 1879.
[190] Ed. Ristelhuber. 2 vols. Paris, 1879.
[191] Ed. Jacob. Paris, 1868. It is possibly not Beroalde's.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PLEIADE.
[Sidenote: Character and Effects of the Pleiade Movement.]
Almost exactly at the middle of the sixteenth century a movement took
place in French literature which has no parallel in literary history,
except the similar movement which took place, also in France, three
centuries later. The movement and its chief promoters are indifferently
known in literature by the name of the _Pleiade_, a term applied by the
classical affectation of the time to the group of seven men[192],
Ronsard, Du Bellay, Belleau, Baif, Daurat, Jodelle, and Pontus de Tyard,
who were most active in promoting it, and who banded themselves together
in a strict league or _coterie_ for the attainment of their purposes.
These purposes were the reduction of the French language and French
literary forms to a state more comparable, as they thought, to that of
the two great classical tongues. They had no intention (though such an
intention has been falsely attributed to them both at the time and
since) of defacing or destroying their mother-tongue. On the contrary,
they were animated by the sincerest and, for the most part, the most
intelligent love for it. But the intense admiration of the severe
beauties of classical literature, which was the dominant literary note
of the Renaissance, translated itself in their active minds into a
determination to make, if it were possible, French itself more able to
emulate the triumphs of Greek and of Latin. This desire, even if it had
borne no fruit, would have honourably distinguished the French
Renaissance from the Italian and German forms of the movement. In Italy
the humanists, for the most part, contented themselves with practice in
the Latin tongue, and in Germany they did so almost wholly. But no
sooner had the literature of antiquity taken root in France than it was
made to bear _novas frondes et non sua poma_ of vernacular literature.
There were some absurdities committed by the Pleiade no doubt, as there
always are in enthusiastic crusades of any kind: but it must never be
forgotten that they had a solid basis of philological truth to go upon.
French, after all, despite a strong Teutonic admixture, was a Latin
tongue, and recurrence to Latin, and to the still more majestic and
fertile language which had had so much to do in shaping the literary
Latin dialect, was natural and germane to its character. In point of
fact, the Pleiade made modern French--made it, we may say, twice over;
for not only did its original work revolutionise the language in a
manner so durable that the reaction of the next century could not wholly
undo it, but it was mainly study of the Pleiade that armed the great
masters of the Romantic movement, the men of 1830, in their revolt
against the cramping rules and impoverished vocabulary of the eighteenth
century. The effect of the change indeed was far too universal for it to
be possible for any Malherbe or any Boileau to overthrow it. The whole
literature of the nation, at a time when it was wonderfully abundant and
vigorous, 'Ronsardised' for nearly fifty years, and such practice at
such a time never fails to leave its mark. The actual details of the
movement cannot better be given than by going through the list of its
chief participators.
[Sidenote: Ronsard.]
[Sidenote: The Defense et Illustration de la Langue Francaise.]
Pierre de Ronsard[193], Prince of Poets[194], was born at La
Poissonniere, in the Vendomois, or, as it was then more often called,
the Gatinais, on the banks of the river Loir, in 1524. He died in his
own country in the year 1585, acknowledged, not merely in France but out
of it, as the leader of living poets. His early life, however, was
rather that of a man of action than of a poet, and one of the most
studious of poets. His father was an old courtier and servant of
Francis I., whose companion in captivity he had been, and Ronsard
entered upon court life when he was a boy of ten years old. He visited
Scotland and England in the suite of French ambassadors, and remained
for some considerable time in Great Britain. He was also attached to
embassies in Flanders, Holland, and Germany. But before he was of age he
fell ill, and though he recovered, it was at the cost of permanent
deafness, which incapacitated him for the public service. He threw
himself on literature for a consolation, and under the direction of
Daurat, a scholar of renown, studied for years at the College Coqueret.
Here Du Bellay, Belleau, Baif, were his fellow-students, and the four
with their master, with Etienne Jodelle, and with Pontus de Tyard,
afterwards bishop of Chalon, formed, as has been said, the Pleiade
according to the most orthodox computation. The idea conceived and
carried out in these studious years (by Ronsard himself and Du Bellay
beyond all doubt in the first place) was the reformation of French
language and French literature by study and imitation of the ancients.
In 1549 the manifesto of the society issued, in the shape of Du Bellay's
_Defense et Illustration de la Langue Francaise_, and in 1550 the first
practical illustration of the method was given by Ronsard's _Odes_. The
principles of the _Defense et Illustration_ may be thus summarised. The
author holds that the current forms of literature, dizains, rondeaus,
etc., are altogether too facile and easy, that the language used is too
pedestrian, the treatment wanting in gravity and art. He would have Odes
of the Horatian kind take the place of Chansons, the sonnet, _non moins
docte que plaisante invention Italienne_, of dizains and huitains,
regular tragedy and comedy of moralities and farces, regular satires of
Fatrasies and Coq-a-l'ane. He takes particular pains to demonstrate the
contrary proposition to Wordsworth's, and to prove that merely natural
and ordinary language is not sufficient for him who in poesy wishes to
produce work deserving of immortality. He ridicules the mediaeval
affectations and conceits of some of the writers of his time, who gave
themselves such names as 'Le Banni de Liesse,' 'Le Traverseur des Voies
Perilleuses,' etc. He speaks, indeed, not too respectfully of mediaeval
literature generally, and uses language which probably suggested Gabriel
Harvey's depreciatory remarks about the _Fairy Queen_ forty years later.
In much of this there is exaggeration, and in much more of it mistake.
By turning their backs on the middle ages--though indeed they were not
able to do it thoroughly--the Pleiade lost almost as much in subject and
spirit as they gained in language and formal excellence. The laudation
of the sonnet, while the ballade and chant royal, things of similar
nature and of hardly less capacity, are denounced as _epiceries_,
savours of a rather Philistine preference for mere novelty and foreign
fashions. But, as has been already pointed out, Du Bellay was right in
the main, and it must especially be insisted on that his aim was to
strengthen and reform, not to alter or misguide, the French language.
The peroration of the book in a highly rhetorical style speaks of the
writer and his readers as having 'echappe du milieu des Grecs et par les
escadrons Romains pour entrer jusqu'au sein de la tant desiree France.'
That is to say, the innovators are to carry off what spoils they can
from Greece and Rome, but it is to be for the enrichment and benefit of
the French tongue. Frenchmen are to write French, not Latin and Greek;
but they are to write it not merely in a conversational way, content as
Du Bellay says somewhere else, 'n'avoir dit rien qui vaille aux neuf
premiers vers, pourvu qu'au dixieme il y ait le petit mot pour rire.'
They are to accustom themselves to long and weary studies, 'ear ce sont
les ailes dont les escripts des hommes volent au ciel,' to imitate good
authors, not merely in Greek and Latin, but in Italian, Spanish, or any
other tongue where they may be found. Such was the manifesto of the
Pleiade; and no one who has studied French literature and French
character, who knows the special tendency of the nation to drop from
time to time into a sterile self-admiration, and an easy confidence that
it is the all-sufficient wonder of the world, can doubt its wisdom.
Certainly, whatever may be thought of it in the abstract, it was
justified of its children. The first of these was, as has been said,
Ronsard's _Odes_, published in 1550. These he followed up, in 1552, by
_Les Amours de Cassandre_, in 1553 by a volume of _Hymnes_, as well as
by _Le Bocage Royal_, _Les Amours de Marie_, sonnets, etc., all of
which were, in 1560, republished in a collected edition of four
volumes. From the first Ronsard had been a very popular poet at court,
where, according to a well-known anecdote, Marguerite de Savoie, the
second of the Valois Marguerites, snatched his first volume from Mellin
de Saint Gelais, who was reading it in a designed tone of burlesque, and
reading it herself to her brother Henry II. and the court, obtained a
verdict at once for the young poet. The accession of Charles IX. brought
Ronsard still more into favour, and during the next ten years he
produced many courtly poems of the occasional kind, besides others to
suit his own pleasure. In 1572 the first part of his most ambitious, but
perhaps least successful, work appeared. This was the _Franciade_, a
dull epic. At the death of Charles, Ronsard retired to his native
province, where he had an abbacy, Croix-Val. Here all his poetical
powers returned, and in his last _Amours, Sonnets to Helene_, and other
pieces, some of his very best work is to be found. The year before his
death he produced an edition of his works much altered, but by no means
invariably improved.
There are few poets to whose personal merits there is more unanimity of
trustworthy testimony than there is to those of Ronsard. From the time
of his betaking himself to literary work, he seems to have been wholly
given to study, and to the contemplation of natural beauty. Although
jealous of his own great reputation, and liable to be nettled when it
was imperilled, as it was by Du Bartas, he was as a rule singularly
placable in literary quarrels. The story of his quarrelling with
Rabelais is late, unsupported, and to all appearance fabulous; while, on
the other hand, the passages which have been supposed to reflect on the
Pleiade in the writings of Rabelais can, for chronological reasons, by
no possibility refer to Ronsard or his friends. Lastly, the poet appears
to have had no thought of writing for gain, and though, like all his
contemporaries, he did not scruple to solicit favours from the king, he
was in no way importunate or servile. But while his personal character,
as well as the extraordinary esteem in which he was held by all his
contemporaries, has never been seriously contested, critical estimates
of his literary work have strangely varied. To his own age he was the
'Prince of Poets.' His successor, Malherbe, behaved to him as certain
popes are reported to have behaved to their predecessors,
excommunicating him in the literary sense. Boileau, with his usual
ignorance of French literature before his own day, described his work in
lines which French schoolboys long learnt by heart, and which are as
false in fact as they are imbecile in criticism. Fenelon was almost the
only sincere partisan he had for two centuries. But when the Romantic
movement began Ronsard was for a while almost restored to the position
he held in his lifetime, and his works became a kind of Bible to the
disciples of Sainte-Beuve and the followers of Hugo. The strong
mediaeval revival which accompanied the movement was however
unfavourable to Ronsard, and he has again sunk, though not very low, in
the general estimation of French critics. The history is curious, and as
a literary phenomenon instructive. But it is not difficult for an
impartial judge to place Ronsard in his true position. His main defects
are two: he was too much a poet of malice prepense, and yet he wrote on
the whole too fluently. The mass of his work is great, and it is not
always, nor perhaps very often, animated by those unmistakable and
universal poetical touches which in the long run will alone suffice to
induce posterity to keep a writer on its shelf of great poets. Yet these
touches are by no means wanting in Ronsard. Many of his sonnets,
especially the famous and universally admired 'Quand vous serez bien
vieille,' not a few of his odes, especially the equally famous
'Mignonne, allons voir si la rose,' rank among those poems of which it
can only be said that they could not be better, and detached passages
innumerable deserve hardly lower praise. But it is when Ronsard is
viewed from the standpoint of a thoroughly instructed historical
criticism that his real greatness appears. It is when we look at the
poets that came before him and at those who came after him that we see
the immense benefit he conferred upon his successors, and upon the
language which those successors illustrated. The result of his classical
studies was little less than the introduction of an entirely new rhythm
into French poetry: let it be observed that a new rhythm, and not merely
new metre, is what is spoken of. Since the disuse of the
half-inarticulate but sweet rhythmical varieties of the mediaeval
pastourelles and romances a great monotony had come upon French poetry.
The fault of the artificial forms of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and
early sixteenth centuries, the _epiceries_ of Du Bellay's scornful
allusion, was that they induced their writers to concentrate their
attention on the arrangement of the rhymes and stanzas, to the neglect
of the individual line, the rhythm of which was but too frequently lame,
stiff, and prosaic in the extreme. With Marot and Saint Gelais the
introduction of less formal patterns, dizains, huitains, etc., had had
the additional drawback of making the individual verse even more prosaic
and pedestrian, though it may be somewhat less stiff. Now the line is,
after all, the unit of poetry, and all reform must start with it. It is
the great glory of Ronsard that his reform did so start. From his time
French poetry reads quite differently. Perhaps this was due to his study
of the Horatian quantity-metres, where every syllable has to give its
quota to the effect of the line as well as every line its quota to the
effect of the stanza. But whether it was this or something else, the
effect is indisputable. To this must be added a liberal, though in
Ronsard's own case not excessive, importation of new words from Greek
and Latin, a bold and striking mode of expression, the retention of many
picturesque old words which the senseless folly of the
seventeenth-century reformers banished, and, above all, a great
indulgence in diminutives, which give a most charming effect to the
lighter verse of Ronsard and his friends, and which also were cut off by
the indiscriminate and 'desperate hook' of Malherbe and Boileau. So
great were the formal changes and improvements thus introduced, that
French poetry takes a new colour from the age of Ronsard, a colour which
in its moments of health it has ever since displayed.
[Sidenote: Du Bellay.]
Next to Ronsard, and perhaps above him, if uniform excellence rather
than bulk and range of work is considered, ranks Joachim du Bellay[195].
He was a connection, though it does not seem quite clear what
connection, of the Cardinal du Bellay to whom Rabelais was so long
attached, and whose house included other illustrious members. Probably
he was a cousin of the cardinal and of his two brothers the memoir
writers. His youth was rendered troublesome by illness and law
difficulties, but at last he was able with Ronsard, whose junior he was
by a little, to give himself up to study under Daurat. His prose
manifesto has already been dealt with, and almost immediately afterwards
he in some sort anticipated Ronsard's poetical carrying out of his
principles by a volume of _Sonnets to Olive_, the anagram of a certain
Mademoiselle de Viole. The sonnet, however, was not such an absolute
novelty as the ode, having been introduced already by Mellin de Saint
Gelais. Shortly afterwards he went to Italy with the Cardinal du Bellay,
a proceeding which did not bring him good luck. The intriguing diplomacy
of the papal court displeased him, and he soon lost his cousin's favour.
A volume of sonnets entitled _Regrets_, full of vigour and poetry, dates
from this time. But Du Bellay, deprived of the protection of the most
powerful member of his family, again fell into difficulties, and finally
died in 1560 at the age of thirty-five. His Roman sojourn has given
birth to perhaps the finest of his works, _Les Antiquites de Rome_,
Englished by Spenser under the slightly altered title of 'The Ruins of
Rome.' Du Bellay's works are not extensive, and indeed they could hardly
be so, considering the shortness of his life and the interruptions of
business and study which even that short life underwent. But he is
undoubtedly the member of the group whose work keeps at the highest
level. Nor is his excellence limited to one or two tones. For grace and
simplicity his _Vanneur_, his _Epitaphe d'un Chat_, and several others
of his _Jeux Rustiques_ challenge comparison. He had a strong vein of
satire, which he showed in denouncing fawning poetasters as well as the
corrupt and intriguing hangers on of the Papal court. His sonnets to
Olive have the finest flavour of the peculiarly cultivated and graceful
voluptuousness which has been noted as one of the distinguishing marks
of the French Renaissance. His _Antiquites de Rome_ exhibit even more
strongly another of those distinguishing marks, the melancholy sense of
death, destruction, and nothingness; indeed, as the _Heptameron_ is the
typical prose work of this period, so Du Bellay's poems may be taken as
its typical poetry. He has been called the Apollo of the Pleiade, but he
should with justice be called its Mercury as well, for, as he was
perhaps its best poet, so he was certainly its best prose writer. It is
unlucky that he was less favoured by fate and fortune than any other of
the greater writers of the century.
[Sidenote: Belleau.]
The position of best poet of the Pleiade--Ronsard, the greatest, having
mingled a good deal of alloy with his gold--has been sometimes disputed
for Remy Belleau[196]. It is certain that his 'Avril' holds with Du
Bellay's 'Vanneur' and Ronsard's already-mentioned 'Quand vous serez
bien vieille,' the rank of the best known and best liked poems of the
school. Belleau, whose life was extremely uneventful, was born at
Nogent-le-Rotrou in 1528, and was attached during nearly the whole of
his life to the household of Remy de Lorraine, Marquis d'Elbeuf, and his
son Charles, Duc d'Elbeuf, whose education he superintended and in whose
house he spent his days. He died in 1577 and received an elaborate
funeral, being carried to the grave by his brother stars, Ronsard and
Baif, and by two of the younger disciples of the Pleiade, Desportes and
Jamyn. Belleau was the chief purely descriptive poet and the chief
poetical translator of the Pleiade. He began by a collection of poems
entitled _Petites Inventions_ (short descriptive pieces), and by a
translation of Anacreon. In 1565 a more ambitious work, the _Bergerie_,
made its appearance. This is a mixture of prose and poetry, describing
country life and its attractions. It is in this that the famous 'Avril'
occurs, and there are other detached pieces not much inferior. In 1566
another rather curiously conceived work made its appearance, the _Amours
et Nouveaux Echanges de Pierres Precieuses_. As a whole this is perhaps
his best book. Besides these, Belleau also translated or paraphrased the
_Phenomena_ of Aratus, _Ecclesiastes_, and the _Song of Solomon_. He
deserves to rank with not a few poets who have often attained a fair
secondary position in the art, and whose special faculty disposes them
to patient and ingenious description in more or less poetical verse. The
stately and at the same time flexible rhythm, the brilliant and varied
vocabulary which the Pleiade used, lent themselves not ill to this task,
and Belleau's talent, learning, and industry enabled him to give an
unusually equable charm to his work. But he is altogether too
occasional, too void of the higher poetical sentiment, and too limited
in range, to be ranked with Ronsard or with Du Bellay. His peculiar
quality of patient labour stood him in good stead in composing a
Macaronic poem on the Huguenots, which is by no means without value.
[Sidenote: Baif.]
Jean Antoine de Baif[197] was a man of more varied talent than Belleau,
and his history and personality are more interesting. He was the natural
son of Lazare de Baif, French ambassador at Venice, and of a noble lady
of that city. Marriage was impossible, for Lazare de Baif, who was
himself a man of letters, was in orders; but he did his best for his
son, and in 1547, when he was still very young, left him a considerable
fortune. Baif was, except Jodelle, the youngest member of the Pleiade,
but he early distinguished himself by his expertness in the classical
languages. He began in French, like the majority of his school, with a
collection of sonnets and other pieces, entitled _Les Amours de Meline_,
and he followed them up with the _Amours de Francine_. Francine is said
to have had over her predecessor the advantage or disadvantage of
existing. Baif then turned to the new theatre, which his comrade Jodelle
had introduced, and translated or adapted several plays of Plautus,
Terence, and Sophocles, but these will be noticed elsewhere. He returned
to poetry proper in _Les Passe-Temps_, a poetical miscellany of merit.
Lastly, in 1581, appeared a curious work, entitled _Les Mimes_, composed
of octosyllabic dizains, half-moral, half-satirical in tone and subject.
Baif, who was thought by some of his contemporaries to write even better
in Latin than in French, was a chief defender of the often-mooted though
preposterous plan of adjusting modern languages to the exact metres of
the ancients. This idea, which somewhat later seduced no less a man than
Spenser for a time, and with him many of the brightest wits in England,
is perhaps almost more hopeless in French than in our own tongue, owing
to the omnipotence of accent and the habit of slurring almost all the
syllables of a word except one. But it was frequently entertained at
different times through the century, and is said by Agrippa d'Aubigne to
have been started as early as 1530 by a certain Mousset, of whom there
is no other trace. Baif, who was also a spelling reformer, wrote a good
deal of verse in the metres he advocated, but with no greater success
than the other adventurous persons who have attempted the same _tour de
force_. He is also said to have conceived the idea of an Academy, and to
have in many other ways shown himself an active and ardent reformer of
letters. It is for this alertness of spirit and general proficiency in
literary craftsmanship that Baif is memorable, rather than for supreme
or even remarkable poetical power. His epitaphs are among his best work,
probably owing to his careful study of the hardly-to-be-surpassed
examples of this kind of composition which the classical languages
afford. He was a diligent panegyrist of country life and country ways,
but no single work of his in this class comes up to the masterpieces of
Ronsard, Du Bellay, and Belleau. Range, variety, and inventiveness of
spirit are Baif's chief merits.
[Sidenote: Daurat, Jodelle, Pontus de Tyard.]
The three remaining members of the group may be disposed of more
rapidly. Daurat, the eldest, and in a sense the master of all, was, as
far as regards French composition, the dark star of the Pleiade, for he
wrote nothing of importance in the vernacular. Jodelle was a voluminous
writer, but his dramatic importance so far exceeds his merely poetical
value that he will be best treated of when we come to discuss the
Theatre of the Renaissance. A somewhat curious instance of his poetical
energy is to be found in his unfinished, indeed hardly begun,
_Contre-Amours_. All the rest had started with a volume of verse in
praise of some real or imaginary mistress, so Jodelle determined to
write one against an unkind lady. The seventh member of the Pleiade,
Pontus de Tyard, was the eldest save Daurat, the longest-lived and the
highest in station, while he was also in a way the most original, having
published his first book before the appearance of the _Defense et
Illustration_. He was born at Bissy, near Macon, and, having been
appointed Bishop of Chalon, died in 1603, last of the group. Poetry was
only part of his literary occupations, and literary work itself by no
means absorbed him. But his _Erreurs Amoureuses_, addressed to a certain
Pasithee, and other works, give him fair rank in the school. He has been
erroneously credited with the introduction of the sonnet into France,
an honour which is probably due, as has been more than once observed, to
Saint Gelais. But if he did not introduce the form, he at least
contributed one of its most striking examples in his beautiful Sonnet to
'Sleep,' a favourite subject of the age both in France and England.
The Pleiade proper by no means monopolised all the poetical talent of
the period. Indeed, there can be no surer testimony to the real strength
of the movement than the universal adherence which was given to its
methods by those who were in no sense bound to it by personal
connection. A second Pleiade might be made up of members who had almost
as much poetical talent as the actual titular stars. Magny, Tahureau, Du
Bartas, D'Aubigne, Desportes, Bertaut, had each of them talent not far
inferior to that of Du Bellay and of Ronsard, and equal to that of the
five minor members. Garnier was immensely Jodelle's superior in his own
line. Jamyn, Durant, Passerat, the two La Tailles, Vauquelin de la
Fresnaye, even La Boetie, who had, as far as can be made out, far more
vocation in poetry than in prose, are names at least equal to those of
Pontus de Tyard or Baif. But they did not form part of the energetic
_coterie_ who started and pushed the movement, and so they have lacked
the reputation which the combined and successful effort of the Seven has
given them. Yet Du Bartas is the one French poet of the sixteenth
century who wrote a poem on the great scale with success, and D'Aubigne
ranks with Regnier and Victor Hugo in the strength and vigour of his
verse.
[Sidenote: Magny.]
Olivier de Magny[198] was a kind of petted child of the Pleiade. His
_Amours_ are prefaced by commendatory verses, among which compositions
of four out of the seven--Ronsard, Baif, Belleau and Jodelle--figure,
and he was as strenuous in carrying out the recommendations of Du
Bellay's _Illustration_ as any of the seven themselves. His _Amours_
just mentioned, his _Odes_, his _Gayetes_ even, testify to the obedient
admiration which young verse-writers often show for the leading poets of
their day. But there is no servile imitation in Magny. His life was
short, and the dates of its beginning and ending are not exactly known,
though he died in 1560. He was a lover of Louise Labe, and was worthy
of her, poetically speaking. He was born, like Marot, at Cahors; he went
to Rome, like many other literary men of his time, on a diplomatic
errand; and his works were all published between 1553 and his death. The
_Odes_ are the best of them; the _Gayetes_ are light and lively enough;
and in both his volumes of sonnets, but especially in the _Soupirs_,
excellent examples of the form are to be found. Magny had a strong
feeling for the formal art of poetry, and it was thus natural that he
should eagerly embrace the gospel of Ronsard. But besides this, he had a
true poetical imagination, and a real command of poetical language. A
sonnet in dialogue, which greatly attracted the admiration of Colletet,
the historian of French poetry in the next age, is perhaps not much more
than a _tour de force_. But many of his other pieces show real feeling,
and have a certain youthfulness about them which suits well with the
sentiments they express, and the ardour of literary as well as amatory
devotion which the poet endeavours to convey.
[Sidenote: Tahureau.]
Still younger and probably still more short-lived, but superior as a
poet, was Jacques Tahureau[199]. He was born at Le Mans of a noble
family, and died at the age of twenty-eight. But his life, if short, was
a happy one, and, like most of his contemporaries, he published a volume
of amatory sonnets under the title, gracefully affected even for that
age of graceful affectation, of _Mignardises Amoureuses de l'Admiree_.
Unlike many of the heroines of the Pleiade and their satellites, who are
either known or shrewdly suspected to have been imaginary, the _Admiree_
of Tahureau was a real person. What is more, he married her, and they
lived together for three years before his early death. Before the
_Mignardises_, he had published a _Premier Recueil_, and after them he
produced a third volume of odes, sonnets, etc. All three display the
same peculiarities, and these peculiarities are sufficiently remarkable.
Tahureau was named by the flattery and the classical fancies of his
contemporaries the French Catullus, and the parallel is not so rash as
might be thought. It is true that it came originally from Du Bellay in
one of his satirical veins. But a later poetical critic, Vauquelin de la
Fresnaye, is more precise in his description, and oddly enough uses the
very term which was afterwards applied in England to Shakespeare's
youthful sonnets. Tahureau, he says:--
Nous affrianda tous au sucre de cet art.
The author of the _Mignardises_ is indeed somewhat 'sugared' in his
style of writing; but there are genuine passion and genuine poetical
feeling as well in his verse. Of the minor poets of the time he is
probably the best.
[Sidenote: Minor Ronsardists.]
Before noticing the four remaining poets who have been mentioned as
occupying the highest places next to the Pleiade itself, a brief review
of the minor poets until the end of the century may be given. Etienne de
la Boetie wrote poems which, though they have some of the stiffness and
a little of the hollowness of his _Contre-un,_ possess a certain
grandeur of sentiment and a knack of diction other than commonplace,
which explain Montaigne's admiration. Claude Buttet is chiefly
remarkable for having made a curious attempt to combine the classicism
of the new school with the romanticism of the old. He wrote Sapphics in
rhyme, an idea sufficiently ingenious, but hardly successful. Yet it is
fair to remember that some of the varieties of Leonine verse lacked
neither force nor elegance. The truth is, that these classic metres are
so alien to all modern tongues, that, rhymed or unrhymed, they are
doomed to failure. Jean de la Peruse was, like Magny and Tahureau, a
poet who died before he had reached his term. At twenty-five few men
have left lasting works. Yet La Peruse not only produced a tragedy of
some merit, but minor poems promising more. Jean Doublet was a much
older man, and is chiefly noticeable as an example of the writers who,
beginning with Marot, or even with Cretin, and the Rhetoriqueurs for
models, bowed to the overmastering influence of the Pleiade. Docility of
this kind, however, rarely promises much poetical worth, and Doublet was
not a great poet; but his poems, which have had better fortune in the
way of reprints than those of greater men, show power of versification.
Amadis Jamyn was a somewhat more distinguished poet than those who have
just been mentioned. Born in 1540, he came to Paris, when the triumph
and supremacy of Ronsard was completely assured, and was taken under
the protection of the Prince of Poets. He was also honoured, as we have
seen, by being allowed to stand by the side of Ronsard, of Baif, of
Desportes, at the funeral of Remy Belleau. He translated the last twelve
books of the Iliad to complete Salel, and began a translation of the
Odyssey; besides which he wrote a poem on the Chase, another on
Generosity, and, like everybody else at the time, abundance of
miscellaneous pieces. He was a good scholar, and there was more ease in
his verse than is usually to be found in his contemporaries (save the
greatest of them), who too often allowed their classical studies to
stiffen and starch their verse. Another admirable poet, though of no
great compass, was the dramatist Grevin. His _Villanesques_, a modified
form of the favourite Villanelle, which had survived the other
_epiceries_ condemned by Du Bellay, are singularly graceful and tender,
epithets which are also applicable to his _Baisers_. The brothers La
Taille also, like Grevin, are chiefly known as dramatists. Jean de la
Taille, though but a boy of ten years old when the _style Marotique_ was
swept out of fashion, had sufficient independence to compose _blasons_
(and very pretty ones) of the daisy and the rose. Others of his poems
have mediaeval forms or settings, but he imitated Ronsard in his _Mort
de Paris_, and Du Bellay in his _Courtisan Retire_. The works of Jacques
de la Taille, who died young, were chiefly epigrams. Guy du Faur de
Pibrac wrote moral quatrains, which had a great vogue, and which in a
way deserved it. Nicolas Rapin was, with the exception of Passerat, the
chief of the poets of the _Menippee_, a remarkable group, who will be
noticed further when we come to that singular production. But Passerat
himself deserves more notice than simply as a political satirist and a
famous Latin scholar. Of all the poets of the sixteenth century before
Regnier and after Marot, Passerat was the one who possessed most comic
talent. His works are full of little touches which exhibit this, while
at the same time he was a master of the graceful love of poetry which
imitation of the ancients had made fashionable. His Villanelle 'J'ai
perdu ma Tourterelle' is probably the most elegant specimen of a
poetical trifle that the age produced, and has of late years attracted
great admiration. Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, a lawyer, the author of an
Art of Poetry, and of the first satires, so called, in French, had a
good deal of poetical power, which he expended chiefly on pastoral
subjects; but unfortunately his command of language and style was by no
means always equal to his command of fresh and agreeable imagery and
sentiment.
[Sidenote: Du Bartas.]
Guillaume de Saluste du Bartas[200], the 'Protestant Ronsard,' was born
in 1544 at Montfort, near Auch, served Henry of Navarre in war and
diplomacy, was wounded at Ivry, and died of his wounds in 1590. His
first work was _Judith_; then followed _La Premiere Semaine_, and next
_Uranie_, _Le Triomphe de la Foi_, and the _Seconde Semaine_. He also
wrote numerous smaller poems, including one on the battle of Ivry. The
'First Week of Creation' is his greatest and most famous work. It went
through thirty editions in a few years; was translated into English by
Sylvester, gave not a little inspiration to Milton, and was warmly
admired by Goethe. Ronsard at first eagerly welcomed Du Bartas; but his
jealousy being aroused by the pretensions of the Calvinist party to set
up their poet as a rival to himself, he resented this in an indignant
and vigorous address to Daurat, which contains some very just criticisms
on Du Bartas. Nevertheless the merits of the latter are extremely great,
and his personage and work very interesting. It has been said of him
that he represents, in the first place, the extreme development of the
Ronsardising innovation; in the second place, the highest literary
culture attained by the French Calvinists. Inferior to D'Aubigne in
knowledge of the world, in the choice of subjects perennially
interesting, and in terse vigour of expression, Du Bartas was the
superior of the great Protestant satirist in picturesqueness, in
imagination, and in facility of descriptive power. The stately and
gorgeous abundance of the vocabulary with which the Hellenising and
Latinising innovations of the Pleiade enriched the French language
supplied him with colours and material to work with, and his own genius
did the rest. His attempt to naturalise Greek compounds, such as
'Aime-Lyre,' 'Donne-Ame,' and the rest, has done him more harm than
anything else; but his combination of classical learning, with the
varied colour and vivid imagination of the middle age and the
Renaissance, often results in extraordinarily striking expressions.
_L'Eschine azuree_, for instance, is a singularly picturesque, if also
somewhat barbaric, reminiscence of [Greek: eurea nota thalasses]: the
enforcement of the idea of _hora novissima tempora pessima_ in the four
following lines is admirable:--
Nos execrables moeurs, dedans Gomorrhe apprises,
Les troublees saisons, les civiles fureurs,
Les menaces du ciel, sont les avant-coureurs
De Christ, qui vient tenir ses dernieres assises.
In such a passage again as the following, the power and simplicity of
the diction can escape no reader; the piling up of the strokes is worthy
of Victor Hugo:--
Les etoiles cherront. Le desordre, la nuict,
La frayeur, le trespas, la tempeste, le bruit,
Entreront en quartier.
All that was wanting to make Du Bartas a poet of the first rank was some
faculty of self-criticism; of natural _verve_ and imagination as well as
of erudition he had no lack, but in critical faculty he seems to have
been totally deficient. His beauties, rare in kind and not small in
amount, are alloyed with vast quantities of dull absurdity.
[Sidenote: D'Aubigne.]
[Sidenote: Desportes.]
Agrippa d'Aubigne[201] was a few years Du Bartas' junior, and long
outlived him. He was an important prose-writer as well as poet, and his
long life was as full of interesting events as of literary occupations.
At six years old he read Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; a year or two later
his father made him swear, in presence of the gibbeted corpses of the
unsuccessful conspirators of Amboise, to revenge their death. Shortly
afterwards he narrowly escaped the stake. For a time he dwelt with Henry
of Navarre at the court of Charles IX., and there thoroughly imbued
himself with the Ronsardising tradition. But he soon escaped with his
master, and for years was a Calvinist irreconcileable, always for war to
the knife, and as rude and bold in the council chamber as in the field.
The death of his master was unfortunate for D'Aubigne; but, though he at
first opposed the regency of Marie de Medicis, he made terms for
himself. The publication, however, of his 'History' brought enemies on
him, and he fled to Geneva, finishing his days there. His prose works
are too numerous to mention separately: the chief besides his histories
are the _Confession de Sancy_ and the _Aventures du Baron de Faeneste_,
both satirical in character and full of vigour. He began as a poet by
poems in the lighter Pleiade style, but his masterpiece is the strange
work called _Les Tragiques_. This consists of seven books, amounting to
not much less than ten thousand lines, and entitled _Miseres_,
_Princes_, _La Chambre Doree_, _Les Feux_, _Les Fers_, _Vengeance_,
_Jugement_. The poem is half historical and half satirical, dealing with
the religious wars, the persecution of the Huguenots, the abuses of the
administration, and of contemporary manners, etc. Nothing equal to the
best verses of this singular book had yet been seen in France, and not
much equal to them has been produced since. The tone of sombre and
impressive declamation had been to some extent anticipated by Du Bartas,
but chiefly for purposes of description. D'Aubigne turned it to its
natural use in invective, and the effect is often extraordinarily fine.
Very copious citation would be necessary to show its excellence: but
before Victor Hugo there is nothing in French equal to D'Aubigne at his
best in point of clangour of sound and impetuosity of rhythm. It is
noteworthy that Du Bartas' _Semaine_, with the _Tragiques_ and the
tragedies of Garnier, finally established the Alexandrine as the
indispensable metre for serious and impassioned poetry in France.
Hitherto the decasyllable and the dodecasyllable had been used
indiscriminately, and Ronsard's _Franciade_ is written in the former.
But after the three poets just mentioned, the Alexandrine became
invariable; the decasyllable being left for light and occasional work,
as a sort of medium in usage as in bulk between the Alexandrine and the
octosyllable. The truth is that, until the improvements of language and
style which the Pleiade had introduced, the Alexandrine couplet had not
had either suppleness or dignity enough for the work. It was lumbering
and disjointed. As soon, however, as the classical turn, inseparable
from a specially classical metre, had been given to the language, it at
once took its place and has ever since kept it, though in the century
succeeding it was deprived of much of its force by arbitrary rules. The
lines of Boileau condemning Ronsard[202] have inseparably connected
Desportes and Bertaut, and have given them a position in literary
history which is as intrinsically inaccurate as it is unduly high.
Neither approaches Du Bartas or D'Aubigne in poetical excellence or in
adroit carrying out of Ronsardism. But neither was in the least made
_retenu_ by Ronsard's failure, and it did not enter the head of
themselves or any of their contemporaries, till their last days, that
Ronsard had failed. Philippe Desportes[203] was a very unclerical
cleric, a successful courtier and diplomatist, a great favourite with
the ladies of the court. He was also a poet of little vigour, but of
great sweetness, much elegance of style and form, and extraordinary
neatness, if not originality, of expression. With Jamyn he was the most
prominent of Ronsard's own particular disciples. His poetical works are
sharply divided, like those of Herrick and Donne and some other poets,
on the one hand, into poems of a very mundane character, collections of
sonnets after the Pleiade fashion to real or imaginary heroines,
celebrations of the ladies and the _mignons_ of the court of Henri III.,
imitations of Italian verse, and the like; on the other, into devotional
poems, which include some translations of the Psalms of not a little
merit. Personally Desportes appears to have been a self-seeker and a
sycophant; not without good nature, but covetous, intriguing, corrupt,
given to base compliances. He was Du Bellay's _poete courtisan_ in the
worst sense of the phrase[204]. But working at leisure and with care,
and undistracted by any literary or sentimental enthusiasm, he found
means to give to his work a polish and correctness which many of his
contemporaries of greater talent did not, or could not, give. In this
fact the explanation of Boileau's commendation--for it is no doubt
meant, relatively speaking, for commendation--is probably to be found.
[Sidenote: Bertaut.]
Jean Bertaut was, to use a metaphor frequently employed in literary
history, the 'moon' of Desportes. Like him, he is a poet rather elegant
than vigorous, rather correct than spirited. Like him, he wrote light
verse and devotional poems, and, as in the case of Desportes, the
religious poems are--rather contrary to the reader's expectation--the
best of the two. His work, however, was even more limited in amount than
that of his contemporary.
FOOTNOTES:
[192] The list is sometimes given rather differently; instead of Jodelle
and Pontus de Tyard, Scevole de St. Marthe and Muretus are substituted.
But the enumeration in the text is the accepted one.
[193] Ed. Blanchemain. 8 vols. Paris, 1857-67.
[194] The term usually applied to him by contemporaries.
[195] Ed. Marty-Laveaux. 2 vols. Paris, 1866-7.
[196] Ed. Gouverneur. 3 vols. Paris, 1866.
[197] Not recently re-edited in full. In selection by Becq de
Fouquieres. Paris, 1874.
[198] Recently edited in 5 vols. by Courbet. Paris, v. d.
[199] Ed. Blanchemain. 2 vols. Geneva, 1869.
[200] Du Bartas, always unjustly treated in France, probably from a
curious tradition of mingled sectarian and literary jealousy, has not
been reprinted of late years. The edition used is that of 1610-1611.
Paris, 2 vols, folio.
[201] Ed. Reaume and de Caussade. Vols. 1-4. Paris, 1873-7. There is
another volume to follow.
[202] Here are these celebrated lines:--
Ronsard, qui le suivit, par une autre methode
Reglant tout, brouilla tout, fit un art a sa mode,
Et toutefois longtemps eut un heureux destin.
Mais sa muse en Francais parlant Grec et Latin
Vit dans l'age suivant, par un retour grotesque,
Tomber de ses grands mots le faste pedantesque.
Ce poete orgueilleux, trebuche de si haut,
Rendit puis retenus Desportes et Bertaut.
_Art Poet._, Chant i.
[203] Ed. Michiels. Paris, 1858.
[204] He was not a courtier for nothing. He held numerous abbacies, and
Charles IX. is said to have given him 800 gold pieces, Henri III. 10,000
crowns of silver, in each case for a poetical offering of very small
bulk.
CHAPTER V.
THE THEATRE FROM GRINGORE TO GARNIER.
[Sidenote: Gringore.]
It so happened that the mediaeval theatre closed, as far as its
exclusive possession of the stage is concerned, with one of the most
remarkable of all its writers. Pierre Gringore[205], who towards the
close of his career preferred the spelling Gringoire, was a Norman by
birth. His poetical and dramatic capacity has been considerably
exaggerated by the learned but crotchety scholar who was at first
charged with the joint editorship of his works in the Bibliotheque
Elzevirienne. But, when the hyperboles of M. Charles d'Hericault are
reduced to their simplest terms, Gringore remains a remarkable figure.
It is to him that we owe the only complete and really noteworthy
tetralogy, composed of _cry_, sotie, morality, and farce, which exists
to show the final result of the mediaeval play--the _Jeu du Prince des
Sots_. To him is also due the most remarkable of the sixteenth-century
mysteries, that of _Saint Louis_; and his miscellaneous poems, as yet
not fully collected, show us a man of letters possessed of no small
faculty for miscellaneous work. Gringore first emerges as a pamphleteer
in verse, on the side of the policy of Louis XII. He held the important
position of _mere sotte_ in the company of persons who charged
themselves with playing the sotie, and Louis perceived the advantages
which he might gain by enlisting such a writer on his side. Gringore's
early works are allegorical poems of the kind which the increasing
admiration of the _Roman de la Rose_, joined to the practice of the
Rhetoriqueurs, had made fashionable in France; but they are directly
political in tone, and an undercurrent of dramatic intention is always
manifest in them. _Les folles Entreprises_ is a very remarkable work. It
might be described as a series of monologues of the kind usual and
already described, but continuous, and having the independent parts
bound to each other by speeches of the author _in propria persona_. The
titles of the separate sections--_L'Entreprise des folz Orgueilleux_,
_Reflexions de l'Auteur sur la Guerre d'Italie_, _le Blason de
Pratique_, _Balade et Supplication a la Vierge Marie_ (_et se peult
Interpreter sur la Royne de France_), etc.--explain the plan of this
curious book as well as any laboured analysis could do. The author takes
what he considers to be the chief grievances in Church and State, and
dilates upon them in the manner, half moralising, half allegoric, which
was popular. An argument of _Les folles Entreprises_ would, however,
require considerable space. It enters into the most recondite
theological questions, and of its general tone the heading of the last
chapter tells as good a story as anything else can do: 'Comme le
tres-chrestien roy et Justice relevent Foy qui estait abattu par
Richesse et Papelardise.' Other works of the same semi-dramatic,
semi-poetical kind are even more directly political in substance: _Les
Entreprises de Venise_; _La Chasse du Cerf des Cerfs_ (Pope Julius),
etc. Sometimes, as in _La Coqueluche_, the author becomes a simple
chronicler describing incidents of his time. Indeed it would hardly be
an exaggeration to describe Gringore's work as the result of a kind of
groping after journalism condemned by the circumstances of the time to
the most awkward and inappropriate form. In his definitely dramatic work
the same practical tendency reappears. The tetralogy is of a directly
politico-social kind. The _cry_, a summons in ironical terms to _sots_
of all kinds to come and hear their lesson; the sotie, an audacious
satire on the state of things; the morality, in which the very names of
the personages--Peuple Francois, Peuple Italique, Divine Pungnicion,
etc.--speak for themselves, all show this tendency; and even the _bonne
bouche_ at the end, the farce (which is altogether too Rabelaisian in
subject for description here), seems to illustrate the motto--a very
practical one--'Il faut cultiver son jardin.' Less directly the same
purpose can be traced in the _Mystere de Monseigneur Saint Loys_. This
is a picture of the ideal patriot king doing judgment and justice, and
serving God by his voyages over sea, and his punishments of blasphemers
and loose livers at home.
[Sidenote: The last Age of the Mediaeval Theatre.]
The first two quarters, and especially the first quarter, of the century
contributed plentifully to the list of mysteries, moralities, and
farces. The dates of the latter are not easy to ascertain, and it is
probable that most of them are older than the present period. The taste
for very lengthy mysteries and moralities, however, had by no means died
out, and some of the mysteries, notably those of Antoine Chevallet, are
of considerable merit. To the sixteenth century too belongs what is
probably the longest of all moralities, that on _The Just and Unjust
Man_, which contains 36,000 lines, besides the _Mundus_, _Caro_, _et
Daemonia_, and the _Condamnation de Banquet_ already described.
This school was continued, though under some difficulties, until a late
period of the century. It had two things in its favour; it was extremely
popular, and it lent itself, far more than the stately rival soon to be
discussed, to the political and social uses which had long been
associated with the stage in the mind of audiences. In Beza's tragedy of
_Abraham Sacrifiant_, a kind of union takes place between the two
styles. But even the triumph of the Pleiade did not at once abolish the
mysteries which were still legal in the provinces, which had a strong
hold on the fancy of the populace, and which some men of letters who
were themselves much indebted to the new movement, notably Vauquelin de
la Fresnaye, upheld with pen as well as with tongue. Thomas Le Coq, a
beneficed clerk of Falaise, wrote a really remarkable play, _Cain_, of
the purest mystery kind, in 1580; and the troubles of the League brought
forth a large number of pieces which approached much nearer to the
mediaeval drama, and especially to the mediaeval drama in the form which
Gringore had given it, than to the model of Jodelle.
[Sidenote: Beginnings of the Classical Drama.]
It was, however, this model which had the seeds of life in it, and which
was destined to serve as the pattern for the French drama of the future.
In the manifesto of the Pleiade Du Bellay gave especial prominence to
the drama among the literary kinds, in which French had need of
strengthening from classical sources. The classical tragedy in the
classical language, and even in translation, was already no stranger to
French audiences, and the principle of constructing modern vernacular
plays on the same model had become familiar to the upper and learned
classes by the practice of the Italians, with which they had become
acquainted, partly through the numerous visits, friendly and hostile,
paid by Frenchmen to Italy in the early years of the sixteenth century,
partly through the reproduction of these Italian plays at the courts of
Francis I. and Henri II. This reproduction of foreign work was not
confined to the court, for in 1548 the town of Lyons greeted Catherine
de Medicis with an Italian play acted by an Italian company. As for
translations of classical drama, Lazare de Baif translated the _Electra_
as early as 1537, and Buchanan, Muretus, and others composed Latin plays
for their pupils to act. In all these plays, Latin, Italian, and
French-translation, the influence of the tragedian Seneca was paramount,
and this influence made an enduring mark on the future drama of France.
Greek, though it was ardently studied, was, from the purely literary
point of view, little comprehended by the French humanists, and of the
three tragedians Euripides was the only one who made much impression
upon them. Seneca, as the only extant Latin tragedian, had a monopoly of
the classical language which they understood best and revered most
heartily. His model was also peculiarly imitable. The paucity of action,
the strict observation of certain easily observable rules, the regular
and harmonious but easily comprehensible system of his choruses, the
declamatory style and strong ethical temper of his sentiments, all
appealed to the French Renaissance. Within a year or two from the time
when Du Bellay had sounded the note of innovation, Jodelle answered the
summons with a tragedy and a comedy at the same time.
[Sidenote: Jodelle.]
Etienne Jodelle[206], Seigneur de Lymodin, was one of the youngest of
Ronsard's fellows. He was born at Paris in 1532, and was thus barely
twenty years old when, in 1552, he founded at once modern French tragedy
with his _Cleopatre_, and modern French comedy with his _Eugene_. The
representation was a great success, and obtained for the author from the
King, Henri II., besides many compliments, the sum of five hundred
crowns. The success of the plays also brought about an incident famous
in French literary history of the anecdotic kind. The seven determined
to celebrate the occasion by a country excursion, and on the way to
Arcueil they unluckily met a flock of goats. Deeply imbued as they all
were with classical fancies, it was almost inevitable that the idea of a
Dionysiac festival should strike them, and a goat was caught, crowned
with flowers and solemnly paraded, Ronsard himself officiating as the
god. This harmless freak was represented by the zealots of the time as
an impious pagan orgie, in which the goat had been actually sacrificed
to a false god, and the reputation of the brotherhood sank almost
equally with Catholics and Protestants. Six years after, Jodelle
produced his second tragedy, _Didon_, also with great success. But he
was not a fortunate person. The miscarriage of a pageant of which he had
the direction alienated the favour of the court from him, and he was too
proud or too careless to solicit its grace. He was a loose and reckless
liver, and receives from Pierre de l'Estoile a character which very
probably is unduly harsh. However this may be, he died at the age of
forty, indigent and ruined in constitution. His literary activity was
great, but only a small part of his work survives, and his three plays
are the only important portion of this.
The comedy has some impression of classical study, though very much less
than the two tragedies. It is, unlike the indigenous farce, divided
regularly into acts and scenes; it is much longer than the native
comedy, and some of the characters show, though faintly and at a
distance, some traces of a reading of Terence. But it retains the
octosyllabic metre, and its general scheme, despite a somewhat greater
involution of plot and multiplicity of characters, is that of a farce.
Eugene, the hero, a rich and luxurious churchman, is in love with Alix,
whom, to save appearances, he has married to a wittol of the name of
Guillaume. Alix, however, has several other lovers, among whom is
Florimond a soldier, the rejected suitor of Helene, Eugene's sister.
These personages are completed by Maitre Jean, the abbe's chaplain and
general factotum, a creditor of Guillaume's, some servants of the
soldier Florimond, etc. The plot is very simple, consisting of hardly
anything but the return of Florimond from the wars, and his wrath at
discovering Alix's relations not merely with Guillaume but with Eugene.
He is finally made happy with Helene. Alix takes the wise resolution to
be less prodigal of her affections, and the play ends. Some detached
passages, especially the opening scene, in which the lazy, dissolute
life of wealthy churchmen is very pointedly satirised, are amusing
enough, and the characters of the chaplain and the husband are not far
from _la vraie comedie_. The tragedies are indirectly of more
importance, but intrinsically much duller reading. Instead, however, of
cleaving, as _Eugene_ does, closely to the lines of the existing drama,
the innovation in them is of the boldest kind. The octosyllabic verse,
hitherto sacred to drama, is exchanged in _Cleopatre_ for a mixture of
the decasyllabic and the Alexandrine, some scenes being written in the
one, others in the other. Nor is the tentative character of the work
only thus indicated; for the rhymes follow different systems in the
different scenes. In _Didon_, however, Jodelle settled down to the
unbroken Alexandrine with alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes,
which has remained the standard vehicle of French tragedy ever since.
His general scheme follows that of Seneca closely, and his choruses are
written in stanzas of short verses regularly arranged. The matter of
both plays is taken with tolerable exactness, in the one case from
Plutarch, in the other from Virgil; but a somewhat full analytic
description of the first French tragedy must be given. _Didon_ is
something of an advance in versification, as has been pointed out, but
in other respects it is perhaps inferior to _Cleopatre_.
The piece begins with a prologue to the king, and then the first act
opens with a long soliloquy from the ghost of Antony. Long speeches, it
should be said, are the bane of this early French tragedy, and for
nearly a century the evil increased instead of diminishing. Cleopatra,
Charmium, and Eras then appear, for the play follows Plutarch strictly
enough. The queen expresses her despair, and announces her intention to
die. The first act is concluded by a long chorus of Alexandrian women,
who bewail the shortness of life in six-syllable quatrains. The second
act, like the first (unless the monologue of the ghost is counted in
this latter), consists of only a single scene and a chorus. The scene is
between Octavian, Agrippa, and Proculeius, who argue about the probable
fate of Cleopatra. The conqueror is disposed to mercy and to regret for
Antony's death, but his officers are less amiably minded. They agree,
however, that Cleopatra will have to be watched for fear of suicide. The
chorus now is nominally divided into strophes and antistrophes, but
these are really only uniform stanzas of six six-syllable lines each,
with the rhymes arranged a, b, a, b, c, c, and there is no epode. The
third act contains the interview of Octavian with Cleopatra, the
surrender of the treasures, and the treachery of Seleucus. The chorus
takes part in this scene both by a short song and a longer one in
couplets, but arranged in eight-line stanzas, which is preceded by a
dialogue with Seleucus. The act thus consists of two scenes. In the
fourth act Cleopatra repeats and regularly matures her resolve of death.
It contains two choric pieces of some beauty. The first is an undivided
song in sixes and fours; the second has a regular arrangement of
strophe, antistrophe, and epode three times repeated, consisting of
five-syllable lines, of which the strophe and antistrophe contain eleven
each and the epode eight, arranged--strophe and antistrophe a, b, a, b,
c, c, d, d, e, e, d, epode a, b, a, b, c, c, d, d. The fifth act is very
short, containing a recital by Proculeius of the Queen's death, and a
choric lament in quatrains. It will thus be seen that the action in the
piece is very small, except in the brawl with Seleucus; that the chorus
has the full importance which it possessed in the classical tragedy; and
that, owing to the few changes of scene and the other restrictions
imposed upon himself by the poet, the dramatic capabilities of the plan
are not a little limited. The same state of things continued to be the
case during the whole duration of the school whose master Jodelle was.
Style and versification were sometimes better, sometimes worse than his;
but, with comparatively few exceptions, the general conception was the
same, long monologues, few characters, an almost total defect of action,
which is conducted by the aid of messengers, etc.
[Sidenote: Minor Pleiade Dramatists.]
The fervent spirit of imitation which characterised the satellites of
the Pleiade has already been noticed more than once. But in no
department was it more marked than in that of drama. Jean de la Peruse,
who, like many of the Pleiade poets, died very young, produced a _Medea_
imitated from Seneca, and Charles Toustain an _Agamemnon,_ also taken
from the same author. Jacques de la Taille at a very early age wrote a
_Darius_ and an _Alexander_, besides a _Didon_, which is lost. These
pieces have some merit, and it is noteworthy that the metre varies, as
in Jodelle's model. A slight eccentricity of realism, however, has been
Jacques de la Taille's chief passport to a place in the history of
French literature. The death of Darius occurs in the middle of the word
_recommandation_,
Mes enfants et ma femme aie en recommanda ...
Il ne put achever, ear la mort l'en garda.
It is perhaps not insignificant that the verse is completed if the word
is not.
Of this immediate group of Jodelle's followers, however, the most
remarkable before Garnier was Jacques Grevin, who was noteworthy both as
a dramatist and as a poet. Grevin was a Protestant and a practitioner of
medicine, in which capacity he accompanied Marguerite de France, Duchess
of Savoy, to Turin, and died there, at the age of thirty. Before he was
twenty he wrote a tragedy, _La Mort de Cesar,_ which has considerable
merit, and two comedies, _Les Esbahis_ and _La Tresoriere_, which are
perhaps better still. Jean de la Taille, the brother of Jacques, but a
better poet and a better dramatist, wrote _Saul Furieux_ and _Les
Gabaonites_, two of the numerous sacred tragedies which have always
found favour in France, and the tradition of which it has been sought to
revive even in our own day. The theatre, like the pulpit, was used as an
engine by the Leaguers, but nothing of much value resulted from this.
[Sidenote: Garnier.]
Although many of the practitioners of this classical tragedy, notably
Jodelle, Grevin, and Jean de la Taille, produced work of interest and
merit, it contributed only one name which can properly be called great
to literary history. This was that of Robert Garnier[207], who brought
the form to the highest perfection of which it was capable in its
earliest state. Garnier was born at La Ferte Bernard in 1545, and died,
apparently in his native province of Maine, in 1601. He was a lawyer of
some distinction, being a member of the Paris bar, then Lieutenant
Criminel at Le Mans, and finally Councillor of State. He was an
immediate disciple and favourite of Ronsard, who has spoken of him in
those terms of magnificent eulogy of which he was liberal, but which
here, if somewhat exaggerated, are by no means altogether misplaced. His
dramatic works, extending to eight plays, were all composed in his
earlier manhood, between 1568 and 1580. There is, however, a wide
difference between the first six plays and the last two. The former,
_Porcie_, _Cornelie_, _Marc-Antoine_, _Hippolyte_, _La Troade_, and
_Antigone_, are all, as their titles show clearly, tragedies of
antiquity closely modelled on Seneca and Euripides, especially Seneca.
The _Cornelie_, it may be observed, was translated into English by Kyd.
They do not differ much in arrangement from each other, or from
Jodelle's _Cleopatre_. In his two last plays, however, produced in 1580,
much greater power and originality appear. These were _Les Juives_, a
Biblical tragedy on the fate of Zedekiah and Jerusalem, and
_Bradamante_, a romantic tragi-comedy on a subject taken from Ariosto.
The latter was apparently the first of its kind, dramatists having
hitherto confined themselves to classical, contemporary, and Biblical
subjects. There is, moreover, a curious incident connected with it. It
contains no choruses, and in the preface of the published edition the
manager is requested to have the want supplied in case of its being
acted. Here too appears the confidant, a dubious present to the French
theatre, but one of no small importance. The play is a remarkable one.
The mixture of comic with tragic models gives the author much more
liberty, of which he duly avails himself; the scenes are more numerous,
the action more lively and complicated, the interest in every way
greater. Yet it would seem, from the remark made above, that there was
some doubt in the mind of the author whether it would ever be acted. Nor
does it seem to have had much, if any, effect on the general character
of stage plays. These continued to follow the Jodelle model until Hardy
brought in the influence of Spain. Of that model _Les Juives_ is
assuredly the masterpiece. The choruses are of great beauty, admirably
diversified in metre and rhythm, and occasionally all but equalling the
best lyrics of the Pleiade. There is interest in the story, which deals
with the vengeance of Nebuchadnezzar on the Jewish king, and its chief
drawback is its unrelieved gloom. The first act too, which consists of a
monologue by the Prophet (unnamed) relieved only by the chorus, is
justly open to that charge of monotony and absence of action, which is
the great drawback of this class of drama. Subsequently, however, a real
interest is created in the question whether the conqueror will or will
not give up his sanguinary purposes in consequence of the remonstrances
of his general, Nebuzaradan, and the entreaties of Zedekiah's mother and
his own Queen. The stiffness of the dialogue, which is remarkable in
most of the tragedies of the period, is here a good deal softened. The
speeches are still sometimes too long--Garnier was indeed a great
offender in this way, and in his _Hippolyte_ has inflicted an unbroken
monologue of nearly two hundred lines on the hapless spectators. But
very frequently the dialogue is fairly kept up, and sufficiently varied
by the avoidance of the practice of concluding the speeches uniformly at
the end of lines.
[Sidenote: Defects of the Pleiade Tragedy.]
On the whole, however, despite the literary excellence of at least some
of the work composing it, it is impossible to give high rank as drama to
the model of Jodelle. Although the unities were not by any means
followed with the strictness which prevailed afterwards, the caution of
Horace about awkward transactions on the stage was rigidly observed,
and, with the usual illegitimate inference, carried out so as almost to
exclude all action whatever. The personages were generally few, the acts
divided into but a scene or two at most, the set _tirades_ mercilessly
long, and the whole thing, as it would appear to a modern spectator,
dull and spiritless.
[Sidenote: Pleiade Comedy.]
[Sidenote: Larivey.]
The dramatists of the Pleiade school, though they chiefly cultivated
tragedy, did not by any means neglect comedy, their leader, Jodelle,
having, as has been shown, set them the example in both kinds. Their
comedy was, however, for some time a somewhat indeterminate kind of
composition, and did not for the most part show much sign of the
extraordinary excellence which French comedy was to attain in the next
century. They seem to have hesitated between three models, the
indigenous farce, the Italian comedy, which was a graft on the Latin,
and the Latin comedy of Plautus and Terence itself. Yet _Eugene_, as has
been said, is a great deal better as a play than either _Didon_ or
_Cleopatre_. Its manner was closely imitated in the already-mentioned
comedies of Grevin. The _Reconnue_ of Belleau is a work of merit. Baif
turned the _Miles Gloriosus_ into French under the title of
_Taillebras_, which was acted with the curious accompaniment of choruses
composed by, among others, Desportes, Belleau, and Ronsard himself. All
these pieces kept the octosyllabic verse which the farce had
consecrated. Afterwards it became fashionable to write comedies in
prose. Jean de la Taille thus gave _Les Corrivaux_, Odet de Turnebe _Les
Mecontents_, Francois d'Amboise _Les Napolitaines_. But the chief comic
author of the century, a better playwright than Garnier himself, was
Pierre Larivey, who also wrote in prose[208]. He was born at Troyes
about 1540, and died probably in the second decade of the seventeenth
century. His father was an Italian, of the famous printer family of the
Giunti, and on settling in France he had dubbed himself L'Arrive, which
soon took the less recognisable form under which the dramatist is known.
Pierre Larivey held a canonry at Troyes, and translated many Italian
books of the most diverse kinds into French. Among these were numerous
comedies, and the genius of the translator for his task in this case
produced what are in effect as original compositions as most plays which
call themselves original. Larivey took the utmost liberties with his
models, adding, dropping, altering, exactly as he pleased, and writing
his adaptations in a style excellent for the purpose. He produced twelve
plays, of which nine are extant, _Le Laquais_, _La Veuve_, _Les
Esprits_, _Le Morfondu_, _Les Jaloux_, _Les Escoliers_, published in
1579, and _Constance_, _Le Fidele_, _Les Tromperies_, published in 1611.
Each of these has an Italian original. But, as the originals themselves
are frequently derived from classical sources, Larivey very often seems
to be imitating these latter. A nearly complete idea of the character of
his best piece, _Les Esprits_, may be obtained by those who know the
_Aulularia_ and _Andria_, and, on the other hand, the _Ecole des Maris_
and _L'Avare_, for he stands about midway between the classical comedies
of Latin and French. Moliere found a good deal of his property in
Larivey, and so did other French comic authors.
FOOTNOTES:
[205] Ed. Hericault, Montaiglon, and Rothschild. 2 vols. Paris.
1858-1877.
[206] _Ancien Theatre Francais_, vol. iv.
[207] A good modern edition has appeared by Foerster. Heilbronn, 1882.
[208] _Ancien Theatre Francais_, vol. vi. vii.
CHAPTER VI.
CALVIN AND AMYOT.
[Sidenote: Prose Writers of the Renaissance.]
It has been pointed out that Rabelais, in his capacity of representative
author of the French Renaissance, exhibits all the characteristics of
that Renaissance--its interest, half-enthusiastic and half-sceptical, in
religious and philosophical questions, its devotion to ancient
literature and learning, and the ardent zest with which it attacked at
once the business and the pleasures of the world. The four most
remarkable of the remaining prose authors of the century illustrate
these characteristics as vividly but less universally. Montaigne indeed
is almost as complete a representative of the entire character for the
last half of the century as Rabelais is of the first. But even in him
one note, the note of sceptical philosophy, is more dominant than any to
be found in Rabelais. In the same way Calvin was the first, if not the
most distinguished, of theologians who wrote modern French prose; Amyot
the representative of erudition; and Brantome of that attention to
mundane business and pleasure which produced so many admirable
memoir-writers. Round each of the four, but especially round Amyot and
Brantome, numerous figures, sometimes of hardly less magnitude, have to
be grouped. Chronological reasons, and the convenience of subdividing
the subject, make it, however, advisable to take Calvin and Amyot first,
leaving the authors of the _Essais_ and the _Dames Galantes_ with their
train for another chapter.
[Sidenote: Calvin.]
Jean Calvin[209] was born in 1509, at Noyon, in Picardy, where his
father held the post of procurator-fiscal to the bishop. He took orders
very early, and obtained some preferment. Before long, by a transition
very usual in that age, he exchanged divinity for law; but his interest
was still in the former study, and he eagerly embraced the Reformed
doctrines. Like other French reformers, he was at first rewarded by the
favour of Francis and his sister Marguerite, but the tide soon turned,
and he left France in 1534 for Basle. It is said that it was not till
then that he learnt Hebrew. At Basle his _Institution_ was published.
After a year or two he went to Italy, where he was received by the
Duchess of Ferrara, Renee of France, the steadiest of all the royal
patrons of the French reformers. At last he established himself at
Geneva, where, as is well known, he succeeded in setting up a kind of
theocratic tyranny, which was for centuries the model and pattern of his
faithful followers the Scotch Presbyterians. He was once banished, but
recalled, and exercised his sway for about a quarter of a century. Into
the too famous and much argued matters of his relations with Servetus,
his intrigues with the French inquisitors to establish a kind of
_Zollverein_ of persecution and the like, there is no need to enter
here. He died in 1564. Calvin's greatest work in literature, as in
theology, is the _Institution of the Christian Religion_, which, as has
been said, was published at Basle in 1536. It was written in Latin, but
four years later was republished in French, the author himself being the
translator. The minor works of Calvin, both in Latin and French, are
very numerous, but from the point of view of literary history they may
be neglected, except certain satirical pamphlets wherein the writer
displayed a considerable command of vigorous, if occasionally clumsy,
satire and invective. The scurrility with which the debates of the
Reformation were carried on on both sides is but too well known. Calvin
was not so guilty in this respect as Luther, but he must bear a
considerable portion of the blame. What is really valuable in Calvin's
satiric style may be found more worthily represented in the less
abstract passages of the _Institution_, notably the Address to the King.
The _Institution_ itself is beyond all question the first serious work
of great literary merit, not historical, in the history of French prose.
It is strongly Latinised in form and construction, as might indeed be
expected considering the circumstances of its production. But the point
in which it differs from preceding works in which the classical
influence is prominent, is that the author no longer attempts to give
his classical colour by means of wholesale importations of terms. The
vocabulary, though rich and varied, is still in the main genuine French,
and the Latinism is more observable in occasional constructions and in
the architecture of the clauses than in the mere selection of words.
This clause-architecture was a matter of the last importance, for it was
exactly in this respect that French, like most of the vernacular
tongues, was deficient. The entirely artless and mainly conversational
array of the sentence which, out of verse, had hitherto been common,
served for narrative well enough, but not at all for argument or
discussion. Calvin threw his French clauses into the mould in which his
Latin had been cast, and without unduly stiffening them produced a
regularity of form which was entirely novel. Even when his sentences are
of considerable length, there is clearness and simplicity in them, which
in some languages, English for instance, was not generally reached in
prose till much later. It is remarkable, too, that the besetting sin of
serious French prose, its tendency to the declamatory, is well kept
under by Calvin. Next to the graceful stateliness of his phrase, its
extreme sobriety, not rejecting legitimate ornament, but seldom or never
trespassing into the rhetorical, has to be observed. Considering that
the whole of it was written before the author was seven-and-twenty, it
is perhaps the most remarkable work of its particular kind to be
anywhere found--the merits being those of full maturity and elaborate
preparation rather than of youthful exuberance. The book consists of
four parts; the first on God, the second on the Atonement, or rather on
the Mediatorial Office of Christ, the third on the results of that
Office, the fourth on Church Government. Its end, it need hardly be
said, is double--the establishment in the most rigorous form of the
doctrine of predestination and original sin, and the destruction of the
sacramental and sacerdotal doctrines of the Catholic Church.
[Sidenote: Minor Reformers and Controversialists.]
Despite the fervid interest taken in religious disputation and the
masterly example which Calvin had set both to friends and foes, theology
proper did not contribute very much of value to literature during the
period. Beza wrote chiefly in Latin, his _Histoire des Eglises
Reformees_ being the chief exception. Pierre Viret, a Swiss by birth,
who passed the last twenty years of his life at various towns in the
south of France as a preacher and theological teacher, wrote a
considerable number of treatises, both serious and satirical. The titles
of some of the latter, _L'Alchimie du Purgatoire_, _La Cosmographie
Infernale_, etc., are characteristic of the time. But Viret's literary
merit was not remarkable. This kind of theological pasquinading was in
great favour throughout the period, and authors of very various merit,
such as Marnix de Sainte Aldegonde, Dore, Claude de Saintes, Arthus
Desire, and others, contributed plentifully to it. But the interest of
their work is for the most part historical and antiquarian only. The
title of 'Protestant Rabelais' has been absurdly given to Marnix. It is
only so far deserved that the scurril language and gross images which
with the master were but accessories, were with the pupil the main
point. In the latter part of the century, after the quieting of the
troubles of the League, two more serious disputants arose, each of
considerable literary eminence. These were on the Protestant side,
Philippe de Mornay, better known as Duplessis-Mornay, who distinguished
himself equally as a soldier, a diplomatist, and a man of letters, and
the still more famous Cardinal Du Perron, a converted Calvinist, who was
supposed to be the most expert controversialist of a time which was
nothing if not controversial. The chief theological work of
Duplessis-Mornay was his _Traite de la Verite de la Religion
Chretienne_. The chief written theological work of Du Perron was a
_Traite du Sacrement de l'Euchariste_, in reply to a work on the same
subject by Mornay.
[Sidenote: Preachers of the League.]
Between the controversies of the earlier part of the century and those
of the latter, preaching, if not dogmatic theology, held an important
place because of its political bearing. The pulpit style of the
sixteenth century was for the most part an aggravation of that (already
described) of the fifteenth, the acrimony of sectarian and factious
partisanship leading the preachers to indulge in every kind of verbal
excess. During the League the partisans of that organisation, especially
in Paris, were perpetually excited against Henri III. and his successor
by the most atrocious pulpit diatribes, the chief artists in which were
Boucher, Rose, Launay, Feuardent, and Genebrard. The literary value of
these furious outpourings however is very small. After their cessation a
reaction set in, and for some time before the splendid period of pulpit
eloquence, which lasted from St. Francis de Sales to Massillon, the
general style of French homiletics was dull and laboured.
[Sidenote: Amyot.]
Jacques Amyot[210] was born at Melun in 1513, and belonged to the lowest
class. He was educated as a servitor at the famous College de Navarre,
and took his degree in arts at the age of nineteen. He then held various
tutorships and attracted the notice of Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, the
constant patroness of men of letters, who gave him a Readership at
Bourges. After some years of University teaching in the classics, he
began his series of translations with the _Theagenes and Chariclea_ in
1546. This was three years in advance of Du Bellay's manifesto, and
though not a few translations had already appeared, none had even
approached Amyot's in elegance. As usual at the time his literary
reputation was rewarded by Church preferment and employment in the
diplomatic service. He was also made tutor to Charles IX. and Henri of
Anjou. His elder pupil, when he came to the throne, made him, first,
Grand Almoner of France, and then Bishop of Auxerre, while Henri III.
added the honour of a commandership in the order of the Holy Ghost. For
a time, in the midst of the troubles of the League, Amyot was driven
from his palace, but he returned and died, at the full age of fourscore,
in 1594.
Besides the work of Heliodorus, Amyot translated Diodorus Siculus
(1554), _Daphnis and Chloe_, Plutarch's _Lives_ (1559), and Plutarch's
_Morals_ (1574). It may seem at first sight that his selection of
authors to translate was somewhat peculiar. It was however, either by
accident or design, singularly well suited to the age which he
addressed. The positive merit of Heliodorus, and still more of Longus,
is certainly greater than is usually admitted nowadays. But for that
time they were peculiarly suited (and especially Longus) by their
combination of romantic and adventurous description with graceful
pictures of nature and amatory interludes. Plutarch, on the other hand,
expressed, more than any other author, the practical and moralising
spirit which accompanied this taste for romance. Montaigne confessed
that he could not do without Plutarch, and it may be doubted whether any
other single author of antiquity, after the Ciceronian mania was over,
exercised such an influence as Plutarch, through Amyot, North, and
Shakespeare (a direct succession of channels), upon France and England.
The merit of the translator had not a little to do with the success of
the books. Here is the testimony of the greatest in a literary sense of
Amyot's readers. 'I give,' says Montaigne, 'and I think I am right in
doing so, the palm to Jacques Amyot over all French writers, not only
for the simplicity and purity of his vocabulary, in which he surpasses
all others, nor for his industry in so long a task, nor for the depth of
his learning which has enabled him to expound so happily a writer so
thorny and crabbed. I am above all grateful to him for having selected
and chosen a book so worthy and so suitable as a present to his country.
We dunces were lost had not this book plucked us out of the mire. Thanks
to it, we dare to speak and to write. By it ladies are in a position to
give lessons to schoolmasters. It is our very breviary.' This praise,
which is not exaggerated in itself, and still less when taken as an
expression of the feeling of the time, refers of course to the
'Plutarch,' and in estimating it it is necessary to take account of
Montaigne's especial affection for the author translated. But if we take
in the lighter work, and especially the _Daphnis and Chloe_, Amyot will
stand higher, not lower. His merit is not so much that he has known how
to adjust himself and his style to two very different authors, but that
in rendering both those authors he has written French of a most original
model and of the greatest excellence. The common fault of translation,
the insensible adoption of a foreign idiom--especially difficult to
avoid at a time when no classical standards or models of the tongue used
by the translator exist--is here almost entirely overcome. The style of
Amyot, who had little before him, if Calvin and Rabelais be excepted,
but the clumsy examples of the _rhetoriqueur_ school, is, as Montaigne
justly says, perfectly simple and pure; and so little is it tinged
either with archaism or with classicism that the seventeenth century
itself, unjust as it was for the most part towards its predecessors,
acknowledged its merit.
[Sidenote: Minor Translators.]
[Sidenote: Dolet.]
Although Amyot was by far the most considerable of the French
translators of the sixteenth century, he was not by any means the first.
Claude de Seyssel translated many Greek authors, Pierre Saliat produced
a version of Herodotus, Lefevre d'Etaples was the author of the first
complete French translation of the Bible, and a cluster of learned
writers, some of them remarkable for other work, such as Bonaventure des
Periers, devoted themselves to Plato. Among these latter there is one
who was in many ways a typical representative of the time. Etienne
Dolet[211] was born at Orleans in 1509, lived a stormy life diversified
by many quarrels, literary and theological, did much service to
literature both in Latin and French, and, falling out with the powers
that were, was burnt (having first been, as a matter of grace and in
consequence of a previous recantation, hanged) in the Place Maubert, at
Paris, on his birthday, August 3, 1554. Dolet had written many Latin
speeches and tractates in the Ciceronian style--that of a curious
section of humanists who entertained an exclusive and exaggerated
devotion to Cicero. Then, becoming himself a master-printer, he wrote
several small treatises on French grammar, some poems, a short history
of Francis the First, and finally, a translation of the Platonic or
Pseudo-Platonic _Axiochus_, which was the proximate cause of his death.
He was one of the earliest of the French humanist students to devote
himself to the vernacular, and, though his short and troubled life did
not enable him to perfect his French style, he is very interesting as a
specimen. His friendship with Marot and Rabelais had in each case an
unhappy end. In the latter this was due to a pirated edition of
_Pantagruel_ and _Gargantua_, which reproduced expressions that
Rabelais, in the rising storm of persecution, had been anxious to
modify. As a Latin scholar Dolet was accurate and sound. His
translations suffer somewhat from the want of a sufficiently definite
and flexible French style, but the striving after such a style is
apparent in them.
Dolet and the other persons just mentioned had translated for the most
part prose into prose. Sanxon, Hugues Salel, Lazare de Baif, Sibilet,
and others, translated verse into verse; but the theory of French
versification had not as yet been sufficiently studied to make the
attempt really profitable. After the innovations of the Pleiade many of
Ronsard's followers bent themselves to the same task with a better
equipment and with more success. Almost all the poets mentioned
elsewhere executed translations of more or less merit.
[Sidenote: Fauchet.]
From a literary point of view, however, the exercises of the century, in
what may be called applied scholarship, were, leaving out of sight for
the moment Amyot's work, and also that, presently to be mentioned, of
Herberay, of greater merit than its pure translations. All the mediaeval
legends, assigning classical or semi-classical origins to the
populations of France, were resumed and amplified by Jean Lemaire de
Belges, in the first years of the century, in his _Illustrations des
Gaules_. Lemaire belongs, as has been said elsewhere, for the most part
to the earlier school of the Rhetoriqueurs, but his literary power was
considerable. The style of research, mingling as it did antiquarian and
historical elements with a strong infusion of what was purely literary,
was illustrated during the period by three persons who deserve special
mention. Claude Fauchet is a name of great importance in French literary
history. So long as mediaeval literature actually flourished we should
expect to find, and we do find, no attention paid to its history and
development. Fauchet was the first person, so far as is known, who
devoted himself to something like a critical examination of its
results; and as many of the materials which he had at his disposal have
perished, his work, with all its drawbacks, is still very valuable. His
_Antiquites Gauloises et Francoises_ are purely historical, but display
a sound spirit of criticism. His _Recueil de l'Origine de la Langue et
Poesie Francoise, Ryme et Romans, plus les Noms et Sommaires des
Oeuvres de CXXVII Poetes Francois vivans avant l'an MCCC_, is a work
for its period (1581) almost unique. Philologically, of course, Fauchet
is far from infallible, as, for instance, in his theory, obviously
indefensible, that French is a cross between the tongues of the Gauls
and the Romans. But his 'Noms et Sommaires' are actually taken from the
study of manuscripts; and, as the works of the Trouveres had, with few
exceptions, long dropped out of sight, except in late fifteenth-century
prose versions, the attempt to make them known was as salutary as it was
bold.
[Sidenote: Pasquier.]
Fauchet unfortunately was not a good writer. This cannot be said of his
principal rival, or rather successor, Etienne Pasquier. Pasquier was
born at Paris in 1529, and early devoted himself to legal studies, which
he pursued all through his life. His most famous performance as an
advocate was his speech for the University of Paris against the Jesuits
in 1565. He afterwards took a vigorous part in the Royalist polemic
against the League. He did not die till 1615. His works, as yet
unpublished in a complete form, are in modern times accessible chiefly
in the selection of M. Leon Feugere[212]. They are voluminous, but by
far the most important (with the exception perhaps of the valuable
_Letters_) is the _Recherches de la France_. This is a somewhat
desultory but very interesting collection of remarks on politics,
history, social changes, and last, not least, literature. To us the most
attractive part of Pasquier's literary history is the account he gives
of the great poetical and literary movement of his own day, the
revolution of the Pleiade, or, as he describes it picturesquely, 'De la
Grande Flotte de Poetes que produisit le Regne du Roi Henry Deuxieme.'
But his notes on the previous history of literature in France, though
necessarily based on somewhat imperfect knowledge, are full of
interest, and not destitute of instruction, such, for instance, as his
chapters on the farce of _Pathelin_, on Provencal poetry, on the formal
measures of the fourteenth century, etc. Pasquier's style is very
delightful. Despite his erudition, and even what may be called his
Ronsardising, he does not aim at the new severity and classicism. But
his manner is exceedingly picturesque, perfectly clear, and
distinguished by a sort of gossiping ingenuousness without any lack of
dignity, the secret of which the sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries in France and England seem to have possessed and carried off
with them.
[Sidenote: Henri Estienne.]
The third of three not dissimilar names is that of Henri Estienne. His
remarkable _Apologie pour Herodote_, like not a few other works of the
same kind, would be less remarkable if it were stripped of borrowed
plumes; but his three treatises on French linguistics, the _Traite de la
Conformite du Francais avec le Grec_, the _Precellence de la Langue
Francaise_, and the _Nouveaux Dialogues de Langage Francais Italianise_,
would give him a considerable place in the history of French literature
if he had written no _Apologie_ and published no _Thesaurus_. All three
works are more or less directed against the Italianising mania of the
day.
[Sidenote: Herberay.]
Here, perhaps, better than elsewhere, may be mentioned the name of one
of the best, if not the best, purely narrative writer of French prose
during the century, Herberay des Essarts. It is to Herberay that the
famous romance of _Amadis of Gaul_ owes most of its fame. According to
the most probable story, the _Amadis_ was originally translated by the
Spaniard Montalvo from a lost Portuguese original of the fourteenth
century. There is absolutely no trace of a French original, the
existence of which has been assumed by French critics. In form the
_Amadis_ is a long prose Roman d'Aventures, distinguished only from its
French companions and predecessors by a somewhat higher strain of
romantic sentiment, and by a greater abundance of giants, dwarfs,
witches, and other condiments, which, even in its most luxuriant day,
the simpler and more academic French taste had known how to do without,
or at most, to apply moderately. It had been continued in the Spanish by
more than one author, and was a very voluminous work when, in 1540,
Herberay undertook to give a French version of it. He, in his turn, had
continuators, but none who equalled his popularity or power. Readers of
the Spanish complain that Herberay has not been a faithful translator,
and, in particular, that he has been guilty of no few anachronisms. He
probably troubled himself very little about exact fidelity or strict
local and temporal colour. But he ranks, in order of time, second only
to Calvin in the production of a clear, elegant, and scholarly French
prose style. The book became immensely popular. It is said that it was
the usual reading book for foreign students of French for a considerable
period, and it was highly thought of by the best critics (such as
Pasquier) of its own and the next generation. It had moreover a great
influence on what came after it. To no single book can be so clearly
traced the heroic romances of the early seventeenth century.
[Sidenote: Palissy.]
It may seem somewhat premature to speak of scientific writers in the
sixteenth century. Yet there are three who usually and deservedly hold a
place in French literary history, and who cannot be conveniently classed
under any other head. There are few better known names of the time than
Bernard Palissy. His famous enamels are no doubt partly the cause of
this, but other artists as great or greater are not nearly so living to
us as this maker of pottery. He was born in or about 1510, at a village,
Chapelle Broin, near Agen, and he died in the Bastile, in 1589, a
prisoner for his Protestantism. Catherine de Medicis had saved him from
the massacre of St. Bartholomew. His long life was occupied mainly in
art and scientific researches, partly also in lecturing on natural
history and physics, and in writing accounts of his investigations,
which are not very voluminous, but which possess an extraordinary
vividness of style and description. His treatise on pottery, the _Art de
la Terre_, contains the passage which has become classical, describing
his desperate efforts to discover the secret of the Italian enamellers.
He also wrote a _Recepte veritable par laquelle tous les hommes de la
France pourront apprendre a multiplier et a augmenter leurs Tresors_,
and, some ten years before his death, a _Discours admirable de la Nature
des Eaux et Fontaines_. His literary work is an almost unique mixture of
research with genuine literary fancy.
[Sidenote: Pare.]
Ambroise Pare, also a famous name, was born about the same time as
Palissy, and died the year after him. A freethinker in his way, he
escaped all temptation to embrace the dangerous heresy which was so
fatal, or, at least, so inconvenient, to many other men of science and
letters, and for the last forty years of his life he was court-surgeon.
His literary work is not inconsiderable in amount, consisting, as might
be expected, chiefly of professional treatises. The most interesting of
his books, however, from a general point of view, and, as it happens,
also by far the best written, is his _Apologie et Voyages_, a kind of
autobiography which contains a large collection of anecdotes and
details, not unimportant for the history of the time, as well as of much
personal interest. The style of this book is often vivid and
picturesque, as well as clear and precise.
[Sidenote: Olivier de Serres.]
It was fitting that agriculture, which is the staple industry of France,
should contribute to her literature at this period--the most genuine and
exuberant period of its history, if not that which produced the most
minutely finished work. The _Theatre de l'Agriculture et du Menage des
Champs_ of Olivier de Serres was published in the last year of the
century. The author was a native of the town of Villeneuve du Berg, in
the present department of Ardeche. He was a Protestant and a great
favourite of Henri IV., to whom he was useful in developing Sully's
plans of internal economy. The _Theatre de l'Agriculture_ was long the
classic book on the subject, and the author has been honoured, in quite
recent times, by statues and other demonstrations. Like most books of
the kind, it is much overlaid with erudition, but this only adds to its
picturesqueness; and, as the author's precepts were founded on a life's
experience of his subject, it certainly cannot be reproached with a want
of practical knowledge and aim.
Not a few other authors would require notice, if space permitted, in
this class of scientific and erudite authors, particularly in the class
of linguistics and literature. Such is Geoffroy Tory, a printer,
grammarian, and prose-writer of merit in the early part of the century,
who anticipated Rabelais in his protest against the indiscriminate
Latinisation of the later Rhetoriqueurs. Not a few other writers, such
as Pelletier and Fontaine, busied themselves during the period with
grammar and prosody; while towards the close of it, the first French
bibliographers of eminence, La Croix du Maine, and Du Verdier, made
their appearance. But the works of all these, as rather ancillary to
literature than actually literary, must here be passed over.
FOOTNOTES:
[209] Cauvin or Chauvin is the more correct form, but the Latinised
Calvinus made Calvin more usual. Calvin's works are voluminous. The
_Institution_ was published in convenient shape at Paris in 1859.
[210] Most of Amyot is accessible only in the old editions. A beautiful
edition of the _Daphnis and Chloe_ has been published by L. Glady.
London, 1878.
[211] Dolet's works are not easily to be found except in public
libraries. The standard book on him is that of Mr. R. C. Christie
(London, 1880), one of the best monographs on French literary history to
be found in any language.
[212] 2 vols. Paris, 1849.
CHAPTER VII.
MONTAIGNE AND BRANTOME.
[Sidenote: Disenchantment of the late Renaissance.]
A period of enthusiasm passes naturally and almost necessarily into one
of scepticism, and it is in no way surprising that the prominent
literary figure of the second half of the sixteenth century in France
should have taken for his motto rather 'Que sais-je?' than, like
Rabelais, 'Sursum Corda.' The early hopes of the Renaissance had been
curiously disappointed. The Reformation had resulted not merely in cruel
and destructive civil war, but in the formation, in too many cases, of a
Protestantism not less imperious and far more illiberal than the
Catholicism against which it protested. The economic and social effects
of the discovery of the New World had been equally discouraging, and
even the recovery of classical learning had produced a race of pedants
almost as trifling as the last doting defenders of scholasticism. The
evils of the civil state of France, moreover, drove nearly all the best
men into the sect of _Politiques_, or Trimmers, who avowedly regarded
high questions of truth and faith as subordinate to a politic
opportunism. The age had not lost its power of enjoyment of affairs and
of pleasure, but its appetite for higher things was somewhat blunted. In
this state of matters a few persons, of whom Montaigne was incomparably
the most important, philosophised sceptically about life, and a great
many, of whom Brantome is the most typical, took pleasure in describing
the ways and acts of an aristocracy which combined extraordinary luxury
and corruption with great love of wit, singular intellectual ability,
and a keen interest in war and business.
[Sidenote: Montaigne.]
Michel Eyquem, Sieur de Montaigne[213], was born, 'between eleven and
twelve o'clock of the day' (the detail is characteristic), on the 28th
of February, 1533, at the _chateau_ from which he derived his name, and
which he has made illustrious. Montaigne is situated in the old province
of Perigord, or, according to modern nomenclature, in the department of
Dordogne and the arrondissement of Bergerac. It is at no great distance
from Bordeaux. The family was long believed from a phrase of Montaigne's
own to have been of English extraction, introduced during the long
tenure of Aquitaine by our sovereigns. But recent and industrious
researches have shown that it may with greater probability have been of
local origin and yeoman _status_. Pierre Eyquem, the father, had filled
many important municipal offices at Bordeaux. Michel was his third son
among nine children, but by the death of his elder brothers he inherited
the family estate. He was educated early, and after the manner of a time
when education was a subject on which almost all men of independent
thought rode hobbies. Latin he learnt by conversation at a very early
age, Greek as a kind of amusement. At the mature age of six he was
placed at the College de Guyenne in Bordeaux, not the least famous of
the famous schools of the time, for there it was that Buchanan, Muretus,
and Guerente, by the Latin plays which they wrote for their scholars to
act, introduced the Senecan drama into France and showed the way to the
French tragedy of the Pleiade. Seven years of study completed
Montaigne's school education at the age of thirteen, when nowadays boys
quit their preparatory cradles. He was set to work at law, but little
positive is known of him for many years. In 1554, being then twenty-one,
he was made counsellor in the Bordeaux _Parlement_, and in 1566 he
married Francoise de la Chassaigne, daughter of one of his colleagues.
Except casual references in the _Essays_, which are seldom precise, all
we know of him during these years is his friendship with Etienne de la
Boetie. He almost certainly served one or more campaigns; but the most
positive thing that can be said of his middle life is that, according to
an existing inscription of his own, he finally retired, in 1571, on his
thirty-eighth birthday, to the _chateau_ which had become his by his
father's death two years previously. He had already translated the
_Theologia Naturalis_ of Raymond de Sebonde. In the year of his
retirement he edited the works of La Boetie. But he now began a much
more important task. The first two books of the _Essais_ appeared in
1580; and immediately afterwards Montaigne, who suffered from severe
internal disorders, undertook a long journey into Italy, Switzerland,
and Germany, which occupied nearly a year and a-half. While sojourning
at the baths of Lucca, he received the news of his appointment as mayor
of Bordeaux, and hastened home. In 1588 he published the third Book of
the _Essays_, and had troubles with the Leaguers in Paris. Four years
afterwards, on the 13th September, 1592, he died of quinsy. Although
Montaigne's municipal and legal appointments at Bordeaux are all that we
know him to have enjoyed, he is styled 'gentleman in ordinary to the
king,' and letters extant from and to Charles IX., Henri III., and Henri
IV., show him to have enjoyed a considerable social as well as literary
position. He was a knight of the Order of St. Michael. By his wife he
had several children, but all died young, except one daughter, who
survived him and left offspring. His adopted daughter, however,
Mademoiselle de Gournay, a celebrated character of the next age, and the
first editor of his complete works after his death, is better known.
A complete abstract of Montaigne's work cannot be here attempted, and
indeed no such thing is possible, because the work itself is absolutely
destitute of general plan and exhibits no unity but a unity of spirit
and treatment. Whether Montaigne himself invented the famous title
_Essays_ or not, is a matter of the very smallest importance. It is
certain that he was the first to give the word its modern meaning,
though he dealt with his subjects in a spirit of audacious
desultoriness, which many of his successors have endeavoured to imitate,
but which few have imitated successfully. His nominal subject is, as a
rule, merely a starting-point, or at the most a text. He allows himself
to be diverted from it by any game which crosses his path, and diverges
as readily from his new direction. Abundant citation from the classics
is one of his chief characteristics; but the two main points which
differentiate him are, first, the audacious egotism and frankness with
which he discourses of his private affairs and exhibits himself in
undress; secondly, the flavour of subtle scepticism which he diffuses
over his whole work. Both these are susceptible of a good deal of
misconstruction, and both no doubt have been a good deal misconstrued.
His egotism, like most egotism, is a compound of frankness and
affectation, and its sincerity is not, as an attraction, equal to the
easy garrulity for which it affords an occasion of display. His
scepticism, however, is altogether _sui generis_. It is not exuberant,
like that of Rabelais, nor sneering, like that of Voltaire, nor
despairing, like that of Pascal, nor merely inquisitive and scholarly,
like that of Bayle. There is no reason for disbelieving Montaigne's
sincere and conscious orthodoxy in the ecclesiastical sense. But his own
temperament, assisted no doubt by the political and ecclesiastical
circumstances already described, by indifferent bodily health, and by
the period, if not exactly of excess, at any rate of free living, in his
younger days, to which he so constantly alludes, had produced in him a
general feeling that the _pros_ and _cons_ of different opinions and
actions balance each other more evenly than is generally thought. He
looks on life with a kind of ironical enjoyment, and the three books of
his _Essays_ might be described as a vast gallery of pictures
illustrating the results of his contemplations.
There are some considerable differences between the earlier and later
_Essays_, one of the most obvious of which concerns the point of length.
Thus the first book consists of fifty-seven essays, occupying rather
more than 500 pages[214], or an average of less than ten pages each. The
second (exclusive of the long 'Apologie de Raymond Sebonde,' which
occupies 300 pages by itself) contains thirty-six essays, of nearly 500
pages in all, or about twelve pages each. These books were published
together, and may be presumed to have been written more or less at the
same time. But the third and last book, though it contains full 550
pages, has only thirteen essays, which thus average more than forty
pages each, though their length is very unequal. Montaigne had, no
doubt, found that his pillar-to-post method of discourse was
sufficiently attractive to make fresh starting-points and definite
titles unnecessary; thus in the third book, his subjects (at least his
professed subjects) are sometimes much wider, and sometimes much more
whimsical, than in the two first. Oedipus himself could hardly divine
the actual subject of the essay 'Sur des Vers de Virgile,' or guess that
a paper 'Sur les Coches' would in reality busy itself with the question
what virtues are most proper to a sovereign. On the other hand, such
large titles as 'De la Vanite de l'Experience,' etc. give room for
almost any and every excursion. All these are in the last book; the
shorter essays of the two first for the most part deal more definitely
with their nominal subjects, which are most frequently moral brocards:
such as 'Le Profit de l'Un est Dommage de l'Autre,' 'Par Divers Moyens
on arrive a Pareille Fin,' etc.
In a literary history, however, of the scale and plan of this present,
the question of Montaigne's subjects and sentiments, interesting as it
is, must not be allowed to obscure the question of the expression which
he gave to these sentiments. His book is of the greatest importance in
the history of French style, of an importance indeed which has been by
no means invariably recognised by French literary historians themselves.
It must be remembered that he at once attained, and never lost, an
immense popularity. Thus the comparative oblivion which, owing to the
reforms of the early seventeenth century and the brilliant period of
production which followed them, overtook most of the men of the
Renaissance, did not touch Montaigne. He, with Rabelais, remained a well
of undefiled French, which all the artificial filtering of Malherbe and
Boileau could not deprive of its refreshing and fertilising power.
Writing, too, at a period subsequent, instead of anterior to the
innovations of the Pleiade, Montaigne was able to incorporate, and thus
to save, not a few of the neologisms which, valuable as they were, the
purists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries neglected. Many
words which his immediate contemporaries, and still more his successors,
condemned, have made good their footing in the language, owing beyond
all doubt to his influence. His style, too, was valuable for something
else besides its vocabulary. It entered so seldom into the plan of
Rabelais to write in any other than a burlesque tone, that he was rarely
able to display his own incomparable faculty of writing ordinary French,
pure, vigorous, graceful, and flexible at once. The tale-tellers and
memoir-writers of the time matured an excellent narrative style, but one
less suited for other forms of writing. The theologians often obeyed the
Latinising influence too implicitly. But Montaigne, with his wide
variety of subject, required and wrought out for himself a corresponding
variety of style. His very discursiveness and the constant flow of new
thoughts that welled up in him helped him to avoid the great curse of
all the vulgar tongues in the Renaissance--the long jointed sentence;
the easy colloquial manner at which he aimed reflected itself in a style
less familiar indeed than avowed burlesque, but at the same time more
familiar than any writer had before used in treating of similar
subjects. Yet no one was more capable than Montaigne, on the rare
occasions when he judged it proper, of showing his mastery of sustained
and lofty eloquence. The often-quoted passage in which he rebukes the
vanity of man (who, without letters patent or privilege, assumes to
himself the honour of being the only created being cognisant of the
secret of the universe) yields to nothing that had been written or was
to be written for many years, fertile as the sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries were in both its characteristics, solemnity and
dignity of expression. That a book which was thus rich in vocabulary,
richer still in idiosyncrasy of expression, gracefully familiar in
general style, and admirably eloquent in occasional passages, should at
once become popular, and should remain so, could not be without a happy
effect on the general standard of literary taste and the general
acquaintance with the capabilities of the French language. That
Montaigne himself was a sound critical judge and not merely a lucky
practitioner of style, may be judged from his singling out Amyot as the
great master of it among his own immediate predecessors. In so far,
indeed, as prose style goes, master and scholar must undoubtedly take
rank at the head of all the writers of the century when bulk and variety
of examples are taken into account.
[Sidenote: Charron.]
Although, as has been already noted, Montaigne has many sides, his most
striking peculiarity may be said to be the mixture of philosophical
speculation, especially on ethical and political topics, with attention
to the historical side of human life both in the past and in the
present. He was, however, by no means the only teacher of ethics and
political philosophy in his century. His own mantle was taken up, or
attempted to be taken up, by Pierre Charron[215]. Born at Paris in 1541,
he was thoroughly educated; studied law, in which he proceeded to a
doctor's degree, and was called to the Paris bar, but then suddenly
entered the Church, and became renowned as a preacher. He even thought
of embracing the monastic life--a waste of ability which the
ecclesiastical authorities, conscious of their need of eloquent
advocates, did not permit. Charron belonged rather to the moderate or
_politique_ party than to the fanatics of Catholicism, and he directly
attacked the League in his _Discours Chretiens_, published in 1589. Five
years later appeared a regular theological treatise entitled _Les Trois
Verites_, affirming, first, the unity of God, and consequently of
orthodox religion; secondly, the sole authority of Christianity among
religions; thirdly, the sole authority of Catholicism among Christian
churches and sects. He held various preferments, and was a member of the
special synod held to admit Henri IV. to the Roman communion. The only
work by which he is generally remembered, the treatise _De la Sagesse_,
was published in 1601. Charron died two years later, after preparing a
second and somewhat altered edition of the book. Charron was a personal
friend of Montaigne, was undoubtedly his disciple, and borrowed largely,
and in many cases verbally, from the _Essais_. His book, however, is far
inferior both in style and matter to his master's, and Pope's praise of
'more wise Charron' can be due only to the fact that it is much more
definitely sceptical. In curious contrast to its author's dogmatically
theological treatise, _De la Sagesse_ goes to prove that all religions
are more or less of human origin, and that they are all indebted one to
the other. The casuistry of the Renaissance on these points was,
however, peculiar; and it has been supposed, with great show of reason,
that Charron regarded orthodoxy as a valuable and necessary condition
for the common run of men, while the elect would prefer a refined
Agnosticism.
[Sidenote: Du Vair.]
These sceptical opinions were by no means the invention of Montaigne;
they were part of the new learning grafted by the study of the classics
on the thought of the middle ages, and had been long anticipated, not
merely in Italy but in France itself. The poet and tale-teller,
Bonaventure des Periers, had, as has been said, almost directly
satirised Christianity in the _Cymbalum Mundi_, which created so great a
scandal. On the other hand, Guillaume du Vair, a lawyer and speaker of
eminence, sought, by combining Stoicism and Christianity, to oppose this
sceptical tendency. Du Vair was a writer of great merit, who exactly
reversed the course of Charron, beginning with theology and ending with
law, though he died in double harness, as keeper of the Seals and bishop
of Lisieux. His moral works[216] were numerous: _Sainte Philosophie_,
_De la Philosophie des Stoiques_, _De la Constance et Consolation des
Calamites Publiques_. He translated, not merely Epictetus, which may be
regarded as part of his ethical work, but numerous speeches of the Greek
and Latin orators. He was himself a great speaker, and his best work is
his _Discours sur la Loi Salique_, which contributed powerfully to the
overthrow of the project for recognising the Infanta as Queen of France.
He also wrote a regular treatise on French oratory. The style of Du Vair
is modelled with some closeness on his classical patterns, but without
any trace of pedantry.
[Sidenote: Bodin and other Political Writers.]
A greater name than Du Vair's in purely philosophical politics is that
of Jean Bodin[217], the author of the only work of great excellence on
the science of politics before the eighteenth century. Bodin was born at
Angers in 1530, became a lawyer, was king's procureur at Laon, and died
there in 1596. His great work, entitled after Plato _La Republique_,
appeared in 1578. It was first published in French, but afterwards
enlarged and reissued by the author in Latin. Bodin follows both Plato
and Aristotle to some extent, but especially Aristotle, in his approach
and treatment of his subject. But, unlike his masters, Bodin declares
for absolute monarchy, of course wisely and temperately administered.
The general literary sentiment was perhaps the other way. The affection
of Montaigne, and a certain fertility of rhetorical commonplace which
has always seduced Frenchmen in political matters, have given undue
reputation to the _Contre-un_ or _Discours de la Servitude volontaire_
of Etienne de la Boetie[218]. In reality it is but a schoolboy theme,
recalling the silly chatter about Harmodius and Brutus which was popular
at the time of the Revolution. Many other political works were published
in the course of the religious wars, but having been for the most part
written in Latin, or translated by others than their authors, they do
not concern us. The excellent Michel de l'Hospital, however, published
many speeches, letters, and pamphlets on the side of conciliation, for
the most part better intended than written; and the famous Protestants
La Noue and Duplessis-Mornay were frequent writers on political
subjects.
[Sidenote: Brantome.]
The complement and counterpart of this moralising on human business and
pleasure is necessarily to be found in chronicles of that business and
that pleasure as actually pursued. In these the sixteenth century is
extraordinarily rich. Correspondence had hardly yet attained the
importance in French literature which it afterwards acquired, but
professed history and, still more, personal memoirs were largely
written. The name of Brantome[219] has been chosen as the central and
representative name of this section of writers, because he is on the
whole the most original and certainly the most famous of them. His work,
moreover, has more than one point of resemblance to that of the great
contemporary author with whom he is linked at the head of this chapter.
Brantome neither wrote actual history nor directly personal memoirs. His
work rather consists of desultory biographical essays, forming a curious
pendant to the desultory moral essays of Montaigne. But around him rank
many writers, some historians pure and simple, some memoir-writers pure
and simple, of whom not a few approach him in literary genius, and
surpass him in correctness and finish of style, while almost all exceed
him in whatever advantage may be derived from uniformity of plan, and
from regard to the decencies of literature.
Pierre de Bourdeilles (who derived the name by which he is, and indeed
was during his lifetime, generally known from an abbacy given to him by
Henri II. when he was still a boy) was born about 1540, in the province
of Perigord, but the exact date and place of his birth have not been
ascertained. He was the third son of Francois, Comte de Bourdeilles, and
his mother, Anne de Vivonne de la Chataigneraie, was the sister of the
famous duellist whose encounter with Jarnac his nephew has described in
a well-known passage. In the court of Marguerite d'Angouleme, the
literary nursery of so great a part of the talent of France at this
time, he passed his early youth, went to school at Paris and at
Poitiers, and was made Abbe de Brantome at the age of sixteen. He was
thus sufficiently provided for, and he never took any orders, but was a
courtier and a soldier throughout the whole of his active life. Indeed
almost the first use he made of his benefice was to equip himself and a
respectable suite for a journey into Italy, where he served under the
Marechal de Brissac. He accompanied Mary Stuart to Scotland, served in
the Spanish army in Africa, volunteered for the relief of Malta from the
Turks, and again for the expedition destined to assist Hungary against
Soliman, and in other ways led the life of a knight-errant. The
religious wars in his own country gave him plenty of employment; but in
the reigns of Charles IX. and Henri III. he was more particularly
attached to the suite of the queen dowager and her daughter Marguerite.
He was, however, somewhat disappointed in his hopes of recompense; and
after hesitating for a time between the Royalists, the Leaguers, and the
Spaniards, he left the court, retired into private life, and began to
write his memoirs, partly in consequence of a severe accident. He seems
to have begun to write about 1594, and he lived for twenty years longer,
dying on the 15th of July, 1614.
The form of Brantome's works is, as has been said, peculiar. They are
usually divided into two parts, dealing respectively with men and women.
The first part in its turn consists of many sub-divisions, the chief of
which is made up of the _Vies des Grands Capitaines Etrangers et
Francais_, while others consist of separate disquisitions or essays,
_Des Rodomontades Espagnoles_, 'On some Duels and Challenges in France'
and elsewhere, 'On certain Retreats, and how they are sometimes better
than Battles,' etc. Of the part which is devoted to women the chief
portion is the celebrated _Dames Galantes_, which is preceded by a
series of _Vies des Dames Illustres_, matching the _Grands Capitaines_.
The _Dames Galantes_ is subdivided into eight discourses, with titles
which smack of Montaigne, as thus, 'Qu'il n'est bien seant de parler mal
des honnestes dames bien qu'elles fassent l'amour,' 'Scavoir qui est
plus belle chose en amour,' etc. These discourses are, however, in
reality little but a congeries of anecdotes, often scandalous enough.
Besides these, his principal works, Brantome left divers _Opuscula_,
some of which are definitely literary, dealing chiefly with Lucan. None
of his works were published in his lifetime, nor did any appear in print
until 1659. Meanwhile manuscript copies had, as usual, been multiplied,
with the result, also usual, that the text was much falsified and
mutilated.
The great merit of Brantome lies in the extraordinary vividness of his
powers of literary presentment. His style is careless, though it is
probable that the carelessness is not unstudied. But his irregular,
brightly coloured, and easily flowing manner represents, as hardly any
age has ever been represented, the characteristics of the great society
of his time. It is needless to say that the morals of that time were
utterly corrupt, but Brantome accepts them with a placid complacency
which is almost innocent. No writer, perhaps, has ever put things more
disgraceful on paper; but no writer has ever written of such things in
such a perfectly natural manner. Brantome was in his way a
hero-worshipper, though his heroes and heroines were sometimes oddly
coupled. Bayard and Marguerite de Valois represent his ideals, and a
good knight or a beautiful lady _de par le monde_ can do no wrong. This
unquestioning acceptance of, and belief in, the moral standards of his
own society, give a genuineness and a freshness to his work which are
very rare in literature. Few writers, again, have had the knack of
hitting off character, superficially it is true, yet with sufficient
distinction, which Brantome has. There is something individual about all
the innumerable characters who move across his stage, and something
thoroughly human about all, even the anonymous men and women, who appear
for a moment as the actors in some too frequently discreditable scene.
With all this there is a considerable vein of moralising in Brantome
which serves to throw up the relief of his actual narratives. He has
sometimes been compared to Pepys, but, except in point of garrulity and
of readiness to set down on paper anything that came into their heads,
there is little likeness between the two. Brantome was emphatically an
_ecrivain_ (unscholarly and Italianised as his phrase sometimes appears,
if judged by the standards of a severer age), and some of the best
passages from his works are among the most striking examples of French
prose.
[Sidenote: Montluc.]
Next to Brantome, and in some respects above him, though of a somewhat
less remarkable idiosyncrasy, come Montluc, La Noue, and D'Aubigne, with
Marguerite de Valois not far behind. Blaise de Lasseran-Massencome,
Seigneur de Montluc[220], was a typical _cadet de Gascogne_, though he
was not, strictly speaking, a cadet, being the eldest son of a
fortuneless house. He became page to Antoine of Lorraine, and made his
first campaign under the orders of Bayard, fighting through the whole of
the Italian war, and being knighted on the field at Cerisoles. In the
next reign he was promoted to high command, and held Sienna against the
Imperialists with distinguished gallantry and skill. When the civil war
broke out he was made Governor of Guyenne, where he maintained order
with the strong hand, 'heading and hanging' Catholics and Protestants
alike, if they showed signs of disloyalty. Ruthless as he was, he was
one of the few great officers who refused to participate in the massacre
of St. Bartholomew. He was made a marshal in 1574, and died three years
later. Montluc's Memoirs are purely military, and the most famous
description of them is that of Henri IV., who called them the soldier's
Bible. His style is concise, free from the slightest attempt at
elaborate ornament, but admirably picturesque and clear. His account of
his exploit at Sienna is one of the capital chapters of French military
history. But almost any page of Montluc possesses eminently the
characteristics which great generals from Caesar downwards have almost
uniformly displayed, when they possess any literary talent at all. The
words and sentences are marshalled and managed like an army; everything
goes straight to the point; there is no confusion, and the whole
complicated scene is as clear as a geometrical diagram.
[Sidenote: La Noue.]
The Memoirs of La Noue are usually spoken of separately, though in
reality they form a part of his _Discours Politiques et Militaires_.
Francois de la Noue, called Bras-de-Fer (a surname which he deserved not
metaphorically, but literally, having had to replace one of his arms
shot off during a siege), was a Breton, and of a good family. He was
born in 1531, fought through the religious wars, escaped St. Bartholomew
by being Alva's prisoner in Flanders, took an active part against the
League, and died at the siege of Lamballe, Aug. 4, 1591. His defence of
La Rochelle was one of the chief of his many feats of arms. The
'Discourses' were published during his life. They are of a more
reflective character than those of Montluc, and display much greater
mental cultivation. The style is not quite so vivid, the sentences are
longer and more charged with thought. La Noue, in short, is a
philosophical soldier and a politician. His style is perhaps less
archaic than that of any of his contemporaries, and is distinguished by
a remarkable strength, sobriety, and precision. He was very highly
thought of by both political parties, and was not unfrequently employed
in schemes of mediation. It is a pleasant story, and not irrelevant in a
history of literature, that a scheme for his assassination during one of
his visits to Paris was discovered by Brantome, who warned his future
craftsfellow of it.
[Sidenote: Agrippa d'Aubigne.]
Agrippa d'Aubigne belongs to this section of the subject by his _Vie a
ses Enfants_, often called his memoirs, by his _Histoire Universelle_,
and by a great number of letters. The same qualities which distinguish
D'Aubigne in verse are recognisable in his prose, his passionate and
insubordinate temper, the keenness of his satire, the somewhat turbid
grandeur of his style and images, the vigour and picturesqueness of
occasional traits. The _Histoire Universelle_ and the _Vie a ses
Enfants_ were both works written in old age, but there is hardly any
sign of failing power in them. The _Vie_ in particular contains many
passages, such as the vision of his mother and the passionate charge
which his father laid upon him at the sight of the victims of the
Amboise conspiracy, which rank very high among the prose of the century.
The _Histoire Universelle_, like the book which Raleigh wrote almost at
the same time, and under not dissimilar circumstances, is necessarily in
great part a compilation, but has many passages worthy of its author at
his best.
[Sidenote: Marguerite de Valois.]