the style of description or narration, and the style of discussion or
argument. The former deals with the imagination, with the passions, with
outward events, with conversation; the latter with the reason only. The
former propounds images, the latter ideas. The former constructs a
picture, the latter reduces words to their simplest terms as symbols of
thought. French had been making very rapid progress in the former
division of style, though there was much left to be done; in the latter
it was yet entirely at its rudiments. Before Descartes there are three
masters of this latter style, and three only, Rabelais, Calvin, and
Montaigne. There is little doubt that Rabelais might have anticipated
Descartes, had it not been for the fact, first, that, except on rare
occasions, he chose to wrap himself in the grotesque; and, secondly,
that he came before the innovations of the Pleiade had enriched the
language, and the reaction against the Pleiade had pruned off the
superfluity of richness. Calvin was also exposed to this second
drawback, and had besides a defect of idiosyncrasy in a certain dryness
and heaviness allied with, and partly resulting from, a too close
adherence to Latin forms. Montaigne again, like Rabelais, deliberately
refuses to be bound by the mere requirements of argument, and expatiates
into all sorts of digressions, partaking of the other style, the style
of description. If any one will take the famous passage of Descartes
already referred to (the passage in which he describes how being in
winter quarters, with nothing to do and sitting all day long by a warm
stove, he started the train of thought which ended or began in _Cogito
ergo sum_), and, having a good acquaintance with the three authors just
mentioned, will imagine how the same facts and arguments would have
appeared in their language, he will not find it difficult to realise the
difference. The grotesque by-play and the archaic vocabulary of
_Gargantua_, the garrulous digression and anecdote of the _Essays_, are
not more strikingly absent than the jejune scholasticism which is the
worse side of Calvin's grave and noble style. The author does not think
it necessary to attract his readers with ornament, nor to repel them
with dry and barren marshalling of technicalities. All is simple,
straightforward, admirably clear, but at the same time the prose is
fluent, modulated, harmonious, and possesses, if not the grace of
superadded ornament, those of perfect proportion and unerring choice of
words.
As a prose writer Descartes is generally compared to his contemporary,
and in some sort predecessor, Balzac, and his advantage over the author
of the _Socrate Chretien_ is stated to lie chiefly in the superiority of
his matter. This is not quite the fact. Balzac had, indeed, aimed at the
simplicity and classical perfection of Descartes, but he had not
attained it; he still has much of the quaintness of Montaigne, though it
must be remembered that in comparisons of this kind censure bestowed on
the authors compared is relative not positive, and that Descartes could
no more have written the _Essays_ than Montaigne the _Discours_.
Descartes has almost entirely discarded this quaintness, which sometimes
passed into what is called in French _clinquant_, that is to say, tawdry
and grotesque ornament. It is a peculiarity of his that no single
description of his sentences fully describes their form. They are always
perfectly clear, but they are sometimes very long. Their length,
however, as is the case with some English authors of the same century,
is more apparent than real, the writer having chosen to link by
conjunctions clauses which are independently finished, and which, by
different punctuation even without the omission of the conjunction,
might stand alone. The mistake of saying that Descartes is nothing more
than clear and correct can only arise from an imperfect appreciation of
the language. Let, for instance, his condemnation of scholastic method
in the _Discours_ be taken. Here the matter is interesting enough, and
the comparison with the gorgeous but unphilosophical disdain which Bacon
is wont to pour on the studies of the past is interesting also. But we
are busied with the form. In the first place, any one must be struck
with the modernness of the phrase and style. With insignificant
exceptions there is nothing which would not be most excellent French
to-day. Further examination of the phrase will show that there is much
more in it than mere clearness and correctness, admirably clear and
correct as it is. There is no 'spilth of adjectives,' as it has been
termed. The words are just so many as are necessary for clear, correct,
and elegant expression of the thought. But it is in the selection of
them that the master of style appears. The happy phrase, 'La gentillesse
des fables reveille l'esprit;' the comparison of the reading of the best
authors not merely to a conversation, but a _conversation etudiee_, in
which the speakers 'show only their best thoughts;' the contrast between
eloquence and poetry (too often forgotten by the writer's countrymen);
the ironic touch[275] in the eulogium on philosophy; all these things
show style in its very rarest and highest form--the form which enables
the writer to say the most, and to say it most forcibly with the least
expenditure of the stores of the dictionary. One sees at once that the
requirement of one of the greatest French writers of our time, that the
master of style 'shall be able to express at once any idea that presents
itself requiring expression,' is fully, and more than fully, met by
Descartes; and one sees also how the miracles of expression which
Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Bossuet, were to produce became possible, and
who showed them the way. It may be asserted, without the slightest fear,
that the more thoroughly Descartes is studied with the necessary
apparatus of knowledge, the more firmly will his claims in this
direction be established.
It is not superfluous to call attention to the fact that the _Discours
de la Methode_ appeared within a few months of the _Cid_. Thus it
happened that the first complete models of French classical style in
prose and verse, and two of the most remarkable examples of that style
which have ever been produced, were given to the public as nearly as
possible contemporaneously. This fact, and the brilliant group of
imitators who almost immediately availed themselves of the examples,
prove satisfactorily how powerful were the influences which produced the
change, and over how wide a circle they worked. As the influence of
Descartes was thus no less literary than philosophical, it followed
naturally enough that his school (which soon included almost all the men
of intellectual eminence in France) preserved literary as well as
philosophical traditions. This school, so far as it concerns French
literature, may be said to have produced two remarkable individuals and
one remarkable group. The group was the school of Port Royal; the
individuals were Malebranche and Bayle.
[Sidenote: Port Royal.]
We are not here concerned with the religious fortunes of the community
of Port Royal[276]. It is sufficient to say that it was originally a
nunnery at no great distance from Versailles, that it underwent a great
religious revival under the influence of St. Francis de Sales and Mere
Angelique Arnauld, and that, chiefly owing to the inspiration of the
Abbe de St. Cyran, there was engrafted on it a community of _Solitaires_
of the other sex, who busied themselves in study, in religious
exercises, in manual labour, and in the education of youth. The society
was early imbued with Jansenist principles, which brought it into
violent conflict with the Jesuits, and eventually led to its persecution
and destruction. It was also the head-quarters of a somewhat modified
Cartesianism, and this, with its importance as a centre of literary
instruction and its intimate connection with many famous men of letters,
such as Pascal, Nicole, and Racine, gives it a place in the history of
literature. The most remarkable work of an educational kind which
proceeded from it was the famous Port Royal Logic, or 'Art of Thinking,'
which seems to have been a work of collaboration, Arnauld and Nicole
being the chief authors. This, though open to criticism from the point
of view of the logician, had a very great influence in making the
methodical treatment and clear luminous exposition which were
characteristic of the Cartesian school common in French writers. Of the
two authors just mentioned, Arnauld was the greater thinker, Nicole by
far the better writer. He was, in fact, a sort of minor Pascal, his
_Lettres sur les Visionnaires_ corresponding to the _Provinciales_ of
his greater contemporary, while he was the author of _Pensees_, which,
unlike Pascal's, were regularly finished, and which, though much
inferior to them, have something of the same character. The
intellectual activity of Port Royal was very considerable, but most of
it was directed into channels which were not purely literary, owing
partly to incessant controversies brought on by the differences between
the community and the Jesuits, partly to the cultivation of
philosophical subjects. The age was perhaps the most controversial that
Europe has ever seen, and the comparative absence of periodicals (which
were only in their infancy) threw the controversies necessarily into
book form, as letters, pamphlets, or even volumes of considerable size.
But no very large portion of this controversial matter deserves the name
of literature, and much of it was written in Latin. Thus Gassendi, the
upholder of Neo-Epicurean opinions in opposition to Descartes, and
beyond all question the greatest French philosopher of the century after
Descartes and Malebranche, hardly belongs to French literature, though
his Latin works are of great bulk and no small literary merit. The
Gassendian school soon gave birth to a small but influential school of
materialist freethinkers. What may be called the school of orthodox
doubt, which had been represented by Montaigne and Charron, had, as has
been said, a representative in La Mothe le Vayer. But this special kind
of scepticism was already antiquated, if not obsolete, and it was
succeeded, on the one side, by the above-mentioned freethinkers, who
were also to a great extent free livers[277], and whose most remarkable
literary figure was Saint Evremond; on the other, by a school of learned
Pyrrhonists, whose most remarkable representative in every respect was
Pierre Bayle.
[Sidenote: Bayle.]
Bayle was born in the south of France in 1647, and, like almost all the
men of letters of his time, was educated by the Jesuits. He was of a
Protestant family, and was converted by his teachers, his conversion
being however so little of a solid one that he reverted to
Protestantism in less than two years. After this he resided for some
time in Switzerland, studying Cartesianism. In 1675 he was made
Professor of Philosophy at Sedan, a post which he held for six years,
moving thence to Rotterdam. Here he began to write numerous articles and
works in the periodicals, which were slowly becoming fashionable,
especially in Holland. They were mostly critical, and dealt with
scientific, historical, philosophical, and theological subjects. Bayle's
utterances on the latter subject, and especially his pleas for
toleration, brought him into a troublesome controversy with Jurieu, and
in 1693 he was deprived of his professorship, or at least of his right
to lecture. He then devoted himself to the famous Dictionary which is
identified with his name, and which, though by no means the first
encyclopaedia of modern times (for Alsten, Moreri, Hoffmann, and others
had preceded him within the century), was by far the most influential
and most original yet produced. It appeared in 1696, and brought him new
troubles, which were not however of a serious character. He died in
1706.
The scepticism of which Bayle was the exponent was purely critical and
intellectual. He was not in the least an enemy of the moral system of
Christianity, nor even, it would appear, an enemy to Christianity
itself. But his intellect was constitutionally disposed to see the
objections to all things rather than the arguments in their favour, and
to take a pleasure in stating these objections. Thus, though he was
after his religious oscillations nominally an orthodox Protestant, the
tendency of his works was to impugn points held by Protestants and
Catholics alike, and though he was nominally a Cartesian, he was equally
far from yielding an implicit belief to the doctrines of Descartes. His
most famous work is the reverse of methodical. The subjects are chosen
almost at random, and are very frequently nothing but pegs on which to
hang notes and digressions in which the author indulges his critical and
dissolvent faculty. Nor is the style by any means a model. But it is
lively, clear, and interesting, and no doubt had a good deal to do with
the vast popularity of his book in the eighteenth century. Bayle had a
strong influence on Voltaire, and though he had less to do with his
follower's style than Saint Evremond and Pascal, he is nearer to him in
spirit than either. The difference perhaps may be said to be that
Bayle's pleasure in negative criticism is almost purely intellectual.
There is but little in him of the half-childish mischievousness which
distinguishes Voltaire.
[Sidenote: Malebranche.]
Cartesianism was not less likely than its opposites to lead to
philosophical scepticism, but in the main its professors, taking their
master's conduct for model, remained orthodox. In that case, however,
the Cartesian idealism had a tendency to pass into mysticism. Of those
in whom it took this form Nicolas Malebranche[278] was the unquestioned
chief. He was born at Paris, where his father held a lucrative office;
in 1638, and from his birth had very feeble health. When he was of age
he became an Oratorian, and passed the whole of his long life in study
and literary work, sometimes being engaged in controversies on the
compatibility of his system--the famous 'Vision in God,' and 'Spiritual
Existence in God'--with orthodoxy, but never receiving any formal
censure from the Church. Despite his bad health he lived to the age of
seventy-seven, dying in 1715. A curious story is told of a verbal
argument between him and Berkeley on the eve of his death. He wrote
several works in French, such as a _Traite de Morale_, _Conversations
Metaphysiques_, etc., but his greatest and most remarkable contribution
to French literature is his _Recherche de la Verite_, published in 1674,
which unfolds his system. From the literary point of view the
_Recherche_ is one of the most considerable books of the philosophical
class ever produced. Unlike the various works of Descartes it is of very
great length, filling three volumes in the original edition, and a
thousand pages of close type in the most handy modern reprint. It also
deals with subjects of an exceedingly abstract character, and is not
diversified by any elaborate illustrations, any machinery like that of
Plato or Berkeley, or any passages of set eloquence. The purity and
beauty of the style, however, and its extraordinary lucidity, make it a
book of which it is difficult to tire. The chief mechanical difference
between the style of Malebranche and that of his master is that his
sentences are shorter. They are, however, framed with equal care as to
rhythm and to logical arrangement. The metaphor of limpidity is very
frequently applied to style, but perhaps there is hardly any to which it
may be applied with such propriety as to the style of Malebranche.
FOOTNOTES:
[272] Not fully edited yet. Cousin's edition is the fullest, but the
important French works figure in many popular collections and are easily
accessible.
[273] He was 'as restless as a hyaena,' says De Quincey, not unjustly.
[274] Professor Mahaffy, _Descartes_. Blackwood, 1880.
[275] 'La philosophie donne moyen de parler vraisemblablement de toutes
choses, et se faire admirer des moins savants.'
[276] Sainte-Beuve, _Port Royal_. 6 vols. Paris, 1859-61.
[277] These men, such as Saint Ibal, Bardouville, Desbarreaux, and
others, figure largely in the anecdotic history of the time. In the
persons of Theophile and Saint Evremond they touch on literature: but
for the most part they were chiefly distinguished by revolting
coarseness and blasphemy of expression, and by a childish delight in
outraging religious sentiment, which was often changed into abject
terror or hypocritical compliance as death approached. They were
commonly called _philosophes_, a degradation of the word which was not
much mended in the next century, though it then acquired a more strictly
literary meaning.
[278] Ed. Simon. 1854.
CHAPTER VII.
THEOLOGIANS AND PREACHERS.
There is no period in the whole course of French literature in which
theological writers and orators contribute so much to literary history
as in the seventeenth century. The causes of this energy can only be
summarily indicated here. They were the various _sequelae_ of the
Reformation and the counter-reformation, the latter of which was in
France extraordinarily powerful; the influence of Richelieu and Mazarin
in politics, which assured to the Church a great predominance in the
State, while its rival, the territorial aristocracy, was depressed and
persecuted; the personal inclination of Louis XIV., who made up for his
loose manner of life by the straitest doctrinal orthodoxy; but perhaps
most of all the accidental determination of various men of great talents
and energy to the ecclesiastical profession. Bossuet, Fenelon,
Bourdaloue, Massillon, Flechier, Mascaron, Claude, Saurin, to name no
others, could hardly have failed to distinguish themselves in any
department of literature which they had chosen. Circumstances of
accident threw them into work more or less wholly theological.
[Sidenote: St. Francois de Sales.]
This peculiarity of the century, however, belongs chiefly to its third
and fourth quarters. The first preacher and theologian of literary
eminence in this period belongs about equally to it and to the
preceding, but his most remarkable work dates from this time. Francois
de Sales was born at Annecy in 1567. He was destined for the law, and
completed his education for it at Paris, but his vocation for the church
was stronger, and he took orders in 1593. He soon distinguished himself
by reconverting a considerable number of persons to the Roman form of
faith in the district of Chablais, and at the beginning of the
seventeenth century preached at Paris, and latterly at Dijon. He was
soon made bishop of Geneva, an episcopate which, it need hardly be said,
might almost be described as _in partibus infidelium_. But in the south
of France, in Savoy, and in Paris itself, his influence was great. His
chief works are the 'Introduction to a Devout Life' (1608), the _Traite
de l'Amour de Dieu_, 'Spiritual Letters' (to Madame de Chantal), and
sermons. His style is by no means destitute of archaism, but it is
clear, fluent, and agreeable. He and Fenouillet, bishop of Marseilles,
with other preachers whose names are now forgotten, were the chief
instruments in recovering the art of sacred oratory from the low estate
into which it had fallen during the heat of the religious wars and the
League, when it had been disgraced alternately by violence and
buffoonery. But the Thirty Years' War and the Fronde were again
unfavourable to theological discussion, except of a quasi-political
kind, and the best spirits of this time threw themselves into the
unpopular direction of Jansenism. The 'Siecle de Louis Quatorze' proper,
that is the period subsequent to 1660, was the palmy time, from the
literary point of view, of theological eloquence and discussion in
France.
[Sidenote: Bossuet.]
Of the authors already named Bossuet deserves precedence in almost every
respect except that of private character. Jacques Benigne Bossuet[279]
was born at Dijon, in 1627, of a family of distinction in the middle
class. He went to school to the Jesuits in his native town, and finished
his education at the College de Navarre in Paris, receiving his doctor's
degree and a canonry at Metz in 1652. He soon distinguished himself both
as an orator and a controversialist, preached before the king in Advent
1661, and in 1669 was appointed to the bishopric of Condom. His
subsequent appointment to the post of tutor to the Dauphin made him
resign his bishopric; but on the completion of his task (in virtue of
which he had been elected to the Academy in 1680) he was made almoner to
the prince, and in the following year received the bishopric of Meaux.
He was soon after engaged in the Gallican controversy, in which he
defended not so much the rights of the Church as the claims of the royal
prerogative. The most unfortunate incident of his life was his
controversy with Fenelon. Bossuet, though thoroughly learned in some
respects, was not a man of the widest culture, and the whole region of
mystical theology was unknown to him. He, therefore, mistook certain
utterances of the archbishop of Cambray, which were neither new nor
alarming, for heterodox innovations, and began a violent polemic against
him. Supported by the king, he was able to obtain a nominal victory, but
the moral success rested with Fenelon, and still more the advantage in
the literary duel. Bossuet died in 1704. His works were very numerous,
and of very various kinds. His first reputation was, as has been said,
earned as a controversialist (his principal adversaries in this respect
were the Protestant ministers Ferri and Claude) and as a preacher on
general subjects. On his appointment to the see of Condom, however, he
struck out a new line, that of funeral discourses (_oraisons funebres_),
and produced, on the occasions of the death of the two Henriettas of
England, mother and daughter, of the great Conde, of the
Princess-Palatine, and of others, works which are undoubtedly triumphs
of French eloquence, and which, with the exception of the best passages
of Burke, are perhaps the only things of the kind comparable to the
masterpieces of antiquity. His controversial work is equal in perfection
of execution to his oratory, the _Exposition de la Doctrine de l'Eglise
Catholique_, and still more the _Histoire des Variations des Eglises
Protestantes_, being deservedly regarded as models of their kind,
notwithstanding the obvious fallacy pervading the latter. Of his other
works the most remarkable (perhaps the most remarkable of all if
originality of conception and breadth of design be taken into account)
is his _Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle jusqu'a l'Empire de
Charlemagne_. This has, though not universally, been held to be the
first attempt at the philosophy of history, that is to say, the first
work in which general history is regarded and expounded from a single
comprehensive point of view, and laws of a universal kind drawn from it.
In Bossuet's case the point of view is, of course, strictly theological,
and the laws are arranged accordingly.
Bossuet's character was unamiable, and, despite the affected frankness
with which he spoke to the king, it will always remain a blot on his
memory that he did not seriously protest either against the loose life
of Louis, or against his ruinous ambition and lawless disregard of the
rights of nations. There is, however, no doubt whatever of his perfect
sincerity and of the genuineness of his belief in political autocracy,
provided that the autocrat was a faithful son of the Church. He was a
Cartesian, and was probably not unindebted to Descartes for the force
and vigour of his reasonings, though he was hardly so careful as his
master in enlarging the field of his knowledge and assuring the validity
of his premises. The extraordinary majesty of his rhetoric, perhaps,
brings out by force of contrast the occasionally fallacious character of
his reasoning, but it must be confessed that even as a controversialist
he has few equals. The rhetorical excellence of the _Oraisons_ and the
gorgeous sweep, not merely of the language but of the conception, in the
_Histoire Universelle_, show him at what is really his best; while many
isolated expressions betray at once an intimate knowledge of the human
heart, and a hardly surpassed faculty of clothing that knowledge in
words. Bossuet no doubt is more of a speaker than a writer. His
excellence lies in the wonderful survey, and grasp of the subject
(qualities which make his favourite literary nickname of the 'Eagle of
Meaux' more than usually appropriate), in the contagious enthusiasm and
energy with which he attacks his point, in his inexhaustible metaphors
and comparisons. He has not the unfailing charm of Malebranche, nor that
which belongs in a less degree, and with more mannerism, to Fenelon; he
is very unequal, and small blemishes of style abound in him. Thus, in
his most famous passage, the description of the sudden death of
Henrietta of Orleans, occurs the phrase 'comme un coup de _tonnerre_
cette _etonnante_ nouvelle,' a jingle of words as unpleasant as it is
easily avoided. But blemishes of this kind (and it is, perhaps,
noteworthy that French is more tolerant of them than almost any other
language of equal literary perfection) disappear in the volume and force
of the torrent of Bossuet's eloquence. It is fair to add that, though he
is almost always aiming at the sublime, he scarcely ever oversteps it,
or falls into the bombastic and the ridiculous. Even his elaborate
eulogy (it would hardly be fair to call it flattery) of the great is so
cunningly balanced by exposition of the nothingness of men and things,
that it does not strike the mind's eye with any immediate sense of
glaring impropriety. The lack of formal perfection which is sometimes
noticeable in him is made up to a greater degree almost than in any
other writer by the intense force and conviction of the speaker and the
imposing majesty of his manner. It is pretty certain that most attempts
to imitate Bossuet would result in a lamentable failure; and it is not a
little significant that the only two Frenchmen who in prose have shown
themselves occasionally his rivals, Michelet and Lamennais, are among
the most unequal of writers.
[Sidenote: Fenelon.]
The contrast between Bossuet and his chief rival was in all respects
great. To begin with, Fenelon was a much younger man than Bossuet,
belonging it might be said almost to another generation. He inherited
some of the noblest blood in France, while Bossuet was but a _roturier_,
and this may have had something to do with the more independent
character of Fenelon. Bossuet was a vigorous student of certain defined
branches of knowledge, but of general literature he took little heed.
Fenelon was a man of almost universal reading, and one of the most
original and soundest literary critics of his time. Fenelon felt deeply
for the misery of the French people; Bossuet does not appear to have
troubled himself about it. Finally Bossuet, with all his merits, had
grave faults of moral character, while to Fenelon--quite as justly as to
Berkeley--every virtue under heaven may be assigned. Francois de
Salignac de la Mothe-Fenelon[280] was born at the castle of the same
name in the province of Perigord, on August 16th, 1661. He was educated
first at home, then at Cahors, and then at the College de Plessis at
Paris. He finally studied in a theological seminary for some years, and
did not formally enter the Church till he was four-and-twenty. He then
devoted himself partly to the poor, partly to education, especially of
girls, and his treatise on this latter subject was his first work. In
1687 he was appointed preceptor to the Duke de Bourgogne, son of
Bossuet's pupil, and heir to the throne. For the duke he wrote a great
number of books, among them _Telemaque_ (or at least the first sketch of
it). In 1697 he was appointed archbishop of Cambray. Into his connection
with Madame Guyon, the celebrated apostle of quietism, and his
consequent quarrel with Bossuet, there is no need to enter further.
Whichever of the two may have been theologically in the right, there are
no two opinions on the question that Bossuet was in the wrong, both in
the acrimony of his conduct and the violence of his language. In the
latter respect, indeed, he brought down upon himself a well-deserved
punishment. Fenelon was the mildest of men, but he possessed a faculty
of quiet irony inferior to that of no man then living, and he used it
with effect in the controversy against Bossuet's declamatory
denunciations. When, at last, the matter had been referred to the Pope,
and judgment had been given against himself, Fenelon at once bowed to
the decision and acknowledged his error. Louis, however, had many more
reasons for disliking him than the mere odium theologicum with which
Bossuet had inspired him. Fenelon was known to disapprove of much in the
actual government of France, and the surreptitious publication of
_Telemaque_ completed his disgrace. He was banished from court and
confined to his diocese, in which he accordingly spent the last part of
his life, doing his best to alleviate the misery caused on the borders
by the war of the Spanish succession, and dying at Cambray in 1715.
Fenelon was an industrious writer. Few of his finished sermons have been
preserved; but these are excellent, as are also his fables written for
the Duke de Bourgogne, his already-mentioned _Education des Filles_, and
his _Dialogues des Morts_, also written for the Duke, in which the form
is borrowed from Lucian, but in which moral lessons are substituted for
mere satire. Like Bossuet, Fenelon was a Cartesian, and his _Traite de
l'Existence de Dieu_ is a philosophico-religious work of no small merit.
In literary history he is remarkable for having directly opposed the
victorious work of Boileau. He has left several exercises in literary
criticism, such as his _Lettre sur les Occupations de l'Academie
Francaise_, one of the latest of his works; his _Dialogues sur
l'Eloquence_, and a contribution to the famous dispute of ancients and
moderns in correspondence with La Motte. He regretted the impoverishment
of the language, and the loss of much of the energy and picturesque
vigour of the sixteenth century. In his controversy with Bossuet, though
the matter is not strictly literary, there is, as has been noticed, much
admirable literary work; but his chief claim to a place in literary
history is, of course, _Telemaque_, which work he had anticipated by the
somewhat similar _Aventures d'Aristonous_. It has often been regretted
that classics in any language should be used for purposes of instruction
in the rudiments, and hardly any single work has suffered more from this
practice than _Telemaque_, for learners of French are usually set to
read it long before they have any power of literary appreciation. A
continuous narrative, moreover, is about the least suited of all
literary forms to bear that process of cutting up in short pieces which
is necessary in education. The pleasure of the story is either lost
altogether, or anticipated by surreptitious reading on the part of the
pupil, after which the mechanical plodding through matter of which he
has already exhausted the interest is disgusting enough. Yet it can
hardly be doubted that if _Telemaque_ had not, in the case of most
readers, this fatal disadvantage, its beauties would be generally
acknowledged. Its form is somewhat artificial, and the author has,
perhaps, not escaped the error of most moral fiction writers, that of
making his hero too much of a model of what ought to be, and too little
of a copy of what is. But the story is excellently managed, the various
incidents are drawn with remarkable vividness and picturesqueness, the
descriptions are uniformly excellent, and the style is almost
impeccable. Even were the moral sentiments and the general tendency of
the book less excellent than they are, its value as a model of French
composition would probably have secured it something like its present
place side by side with La Fontaine's Fables as a school-book. It is
fair to add that in the character of Calypso, where the need of the
author for a 'terrible example' freed him from his restraints, very
considerable powers of character-drawing are shown, and the same may be
said of not a few of the minor personages.
[Sidenote: Massillon.]
The third greatest name of the period in this class of men of letters
is beyond all question that of Massillon. He, like Fenelon, belongs to
the second, if not the third, generation of the Siecle de Louis
Quatorze, being nearly forty years younger than Bossuet. He was a long
liver, and his death did not occur till far into the reign of Louis XV.,
when the reputation of Voltaire was established, and the
eighteenth-century movement was in full swing. But his literary and
oratorical activity had ceased for nearly a quarter of a century at the
time of his death. Jean Baptiste Massillon[281] was a native of Hieres,
and was born on June 24, 1663. His father was a notary, and he himself
was destined for the same profession; but his vocation for the Church
was strong, and he was at last permitted to enter the Oratorian
Congregation. His aptitude for preaching was soon discovered, and when
very young he distinguished himself by _Oraisons Funebres_ on the
archbishops of Lyons and Vienne. He was of a retiring disposition, and,
wishing to avoid publicity, joined a stricter order than that of the
Oratory, but was induced, and indeed ordered, by the Cardinal de
Noailles, who heard him preach in his new abode, not to hide his light
under a bushel, but to come to Paris and do the Church service. He
obeyed, and was established in the capital in 1696. His fame soon became
great, and he preached before the king more than one course of sermons.
He was appointed bishop of Clermont in 1717, and in the same year
preached the celebrated _Petit Careme_, or course of Lent sermons,
before Louis XV. In 1719 he was elected of the Academy. He preached his
last sermon at Paris in 1723, and then retired to his diocese, where he
spent the last twenty years of his life, dying of apoplexy at the age of
eighty, Sept. 28, 1742.
Massillon has usually, and justly, been considered the greatest
preacher, in the strict sense of the word, of France. Only Bossuet and
Bourdaloue could contest this position; and though both preceded him,
and he owed much to both, he excels both in sermons properly so called.
Bossuet was, perhaps, a greater orator, if the finest parts of his work
only are taken; but he was, as has been said, unequal, and in the two
great objects of the preacher, exposition of doctrine and effect upon
the consciences of his hearers, he was admittedly inferior to Massillon.
The latter, moreover, has, of all French preachers (for Fenelon, it must
be remembered, has left but few sermons), the purest style, and
possesses the greatest range. His special function was considered to be
persuasion; yet few pulpit orators have managed the sterner parts of
their duty more forcibly. Massillon's sermon on the Prodigal Son, and
that on the Deaths of the Just and the Unjust, are models of his style.
It is, moreover, very much to his credit that he was the most
uncompromising, despite his gentleness, of all the great preachers of
the time, and, therefore, the least popular at court. Louis the
Fourteenth's famous epigram, to the effect that other preachers made him
contented with them, but Massillon made him discontented with himself,
was somewhat comically illustrated by the fact that, after the second
course of sermons preached before him, that of Lent 1704, the preacher,
though then in the very height of his powers, was never asked again to
preach at court. We are, however, more concerned with the manner than
with the matter of his orations. He had (after the example of
Bourdaloue, it is true) entirely discarded the frippery of erudition
with which most of his predecessors had been wont to load their sermons,
as well as the occasional oddities of gesticulation and anecdote which
had once been fashionable. His style is simple, straightforward, and yet
extremely elegant. In the commonplaces of French literary history of the
old school he is called the Racine of the pulpit, a compliment
determined by the extreme purity and elegance of his style, but not
otherwise very applicable, inasmuch as one chief characteristic of
Massillon is an energy and masculine vigour of expression in which
Racine is, for the most part, wanting.
[Sidenote: Bourdaloue.]
If we have postponed Bourdaloue to Massillon, despite the order of
chronology, it has been in accordance with Bourdaloue's own remark when
Massillon made his first reputation, 'He must increase, but I must
decrease.' This remark is characteristic of the disposition of the man,
which was as stainless as Massillon's own. Louis Bourdaloue was born at
Bourges on the 20th August, 1632, and was thus not many years the junior
of Bossuet. He entered the Society of Jesus early, and served it as
professor of philosophy and kindred subjects. But his superiors soon
discovered his talents as a preacher, and he was sent to make his way
before the court, where he became a great favourite, especially with
Madame de Sevigne, who was no mean critic. He died in 1704.
The chief characteristic of Bourdaloue's eloquence is a remarkable
absence of ornament, and a strict adherence to dialectical order. None
of the great French preachers admit of logical abstraction and _precis_
so well as he. Another peculiarity is his preference for ethical
subjects. More than any of his contemporaries he was an expounder of
Christian morality, and his sermons are wont to deal with simple virtues
and vices rather than with points of devotional piety. He was, like
Massillon, and even more than Massillon, absolutely fearless and
uncompromising, preaching against adultery in the very face of Louis
XIV. in his early days, and sparing no vice or folly of the court. But,
perhaps owing to the somewhat severe and exclusively intellectual
character of his oratory, it does not appear to have produced the
effects, salutary doubtless for the hearers, but somewhat inconvenient
for the preacher, which attended the more cunningly-aimed attacks of
Massillon.
The example of the three great preachers--Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and
Massillon--raised up many imitators, some of whom, such as De la Rue,
Cheminais, and others, were popular in their day. There are, however,
four orators--two Roman Catholics, and two belonging to the French
Protestant Church--to whom is usually and rightly accorded the second
rank, while sectarian partiality sometimes claims even the first for
them. These were Flechier, Mascaron, Claude, and Saurin.
[Sidenote: Minor Preachers.]
Esprit Flechier was born at Pesmes in 1632. For a time he was a member
of the congregation of the Brothers of Christian Doctrine, which,
however, on an alteration of its constitution by a new superior-general
(he had been introduced to it by his uncle, who held that office), he
quitted. He then went to Paris and tried various methods of gaining a
livelihood, such as writing verses in Latin and French, and teaching in
a school. In these early days he indulged in various forms of
miscellaneous literature. The most curious and interesting of these
works is a little account of the _Grands Jours d'Auvergne_, a sort of
provincial assize which he visited. This has much liveliness, and the
sketches of character and manners show a good deal of skill. But at
length he found his proper sphere in the pulpit. He acquired reputation
by his _Oraison Funebre_ on Turenne. He became a member of the Academy
(being admitted on the same day as Racine); and he was appointed, first,
to the bishopric of Lavaur, then to that of Nimes, where, in a very
difficult position (for the revocation of the edict of Nantes had
exasperated the Protestants, who were numerous in the diocese), he made
himself universally beloved. He died in 1710. The most famous of
Flechier's discourses are those on Madame de Montausier (the heroine of
the _Guirlande de Julie_[282] and the idol of the Hotel de Rambouillet),
that on Madame de Montausier's husband, and that on Turenne. Flechier
represents a somewhat older style of diction and expression than either
of his great contemporaries, Bossuet and Bourdaloue; and his style,
unlike some other work of this older school, is not characterised by
many striking occasional phrases, but his sermons as a whole are
vigorous and well expressed.
Jean Mascaron was born at Marseilles in 1634. It is worth noticing that
almost all these orators came from the south of France. He preached
frequently before the king, and did not hesitate to rebuke his vices,
notwithstanding or because of which he was appointed to the bishopric of
Tulle, whence he was afterwards translated to Agen. He died in 1703.
Mascaron is chiefly remembered for his _Oraison_ on that same death of
Turenne which gave occasion to so many orators. He is usually reproached
with a certain affectation of style, and there is justice in the
reproach.
Of the two Protestant divines who have been mentioned Claude was the
less distinguished, though he sustained on pretty even terms a public
controversy with Bossuet himself. Jacques Saurin was of less political
influence with his own sect, but he possessed greater eloquence, and
critics of his own persuasion in France and Switzerland have equalled
him to Bossuet. His works, moreover, long continued to be the most
popular body of household divinity with French Protestants. He was born
at Nimes, 1677, and was thus considerably younger even than Massillon.
The revocation of the edict of Nantes (which had formed the subject of
some of Claude's most famous discourses) prevented him from making a
name for himself in France. He was at first appointed, in 1701, after
studying at Geneva, to a Walloon congregation in London, but soon moved,
in consequence of weak health, to the Hague. He there became a victim of
the petty dissensions which seem to have been more frequent among Dutch
Protestant sects than anywhere else, and to the vexation of these is
said to have been partly due his comparatively early death in 1730. He
left a very considerable number of sermons and some theological
treatises. He was admittedly a great orator, excelling in striking
pictures and forcible imagery.
It will have been observed that, though this age contributes more to
theology of the literary kind than almost any other, its most memorable
contributions are almost exclusively oratorical. Incidentally, however,
much that was intended to be read, not heard, was of course written. But
less of it has been thought worthy the attention of posterity. The chief
theological names in this department have already been named in naming
those of the other. Of the school of Port Royal, who preached little but
wrote much, J. J. Duguet, a man of great talent and saintly life,
deserves mention.
FOOTNOTES:
[279] Bossuet's works are extremely voluminous. The most important of
them are easily obtainable in the _Collection Didot_ and similar
libraries.
[280] There is a fairly representative edition of Fenelon in five vols.
large 8vo. Didot. Separate works are easily accessible.
[281] Edition as in Fenelon's case. Selections of all the orthodox
sermon-writers are abundant.
[282] This was an album to which the poets of the day, from Corneille
downwards, contributed verses, each on a different flower.
INTERCHAPTER III.
SUMMARY OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE.
The tendencies of the period which has been surveyed in the foregoing
book must be sufficiently obvious from the survey itself. They had been,
as far as the unsatisfactory result of them went, indicated with
remarkably prophetic precision by Regnier in lines quoted above[283].
The work, not merely of Malherbe, which the satirist had directly in
view, but of Boileau, who succeeded Malherbe and completed his task, had
tended far too much in the direction of substituting a formal regularity
for an elastic freedom and of discouraging the more poetical utterances
of thought. In prose, however, the operation of not dissimilar
tendencies had been almost wholly good. For it is in the nature of prose
not to admit of too absolute regulation, and it is at the same time in
its nature to require that regulation up to a certain point. If the
French vocabulary had been somewhat impoverished, it had been
considerably refined. All good authorities admit that the influence of
the salon-coteries and the _precieuses_--mischievous as it was in some
ways--was of no small benefit in purifying not merely manners but
speech. A single book, the _Historiettes_ of Tallemant des Reaux, shows
sufficiently the need of this double purification. French literature has
at no time been distinguished by prudery, but from the fifteenth to the
middle of the seventeenth century (for, as has been pointed out, the
courtly literature at least of the middle ages is free from this defect)
it had added to its liberty in choice and treatment of subjects a
liberty which amounted to the extremest licence in the choice of words.
It had become in fact exceedingly coarse. The poetry of the Pleiade was
not as a rule open to this charge, but the early poetry and prose of the
seventeenth century must submit to it. One effect of the process of
correction and reform was a decided improvement in this matter.
But the vocabulary was by no means the only thing that underwent
revision. Other constituents of literature shared in the same
experience, and much more beneficially, for the expurgation of the
dictionary was unfortunately made to involve the weeding out of many
terms which were not open to the slightest exception, and the loss of
which deprived the tongue of much of its picturesqueness. No such
concomitant defect attended the reformations in grammar which, begun by
the grammarians of the sixteenth century, were pursued still more
systematically by Vaugelas and his followers. There can hardly be too
much precision observed in matters of accidence and syntax; while it is
desirable that the vocabulary should be as rich as possible, provided
that its terms are vernacular or properly naturalised. The same may be
said of some at least of the reforms of Malherbe in prosody and the
minutiae of poetical art. So too the advance made to something like a
uniform orthography was of no small importance. The result of this
general criticism was the group (or rather groups, for they may be
divided into at least two, the earlier comprising Descartes, Corneille,
Pascal, Saint Evremond, La Rochefoucauld, Bossuet, Madame de Sevigne, La
Fontaine, and Moliere, in other words, most of the greatest names)
illustrating the so-called _Grand Siecle_, or Siecle de Louis Quatorze.
The two names that stand first in this list, Descartes and Corneille,
represent at once the initial change and in addition the greatest
accomplishment in the direction of change effected by any individual.
The others worthily followed where they led. This group, as has been
more than once pointed out, does not shine in poetry proper. But it has
hardly a rival in prose and in that measured and declamatory or easy and
pedestrian verse which is half prose, half poetry.
Long, however, before the century ended, the evils which invariably
attend upon a critical period, especially--it is paradoxical but
true--when it is at the same time a period of considerable creative
power, began to manifest themselves. These evils may be briefly
described as the natural results of the drawing up of too straight and
definite rules for each department of literature, and the following with
too great exactness of the more brilliant examples in each kind. The one
practice leads to what is called, in Sterne's well-known phrase,
'looking at the stop-watch;' the other, to an endeavour to be like
somebody. It was not till the eighteenth century that these evils were
fully patent; and then, though they were somewhat mitigated in
departments other than the Belles Lettres by the eager spirit of enquiry
and adventure which characterised the time, they are evident enough. The
mischief showed itself in various ways. Besides the two which have been
already indicated, there was a third and subtler form, which has
produced some curious and interesting work, but which is obviously an
indication of decadence. Those who did not resign themselves to the mere
recasting of old material in the old moulds, or to simple following of
the great models, were apt to echo, aloud or silently, La Bruyere's
opening sentence, 'tout est dit,' and to draw from this discouraging
fact the same conclusion that he did--that the only way to innovate was
to vary in cunning fashion the manners of saying. In itself there might
be no great harm in the conclusion, especially if it had led to a revolt
against the narrow limits imposed by current criticism. But it did not,
it only led to an attempt to innovate within those limits, which could
only be done by a kind of new 'preciousness'--an affectation in short.
This affectation showed itself first (though La Bruyere himself is not
quite free from it, enemy of Fontenelle as he was) in Fontenelle, who
was a descendant of the old _precieuse_ school itself, and reached a
climax in the author from whose name it thenceforward took its name of
_Marivaudage_.
Thus the literary produce of the seventeenth century was better than its
tendency. The latter has been sufficiently described; a very few words
will suffice for the former. In the special characteristics of the
genius of French, which may be said to be clearness, polish of form and
expression, and a certain quality which perhaps cannot be so well
expressed by any other word as by alertness, the best work of the
seventeenth century has no rivals. Except in Corneille and Bossuet, it
is not often grand, it is still seldomer passionate, or suggestively
harmonious, or quaintly humorous, or even picturesquely narrative. But
the charm of precision, of elegance, of expressing what is expressed in
the best possible manner, belongs to it in a supreme degree. There are
not many things in literature more absolutely incapable of improvement
in their own style, and as far as they go, than a scene of Moliere, a
_tirade_ of Racine, a maxim of La Rochefoucauld, a letter of Madame de
Sevigne, a character of La Bruyere, a peroration of Massillon, when each
is at his or her best. The reader may in some cases feel that he likes
something else better, but he is incapable of pointing out a blemish. If
he objects, he must object to something extra-literary, to the writer's
conception of human nature, his political views, his range of thought,
his selection of subject. When the one supreme question of criticism
formulated by Victor Hugo, 'l'ouvrage est-il bon ou est-il mauvais?'
(not 'aimez-vous l'ouvrage?' which is the illegitimate question which
nine critics out of ten put to themselves), is set in reference to the
best work of this time, the answer cannot be dubious for one moment in
the case of any one qualified to give an answer at all. It is good, and
in very many cases it could not possibly be better.
FOOTNOTES:
[283] p. 267.
BOOK IV.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
CHAPTER I.
POETS.
[Sidenote: Literary Degeneracy of the Eighteenth Century.]
The literature of the eighteenth century, despite the many great names
which adorn it, and the extraordinary practical influence which it
exercised, is, from the point of view of strict literary criticism,
which busies itself with form rather than matter, a period of decadence.
In all the departments of Belles Lettres a servile imitation of the
models of the great classical period is observable. The language,
according to an inevitable process which the more clearsighted of the
men of Louis the Fourteenth's time, such as Fenelon and La Bruyere,
themselves foresaw and deprecated, became more and more incapable of
expressing deep passion, varied scenery, the intricacies and
eccentricities of character. For a time a few survivors of the older
class and manner, such as Fontenelle, Saint Simon, Massillon, resisted
the tendency of the age more or less successfully. As they one by one
dropped off, the militant energy of the great _philosophe_ movement,
which may be said to coincide with the second and third quarters of the
century, communicated a temporary brilliance to prose. But during the
reign of Louis XVI., the Revolution and the Empire (for in the widest
sense the eighteenth century of literature does not cease till the
Restoration, or even later), the average literary value of what is
written in French is but small, and, with few exceptions, what is
valuable belongs to those who, consciously or unconsciously, were in an
attitude of revolt, and were clearing the way for the men of 1830.
[Sidenote: especially manifest in Poetry.]
Poetry and the drama naturally suffered most from this course of events,
and poetry pure and simple suffered even more than the drama. By the
opening of the eighteenth century epic and lyric in the proper sense had
been rendered nearly impossible by the full and apparently final
adoption of the conception of poetry recommended by Malherbe, and
finally rendered orthodox by Boileau. The impossibility was not
recognised, and France, in the opinion of her own critics, at last got
her epic poem in the _Henriade_, and her perfect lyrists in Rousseau and
Lebrun. But posterity has not ratified these judgments. Fortunately,
however, the men of the eighteenth century had in La Fontaine a model
for lighter work which their principles permitted them to follow, and
the irresistible attractions of the song left song-writers tolerably
free from the fatal restrictions of dignified poetry. Once, towards the
close of the century, a poet of exceptional genius, Andre Chenier,
showed what he might have done under happier circumstances. But for the
most part the history of poetry during this time in France is the
history of verse almost uninspired by the poetic spirit, and destitute
even of the choicer graces of poetic form.
[Sidenote: J. B. Rousseau.]
For convenience' sake it will be well to separate the graver and the
lighter poets, and to treat each in order, with the proviso that in most
cases those mentioned in the first division have some claim to figure in
the second also, for few poets of the time were wholly serious. The
first poet who is distinctively of the eighteenth century, and not the
least remarkable, was Jean Baptiste Rousseau[284] (1669-1741).
Rousseau's life was a singular and rather an unfortunate one. In the
first place he was exiled for a piece of scandalous literature, of which
in all probability he was quite guiltless; and, in the second, meeting
in his exile with Voltaire, who professed (and seems really to have
felt) admiration for him, he offended the irritable disciple and was
long the butt of his attacks. Here, however, Rousseau concerns us as a
direct pupil of Boileau, who, with great faculties for the formal part
of poetry, and not without some tincture of its spirit, set himself to
be a lyric poet after Boileau's fashion. He tried play-writing also, but
his dramas are quite unimportant. Rousseau's principal works are certain
odes, most of which are either panegyrical after the fashion of the
celebrated Namur specimen (though he is seldom so absurd as his master),
or else sacred and drawn from the Bible. The _Cantates_ are of the same
kind as the latter. These elaborate and formal works, which owed much of
their popularity to the vogue given to piety at court in the later years
of Louis XVI., are curiously contrasted with the third principal
division of his poems, consisting of epigrams which allow themselves the
full epigrammatic licence in subject and treatment. The contrast is,
however, probably due to a very simple cause, the state of demand at the
time, and perhaps also to the study of Marot, the only pre-seventeenth
century poet of France who was allowed to pass muster in the school of
Boileau. Rousseau's merits have been already indicated, and his defects
may be easily divined, even from this brief notice. He is almost always
adroit, often eloquent, sometimes remarkably clever; but he is seldom
other than artificial, never passionate, and only once or twice sublime.
Nor is it superfluous to mention that he is more responsible than any
other person for the intolerable frippery of classical mythology which
loads eighteenth-century verse.
La Motte-Houdart (1672-1731), a successful dramatist, an excellent
prose-writer, and an ingenious but paradoxical critic, was at the time
considered Rousseau's rival in point of ode-making. His work displays
the same defects in a greater and the same merits in a lesser degree,
but his fables in the style of La Fontaine are not unhappy.
Lagrange-Chancel, a partisan of the Duchess du Maine, is chiefly famous
for his ferocious satires on the Duke of Orleans. Louis Racine
(1692--1763), undeterred by his father's reputation and the dissuasion
of the redoubtable Boileau, attempted poetry of a serious kind. He was
brought up by the Jansenists, and his two chief works are poems on
'Grace' and 'Religion.' The latter is better than the former; but both
exhibit a considerable faculty in the style of verse which his father
had made fashionable. The 'Sacred Odes' of Louis Racine are, like most
French poetry of the kind, stiff with a double mannerism, literary and
devotional.
[Sidenote: Voltaire.]
It would not be easy to give a clearer idea of the strange conception of
poetry which prevailed in France at this time than is given in the
simple statement that Voltaire was acknowledged to be its greatest poet.
It is probable that few Englishmen think of Voltaire as a poet at all;
and he has indeed no claim to the title except such as may be derived
from his remarkable skill in the mechanism of the art of poetry, and
from the extraordinary felicity of his light occasional pieces. It is,
however, as a poet that he was chiefly regarded by his contemporaries;
and though he will figure in almost every one of the chapters of this
book, such brief notice of his life as can alone be attempted in this
volume may best be given here. He was born in Paris in 1694, being the
younger son of a wealthy notary. The Jesuits had charge of his
education, and he very early displayed inclinations towards verse which
were not agreeable to his father. His youth seemed destined to scrapes.
He became identified with the party hostile to the Regent, and was twice
imprisoned in the Bastile (the second time in consequence of no fault of
his own), while he was at least twice bastinadoed by personal enemies.
Being sent in the suite of an ambassador to Holland, he became entangled
in a foolish love affair, and had to be hastily recalled. But by degrees
his literary talent developed itself. His first visit to the Bastile is
identified, more or less correctly, with the composition of _Oedipe_,
his second with that of the _Henriade_. After his second release he had
to go to England, and there the poem was published. He was soon enabled
to return to France, and from that time forward was careful to keep
himself out of difficulties by residing first with his friend, Madame du
Chatelet, at the remote frontier chateau of Circy, then with Frederick
II. at Berlin, then on the neutral territory of Switzerland, or close to
its border, at Les Delices and Ferney. During the whole of his long life
his literary production was incessant, and the form most congenial to
him was poetry, or at least verse. Besides the _Henriade_, his only
poem of great bulk is the scandalous burlesque epic of the _Pucelle_,
nominally imitated from Ariosto, but destitute of the poetical feeling
prominent in the _Orlando_. Voltaire's talent, however, was so much
greater in the lighter kinds of poetry than in the severer, that the
_Pucelle_ is not only more amusing, but actually better as poetry, than
the _Henriade_, the latter being stiff in plan and servilely modelled on
the classical epics, declamatory in tone, tedious in action, and
commonplace in character. Besides these two long poems Voltaire produced
an immense quantity of miscellaneous work, tales in verse, epistles in
verse, discourses in verse, satires, epigrams, _vers de societe_ of
every possible kind. These are almost invariably distinguished by the
felicity of expression--spoilt only by too close adherence to the
mannerism of the time--the brilliant wit, the keen observation which are
identified with the name of Voltaire. The number and the small
individual size of these works make it impossible to particularise them
here. But _Le Pauvre Diable_ may be specified as an almost unique
example of easy Horatian satire less conventional than most of its kind;
and the verses to the Princess Ulrique of Prussia as a model of
artificial but exquisitely polished gallantry in verse.
[Sidenote: Descriptive Poets. Delille.]
Le Franc de Pompignan had the misfortune to incur the enmity of
Voltaire, and has consequently borne in France the traditional ignominy
which in England hangs on certain victims of Dryden and Pope. He had,
however, some poetical talent, which was shown principally in his ode on
the death of J. B. Rousseau. The charming poem of _Ver-Vert_ (the
burlesque history of a parrot, the pet of a convent) made, and not
unjustly, the reputation of Gresset. This reputation his other poetical
works--though he wrote a comedy of much merit--failed to sustain. Saint
Lambert, the rival of Voltaire in love if not in literature, imitated
Thomson's _Seasons_ very closely in a poem of the same name, which set
the fashion of descriptive poetry in France for a considerable time. The
three most remarkable of his followers, all considerably superior to
himself in power, were Lemierre, Delille, and Roucher. Some paradoxical
critics have endeavoured to make Lemierre into a great poet; but his
poems (_La Peinture_, _Les Fastes_, etc.), written on ill-selected
subjects and in a style full of conventional mannerism, have at best the
occasional striking lines which are to be found in Armstrong and other
followers of Young or Thomson in England. Jacques Delille and his
extraordinary popularity form, perhaps, the greatest satire on the taste
of the eighteenth century in France. His translation of the Georgics was
supposed to make him the equal of Virgil, and brought him not merely
fame, but solid reward. His principal work was the poem of _Les
Jardins_, which he followed up with others of a not dissimilar kind.
Though he emigrated he did not lose his fame, and to the day of his
death was considered to be the first poet of France, or to share that
honour with Lebrun-_Pindare_. Delille has expiated his popularity by a
full half-century of contempt, and his work is, indeed, valueless as
poetry. But it is interesting as one of the most striking examples of
talent, adjusting itself exactly to the demands made on it. The age of
Delille wished to see everything described in elegant periphrases, and
the periphrases arranged in harmonious verses. Delille did this and
nothing more. Chess is 'le jeu reveur qu'inventa Palamede.' Backgammon
is 'le jeu bruyant ou, le cornet en main, L'adroit joueur calcule un
hasard incertain.' Sugar is 'le miel Americain Que du suc des roseaux
exprima l'Africain.' In short, poetry becomes an elaborate conundrum;
nothing is called by its proper name when a circumlocution is in any way
possible. Given the demand, Delille may justly claim the honour of
supplying it with unequalled adroitness. Roucher, the author of _Les
Mois_, who fell a victim to the guillotine, was a member of this school,
possessing not a little vigour, though he was not free from the defects
of his predecessors. To these may, perhaps, be joined the pastoral and
idyllic poet Leonard.
[Sidenote: Lebrun.]
It has been said that the glory of Delille as the greatest poet of the
last quarter of the century was shared by a writer whom his
contemporaries surnamed (absurdly enough) Pindar. Escouchard Lebrun had
a strange resemblance to J. B. Rousseau, of whom, however, he was by no
means a warm admirer. Like his forerunner, he divided his time between
bombastic lyrics and epigrams of very considerable merit. Lebrun was
not destitute of a certain force, but his time was too much for him. He
was a very long-lived man, and in his old age celebrated by turns the
Republic and Bonaparte. His chief rivals as poets of the Republic were
M. J. Chenier and the hunchback Desorgues, a voluminous and vigorous but
crude and unfinished writer, who died in a madhouse at the age of
forty-five.
Two young poets, who lived about the middle of the century, are usually
mentioned together, from the fact of the younger of them having used the
misfortunes of the elder to point his own complaints. Malfilatre, a
Norman by birth, had the ill-luck to write a piece of verse which gained
a provincial success. He at once set out for Paris to make his fortune.
He obtained the post of secretary to the Count de Lauraguais, wrote
verses not without grace and full of a certain tender melancholy, and
died at the age of thirty, his health broken by privations and
disappointment. Gilbert, a stronger man, but who has been somewhat
honoured by being called the French Chatterton, died still younger,
after writing some vigorous satire, and a 'complaint' or elegy which has
a good deal of pathos. But he did not, as is generally said, die of
want, though he did die in a public hospital, having been carried
thither after a fall from his horse.
[Sidenote: Parny.]
The places accorded by their contemporaries to Delille and Lebrun really
belonged to two writers of very different character and fortune, Parny
and Andre Chenier. Evariste de Parny, a native of the island of Bourbon,
was called by the aged Voltaire 'mon cher Tibulle,' and displays, with
much of the frivolity and false gallantry of the time, an extraordinary
command of simple elegiac verse, and a manner almost antique in its
simplicity and sweetness. Parny's best piece, a short epitaph on a young
girl, is one of the best things of its kind in literature. His merits,
however, are confined to his early works. In his maturer years he wrote
long poems, on the model of the _Pucelle_, against England,
Christianity, and Monarchism, which are equally remarkable for
blasphemy, obscenity, extravagance, and dulness. His friend Bertin, like
him a creole, resembled him in the command of graceful elegiac and
epistolary verse, but had not what Parny sometimes had, genuine
passion.
[Sidenote: Chenier.]
Andre Marie de Chenier[285], beyond question the greatest poet of the
eighteenth century in France, was born at Constantinople, where his
father was consul-general, in 1762. His mother was a Greek. His family
returned to France when he was a child; he was educated carefully, and
for a short time served in the army, but soon left it. After a time he
was attached (in 1787) to the French embassy in London. Here he spent
four years. Returning to France he sympathised, but on the moderate
side, with the Revolution. The growth of the Jacobin spirit horrified
him, and the excesses of the summer of 1792 decided his attitude and his
fate. He wrote frequently in the _Journal de Paris_, the organ of the
moderate royalist party. Although he did not in any way put himself
forward, he was at last arrested in March, 1794, and was guillotined on
the seventh Thermidor, two days only before the event which would have
saved him, the fall of Robespierre. His poems were not published till
long after his death, and the text of them is even now in an
unsatisfactory condition, many having been left unfinished and
uncorrected by the author. Andre Chenier is sometimes considered as a
precursor of the Romantic reform, but this is a mistake. His critical
comments on Shakespeare and other writers, his favourite studies, which
were confined to the Greek and Latin classics and the humanists of the
Italian Renaissance, above all his poems themselves, prove the contrary.
A Greek by birthplace, and half a Greek by blood, his tastes and
standards were wholly classical. But the fire and force of his poetical
genius made the blood circulate afresh in the veins of the old French
classical tradition, without, however, permanently strengthening or
renovating it. The poetry of Chenier is still in the main the poetry of
Racine, though with infinitely more glow of colour and variety of
harmony. His poems are mostly antique in their titles and plan,
eclogues, elegies, and so forth, and are not free from a certain
artificiality inseparable from the style. _La Jeune Tarentine_, _La
Jeune Captive_, _L'Aveugle_, and some others, are of extreme merit, and
all over his work (much of which is in the most fragmentary condition)
lines and phrases of extraordinary beauty are scattered. The noble
_Iambes_, or political and satirical poems, which he wrote in prison,
just before his death, bear out, perhaps better than anything else, his
well-known saying, as he touched his head when sentence had been passed,
'et pourtant il y avait quelque chose la.'
[Sidenote: Minor Poets.]
A few other poets or verse-makers of merit before the revival of poetry
proper must be rapidly noticed. The fable of La Fontaine was cultivated
vigorously, in particular by Florian, a favourite pupil of Voltaire, who
will reappear in these pages. Florian's fables are graceful copies of
his master. Those of Arnault, with less grace, have more originality;
often, indeed, Arnault's short moral poems are not so much fables as
what used to be called in English 'emblems.' The most famous of these,
which of itself deserves to keep Arnault's memory green, is 'La
Feuille.' Marie Joseph Chenier, the younger brother of Andre, and,
unlike him, a fervent republican, is chiefly known as a dramatist. He
had, however, a vein of satirical verse, which was not commonplace.
Another dramatist, Andrieux, also deserves mention in passing. Superior
to either of these as a poet, and wanting only the good-fortune of
having been born a little later, was Nepomucene Lemercier, a playwright
of no small merit, and a poet of extraordinary but unequal vigour. The
_Panhypocrisiade_, a kind of satirical epic _par personnages_ (to use
the old French expression for a dramatic narrative), is his principal
work, and a very remarkable one. Last of all have to be mentioned
Fontanes and Chenedolle, who are the characteristic poets of the Empire,
with the exception of an epic school of no value. The chief importance
of Fontanes in literature is derived not from any performances of his
own, but from the fact that he was the appointed intermediary between
Napoleon and the men of letters of the time, and was able to exercise a
good deal of useful patronage. Chenedolle was in production, if not in
publication, for he published late in life, a precursor of Lamartine,
much of whose style and manner may be found in him. An amiable
appreciation of natural beauty, and a tendency to facile pathos, derived
from the contemplation of natural objects, distinguish him from his
predecessors.
[Sidenote: Light verse. Piron.]
[Sidenote: Desaugiers.]
The vigorous, if not always edifying, work of the song-writers and
authors of _vers de societe_ during this century remains to be noticed.
The example of La Fontaine's tales was followed by many writers of more
talent than scruple, but their literary value is not sufficient to
entitle them to a place here. No history of French literature, however,
would be complete without a notice of Piron, the greatest epigrammatist
of France, and one of her keenest and brightest wits. Piron's temper was
an idle one, and he did little solid work in literature, except his
epigrams and one comedy, _La Metromanie_. He wrote many vaudevilles and
operettas, and no one, with the possible exception of Catullus, has ever
excelled him in the art of packing in a few light and graceful lines the
greatest possible quantity of malicious wit. Panard, also a
vaudevillist, is remarkable for the number and excellence of his
drinking songs, and the variety and melody of their rhythm. Colle,
author of amusing but spiteful memoirs, and, like Piron and Panard, a
writer of comic operettas, excelled rather in the political chanson.
Gentil Bernard, the Cardinal de Bernis, the Abbe Boufflers, and Dorat,
were all writers of _vers de societe_, the last being much the best.
Their style of writing was frivolous and conventional in the extreme,
but long practice and the vogue which it enjoyed in French society had
brought it to something like the condition of a fine art. Dorat was
surnamed by a contemporary the 'glowworm of Parnassus.' The expression
was not an unhappy one, and may be fairly applied to the other authors
who have been mentioned in his company. He himself was a rather
voluminous author in different styles. The literary baggage of the
others is not heavy. Vade, a writer of light and trifling verse, who
died comparatively young, devoted himself to composing poems in the
'poissard' dialect of Paris, which are among the best of such things. At
the close of the century, and deserving more particular notice, appeared
Desaugiers, the best light song-writer of France, with the single
exception of Beranger, and preferred to him by some critics. Desaugiers
escaped the revolution by good fortune, had a short but rather
adventurous career of foreign travel, and then settled down to
vaudeville-writing, song-making, and jovial living in Paris. He was a
great frequenter of the Caveau, a kind of irregular club of men of
letters which had been instituted by Piron and his friends, and which
long continued to be a literary and social rendezvous. Desaugiers was
the last of the older class of _Chansonniers_, who relied chiefly on
love and wine for their subjects, and who, if they touched on politics
at all, touched on them merely from the personal and satirical point of
view, with occasional indulgence in cheap patriotism. His songs have
great sweetness and ease, but they contain nothing that can compare with
Beranger in his more serious and pathetic mood[286].
This is a sketch, necessarily and designedly rapid, of the poetical
history of the eighteenth century in France. The matter thus rapidly
treated is of no small interest to professed students of literature; it
abounds in curious social indications; it gives frequent instances of
the extremest ingenuity applied to somewhat unworthy use. But in the
history of the literature as a whole, and to those who have to regard it
not as a collection of curiosities, but as a fruitful field of great and
noble work, it cannot but be of subordinate interest, and as such
requires but cursory treatment here[287].
FOOTNOTES:
[284] Editions of almost all authors of any merit from the beginning of
the eighteenth century are common and accessible enough. They will,
therefore, not be specially indicated henceforward unless there is some
special reason for the citation, such as the peculiar elegance or
literary merit of a particular edition, or else the comparative rarity
of the book in any form.
[285] Chenier has been somewhat unfortunate in his editors. The only
complete and accurate edition (though it is far from perfect) is that of
M. Gabriel de Chenier. 3 vols. 1879.
[286] Excellent selections from many of these lighter poets have
recently been put forth under the editorship of M. Octave Uzanne.
[287] Rouget de L'Isle, the author of the famous _Marseillaise_,
deserves mention for that only. He published poems, but their singular
difference from, and inferiority to, his masterpiece were the chief
causes of the scepticism (apparently ill-founded) which has sometimes
been displayed as to his authorship of it.
CHAPTER II.
DRAMATISTS.
[Sidenote: Divisions of Drama.]
[Sidenote: La Motte.]
At the beginning, and indeed during the whole course, of the eighteenth
century, the theatre continued to enjoy all the vogue which the
extraordinary brilliancy of the authors of the preceding age had
conferred on it. There were three tolerably distinct kinds of dramatic
work--tragedy, comedy, and opera--the latter either artificial or comic,
and subdividing itself into a great many classes, from the dignified
opera of the Comedie Francaise and the Comedie Italienne, down to the
vaudevilles and operettas of the so-called 'fair' theatre, _Theatre de
la Foire_. Towards the middle of the century there grew up a fourth
class, to which the not very appropriate and still less definite name of
_drame_ is applied. This was subdivided, also somewhat arbitrarily, into
_tragedie bourgeoise_ and _comedie larmoyante_. Thus the dramatic author
had considerable liberty of choice except in tragedy proper, where the
model of Racine was enforced on him with pitiless rigour. La Motte, who
was, as has been said, a brilliant writer of prose, endeavoured to break
these bonds, first, by decrying the alleged superiority of the ancients;
secondly, by attacking the theory of the unities; and, lastly, by boldly
denying the necessity of verse in tragedy, and still more the necessity
of rhyme. He was, of course, answered, and the only one of the answers
which has much interest for posterity is that which Voltaire prefixed to
the second edition of _Oedipe_. This is, as always with its author,
lively and ingenious, but ill-informed, destitute of true critical
principles, and entirely inconclusive. La Motte himself wrote a tragedy,
_Ines de Castro_, in which he did not venture to carry out his own
principles, and which had some success. But the justice of his
strictures was best shown by the increasing feebleness of French tragedy
throughout the century. Were it not for the prodigious genius of
Voltaire, not a single tragedy of the age would now have much chance of
being read, still less of being performed; and were it not for that
genius, and the unequal but still remarkable talent of Crebillon the
elder, not a single tragedy of the age would be worth reading for any
motive except curiosity, simple or studious.
[Sidenote: Crebillon the Elder.]
Crebillon was born in 1674, and lived to the age of eighty-nine. His
family name was Jolyot, and the most remarkable thing about his private
history is, that, being clerk to a lawyer, he was enthusiastically
encouraged by his master in his poetical attempts. His first acted
tragedy, _Idomenee_, appeared in 1703; his last, 'The Triumvirate,' more
than fifty years later. In the interval he was irregularly busy, and the
duel of tragedies, which in his old age his partisans got up between him
and Voltaire, was not entirely in favour of the more famous and gifted
writer. Crebillon's best works were _Atree_, 1707, and _Rhadamiste et
Zenobie_, 1711, the latter being his masterpiece. He had in the eyes of
the minute critics of his time some technical defects of style and
construction. But, despite the restraints of the French stage, he
succeeded in being truly tragical and truly natural; and not a few of
his verses have a grandeur which has been said to be hardly discoverable
elsewhere in French tragedy between Corneille and Hugo.
[Sidenote: Voltaire and his followers.]
Voltaire's own tragedies have been very differently judged by different
persons. It has been said that they owed their popularity chiefly to the
adroit manner in which, without going too far, the author made them
opportunities for insinuating the popular opinions of the time. Yet
_Zaire_ at least is still a successful and popular play on the stage;
and it is admitted that Voltaire had both a most intimate acquaintance
with the objects and methods of the playwright, and an extraordinary
affection for the theatre. If to this be added his astonishing dexterity
as a literary workman, his acuteness in discerning the taste of the
public, and his complete mastery of the language, and if it be
remembered that the classical French tragedy is almost wholly a _tour
de force_, it will appear that it would have been very surprising if he
had not succeeded in it. His tragedies, however, are by no means of
equal merit. The best is, beyond all doubt, the already-mentioned
_Zaire_, 1732, in which Voltaire took just so much from the _Othello_ of
that Shakespeare whom he was never tired of decrying as would suffice to
animate and support his own skilful workmanship. The earlier play,
_Oedipe_, 1718, was astonishingly successful, and is still
astonishingly clever. _La Mort de Cesar_, another Shakespearian
adaptation, is less happy. In _Alzire_, a play written in the time of
the poet's greatest intimacy with Madame du Chatelet, and dedicated to
her, his extraordinary talent once more appears, as also in _Le
Fanatisme_, better known as _Mahomet_, 1742. The best, however, of his
plays, next to _Zaire_, is probably _Merope_, 1743, which is a prodigy
of ingenuity. The author has deliberately eschewed the means whereby
both Corneille and Racine respectively alleviated the dryness and
dulness of the Senecan model--the heroic virtues of the one, and the
sighs and flames of the other. The play probably is the most perfect
carrying out of the model pure and simple, and its inferiority is the
inferiority of the kind, not of the individual. Indeed it may be
questioned whether, on the mere technical merits, Voltaire is not
superior to both Corneille and Racine, though he is of course very far
inferior to them as a poet, and as a draughtsman of character. Voltaire
wrote many other plays, earlier and later, of which _Tancrede_ is the
only one which requires special mention. Nor, except Crebillon, do the
tragic contemporaries and successors of Voltaire require more than very
short notice. Le Franc de Pompignan wrote a respectable _Didon_; Saurin,
who was in some sort a follower of Voltaire, a more than respectable
_Spartacus_. The subject had perhaps the chief part in the success of
the _Siege de Calais_ of Pierre Burette, who called himself De Belloy,
and who followed it up by other patriotic tragedies or dramas. But he
had the merit of attempting, though not with much success, some
innovations on the meagreness of the established model. The tragedies of
La Harpe are written throughout with the cold correctness (as
correctness was then held) which characterised his work generally.
Almost all the men of letters of this time wrote plays of this kind, but
they are for the most part valueless. Ducis is remarkable for a serious,
and to a certain extent successful, attempt to inoculate the French
tragedy with Shakespearian force. Versions of _Hamlet_, of _Macbeth_,
and other plays appeared from his hands, which were also busy during a
long life with dramatic work of all sorts. These versions have naturally
been regarded in England as mere travesties, but there seems no reason
to doubt that they really operated favourably as schoolmasters to bring
their audience somewhat nearer to dramatic truth. The classical tragedy
was indeed expiring of simple old age, and most of the names of its
practitioners, which emerge during the last quarter of the eighteenth
and the first of the nineteenth century, are those of innovators in
their measure and degree, whose innovations, however, were obliterated
and made forgotten by the great romantic reform. Marie Joseph Chenier
followed Voltaire's manner very closely (substituting for Voltaire's
bait of insinuated free-thinking that of republicanism more or less
violently expressed) in _Charles IX._, _Cyrus_, _Caius Gracchus_, _Henry
VIII._, _Tibere_, the last a work of some merit. Legouve dramatised
Gessner's _Death of Abel_ on the principles of Boileau. Nepomucene
Lemercier, the strange failure of a genius who has been already noticed
in the last chapter, produced much more remarkable work. His
_Agamemnon_, his _Fredegonde et Brunehault_ and some others display his
merits, and show that he was striving after something better. But, like
most transitional work, they are unsatisfactory as a whole. The _Hector_
of Luce de Lancival, the _Templiers_ of Raynouard, and many other
pieces, were once popular, but are now utterly forgotten.
[Sidenote: Lesage.]
The list of comic writers, along with whom, for convenience' sake, those
of the authors of opera and _drame_ may be included, is far longer and
more important. It includes two men, Lesage and Beaumarchais, of
European reputation, half-a-dozen others, Destouches, Marivaux, Piron,
Gresset, Sedaine, who have produced work of remarkable character and
merit, and a crowd of clever playwrights who amused their own times, and
would amuse ours, if it were not that all comedy, save the very highest,
is of its nature ephemeral. The list is worthily opened by Lesage, who,
during the greater part of his life, earned by vaudevilles and
operettas, composed either alone or in co-operation for the Theatre de
la Foire, the bread which his incomparable novels would hardly have
sufficed to procure him. This lighter dramatic work is, it may be
observed, among the chief products of the century, and it has continued
up to the present day to form one of the staple elements in the
journey-work of French literature. Little of it has permanent qualities,
yet the remarkable talents of many of the men who composed it make it,
ephemeral as it is, interesting historically and even intrinsically. It
derived partly from the indigenous farce, partly from the Italian comedy
of stock personages, and partly from the merry-andrew performances
already mentioned. The theatres at which it was performed were the
object of much jealousy from the Comedie Francaise, and restrictions of
the most annoying kind were placed on it. Once an edict forbade more
than a single actor to appear--a condition surmounted by the ingenuity
of Piron. Sometimes it was confined to dumb show, illustrated by songs
on placards which the audience chanted. Often the audience joined in the
chorus, and it may be said generally that singing was always included.
Besides this rapid and perishable kind of work Lesage has left two
pieces in the true style of Moliere. The more extravagant and farcical
side of the master's genius is represented by _Crispin Rival de son
Maitre_, 1707, a lively piece, the subject of which is indicated by its
title, and which carries off the extreme and probably intentional
improbability of its plot by its brisk and rapid action, its vivid
pictures of character, and the shower of wit which the dialogue
everywhere pours out. _Turcaret_, 1709, is a regular comedy of the
highest merit. It has been found fault with by some French critics,
enamoured of the ruling passion and central situation theory; but this
is really a testimony to its merit. _Turcaret_ is in the strictest sense
a criticism of life at the time, and the author shows the true
prodigality of genius in filling his canvas. It is often described as a
satire on the corruption and vices of the financiers, who were the curse
of France at the time; and this it is in part. But there are combined
with this satire of the loose morals of the nobility, the follies of
provincial coteries, the meanness of the trading classes; while each
character, instead of being an abstraction, is as sharp and individual
as Gil Blas himself. Like Lesage, Piron worked much for the theatre;
indeed he made his _debut_, as has been said, by venturing on a task
which even Lesage had declined,--the writing of a comic opera with a
single actor only. Like Lesage, too, he has left one comedy of durable
reputation, _La Metromanie_, which, if it falls short of _Turcaret_ in
holding up the mirror to nature, equals it in wit, and has for a French
audience the attraction of being written in very good verse, while
_Turcaret_ is in prose. With perhaps less genius than Piron, and
certainly with less than Lesage, Destouches devoted himself to a higher
class of work on the whole, and has left more pieces that are
remembered. _Le Philosophe Marie_, 1727, and _Le Glorieux_, 1732, are
among the classics of French comedy. _Le Dissipateur_, _Le Tambour
Nocturne_, _L'Obstacle Imprevu_ have also much merit; and if _La Fausse
Agnes_ has something of the farcical in it, it is farce of the right
kind. Destouches wrote seventeen comedies; and, if bulk and general
merit of work are taken together, he deserves the first place among the
comic dramatists of the century in France.
[Sidenote: Comedie Larmoyante. La Chaussee. Diderot.]
In contrast to these three writers, who all followed the traditions of
the comedy of Moliere and Regnard, Nivelle de la Chaussee invented, or
at least brought into fashion, what was called _comedie larmoyante_, or
_drame_. La Chaussee was a good deal ridiculed by his contemporaries,
notably by Piron, who devoted to him some of his most admirable
epigrams. But he was popular, and not altogether undeservedly popular,
though his drama occupied in French literary history something of the
same place as that of Lillo and Moore in English. La Chaussee was
followed by a greater writer, but a worse dramatist, than himself. While
La Chaussee was a clever versifier and an adroit playwright, Diderot
understood the theory both of poetry and of the theatre much better than
he understood the practice. Thus _L'Ecole des Meres_, _La Gouvernante_,
_Le Prejuge a la Mode_ are better plays than _Le Pere de Famille_ or _Le
Fils Naturel_. It ought to be said that Diderot succeeded better in two
small pieces, _La Piece et le Prologue_ and _Est-il Bon? Est-il
Mechant?_ which were never acted. It should perhaps also be explained
that the peculiarity of what was almost indifferently called _tragedie
bourgeoise_ and _comedie larmoyante_ is the choice of possible
situations in real life, which neither of the two conventional
treatments of heroic tragedy and comedy purely comic can afford. Many
writers followed La Chaussee and Diderot. Of these the most important
perhaps was Saurin, who, not content with regular tragedy and comedy,
obtained much success with _Beverley_, an adaptation of Moore's
_Gamester_, of which Diderot wrote an unacted version.
_L'Ecole des Bourgeois_ and _L'Embarras des Richesses_, by D'Allainval,
one of the few French writers who experienced the privations of their
English contemporaries in Grub Street, are good pieces, and so are the
short _La Pupille_ and the _Originaux_ of Fagan, a clerk in the public
service, who, like Lesage and Piron (Colle and Panard may be added),
wrote vaudevilles, _parades_, etc. for the Theatre de la Foire. In the
titles of most of these pieces the close following of Moliere, which was
usual, and wisely usual, during the first half of the century, may be
noticed.
[Sidenote: Marivaux.]
The same tradition is observed in one of the best comedies of the
century, the _Mechant_ of Gresset, which, like his poem of _Ver-Vert_,
had a great success, and deserved it, being equally good as literature
and as drama. Marivaux, without, perhaps, attaining as positive an
excellence, was more original, and very much more productive. The
fullest edition of his dramatic works contains thirty-two pieces, and
even this is not complete. Several of them, _Le Jeu de l'Amour et du
Hasard_, 1730, _Le Legs_, 1736, _Les Fausses Confidences_, 1737, have
continued to be popular. All the work of Marivaux, dramatic and
non-dramatic, is pervaded more or less by a peculiarity which at the
time received the name of Marivaudage. This peculiarity consists partly
in the sentiment, and partly in the phraseology. The former is
characteristic of the eighteenth century, disguising a considerable
affectation under a mask of simplicity, and the latter (sparkling with
abundant, if somewhat precious wit) is ingeniously constructed to suit
it and carry it off.
Of the three greatest literary names of the time, Diderot, it has been
seen, tried the theatre not too happily. Voltaire, as successful in
tragedy as his models permitted him to be, was not successful at all in
comedy, and, indeed, rarely tried it. His best piece, _Nanine_, a
dramatisation of _Pamela_, or at least suggested by it, is chiefly
remarkable for being written in decasyllabic verse. The third, Rousseau,
who lived to denounce the theatre, wrote a short operetta, _Le Devin du
Village_, which is not without merit. Desmahis, a protege of Voltaire,
produced, in 1750, a good comedy, _L'Impertinent_, on a small scale; and
La Noue, another of his favourites (for he was as indulgent to his
juniors as he was jealous of men of his own standing), the _Coquette
Corrigee_. A third member of the same class, Saurin, already twice
mentioned, must be mentioned again, and still more deservedly, for _Les
Moeurs du Temps_. The best dramatists, however, among the immediate
followers of the _Philosophes_ were Sedaine and Marmontel. Sedaine is,
indeed, with the possible exception of Beaumarchais, the best dramatist
of the last half of the century. _Le Philosophe sans le Savoir_, 1765,
and _La Gageure Imprevue_, 1768, are both admirable pieces. The author,
like many of his predecessors, was a constant worker for the Opera
Comique, and one of the best of the class. Marmontel also adopted this
line of composition, to which the musical talent of Gretry gave, at the
time, great advantages. His best light dramatic work is a kind of comedy
vaudeville, the _Ami de la Maison_.
[Sidenote: Beaumarchais.]
Beyond all doubt, however, the most remarkable, if not the best,
dramatist of the late eighteenth century is Beaumarchais. Some critics
have seen in the enormous success of the _Barbier de Seville_, 1775, and
the _Mariage de Figaro_, 1784, nothing but a _succes de circonstance_
connected with the political ideas which were then fermenting in men's
minds. This seems to be unjust, or rather it is unjust not to recognise
something very like genius in the manner in which the author has
succeeded in shaping his subject, without choosing a specially political
one, so as to produce the effect acknowledged. The wit of these two
plays, moreover, is indisputable. But it may be allowed that
Beaumarchais' other productions are inferior, and that his _Memoires_,
which are not dramatic at all, contain as much wit as the Figaro plays.
As a satirist of society and a contributor of illustrations to history,
Beaumarchais must always hold a very high place, higher perhaps than as
an artist in literature. Of his life, it is enough to say that he was
born in 1731; became music master to the daughters of Louis XV.; engaged
in a law-suit, the subject of the _Memoires_, with some high legal
functionaries; made a fortune by speculating and by contracts in the
American war, and lost it by further speculations, one of which was the
preparation of a sumptuous edition of Voltaire. Besides the Figaro
plays, his chief dramatic works are _Eugenie_, _Les Deux Amis_, and
lastly, _La Mere Coupable_, in which the characters of his two famous
works reappear.
After Beaumarchais, but few comic authors demand mention. Collin
d'Harleville, one of the pleasantest writers of light comedies in verse,
produced _Les Chateaux en Espagne_, _L'Inconstant_, _L'Optimiste_, and
_Le Vieux Celibataire_, 1792, all sparkling pieces, which only need
freeing from the restraints of rhyme. Andrieux, the author of _Les
Etourdis_, 1787, _Le Tresor_, _Le Vieux Fat_, and others, has something
of the same character. Nepomucene Lemercier distinguished himself in
comedy, chiefly by _Plaute_, in irregular verse, and by a comedy-drama,
_Pinto_, in prose. These have his usual characteristics of somewhat
spasmodic genius. Fabre d'Eglantine, the companion of Danton and Camille
Desmoulins on the scaffold, is better remembered for his death than for
his life. But his _Intrigue Epistolaire_ and _Philinte de Moliere_ shew
talent. _Le Sourd_, by Desforges, is an amusing play.
[Sidenote: Characteristics of Eighteenth-century Drama.]
It will be seen that the positive achievements of drama during this
period were considerably superior to those of poetry. The tragedies of
Voltaire are prodigies of literary cleverness. In comedy proper Lesage
produced work of enduring value; Destouches, Marivaux, Piron, Gresset,
and some others, work which does not require any very great indulgence
to entitle it to the name, in the right sense, of classical;
Beaumarchais, work which is indissolubly connected with great historical
events, and which is not unworthy the connection. Moreover, as a matter
of general literary history, the drama during this time displays
numerous evidences of life and promise, as well as of decadence. The
gradual recognition of the vaudeville as a separate literary kind gave
occasion to much work, the ephemeral character of which should not be
allowed to obscure its real literary excellence, and founded a school
which is still living and flourishing with by no means simulated life.
The attempt of La Chaussee and Diderot to widen the range and break down
the barriers of legitimate drama was premature, and not altogether well
directed; but it was the forerunner of the great and durable reaction of
nearly a century later. Still the actual dramatic accomplishment of this
period, though in many ways interesting, and to a certain extent
positively valuable, is not of the first class. It is made up either of
clever imitations and variations of modes which had already been
expressed with greater perfection, and with far greater genius, by the
preceding century, or of what may be fairly called dramatic
pamphleteering, or else of tentative and immature experiments in reform,
which came to nothing, or to very little, for the time being. Even its
most gifted practitioners regarded it as a kind of journey-work, which
was understood to lead to honour and profit, rather than as an art, in
which honour and profit, if not entirely to be ignored, are altogether
secondary considerations. Hence, in a lesser degree, the drama of the
eighteenth century shares the same disadvantage which has been noted as
characterising its poetry. Its value is a value of curiosity chiefly, a
relative value. Indeed, as a mere mechanical art, drama sank even lower
than poetry proper ever sank; and for fifty years at least before the
romantic revival it may be doubted whether a single play was written,
the destruction of which need greatly grieve even the most sensitive and
appreciative student of French literary history.
CHAPTER III.
NOVELISTS.
The peculiarity of the eighteenth century in France as regards
literature----that is to say, the application of great talents to almost
every branch of literary production without the result of a distinct
original growth in any one department----is nowhere more noticeable than
in the department of prose fiction[288]. The names of Lesage, Prevost,
Marivaux, Voltaire, Rousseau, are deservedly recorded among the list of
the best novel writers. Yet, with the exception of _Manon Lescaut_,
which for the time had no imitators, of the great works of Lesage which,
admirable in execution, were by no means original in conception, and of
the exquisite but comparatively insignificant variety of the prose
_Conte_, of which Voltaire was the chief practitioner, nothing in the
nature of a masterpiece, still less anything in the nature of an
epoch-making work, was composed. The example of _Manon_ was left for the
nineteenth century to develop, the others either died out (the adventure
romance, after Lesage's model, flourishing brilliantly in England, but
hardly at all in France), or else were subordinated to a purpose, the
purpose of advocating _philosophe_ views, or of pandering to the not
very healthy cravings of an altogether artificial society. Yet, so far
as merely literary merits are concerned, few branches of literature were
more fertile than this during the period.
[Sidenote: Lesage.]
The first, and on the whole, the most considerable name of the century
in fiction is that of the author of _Gil Blas_. Alain Rene Lesage was
born at Sarzeau, near Vannes, on the 8th of May, 1668, and died at
Boulogne on the 17th of November, 1747. He was bred a lawyer, and should
have had a fair competence, but, being early left an orphan, was
deprived of most of his property by the dishonesty of his guardian. He
married young, moreover, and, unlike most of the prominent men of
letters of his day, never seems to have enjoyed any solid patronage or
protection from any powerful man or woman. This is indeed sufficiently
accounted for by anecdotes which exist showing his extreme independence
of character. Like most men of talent in such circumstances, he turned,
though not very early, to literature, and began by a translation of the
'Letters' of Aristaenetus. No great success could have awaited him in
this line, and perhaps the greatest stroke of good-fortune in his life
was the suggestion of the Abbe de Lyonne that he should turn his
attention to Spanish literature, a suggestion which was not made more
unpalatable by the present of a small annuity. He translated the 'New
Don Quixote' of Avellaneda (than which he might have found a better
subject), and he adapted freely plays from Rojas, Lope de Vega, and
Calderon. It was not, however, till he was nearly forty that he produced
anything of real merit. The _Diable Boiteux_ appeared in 1707, and was
at once popular. Still Lesage did not desert the stage, and the
production of his admirable comedy _Turcaret_ ought to have secured him
success there. But the Comedie Francaise was at that time more under the
influence of clique than at any other time of its history; and Lesage,
disgusted with the treatment he received from it, gave himself up
entirely to writing farces and operettas for the minor theatres, and to
prose fiction. _Gil Blas_, his greatest work, originally appeared in
1715, but was not completed till twenty years later. He also
wrote--besides one or two bright but trifling minor works of a
fictitious character, _La Valise Trouvee_ (a letter-bag supposed to be
picked up), _Une Journee des Parques_, a keen piece of Lucianic satire,
etc.--many other romances in the same general style as his great works,
and more or less borrowed from Spanish originals. The chief of these are
_Guzman d'Alfarache_, _Estevanille Gonzalez_, _Le Bachelier de
Salamanque_, and a curious Defoe-like book entitled _Vie et Aventures de
M. de Beauchene_. In his old age he retired to the house of his second
son, who held a canonry at Boulogne, and resided there for some years,
until, in 1747, he died in his eightieth year. His works have hitherto
been very insufficiently collected and edited.
_Le Diable Boiteux_ and _Gil Blas_ are far the greatest of Lesage's
romances, and, as it happens, they are the most original, little except
the starting-point being borrowed in the one case, and nothing but a few
detached details in the other. Lesage was, however, true to the general
spirit of his model, the picaroon romance of Spain, a kind of Roman
d'Aventures transported from the days and conventional conditions of
chivalry to those of ordinary but still adventurous life in the
Peninsula. The directly satirical intention predominates in the _Diable
Boiteux_, the more purely narrative faculty in _Gil Blas_. In both the
piercing observation of human character, which Lesage possessed in a
greater degree perhaps than any other French writer, appears, and so
does his remarkable power of making the results of this observation live
and move. No French writer is so little of a mere Frenchman as Lesage,
and in this point of cosmopolitan humanity he may be compared, without
extravagance, in kind if not in degree, to Shakespeare. Besides his
skill in character-drawing, and his faculty of spicing his narrative
with epigram, Lesage also possessed extraordinary narrative ability. His
books are not remarkable for what is called plot, that is to say, the
action rather continues indefinitely in a straight line than converges
on a given and definite point. But this continuance is so adroitly
managed that no break is felt, and the succession very seldom becomes
tedious. The novel of Lesage is the immediate parent and pattern of that
of Fielding and Smollett in England. It is somewhat remarkable that it
had no successors of importance or merit in France. This is probably to
be accounted for by the cosmopolitan tone which has been already
remarked upon. Indeed Lesage, as a rule, has had less justice done to
him by his countrymen than any other of their great writers. Yet his
style, looked at merely from the point of view of art, is excellent, and
perhaps superior to that of any of his contemporaries properly so
called.
Close in the track of Madame de la Fayette followed Madame de Fontaines
(Marie Louise Charlotte de Givri), the date of whose birth is unknown,
but who died in 1730. She was a friend of Voltaire's youth, and her best
work is named _La Comtesse de Savoie_, the date of the story being the
eleventh century. She also wrote a short story of less merit called
_Amenophis_. Madame de Tencin (Claudine Alexandrine Guerin), the mother
of D'Alembert, the friend of Fontenelle, and one of the most famous
salon-holders of the early eighteenth century, was a more fertile and a
cleverer writer. She was born in 1681, and died in 1749. She had a bad
heart, but an excellent head, and she showed her powers in the _Memoires
du Comte de Comminges_ and the _Siege de Calais_, besides some minor
works. The fault of almost all romances of the La Fayette school, the
habit of throwing the scene into periods about which the writers knew
nothing, appears in these works.
[Sidenote: Marivaux.]
But the first writer of fiction after Lesage who is worthy of separate
mention at any length (for in these later centuries of our history there
are, as any reader of books will understand, vast numbers of
practitioners in every branch of literary art who are entirely unworthy
of notice in a compendious history of literature) is Marivaux, an
original and remarkable novelist, who, though by no possibility to be
ranked among the great names of French literature, occupies a not
inconsiderable place among those who are remarkable without being great.
Pierre Carlet de Marivaux, whose strict paternal appellation was simply
Pierre Carlet, was born at Paris on the 8th of February, 1688. His
father was of Norman origin, and held employments in the financial
branch of the public service. Very little is known of the son's youth,
and indeed not much of his life. He is said to have produced his first
play, _Le Pere Prudent et Equitable_, at the age of eighteen, and his
dramatic industry was thenceforward considerable. As a romancer he
worked more by fits and starts. His first attempt at prose fiction is
said to have been--for the authenticity of the attribution is not
certain--a romance in a kind of pseudo-Spanish style, called _Les Effets
surprenants de la Sympathie_, published six years later. Then he took to
the sterile and ignoble literature of travesty, attacking Homer and
Fenelon in the style of Scarron and Cotton. This brought him, through La
Motte, under the influence of Fontenelle, to whom he owed not a little.
He made a fortune and lost it in Law's bubble. Then he turned
journalist, and after writing social articles in the _Mercure_, started
a periodical himself, the nature of which is sufficiently shown by its
borrowed title, _Le Spectateur Francais_, 1722. At a later period he
began another paper of the same kind, _Le Cabinet du Philosophe_, 1734.
His plays, which have been already noticed, were written partly for the
Comedie Francaise, and partly for a very popular Italian company which
appeared in France during the second quarter of the century. But for the
present purpose his works which concern us are the famous romance of
_Marianne_, 1731-1742, and the less-known one of the _Paysan Parvenu_,
1735. His dramas, rather than his fictions, procured him a place in the
Academy in 1742, and he died in 1763.
_Marianne_ has been said to be the origin of _Pamela_, which may not be
exactly the fact, though it is difficult not to believe that it gave
Richardson his idea. But it is certain that it is a remarkable novel,
and that it, rather than the plays, gave rise to the singular phrase
_Marivaudage_, with which the author, not at all voluntarily, has
enriched literature. The plot is simple enough. A poor but virtuous girl
has adventures and recounts them, and the manner of recounting is
extremely original. A morally faulty but intellectually admirable
contemporary, Crebillon the younger, described this manner excellently
by saying that the characters not only say everything that they have
done and everything that they have thought, but everything that they
would have liked to think but did not. This curious kind of mental
analysis is expressed in a style which cannot be defended from the
charge of affectation notwithstanding its extreme ingenuity and
occasional wit. The real importance of _Marianne_ in the history of
fiction is that it is the first example of the novel of analysis rather
than of incident (though incident is still prominent), and the first in
which an elaborate style, strongly imbued with mannerism, is applied to
this purpose. The _Paysan Parvenu_, the title of which suggested
Restif's novel _Le Paysan Perverti_, and which was probably not without
influence on _Joseph Andrews_, is not very different in manner from
_Marianne_, and, like it, was left unfinished after publication in parts
at long intervals.
[Sidenote: Prevost]
A third eminent writer of novels was, in point of production, a
contemporary of Lesage and Marivaux, though he was nearly thirty years
younger than the first, and fully ten years younger than the second, and
he more than either of them set the example of the modern novel. The
Abbe Prevost, sometimes called Prevost d'Exilles, was born at Hesdin, in
Picardy, in April, 1697. He was brought up by the Jesuits, and after a
curious hesitation between entering the order and becoming a soldier (he
actually served for some time) he joined the famous community of the
Benedictines of Saint Maur, the most learned monastic body in the Roman
church. When he did this he was four-and-twenty, and he continued for
some six years to give himself up to study, not without interludes of
professorial work and of preaching. He became, however, disgusted with
his order, and unfortunately left his convent before technical
permission had been given; a proceeding which kept him an exile from
France for several years. It was at this time (1728) that he threw
himself into novel-writing, taking his models, and in some cases, his
scenes and characters, from England, which he visited, and of which he
was a fervent admirer. He obtained permission to return in 1735, and
then started a paper called _Le Pour et le Contre_, something like those
of Marivaux, but more like a modern critical review. He received the
protection of several persons of position and influence, notably the
Prince de Conti and the Chancellor D'Aguesseau, and for nearly thirty
years led a laborious literary life, in the course of which he is said
to have written nearly a hundred volumes, mostly compilations. His
death, which occurred in November, 1763, was perhaps the most horrible
in literary history. He was on his way from Paris to his cottage near
Chantilly, when he was struck by apoplexy. A stupid village doctor took
him for dead, and began a post-mortem examination to discover the cause.
Prevost revived at the stroke of the knife, but was so injured by it
that he expired shortly afterwards.
His chief works of fiction are the _Memoires d'un Homme de Qualite_,
1729, _Cleveland_, and the _Doyen de Killerine_, 1735, romances of
adventure occupying a middle place between those of Lesage and Marivaux.
But he would have been long forgotten had it not been for an episode or
rather postscript of the _Memoires_ entitled _Manon Lescaut_, in which
all competent criticism recognises the first masterpiece of French
literature which can properly be called a novel. Manon is a young girl
with whom the Chevalier des Grieux, almost as young as herself, falls
frantically in love. The pair fly to Paris, and the novel is occupied
with the description of Manon's faithlessness--a faithlessness based not
on want of love for Des Grieux, but on an overmastering desire for
luxury and comfort with which he cannot always supply her. The story,
which is narrated by Des Grieux, and which has a most pathetic ending,
is chiefly remarkable for the perfect simplicity and absolute
life-likeness of the character-drawing. The despairing constancy of Des
Grieux, conscious of the vileness of his idol, yet unable to help loving
her, the sober goodness of his friend Tiberge, the roystering villany of
Manon's brother Lescaut, and, above all, the surprising and novel, but
strictly practical and reasonable, figure of Manon, who, in her way,
loves Des Grieux, who has no objection to deceive her richer lovers for
him, but whose first craving is for material well-being and
prosperity--make up a gallery which has rarely been exceeded in power
and interest.
A novelist of merit, slightly junior to these, was Madame Riccoboni
(Marie Jeanne Laboras de Mezieres), who was born in 1713, married an
actor and dramatic author of little talent, and died at a great age in
1792. Her best works of fiction are _Le Marquis de Cressy_, _Mylady
Catesby_, and _Ernestine_, with an exceedingly clever continuation
(which, however, stops short of the conclusion) of Marivaux'
_Marianne_. All these books are constructed with considerable skill, and
are good examples of what may be called the sentimental romance. Duclos,
better known now for his historical and historical-ethical work, was
also a novel-writer at this period. The _Lettres du Marquis de Roselle_,
of Madame Elie de Beaumont, rather resembles the work of Madame
Riccoboni.
The works of the three principal writers who have just been discussed
belong to the first half of the century, and do not exhibit those
characteristics by which it is most generally known. Marivaux is indeed
an important representative of the laborious gallantry which descended
from the days of the _precieuses_--Fontenelle being a link between the
two ages--and Prevost exhibits, in at least its earlier stage, the
sensibility which was one of the great characteristics of the eighteenth
century. But neither of them can in the least be called a _philosophe_.
On the other hand, the _philosophe_ movement, which dominated the middle
and latter portions of the age, was not long in invading the department
of fiction. Each of the three celebrated men who stood at its head
devoted himself to the novel in one or other of its forms; while
Montesquieu, in the _Lettres Persanes_, came near to it, and each of the
trio themselves had more or fewer followers in fiction.
[Sidenote: Voltaire.]
No long work of prose fiction stands under the name of Voltaire, but it
may be doubted whether any of his works displays his peculiar genius
more fully and more characteristically than the short tales in prose
which he has left. Every one of them has a moral, political, social, or
theological purpose. _Zadig_, 1748, is, perhaps, in its general aim,
rather philosophical in the proper sense; _Babouc_, 1746, social;
_Memnon_, 1747, ethical. _Micromegas_, 1752, is a satire on certain
forms of science; the group of smaller tales, such as _Le Taureau
Blanc_, are theological or rather anti-theological. _L'Ingenu_, 1767,
and _L'Homme aux Quarante Ecus_ (same date), are political from
different points of view. All these objects meet and unite in the most
famous and most daring of all, _Candide_, 1758. Written ostensibly to
ridicule philosophical optimism, and on the spur given to pessimist
theories by the Lisbon earthquake, _Candide_ is really as comprehensive
as it is desultory. Religion, political government, national
peculiarities, human weakness, ambition, love, loyalty, all come in for
the unfailing sneer. The moral, wherever there is a moral, is, 'be
tolerant, and _cultivez votre jardin_,' that is to say, do whatsoever
work you have to do diligently. But in all these tales the destructive
element has a good deal the better of the constructive. As literature,
however, they are almost invariably admirable. There is probably no
single book in existence which contains so much wit, pure and simple, as
the moderate sized octavo in which are comprised these two or three
dozen short stories, none of which exceeds a hundred pages or so in
length, while many do not extend beyond two or three. Nowhere is the
capacity of the French language for _persiflage_ better shown, and
nowhere, perhaps, are more phrases which have become household words to
be found. Nowhere also, it is true, is the utter want of reverence,
which was Voltaire's greatest fault, and the absence of profundity,
which accompanied his marvellous superficial range and acuteness, more
constantly displayed.
[Sidenote: Diderot.]
No inconsiderable portion of the extensive and unequal work of Diderot
is occupied by prose fiction. He began by a licentious tale in the
manner, but without the wit, of Crebillon the younger; a tale in which,
save a little social satire, there was no purpose whatever. But by
degrees he, like Voltaire, began to use the novel as a polemical weapon.
The powerful story of _La Religieuse_, 1760, was the boldest attack
which, since the Reformation and the licence of Latin writing, had been
made on the drawbacks and dangers of conventual life. _Jacques le
Fataliste_, 1766, is a curious book, partly suggested, no doubt, by
Sterne, but having a legitimate French ancestry in the _fatrasie_ of the
sixteenth century. Jacques is a manservant who travels with his master,
has adventures with him, talks incessantly to him, and tells him
stories, as also does another character, the mistress of a country inn.
One of these stories, the history of the jealousy and attempted revenge
of a great lady on her faithless lover by making him fall in love with a
girl of no character, is admirably told, and has often since been
adapted in fiction and drama. Other episodes of _Jacques le Fataliste_
are good, but the whole is unequal. The strangest of all Diderot's
attempts in prose fiction--if it is to be called a fiction and not a
dramatic study--is the so-called _Neveu de Rameau_, in which, in the
guise of a dialogue between himself and a hanger-on of society (or
rather a monologue of the latter), the follies and vices, not merely of
the time, but of human nature itself, are exposed with a masterly hand,
and in a manner wonderfully original and piquant.
[Sidenote: Rousseau.]
[Sidenote: Crebillon the Younger.]
Neither Voltaire, however, nor Diderot devoted, in proportion to their
other work, as much attention to prose fiction as did Jean Jacques
Rousseau. Even the _Confessions_ might be classed under this head
without a great violation of propriety, and Rousseau's only other large
books, _La Nouvelle Heloise_, 1760, and _Emile_, 1764, are avowed
novels. In both of these the didactic purpose asserts itself. In the
latter, indeed, it asserts itself to a degree sufficient seriously to
impair the literary merit of the story. The second title of _Emile_ is
_L'Education_, and it is devoted to the unfolding of Rousseau's views on
that subject by the aid of an actual example in Emile the hero. It had a
great vogue and a very considerable practical influence, nor can the
race of novels with political or ethical purposes be said to have ever
died out since. As a novel, properly so called, it has but little merit.
The case is different with _Julie_ or _La Nouvelle Heloise_. This is a
story told chiefly in the form of letters, and recounting the love of a
noble young lady, Julie, for Saint Preux, a man of low rank, with a kind
of afterpiece, depicting Julie's married life with a respectable but
prosaic free-thinker, M. de Wolmar. This famous book set the example,
first, of the novel of sentiment, secondly, of the novel of landscape
painting. Many efforts have been made to dethrone Rousseau from his
position of teacher of Europe in point of sentiment and the picturesque,
but they have had no real success. It is to _La Nouvelle Heloise_ that
both sentimental and picturesque fictions fairly owe their original
popularity; yet _Julie_ cannot be called a good novel. Its direct
narrative interest is but small, its characters are too intensely drawn
or else too merely conventional, its plot far too meagre. It is in
isolated passages of description, and in the fervent passion which
pervades parts of it, that its value, and at the same time its
importance in the history of novel-writing, consist.
Some lesser names group themselves naturally round those of the greater
_Philosophes_ in the department of prose fiction. Voltaire's style was
largely followed, but scarcely from Voltaire's point of view, and those
who practised it fell rather under the head of _Conteurs_ pure and
simple than of novelists with a purpose. The prose _Conte_ of the
eighteenth century forms a remarkable branch of literature, redeemed
from triviality by the exceptional skill expended on it. The master of
the style was Crebillon the younger, in whom its merits and defects were
both eminently present. Son of the tragic author, Crebillon led an easy
but a rather mysterious life, married an Englishwoman, and was supposed
by his friends to be dead long before he had actually quitted this
world. His works, of which it is unnecessary to mention the names here,
exhibit the moral corruption of the times in almost the highest possible
degree. But they abound in keen social satire, in acute literary
criticism, and in verbal wit. What is more, they show an extraordinary
mastery of the art of narrative of the lighter kind. Around Crebillon
are grouped a large number of writers, some of whom almost rival him in
delicate literary knack, and most of whom equal him in perverse
immorality of subject and tone. Much of the formal exercise of this tale
literature was a tradition from the slightly earlier school of fairy
tale-writing, which has already been noticed. Voisenon, Caylus,
Boufflers, Moncrif (the most original and most eccentric of all), La
Morliere, are names of this class. Their prose may, on the analogy of
Vers de Societe, be called Prose de Societe, and of a very corrupt
society too. But its formal excellence is considerable.
Of exceptional excellence among the short tales of this time, and free
from their drawbacks, is the _Diable Amoureux_, 1772, of Cazotte, a
singular person, strongly tinged with the 'illuminism,' or belief in
occult sciences and arts, which was a natural result of the _philosophe_
movement. Cazotte's melancholy story has a place in all histories of the
French Revolution, and his name was (probably) borrowed by La Harpe for
a bold and striking apologue, the authenticity or spuriousness of which
is very much a matter of guess-work. The _Diable Amoureux_ is a
singularly powerful story of its kind, uniting, in the fashion so
difficult with tales of _diablerie_, literary verisimilitude and
exactness of presentation with strangeness of subject.
Voltaire's chief pupils and followers, while taking his own view of the
utility of the prose tale for controversial purposes, followed another
model for the most part in point of form. The immense influence of
_Telemaque_ was felt by Voltaire himself, though in his case it resulted
in history pure and simple. Marmontel in his _Belisaire_, and Florian in
his _Numa Pompilius_ and _Gonsalve de Cordoue_, returned to the
historical romance. Something of the same class, though based upon much
more solid scholarship, was the _Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis_ of the Abbe
Barthelemy. All these books, like their predecessor, have somewhat
passed out of the range of literature proper into that of school books.
They are, however, all good examples of the easy, correct, and lucid, if
cold and conventional, tongue of the later eighteenth century.
[Sidenote: Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.]
Rousseau had a far more important disciple in fiction. Jacques Henri
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was born at Havre in 1737. He was by
profession an engineer, and both professionally and on his private
account wandered about the world in a curious fashion. At last he met
Rousseau, and the influence of Jean Jacques developed the sentimental
morality, the speculative republicanism, and the ardent, if rather
affected, love of nature which had already distinguished him. His best
book, _Paul et Virginie_, is perhaps the only one of his works which can
properly be called a novel; but _La Chaumiere Indienne_ deserves to be
classed with it, and even the _Etudes de la Nature_ are half fiction.
_Paul et Virginie_ was written when the author's admiration of nature
and of the savage state, imbibed from Rousseau or quickened by his
society, had been further inflamed by a three years' residence in
Mauritius. Like the books mentioned in the last paragraph, _Paul et
Virginie_ has lost something by becoming a school-book, but its faults
and merits are in a literary sense greater than theirs. The over-ripe
sentiment and the false delicacy of it will always remain evidence of
the stimulating but unhealthy atmosphere in which it was written. But it
cannot be denied that, both here and elsewhere in Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre, there is a very remarkable faculty of word-painting, and
also of influencing the feelings.
[Sidenote: Restif de la Bretonne.]
The later eighteenth century saw a vast number of novelists and novels,
few of which were of much literary value, while most of them displayed
the evil influences of the time in more ways than one. Dulaurens, a
vagabond and disreputable writer, is chiefly remembered for his _Compere
Mathieu_, a book presenting some points of likeness to _Jacques le
Fataliste_, and like it inspired partly by Sterne, and partly by
Sterne's master, Rabelais. Writers like Louvet and La Clos continued the
worst part of Crebillon's tradition without exhibiting either his
literary skill or his wit. A much more remarkable name is that of Restif
de la Bretonne, who has been called, and not without reason, the French
Defoe. He was born at Sacy in Burgundy in 1734, and died at Paris in
1806. Although of very humble birth, he seems to have acquired an
irregular but considerable education, and, establishing himself early in
Paris, he became an indefatigable author. About fifty separate works of
his exist, some of which are of great extent, and one of which, _Les
Contemporaines_, includes forty-two volumes and nearly three hundred
separate articles or tales. Restif, whose entire sanity may reasonably
be doubted, was a novelist, a philosopher, a social innovator, a
diligent observer of the manners of his times, a spelling reformer. His
work is for the most part destitute of the most rudimentary notions of
decency, but it is apparently produced in good faith and with no evil
purpose. His portraiture of manners is remarkably vivid. It is in this,
in his earnest but eccentric philanthropy, and in his grasp of
character, not seldom vigorous and close, that he chiefly resembles
Defoe. He has been called in France the Rousseau of the gutter, which
also is a comparison not without truth and instruction, despite the
jingle ('Rousseau du ruisseau') by which it was no doubt suggested.
The law which seems to have ordained that, though the eighteenth century
in France should produce no masterpiece in fictitious literature, or
only one, all the most distinguished literary names should be connected
with fiction, extended to the long and, in a literary sense, dreary
debateable land between the eighteenth century itself and the
nineteenth. Of this period the two dominant names are beyond question
those of Chateaubriand and of Madame de Stael. Both attempted various
kinds of writing, but some of the most important work of both comes
under the heading of the present chapter, and both as literary figures
are best treated here.
[Sidenote: Chateaubriand.]