_17th-Century Drama._--We have already seen how the medieval theatre was

formed, and how in the second half of the 16th century it met with a

formidable rival in the classical drama of Jodelle and Garnier. In 1588

mysteries had been prohibited, and with the prohibition of the mysteries

the Confraternity of the Passion lost the principal part of its reason

for existence. The other bodies and societies of amateur actors had

already perished, and at length the Hotel de Bourgogne itself, the home

of the confraternity, had been handed over to a regular troop of actors,

while companies of strollers, whose life has been vividly depicted in

the _Roman comique_ of Scarron and the _Capitaine Fracasse_ of Theophile

Gautier, wandered all about the provinces. The old farce was for a time

maintained or revived by Tabarin, a remarkable figure in dramatic

history, of whom but little is known. The great dramatic author of the

first quarter of the 17th century was Alexandre Hardy (1569-1631), who

surpassed even Heywood in fecundity, and very nearly approached the

portentous productiveness of Lope de Vega. Seven hundred is put down as

the modest total of Hardy's pieces, but not much more than a twentieth

of these exist in print. From these latter we can judge Hardy. They are

hardly up to the level of the worst specimens of the contemporary

Elizabethan theatre, to which, however, they bear a certain resemblance.

Marston's _Insatiate Countess_ and the worst parts of Chapman's _Bussy

d'Ambois_ may give English readers some notion of them. Yet Hardy was

not totally devoid of merit. He imitated and adapted Spanish literature,

which was at this time to France what Italian was in the century before

and English in the century after, in the most indiscriminate manner. But

he had a considerable command of grandiloquent and melodramatic

expression, a sound theory if not a sound practice of tragic writing,

and that peculiar knowledge of theatrical art and of the taste of the

theatrical public which since his time has been the special possession

of the French playwright. It is instructive to compare the influence of

his irregular and faulty genius with that of the regular and precise

Malherbe. From Hardy to Rotrou is, in point of literary interest, a

great step, and from Rotrou to Corneille a greater. Yet the theory of

Hardy only wanted the genius of Rotrou and Corneille to produce the

latter. Jean de Rotrou (1610-1650) has been called the French Marlowe,

and there is a curious likeness and yet a curious contrast between the

two poets. The best parts of Rotrou's two best plays, _Venceslas_ and

_St Genest_, are quite beyond comparison in respect of anything that

preceded them, and the central speech of the last-named play will rank

with anything in French dramatic poetry. Contemporary with Rotrou were

other dramatic writers of considerable dramatic importance, most of them

distinguished by the faults of the Spanish school, its declamatory

rodomontade, its conceits, and its occasionally preposterous action.

Jean de Schelandre (d. 1635) has left us a remarkable work in _Tyr et

Sidon_, which exemplifies in practice, as its almost more remarkable

preface by Francois Ogier defends in principle, the English-Spanish

model. Theophile de Viau in _Pyrame et Thisbe_ and in _Pasiphae_

produced a singular mixture of the classicism of Garnier and the

extravagancies of Hardy. Scudery in _l'Amour tyrannique_ and other plays

achieved a considerable success. The _Marianne_ of Tristan (1601-1655)

and the _Sophonisbe_ of Jean de Mairet (1604-1686) are the chief pieces

of their authors. Mairet resembles Marston in something more than his

choice of subject. Another dramatic writer of some eminence is Pierre du

Ryer (1606-1648). But the fertility of France at this moment in dramatic

authors was immense; nearly 100 are enumerated in the first quarter of

the century. The early plays of Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) showed all

the faults of his contemporaries combined with merits to which none of

them except Rotrou, and Rotrou himself only in part, could lay claim.

His first play was _Melite_, a comedy, and in _Clitandre_, a tragedy, he

soon produced what may perhaps be not inconveniently taken as the

typical piece of the school of Hardy. A full account of Corneille may be

found elsewhere. It is sufficient to say here that his importance in

French literature is quite as great in the way of influence and example

as in the way of intellectual excellence. The _Cid_ and the _Menteur_

are respectively the first examples of French tragedy and comedy which

can be called modern. But this influence and example did not at first

find many imitators. Corneille was a member of Richelieu's band of five

poets. Of the other four Rotrou alone deserves the title; the remaining

three, the prolific abbe de Boisrobert, Guillaume Colletet (whose most

valuable work, a MS. _Lives of Poets_, was never printed, and burnt by

the Communards in 1871), and Claude de Lestoile (1597-1651), are as

dramatists worthy of no notice, nor were they soon followed by others

more worthy. Yet before many years had passed the examples which

Corneille had set in tragedy and in comedy were followed up by

unquestionably the greatest comic writer, and by one who long held the

position of the greatest tragic writer of France. Beginning with mere

farces of the Italian type, and passing from these to comedies still of

an Italian character, it was in _Les Precieuses ridicules_, acted in

1659, that Moliere (1622-1673), in the words of a spectator, hit at last

on "la bonne comedie." The next fifteen years comprise the whole of his

best known work, the finest expression beyond doubt of a certain class

of comedy that any literature has produced. The tragic masterpieces of

Racine (1639-1699) were not far from coinciding with the comic

masterpieces of Moliere, for, with the exception of the remarkable

aftergrowth of _Esther_ and _Athalie_, they were produced chiefly

between 1667 and 1677. Both Racine and Moliere fall into the class of

writers who require separate mention. Here we can only remark that both

to a certain extent committed and encouraged a fault which distinguished

much subsequent French dramatic literature. This was the too great

individualizing of one point in a character, and the making the man or

woman nothing but a blunderer, a lover, a coxcomb, a tyrant and the

like. The very titles of French plays show this influence--they are _Le

Grondeur_, _Le Joueur_, &c. The complexity of human character is

ignored. This fault distinguishes both Moliere and Racine from writers

of the very highest order; and in especial it distinguishes the comedy

of Moliere and the tragedy of Racine from the comedy and tragedy of

Shakespeare. In all probability this and other defects of the French

drama (which are not wholly apparent in the work of Moliere and

Corneille, are shown in their most favourable light in those of Racine,

and appear in all their deformity in the successors of the latter) arise

from the rigid adoption of the Aristotelian theory of the drama with its

unities and other restrictions, especially as transmitted by Horace

through Boileau. This adoption was very much due to the influence of the

French Academy, which was founded unofficially by Conrart in 1629, which

received official standing six years later, and which continued the

tradition of Malherbe in attempting constantly to school and correct, as

the phrase went, the somewhat disorderly instincts of the early French

stage. Even the Cid was formally censured for irregularity by it. But it

is fair to say that Francois Hedelin, abbe d'Aubignac (1604-1676), whose

_Pratique du theatre_ is the most wooden of the critical treatises of

the time, was not an academician. It is difficult to say whether the

subordination of all other classes of composition to the drama, which

has ever since been characteristic of French literature, was or was not

due to the predilection of Richelieu, the main protector if not exactly

the founder of the Academy, for the theatre. Among the immediate

successors and later contemporaries of the three great dramatists we do

not find any who deserve high rank as tragedians, though there are some

whose comedies are more than respectable. It is at least significant

that the restrictions imposed by the academic theory on the comic drama

were far less severe than those which tragedy had to undergo. The latter

was practically confined, in respect of sources of attraction, to the

dexterous manipulation of the unities; the interest of a plot attenuated

as much as possible, and intended to produce, instead of pity a mild

sympathy, and instead of terror a mild alarm (for the purists decided

against Corneille that "admiration was not a tragic passion"); and

lastly the composition of long tirades of smooth but monotonous verses,

arranged in couplets tipped with delicately careful rhymes. Only Thomas

Corneille (1625-1709), the inheritor of an older tradition and of a

great name, deserves to be excepted from the condemnation to be passed

on the lesser tragedians of this period. He was unfortunate in

possessing his brother's name, and in being, like him, too voluminous in

his compositions; but _Camma_, _Ariane_, _Le Comte d'Essex_, are not

tragedies to be despised. On the other hand, the names of Jean de

Campistron (1656-1723) and Nicolas Pradon (1632-1698) mainly serve to

point injurious comparisons; Joseph Francois Duche (1668-1704) and

Antoine La Fosse (1653-1708) are of still less importance, and

Quinault's tragedies are chiefly remarkable because he had the good

sense to give up writing them and to take to opera. The general

excellence of French comedy, on the other hand, was sufficiently

vindicated. Besides the splendid sum of Moliere's work, the two great

tragedians had each, in _Le Menteur_ and _Les Plaideurs_, set a capital

example to their successors, which was fairly followed. David Augustin

de Brueys (1640-1723) and Jean Palaprat (1650-1721) brought out once

more the ever new _Advocat Patelin_ besides the capital _Grondeur_

already referred to. Quinault and Campistron wrote fair comedies.

Florent Carton Dancourt (1661-1726), Charles Riviere Dufresny (c.

1654-1724), Edmond Boursault (1638-1701), were all comic writers of

considerable merit. But the chief comic dramatist of the latter period

of the 17th century was Jean Francois Regnard (1655-1709), whose

_Joueur_ and _Legataire_ are comedies almost of the first rank.

Heroic Romance.

_17th-Century Fiction._--In the department of literature which comes

between poetry and prose, that of romance-writing, the 17th century,

excepting one remarkable development, was not very fertile. It devoted

itself to so many new or changed forms of literature that it had no time

to anticipate the modern novel. Yet at the beginning of the century one

very curious form of romance-writing was diligently cultivated, and its

popularity, for the time immense, prevented the introduction of any

stronger style. It is remarkable that, as the first quarter of the 17th

century was pre-eminently the epoch of Spanish influence in France, the

distinctive satire of Cervantes should have been less imitated than the

models which Cervantes satirized. However this may be, the romances of

1600 to 1650 form a class of literature vast, isolated, and, perhaps, of

all such classes of literature most utterly obsolete and extinct. Taste,

affectation or antiquarian diligence have, at one time or another,

restored to a just, and sometimes a more than just, measure of

reputation most of the literary relics of the past. Romances of

chivalry, fabliaux, early drama, Provencal poetry, prose chronicles,

have all had, and deservedly, their rehabilitators. But _Polexandre_ and

_Cleopatre_, _Clelie_ and the _Grand Cyrus_, have been too heavy for all

the industry and energy of literary antiquarians. As we have already

hinted, the nearest ancestry which can be found for them is the romances

of the _Amadis_ type. But the _Amadis_, and in a less degree its

followers, although long, are long in virtue of incident. The romances

of the _Clelie_ type are long in virtue of interminable discourse,

moralizing and description. Their manner is not unlike that of the

_Arcadia_ and the _Euphues_ which preceded them in England; and they

express in point of style the tendency which simultaneously manifested

itself all over Europe at this period, and whose chief exponents were

Gongora in Spain, Marini in Italy, and Lyly in England. Everybody knows

the _Carte de Tendre_ which originally appeared in _Clelie_, while most

people have heard of the shepherds and shepherdesses who figure in the

_Astree_ of Honore D'Urfe (1568-1625), on the borders of the Lignon; but

here general knowledge ends, and there is perhaps no reason why it

should go much further. It is sufficient to say that Madeleine de

Scudery (1607-1701) principally devotes herself in the books above

mentioned to laborious gallantry and heroism, La Calprenede (1610-1663)

in _Cassandre et Cleopatre_ to something which might have been the

historical novel if it had been constructed on a less preposterous

scale, and Marin le Roy de Gomberville (1600-1647) in _Polexandre_ to

moralizings and theological discussions on Jansenist principles, while

Pierre Camus, bishop of Belley (1582-1652), in _Palombe_ and others,

approached still nearer to the strictly religious story. In the latter

part of the century, the example of La Fontaine, though he himself wrote

in poetry, helped to recall the tale-tellers of France to an occupation

more worthy of them, more suitable to the genius of the literature, and

more likely to last. The reaction against the _Clelie_ school produced

first Madame de Villedieu (Catherine Desjardins) (1632-1692), a fluent

and facile novelist, who enjoyed great but not enduring popularity. The

form which the prose tale took at this period was that of the fairy

story. Perrault (1628-1703) and Madame d'Aulnoy (d. 1705) composed

specimens of this kind which have never ceased to be popular since.

Hamilton (1646-1720), the author of the well-known _Memoires du comte de

Gramont_, wrote similar stories of extraordinary merit in style and

ingenuity. There is yet a third class of prose writing which deserves to

be mentioned. It also may probably be traced to Spanish influence, that

is to say, to the picaresque romances which the 16th and 17th centuries

produced in Spain in large numbers. The most remarkable example of this

is the _Roman comique_ of the burlesque writer Scarron. The _Roman

bourgeois_ of Antoine Furetiere (1619-1688) also deserves mention as a

collection of pictures of the life of the time, arranged in the most

desultory manner, but drawn with great vividness, observation and skill.

A remarkable writer who had great influence on Moliere has also to be

mentioned in this connexion rather than in any other. This is Cyrano de

Bergerac (1619-1655), who, besides composing doubtful comedies and

tragedies, writing political pamphlets, and exercising the task of

literary criticism in objecting to Scarron's burlesques, produced in his

_Histoires comiques des etats et empires de la lune et du soleil_, half

romantic and half satirical compositions, in which some have seen the

original of _Gulliver's Travels_, in which others have discovered only a

not very successful imitation of Rabelais, and which, without attempting

to decide these questions, may fairly be ranked in the same class of

fiction with the masterpieces of Swift and Rabelais, though of course at

an immense distance below them. One other work, and in literary

influence perhaps the most remarkable of its kind in the century,

remains. Madame de Lafayette, Marie de la Vergne (1634-1692), the friend

of La Rochefoucauld and of Madame de Sevigne, though she did not exactly

anticipate the modern novel, showed the way to it in her stories, the

principal of which are _Zaide_ and still more La _Princesse de Cleves_.

The latter, though a long way from _Manon Lescaut_, _Clarissa_, or

_Tom Jones_, is a longer way still from _Polexandre_ or the _Arcadia_.

The novel becomes in it no longer a more or less fictitious chronicle,

but an attempt at least at the display of character. _La Princesse de

Cleves_ has never been one of the works widely popular out of their own

country, nor perhaps does it deserve such popularity, for it has more

grace than strength; but as an original effort in an important direction

its historical value is considerable. But with this exception, the art

of fictitious prose composition, except on a small scale, is certainly

not one in which the century excelled, nor are any of the masterpieces

which it produced to be ranked in this class.

J. G. de Balzac and modern French prose.

_17th-Century Prose._--If, however, this was the case, it cannot be said

that French prose as a whole was unproductive at this time. On the

contrary, it was now, and only now, that it attained the strength and

perfection for which it has been so long renowned, and which has

perhaps, by a curious process of compensation, somewhat deteriorated

since the restoration of poetry proper in France. The prose Malherbe of

French literature was Jean Guez de Balzac (1594-1654). The writers of

the 17th century had practically created the literary language of prose,

but they had not created a prose style. The charm of Rabelais, of Amyot,

of Montaigne, and of the numerous writers of tales and memoirs whom we

have noticed, was a charm of exuberance, of naivete, of picturesque

effect--in short, of a mixture of poetry and prose, rather than of prose

proper. Sixteenth-century French prose is a delightful instrument in the

hands of men and women of genius, but in the hands of those who have not

genius it is full of defects, and indeed is nearly unreadable. Now,

prose is essentially an instrument of all work. The poet who has not

genius had better not write at all; the prose writer often may and

sometimes must dispense with this qualification. He has need, therefore,

of a suitable machine to help him to perform his task, and this machine

it is the glory of Balzac to have done more than any other person to

create. He produced himself no great work, his principal writings being

letters, a few discourses and dissertations, and a work entitled _Le

Socrate chretien_, a sort of treatise on political theology. But if the

matter of his work is not of the first importance, its manner is of a

very different value. Instead of the endless diffuseness of the

preceding century, its ill-formed or rather unformed sentences, and its

haphazard periods, we find clauses, sentences and paragraphs distinctly

planned, shaped and balanced, a cadence introduced which is rhythmical

but not metrical, and, in short, prose which is written knowingly

instead of the prose which is unwittingly talked. It has been well said

of him that he "_ecrit pour ecrire_"; and such a man, it is evident, if

he does nothing else, sets a valuable example to those who write because

they have something to say. Voiture seconded Balzac without much

intending to do so. His prose style, also chiefly contained in letters,

is lighter than that of his contemporary, and helped to gain for French

prose the tradition of vivacity and sparkle which it has always

possessed, as well as that of correctness and grace.

_17th-century History._--In historical composition, especially in the

department of memoirs, this period was exceedingly rich. At last there

was written, in French, an entire history of France. The author was

Francois Eudes de Mezeray (1610-1683), whose work, though not exhibiting

the perfection of style at which some of his contemporaries had already

arrived, and though still more or less uncritical, yet deserves the title

of history. The example was followed by a large number of writers, some

of extended works, some of histories in part. Mezeray himself is said to

have had a considerable share in the _Histoire du roi Henri le grand_ by

the archbishop Perefixe (1605-1670); Louis Maimbourg (1610-1686) wrote

histories of the Crusades and of the League; Paul Pellisson (1624-1693)

gave a history of Louis XIV. and a more valuable _Memoire_ in defence of

the superintendent Fouquet. Still later in the century, or at the

beginning of the next, the Pere d'Orleans (1644-1698) wrote a history of

the revolutions of England, the Pere Daniel (1649-1728), like d'Orleans a

Jesuit, composed a lengthy history of France and a shorter one on the

French military forces. Finally, at the end of the period, comes the

great ecclesiastical history of Claude Fleury (1640-1723), a work which

perhaps belongs more to the section of erudition than to that of history

proper. Three small treatises, however, composed by different authors

towards the middle part of the century, supply remarkable instances of

prose style in its application to history. These are the _Conjurations du

comte de Fiesque_, written by the famous Cardinal de Retz (1613-1679),

the _Conspiration de Walstein_ of Sarrasin, and the _Conjuration des

Espagnols contre Venise_, composed in 1672 by the abbe de Saint-Real

(1639-1692), the author of various historical and critical works

deserving less notice. These three works, whose similarity of subject and

successive composition at short intervals leave little doubt that a

certain amount of intentional rivalry animated the two later authors, are

among the earliest and best examples of the monographs for which French,

in point of grace of style and lucidity of exposition, has long been the

most successful vehicle of expression among European languages. Among

other writers of history, as distinguished from memoirs, need only be

noticed Agrippa d'Aubigne, whose _Histoire universelle_ closed his long

and varied list of works, and Varillas (1624-1696), a historian chiefly

remarkable for his extreme untrustworthiness. In point of memoirs and

correspondence the period is hardly less fruitful than that which

preceded it. The _Registres-Journaux_ of Pierre de l'Etoile (1540-1611)

consist of a diary something of the Pepys character, kept for nearly

forty years by a person in high official employment. The memoirs of Sully

(1560-1641), published under a curious title too long to quote, date also

from this time.

Henri IV. himself has left a considerable correspondence, which is not

destitute of literary merit, though not equal to the memoirs of his

wife. What are commonly called Richelieu's _Memoirs_ were probably

written to his order; his _Testament politique_ may be his own. Henri de

Rohan (1579-1638) has not memoirs of the first value. Both this and

earlier times found chronicle in the singular _Historiettes_ of Gedeon

Tallemant des Reaux (1619-1690), a collection of anecdotes, frequently

scandalous, reaching from the times of Henri IV. to those of Louis XIV.,

to which may be joined the letters of Guy Patin (1602-1676). The early

years of the latter monarch and the period of the Fronde had the

cardinal de Retz himself, than whom no one was certainly better

qualified for historian, not to mention a crowd of others, of whom we

may mention Madame de Motteville (1621-1689), Jean Herault de Gourville

(1625-1703), Mademoiselle de Montpensier ("La Grande Mademoiselle")

(1627-1693), Conrart, Turenne and Mathieu Mole (1584-1663), Francois du

Val, marquis de Fontenay-Mareuil (1594-1655), Arnauld d'Andilly

(1588-1670). From this time memoirs and memoir writers were ever

multiplying. The queen of them all is Madame de Sevigne (1626-1696), on

whom, as on most of the great and better-known writers whom we have had

and shall have to mention, it is impossible here to dwell at length. The

last half of the century produced crowds of similar but inferior

writers. The memoirs of Roger de Bussy-Rabutin (1618-1693) (author of a

kind of scandalous chronicle called _Histoire amoureuse des Gaules_) and

of Madame de Maintenon (1635-1719) perhaps deserve notice above the

others. But this was in truth the style of composition in which the age

most excelled. Memoir-writing became the occupation not so much of

persons who made history, as was the case from Comines to Retz, as of

those who, having culture, leisure and opportunity of observation,

devoted themselves to the task of recording the deeds of others, and

still more of regarding the incidents of the busy, splendid and

cultivated if somewhat frivolous world of the court, in which, from the

time of Louis XIV.'s majority, the political life of the nation and

almost its whole history were centred. Many, if not most, of these

writers were women, who thus founded the celebrity of the French lady

for managing her mother-tongue, and justified by results the taste and

tendencies of the blue-stockings and precieuses of the Hotel Rambouillet

and similar coteries. The life which these writers saw before them

furnished them with a subject to be handled with the minuteness and care

to which they had been accustomed in the ponderous romances of the

_Clelie_ type, but also with the wit and terseness hereditary in France,

and only temporarily absent in those ponderous compositions. The efforts

of Balzac and the Academy supplied a suitable language and style, and

the increasing tendency towards epigrammatic moralizing, which reached

its acme in La Rochefoucauld (1663-1680) and La Bruyere (1639-1696),

added in most cases point and attractiveness to their writings.

Descartes.

Malebranche.

Bayle.

_17th-Century Philosophers and Theologians._--To these moralists we

might, perhaps, not inappropriately pass at once. But it seems better to

consider first the philosophical and theological developments of the

age, which must share with its historical experiences and studies the

credit of producing these writers. Philosophy proper, as we have already

had occasion to remark, had hitherto made no use of the vulgar tongue.

The 16th century had contributed a few vernacular treatises on logic, a

considerable body of political and ethical writing, and a good deal of

sceptical speculation of a more or less vague character, continued into

our present epoch by such writers as Francois de la Mothe le Vayer

(1588-1672), the last representative of the orthodox doubt of Montaigne

and Charron. But in metaphysics proper it had not dabbled. The 17th

century, on the contrary, was to produce in Rene Descartes (1596-1650),

at once a master of prose style, the greatest of French philosophers,

and one of the greatest metaphysicians, not merely of France and of the

17th century, but of all countries and times. Even before Descartes

there had been considerable and important developments of metaphysical

speculation in France. The first eminent philosopher of French birth was

Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655). Gassendi devoted himself to the maintenance

of a modernized form of the Epicurean doctrines, but he wrote mainly, if

not entirely, in Latin. Another sceptical philosopher of a less

scientific character was the physicist Gabriel Naude (1600-1653), who,

like many others of the philosophers of the time, was accused of

atheism. But as none of these could approach Descartes in philosophical

power and originality, so also none has even a fraction of his

importance in the history of French literature. Descartes stands with

Plato, and possibly Berkeley and Malebranche, at the head of all

philosophers in respect of style; and in his case the excellence is far

more remarkable than in others, inasmuch as he had absolutely no models,

and was forced in a great degree to create the language which he used.

The _Discours de la methode_ is not only one of the epoch-making books

of philosophy, it is also one of the epoch-making books of French style.

The tradition of his clear and perfect expression was taken up, not

merely by his philosophical disciples, but also by Blaise Pascal

(1623-1662) and the school of Port Royal, who will be noticed presently.

The very genius of the Cartesian philosophy was intimately connected

with this clearness, distinctness and severity of style; and there is

something more than a fanciful contrast between these literary

characteristics of Descartes, on the one hand, and the elaborate

splendour of Bacon, the knotty and crabbed strength of Hobbes, and the

commonplace and almost vulgar slovenliness of Locke. Of the followers of

Descartes, putting aside the Port Royalists, by far the most

distinguished, both in philosophy and in literature, is Nicolas

Malebranche (1638-1715). His _Recherche de la verite_, admirable as it

is for its subtlety and its consecutiveness of thought, is equally

admirable for its elegance of style. Malebranche cannot indeed, like his

great master, claim absolute originality. But his excellence as a writer

is as great as, if not greater than, that of Descartes, and the

_Recherche_ remains to this day the one philosophical treatise of great

length and abstruseness which, merely as a book, is delightful to

read--not like the works of Plato and Berkeley, because of the

adventitious graces of dialogue or description, but from the purity and

grace of the language, and its admirable adjustment to the purposes of

the argument. Yet, for all this, philosophy hardly flourished in France.

It was too intimately connected with theological and ecclesiastical

questions, and especially with Jansenism, to escape suspicion and

persecution. Descartes himself was for much of his life an exile in

Holland and Sweden; and though the unquestionable orthodoxy of

Malebranche, the strongly religious cast of his works, and the

remoteness of the abstruse region in which he sojourned from that of the

controversies of the day, protected him, other followers of Descartes

were not so fortunate. Holland, indeed, became a kind of city of refuge

for students of philosophy, though even in Holland itself they were by

no means entirely safe from persecution. By far the most remarkable of

French philosophical sojourners in the Netherlands was Pierre Bayle

(1647-1706), a name not perhaps of the first rank in respect of literary

value, but certainly of the first as regards literary influence. Bayle,

after oscillating between the two confessions, nominally remained a

Protestant in religion. In philosophy he in the same manner oscillated

between Descartes and Gassendi, finally resting in an equally nominal

Cartesianism. Bayle was, in fact, both in philosophy and in religion,

merely a sceptic, with a scepticism at once like and unlike that of

Montaigne, and differenced both by temperament and by circumstance--the

scepticism of the mere student, exercised more or less in all histories,

sciences and philosophies, and intellectually unable or unwilling to

take a side. His style is hardly to be called good, being diffuse and

often inelegant. But his great dictionary, though one of the most

heterogeneous and unmethodical of compositions, exercised an enormous

influence. It may be called the Bible of the 18th century, and contains

in the germ all the desultory philosophy, the ill-ordered scepticism,

and the critical but negatively critical acuteness of the _Aufklarung_.

Jansenists.

Port Royal.

Pascal.

We have said that the philosophical, theological and moral tendencies of

the century, which produced, with the exception of its dramatic triumphs,

all its greatest literary works, are almost inextricably intermingled.

Its earliest years, however, bear in theological matters rather the

complexion of the previous century. Du Perron and St Francis of Sales

survived until nearly the end of its first quarter, and the most

remarkable works of the latter bear the dates of 1608 and later. It was

not, however, till some years had passed, till the counter-Reformation

had reconverted the largest and most powerful portion of the Huguenot

party, and till the influence of Jansenius and Descartes had time to

work, that the extraordinary outburst of Gallican theology, both in

pulpit and in press, took place. The Jansenist controversy may perhaps be

awarded the merit of provoking this, as far as writing was concerned. The

astonishing eloquence of contemporary pulpit oratory may be set down

partly to the zeal for conversion of which du Perron and de Sales had

given the example, partly to the same taste of the time which encouraged

dramatic performances, for the sermon and the tirade have much in common.

Jansenius himself, though a Dutchman by birth, passed much time in

France, and it was in France that he found most disciples. These

disciples consisted in the first place of the members of the society of

Port Royal des Champs, a coterie after the fashion of the time, but one

which devoted itself not to sonnets or madrigals but to devotional

exercises, study and the teaching of youth. This coterie early adopted

the Cartesian philosophy, and the Port Royal _Logic_ was the most

remarkable popular handbook of that school. In theology they adopted

Jansenism, and were in consequence soon at daggers drawn with the

Jesuits, according to the polemical habits of the time. The most

distinguished champions on the Jansenist side were Jean Duvergier de

Hauranne, abbe de St Cyran (1581-1643), and Antoine Arnauld (1560-1619),

but by far the most important literary results of the quarrel were the

famous _Provinciales_ of Pascal, or, to give them their proper title,

_Lettres ecrites a un provincial_. Their literary importance consists,

not merely in their grace of style, but in the application to serious

discussion of the peculiarly polished and quiet irony of which Pascal is

the greatest master the world has ever seen. Up to this time controversy

had usually been conducted either in the mere bludgeon fashion of the

Scaligers and Saumaises--of which in the vernacular the Jesuit Francois

Garasse (1585-1631) had already contributed remarkable examples to

literary and moral controversy--or else in a dull and legal style, or

lastly under an envelope of Rabelaisian buffoonery such as survives to a

considerable extent in the _Satire Menippee_. Pascal set the example of

combining the use of the most terribly effective weapons with good

humour, good breeding and a polished style. The example was largely

followed, and the manner of Voltaire and his followers in the 18th

century owes at least as much to Pascal as their method and matter do to

Bayle. The Jansenists, attacked and persecuted by the civil power, which

the Jesuits had contrived to interest, were finally suppressed. But the

_Provinciales_ had given them an unapproachable superiority in matter of

argument and literature. Their other literary works were inferior, though

still remarkable. Antoine Arnauld (the younger, often called "the great")

(1612-1694) and Pierre Nicole (1625-1695) managed their native language

with vigour if not exactly with grace. They maintained their orthodoxy by

writings, not merely against the Jesuits, but also against the

Protestants such as the _Perpetuite de la foi_ due to both, and the

_Apologie des Catholiques_ written by Arnauld alone. The latter, besides

being responsible for a good deal of the _Logic_ (_L'Art de penser_) to

which we have alluded, wrote also much of a _Grammaire generale_ composed

by the Port Royalists for the use of their pupils; but his principal

devotion was to theology and theological polemics. To the latter Nicole

also contributed _Les Visionnaires_, _Les Imaginaires_ and other works.

The studious recluses of Port Royal also produced a large quantity of

miscellaneous literary work, to which full justice has been done in

Sainte-Beuve's well-known volumes.

Bossuet.

Fenelon.

_17th-Century Preachers._--When we think of Gallican theology during the

17th century, it is always with the famous pulpit orators of the period

that thought is most busied. Nor is this unjust, for though the most

prominent of them all, Jacques Benigne Bossuet (1627-1704) was

remarkable as a writer of matter intended to be read, not merely as a

speaker of matter intended to be heard, this double character is not

possessed by most of the orthodox theologians of the time; and even

Bossuet, great as is his genius, is more of a rhetorician than of a

philosopher or a theologian. In no quarter was the advance of culture

more remarkable in France than in the pulpit. We have already had

occasion to notice the characteristics of French pulpit eloquence in the

15th and 16th centuries. Though this was very far from destitute of

vigour and imagination, the political frenzy of the preachers, and the

habit of introducing anecdotic buffoonery, spoilt the eloquence of

Maillard and of Raulin, of Boucher and of Rose. The powerful use which

the Reformed ministers made of the pulpit stirred up their rivals; the

advance in science and classical study added weight and dignity to the

matter of their discourses. The improvement of prose style and language

provided them with a suitable instrument, and the growth of taste and

refinement purged their sermons of grossness and buffoonery, of personal

allusions, and even, as the monarchy became more absolute, of direct

political purpose. The earliest examples of this improved style were

given by St Francis de Sales and by Fenouillet, bishop of Marseilles (d.

1652); but it was not till the latter half of the century, when the

troubles of the Fronde had completely subsided, and the church was

established in the favour of Louis XIV., that the full efflorescence of

theological eloquence took place. There were at the time pulpit orators

of considerable excellence in England, and perhaps Jeremy Taylor,

assisted by the genius of the language, has wrought a vein more precious

than any which the somewhat academic methods and limitations of the

French teachers allowed them to reach. But no country has ever been able

to show a more magnificent concourse of orators, sacred or profane, than

that formed by Bossuet, Fenelon (1651-1715), Esprit Flechier

(1632-1710), Jules Mascaron (1634-1703), Louis Bourdaloue (1632-1704),

and Jean Baptiste Massillon (1663-1742), to whom may be justly added the

Protestant divines, Jean Claude (1619-1687) and Jacques Saurin

(1677-1730). The characteristics of all these were different. Bossuet,

the earliest and certainly the greatest, was also the most universal. He

was not merely a preacher; he was, as we have said, a controversialist,

indeed somewhat too much of a controversialist, as his battle with

Fenelon proved. He was a philosophical or at least a theological

historian, and his _Discours sur l'histoire universelle_ is equally

remarkable from the point of view of theology, philosophy, history and

literature. Turning to theological politics, he wrote his _Politique

tiree de l'ecriture sainte_, to theology proper his _Meditations sur les

evangiles_ and his _Elevations sur les mysteres_. But his principal

work, after all, is his _Oraisons funebres_. The funeral sermon was the

special oratorical exercise of the time. Its subject and character

invited the gorgeous if somewhat theatrical commonplaces, the display of

historical knowledge and parallel, and the moralizing analogies, in

which the age specially rejoiced. It must also be noticed, to the credit

of the preachers, that such occasions gave them an opportunity, rarely

neglected, of correcting the adulation which was but too frequently

characteristic of the period. The spirit of these compositions is fairly

reflected in the most famous and often quoted of their phrases, the

opening "Mes freres, Dieu seul est grand" of Massillon's funeral

discourse on Louis XIV.; and though panegyric is necessarily by no means

absent, it is rarely carried beyond bounds. While Bossuet made himself

chiefly remarkable in his sermons and in his writings by an almost

Hebraic grandeur and rudeness, the more special characteristics of

Christianity, largely alloyed with a Greek and Platonic spirit,

displayed themselves in Fenelon. In pure literature he is not less

remarkable than in theology, politics and morals. His practice in

matters of style was admirable, as the universally known _Telemaque_

sufficiently shows to those who know nothing else of his writing. But

his taste, both in its correctness and its audacity, is perhaps more

admirable still. Despite of Malherbe, Balzac, Boileau and the traditions

of nearly a century, he dared to speak favourably of Ronsard, and

plainly expressed his opinion that the practice of his own

contemporaries and predecessors had cramped and impoverished the French

language quite as much as they had polished or purified it. The other

doctors whom we have mentioned were more purely theological than the

accomplished archbishop of Cambray. Flechier is somewhat more archaic in

style than Bossuet or Fenelon, and he is also more definitely a

rhetorician than either. Mascaron has the older fault of prodigal and

somewhat indiscriminate erudition. But the two latest of the series,

Bourdaloue and Massillon, had far the greatest repute in their own time

purely as orators, and perhaps deserved this preference. The difference

between the two repeated that between du Perron and de Sales.

Bourdaloue's great forte was vigorous argument and unsparing

denunciation, but he is said to have been lacking in the power of

influencing and affecting his hearers. His attraction was purely

intellectual, and it is reflected in his style, which is clear and

forcible, but destitute of warmth and colour. Massillon, on the other

hand, was remarkable for his pathos, and for his power of enlisting and

influencing the sympathies of his hearers. Of minor preachers on the

same side, Charles de la Rue, a Jesuit (1643-1725), and the Pere

Cheminais (1652-1680), according to a somewhat idle form of

nomenclature, "the Racine of the pulpit," may be mentioned. The two

Protestant ministers whom we have mentioned, though inferior to their

rivals, yet deserve honourable mention among the ecclesiastical writers

of the period. Claude engaged in a controversy with Bossuet, in which

victory is claimed for the invincible eagle of Meaux. Saurin, by far the

greater preacher of the two, long continued to occupy, and indeed still

occupies, in the libraries of French Protestants, the position given to

Bossuet and Massillon on the other side.

_17th-Century Moralists._--It is not surprising that the works of

Montaigne and Charron, with the immense popularity of the former, should

have inclined the more thoughtful minds in France to moral reflection,

especially as many other influences, both direct and indirect,

contributed to produce the same result. The constant tendency of the

refinements in French prose was towards clearness, succinctness and

precision, the qualities most necessary in the moralist. The

characteristics of the prevailing philosophy, that of Descartes, pointed

in the same direction. It so happened, too, that the times were more

favourable to the thinker and writer on ethical subjects than to the

speculator in philosophy proper, in theology or in politics. Both the

former subjects exposed their cultivators, as we have seen, to the

suspicion of unorthodoxy; and to political speculation of any kind the

rule of Richelieu, and still more that of Louis XIV., were in the

highest degree unfavourable. No successors to Bodin and du Vair

appeared; and even in the domain of legal writings, which comes nearest

to that of politics, but few names of eminence are to be found.

Pascal and pensee-writing.

Saint-Evremond.

La Rochefoucauld.

La Bruyere.

Only the name of Omer-Talon (1595-1652) really illustrates the legal

annals of France at this period on the bench, and that of Olivier Patru

(1604-1681) at the bar. Thus it happened that the interests of many

different classes of persons were concentrated upon moralizings, which

took indeed very different forms in the hands of Pascal and other grave

and serious thinkers of the Jansenist complexion in theology, and in

those of literary courtiers like Saint-Evremond (1613-1703) and La

Rochefoucauld, whose chief object was to depict the motives and

characters prominent in the brilliant and not altogether frivolous

society in which they moved. Both classes, however, were more or less

tempted by the cast of their thoughts and the genius of the language to

adopt the tersest and most epigrammatic form of expression possible, and

thus to originate the "_pensee_" in which, as its greatest later writer,

Joubert, has said, "the ambition of the author is to put a book into a

page, a page into a phrase, and a phrase into a word." The great genius

and admirable style of Pascal are certainly not less shown in his

_Pensees_ than in his _Provinciales_, though perhaps the literary form

of the former is less strikingly supreme than that of the latter. The

author is more dominated by his subject and dominates it less. Nicole, a

far inferior writer as well as thinker, has also left a considerable

number of _Pensees_, which have about them something more of the essay

and less of the aphorism. They are, however, though not comparable to

Pascal, excellent in matter and style, and go far to justify Bayle in

calling their author "l'une des plus belles plumes de l'Europe." In

sharp contrast with these thinkers, who are invariably not merely

respecters of religion but ardently and avowedly religious, who treat

morality from the point of view of the Bible and the church, there arose

side by side with them, or only a little later, a very different group

of moralists, whose writings have been as widely read, and who have had

as great a practical and literary influence as perhaps any other class

of authors. The earliest to be born and the last to die of these was

Charles de Saint-Denis, seigneur de saint-Evremond (1613-1703).

Saint-Evremond was long known rather as a conversational wit, some of

whose good things were handed about in manuscript, or surreptitiously

printed in foreign lands, than as a writer, and this is still to a

certain extent his reputation. He was at least as cynical as his still

better known contemporary La Rochefoucauld, if not more so, and he had

less intellectual force and less nobility of character. But his wit was

very great, and he set the example of the brilliant societies of the

next century. Many of Saint-Evremond's printed works are nominally works

of literary criticism, but the moralizing spirit pervades all of them.

No writer had a greater influence on Voltaire, and through Voltaire on

the whole course of French literature after him. In direct literary

value, however, no comparison can be made between Saint-Evremond and the

author of the _Sentences et maximes morales_. Francois, duc de la

Rochefoucauld (1613-1680), has other literary claims besides those of

this famous book. His _Memoires_ were very favourably judged by his

contemporaries, and they are still held to deserve no little praise even

among the numerous and excellent works of the kind which that age of

memoir-writers produced. But while the _Memoires_ thus invite

comparison, the _Maximes et sentences_ stand alone. Even allowing that

the mere publication of detached reflections in terse language was not

absolutely new, it had never been carried, perhaps has never since been

carried, to such a perfection. Beside La Rochefoucauld all other writers

are diffuse, vacillating, unfinished, rough. Not only is there in him

never a word too much, but there is never a word too little. The thought

is always fully expressed, not compressed. Frequently as the metaphor of

minting or stamping coin has been applied to the art of managing words,

it has never been applied so appropriately as to the maxims of La

Rochefoucauld. The form of them is almost beyond praise, and its

excellencies, combined with their immense and enduring popularity, have

had a very considerable share in influencing the character of subsequent

French literature. Of hardly less importance in this respect, though of

considerably less intellectual and literary individuality, was the

translator of Theophrastus and the author of the _Caracteres_, La

Bruyere. Jean de la Bruyere (1645-1696), though frequently epigrammatic,

did not aim at the same incredible terseness as the author of the

_Maximes_. His plan did not, indeed, render it necessary. Both in

England and in France there had been during the whole of the century a

mania for character writing, both of the general and Theophrastic kind,

and of the historical and personal order. The latter, of which our own

Clarendon is perhaps the greatest master, abound in the French memoirs

of the period. The former, of which the naive sketches of Earle and

Overbury are English examples, culminated in those of La Bruyere, which

are not only light and easy in manner and matter, but also in style

essentially amusing, though instructive as well. Both he and La

Rochefoucauld had an enduring effect on the literature which followed

them--an effect perhaps superior to that exercised by any other single

work in French, except the _Roman de la rose_ and the _Essais_ of

Montaigne.

Controversy between Ancients and Moderns.

_17th-century Savants._--Of the literature of the 17th century there

only remains to be dealt with the section of those writers who devoted

themselves to scientific pursuits or to antiquarian erudition of one

form or another. It was in this century that literary criticism of

French and in French first began to be largely composed, and after this

time we shall give it a separate heading. It was very far, however, from

attaining the excellence or observing the form which it afterwards

assumed. The institution of the Academy led to various linguistic works.

One of the earliest of these was the _Remarques_ of the Savoyard Claude

Favre de Vaugelas (1595-1650), afterwards re-edited by Thomas Corneille.

Pellisson wrote a history of the Academy itself when it had as yet but a

brief one. The famous _Examen du Cid_ was an instance of the literary

criticism of the time which was afterwards represented by Rene Rapin

(1621-1687), Dominique Bouhours (1628-1702) and Rene de Bossu

(1631-1680), while Adrien Baillet (1649-1706) has collected the largest

thesaurus of the subject in his _Jugemens des savants_. Boileau set the

example of treating such subjects in verse, and in the latter part of

the century _Reflexions_, _Discourses_, _Observations_, and the like, on

particular styles, literary forms and authors, became exceedingly

numerous. In earlier years France possessed a numerous band of classical

scholars of the first rank, such as Scaliger and Casaubon, who did not

lack followers. But all or almost all this sort of work was done in

Latin, so that it contributed little to French literature properly

so-called, though the translations from the classics of Nicolas Perrot

d'Ablancourt (1606-1664) have always taken rank among the models of

French style. On the other hand, mathematical studies were pursued by

persons of far other and far greater genius, and, taking from this time

forward a considerable position in education and literature in France,

had much influence on both. The mathematical discoveries of Pascal and

Descartes are well known. Of science proper, apart from mathematics,

France did not produce many distinguished cultivators in this century.

The philosophy of Descartes was not on the whole favourable to such

investigations, which were in the next century to be pursued with

ardour. Its tendencies found more congenial vent and are more thoroughly

exemplified in the famous quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns.

This, of Italian origin, was mainly started in France by Charles

Perrault (1628-1703), who thereby rendered much less service to

literature than by his charming fairy tales. The opposite side was taken

by Boileau, and the fight was afterwards revived by Antoine Houdar[d, t]

de la Motte (1672-1731), a writer of little learning but much talent in

various ways, and by the celebrated Madame Dacier, Anne Lefevre

(1654-1720). The discussion was conducted, as is well known, without

very much knowledge or judgment among the disputants on the one side or

on the other. But at this very time there were in France students and

scholars of the most profound erudition. We have already mentioned

Fleury and his ecclesiastical history. But Fleury is only the last and

the most popular of a race of omnivorous and untiring scholars, whose

labours have ever since, until the modern fashion of first-hand

investigations came in, furnished the bulk of historical and scholarly

references and quotations. To this century belong le Nain de Tillemont

(1637-1698), whose enormous _Histoire des empereurs_ and _Memoires pour

servir a l'histoire ecclesiastique_ served Gibbon and a hundred others

as quarry; Charles Dufresne, seigneur de Ducange (1614-1688), whose

well-known glossary was only one of numerous productions; Jean Mabillon

(1632-1707), one of the most voluminous of the voluminous Benedictines;

and Bernard de Montfaucon (1655-1741), chief of all authorities of the

dry-as-dust kind on classical archaeology and art.

_Opening of the 18th Century._--The beginning of the 18th century is

among the dead seasons of French literature. All the greatest men whose

names had illustrated the early reign of Louis XIV. in profane

literature passed away long before him, and the last if the least of

them, Boileau and Thomas Corneille, only survived into the very earliest

years of the new age. The political and military disasters of the last

years of the reign were accompanied by a state of things in society

unfavourable to literary development. The devotion to pure literature

and philosophy proper which Descartes and Corneille had inspired had

died out, and the devotion to physical science, to sociology, and to a

kind of free-thinking optimism which was to inspire Voltaire and the

Encyclopedists had not yet become fashionable. Fenelon and Malebranche

still survived, but they were emphatically men of the last age, as was

Massillon, though he lived till nearly the middle of the century. The

characteristic literary figures of the opening years of the period are

d'Aguesseau, Fontenelle, Saint-Simon, personages in many ways

interesting and remarkable, but purely transitional in their

characteristics. Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757) is, indeed,

perhaps the most typical figure of the time. He was a dramatist, a

moralist, a philosopher, physical and metaphysical, a critic, an

historian, a poet and a satirist. The manner of his works is always easy

and graceful, and their matter rarely contemptible.

J. B. Rousseau.

Voltaire (poetry).

_18th-Century Poetry._--The dispiriting signs shown during the 17th

century by French poetry proper received entire fulfilment in the

following age. The two poets who were most prominent at the opening of

the period were the abbe de Chaulieu (1639-1720) and the marquis de la

Fare (1644-1712), poetical or rather versifying twins who are always

quoted together. They were both men who lived to a great age, yet their

characteristics are rather those of their later than of their earlier

contemporaries. They derive on the one hand from the somewhat trifling

school of Voiture, on the other from the Bacchic sect of Saint-Amant;

and they succeed in uniting the inferior qualities of both with the

cramped and impoverished though elegant style of which Fenelon had

complained. Their compositions are as a rule lyrical, as lyrical poetry

was understood after the days of Malherbe--that is to say, quatrains of

the kind ridiculed by Moliere, and Pindaric odes, which have been justly

described as made up of alexandrines after the manner of Boileau cut up

into shorter or longer lengths. They were followed, however, by the one

poet who succeeded in producing something resembling poetry in this

artificial style, J. B. Rousseau (1671-1741). Rousseau, who in some

respects was nothing so little as a religious poet, was nevertheless

strongly influenced, as Marot had been, by the Psalms of David. His

_Odes_ and his _Cantates_ are perhaps less destitute of that spirit than

the work of any other poet of the century excepting Andre Chenier.

Rousseau was also an extremely successful epigrammatist, having in this

respect, too, resemblances to Marot. Le Franc de Pompignan (1700-1784),

to whom Voltaire's well-known sarcasms are not altogether just, and

Louis Racine (1692-1763), who wrote pious and altogether forgotten

poems, belonged to the same poetical school; though both the style and

matter of Racine are strongly tinctured by his Port Royalist sympathies

and education. Lighter verse was represented in the 18th century by the

long-lived Saint-Aulaire (1643-1742), by Gentil Bernard (1710-1775), by

the abbe (afterwards cardinal) de Bernis (1715-1794), by Claude Joseph

Dorat (1734-1780), by Antoine Bertin (1752-1790) and by Evariste de

Parny (1753-1814), the last the most vigorous, but all somewhat

deserving the term applied to Dorat of _ver luisant du Parnasse_. The

jovial traditions of Saint-Amant begat a similar school of anacreontic

songsters, which, represented in turn by Charles Francois Panard

(1674-1765), Charles Colle (1709-1783), Armand Gouffe (1775-1845), and

Marc-Antoine-Madeleine Desaugiers (1772-1827), led directly to the best

of all such writers, Beranger. To this class Rouget de Lisle (1760-1836)

perhaps also belongs; though his most famous composition, the

_Marseillaise_, is of a different stamp. Nor is the account of the light

verse of the 18th century complete without reference to a long

succession of fable writers, who, in an unbroken chain, connect La

Fontaine in the 17th century with Viennet in the 19th. None of the

links, however, of this chain, with the exception of Jean Pierre Florian

(1759-1794) deserve much attention. The universal faculty of Voltaire

(1694-1778) showed itself in his poetical productions no less than in

his other works, and it is perhaps not least remarkable in verse. It is

impossible nowadays to regard the _Henriade_ as anything but a highly

successful prize poem, but the burlesque epic of _La Pucelle_,

discreditable as it may be from the moral point of view, is remarkable

enough as literature.

Chenier.

The epistles and satires are among the best of their kind, the verse

tales are in the same way admirable, and the epigrams, impromptus, and

short miscellaneous poems generally are the _ne plus ultra_ of verse

which is not poetry. The Anglomania of the century extended into poetry,

and the _Seasons_ of Thomson set the example of a whole library of

tedious descriptive verse, which in its turn revenged France upon

England by producing or helping to produce English poems of the Darwin

school. The first of these descriptive performances was the _Saisons_ of

Jean Francois de Saint-Lambert (1716-1803), identical in title with its

model, but of infinitely inferior value. Saint-Lambert was followed by

Jacques Delille (1738-1813) in _Les Jardins_, Antoine Marin le Mierre

(1723-1793) in _Les Fastes_, and Jean Antoine Roucher (1745-1794) in

_Les Mois_. Indeed, everything that could be described was seized upon

by these describers. Delille also translated the _Georgics_, and for a

time was the greatest living poet of France, the title being only

disputed by Escouchard le Brun (1729-1807), a lyrist and ode writer of

the school of J. B. Rousseau, but not destitute of energy. The only

other poets until Chenier who deserve notice are Nicolas Gilbert

(1751-1780)--the French Chatterton, or perhaps rather the French Oldham,

who died in a workhouse at twenty-nine after producing some vigorous

satires and, at the point of death, an elegy of great beauty; Jacques

Charles Louis Clinchaut de Malfilatre (1732-1767), another short-lived

poet whose "Ode to the Sun" has a certain stateliness; and Jean Baptiste

Gresset (1709-1777), the author of _Ver-Vert_ and of other poems of the

lighter order, which are not far, if at all, below the level of

Voltaire. Andre Chenier (1762-1794) stands far apart from the art of his

century, though the strong chain of custom, and his early death by the

guillotine, prevented him from breaking finally through the restraints

of its language and its versification. Chenier, half a Greek by blood,

was wholly one in spirit and sentiment. The manner of his verses, the

very air which surrounds them and which they diffuse, are different from

those of the 18th century; and his poetry is probably the utmost that

its language and versification could produce. To do more, the revolution

which followed a generation after his death was required.

Diderot (plays).

_18th-Century Drama._--The results of the cultivation of dramatic poetry

at this time were even less individually remarkable than those of the

attention paid to poetry proper. Here again the astonishing power and

literary aptitude of Voltaire gave value to his attempts in a style

which, notwithstanding that it counts Racine among its practitioners,

was none the less predestined to failure. Voltaire's own efforts in this

kind are indisputably as successful as they could be. Foreigners usually

prefer _Mahomet_ and _Zaire_ to _Bajazet_ and _Mithridate_, though there

is no doubt that no work of Voltaire's comes up to _Polyeucte_ and

_Rodogune_, as certainly no single passage in any of his plays can

approach the best passages of _Cinna_ and _Les Horaces_. But the

remaining tragic writers of the century, with the single exception of

Crebillon _pere_, are scarcely third-rate. C. Jolyot de Crebillon

(1674-1762) himself had genius, and there are to be found in his work

evidences of a spirit which had seemed to die away with _Saint-Genest_,

and was hardly to revive until _Hernani_. Of the imitators of Racine and

Voltaire, La Motte in _Ines de Castro_ was not wholly unsuccessful.

Francois Joseph de la Grange-Chancel (1677-1758) copied chiefly the

worst side of the author of _Britannicus_, and Bernard Joseph Saurin

(1706-1781) and Pierre-Laurent de Belloy (1727-1775) performed the same

service for Voltaire. Le Mierre and La Harpe, mentioned and to be

mentioned, were tragedians; but the _Iphigenie en Tauride_ of Guimond de

la Touche (1725-1760) deserves more special mention than anything of

theirs. There was an infinity of tragic writers and tragic plays in this

century, but hardly any others of them even deserve mention. The muse of

comedy was decidedly more happy in her devotees. Moliere was a far safer

if a more difficult model than Racine, and the inexorable fashion which

had bound down tragedy to a feeble imitation of Euripides did not

similarly prescribe an undeviating adherence to Terence. Tragedy had

never been, has scarcely been since, anything but an exotic in France;

comedy was of the soil and native. Very early In the century Alain Rene

le Sage (1668-1747), in the admirable comedy of _Turcaret_, produced a

work not unworthy to stand by the side of all but his master's best.

Philippe Destouches (1680-1754) was also a fertile comedy writer in the

early years of the century, and in _Le Glorieux_ and _Le Philosophe

marie_ achieved considerable success. As the age went on, comedy, always

apt to lay hold of passing events, devoted itself to the great struggle

between the Philosophes and their opponents. Curiously enough, the party

which engrossed almost all the wit of France had the worst of it in this

dramatic portion of the contest, if in no other. The _Mechant_ of

Gresset and the _Metromanie_ of Alexis Piron (1689-1773) were far

superior to anything produced on the other side, and the _Philosophes_

of Charles Palissot de Montenoy (1730-1814), though scurrilous and

broadly farcical, had a great success. On the other hand, it was to a

Philosophe that the invention of a new dramatic style was due, and still

more the promulgation of certain ideas on dramatic criticism and

construction, which, after being filtered through the German mind, were

to return to France and to exercise the most powerful influence on its

dramatic productions. This was Denis Diderot (1713-1784), the most

fertile genius of the century, but also the least productive in finished

and perfect work. His chief dramas, the _Fils naturel_ and the _Pere de

famille_, are certainly not great successes; the shorter plays, _Est-il

bon? est-il mechant?_ and _La Piece et le prologue_, are better. But it

was his follower Michel Jean Sedaine (1719-1797) who, in _Le Philosophe

sans le savoir_ and other pieces, produced the best examples of the

bourgeois as opposed to the heroic drama. Diderot is sometimes credited

or discredited with the invention of the _Comedie Larmoyante_, a title

which indeed his own plays do not altogether refuse, but this special

variety seems to be, in its invention, rather the property of Pierre

Claude Nivelle de la Chaussee (1692-1754). Comedy sustained itself, and

even gained ground towards the end of the century; the _Jeune Indienne_

of Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794), if not quite worthy of its author's

brilliant talent in other paths, is noteworthy, and so is the _Billet

perdu_ of Joseph Francois Edouard de Corsembleu Desmahis (1722-1761),

while at the extreme limit of our present period there appears the

remarkable figure of Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799). The

_Mariage de Figaro_ and the _Barbier de Seville_ are well known as

having had attributed to them no mean place among the literary causes

and forerunners of the Revolution. Their dramatic and literary value

would itself have sufficed to obtain attention for them at any time,

though there can be no doubt that their popularity was mainly due to

their political appositeness. The most remarkable point about them, as

about the school of comedy of which Congreve was the chief master in

England at the beginning of the century, was the abuse and superfluity

of wit in the dialogue, indiscriminately allotted to all characters

alike. It is difficult to give particulars, but would be improper to

omit all mention, of such dramatic or quasi-dramatic work as the

libretti of operas, farces for performance at fairs and the like. French

authors of the time from Le Sage downwards usually managed these with

remarkable skill.

J. J. Rousseau.

_18th-Century Fiction._--With prose fiction the case was altogether

different. We have seen how the short tale of a few pages had already in

the 16th century attained high if not the highest excellence; how at

three different periods the fancy for long-winded prose narration

developed itself in the prose rehandlings of the chivalric poems, in the

_Amadis_ romances, and in the portentous recitals of Gomberville and La

Calprenede; how burlesques of these romances were produced from Rabelais

to Scarron; and how at last Madame de Lafayette showed the way to

something like the novel of the day. If we add the fairy story, of which

Perrault and Madame d'Aulnoy were the chief practitioners, and a small

class of miniature romances, of which _Aucassin et Nicolette_ in the

13th, and the delightful _Jehan de Paris_ (of the 15th or 16th, in which

a king of England is patriotically sacrificed) are good representatives,

we shall have exhausted the list. The 18th century was quick to develop

the system of the author of the _Princesse de Cleves_, but it did not

abandon the cultivation of the romance, that is to say, fiction dealing

with incident and with the simpler passions, in devoting itself to the

novel, that is to say, fiction dealing with the analysis of sentiment

and character. Le Sage, its first great novelist, in his _Diable

boiteux_ and _Gil Blas_, went to Spain not merely for his subject but

also for his inspiration and manner, following the lead of the picaroon

romance of Rojas and Scarron. Like Fielding, however, whom he much

resembles, Le Sage mingled with the romance of incident the most careful

attention to character and the most lively portrayal of it, while his

style and language are such as to make his work one of the classics of

French literature. The novel of character was really founded in France

by the abbe Prevost d'Exilles (1697-1763), the author of _Cleveland_ and

of the incomparable _Manon Lescaut_. The popularity of this style was

much helped by the immense vogue in France of the works of Richardson.

Side by side with it, however, and for a time enjoying still greater

popularity, there flourished a very different school of fiction, of

which Voltaire, whose name occupies the first or all but the first place

in every branch of literature of his time, was the most brilliant

cultivator. This was a direct development of the earlier _conte_, and

consisted usually of the treatment, in a humorous, satirical, and not

always over-decent fashion, of contemporary foibles, beliefs,

philosophies and occupations. These tales are of every rank of

excellence and merit both literary and moral, and range from the

astonishing wit, grace and humour of _Candide_ and _Zadig_ to the book

which is Diderot's one hardly pardonable sin, and the similar but more

lively efforts of Crebillon _fils_ (1707-1777). These latter deeps led

in their turn to the still lower depths of La Clos and Louvet. A third

class of 18th-century fiction consists of attempts to return to the

humorous _fatrasie_ of the 16th century, attempts which were as much

influenced by Sterne as the sentimental novel was by Richardson. The

_Homme aux quarante ecus_ of Voltaire has something of this character,

but the most characteristic works of the style are the _Jacques le

fataliste_ of Diderot, which shows it nearly at its best, and the

_Compere Mathieu_, sometimes attributed to Pigault-Lebrun (1753-1835),

but no doubt in reality due to Jacques du Laurens (1719-1797), which

shows it at perhaps its worst. Another remarkable story-teller was

Cazotte (1719-1792), whose _Diable amoureux_ displays much fantastic

power, and connects itself with a singular fancy of the time for occult

studies and _diablerie_, manifested later by the patronage shown to

Cagliostro, Mesmer, St Germain and others. In this connexion, too, may

perhaps also be mentioned most appropriately Restif de la Bretonne, a

remarkably original and voluminous writer, who was little noticed by his

contemporaries and successors for the best part of a century. Restif,

who was nicknamed the "Rousseau of the gutter," _Rousseau du ruisseau_,

presents to an English imagination many of the characteristics of a

non-moral Defoe. While these various schools busied themselves more or

less with real life seriously depicted or purposely travestied, the

great vogue and success of _Telemaque_ produced a certain number of

didactic works, in which moral or historical information was sought to

be conveyed under a more or less thin guise of fiction. Such was the

_Voyage du jeune Anacharsis_ of Jean Jacques Barthelemy (1716-1795);

such the _Numa Pompilius_ and _Gonzalve de Cordoue_ of Florian

(1755-1794), who also deserves notice as a writer of pastorals, fables

and short prose tales; such the _Belisaire_ and _Les Incas_ of Jean

Francois Marmontel (1723-1799). Between this class and that of the novel

of sentiment may perhaps be placed _Paul et Virginie_ and _La Chaumiere

indienne_; though Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814) should more

properly be noticed after Rousseau and as a moralist. Diderot's

fiction-writing has already been referred to more than once, but his

_Religieuse_ deserves citation here as a powerful specimen of the novel

both of analysis and polemic; while his undoubted masterpiece, the

_Neveu de Rameau_, though very difficult to class, comes under this head

as well as under any other. There are, however, two of the novelists of

this age, and of the most remarkable, who have yet to be noticed, and

these are the author of _Marianne_ and the author of _Julie_. We do not

mention Pierre de Marivaux (1688-1763) in this connexion as the equal of

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), but merely as being in his way almost

equally original and equally remote from any suspicion of school

influence. He began with burlesque writing, and was also the author of

several comedies, of which _Les Fausses Confidences_ is the principal.

But it is in prose fiction that he really excels. He may claim to have,

at least in the opinion of his contemporaries, invented a style, though

perhaps the term _marivaudage_, which was applied to it, has a not

altogether complimentary connotation. He may claim also to have invented

the novel without a purpose, which aims simply at amusement, and at the

same time does not seek to attain that end by buffoonery or by satire.

Gray's definition of happiness, "to lie on a sofa and read endless

novels by Marivaux" (it is true that he added Crebillon), is well known,

and the production of mere pastime by means more or less harmless has

since become so well-recognized a function of the novelist that

Marivaux, as one of the earliest to discharge it, deserves notice. The

name, however, of Jean Jacques Rousseau is of far different importance.

His two great works, the _Nouvelle Heloise_ and _Emile_, are as far as

possible from being perfect as novels. But no novels in the world have

ever had such influence as these. To a great extent this influence was

due mainly to their attractions as novels, imperfect though they may be

in this character, but it was beyond dispute also owing to the doctrines

which they contained, and which were exhibited in novel form.

Such are the principal developments of fiction during the century; but

it is remarkable that, varied as they were, and excellent as was some of

the work to which they gave rise, none of these schools was directly

very fertile in results or successors. The period with which we shall

next have to deal, that from the outbreak of the Revolution to the death

of Louis XVIII., is curiously barren of fiction of any merit. It was not

till English influence began again to assert itself in the later days of

the Restoration that the prose romance began once more to be written.

_18th-Century History._--It is not, however, in any of the departments

of _belles-lettres_ that the real eminence of the 18th century as a time

of literary production in France consists. In all serious branches of

study its accomplishments were, from a literary point of view,

remarkable, uniting as it did an extraordinary power of popular and

literary expression with an ardent spirit of inquiry, a great

speculative ability, and even a far more considerable amount of

laborious erudition than is generally supposed. The historical studies

and results of 18th-century speculation in France are of especial and

peculiar importance. There is no doubt that what is called the science

of history dates from this time, and though the beginning of it is

usually assigned to the Italian Vico, its complete indication may

perhaps with equal or greater justice be claimed by the Frenchman

Turgot. Before Turgot, however, there were great names in French

historical writing, and perhaps the greatest of all is that of Charles

Secondat de Montesquieu (1689-1755). The three principal works of this

great writer are all historical and at the same time political in

character. In the _Lettres persanes_ he handled, with wit inferior to

the wit of no other writer even in that witty age, the corruptions and

dangers of contemporary morals and politics. The literary charm of this

book--the plan of which was suggested by a work, the _Amusements serieux

et comiques_, of Dufresny (1648-1724), a comic writer not destitute of

merit--is very great, and its plan was so popular as to lead to a

thousand imitations, of which all, except those of Voltaire and

Goldsmith, only bring out the immense superiority of the original. Few

things could be more different from this lively and popular book than

Montesquieu's next work, the _Grandeur et decadence des Romains_, in

which the same acuteness and knowledge of human nature are united with

considerable erudition, and with a weighty though perhaps somewhat

grandiloquent and rhetorical style. His third and greatest work, the

_Esprit des lois_, is again different both in style and character, and

such defects as it has are as nothing when compared with the merits of

its fertility in ideas, its splendid breadth of view, and the felicity

with which the author, in a manner unknown before, recognizes the laws

underlying complicated assemblages of fact. The style of this great work

is equal to its substance; less light than that of the _Lettres_, less

rhetorical than that of the _Grandeur des Romains_, it is still a

marvellous union of dignity and wit. Around Montesquieu, partly before

and partly after him, is a group of philosophical or at least systematic

historians, of whom the chief are Jean Baptiste Dubos (1670-1742), and

G. Bonnot de Mably (1709-1785). Dubos, whose chief work is not

historical but aesthetic (_Reflexions sur la poesie et la peinture_),

wrote a so-called _Histoire critique de l'etablissement de la monarchie

francaise_, which is as far as possible from being in the modern sense

critical, inasmuch as, in the teeth of history, and in order to exalt

the _Tiers etat_, it pretends an amicable coalition of Franks and Gauls,

and not an irruption by the former. Mably (_Observations sur l'histoire

de la France_) had a much greater influence than either of these

writers, and a decidedly mischievous one, especially at the period of

the Revolution. He, more than any one else, is responsible for the

ignorant and childish extolling of Greek and Roman institutions, and the

still more ignorant depreciation of the middle ages, which was for a

time characteristic of French politicians. Montesquieu was, as we have

said, followed by Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727-1781), whose writings

are few in number, and not remarkable for style, but full of original

thought. Turgot in his turn was followed by Condorcet (1743-1794), whose

tendency is somewhat more sociological than directly historical. Towards

the end of the period, too, a considerable number of philosophical

histories were written, the usual object of which was, under cover of a

kind of allegory, to satirize and attack the existing institutions and

government of France. The most famous of these was the _Histoire des

Indes_, nominally written by the Abbe Guillaume Thomas Francois Raynal

(1713-1796), but really the joint work of many members of the Philosophe

party, especially Diderot. Side by side with this really or nominally

philosophical school of history there existed another and less ambitious

school, which contented itself with the older and simpler view of the

science. The Abbe Rene de Vertot (1655-1735) belongs almost as much to

the 17th as to the 18th century; but his principal works, especially the

famous _Histoire des Chevaliers de Malte_, date from the later period,

as do also the _Revolutions romaines_. Vertot is above all things a

literary historian, and the well-known "Mon siege est fait," whether

true or not, certainly expresses his system. Of the same school, though

far more comprehensive, was the laborious Charles Rollin (1661-1741),

whose works in the original, or translated and continued in the case of

the _Histoire romaine_ by Jean Baptiste Louis Crevier (1693-1765), were

long the chief historical manuals of Europe. The president Charles Jean

Francois Henault (1685-1770), and Louis Pierre Anquetil (1723-1806) were

praiseworthy writers, the first of French history, the second of that

and much else. In the same class, too, far superior as is his literary

power, must be ranked the historical works of Voltaire, _Charles XII_.,

_Pierre le Grand_, &c. A very perfect example of the historian who is

literary first of all is supplied by Claude Carloman de Rulhiere

(1735-1791), whose _Revolution en Russie en 1762_ is one of the little

masterpieces of history, while his larger and posthumous work on the

last days of the Polish kingdom exhibits perhaps some of the defects of

this class of historians. Lastly must be mentioned the memoirs and

correspondence of the period, the materials of history if not history

itself. The century opened with the most famous of all these, the

memoirs of the duc de Saint-Simon (1675-1755), an extraordinary series

of pictures of the court of Louis XIV. and the Regency, written in an

unequal and incorrect style, but with something of the irregular

excellence of the great 16th-century writers, and most striking in the

sombre bitterness of its tone. The subsequent and less remarkable

memoirs of the century are so numerous that it is almost impossible to

select a few for reference, and altogether impossible to mention all. Of

those bearing on public history the memoirs of Madame de Stael (Mlle

Delaunay) (1684-1750), of Pierre Louis de Voyer, marquis d'Argenson

(1694-1757), of Charles Pinot Duclos (1704-1772), of Stephanie Felicite

de Saint-Aubin, Madame de Genlis (1746-1830), of Pierre Victor de

Besenval (1722-1791), of Madame Campan (1752-1822) and of the cardinal

de Bernis (1715-1794), may perhaps be selected for mention; of those

bearing on literary and private history, the memoirs of Madame d'Epinay

(1726-1783), those of Mathieu Marais (1664-1737) the so-called _Memoires

secrets_ of Louis Petit de Bachaumont (1690-1770), and the innumerable

writings having reference to Voltaire and to the Philosophe party

generally. Here, too, may be mentioned a remarkable class of literature,

consisting of purely private and almost confidential letters, which were

written at this time with very remarkable literary excellence. As

specimens may be selected those of Mademoiselle Aisse (1694-1757), which

are models of easy and unaffected tenderness, and those of Mademoiselle

de Lespinasse (1732-1776) the companion of Madame du Deffand and

afterwards of d'Alembert. These latter, in their extraordinary fervour

and passion, not merely contrast strongly with the generally languid and

frivolous gallantry of the age, but also constitute one of its most

remarkable literary monuments. It has been said of them that they "burn

the paper," and the expression is not exaggerated. Madame du Deffand's

(1697-1780) own letters, many of which were written to Horace Walpole,

are noteworthy in a very different way. Of lighter letters the charming

correspondence of Diderot with Mademoiselle Voland deserves special

mention. But the correspondence, like the memoirs of this century,

defies justice to be done to it in any cursory or limited mention. In

this connexion, however, it may be well to mention some of the most

remarkable works of the time, the _Confessions_, _Reveries_, and

_Promenades d'un solitaire_ of Rousseau. In these works, especially in

the _Confessions_, there is not merely exhibited passion as fervid

though perhaps less unaffected than that of Mademoiselle de

Lespinasse--there appear in them two literary characteristics which, if

not entirely novel, were for the first time brought out deliberately by

powers of the first order, were for the first time made the mainspring

of literary interest, and thereby set an example which for more than a

century has been persistently followed, and which has produced some of

the finest results of modern literature. The first of these was the

elaborate and unsparing analysis and display of the motives, the

weaknesses and the failings of individual character. This process, which

Rousseau unflinchingly performed on himself, has been followed usually

in respect to fictitious characters by his successors. The other novelty

was the feeling for natural beauty and the elaborate description of it,

the credit of which latter must, it has been agreed by all impartial

critics, be assigned rather to Rousseau than to any other writer. His

influence in this direction was, however, soon taken up and continued by

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the connecting link between Rousseau and

Chateaubriand, some of whose works have been already alluded to. In

particular the author of _Paul et Virginie_ set himself to develop the

example of description which Rousseau had set, and his word-paintings,

though less powerful than those of his model, are more abundant, more

elaborate, and animated by a more amiable spirit.

Condillac.

_18th-Century Philosophy._--The Anglomania which distinguished the time

was nowhere more strongly shown than in the cast and direction of its

philosophical speculations. As Montesquieu and Voltaire had imported

into France a vivid theoretical admiration for the British constitution

and for British theories in politics, so Voltaire, Diderot and a crowd

of others popularized and continued in France the philosophical ideas of

Hobbes and Locke and even Berkeley, the theological ideas of

Bolingbroke, Shaftesbury and the English deists, and the physical

discoveries of Newton. Descartes, Frenchman and genius as he was, and

though his principles in physics and philosophy were long clung to in

the schools, was completely abandoned by the more adventurous and

progressive spirits. At no time indeed, owing to the confusion of

thought and purpose to which we have already alluded, was the word

philosophy used with greater looseness than at this time. Using it, as

we have hitherto used it, in the sense of metaphysics, the majority of

the Philosophes have very little claim to their title. There were some

who manifested, however, an aptitude for purely philosophical argument,

and one who confined himself strictly thereto. Among these the most

remarkable are Julien Offroy de la Mettrie (1709-1751) and Denis

Diderot. La Mettrie in his works _L'Homme machine_, _L'Homme plante_,

&c., applied a lively and vigorous imagination, a considerable

familiarity with physics and medicine, and a brilliant but unequal

style, to the task of advocating materialistic ideas on the constitution

of man. Diderot, in a series of early works, _Lettre sur les aveugles_,

_Promenade d'un sceptique_, _Pensees philosophiques_, &c., exhibited a

good acquaintance with philosophical history and opinion, and gave sign

in this direction, as in so many others, of a far-reaching intellect. As

in almost all his works, however, the value of the thought is extremely

unequal, while the different pieces, always written in the hottest

haste, and never duly matured or corrected, present but few specimens of

finished and polished writing. Charles Bonnet (1720-1793), a Swiss of

Geneva, wrote a large number of works, many of which are purely

scientific. Others, however, are more psychological, and these, though

advocating the materialistic philosophy generally in vogue, were

remarkable for uniting materialism with an honest adherence to

Christianity. The half mystical writer, Louis Claude de Saint-Martin

(1743-1803) also deserves notice. But the French metaphysician of the

century is undoubtedly Etienne Bonnot, abbe de Condillac (1714-1780),

almost the only writer of the time in France who succeeded in keeping

strictly to philosophy without attempting to pursue his system to its

results in ethics, politics and theology. In the _Traite des

sensations_, the _Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines_ and

other works Condillac elaborated and continued the imperfect

sensationalism of Locke. As his philosophical view, though perhaps more

restricted, was far more direct, consecutive and uncompromising than

that of the Englishman, so his style greatly exceeded Locke's in

clearness and elegance and as a good medium of philosophical expression.

Voltaire (theology).