was laid at the insignificant village of Pourges, not far from Paris. He
found afterwards that the effect of the poem was injured by this change,
and he transferred it to its right and proper place.]
[Footnote 90: Citeaux was a famous abbey of Bernardins situated in
Burgundy. The monks of Citeaux had not conformed to the reform lately
introduced into other houses of their order, which caused Boileau to
represent Indolence as domiciled among them.]
[Footnote 91: The speech of Indolence breaks off suddenly and
characteristically,--
"La Mollesse, oppressée,
Dans sa bouche à ce mot sent sa langue glassée,
Et lasse de parler, succombant sous l'effort,
Soupire, étend les bras, ferme l'œil, et s'endort."
This last line, so expressive of the lassitude it describes, charmed the
brilliant but unfortunate Henrietta of England, duchess of Orleans. One
day, in the chapel at Versailles, while waiting the arrival of the king,
she perceived Boileau, and, beckoning him to approach, whispered:
"Soupire, étend les bras, ferme l'œil, et s'endort."]
[Footnote 92: Charles Perrault was a man of merit and imagination,
though his want of learning led him into such deplorable literary
errors. It was through his representations that Colbert founded the
academies of painting, sculpture, and architecture; and he always
exerted his influence in favour of the improvement of science and art.
The work by which he has, however, obtained immortality, is his "Mother
Goose's Tales." Perhaps he would have disdained a fame thus founded;
but, while the fancy is the portion of the human mind, shared in common
by young and old, which receives the greatest pleasure from works of
intellect; while (in spite of Rousseau's doctrine) children are
singularly quick in discerning the difference between a lie and a fable,
and that to interest their imaginations is the best method of enlarging
their minds and cultivating their affections'; Perrault's name will be
remembered with gratitude, and "Mother Goose's Tales" remain the classic
work of a child's library.]
[Footnote 93: Racine's Letters.]
[Footnote 94: Lettres à Racine.]
[Footnote 95: There is humour, certainly, in the description of the
bishop, in the "Lutrin," escaping from his enemies by forcing them to
receive his blessing.]
RACINE
1639-1699
Born under not very dissimilar circumstances from Boileau--running,
without great variation, the same literary career--sometimes associated
in the same labours, always making a part of the same society, and,
throughout, his dearest friend, yet the texture of their minds caused
Racine to be a very different person from the subject of the foregoing
sketch. The lives of both were unmarked by events; but while the one
calmly and philosophically enjoyed the pleasures of life, unharmed by
its pains, the more tender and sensitive nature of Racine laid him open
to their impression. Censures, that only roused Boileau to bitter
replies, saddened and crushed his friend. The feelings of religion,
which made the former a good and pious man, rendered the other, to a
great degree, a bigot. The one was independent of soul, the other sought
support: yet, as the faults of Racine were combined with tenderness and
amiability of disposition, and as he possessed the virtues of a warm
heart, it is impossible not to regard his faults with kindness, while we
deplore the mistakes into which they betrayed him. To trace out the
different natures of men, to account for the variation, either from
innate difference, or the influence of dissimilar circumstances, is,
perhaps, one of the most useful objects of a biographer. We all vary one
from another, yet none of us tolerate the difference in others: the
haughty and independent spirit disdains the pliant and tender, while
this regards its opposite as unfeeling and lawless. The conviction, on
the contrary, ought to be deeply impressed of the _harmony of
characters_--that certain defects and certain virtues are allied, and
ever go together. We should not ask the sheep for fleetness, nor wool
from the horse; but we may love and admire the gifts that each enjoy,
and profit by them, both as matter of advantage and instruction.
Racine was born of a respectable family of Ferté-Milon, a small town of
Valois. His father and grandfather both enjoyed small financial
situations in their native town. His father, Jean Racine, married Jeanne
Sconin, whose father occupied the same sort of position in society. This
pair had two children, whom their deaths left orphans in infancy. The
wife died in 1641, and her husband survived her only two years.
The two children, a boy and a girl, were brought up by their maternal
grandfather. The daughter passed her life at Ferté-Milon, and died
there at the advanced age of ninety-two. The son, named Jean, was born
on the 21st of December, 1639. We have few traces of his childhood. It
was not, apparently, a happy one; at least we are told that, when all
the family of Sconin assembled at his house, on those festive
anniversaries which the French celebrate with so much exactitude, his
orphan grandchildren were wholly disregarded[96]; and the gentle
sensitive heart of Racine must have felt this neglect severely. His
first studies were made at Beauvais. At this time the civil war of the
fronde was raging in France. The scholars at Beauvais were also divided
into parties; and "Vive Mazarin," or "A bas Mazarin," became the
rallying cries of their mimic wars; yet not so mimic but that the little
combatants encountered perils. Racine himself received a wound on his
forehead, of which he ever after bore the mark. The master of the school
used to show the scar to everybody as a token of the boy's courage; a
quality of which, in after life, he made no great display.
[Sidenote: 1670.
Ætat.
11.]
His grandfather died while he was still a child, and he fell to the care
of his widowed grandmother. Two of this lady's daughters were nuns in
the abbey of Port Royal, and she took up her abode with them; which was,
doubtless, the cause that, on leaving the school at Beauvais, Racine was
received a pupil in the seminary of that convent.
[Sidenote: 1655.
Ætat.
16.]
At this time, in France, the education of young people was chiefly
committed to the clergy. The jesuits did all they could to engross an
employment full of promise of power--the great aim of that society.
Their principal rivals were the teachers of the abbey of Port Royal,
whose methods were admirable, and whose enthusiasm led them to diligence
and patience in their task. Theoretically it seems an excellent plan to
commit the bringing up of youth to those who dedicate their lives to the
strictest practices of virtue, as the recluses of Port Royal at that
time undoubtedly did. But, in fact, the monkish spirit is so alien to
the true purposes of life, and men who sacrifice every pleasure and
affection to the maintenance of ascetic vows must naturally give so
preponderating an importance to the objects that influence them, that
such teachers are apt rather to trouble the conscience, and plunge youth
in extravagant devotion; inspiring rather a polemical spirit, or a dream
of idleness, than instilling that manly and active morality, and that
noble desire to make a right use of the faculties given us by God, which
is the aim of all liberal education. The effects of a monkish tutelage
spread a sinister influence over the ductile disposition of Racine; the
faults of his character were all fostered; the independence and
hardihood he wanted were never instilled.
As a school for learning it succeeded admirably. Greek and Latin were
assiduously cultivated by the tutors, and Racine's wonderful memory
caused him to make swift progress. M. de Sacy took particular pains with
him: discerning his talents, and hoping that he would one day
distinguish himself, he took him into his own apartments, and gave him
the name and treatment of a son. M. Hannon, who succeeded to M. de Sacy,
on the death of the latter, continued the same attentions. Racine was
poor: he could not purchase good copies of the classics, and he read
them in the Basle editions without any Latin translation. His son tells
us that he still possessed his father's Plutarch and Plato, the margins
of which were covered with annotations which proved his application and
learning.
It is impossible not to be struck by the benefit derived from the Greek
writers by a child of genius, who was indebted to the respect which the
priests showed for ancient authors for the awakening of his mind to
poetry and philosophy. But for this saving grace the monks would
probably have allowed him to read only books of scholastic piety.
Racine, young as he was, drank eagerly from the purest fountains of
intellectual beauty and grace, opened by the Greeks, unsurpassed even to
this time. His imaginative spirit was excited by the poetry of the Greek
tragedians; and he spent many a day wandering in the woods of Port Royal
with the works of Sophocles and Euripides in his hands. He thus obtained
a knowledge of these divine compositions which always remained; and in
after years he could recite whole plays.[97] It happened, however, that
he got hold of the Greek romance of the loves of Theagines and
Chariclea. This was too much for priestly toleration. The sacristan
discovered the book and devoted it to the flames; another copy met the
same fate. Racine bought a third, learnt the romance by heart, and then
took the volume to the monk, and told him he might burn that also.
It would appear that Racine was happy while at Port Royal. He was loved
by his masters: his gentle amiable nature led him to listen docilely to
their lessons; and the tenderness of his disposition was akin to that
piety which they sedulously sought to inculcate. The peculiar tenets of
the Port Royal, which fixed the foundations of all religion in the love
of God, found an echo in his heart; but how deeply is it be regretted,
that he imbibed that narrow spirit along with it that restricted the
adoration of the Creator to the abstract idea of himself, rather than a
warm diffusive love of the creation. Poetry was the very essence of
Racine's mind--the poetry of sentiment and the passions; but poetry was
forbidden by the jansenists, except on religious subjects, and Racine
could only indulge his tastes by stealth. His French verses, composed at
the Port Royal, are not good; for his native language, singularly
ill-adapted to verse, had not yet received that spirit of harmony with
which he was destined to inspire her.[98] His biographers have preserved
some specimens of his Latin verses, which have more merit. They want
originality and force, but they are smooth and pleasing, and show the
command he had of the language.
At the age of nineteen he left the Port Royal to follow his studies in
the college of Harcour, at Paris. The logic of the schools pleased him
little: his heart was still set on verse; and his letters, at this
period, to a youthful friend, show the playfulness of his mind, and his
desire to distinguish himself as a writer. An occasion presented itself.
[Sidenote: 1660.
Ætat.
21.]
The marriage of Louis XIV. caused every versifier in France to bring his
tribute of rhymes. Racine was then unknown. He had, indeed, written a
sonnet to his aunt, Madame Vitart, to compliment her on the birth of a
child, which sonnet, becoming known at Port Royal, awoke a holy horror
throughout the community. His aunt, Agnes de Sainte Thecle Racine, then
abbess, who had been his instructress, wrote him letter after letter,
"excommunication after excommunication," he calls it, to turn his heart
from such profane works. But the suggestions of the demon were too
strong; and Racine wrote an ode, entitled "Nymphes de la Seine," to
celebrate his sovereign's nuptials. His uncle, M. Vitart, showed it to
M. Chapelain, at that time ruler of the French Parnassus. Chapelain
thought the ode showed promise, and suggested a few judicious
alterations. "The ode has been shown to M. Chapelain," Racine writes to
a friend: "he pointed out several alterations I ought to make, which I
have executed, fearful at the same time that these changes would have to
be changed. I knew not to whom to apply for advice. I was ready to have
recourse, like Malherbe, to an old servant, had I not discovered that
she, like her master, was a jansenist, and might betray me, which would
ruin me utterly, considering that I every day receive letters on
letters, or rather excommunication on excommunication, on account of my
unlucky sonnet."
The ode, however, and its alterations, found favour in the sight of
Chapelain. It deserves the praise at least of being promising--it is
neither bombastic nor tedious, if it be neither original nor sublime.
The versification is harmonious, and, as a whole, it is unaffected and
pleasing. Chapelain carried his approbation so far as to recommend the
young poet and his ode to his patron, M. Colbert, who sent him a hundred
louis from the king, and soon after bestowed on him a pension of six
hundred livres, in his quality of man of letters.
Still, as time crept on, both Racine and his friends deemed it necessary
to take some decision with regard to his future career. His uncle, M. V;
tart, intendant of Chevreux, gave him employment to overlook some
repairs at that place: he did not like the occupation, and considered
Chevreux a sort of prison. His friends at Port Royal wished him to apply
to the law; and, when he testified his disinclination, were eager to
obtain for him some petty place which would just have maintained him.
Racine appears to have been animated by no mighty ambition. His son,
indeed, tells us that, when young, he had an ardent desire for glory,
suppressed afterwards by feelings of religion. But these aspirations
probably awoke in their full force afterwards, when success opened the
path to renown. There are no expressions in his early letters that
denote a thirst for fame: probably his actual necessities pressed too
hardly on him: he thought, perhaps, more of escape from distasteful
studies than attaining a literary reputation, and thought that he might
indulge his poetical dreams in the inaction of a clerical life. Whatever
his motives were, he showed no great dislike to become in some sort a
member of the church; and, when an opening presented itself, did not
turn away.
He had an uncle, father Sconin, canon of St. Geneviève at Paris, and at
one time general of that community. He was of a restless, meddling
disposition; so that at last his superiors, getting tired of the broils
in which he involved them, sent him into a sort of honourable banishment
at Uzès, where he possessed some ecclesiastical preferments. He wished
to resign his benefice to his nephew. Racine did not much like the
prospect; but he thought it best, in the first place, to accept his
uncle's invitation, and to visit him.
Uzès is in Provence. Racine repaired to Lyons, and then down the Rhone
to his destination. In the spirit of a true Parisian, he gives no token
of delight at the beauties of nature: he talks of high mountains and
precipitous rocks with a carelessness ill-befitting a poet; and shows at
once that, though he could adorn passion and sentiment with the colours
of poetry, he had not that higher power of the imagination which allies
the emotions of the heart with the glories of the visible creation, and
creates, as it were, "palaces of nature" for the habitation of the
sublimer passions. We have several of his letters written at this
period. They display vivacity, good humour, and a well-regulated mind:
scraps of verses intersperse them; but these are merely _à propos_ of
familiar or diverting events. There is no token of the elevated nor the
fanciful--nothing, in short, of the poet who, if he did not, like his
masters the Greeks, put a soul into rocks, streams, flowers, and the
winds of heaven, yet afterwards showed a spirit true to the touch of
human feeling, and capable of giving an harmonious voice to sorrow and
to love. One of his chief annoyances during this visit was the patois of
the people. He was eager to acquire a pure and elegant diction; and he
feared that his ear would be corrupted by the jargon to which he was
forced to listen. "I have as much need of an interpreter here," he
writes, "as a Muscovite in Paris. However, as I begin to perceive that
the dialect is a medley of Spanish mixed with Italian, and as I
understand these two languages, I sometimes have recourse to them; yet
often I lose my pains, asking for one thing and getting another. I sent
a servant for a hundred small nails, and he brought me three boxes of
_allumettes_." "This is a most tiresome town," he writes, in another
letter: "the inhabitants amuse themselves by killing each other, and
getting hanged. There are always lawsuits going on, wherefore I have
refused all acquaintance; for if I made one friend I should draw down a
hundred enemies. I have often been asked, unworthy as I am, to frequent
the society of the place; for my ode having been seen at the house of a
lady, every one came to visit the author: but it is to no purpose--_mens
immota manet_. I never believed myself capable of enduring so much
solitude, nor could you have ever hoped so much from my virtue. I pass
all my time with my uncle, with St. Thomas, and Virgil. I make many
notes on theology, and sometimes on poetry. My uncle has all sorts of
kind schemes for me--but none are yet certain: however, he makes me
dress in black from head to foot, and hopes to get something for me;
when I shall pay my debts, if I can; for I cannot before. I ought to
think on all the dunning you suffer on my account--I blush as I write;
_erubuit puer; salva res est._"
Obstacles, however, continued to present themselves to the execution of
any of his uncle's plans. Racine, as he grew hopeless of advancement,
turned his thoughts more entirely to composition. He wrote a poem called
"The Bath of Venus," and began a play on the subject of Theagines and
Chariclea, the beloved romance of his boyhood. After three months'
residence at Uzès he returned to Paris.
He returned disappointed and uncertain. Poetry--even the drama--occupied
his thoughts; but the opposition of his friends, and the little
confidence in himself which marked his disposition, might have made him
tremble to embark in a literary career, had not a circumstance occurred
which may be called an accident[99], but which was, indeed, one of those
slight threads which form the web of our lives, and compose the
machinery by which Providence directs it. Molière, having established
a comic company in Paris, grew jealous of the actors of the Hôtel de
Bourgogne, who prided themselves on the tragic dignity of their
representations. Having heard that a new piece was about to be
represented at that theatre, he was desirous of bringing out one
himself, on the same day, in rivalship. A new tragedy, secure of
success, was not easy to acquire. Racine had, on his return from
Provence, sent his "Theagines and Chariclea" to Molière. The latter saw
the defects of the piece, but, penetrating the talent of the author,
gave him general encouragement to proceed. At this crisis he remembered
him. Molière had a design of the "Frères Ennemis" in his portfolio,
which he felt incapable of filling up: he resolved to devolve the task
on Racine, but knew not where to find him. With some difficulty he
hunted him out, and besought him to write, if possible, an act a week;
and they even worked together, that greater speed might be attained.
Well acquainted as Molière was with the conduct of a drama, and the
trickery of actors, no doubt his instructions and aid were invaluable to
the young author. The piece was brought out, and succeeded--its faults
were pardoned on the score of its being a first production. When it was
afterwards published, Racine altered and corrected it materially. It
cannot be said, indeed, that, as some authors have done, he surprised
the world at first with a _chef d'œuvre_; elegance and harmony of
versification being his characteristics, he continued to improve to the
end, and his first piece may be considered as a _coup d'essai_.
[Sidenote: 1664.
Ætat.
25.]
The subject was not suited to him, whose merit lay in the struggle of
passion, and the gushing overflowings of tenderness. However, it went
through fifteen representations. It was speedily followed by his
"Alexandre." Neither in this play did he make any great progress, or
give the stamp of excellence which his dramas afterwards received.
[Sidenote: 1665.
Ætat.
26.]
It is said that he read his tragedy to Corneille, who praised it coldly,
and advised the author to give up writing for the stage. The mediocrity
of "Alexandre" prevents any suspicion that the great tragedian was
influenced by envy; and as Racine, in this play, again attempted a
subject requiring an energy and strength of virile passion of which he
was incapable, and in which Corneille so much excelled, we may believe
that the old master of the art felt impatient of the feebleness and
inefficiency of him who afterwards became a successful rival.
When we regard these first essays of Racine, we at once perceive the
origin of his defects, while we feel aware that a contrary system would
have raised him far higher as a dramatist. He was, of course, familiar
with Corneille's master-pieces; and he founded his ideas of the conduct
of a tragedy partly on these, and partly on the Greek. He did not read
Spanish nor English, and was ignorant of the original and bold
conceptions of the poets of those nations; and was hampered by an
observance of the unities, which had become a law on the French stage,
and was recognised and confirmed by himself. He felt that the Greek
drama is not adapted to modern times: he did not feel that the Greeks,
in taking national subjects, warmed the hearts of their audience; and
that the religion, the scenery, the poetry, the allusions--all Greek,
and all, therefore, full of living interest to Greeks, ought to serve as
a model whereby modern authors might form their own national history and
traditions into a dramatic form, not as ground-works for cold
imitations. Racine, from the first, fell into those deplorable mistakes
which render most of his plays--beautiful and graceful as they are, and
full of tenderness and passion--more like copies in fainter colours of
his sublime masters, than productions conceived by original genius, in a
spirit akin to the age and nation to which he belonged. Another
misfortune attended the composition of his tragedies, as it had also on
those of his predecessor. The Greek drama was held solemn and
sacred--the stage a temple: the English and Spanish theatres, wild, as
they might be termed, were yet magnificent in their errors. An evil
custom in France crushed every possibility of external pomp waiting on
the majesty of action. The nobles, the _petit maîtres_, all the men of
what is called the best society in Paris, were accustomed to sit on the
stage, and crowded it so as not to allow the author room to produce more
than two persons at a time before the scene. All possibility, therefore,
of reforming the dull undramatic expedient of the whole action passing
in narration between a chief personage and a confidant was taken away;
and thus plays assumed the form rather of narrative poems in dialogue
than the native guise of a moving, stirring picture of life, such as it
is with us--while the assembly of _dandy_ critics, ever on the look-out
for ridicule, allowed no step beyond conventional rules, and termed the
torpor of their imaginations, good taste. We only wonder that, under
such circumstances, tragedies of merit were produced. But to return to
Racine's "Alexandre."