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Transcriber's note:
The following typographical errors have been corrected:
Page 23: "The people--that is, the promiscuous mass of
mankind--hardly exist to Froissart." 'promiscuous' amended from
'promiscous'.
Page 178: "Gil Blas, discouraged, was about to leave Dr. Sangrado's
service, when that distinguished physician said to him--we take up
the text of the story once more:" 'Blas' amended from 'Glas'.
Page 189: "When the Christian religion, two centuries ago, became
unhappily divided into Catholic and Protestant, the people of the
north embraced the Protestant, and those south adhered still to the
Catholic." 'unhappily' amended from 'unhappilly'.
Page 238: "His European reputation in science made his name a tower
of strength to the 'Encyclopaedia,'--even after he ceased to be an
editorial coadjutor in the enterprise." 'editorial' amended from
'editoral'.
Page 295: "Dickens's Pegasus often flies with his bit between his
teeth. 'between' amended from 'beween'.
OTHER BOOKS BY PROFESSOR WILKINSON
THE EPIC OF SAUL
THE EPIC OF PAUL
WEBSTER: AN ODE. WITH NOTES
POEMS
A FREE LANCE IN THE FIELD OF LIFE AND LETTERS (Volume of Essays)
EDWIN ARNOLD AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER
THE DANCE OF MODERN SOCIETY
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY NEW YORK AND LONDON
_WILKINSON'S FOREIGN CLASSICS IN ENGLISH_
FRENCH CLASSICS
BY
WILLIAM CLEAVER WILKINSON
PROFESSOR OF POETRY AND CRITICISM
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
* * * * *
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1909
COPYRIGHT 1900
BY
WILLIAM CLEAVER WILKINSON.
(_Printed in the United States of America_)
PREFACE.
The preparation of the present volume proposed to the author a task more
difficult far than that undertaken in the case of either of the
literatures, the Greek or the Latin, treated in the four preceding
volumes of the present series. Those volumes dealt with literatures
limited and finished; this volume deals with a literature indefinitely
vast in extent, and still in vital process of growth. The selection of
material to be used was, in the case of the earlier volumes, virtually
made for the author beforehand, in a manner greatly to ease his sense of
responsibility for the exercise of individual judgment and taste. Long
prescription, joined to the winnowing effect of wear and waste through
time and chance, had left little doubt what works of what writers, Greek
and Roman, best deserved now to be shown to the general reader. Besides
this, the prevalent custom of the schools of classical learning could
then wisely be taken as a clew of guidance to be implicitly followed,
whatever might be the path through which it should lead. There is here
no similar avoidance of responsibility possible; for the schools have
not established a custom, and French literature is a living body, from
which no important members have ever yet been rent by the ravages of
time.
The plan of this volume, together with the compass proposed for it,
created the necessity of establishing from the outset certain limits to
be very strictly observed. There could be no introductory general
matter, beyond a rapid and summary review of that literature, as a
whole, which is the subject of the book. The list of authors selected
for representation must not include the names of any still living. A
third thing resolved upon was to make the number of representative
names small rather than large, choice rather than inclusive. The
principle at this point adopted was to choose those authors only whose
merit, or whose fame, or whose influence, might be supposed
unquestionably such that their names and their works would certainly be
found surviving, though the language in which they wrote should, like
its parent Latin, have perished from the tongues of men. The proportion
of space severally allotted to the different authors was to be measured
partly according to their relative importance, and partly according to
their estimated relative capacity of interesting in translation the
average intelligent reader of to-day.
In one word, the single inspiring aim of the author has here been to
furnish enlightened readers, versed only in the English language, the
means of acquiring, through the medium of their vernacular, some
proportioned, trustworthy, and effective knowledge and appreciation, in
its chief classics, of the great literature which has been written in
French. This object has been sought, not through narrative and
description, making books and authors the subject, but through the
literature itself, in specimen extracts illuminated by the necessary
explanation and criticism.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I.
FRENCH LITERATURE 5
II.
FROISSART 22
III.
RABELAIS 29
IV.
MONTAIGNE 40
V.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD (LA BRUYERE; VAUVENARGUES) 55
VI.
LA FONTAINE 66
VII.
MOLIERE 76
VIII.
PASCAL 91
IX.
MADAME DE SEVIGNE 105
X.
CORNEILLE 117
XI.
RACINE 127
XII.
BOSSUET, BOURDALOUE, MASSILLON, SAURIN 137
XIII.
FENELON 158
XIV.
LE SAGE 174
XV.
MONTESQUIEU, TOCQUEVILLE 184
XVI.
VOLTAIRE 199
XVII.
ROUSSEAU (ST. PIERRE) 212
XVIII.
THE ENCYCLOPAEDISTS 235
XIX.
MADAME DE STAEL 239
XX.
CHATEAUBRIAND 248
XXI.
BERANGER 256
XXII.
LAMARTINE 263
XXIII.
THE GROUP OF 1830 274
XXIV.
JOUBERT (SWETCHINE; AMIEL) 307
XXV.
EPILOGUE 318
INDEX 319
FRENCH CLASSICS IN ENGLISH
I.
FRENCH LITERATURE.
Of French literature, taken as a whole, it may boldly be said that it
is, not the wisest, not the weightiest, not certainly the purest and
loftiest, but by odds the most brilliant and the most interesting,
literature in the world. Strong at many points, at some points
triumphantly strong, it is conspicuously weak at only one point,--the
important point of poetry. In eloquence, in philosophy, even in
theology; in history, in fiction, in criticism, in epistolary writing,
in what may be called the pamphlet; in another species of composition,
characteristically, peculiarly, almost uniquely, French--the Thought and
the Maxim; by eminence in comedy, and in all those related modes of
written expression for which there is scarcely any name but a French
name--the _jeu d'esprit_, the _bon mot_, _persiflage_, the _phrase_; in
social and political speculation; last, but not least, in scientific
exposition elegant enough in form and in style to rise to the rank of
literature proper--the French language has abundant achievement to show,
that puts it, upon the whole, hardly second in wealth of letters to any
other language whatever, either ancient or modern.
What constitutes the charm--partly a perilous charm--of French
literature is before all else its incomparable clearness, its precision,
its neatness, its point; then, added to this, its lightness of touch,
its sureness of aim; its vivacity, sparkle, life; its inexhaustible
gayety; its impulsion toward wit--impulsion so strong as often to land
it in mockery; the sense of release that it breathes and inspires; its
freedom from prick to the conscience; its exquisite study and choice of
effect; its deference paid to decorum--decorum, we mean, in taste, as
distinguished from morals; its infinite patience and labor of art,
achieving the perfection of grace and of ease--in one word, its style.
We speak, of course, broadly and in the gross. There are plenty of
French authors to whom some of the traits just named could by no means
be attributed, and there is certainly not a single French author to whom
one could truthfully attribute them all. Voltaire insisted that what was
not clear was not French--so much, to the conception of this typical
Frenchman, was clearness the genius of the national speech. Still,
Montaigne, for example, was sometimes obscure; and even the tragedist
Corneille wrote here and there what his commentator, Voltaire, declared
to be hardly intelligible. So, too, Rabelais, coarsest of humorists,
offending decorum in various ways, offended it most of all exactly in
that article of taste, as distinguished from morals, which, with
first-rate French authors in general, is so capital a point of regard.
On the other hand, Pascal--not to mention the moralists by profession,
such as Nicole, and the preachers Bourdaloue and Massillon--Pascal,
quivering himself, like a soul unclad, with sense of responsibility to
God, constantly probes you, reading him, to the inmost quick of your
conscience. Rousseau, notably in the "Confessions," and in the
"Reveries" supplementary to the "Confessions;" Chateaubriand, echoing
Rousseau; and that wayward woman of genius, George Sand, disciple she to
both--were so far from being always light-heartedly gay, that not seldom
they spread over their page a somber atmosphere almost of gloom--gloom
flushed pensively, as with a clouded "setting sun's pathetic light." In
short, when you speak of particular authors, and naturally still more
when you speak of particular works, there are many discriminations to be
made. Such exceptions, however, being duly allowed, the literary product
of the French mind, considered in the aggregate, will not be
misconceived if regarded as possessing the general characteristics in
style that we have now sought briefly to indicate.
French literature, we have hinted, is comparatively poor in poetry. This
is due in part, no doubt, to the genius of the people; but it is also
due in part to the structure of the language. The language, which is
derived chiefly from Latin, is thence in such a way derived as to have
lost the regularity and stateliness of its ancient original, without
having compensated itself with any richness and sweetness of sound
peculiarly its own; like, for instance, that canorous vowel quality of
its sister derivative, the Italian. The French language, in short, is
far from being an ideal language for the poet.
In spite, however, of this fact, disputed by nobody, it is true of
French literature, as it is true of almost any national literature, that
it took its rise in verse instead of in prose. Anciently there were two
languages subsisting together in France which came to be distinguished
from each other in name by the word of affirmation--_oc_ or _oil_,
yes--severally peculiar to them, and thus to be known respectively as
_langue d'oc_ and _langue d'oil_. The future belonged to the latter of
the two forms of speech--the one spoken in the northern part of the
country. This, the _langue d'oil_, became at length the French language.
But the _langue d'oc_, a soft and musical tongue, survived long enough
to become the vehicle of lyric strains, mostly on subjects of love and
gallantry, still familiar in mention, and famous as the songs of the
troubadours. The flourishing time of the troubadours was in the eleventh
and twelfth centuries. Provencal is an alternative name of the language.
Side by side with the southern _troubadours_, or a little later than
they, the _trouveres_ of the north sang, with more manly ambition, of
national themes, and, like Virgil, of arms and of heroes. Some
productions of the _trouveres_ may fairly be allowed an elevation of aim
and of treatment entitling them to be called epic in character.
_Chansons de geste_ (songs of exploit), or _romans_, is the native name
by which those primitive French poems are known. They exist in three
principal cycles, or groups, of productions--one cycle composed of those
pertaining to Charlemagne; one, of those pertaining to British Arthur,
and a third, of those pertaining to ancient Greece and Rome, notably to
Alexander the Great. The cycle revolving around the majestic legend of
Charlemagne for its center was Teutonic, rather than Celtic, in spirit
as well as in theme. It tended to the religious in tone. The Arthurian
cycle was properly Celtic. It dealt more with adventures of love. The
Alexandrian cycle, so named from one principal theme celebrated--namely,
the deeds of Alexander the Great--mixed fantastically the traditions of
ancient Greece and Rome with the then prevailing ideas of chivalry, and
with the figments of fairy lore. (The metrical form employed in these
poems gave its name to the Alexandrine line later so predominant in
French poetry.) The volume of this quasi-epical verse, existing in its
three groups, or cycles, is immense. So is that of the satire and the
allegory in meter that followed. From this latter store of stock and
example, Chaucer drew to supply his muse with material. The _fabliaux_,
so called--fables, that is, or stories--were still another form of
French literature in verse. It is only now, within the current decade of
years, that a really ample collection of _fabliaux_--hitherto, with the
exception of a few printed volumes of specimens, extant exclusively in
manuscript--has been put into course of publication. Rutebeuf, a
_trouvere_ of the reign of St. Louis (Louis IX., thirteenth century), is
perhaps as conspicuous a personal name as any that thus far emerges out
of the sea of practically anonymous early French authorship. A frankly
sordid and mercenary singer, Rutebeuf always tending to mockery, was not
seldom licentious--in both these respects anticipating, as probably also
to some extent by example conforming, the subsequent literary spirit of
his nation. The _fabliaux_ generally mingled with their narrative
interest that spice of raillery and satire constantly so dear to the
French literary appetite. Thibaud was, in a double sense, a royal singer
of songs; for he reigned over Navarre, as well as chanted sweetly in
verse his love and longing, so the disputed legend asserts, for Queen
Blanche of Castile. Thibaud bears the historic title of The Song-maker.
He has been styled the Beranger of the thirteenth century. To Thibaud is
said to be due the introduction of the feminine rhyme into French
poetry--a metrical variation of capital importance. The songs of
Abelard, in the century preceding Thibaud, won a wide popularity.
Prose, meantime, had been making noteworthy approaches to form.
Villehardouin must be named as first in time among French writers of
history. His work is entitled, "Conquest of Constantinople." It gives an
account of the fourth crusade. Joinville, a generation later, continues
the succession of chronicles with his admiring story of the life of St.
Louis, whose personal friend he was. But Froissart of the fourteenth
century, and Comines of the fifteenth, are greater names. Froissart, by
his simplicity and his narrative art, was the Herodotus, as Philip de
Comines, for his political sagacity, has been styled the Tacitus, of
French historical literature. Up to the time of Froissart, the
literature which we have been treating as French was different enough in
form from the French of to-day to require what might be called
translation in order to become generally intelligible to the living
generation of Frenchmen. The text of Froissart is pretty archaic, but it
definitely bears the aspect of French.
With the name of Comines, who wrote of Louis XI. (compare Walter Scott's
"Quentin Durward"), we reach the fifteenth century, and are close upon
the great revival of learning which accompanied the religious
reformation under Luther and his peers. Now come Rabelais, boldly
declared by Coleridge one of the great creative minds of literature; and
Montaigne, with those essays of his, still living, and, indeed, certain
always to live. John Calvin, meantime, writes his "Institutes of the
Christian Religion" in French as well as in Latin, showing, once and for
all, that in the right hands his vernacular tongue was as capable of
gravity as many a writer before him had superfluously shown that it was
capable of levity. Amyot, the translator of Plutarch, is a French writer
of power, without whom the far greater Montaigne could hardly have been.
The influence of Amyot on French literary history is wider in reach and
longer in duration than we thus indicate; but Montaigne's indebtedness
to him is alone enough to prove that a mere translator had in this man
made a very important contribution to the forming prose literature of
France.
"The Pleiades," so called, were a group of seven writers, who, about the
middle of the sixteenth century, banded themselves together in France,
with the express aim of supplying influential example to improve the
French language for literary purposes. Their peculiar appellation, "The
Pleiades," was copied from that of a somewhat similar group of Greek
writers that existed in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Of course, the
implied allusion in it is to the constellation of the Pleiades. The
individual name by which the "Pleiades" of the sixteenth century may
best be remembered is that of Ronsard, the poet, associated with the
romantic and pathetic memory of Mary Queen of Scots. Never, perhaps, in
the history of letters was the fame of a poet in the poet's own
life-time more universal and more splendid than was the fame of Ronsard.
A high court of literary judicature formally decreed to Ronsard the
title of The French Poet by eminence. This occurred in the youth of the
poet. The wine of success so brilliant turned the young fellow's head.
He soon began to play lord paramount of Parnassus, with every air of one
born to the purple. The kings of the earth vied with each other to do
him honor. Ronsard affected scholarship, and the foremost scholars of
his time were proud to place him with Homer and with Virgil on the roll
of the poets. Ronsard's peculiarity in style was the free use of words
and constructions not properly French. Boileau indicated whence he
enriched his vocabulary and his syntax, by satirically saying that
Ronsard spoke Greek and Latin in French. At his death, Ronsard was
almost literally buried under praises. Sainte-Beuve strikingly says that
he seemed to go forward into posterity as into a temple.
Sharp posthumous reprisals awaited the extravagant fame of Ronsard.
Malherbe, coming in the next generation, legislator of Parnassus,
laughed the literary pretensions of Ronsard to scorn. This stern critic
of form, such is the story, marked up his copy of Ronsard with notes of
censure so many, that a friend of his, seeing the annotated volume,
observed, "What here is not marked will be understood to have been
approved by you." Whereupon Malherbe, taking his pen, with one
indiscriminate stroke drew it abruptly through the whole volume. "There
I Ronsardized," the contemptuous critic would exclaim, when in reading
his own verses to an acquaintance--for Malherbe was a poet himself--he
happened to encounter a word that struck him as harsh or improper.
Malherbe, in short, sought to chasten and check the luxuriant overgrowth
to which the example and method of the Pleiades were tending to push the
language of poetry in French. The resultant effect of the two contrary
tendencies--that of literary wantonness on the one hand, and that of
literary prudery on the other--was at the same time to enrich and to
purify French poetical diction. Balzac (the elder), close to Malherbe in
time, performed a service for French prose similar to that which the
latter performed for French verse. These two critical and literary
powers brought in the reign of what is called classicism in France.
French classicism had its long culmination under Louis XIV.
But it was under Louis XIII., or rather under that monarch's great
minister, Cardinal Richelieu, that the rich and splendid Augustan age of
French literature was truly prepared. Two organized forces, one of them
private and social, the other official and public, worked together,
though sometimes perhaps not in harmony, to produce the magnificent
literary result that illustrated the time of Louis XIV. Of these two
organized forces the Hotel de Rambouillet was one, and the French
Academy was the other. The Hotel de Rambouillet has become the adopted
name of a literary society, presided over by the fine inspiring genius
of the beautiful and accomplished Italian wife of the Marquis de
Rambouillet, a lady who generously conceived the idea of rallying the
feminine wit and virtue of the kingdom to exert a potent influence for
regenerating the manners and morals, and indeed the literature, of
France. At the high court of blended rank and fashion and beauty and
polish and virtue and wit, thus established in the exquisitely builded
and decorated saloons of the Rambouillet mansion, the selectest literary
genius and fame of France were proud and glad to assemble for the
discussion and criticism of literature. Here came Balzac and Voiture;
here Corneille read aloud his masterpieces before they were represented
on the stage; here Descartes philosophized; here the large and splendid
genius of Bossuet first unfolded itself to the world; here Madame de
Sevigne brought her bright, incisive wit, trebly commended by stainless
reputation, unwithering beauty, and charming address, in the woman who
wielded it. The noblest blood of France added the decoration and
inspiration of their presence. It is not easy to overrate the diffusive
beneficent influence that hence went forth to change the fashion of
literature, and to change the fashion of society, for the better. The
Hotel de Rambouillet proper lasted two generations only; but it had a
virtual succession, which, though sometimes interrupted, was scarcely
extinct until the brilliant and beautiful Madame Recamier ceased, about
the middle of the present century, to hold her famous _salons_ in Paris.
The continuous fame and influence of the French Academy, founded by
Richelieu, everybody knows. No other European language has been
elaborately and sedulously formed and cultivated like the French.
But great authors are better improvers of a language than any societies,
however influential. Corneille, Descartes, Pascal, did more for French
style than either the Hotel de Rambouillet or the Academy--more than
both these two great literary societies together. In verse, Racine,
following Corneille, advanced in some important respects upon the
example and lead of that great original master; but in prose, when
Pascal published his "Provincial Letters," French style reached at once
a point of perfection beyond which it never since has gone. Bossuet,
Bourdaloue, Fenelon, Massillon, Moliere, La Fontaine, Boileau, La
Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere--what a constellation of names are these to
glorify the age of Louis XIV.! And Louis XIV. himself, royal embodiment
of a literary good sense carried to the pitch of something very like
real genius in judgment and taste--what a sun was he (with that talent
of his for kingship, probably never surpassed), to balance and to sway,
from his unshaken station, the august intellectual system of which he
alone constituted the despotic center to attract and repel! Seventy-two
years long was this sole individual reign. Louis XIV. still sat on the
throne of France when the seventeenth century became the eighteenth.
The eighteenth century was an age of universal reaction in France.
Religion, or rather ecclesiasticism--for, in the France of those times,
religion was the Church, and the Church was the Roman Catholic
hierarchy--had been the dominant fashion under Louis XIV. Infidelity was
a broad literary mark, written all over the face of the eighteenth
century. It was the hour and power of the Encyclopaedists and the
Philosophers--of Voltaire, of Diderot, of D'Alembert, of Rousseau.
Montesquieu, though contemporary, belongs apart from these writers. More
really original, more truly philosophical, he was far less
revolutionary, far less destructive, than they. Still, his influence
was, on the whole, exerted in the direction, if not of infidelity, at
least of religious indifferentism. The French Revolution was laid in
train by the great popular writers whom we have now named, and by their
fellows. It needed only the spark, which the proper occasion would be
sure soon to strike out, and the awful earthshaking explosion would
follow. After the Revolution, during the First Empire, so called--the
usurpation, that is, of Napoleon Bonaparte--literature was well-nigh
extinguished in France. The names, however, then surpassingly brilliant,
of Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael, belong to this period.
Three centuries have now elapsed since the date of "The Pleiades."
Throughout this long period, French literature has been chiefly under
the sway of that spirit of classicism in style which the reaction
against Ronsardism, led first by Malherbe and afterward by Boileau, had
established as the national standard in literary taste and aspiration.
But Rousseau's genius acted as a powerful solvent of the classic
tradition. Chateaubriand's influence was felt on the same side,
continuing Rousseau's. George Sand, too, and Lamartine, were forces that
strengthened this component. Finally, the great personality of Victor
Hugo proved potent enough definitively to break the spell that had been
so long and so heavily laid on the literary development of France. The
bloodless warfare was fierce between the revolutionary Romanticists and
the conservative Classicists in literary style, but the victory seemed
at last to remain with the advocates of the new romantic revival. It
looked, on the face of the matter, like a signal triumph of originality
over prescription, of genius over criticism, of power over rule. We
still live in the midst of the dying echoes of this resonant strife.
Perhaps it is too early, as yet, to determine on which side, by the
merit of the cause, the advantage truly belongs. But, by the merit of
the respective champions, the result was, for a time at least,
triumphantly decided in favor of the Romanticists, against the
Classicists. The weighty authority, however, of Sainte-Beuve, at first
thrown into the scale that was destined to sink, was thence withdrawn,
and at last, if not resolutely cast upon the opposite side of the
balance, was left wavering in a kind of equipoise between the one and
the other.
But our preliminary sketch already reaches the limit within which our
choice of authors for representation is necessarily confined.
With first a few remarks, naturally suggested, that may be useful, on
the general subject thus rather touched merely than handled, the present
writer gives way to let now the representative authors themselves,
selected for the purpose, supply to the reader a just and lively idea of
French literature.
The first thing, perhaps, to strike the thoughtful mind in a
comprehensive view of the subject is not so much the length--though this
is remarkable--as the long _continuity_ of French literary history. From
its beginning down to the actual moment, French literature has suffered
no serious break in the course of its development. There have been
periods of greater and periods of less prosperity and fruit; but wastes
of marked suspension and barrenness there have been none.
The second thing noticeable is, that French literature has, to a
singular degree, lived an independent life of its own. It has found
copious springs of health and growth within its own bosom.
But then a third thing to be also observed is that, on the other hand,
the touch of foreign influence, felt and acknowledged by this most
proudly and self-sufficiently national of literatures, has proved to it,
at various epochs, a sovereign force of revival and elastic expansion.
Thus, the great renascence in the sixteenth century of ancient Greek and
Latin letters was new life to French literature. So, again, Spanish
literature, brought into contact with French through Corneille and
Moliere, with others, gave to the national mind of France a new literary
launch. But the most recent and perhaps the most remarkable example of
foreign influence quickening French literature to make it freshly
fruitful is supplied in the great romanticizing movement under the lead
of Victor Hugo. English literature--especially Shakespeare--was largely
the pregnant cause of this attempted emancipation of the French literary
mind from the bondage of classicism.
A fourth very salient trait in French literary history consists in the
self-conscious, elaborate, persistent efforts put forth from time to
time by individuals, and by organizations, both public and private, in
France, to improve the language and to elevate the literature of the
nation. We know of nothing altogether comparable to this anywhere else
in the literature of the world.
A fifth striking thing about French literature is, that it has, to a
degree as we believe beyond parallel, exercised a real and vital
influence on the character and the fortune of the nation. The social,
the political, the moral, the religious, history of France is from age
to age a faithful reflex of the changing phases of its literature. Of
course, a reciprocal influence has been constantly reflected back and
forth from the nation upon its literature, as well as from its
literature upon the nation. But where else in the world has it ever been
so extraordinarily, we may say so appallingly, true as in France, that
the nation was such because such was its literature?
French literature, it will at once be seen, is a study possessing,
beyond the literary, a social, a political, and even a religious,
interest.
Readers desiring to push their conversance with the literary history of
France further into the catalogue of its less important names than the
present volume will enable them to do will consult with profit either
the Primer, or the Short History, of French Literature, by Mr. George
Saintsbury. Mr. Saintsbury is a well-informed writer, who diffuses
himself perhaps too widely to do his best possible work. But he has made
French literature a specialty, and he is in general a trustworthy
authority on the subject.
Another writer on the subject is Mr. H. Van Laun. Him, although a
predecessor of his own in the field, Mr. Saintsbury severely ignores, by
claiming that he is himself the first to write in English a history of
French literature based on original and independent reading of the
authors. We are bound to say that Mr. Van Laun's work is of very poor
quality. It offers, indeed, to the reader one advantage not afforded by
either of Mr. Saintsbury's works--the advantage, namely, of illustrative
extracts from the authors treated extracts, however, not unfrequently
marred by wretched translation.
A noteworthy book of the year 1889 is "A History of French Literature"
by Charles Woodward Hutson, Professor of Modern Languages in the
University of Mississippi. This is an intelligent, well-studied,
well-written, carefully conscientious, comprehensive account of French
letters from the beginning down to the present day. It has, as a
concluding chapter, a notice of the "French Writers of Louisiana." An
admirable series of books, translated from the French, on the great
French writers, has recently been brought out in Chicago. These two last
mentions, by the way, strikingly suggest how wide, territorially, the
bounds of the republic of letters are becoming in our country.
The cyclopaedias are, some of them, both in articles on particular
authors and in their sketches of French literary history as a whole,
good sources of general information on the subject. Readers who command
the means of comparing several different cyclopaedias, or several
successive editions of some one cyclopaedia, as, for example, the
"Encyclopaedia Britannica," will find enlightening and stimulating the
not always harmonious views presented on the same topics. Hallam's
"History of Literature in Europe" is an additional authority by no means
to be overlooked. And, finally, it is to be remembered that any good
general history of France will almost certainly contain notices of the
more important literary events co-ordinately with those of political,
social, economic, or scientific moment.
II.
FROISSART.
1337-1410.
French literature, for the purposes of the present volume, may be said
to commence with Froissart. Froissart is a kind of mediaeval Herodotus.
His time is, indeed, almost this side the Middle Ages; but by character
and by sympathy he belongs rather to the mediaeval than to the modern
world. He is delightfully like Herodotus in the style and the spirit of
his narrative. Like Herodotus, he became a traveler in order to become
an historian. Like Herodotus, he was cosmopolite enough not to be
narrowly patriotic. Frenchman though he was, he took as much pleasure in
recounting English victories as he did in recounting French. His
countrymen have even accused him of unpatriotic partiality for the
English. His Chronicles have been, perhaps, more popular in their
English form than in their original French. Two prominent English
translations have been made, of which the later, that by Thomas Johnes,
is now most read. Sir Walter Scott thought the earlier excelled in charm
of style.
Jehan or Jean Froissart was a native of Valenciennes. His father meant
to make a priest of him, but the boy had tastes of his own. Before he
was well out of his teens he began writing history. This was under the
patronage of a great noble. Froissart was all his life a natural
courtier. He throve on the patronage of the great. It was probably not a
fawning spirit in him that made him this kind of man; it was rather an
innate love of splendor and high exploit. He admired chivalry, then in
its last days, and he painted it with the passion of an idealizer. His
father had been an heraldic painter, so it was perhaps an hereditary
strain in the son that naturally attached him to rank and royalty. The
people--that is, the promiscuous mass of mankind--hardly exist to
Froissart. His pages, spacious as they are, have scarcely room for more
than kings and nobles, and knights and squires. He is a picturesque and
romantic historian, in whose chronicles the glories of the world of
chivalry--a world, as we have said, already dying, and so soon to
disappear--are fixed forever on an ample canvas, in moving form and
shifting color, to delight the backward-looking imagination of mankind.
Froissart, besides being chronicler, was something of a poet. It would
still be possible to confront one who should call this in question with
thirty thousand surviving verses from the chronicler's pen. Quantity,
indeed, rather than quality, is the strong point of Froissart as poet.
He had no sooner finished the first part of his Chronicles, a
compilation from the work of an earlier hand, than he posted to England
for the purpose of formally presenting his work to the queen, a princess
of Hainault. She rewarded him handsomely. Woman enough, too, she was,
woman under the queen, duly to despatch him back again to his native
land, where the young fellow's heart, she saw, was lost to a noble lady,
whom, from his inferior station, he could woo only as moth might woo the
moon. He subsequently returned to Great Britain, and rode about on
horseback gathering materials of history. He visited Italy under
excellent auspices, and, together with Chaucer and with Petrarch,
witnessed a magnificent marriage ceremonial in Milan. Froissart
continued to travel far and wide, always a favorite with princes, but
always intent on achieving his projected work. He finally died at
Chimay, where he had spent his closing years in rounding out to their
completeness his "Chronicles of England, France, and the Adjoining
Countries."
Froissart is the most leisurely of historians, or, rather, he is a
writer who presupposes the largest allowance of leisure at the command
of his readers. He does not seek proportion and perspective. He simply
tells us all he has been able to find out respecting each transaction
in its turn as it successively comes up in the progress of his
narrative. If he goes wrong to-day, he will perhaps correct himself
to-morrow, or day after to-morrow--this not by changing the first record
where it stands, to make it right, but by inserting a note of his
mistake at the point, whatever it may be, which he shall chance to have
reached in the work of composition when the new and better light breaks
in on his eyes. The student is thus never quite certain but that what he
is at one moment reading in his author may be an error of which at some
subsequent moment he will be faithfully advised. A little discomposing,
this, but such is Froissart; and it is the philosophical way to take
your author as he is, and make the best of him.
Of such an historian, an historian so diffuse, and so little selective,
it would obviously be difficult to give any suitably brief specimen that
should seem to present a considerable historic action in full. We go to
Froissart's account of the celebrated battle of Poitiers (France). This
was fought in 1356, between Edward the Black Prince on the English side,
and King John on the side of the French. King John, as a result of the
battle, fell into the hands of the enemy.
The king of the French was, of course, a great prize to be secured by
the victorious English. There was eager individual rivalry as to what
particular warrior should be adjudged his true captor. Froissart thus
describes the strife and the issue:
There was much pressing at this time, through eagerness to take the
king; and those who were nearest to him, and knew him, cried out,
"Surrender yourself, surrender yourself, or you are a dead man!" In
that part of the field was a young knight from St. Omer, who was
engaged by a salary in the service of the king of England; his name
was Denys de Morbeque, who for five years had attached himself to the
English, on account of having been banished in his younger days from
France, for a murder committed in an affray at St. Omer. It
fortunately happened for this knight, that he was at the time near to
the king of France, when he was so much pulled about. He, by dint of
force, for he was very strong and robust, pushed through the crowd,
and said to the king, in good French, "Sire, sire, surrender
yourself!" The king, who found himself very disagreeably situated,
turning to him, asked, "To whom shall I surrender myself? to whom?
Where is my cousin, the Prince of Wales? If I could see him, I would
speak to him." "Sire," replied Sir Denys, "he is not here; but
surrender yourself to me, and I will lead you to him." "Who are you?"
said the king. "Sire, I am Denys de Morbeque, a knight from Artois;
but I serve the king of England because I cannot belong to France,
having forfeited all I possessed there." The king then gave him his
right-hand glove, and said, "I surrender myself to you." There was
much crowding and pushing about; for every one was eager to cry out,
"I have taken him!" Neither the king nor his youngest son Philip were
able to get forward, and free themselves from the throng....
The Prince [of Wales] asked them [his marshals] if they knew any thing
of the king of France; they replied, "No, sir, not for a certainty;
but we believe he must be either killed or made prisoner, since he has
never quitted his batallion." The prince then, addressing the Earl of
Warwick and Lord Cobham, said: "I beg of you to mount your horses, and
ride over the field so that on your return you may bring me some
certain intelligence of him." The two barons, immediately mounting
their horses, left the prince, and made for a small hillock, that they
might look about them. From their stand they perceived a crowd of
men-at-arms on foot, who were advancing very slowly. The king of
France was in the midst of them, and in great danger; for the English
and Gascons had taken him from Sir Denys de Morbeque, and were
disputing who should have him, the stoutest bawling out, "It is I that
have got him." "No, no," replied the others, "we have him." The king,
to escape from this peril, said: "Gentlemen, gentlemen, I pray you
conduct me and my son in a courteous manner to my cousin the prince;
and do not make such a riot about my capture, for I am so great a lord
that I can make all sufficiently rich." These words, and others which
fell from the king, appeased them a little; but the disputes were
always beginning again, and they did not move a step without rioting.
When the two barons saw this troop of people, they descended from the
hillock, and, sticking spurs into their horses, made up to them. On
their arrival, they asked what was the matter. They were answered,
that it was the king of France, who had been made prisoner, and that
upward of ten knights and squires challenged him at the same time, as
belonging to each of them. The two barons then pushed through the
crowd by main force, and ordered all to draw aside. They commanded, in
the name of the prince, and under pain of instant death, that every
one should keep his distance, and not approach unless ordered or
desired so to do. They all retreated behind the king; and the two
barons, dismounting, advanced to the king with profound reverences,
and conducted him in a peaceable manner to the Prince of Wales.
We continue our citation from Froissart with the brief chapter in which
the admiring chronicler tells the gallant story of the Black Prince's
behavior as host toward his royal captive, King John of France (it was
the evening after the battle):
When evening was come, the Prince of Wales gave a supper in his
pavilion to the king of France, and to the greater part of the princes
and barons who were prisoners. The prince seated the king of France,
and his son the Lord Philip, at an elevated and well-covered table;
with them were Sir James de Bourbon, the Lord John d'Artois, the Earls
of Tancarville, of Estampes, of Dammartin, of Graville, and the Lord
of Partenay. The other knights and squires were placed at different
tables. The prince himself served the king's table, as well as the
others, with every mark of humility, and would not sit down at it, in
spite of all his entreaties for him so to do, saying that "he was not
worthy of such an honor, nor did it appertain to him to seat himself
at the table of so great a king, or of so valiant a man as he had
shown himself by his actions that day." He added, also, with a noble
air, "Dear sir, do not make a poor meal because the Almighty God has
not gratified your wishes in the event of this day; for be assured
that my lord and father will show you every honor and friendship in
his power, and will arrange your ransom so reasonably, that you will
henceforward always remain friends. In my opinion, you have cause to
be glad that the success of this battle did not turn out as you
desired; for you have this day acquired such high renown for prowess
that you have surpassed all the best knights on your side. I do not,
dear sir, say this to flatter you: for all those of our side who have
seen and observed the actions of each party, have unanimously allowed
this to be your due, and decree you the prize and garland for it." At
the end of this speech, there were murmurs of praise heard from every
one; and the French said the prince had spoken nobly and truly, and
that he would be one of the most gallant princes in Christendom if God
should grant him life to pursue his career of glory.
A splendid and a gracious figure the Black Prince makes in the pages of
Froissart. It was great good fortune for the posthumous fame of chivalry
that the institution should have come by an artist so gifted and so
loyal as this Frenchman, to deliver its features in portrait to
after-times, before the living original vanished forever from the view
of history. How much the fiction of Sir Walter Scott owes to Froissart,
and to Philip de Comines after Froissart, those only can understand who
have read both the old chronicles and the modern romances.
It was one of the congenial labors of Sidney Lanier--pure flame of
genius that late burned itself out so swiftly among us!--to edit a
reduction or abridgment of Froissart's Chronicles dedicated especially
to the use of the young. "The Boy's Froissart," he called it. This book
is enriched with a wise and genial appreciation of Froissart's quality
by his American editor.
Whoever reads Froissart needs to remember that the old chronicler is too
much enamored of chivalry, and is too easily dazzled by splendor of
rank, to be a rigidly just censor of faults committed by knights and
nobles and kings. Froissart, in truth, seems to have been nearly
destitute of the sentiment of humanity. War to him was chiefly a game
and a spectacle.
Our presentation of Froissart must close with a single passage
additional, a picturesque one, in which the chronicler describes the
style of living witnessed by him at the court--we may so not unfitly
apply a royal word--of the Count de Foix. The reader must understand,
while he reads what we here show, that Froissart himself, in close
connection, relates at full, in the language of an informant of his, how
this magnificent Count de Foix had previously killed, with a knife at
his throat, his own and his only son. "I was truly sorry," so, at the
conclusion of the story, Froissart, with characteristic direction of his
sympathy, says, "for the count his father, whom I found a magnificent,
generous, and courteous lord, and also for the country that was
discontented for want of an heir." Here is the promised passage; it
occurs in the ninth chapter of the third volume:
Count Gaston Phoebus de Foix, of whom I am now speaking, was at that
time fifty-nine years old; and I must say, that although I have seen
very many knights, kings, princes, and others, I have never seen any
so handsome, either in the form of his limbs and shape, or in
countenance, which was fair and ruddy, with gray and amorous eyes,
that gave delight whenever he chose to express affection. He was so
perfectly formed, one could not praise him too much. He loved
earnestly the things he ought to love, and hated those which it was
becoming him so to hate. He was a prudent knight, full of enterprise
and wisdom. He had never any men of abandoned character with him,
reigned prudently, and was constant in his devotions. There were
regular nocturnals from the Psalter, prayers from the rituals to the
Virgin, to the Holy Ghost, and from the burial service. He had every
day distributed as alms, at his gate, five florins in small coin, to
all comers. He was liberal and courteous in his gifts, and well knew
how to take when it was proper, and to give back where he had
confidence. He mightily loved dogs above all other animals, and during
the summer and winter amused himself much with hunting....
When he quitted his chamber at midnight for supper, twelve servants
bore each a lighted torch before him, which were placed near his
table, and gave a brilliant light to the apartment. The hall was full
of knights and squires, and there were plenty of tables laid out for
any person who chose to sup. No one spoke to him at his table, unless
he first began a conversation. He commonly ate heartily of poultry,
but only the wings and thighs; for in the day-time, he neither ate nor
drank much. He had great pleasure in hearing minstrels; as he himself
was a proficient in the science, and made his secretaries sing songs,
ballads, and roundelays. He remained at table about two hours, and was
pleased when fanciful dishes were served up to him, which having seen,
he immediately sent them to the tables of his knights and squires.
In short, every thing considered, though I had before been in several
courts of kings, dukes, princes, counts, and noble ladies, I was never
at one that pleased me more, nor was I ever more delighted with feats
of arms, than at this of the Count de Foix. There were knights and
squires to be seen in every chamber, hall, and court, going backward,
and forward, and conversing on arms and amours. Every thing honorable
was there to be found. All intelligence from distant countries was
there to be learnt, for the gallantry of the count had brought
visitors from all parts of the world. It was there I was informed of
the greater part of those events which had happened in Spain,
Portugal, Arragon, Navarre, England, Scotland, and on the borders of
Languedoc; for I saw, during my residence, knights and squires arrive
from every nation. I therefore made inquiries from them, or from the
count himself, who cheerfully conversed with me.