Since, in modern literature, there are so few really good comedies that
we may count them all upon our fingers, a man who has written two must
be worth knowing. We ask permission to introduce Jean Francois Regnard
to those who do not know him.
He comes recommended by the great critic Boileau, who liked him,
quarrelled with him, and made up again. Forty years later, Voltaire
wrote that the man who did not enjoy Regnard was not capable of
appreciating Moliere. Then came M. de La Harpe, the authority in such
matters for two generations: he devotes a chapter to Regnard, and calls
him the worthy successor of Moliere. And Beranger, in his charming
autobiography, an epilogue worthy of the noble part he had played upon
the stage of the world, speaks of the unflagging gayety and abundant wit
of Regnard's dialogue, and of his lively and graceful style. "In my
opinion," he adds, "Regnard would be the first of modern comedians, if
Moliere had not been given to us."
In spite of the idle complainings into which authors are betrayed by the
pleasure human nature takes in talking about self to attentive
listeners, all who are familiar with the history of the brethren of the
quill know, that, as a class, they have had a large share of the good
things of the earth,--cheerful occupation, respected position,
comfortable subsistence, and long life. France, in particular, has been
the _Pays de Cocagne_ of book-makers for the last two hundred years.
Neither praise, pay, nor rank has been wanting to those who deserved
them. But in the long line of _litterateurs_ who have flourished since
Cardinal Richelieu founded the Academy, few were so fortunate as
Regnard. He entered upon his career with wealth, health, and a jovial
temperament: three supreme blessings he kept through life.
He was born in Paris in 1655, three years before Moliere brought his
company from the provinces to the Hotel de Bourbon, and opened the new
theatre with the "Precieuses Ridicules." Regnard's father, a citizen of
Paris and a shopkeeper, died when his son was a lad, leaving him one
hundred and twenty thousand livres,--a fortune for a man of the middle
class at that period. Like most independent young fellows, Regnard made
use of his money to travel. He went to Italy, and spent a year in the
famous cities of the Peninsula,--but returned home with thirty thousand
additional livres in his pocket, won at play. He soon went back to the
land of pleasure and of luck. At Bologna he fell in love with a lady
from the South of France, whom he calls Elvire. The lady was married,
the husband was with her; they were travellers like himself. Regnard
joined the party, and sailed with them from Civita Vecchia in an English
ship bound for Toulon. The vessel was captured, off Nice, by a Barbary
corsair, and brought into Algiers; the crew and passengers were sold to
the highest bidder. One Achmet Talem paid fifteen hundred livres for
Regnard, and one thousand for the lady. This low price might lead us to
imagine that the Moorish taste in beauty differed from that of Regnard;
but the Algerine market may have been overstocked with women on the day
of sale. Achmet took his new chattels to Constantinople. Perceiving
Regnard's talent for _ragouts_ and sauces, he made a cook of him. What
became of Elvire history has omitted, perhaps discreetly, to relate.
After two years of toil and ill-treatment, Regnard received money from
home to buy his freedom. He paid twelve thousand livres for himself and
the fair Provencale. Achmet more than quadrupled his investment, and no
doubt thought slavery a divine institution.
In Paris once more, Regnard hung his chains in his library and was
preparing to lead a comfortable life with Elvire, when the superfluous
husband, whose death had been reported, most unseasonably reappeared. He
had been ransomed by the Mathurins, a religious order, who believed it
to be the duty of Christians to deliver their fellow-men from
bondage,--Abolitionists of the seventeenth century, who, strange as some
of us may think it, were honored by their countrymen and the Christian
world. Regnard yielded gracefully the right he had acquired by purchase
to the prior claim of the husband, and made preparations for another
journey. With two compatriots, De Fercourt and De Corberon, he traversed
the Low Countries and Denmark and crossed over to Stockholm. The King of
Sweden received the travellers graciously and proposed a visit to
Lapland. Furnished with the royal letters of recommendation, they sailed
up the Gulf of Bothnia to Torneo, and thence pushed north by land until
they came to Lake Tornoetrask. Eighteen miles from the lower end of
the lake they ascended a high mountain which they named Metavara, "from
the Latin word _meta_ and the Finlandic word _vara_, which means rock:
that is to say, the rock of limits." "We were four hours in climbing to
the top by paths which no mortal had as yet known. When we reached it,
we perceived the whole extent of Lapland, and the Icy Ocean as far as
the North Cape, on the side it turns to the west. This may, indeed, be
called arriving at the end of the world and jostling the axle of the
pole (_se frotter a l'essieu du pole_)." Here they set up a tablet of
stone they had brought with their luggage,--_monument eternel_, Regnard
says. "It shall make known to posterity that three Frenchmen did not
cease to travel northward until the earth failed them; that, in spite of
the difficulties they encountered, which would have turned back most
others, they reached the end of the world and planted their column; the
ground was wanting, but not the courage to press on." These sounding
verses were cut upon the eternal monument:--
"Gallia nos genuit; vidit nos Africa; Gangem
Hausimus, Europamque oculis lustravimus omnem;
Casibus et variis acti terraque marique,
Hic tandem stetimus, nobis ubi defuit orbis.
De Fercourt, De Corberon, Regnard.
Anno 1681, die 22 Augusti."
"The inscription will never be read, except by the bears," Regnard adds.
A melancholy thought to the French mind! If nobody saw it or talked
about it, half the pleasure of the exploit was gone. The Frenchmen had
foreseen this difficulty, and had taken their precautions. Four days'
journey to the southward stood an ancient church, near which the Lapps
held their annual fair. In this church, in a conspicuous position, they
had already deposited the same verses, carved upon a board. In 1718,
thirty-six years after, another French traveller, La Motraye, read the
lines upon the stone tablet,--too late to gratify Regnard.
"Travellers' stories,"--"_A beau mentir qui vient de loin_,"--these
proverbs date from the seventeenth century. It was not expected of such
adventurous gentlemen that they should tell the simple truth, any more
than we expect veracity from sportsmen. We listen without surprise and
disbelieve without a smile. Some exaggeration, too, was pardonable to
help out the verse; but "_nobis ubi defuit orbis_" goes beyond a
reasonable license. The mountain _Metavara_ is in Lat. 68 deg. 30'; the
North Cape in 71 deg. 10'. There were still one hundred and fifty miles of
solid _orbis_ before Regnard and his friends; and they had need of
optics sharp to see the Cape from the spot they stood upon.
The 27th of September found the three Arctic explorers back again in
Stockholm. Thence they took boat for Dantzic, travelled in Poland,
Hungary, and Austria, and left Vienna for Paris a few months before the
famous siege, when Sobieski, the "man sent from God whose name was
John," routed the Turks and delivered Christendom forever from the fear
of the Ottoman arms.
Before this time Regnard must have heard that Duquesne had avenged his
African sufferings. In the autumn of 1681 the Huguenot Admiral shelled
Algiers from bomb-ketches, then used for the first time. The Dey was
forced to surrender. His lively conquerors treated him with the honors
of wit as well as of war. They made a _mot_ for him, of the kind they
get up so cleverly in Paris. When the Turk is told how much it had cost
the great monarch of France to fit out the fleet which had just reduced
a part of his city to ashes, he exclaims, amazed at the useless
extravagance,--"For half the money I would have burned the whole town."
Cervantes was a slave in Algiers a hundred years before Regnard, and no
doubt used his experience in the story of the Captive in "Don Quixote."
Regnard also worked his African materials up into a tale,--"La
Provencale,"--and varnished them with the sentimentality fashionable in
his day. Zelmis (himself) is a conquering hero; women adore him. He is
full of courage, resources, and devotion to one only,--Elvire,--who is
beautiful as a dream, and dignified as the wife of a Roman Senator. The
King of Algiers is on the quay when the captives are brought ashore. He
falls in love with Elvire on the spot, and adds her to his collection.
But his passion is respectful and pure. Aided by Zelmis, she escapes
from the harem. They are retaken and brought back; but instead of the
whipping usually bestowed upon returned runaways, the generous king,
despairing of winning Elvire's affections, gives her her liberty. In the
mean time Zelmis has had his troubles. His master has four wives,
beautiful as houris. All four cast eyes of flame upon the well-favored
infidel. Faithful to Elvire, Zelmis of course defends himself as
heroically as Joseph. The ladies revenge the slight in the same way as
the wife of Potiphar. The attractive Frenchman is condemned to
impalement, when his consul interferes with a ransom, and he is released
just in time to embark for France with Elvire.
Although Regnard often alludes with pride to his travels, the sketch he
has left of them is meagre and uninteresting, and written in a harsh and
awkward style. Lapland was a _terra incognita_,--Poland, Hungary, and
Bohemia not much better known; yet this clever young Parisian has little
to relate beyond a few names, which he generally misspells or misplaces.
No descriptions of town or country or scenery; no traits of manners,
character, or customs, except a dull page on the sorcery and the funeral
ceremonies of the Lapps. The only eminent man he notices is Evelius, the
astronomer of Dantzic,--one of the foreign _savans_ of distinction on
whom Louis XIV. bestowed pensions in his grand manner, omitting to pay
them after the second year. Regnard seems to have written to let his
countrymen know where he had been,--not to tell them what he had seen.
Had he made ever so good a book out of his really remarkable journey,
little notice would have been taken of it. Voyages and travels were
looked upon as a dull branch of fiction,--not nearly so amusing or
improving as cockney excursions from one town of France to another in
the neighborhood, described after the manner of Bachaumont and Chapelle:
not sentimental journeys, by any means; eating, drinking, and sleeping
are the points of interest:--
"Bon vin, bon gite, bon lit,
Belle hotesse, bon appetit."
Even Regnard, who had seen so much of the world, tried his hand at this
kind of travel-writing and failed lamentably.
At thirty, Regnard closed a chapter in his life, and turned over a new
leaf. He gave up wandering and gambling, the ruling passions of his
youth, and settled himself comfortably for the rest of his days. For
occupation and official position, he bought an assistant-treasurership
in the _Bureau des Finances_. His house in the Rue Richelieu became
famous for good company and good things, intellectual as well as
material. In the country his _Terre de Grillon_ was planted with so much
taste that the lively persons who liked to visit there called it a
_Sejour enchante_. In laying out his grounds, his intimate, Dufresny,
was doubtless of use to him. This spendthrift poet, reputed
great-grandson of Henri Quatre and the _belle jardiniere_, had great
skill in landscape gardening, admitted even by those who found his
verses tedious. He it was, probably, who introduced Regnard to the
stage. For several years they supplied the Theatre Italien with amusing
trifles,--working together in one of those literary partnerships so
common among French playwrights. The "Joueur" broke up this business
connection. Dufresny accused Regnard of having stolen the plot from him,
and brought out a "Joueur" of his own. Regnard insisted that Dufresny
was the pirate. The public decided in favor of Regnard. Dufresny's play
was hopelessly damned, and no appeal ever taken from the first sentence.
The verdict of the _bel-esprits_ was recorded in an epigram, which ended
thus:--
"Mais quiconque aujourd'hui voit l'un et l'autre ouvrage
Dit que Regnard a l'avantage
D'avoir ete le 'bon larron.'"[F]
Dufresny had more wit than dramatic talent. He will live in the memories
of married men for his famous speech,--
"Comment, Monsieur! Vous n'y etiez pas oblige."
It was in 1696, twelve years after his return to Paris, that Regnard
sent the "Joueur," a comedy in five acts, and in verse, to the Theatre
Francais. It was received with enthusiastic applause. Nothing equal to
it had appeared in twenty-four years since the death of the great
master; nor did the eighteenth century produce any comedy which can be
compared with it for action, wit, and literary finish,--not excepting
the "Turcaret" of Le Sage, and Beaumarchais's "Barber of Seville," which
are both better known to-day.
Regnard sat to himself for the portrait of Valere. The wild and
fascinating excitement of play, the gambler's exultation when he is
successful, his furious curses on his bad luck when he loses, his
superstitious veneration for his winnings, are drawn from the life. When
Fortune smiles, Valere neglects Angelique, his rich _fiancee_; when he
is penniless, his love revives, and he is at her feet until his valet
devises some new plan of raising money. He swears, if she will forgive
him, never again to touch dice or cards, and five minutes afterward
pledges for a thousand crowns a miniature set in diamonds she has just
given him to bind their reconciliation, and hurries back to the
gaming-table. He wins, but thinks his gains too sacred to pay away, even
to redeem the portrait of Angelique.
"Rien ne porte malheur comme de payer ses dettes,"
is his answer to the prudent Hector,--a maxim current among many who
never play. At last comes a reverse of fortune so sweeping that he
cannot conceal it. Angelique might have forgiven him his broken
promises, but the pawnbroker enters with her picture and demands the
thousand crowns. This is too much. She rejects him and gives her hand to
his rival. His indignant father casts him off forever. But no feeling of
regret or of repentance arises in the mind of the gambler. He turns
coolly upon his heel, and calls to his valet,--
"Va! va! consolons-nous, Hector,--et quelque jour
Le Jeu m'acquittera des pertes de l'amour."
Richard is the name of this prince of rascally and quick-witted valets;
but he calls himself Hector, after the knave of spades, because he
serves a gambler. He has good sense as well as ingenuity; for he gives
his master the best advice, while he strains his invention and his
impudence to help him on to destruction. Nerine, maid to Angelique,
declares open war against Valere, and vows that her mistress shall not
throw herself away upon a silly dandy, an insipid puppet, with nothing
to recommend him but his fine clothes and his swagger.
"True enough," laughs Hector, "but
"C'est le gout d'a present; tes cris sont superflus,
Mon enfant."
"And Valere is a spendthrift, an inveterate gambler, who will bring her
to misery and want."
"What of that?
"Tant que tu voudras, parle, preche, tempete,
Ta maitresse est coiffee,...
Elle est dans nos filets."
"And such an outrageous _roue_ that he cannot live in his father's
house."
"We do not deny it," Hector answers. "It is no fault of ours.
"Valere a deserte la maison paternelle,
Mais ce n'est point a lui qu'il faut faire querelle;
Et si Monsieur son pere avait voulu sortir,
Nous y serions encore;...
Ces peres, bien souvent, sont obstines en diable."
Nevertheless, the obdurate parent, in the hope of reforming his son, and
of providing for him by the excellent match with Angelique, hunts up the
prodigal and lectures him after the manner of fathers. Hector joins in,
and expresses strongly his disapprobation of games of chance; "_les jeux
innocents, ou l'esprit se deploie_," are the only safe pastime.
"But will our father pay our debts this time?"
"Not a crown."
"Will he lend us the money at one per cent a month? Once out of this
pecuniary strait, we can marry Angelique, and be rich and virtuous.
Besides, we have assets as well as debts: here is our schedule."
The elder softens a little and takes the paper. At the head of the list
of debts he finds Hector's bill for wages and services rendered, leading
off a long file of Aarons and Levys; and the assets consist of a debt of
honor owing by an officer killed at the Battle of Fleurus, and the
good-will of a match at _tric-trac_ with a poor player who had already
lost games enough to make his defeat certain.
The action of the comedy does not lag or limp from the opening scene to
Valere's last words. The versification is easy and natural; the dialogue
abounds in wit and comic humor; it is short and quick, with none of
those tedious declamations which weary and unsettle the attention of an
audience. Take it all in all, we may say, that, if Moliere had chosen
the same subject, he could hardly have handled it better.
Not that Regnard can pretend to rank with Moliere in genius, or even
near him. The "Gambler" is admirably done; but it is the only comedy in
which Regnard attempted character. He drew from his experience. Moliere
was so skilful a moral anatomist that he required only a whim or a
weakness to construct a consistent character. This wonderful man found
the French comic stage occupied by a few stock personages, imported from
Spain and Italy. The elders were fathers or uncles, rich, miserly, and
perverse, instinctively disposed to keep a tight rein on the young
people, of whose personal expenses and matrimonial projects they
invariably disapproved. The persecuted juniors were all alike, colorless
shadows, mere lay figures to hang a plot on: _Leandre, amant de
Celimene; Celimene amante de Leandre_: helpless creatures, who would
have been quite at the mercy of the old dragons of the story, were it
not for the powerful assistance of the rascally soubrettes. These clever
sinners abounded in cunning contrivances, disguises, and tricks, which
resulted in the signal discomfiture of the parents and guardians. In the
last act, they are forced to consent to all the marriages, and are
cheated out of most of their property; they are even lucky to escape
with their lives. There was no mercy for Age in those plays.
"Pluck the lined crutch from the old limping sire;
With it beat out his brains."
The theatre was the temple of youth, of love, and of feasting. Away with
the dull old people! Providence created them only to pay the bills.
"Fuyez d'ici, sombre vieillesse,--
Car en amour les vieillards ne sont bons
Qu'a payer les violons."
Did gentlemen of a certain age go to the theatre in the seventeenth
century? expend their money to see themselves abused and ridiculed? Did
they laugh at these indignities and enjoy them? We might wonder, if we
did not know that Frenchmen never grow old, so long as they have an eye
left for ogling or a leg to caper with.
Moliere took these old inhabitants of the stage into his service, and
injected new life into their veins. He gave them the foibles, the
follies, and the vices he saw about him, and made them speak in a new
language of unrivalled wit, humor, and mirth. But his genius was
shackled by the artificial conventions of the theatre, which did not
allow him time or space to fully develop a character. A grand comic
creation like Falstaff was impossible. He introduces a single propensity
of mankind, exhibits it in all its relations to society, shows it to us
on every side; but it remains only a trait of character, although we see
it in half a dozen different lights. Tartuffe is the one exception; in
him, hypocrisy hides covetousness and lust; and Tartuffe is Moliere's
masterpiece. But in most of his comedies he displays rather a knowledge
of the world than a knowledge of human nature. In his walk he has no
equal at home or abroad; but his walk is not the highest. We feel that
something is wanting, and yet we can hardly extol him too highly. He
brought comedy into close relation with every-day life; he is the father
of the modern French stage, which has gradually cast off the old
conventional personages. The French dramatists of to-day are not men of
genius like Moliere, but, in their airy, sparkling plays, they represent
the freaks, follies, and fancies of society so exquisitely that nothing
remains to be desired. They furnish the model and the materials for the
theatre of all other nations.
When Regnard came before the public, the stage remained as Moliere had
left it The only new personage was the Marquis, first introduced in the
"Mere Coquette," by Quinault, the sweet and smooth writer of operas,--of
whom it was said, that he had boned (_desosse_) the French language. The
Marquis is the ancestor of our Fop,--
"Loose in morals and in manners vain,
In conversation frivolous, in dress extreme,"--
who in turn has become antiquated and tiresome. Regnard's only original
character is the Gambler; in his other comedies he made use of the old,
familiar masks, and won success by his keen sense of the ridiculous, his
wit, and his unceasing jollity and fun. His Crispins and Scapins are
perfect. What impudent, worthless, amusing rogues! To keep inside of the
law is their only rule of right. "Honesty is a fool, and Trust, his
sworn brother, a very simple gentleman." They came of an ancient race,
these Crispins and Scapins, that had flourished in Italy and in Spain
since Plautus and Terence brought them over from Greece. They found
their way to France, and even reached England in their migration,
following in the train of Charles II. when he returned from exile, and
during a short life on that side of the Channel added drunkenness and
brutality to their gayer vices. The character was true to Nature in
Athens or in Rome, where men of talent might often be bound to devote
their brains to the service of those who owned their bodies, and by
their condition as slaves were released from all obligations of honor or
of honesty. In the seventeenth century it might pass in France; for the
line between gentle and simple was so sharply drawn that ladies of rank
saw no greater impropriety in disrobing before their footmen than before
their dogs. But the progress of liberty or of _egalite_ blotted out the
valets of comedy. Even in Regnard's time the inconsistencies of the
character were noticed. Jasmin, in the "Serenade," utters revolutionary
doctrine:--"How can an honorable valet devote himself to the interests
of a penniless master? We grow tricky in waiting upon such fellows. They
scold us; sometimes they beat us. We have more wit than they. We support
them; we are obliged to invent, for their benefit, all sorts of knavery,
in which they are always ready to take a share; and, withal, they are
the masters, and we the servants. It is not just. Hereafter I mean to
scheme for myself, and become a master in my turn."
Scapin has joined his brother pagans beyond the Styx; but Lisette blooms
in evergreen youth. This young French person's theory of woman's rights
is different from the one which obtains in New England; nor does she
trouble herself at all to seek for woman's mission. She found it years
ago. It is to deceive a man. She is satisfied with her condition, and
with the old mental and moral attributes of her sex. When Crispin
disguises himself in her clothes, he exclaims,--
"L'addresse et l'artifice ont passe dans mon coeur;
Qu'on a sous cet habit et d'esprit et de ruse--
Rien n'est si trompeur qu'animal porte-jupe."
This animal is as clever and as cunning in Paris to-day as when Crispin
felt the inspiration of the petticoats.
In 1708, after another period of twelve years, "Le Legataire Universel"
was played at the same theatre. In this piece the author relied entirely
upon the _vis comica_ of his plot and dialogue. Geronte, a rich, miserly
old bachelor, with as many ailments as years,--
"Vieux et casse, fievreux, epileptique,
Paralytique, etique, asthmatique, hydropique,"--
has for a nephew Ergaste, with well-grounded hopes of inheriting, and
that shortly. These are suddenly dashed by the announcement that his
uncle has resolved to marry Isabelle, a girl to whom Ergaste himself is
attached. The nephew keeps his own secret, and judiciously commends the
choice of his uncle. Geronte is delighted with him; even asks his advice
about a present for the damsel,--something pretty, but cheap.
"Je voudrais inventer quelque petit cadeau
Qui coutat peu, mais qui parut nouveau."
Meeting with no opposition, the old gentleman gradually loses his relish
for matrimony; and Madame Argante, the mother, promises Ergaste to give
Isabelle to him, instead of to his uncle, provided Geronte will declare
his nephew heir to his estate. Unluckily, there are two other
collaterals, country cousins, whom Geronte has never seen, but whom he
wishes to remember. Crispin, valet to Ergaste, assisted by Lisette, the
old man's housekeeper and nurse, personifies first the male and then the
female relative from the rural districts so well that Geronte orders
them out of his house in disgust, swears that he will not leave them a
sous, and sends for a notary to draw his will in favor of Ergaste. But
the excitement of the last interview with Crispin, as a widow, is too
much for his strength. He becomes unconscious, and apparently breathes
his last just as the notary knocks at the door. In this moment of
agonizing disappointment, the indomitable Crispin comes to the rescue.
He puts on the dressing-gown and cap of Geronte, reclines in his
easy-chair, counterfeits his voice, and dictates a will to the notary.
Firstly, he bequeaths to Lisette two thousand crowns, on condition that
she marry Crispin; secondly, he leaves to Crispin an annuity of fifteen
hundred crowns, to reward his devotion to his master; the rest of the
estate, real and personal, to go to Ergaste. The residuary legatee
remonstrates warmly with the testator against his foolish generosity to
Crispin and Lisette; but the sham Geronte insists, and Ergaste is
obliged to submit. The notary withdraws to make the necessary copies of
the will, and the plotters are chuckling over the success of their
plans, when, to their dismay, Geronte enters, alive. He tells them that
he feels his strength departing, and bids them send at once for the
notary to settle his worldly affairs. The notary, who is ignorant of any
deceit, assures him that he has made his will already, and shows him the
document. The conspirators seize the chance of escape, confirm the
notary's story, and relate all the circumstances of the conference,
Geronte protests that he recollects nothing of it; he feels certain he
could not have given more than twenty crowns to Lisette; as to Crispin,
he had never heard of him. The answer is always, "_C'est votre
lethargie_." While perplexed and hesitating, the old man discovers that
a large sum in notes has been abstracted from his hoard. Ergaste had
secured them as an alleviation in case of the worst, and had placed them
in the hands of Isabelle. She promises to return them, if Geronte will
make Ergaste his heir and her husband. In his anxiety for his money,
Geronte consents to everything, and allows the will to stand.
Nothing, La Harpe tells us, ever made a French audience laugh so
heartily as the scene of the will. Falbaire, one of the _poetes
negliges_ of the eighteenth century, says, in a note to his drama, "The
Monks of Japan," that the Jesuits furnished Regnard with the idea of
this scene. In 1626, the reverend fathers, by precisely the same
stratagem employed by Crispin, obtained possession of the estate of a M.
d'Ancier of Besancon, who died suddenly and intestate. It is proper to
add that M. Falbaire's drama was written against the Jesuits.
There are two other plays, out of some twenty that Regnard published,
which will repay a reader: "Les Menechmes," imitated from Plautus, like
Shakspeare's Dromios, and "Democrite,"[G] which reminds one a little of
Moliere's "Amphitryon." Both are distinguished for that perpetual
gayety, the most pleasing of all qualities, which is the characteristic
of their author. It seems impossible for him to be dull; he never nods;
his bow, such as it is, is always strung. It is remarkable that his
comic scenes, although crammed with fun, never run down into farce; nor
does he find it necessary to eke out his wit with buffoonery. He had an
instinctive taste which preserved him from coarseness; although he wrote
a century and a half ago, there is less of the low and indelicate than
in the plays we see posted at the doors of our theatres. The French of
the time of Louis XIV. must have been a much more refined people than
the contemporary English. At least, Thalia in Paris was a vestal,
compared with her tawdry, indecent, and drunken London sister. One is
ashamed to be seen reading the unblushing profligacy of Wycherley,
Cibber, Vanbrugh, and Congreve.
We must admit that Regnard's mantle of decorum is not without a rent. In
the "Legataire," as in the "Malade Imaginaire," may be found a good deal
of pleasantry on the first of the three principal remedies of the
physicians of the period, as mentioned by Moliere in his burlesque
Latin:--
"Clysterium donare,
Postea purgare,
Ensuita seignare."
It seems to have been a good joke in France then; it is so
now,--wonderfully fresh and new,--defying time and endless repetition.
American eyes do not see much fun in it; they rather turn away in
disgust. But on the risible organs of the French purgative medicines
operate violently; and the favorite weapon of their medical service,
primitive in shape and exaggerated in dimensions, is a property
indispensable to every theatre. Regnard used it as a part of the stage
machinery,--worked it in as a stock pleasantry, the effect of which was
certain. Were he writing now, he would do the same thing. But in the
"Joueur" nobody is ill; it may be read by that typical creature, the
"most virtuous female," publicly and without a blush.
Gentlemen and ladies whose morals are not fully fledged are generally
advised to beware of attempting to skim over the fiction of modern
France. They may take up Regnard without risking a fall; for there is
little danger of being led astray by the picaresque knaveries of Scapin
and Lisette. In 1700 love for another man's wife had not come to be
considered one of the fine arts. Nowadays the victims of this kind of
misplaced affection are the heroes of French novels and plays. The
husband, odious and tiresome _ex officio_, has succeeded to the miserly
father or tyrannical guardian. He is the giant of French romance, who
keeps the lovely and uneasy lady locked up in Castle Matrimony. He
cannot help himself, poor fellow!--he is compelled to fill that
unenviable position, whenever Madame chooses. Sentimental young Arthurs
and Ernests stand in the place of Ergaste and Cleante, and are always
ready to make war upon the unlucky giant. They overcome him as of old,
scale the walls, and carry off the capricious fair one. We have hardly
changed for the better. Ergaste and Cleante were not sentimental, but
they were marrying men and broke no commandments.
Regnard's life of fifty years covers the whole of the literary age of
Louis XIV. Before 1660 the French had no literature worth preserving,
except Rabelais, Montaigne, a few odes of Malherbe, a page or two of
Marot, and the tragedies of Corneille. Pascal published the "Provincial
Letters" in the year of Regnard's birth. La Fontaine had written a few
indifferent verses; Moliere was almost unknown. In 1686, when Regnard
became an author, the Voitures, Balzacs, and Benserades, the men of
fantastic conceits, the vanguard of the grand army of French wits, had
marched away to Pluto and to Lethe. One or two stragglers, like Menage
and Chapelle, lingered to wonder at the complete change of taste. The
age had ripened fast. Not many years before, Barbin the bookseller
ordered his hacks to _faire du St. Evremond_. St. Evremond was still
living in England, dirty and witty; and Barbin still kept his shop, but
gave no more orders for wares of that description. Many of the greatest
names of the era were already carved on tombs: La Rochefoucauld, Pascal,
Corneille, Moliere. Bossuet was a man of sixty; La Fontaine a few years
older; Boileau and Racine close upon fifty. When Regnard died, in 1710,
the eighteenth century had begun. Fontenelle, Le Sage, Bayle, men of
nearly the same age as himself, belong to it.
In 1686 King Louis had reached the full meridian of his _Gloire_,
_Grandeur_, _Eclat_. No monarch in Europe was so powerful. He had
conquered Flanders, driven the Dutch under water, seized Franche-Comte,
annexed Lorraine, ravaged the Palatinate, bombarded Algiers and Genoa,
and by a skilful disregard of treaties and of his royal word kept his
neighbors at swords' points until he was ready to destroy them. The
Emperor was afraid of him, Philip of Spain his most humble servant,
Charles II. in his pay. He had bullied the Pope, and brought the Doge of
Genoa to Paris to ask pardon for selling powder to the Algerines and
ships to Spain. He was _Louis le Grand, le roi vraiment roi, le
demi-dieu qui nous gouverne, Deodatus, Sol nec pluribus impar_. Regnard
witnessed the cloudy setting of this splendid luminary. After the secret
marriage with Mme. de Maintenon, in 1686, Fortune deserted the King. He
was everywhere defeated, or his victories were Cadmean, as disastrous as
defeats. The fleet that was to replace James II. on his throne was
destroyed at La Hogue by Russell. The Camisards defied for years the
army sent against them. Rooke took Gibraltar. Peterborough defeated the
Bourbon forces in Spain. Blenheim, Oudenarde, Ramillies, Malplaquet,
brought ruin upon France before Regnard was withdrawn from the scene.
Meanwhile the Eighteenth Century, with its godlessness and its
debauchery, was born. Hypocrisy watched over its infancy. When Louis
reformed, and took a pious elderly second wife, it was the fashion to be
religious; and whoever wished to stand well at court followed the
fashion. "You who live in France have wonderful advantages for saving
your souls," wrote St. Evremond from London. "Vice is quite out of date
with you. It is in bad taste to sin,--as offensive to good manners as to
morality. And those of you who might be forgetful of their hereafter are
led to salvation by a becoming deference to the habits and observances
of well-bred people." The monarch himself was utterly ignorant in
matters of religion; the Duchess of Orleans wrote to her German
friends, that he had never even read the Bible. He was shocked to hear
that Christ had demeaned himself to speak the language of the poor and
the humble. "_Il avait la foi du charbonnier_," Cardinal Fleury
said,--the blind, unreasoning faith of the African in his fetich. He
considered it due to _gloire_ to assist Divine Providence in its
government of the souls of men. Was he not the greatest prince of the
earth, the eldest son of the Church, standing nearer to the throne of
grace than any insignificant pope? Of course he was responsible for the
orthodoxy of his subjects, a _demi-dieu qui nous gouverne_. He came to
think religion a part of his royal prerogative, and misbelief treason
against his royal person. He was quite capable of going a step beyond
Cardinal Wolsey, and of writing, "_Ego et Deus meus_." He said to a
prelate whose management of some ecclesiastical business particularly
gratified him,--"_J'ignore si Dieu vous tiendra compte de la conduite
que vous avez tenue; mais quant a moi, je vous assure que je ne
l'oublierai jamais_." The spiritual powers are never backward in taking
advantage of favorable circumstances: Huguenots, Jansenists, and
Quietists were sternly put down, and the girdle of superstition
tightened until it began to crack. The skeptics were quiet,--asked but
few questions,--pretended to be satisfied with the time-honored answers
Mother Church keeps for her uneasy children,--and seemed to be busy with
the "Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes," and the "Dispute sur les
Ceremonies Chinoises." It was not yet the time for them to announce
pompously their radical theories as new and true. A thin varnish of
decorum and orthodoxy overspread everything; but one may see the shadow
of the coming _Regence_ in Regnard's works. He and gentlemen like him
went to mass in the morning, and to pleasure for the rest of the day and
night.
"Ils sont chretiens a la messe,
Ils sont paiens a l'opera."
Regnard was almost as much of a pagan as his favorite Horace,--called
for wines, roses, and perfumes, and sang his Lydia and his Lalage almost
in the same words. His creed and his philosophy were pagan. He adored
three goddesses,--_la Comedie_, _la Musique_, _la bonne Chere_; his
solution of the problem of life was enjoyment.
"Fair tout ce qu'on veut, vivre exempt de chagrin,
Ne se rien refuser,--Voila tout mon systeme,
Et de mes jours ainsi j'attraperai la fin."
Wisdom was given to man to temper pleasure,--to avoid excess, which
destroys pleasure. Regnard had agreeable recollections of the past; the
present satisfied him; he was as careless of the unknown future as De
Retz, whose _epouvantable tranquillite_, appalling ease of mind on that
point, so shocked poor Mme. de Sevigne. All other speculations he put
quietly aside with a doubt or a _cui bono_. It was a witty and refined
selfishness, and nothing beyond. Spiritual light, faith, none; hope that
to-morrow might pass as smoothly as to-day; love, only that particular
affection which man feels for his female fellow-creature. Such a
heathenish frame of mind will find little favor in this era of
yearnings, seekings, teachings. It was, indeed, a lamentable condition
of moral darkness; but the error, though grievous, has its attractive
side.
"On court apres la verite;
Ah! croyez moi, l'erreur a son merite."
It is a relief in these dyspeptic times to turn back to Regnard, the
big, rosy, and jolly pagan, enjoying to the utmost the four blessings
invoked upon the head of Argan by the chorus of Doctors:--
"Salus, honor et argentum.
Arque bonum appetitum."
Comfortable, contented with himself and with the world, he was free from
the sadness, the misgivings, and the enervating doubts which overrun so
many morbid minds,--symptoms of moral weakness, and of the want of
healthy occupation. Hence lady poets, more than all others, love to
indulge in these feeble repinings, and take the privilege of their sex
to shed tears on paper. In his bachelor establishment, Rue de
Richelieu, there was, he tells us,--
"Grande chere, vin delicieux,
Belle maison, liberte toute entiere,
Bals, concerts, enfin tout ce qui peut satisfaire
Le gout, les oreilles, les yeux."
The _Societe choisie_ was numerous; for a good cook never fails to make
friends for his master, and Regnard's cook dealt with fat capons,
plover, and ortolans. His lettuce, mushrooms, and artichokes were grown
under his own eyes. The choice vintages of France, in casks, lay in his
cellar. He gave wine to nourish wit, not to furnish an opportunity for
ostentatious gabble about age and price. How he revels in the
description of good cheer! There rises from his pages _fumet_ of game
and the _bouquet d'un vin exquis_.
"Et des perdrix! Morbleu! d'un fumet admirable
Sentez plutot, Quel baume! Mon Dieu!"
Why are American authors so commonly wan and gaunt, with none of the
external marks of healthy gayety? Is it the climate, or the lack of
out-door exercise, or hot-air furnaces, or rascally cooks? They look as
if, like Burns's man, they "were made to mourn." If they conceive a
joke, their sad, sharp voices and angular gesticulations make it
miscarry. Now and then they rebel against their constitutions, poor
fellows, and try to imitate the jovial ancestors they have read of;
babble shrilly of _noctes coenaeque Deum, petits soupers_, and what
not. It is mostly idle talk. They know too well that digestion does not
wait upon appetite in the evening,--and that they will feel better for
the next week, if they restrict their debauch to dandelion coffee and
Graham bread. Moreover, the age of conviviality is gone, as much as the
age of chivalry. _Petits soupers_ are impossible in this part of the
world. Let us manfully confess one reason: they cost too much. And we
have not the wit, nor the wicked women, nor the same jolly paganism.
Juno Lucina reigns here in the stead of Venus; and Bacchus is two
dollars a bottle.
But these and other good things Regnard had in abundance, and so lived
smoothly and happily on, defying time,--for he held, with Mme. de
Thianges, "_On ne viellit point a table_" until one day he overheated
himself in shooting, drank abundantly of cold water, and fell
dead,--Euthanasia. He died a bachelor, and, if we may judge from many of
his verses, seems, like Thackeray, to have wondered why Frenchmen ever
married. But he had a keen eye for "the fair defect of Nature."
Strabon's description of young Criseis before her glass could have been
written only by an amateur:--
"Je la voyais tantot devant une toilette
D'une _mouche assasine irriter ses attraits_."
Neither Moliere, Regnard, nor Le Sage was a member of the Academy.
Beranger thinks it remarkable that the _improvisations folles et
charmantes_ of Regnard should now be neglected in France. We do not
recollect to have met with him even in the "Causeries" of Ste. Beuve,
who has ransacked the French Temple of Fame from garret to cellar for
_feuilleton_ materials; yet the "Legataire" kept a foothold on the stage
for a hundred and twenty years. But the Temple of Fame is overcrowded.
Every day some worthy fellow is turned out to make room for a new-comer.
Our libraries are not large enough to hold the mob of authors who press
in. What with newspapers, magazines, and the last new novel, few persons
have time to read more than the titles on the backs of their books. They
are familiar with the great names, take their excellence on trust, and
allow them to stand neglected and dusty on their shelves. But with
another generation the great names will become mere shadows of a name;
and so on to oblivion. Father Time has a good taste in literature, it is
true. He mows down with his critical scythe the tares which spring up in
such daily abundance; but, unfortunately, he cannot stop there: after a
lapse of years, he sweeps away also the fruit of the good seed to make
room for the productions of his younger children.
"For he's their parent and he is their grave."
The doom is universal; it cannot be avoided. There must be an end to all
temporal things, and why not to books? The same endless night awaits a
Plato and a penny-a-liner. Our Eternities of Fame, like all else
appertaining to humanity, will some day pass away. Even Milton and
Shakspeare, our great staple international poets, who have been brought
out whenever the American ambassador to England dined in public, are
travelling the same downward path. How many of us, man or woman, on the
sunny side of thirty, have gone through the "Paradise Lost"? And
Shakspeare, in spite of new editions and of new commentators, is not
half as much read as fifty years since. Perhaps the time will come when
English speaking people will not know to whom they owe so many of the
proverbs, metaphors, and eloquent words which enrich their daily talk.
Will none escape this inexorable fate? Homer and Robinson Crusoe seem to
us to have the most tenacity of life.