Scarron, as a burlesque poet, but no other comparison exists, had his
merit, but is now little read; for the uniformity of the burlesque style
is as intolerable as the uniformity of the serious. From various sources
we may collect some uncommon anecdotes, although he was a mere author.
His father, a counsellor, having married a second wife, the lively
Scarron became the object of her hatred.
He studied, and travelled, and took the clerical tonsure; but discovered
dispositions more suitable to the pleasures of his age than to the
gravity of his profession. He formed an acquaintance with the wits of
the times; and in the carnival of 1638 committed a youthful
extravagance, for which his remaining days formed a continual
punishment. He disguised himself as a savage; the singularity of a naked
man attracted crowds. After having been hunted by the mob, he was forced
to escape from his pursuers; and concealed himself in a marsh. A
freezing cold seized him, and threw him, at the age of twenty-seven
years, into a kind of palsy; a cruel disorder which tormented him all
his life. "It was thus," he says, "that pleasure deprived me suddenly of
legs which had danced with elegance, and of hands, which could manage
the pencil and the lute."
Goujet, without stating this anecdote, describes his disorder as an
acrid humour, distilling itself on his nerves, and baffling the skill of
his physicians; the sciatica, rheumatism, in a word, a complication of
maladies attacked him, sometimes successively, sometimes together, and
made of our poor Abbé a sad spectacle. He thus describes himself in one
of his letters; and who could be in better humour?
"I have lived to thirty: if I reach forty, I shall only add many
miseries to those which I have endured these last eight or nine years.
My person was well made, though short; my disorder has shortened it
still more by a foot. My head is a little broad for my shape; my face is
full enough for my body to appear very meagre; I have hair enough to
render a wig unnecessary; I have got many white hairs, in spite of the
proverb. My teeth, formerly square pearls, are now of the colour of
wood, and will soon be of slate. My legs and thighs first formed an
obtuse angle, afterwards an equilateral angle, and at length, an acute
one. My thighs and body form another; and my head, always dropping on my
breast, makes me not ill represent a Z. I have got my arms shortened as
well as my legs, and my fingers as well as my arms. In a word, I am an
abridgment of human miseries."
He had the free use of nothing but his tongue and his hands; and he
wrote on a portfolio placed on his knees.
Balzac said of Scarron, that he had gone further in insensibility than
the Stoics, who were satisfied in appearing insensible to pain; but
Scarron was gay, and amused all the world with his sufferings.