A delicate question, to which somewhat diverse solutions might be
given according to times and seasons. An intelligent man suggests it
to me, and I intend to try, if not to solve it, at least to examine
and discuss it face to face with my readers, were it only to
persuade them to answer it for themselves, and, if I can, to make
their opinion and mine on the point clear. And why, in criticism,
should we not, from time to time, venture to treat some of those
subjects which are not personal, in which we no longer speak of some
one but of some thing? Our neighbours, the English, have well
succeeded in making of it a special division of literature under the
modest title of "Essays." It is true that in writing of such
subjects, always slightly abstract and moral, it is advisable to
speak of them in a season of quiet, to make sure of our own
attention and of that of others, to seize one of those moments of
calm moderation and leisure seldom granted our amiable France; even
when she is desirous of being wise and is not making revolutions,
her brilliant genius can scarcely tolerate them.
A classic, according to the usual definition, is an old author
canonised by admiration, and an authority in his particular style.
The word classic was first used in this sense by the Romans. With
them not all the citizens of the different classes were properly
called classici, but only those of the chief class, those who
possessed an income of a certain fixed sum. Those who possessed a
smaller income were described by the term infra classem, below the
preeminent class. The word classicus was used in a figurative sense
by Aulus Gellius, and applied to writers: a writer of worth and
distinction, classicus assiduusque scriptor, a writer who is of
account, has real property, and is not lost in the proletariate
crowd. Such an expression implies an age sufficiently advanced to
have already made some sort of valuation and classification of
literature.
At first the only true classics for the moderns were the ancients.
The Greeks, by peculiar good fortune and natural enlightenment of
mind, had no classics but themselves. They were at first the only
classical authors for the Romans, who strove and contrived to
imitate them. After the great periods of Roman literature, after
Cicero and Virgil, the Romans in their turn had their classics, who
became almost exclusively the classical authors of the centuries
which followed. The middle ages, which were less ignorant of Latin
antiquity than is believed, but which lacked proportion and taste,
confused the ranks and orders. Ovid was placed above Homer, and
Boetius seemed a classic equal to Plato. The revival of learning in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries helped to bring this long
chaos to order, and then only was admiration rightly proportioned.
Thenceforth the true classical authors of Greek and Latin antiquity
stood out in a luminous background, and were harmoniously grouped on
their two heights.
Meanwhile modern literatures were born, and some of the more
precocious, like the Italian, already possessed the style of
antiquity. Dante appeared, and, from the very first, posterity
greeted him as a classic. Italian poetry has since shrunk into far
narrower bounds; but, whenever it desired to do so, it always found
again and preserved the impulse and echo of its lofty origin. It is
no indifferent matter for a poetry to derive its point of departure
and classical source in high places; for example, to spring from
Dante rather than to issue laboriously from Malherbe.
Modern Italy had her classical authors, and Spain had every right to
believe that she also had hers at a time when France was yet seeking
hers. A few talented writers en dowed with originality and
exceptional animation, a few brilliant efforts, isolated, without
following, interrupted and recommenced, did not suffice to endow a
nation with a solid and imposing basis of literary wealth. The idea
of a classic implies something that has continuance and consistence,
and which produces unity and tradition fashions and transmits
itself, and endures. It was only after the glorious years of Louis
XIV. that the nation felt with tremor and pride that such good
fortune had happened to her. Every voice in formed Louis XIV. of it
with flattery, exaggeration, and emphasis, yet with a certain
sentiment of truth. Then arose a singular and striking contradiction:
those men of whom Perrauit was the chief, the men who were most
smitten with the marvels of the age of Louis the Great, who even
went the length of sacrificing the ancients to the moderns, aimed at
exalting and canonising even those whom they regarded as inveterate
opponents and adversaries. Boileau avenged and angrily upheld the
ancients against Perrault, who extolled the moderns--that is to say,
Corneille, Moliere, Pascal, and the eminent men of his age, Boileau,
one of the first, included. Kindly La Fontaine, taking part in the
dispute in behalf of the learned Huet, did not perceive that, in
spite of his defects, he was in his turn on the point of being held
as a classic himself.
Example is the best definition. From the time France possessed her
age of Louis XIV. and could contemplate it at a little distance, she
knew, better than by any arguments, what to be classical meant. The
eighteenth century, even in its medley of things, strengthened this
idea through some fine works, due to its four great men. Read
Voltaire's Age of Louis XIV., Montesquieu's Greatness and Fall of
the Romans, Buffon's Epochs of Nature, the beautiful pages of
reverie and natural description of Rousseau's Savoyard Vicar, and
say if the eighteenth century, in these memorable works, did not
understand how to reconcile tradition with freedom of development
and independence. But at the be ginning of the present century and
under the Empire, in sight of the first attempts of a decidedly new
and somewhat adventurous literature, the idea of a classic in a few
resist ing minds, more sorrowful than severe, was strangely nar
rowed and contracted. The first Dictionary of the Academy (1694)
merely defined a classical author as "a much-approved ancient
writer, who is an authority as regards the subject he treats." The
Dictionary of the Academy of 1835 narrows that definition still
more, and gives precision and even limit to its rather vague form.
It describes classical authors as those "who have become models in
any language whatever," and in all the articles which follow, the
expressions, models, fixed rules for composition and style, strict
rules of art to which men must conform, continually recur. That
definition of classic was evidently made by the respectable
Academicians, our predecessors, in face and sight of what was then
called romantic--that is to say, in sight of the enemy. It seems to
me time to renounce those timid and restrictive definitions and to
free our mind of them. A true classic, as I should like to hear it
defined, is an author who has enriched the human mind, increased its
treasure, and caused it to advance a step; who has discovered some
moral and not equivocal truth, or revealed some eternal passion in
that heart where all seemed known and discovered; who has expressed
his thought, observation, or invention, in no matter what form, only
provided it be broad and great, refined and sensible, sane and
beautiful in itself; who has spoken to all in his own peculiar
style, a style which is found to be also that of the whole world, a
style new without neologism, new and old, easily contemporary with
all time.
Such a classic may for a moment have been revolutionary; it may at
least have seemed so, but it is not; it only lashed and subverted
whatever prevented the restoration of the balance of order and
beauty.
If it is desired, names may be applied to this definition which I
wish to make purposely majestic and fluctuating, or in a word, all-
embracing. I should first put there Corneille of the Polyeucte,
Cinna, and Horaces. I should put Moliere there, the fullest and most
complete poetic genius we have ever had in France. Goethe, the king
of critics, said:--
"Moliere is so great that he astonishes us afresh every time we read
him. He is a man apart; his plays border on the tragic, and no one
has the courage to try and imitate him. His Avare, where vice
destroys all affection between father and son, is one of the most
sublime works, and dramatic in the highest degree. In a drama every
action ought to be important in itself, and to lead to an action
greater still. In this respect Tartuffe is a model. What a piece of
exposition the first scene is! From the beginning everything has an
important meaning, and causes something much more important to be
foreseen. The exposition in a certain play of Lessing that might be
mentioned is very fine, but the world only sees that of Tartuffe
once. It is the finest of the kind we possess. Every year I read a
play of Moliere, just as from time to time I contemplate some
engraving after the great Italian masters."
I do not conceal from myself that the definition of the classic I
have just given somewhat exceeds the notion usually ascribed to the
term. It should, above all, include conditions of uniformity,
wisdom, moderation, and reason, which dominate and contain all the
others. Having to praise M. Royer-Collard, M. de Remusat said--"If
he derives purity of taste, propriety of terms, variety of
expression, attentive care in suiting the diction to the thought,
from our classics, he owes to himself alone the distinctive
character he gives it all." It is here evident that the part
allotted to classical qualities seems mostly to depend on harmony
and nuances of expression, on graceful and temperate style: such is
also the most general opinion. In this sense the pre-eminent
classics would be writers of a middling order, exact, sensible,
elegant, always clear, yet of noble feeling and airily veiled
strength. Marie-Joseph Chenier has described the poetics of those
temperate and accomplished writers in lines where he shows himself
their happy disciple:--
"It is good sense, reason which does all,--virtue, genius, soul,
talent, and taste.--What is virtue? reason put in practice;--talent?
reason expressed with brilliance;--soul? reason delicately put
forth;--and genius is sublime reason."
While writing those lines he was evidently thinking of Pope,
Boileau, and Horace, the master of them all. The peculiar
characteristic of the theory which subordinated imagination and
feeling itself to reason, of which Scaliger perhaps gave the first
sign among the moderns, is, properly speaking, the Latin theory, and
for a long time it was also by preference the French theory. If it
is used appositely, if the term reason is not abused, that theory
possesses some truth; but it is evident that it is abused, and that
if, for instance, reason can be confounded with poetic genius and
make one with it in a moral epistle, it cannot be the same thing as
the genius, so varied and so diversely creative in its expression of
the passions, of the drama or the epic. Where will you find reason
in the fourth book of the AEneid and the transports of Dido? Be that
as it may, the spirit which prompted the theory, caused writers who
ruled their inspiration, rather than those who abandoned themselves
to it, to be placed in the first rank of classics; to put Virgil
there more surely than Homer, Racine in preference to Corneille. The
masterpiece to which the theory likes to point, which in fact brings
together all conditions of prudence, strength, tempered boldness,
moral elevation, and grandeur, is Athalie. Turenne in his two last
campaigns and Racine in Athalie are the great examples of what wise
and prudent men are capable of when they reach the maturity of their
genius and attain their supremest boldness.
Buffon, in his Discourse on Style, insisting on the unity of design,
arrangement, and execution, which are the stamps of true classical
works, said:--"Every subject is one, and however vast it is, it can
be comprised in a single treatise. Interruptions, pauses, sub-
divisions should only be used when many subjects are treated, when,
having to speak of great, intricate, and dissimilar things, the
march of genius is interrupted by the multiplicity of obstacles, and
contracted by the necessity of circumstances: otherwise, far from
making a work more solid, a great number of divisions destroys the
unity of its parts; the book appears clearer to the view, but the
author's design remains obscure." And he continues his criticism,
having in view Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws, an excellent book at
bottom, but sub-divided: the famous author, worn out before the end,
was unable to infuse inspiration into all his ideas, and to arrange
all his matter. However, I can scarcely believe that Buffon was not
also thinking, by way of contrast, of Bossuet's Discourse on
Universal History, a subject vast indeed, and yet of such an unity
that the great orator was able to comprise it in a single treatise.
When we open the first edition, that of 1681, before the division
into chapters, which was introduced later, passed from the margin
into the text, very thing is developed in a single series, almost in
one breath. It might be said that the orator has here acted like the
nature of which Buffon speaks, that "he has worked on an eternal
plan from which he has nowhere departed," so deeply does he seem to
have entered into the familiar counsels and designs of providence.
Are Athalie and the Discourse on Universal History the greatest
masterpieces that the strict classical theory can present to its
friends as well as to its enemies? In spite of the admirable
simplicity and dignity in the achievement of such unique
productions, we should like, nevertheless, in the interests of art,
to expand that theory a little, and to show that it is possible to
enlarge it without relaxing the tension. Goethe, whom I like to
quote on such a subject, said:--
"I call the classical healthy, and the romantic sickly. In my
opinion the Nibelungen song is as much a classic as Homer. Both are
healthy and vigorous. The works of the day are romantic, not because
they are new, but because they are weak, ailing, or sickly. Ancient
works are classical not because they are old, but because they are
powerful, fresh, and healthy. If we regarded romantic and classical
from those two points of view we should soon all agree."
Indeed, before determining and fixing the opinions on that matter, I
should like every unbiassed mind to take a voyage round the world
and devote itself to a survey of different literatures in their
primitive vigour and infinite variety. What would be seen? Chief of
all a Homer, the father of the classical world, less a single
distinct individual than the vast living expression of a whole epoch
and a semi-barbarous civilisation. In order to make him a true
classic, it was necessary to attribute to him later a design, a
plan, literary invention, qualities of atticism and urbanity of
which he had certainly never dreamed in the luxuriant development of
his natural inspirations. And who appear by his side? August,
venerable ancients, the AEschyluses and the Sophocles, mutilated, it
is true, and only there to present us with a debris of themselves,
the survivors of many others as worthy, doubtless, as they to
survive, but who have succumbed to the injuries of time. This
thought alone would teach a man of impartial mind not to look upon
the whole of even classical literatures with a too narrow and
restricted view; he would learn that the exact and well-proportioned
order which has since so largely prevailed in our admiration of the
past was only the outcome of artificial circumstances.
And in reaching the modern world, how would it be? The greatest
names to be seen at the beginning of literatures are those which
disturb and run counter to certain fixed ideas of what is beautiful
and appropriate in poetry. For example, is Shakespeare a classic?
Yes, now, for England and the world; but in the time of Pope he was
not considered so. Pope and his friends were the only pre-eminent
classics; directly after their death they seemed so for ever. At the
present time they are still classics, as they deserve to be, but
they are only of the second order, and are for ever subordinated and
relegated to their rightful place by him who has again come to his
own on the height of the horizon.
It is not, however, for me to speak ill of Pope or his great
disciples, above all, when they possess pathos and naturalness like
Goldsmith: after the greatest they are perhaps the most agreeable
writers and the poets best fitted to add charm to life. Once when
Lord Bolingbroke was writing to Swift, Pope added a postscript, in
which he said--"I think some advantage would result to our age, if
we three spent three years together." Men who, without boasting,
have the right to say such things must never be spoken of lightly:
the fortunate ages, when men of talent could propose such things,
then no chimera, are rather to be envied. The ages called by the
name of Louis XIV. or of Queen Anne are, in the dispassionate sense
of the word, the only true classical ages, those which offer
protection and a favourable climate to real talent. We know only to
well how in our untrammelled times, through the instability and
storminess of the age, talents are lost and dissipated.
Nevertheless, let us acknowledge our age's part and superiority in
greatness. True and sovereign genius triumphs over the very
difficulties that cause others to fail: Dante, Shakespeare, and
Milton were able to attain their height and produce their
imperishable works in spite of obstacles, hardships and tempests.
Byron's opinion of Pope has been much discussed, and the explanation
of it sought in the kind of contradiction by which the singer of Don
Juan and Childe Harold extolled the purely classical school and
pronounced it the only good one, while himself acting so
differently. Goethe spoke the truth on that point when he remarked
that Byron, great by the flow and source of poetry, feared that
Shakespeare was more powerful than himself in the creation and
realisation of his characters. "He would have liked to deny it; the
elevation so free from egoism irritated him; he felt when near it
that he could not display himself at ease. He never denied Pope,
because he did not fear him; he knew that Pope was only a low wall
by his side."
If, as Byron desired, Pope's school had kept the supremacy and a
sort of honorary empire in the past, Byron would have been the first
and only poet in his particular style; the height of Pope's wall
shuts out Shakespeare's great figure from sight, whereas when
Shakespeare reigns and rules in all his greatness, Byron is only
second.
In France there was no great classic before the age of Louis XIV.;
the Dantes and Shakespeares, the early authorities to whom, in times
of emancipation, men sooner or later return, were wanting. There
were mere sketches of great poets, like Mathurin Regnier, like
Rabelais, without any ideal, without the depth of emotion and the
seriousness which canonises. Montaigne was a kind of premature
classic, of the family of Horace, but for want of worthy
surroundings, like a spoiled child, he gave himself up to the
unbridled fancies of his style and humour. Hence it happened that
France, less than any other nation, found in her old authors a right
to demand vehemently at a certain time literary liberty and freedom,
and that it was more difficult for her, in enfranchising herself, to
remain classical. However, with Moliere and La Fontaine among her
classics of the great period, nothing could justly be refused to
those who possessed courage and ability.
The important point now seems to me to be to uphold, while
extending, the idea and belief. There is no receipt for making
classics; this point should be clearly recognised. To believe that
an author will become a classic by imitating certain qualities of
purity, moderation, accuracy, and elegance, independently of the
style and inspiration, is to believe that after Racine the father
there is a place for Racine the son; dull and estimable role, the
worst in poetry. Further, it is hazardous to take too quickly and
without opposition the place of a classic in the sight of one's
contemporaries; in that case there is a good chance of not retaining
the position with posterity. Fontanes in his day was regarded by his
friends as a pure classic; see how at twenty-five years' distance
his star has set. How many of these precocious classics are there
who do not endure, and who are so only for a while! We turn round
one morning and are surprised not to find them standing behind us.
Madame de Sevigne would wittily say they possessed but an evanescent
colour. With regard to classics, the least expected prove the best
and greatest: seek them rather in the vigorous genius born immortal
and flourishing for ever. Apparently the least classical of the four
great poets of the age of Louis XIV. was Moliere; he was then
applauded far more than he was esteemed; men took delight in him
without understanding his worth. After him, La Fontaine seemed the
least classical: observe after two centuries what is the result for
both. Far above Boileau, even above Racine, are they not now
unanimously considered to possess in the highest degree the
characteristics of an all-embracing morality?
Meanwhile there is no question of sacrificing or depreciating
anything. I believe the temple of taste is to be rebuilt; but its
reconstruction is merely a matter of enlargement, so that it may
become the home of all noble human beings, of all who have
permanently increased the sum of the mind's delights and
possessions. As for me, who cannot, obviously, in any degree pretend
to be the architect or designer of such a temple, I shall confine
myself to expressing a few earnest wishes, to submit, as it were, my
designs for the edifice. Above all I should desire not to exclude
any one among the worthy, each should be in his place there, from
Shakespeare, the freest of creative geniuses, and the greatest of
classics without knowing it, to Andrieux, the last of classics in
little. "There is more than one chamber in the mansions of my
Father;" that should be as true of the kingdom of the beautiful here
below, as of the kingdom of Heaven. Homer, as always and everywhere,
should be first, likest a god; but behind him, like the procession
of the three wise kings of the East, would be seen the three great
poets, the three Homers, so long ignored by us, who wrote epics for
the use of the old peoples of Asia, the poets Valmiki, Vyasa of the
Hindoos, and Firdousi of the Persians: in the domain of taste it is
well to know that such men exist, and not to divide the human race.
Our homage paid to what is recognized as soon as perceived, we must
not stray further; the eye should delight in a thousand pleasing or
majestic spectacles, should rejoice in a thousand varied and
surprising combinations, whose apparent confusion would never be
without concord and harmony. The oldest of the wise men and poets,
those who put human morality into maxims, and those who in simple
fashion sung it, would converse together in rare and gentle speech,
and would not be surprised at understanding each other's meaning at
the very first word. Solon, Hesiod, Theognis, Job, Solomon, and why
not Confucius, would welcome the cleverest moderns, La Rochefoucauld
and La Bruyere, who, when listening to them, would say "they knew
all that we know, and in repeating life's experiences, we have
discovered nothing." On the hill, most easily discernible, and of
most accessible ascent, Virgil, surrounded by Menander, Tibullus,
Terence, Fenelon, would occupy himself in discoursing with them with
great charm and divine enchantment: his gentle countenance would
shine with an inner light, and be tinged with modesty; as on the day
when entering the theatre at Rome, just as they finished reciting
his verses, he saw the people rise with an unanimous movement and
pay to him the same homage as to Augustus. Not far from him,
regretting the separation from so dear a friend, Horace, in his
turn, would preside (as far as so accomplished and wise a poet could
preside) over the group of poets of social life who could talk
although they sang,--Pope, Boileau, the one become less irritable,
the other less fault-finding. Montaigne, a true poet, would be among
them, and would give the finishing touch that should deprive that
delightful corner of the air of a literary school. There would La
Fontaine forget himself, and becoming less volatile would wander no
more. Voltaire would be attracted by it, but while finding pleasure
in it would not have patience to remain. A little lower down, on the
same hill as Virgil, Xenophon, with simple bearing, looking in no
way like a general, but rather resembling a priest of the Muses,
would be seen gathering round him the Attics of every tongue and of
every nation, the Addisons, Pellissons, Vauvenargues--all who feel
the value of an easy persuasiveness, an exquisite simplicity, and a
gentle negligence mingled with ornament. In the centre of the place,
in the portico of the principal temple (for there would be several
in the enclosure), three great men would like to meet often, and
when they were together, no fourth, however great, would dream of
joining their discourse or their silence. In them would be seen
beauty, proportion in greatness, and that perfect harmony which
appears but once in the full youth of the world. Their three names
have become the ideal of art--Plato, Sophocles, and Demosthenes.
Those demi-gods honoured, we see a numerous and familiar company of
choice spirits who follow, the Cervantes and Molieres, practical
painters of life, indulgent friends who are still the first of
benefactors, who laughingly embrace all mankind, turn man's
experience to gaiety, and know the powerful workings of a sensible,
hearty, and legitimate joy. I do not wish to make this description,
which if complete would fill a volume, any longer. In the middle
ages, believe me, Dante would occupy the sacred heights: at the feet
of the singer of Paradise all Italy would be spread out like a
garden; Boccaccio and Ariosto would there disport themselves, and
Tasso would find again the orange groves of Sorrento. Usually a
corner would be reserved for each of the various nations, but the
authors would take delight in leaving it, and in their travels would
recognise, where we should least expect it, brothers or masters.
Lucretius, for example, would enjoy discussing the origin of the
world and the reducing of chaos to order with Milton. But both
arguing from their own point of view, they would only agree as
regards divine pictures of poetry and nature.
Such are our classics; each individual imagination may finish the
sketch and choose the group preferred. For it is necessary to make a
choice, and the first condition of taste, after obtaining knowledge
of all, lies not in continual travel, but in rest and cessation from
wandering. Nothing blunts and destroys taste so much as endless
journeyings; the poetic spirit is not the Wandering Jew. However,
when I speak of resting and making choice, my meaning is not that we
are to imitate those who charm us most among our masters in the
past. Let us be content to know them, to penetrate them, to admire
them; but let us, the late-comers, endeavour to be ourselves. Let us
have the sincerity and naturalness of our own thoughts, of our own
feelings; so much is always possible. To that let us add what is
more difficult, elevation, an aim, if possible, towards an exalted
goal; and while speaking our own language, and submitting to the
conditions of the times in which we live, whence we derive our
strength and our defects, let us ask from time to time, our brows
lifted towards the heights and our eyes fixed on the group of
honoured mortals: what would that say of us?
But why speak always of authors and writings? Maybe an age is coming
when there will be no more writing. Happy those who read and read
again, those who in their reading can follow their unrestrained
inclination! There comes a time in life when, all our journeys over,
our experiences ended, there is no enjoyment more delightful than to
study and thoroughly examine the things we know, to take pleasure in
what we feel, and in seeing and seeing again the people we love: the
pure joys of our maturity. Then it is that the word classic takes
its true meaning, and is defined for every man of taste by an
irresistible choice. Then taste is formed, it is shaped and
definite; then good sense, if we are to possess it at all, is
perfected in us. We have neither more time for experiments, nor a
desire to go forth in search of pastures newf We cling to our
friends, to those proved by long intercourse. Old wine, old books,
old friends. We say to ourselves with Voltaire in these delightful
lines:--"Let us enjoy, let us write, let us live, my dear Horace!...I
have lived longer than you: my verse will not last so long. But on
the brink of the tomb I shall make it my chief care--to follow the
lessons of your philosophy--to despise death in enjoying life--to
read your writings full of charm and good sense--as we drink an old
wine which revives our senses."
In fact, be it Horace or another who is the author preferred, who
reflects our thoughts in all the wealth of their maturity, of some
one of those excellent and antique minds shall we request an
interview at every moment; of some one of them shall we ask a
friendship which never deceives, which could not fail us; to some
one of them shall we appeal for that sensation of serenity and
amenity (we have often need of it) which reconciles us with mankind
and with ourselves.