that is perfect or regular. I am not aware whether a single one of the
latter kind still exists. It is perhaps less difficult for uncommon
minds to hit upon the grand and the sublime than to avoid all kinds of
errors. The _Cid_, at its first appearance, was universally admired; it
rose in spite of power and politics, which attempted in vain to crush
it. People of rank and the general public, though always divided in
their opinions and feelings, were in favour of it; they learned it by
heart so as to anticipate the actors who were performing it. The _Cid_,
in short, is one of the finest poems ever written, and one of the best
criticisms on any subject is that on the _Cid_.[61]
(31.) When, after having read a work, loftier thoughts arise in your
mind and noble and heartfelt feelings animate you, do not look for
any other rule to judge it by; it is fine and written in a masterly
manner.[62]
(32.) Capys,[63] who sets up for a judge of style and fancies he writes
like Bouhours[64] and Rabutin,[65] disagrees with public opinion, and
is the only person who says that Damis[66] is not a good author. Damis
is of the same opinion as a large number of people, and says artlessly,
as well as the public, that Capys is a dull writer.
(33.) It is the business of a newsmonger to inform us when any book is
published; if it is printed by Cramoisy,[67] and with what type; if
it is well bound, and on what paper, and at what price it is sold; he
ought even to know what the booksellerʼs sign is; but it is foolish in
him to pretend to criticise it.
The highest point a newsmonger can reach is to reason in a vague manner
on politics.
A newsmonger lies down at night quietly, after having received some
information, but it is spoiled overnight, and he is obliged to throw it
away when he wakes in the morning.[68]
(34.) A philosopher[69] wastes his life in observing men, and wears
himself out in exposing vice and folly. If he shapes his thoughts into
words, it is not so much from his vanity as an author as to place
entirely in its proper light some truth he has discovered, that it may
make the desired impression. Yet some readers think they repay him with
interest if they say, with a magisterial air, “that they have read his
book, and that there is some sense in it;” but he does not mind their
praise, for he has not laboured and passed many sleepless nights to
obtain it: he has higher aims, and acts from nobler motives: he demands
from mankind greater and more uncommon results than empty praise, and
even than rewards; he expects them to lead better lives.
(35.) A fool reads a book and does not understand it; a man of ordinary
mind reads it and fancies he perfectly understands it; a man of
intelligence sometimes does not wholly understand it; he perceives
what is really obscure and what is really clear, whilst witlings[70]
imagine those passages obscure which are not so, and think they do not
understand what is really intelligible.
(36.) In vain an author endeavours to obtain admiration by his
works. A fool may sometimes admire him, but then he is only a fool;
an intelligent man has within him the germs of all truth and of all
sentiments; nothing is new to him; he admires few things, but he finds
that many things deserve some praise.
(37.) I question if it be possible to write more clever letters in a
more agreeable manner and in a better style than those of Balzac[71] or
Voiture;[72] but they are void of those sentiments which have swayed
us since their time and originated with the ladies. That sex excels
ours in this kind of writing; from their pens flow naturally those
turns and expressions which often are with us the effects of tedious
labour and troublesome research; they are fortunate in the selection
of their wordings, which they employ so cleverly, that though they are
not new, they have all the charm of novelty, and seem only designed for
the use they put them to; they alone can express an entire sentiment
in a single word, and render a delicate thought as delicately; their
arguments are connected in an inimitable manner, follow one another
naturally, and are only linked together by the sense. If the ladies
wrote always correctly, I might affirm that perhaps the letters of some
of them would be among the best in our language.[73]
(38.) Terentius[74] wanted nothing but to be less cold. What purity!
what preciseness! what polish! what elegance! what characters! Molière
wanted nothing but to avoid the vulgar tongue and barbarisms and to
write elegantly.[75] What fire! what artlessness! what original and
good jokes! how well he imitates manners! what imagery! and how he
lashes what is ridiculous! But what an author might have been formed of
these two comic writers!
(39.) I have read Malherbe and Théophile.[76] They both understood
nature, with this difference: the first, in a nervous and uniform
style, displays at one and the same time whatever is beautiful, noble,
ingenuous and simple, and depicts or describes it; the other, without
choice or accuracy, with a loose and uneven pen, some times overloads
his descriptions, goes into too many details, and analyses too much;
sometimes he imagines certain things,[77] exaggerates, outstrips what
is true in nature, and becomes a romancer.
(40.) In both Ronsard[78] and Balzac, each in their kind, are found a
sufficient number of good and bad things to form after them very great
men either in verse or prose.
(41.) Marot,[79] by his phraseology and style, seems to have written
after Ronsard wrote; there is very little difference, except in a few
words, between the style of the former and our present style.
(42.) Ronsard and his contemporaries have done more harm than good to
style; they delayed its progress towards perfection, and exposed it
to the danger of being always defective and of never becoming perfect
again. It is astonishing that Marotʼs works, which are so natural and
easy, have not made of Ronsard, so full of rapture and enthusiasm, a
greater poet than he or Marot ever were; and that, on the contrary,
Belleau, Jodelle, and du Bartas[80] were soon followed by a Racan[81]
and a Malherbe, and that the French language was no sooner vitiated
than it recovered.
[Illustration: MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE]
(43.) Marot and Rabelais[82] are inexcusable for scattering so much
filth in their writings: they both had genius and originality enough
to be able to do without it, even for those who seek rather what is
comical than what is admirable in an author. Rabelais above all is
incomprehensible: his book is a mystery, a mere chimera; it has a
lovely womanʼs face, with the feet and tail of a serpent or of some
more hideous animal; it is a monstrous jumble of delicate and ingenious
morality and of filthy depravation. Where it is bad, it excels by far
the worst, and is fit only to delight the rabble; and where it is good,
it is exquisite and excellent, and may entertain the most delicate.
(44.) Two writers have condemned Montaigne[83] in their works. I am
of their opinion, and believe him not always free from blame; but it
seems that none of these two can see anything good in him. One of these
thinks too little to enjoy an author who thinks a great deal; the other
thinks with too much subtlety to be pleased with thoughts that are
natural.[84]
(45.) A grave, solemn, and correct style will go a long way. Amyot and
Coëffeteau[85] are read, but who else of their contemporaries? The
phraseology and the expression of Balzac have become less antiquated
than those of Voiture; but if the style, the intelligence, and
originality of the latter are not modern nor in anything resemble our
present writers, it is because it is easier not to pay any attention to
him than to imitate him, and because the few who follow him could never
overtake him.
(46.) The H ... G ...[86] is distinctly less than nothing, and there
are a good many works like it. There is as much trickery required to
grow rich by a stupid book as there is folly in buying it; a man would
never know the peopleʼs taste if he did not venture sometimes on some
great piece of silliness.
(47.) We perceive that an opera is an outline of a magnificent
spectacle, of which it serves to give an idea.
I cannot understand how the opera, with such perfect music and quite a
regal expenditure, has been able to tire me.[87]
There are some passages in an opera which make us long for others; it
sometimes happens we wish it was all over: this is the fault of the
decorations, or of a want of action or interest.
An opera is not even to this day a poem, for it contains nought but
verses; nor is it a spectacle, since machinery has disappeared through
the dexterous management of Amphion and his kindred;[88] it is a
concert of voices assisted by instruments. We deceive ourselves and
acquire a bad taste when we state, as has been done, that machinery is
only an amusement fit for children and suitable for puppet-shows.[89]
Machines increase and embellish poetical fiction and maintain among
the spectators that gentle illusion in which the entire pleasure
of a theatre consists, to which it also adds a feeling of wonder.
There is no need of flights, or cars, or changes when _Bérénice_ or
_Pénélope_[90] are represented, but they are necessary in an opera, as
the characteristic of such a spectacle is to enchant the mind as well
as the ear and the eye.
(48.) Some busybodies[91] have erected a theatre and machinery,
composed ballets, verses, and music; theirs is the whole spectacle,
even to the room where the performance was held, from the roof to the
very foundation of the four walls. Who has any doubt that the hunt
on the water,[92] the delights of “La Table,”[93] the marvels of the
Labyrinth[94] were also invented by them? I think so, at least, by the
agitation they are in and by the self-satisfied air with which they
applaud their success. Unless I am deceived, they have not contributed
anything to a festival so splendid, so magnificent, and so long kept
up, and which one person planned and paid for; so that I admire two
things: the ease and quietness of him who directed everything, and the
fuss and gesticulations of those who did nothing.[95]
(49.) The critics, or those who, thinking themselves so, decide
deliberately and decisively about all public representations, group
and divide themselves into different parties, each of whom admires a
certain poem or a certain music and damns all others, urged on by a
wholly different motive than public interest or justice. The ardour
with which they defend their prejudices damages the opposite party as
well as their own set. These men discourage poets and musicians by a
thousand contradictions, and delay the progress of arts and sciences,
by depriving them of the advantages to be obtained by that emulation
and freedom which many excellent masters, each in their own way and
according to their own genius, might display in the execution of some
very fine works.[96]
(50.) What is the reason that we laugh so freely in a theatre but are
ashamed to weep? Is it less natural to be melted by what excites pity
than to burst into laughter at what is comical? Is it the alteration of
our features that checks us? It is more visible in immoderate laughter
than in the most passionate grief; and we avert our faces when we
laugh or weep in the presence of people of rank, or of all those whom
we respect. Is it because we are reluctant to let it be seen we are
tender-hearted, or to show any emotion, especially at an imaginary
subject, and by which it seems we are imposed upon? But without quoting
those austere men, or those who do not care for the opinions of the
world,[97] who think that excessive laughter or tears betray weakness,
and who forbid both, what is it that we look for in tragedy? Is it to
laugh? Is truth not depicted there as vividly as in comedy? And have we
not to feel that those things are realities in either case before we
are moved? Or is it so easily to be pleased, and is no verisimilitude
needed? It is not thought odd to hear a whole theatre ring with
laughter at some passage of a comedy, but, on the contrary, it implies
that it was funny, and very naturally performed; therefore the extreme
restraint every one puts on himself not to shed tears and the affected
laughter with which one tries to disguise them, clearly prove that the
natural result of lofty tragedy should be to make us all weep without
concealment and publicly, and without any other hindrance than wiping
our eyes; moreover, after we have agreed to indulge in our passion,
it will be found there is often less room to fear we should weep in a
theatre than that we should be tired out there.
(51.) Tragedy, from its very beginning, oppresses the spectatorʼs
feelings, and, whilst being acted, scarcely allows him liberty to
breathe and leisure to recover, or if it leaves him some respite,
it is only to be plunged again into fresh abysses and new alarms.
Through pity he is led to terror, or reciprocally through terror to
pity; it leads him through tears, sobs, uncertainty, expectation,
fear, surprises and horror to a catastrophe. It should not, therefore,
be a collection of pretty sentiments, tender declarations, gallant
conversations, agreeable pictures, soft words, or something comical
enough to produce laughter, followed, in truth, by a final scene
in which the “mutineers” do not listen to reason,[98] and in which
for decencyʼs sake there is at last some blood spilled, and some
unfortunate manʼs life taken.[99]
(52.) It is not sufficient for the manners of the stage not to be
bad; they should be decent and instructive. Some comical subjects are
so low, so mean, or even so dull and so insignificant, that a poet
should not be permitted to write about them, nor could an audience by
any possibility be diverted by them. A peasant or an intoxicated man
may furnish some scenes for a farce writer; but they can scarcely be
personages of true comedy; for how can they be the basis of the main
action of a comedy? Perhaps it may be said that “such characters are
natural.” Then, according to a similar rule, the attention of an entire
audience may be occupied by a lackey whistling, or a sick person on his
bed-chair, or by a drunken man snoring and being sick; for can anything
be more natural?[100] An effeminate dandy rises late, spends part of
the day at his toilet, looks at himself in the glass, perfumes himself,
puts patches on his face, receives his letters and answers them. But
such a character brought on the stage, made to stop for any length of
time, during one or two acts, and depicted as natural and as like the
original as possible, will be as dull and as tedious as it well can
be.[101]
(53.) Plays and novels, in my opinion, may be made as useful as they
are pernicious. They exhibit so many grand examples of constancy,
virtue, tenderness and disinterestedness; so many fine and perfect
characters, that when young people cast their eyes on what they see
around them and find nothing but unworthy objects, very much inferior
to those they just admired, it is not to be wondered at that they
cannot have the least inclination for them.
(54.) Corneille cannot be equalled where he is excellent; he shows
then original and inimitable characteristics, but he is unequal. His
first plays[102] are uninteresting and heavy, and did not lead us to
expect that he would afterwards soar to such a height, just as his
last plays make us wonder at his fall from such a pinnacle. In some of
his best pieces there are unpardonable errors in the characters of the
drama[103]—a declamatory style which arrests the action and delays it,
and such negligence in his versification and in his expressions that
we can hardly understand how so great a man could be guilty of them.
His highest individual quality is his sublime genius, to which he is
beholden for some of the most beautiful verses ever read; for the plots
of his plays, in which he sometimes ventures to transgress the rules
of the ancients; and finally, for his catastrophes. In this he does
not always follow the taste of the Greeks and their grand simplicity;
on the contrary, he delights in crowding the stage with events, which
he almost always disentangles successfully; and is above all to be
admired for his great variety and the little similarity of his plots
in the large number of dramas he has written. It seems that Racineʼs
plays are more like one another, and that they lead up a little more
to the same ending; but he is uniform, lofty in style, and everywhere
the same, as well in the plots and incidents of his plays, which are
sound, regular, rational and natural, as in his versification, which is
correct, rich in its rhythm, elegant, melodious,[104] and harmonious.
He is an exact imitator of the ancients, whom he carefully follows
in their distinctness and simplicity of action, and like Corneille,
not lacking the sublime and marvellous, the moving and the pathetic.
Where can we find greater tenderness diffused than in _Le Cid_,
_Polyeucte_, and _Les Horaces_?[105] What grandeur do we not observe in
Mithridates, lʼorus, and Burrhus![106] Both poets were well acquainted
with terror and pity, those favourite passions of the ancients, which
the dramatic authors were fond of producing on the stage; as Orestes
in the _Andromaque_ of Racine, _Phèdre_ of the same author, as well as
_Œdipus_ and the _Horatii_ of Corneille clearly prove. If, however,
it is allowable to draw some comparison between them, and distinguish
what are the peculiarities of each of them, as is generally discovered
in their writings, I should probably say: Corneille enthralls us by his
characters and ideas; Racineʼs coincide with ours; the one represents
men as they ought to be, the other as they are. There is in the first
more of what we admire and what we ought even to imitate; and in the
second more of what we perceive in others or feel within ourselves.
Corneille elevates, surprises, controls and instructs us; Racine
pleases, affects, moves and penetrates us. The former employs the most
beautiful, the most noble, and the most commanding arguments; the
latter depicts the most praiseworthy and the most refined passions.
One is full of maxims, rules, and precepts; the other of taste and
feeling. Our mind is kept more occupied by Corneilleʼs tragedies, but
by Racineʼs we are more softened and moved. Corneille is more moral,
Racine more natural.[107] The one seems to imitate Sophocles, the
other Euripides.[108]
(55.) What the people call eloquence is the facility some persons have
of speaking alone and for a long time, aided by extravagant gestures,
a loud voice, and powerful lungs. Pedants also will not recognise
eloquence except in public orations, and can see no distinction between
it and a heap of figures, the use of big words and flowing periods.
It seems that logic is the art of making some truth prevail, and that
eloquence is a gift of the soul which renders us master of the hearts
and minds of other men, so that we suggest to them, or persuade them,
to do whatever we please.
Eloquence may be found in conversations and in all kind of writings; it
is rarely found when looked for, and sometimes discovered where it is
least expected.
Eloquence is to the sublime what the whole is to its part.
What is the sublime? It does not appear to have been defined. Is it
a figure of speech? Does it spring from figures, or at least from
some figures of speech?[109] Does the sublime enter into all kinds of
writings, or are grand subjects only fit for it?[110] Can an eclogue
display anything but fine simplicity, and familiar letters as well as
conversation anything but great delicacy? Are simplicity and delicacy
not the sublime of those works of which they are the perfection? What
is this sublime? Where does it begin?[111]
Synonyms are several words or various phrases which are the precise
equivalents of each other. An antithesis is an opposition of two truths
which throw light on one another. A metaphor or a comparison borrows
from a foreign matter a sensible and natural image of a truth.[112]
A hyperbole exaggerates truth to enable the mind to understand it
better. The sublime paints nothing but the truth, and that only in
noble subjects; it depicts all its causes and effects; it is the
most meritorious expression or image of this truth. Ordinary minds
cannot find the only right expression, and, therefore, use synonyms.
Young men are dazzled by the lustre of an antithesis, and employ it.
Sensible people, who delight in exact imagery, of course, are led away
by comparisons and metaphors. Sharp people, full of fire, and carried
away by a lively imagination beyond all bounds and accuracy, cannot be
satiated with hyperboles. As for the sublime, even among the greatest
geniuses, only the highest can reach it.
(56.) Every author who wishes to write clearly should put himself in
the place of his readers, examine his own work as something new to
him, which he reads for the first time, is not at all concerned in,
and which has been submitted to his criticism; and then be convinced
that no one will understand what is written merely because the author
understands it himself, but because it is really intelligible.
(57.) People write only to be understood, but they should, at least, in
their writings produce very beautiful things. They ought to have a pure
style, and, in truth, employ a suitable phraseology; moreover, their
phrases should express noble, intense, and solid thoughts, and contain
a very fine meaning. A pure and clear style is thrown away on a dry,
barren subject, without either spirit, use, or novelty. What avails
it to any reader to understand easily and without any difficulty some
frivolous and puerile subject, not seldom dull and common, when he is
less in doubt about the meaning of the author than tired with his work?
If we aim at being profound in certain writings, if we affect a polite
turn, and sometimes too much delicacy, it is merely because we have a
good opinion of our readers.
(58.) The disadvantage of reading books written by people belonging to
a certain party or a certain set is that they do not always contain the
truth. Facts are disguised, the arguments on both sides are not brought
forward in all their strength, nor are they quite accurate; and what
wears out the greatest patience is that we must read a large number of
harsh and scurrilous reflections, tossed to and fro by serious-minded
men, who consider themselves personally insulted when any point of
doctrine or any doubtful matter is controverted. Such works possess
this peculiarity, that they neither deserve the prodigious success they
have for a certain time, nor the profound oblivion into which they fall
afterwards, when the rage and contention have ceased, and they become
like almanacks out of date.[113]
(59.) It is the glory and the merit of some men to write well, and of
others not to write at all.
(60.) Some persons have been writing regularly for the last twenty
years; they have faithfully observed all rules of composition, enriched
the language with new words, thrown off the yoke of Latinism, and given
to style a pure French phraseology; they have almost recovered that
harmony which Malherbe and Balzac first discovered, and which since
then so many authors allowed to be lost; they have, in short, given to
our style all the clearness it is capable of, and this will gradually
lead to it becoming easily understood.[114]