that mixture of tact and force which was his great quality. He was
certainly the most eminent man of letters in the assembly, and the
others supposed him to be more independent than he really was. As a
matter of fact, he had succumbed to the fascination of the Cardinal,
who, to put it vulgarly, had Chapelain safe in his pocket. With a great
show of impartiality, the poet put before his friends the sensible view
that, no doubt, it would have been more agreeable to continue in private
their confidential gatherings, but that it was no longer a question of
what was agreeable. They had--he would not insist on pointing out
how--lost all chance of keeping themselves to themselves. The secret was
out, and they had attracted the attention of the most formidable of men,
one who was in the habit of being implicitly obeyed, and who was not
accustomed to meet with resistance; that this all-powerful statesman
would not forgive the insult of their refusing his proffer of
protection, and that he would find a way to chastise each individual
member. But certainly, the first thing he would be sure to do would be
to disperse their assembly and destroy a society which all of them had
already begun to hope would be immortal. Nothing more was heard of
Malleville's "minority report"; the infant Academy surrendered
unanimously. Before the company dispersed, M. de Boisrobert was desired
to convey to Monsieur le Cardinal the very humble thanks of the assembly
for the honour he designed to show them, and to assure him that, though
none of them had ever dreamed of such distinction, they were all of
them resolved to carry out the wishes of his Eminence.
Richelieu always responded to this sort of attitude. He expressed to "le
plaisant abbe" his great satisfaction, and no doubt they laughed
together in private over the oddities of Conrart's guests, for such was
their habit, and such the influence of Boisrobert over his master. A
doctor once facetiously recommended, when the Cardinal was ill, "two
drams of Boisrobert after every meal." But in public, and in fact,
Richelieu took the most lively interest in the scheme. One is inclined
to believe, that, by a flash of prophetic imagination, this great man
saw what a place the Academie Francaise would take in the French order
of things during three coming centuries at least. He urged the friends
to meet without delay, now no longer at Conrart's, but in Desmarets's
palatial hotel, "et a penser serieusement a l'etablissement de
l'Academie." All this was early in 1634, probably in February.
The first direction which the Cardinal deigned to give to the
embarrassed and slightly terrified friends was that they should add to
their number, or in his own words that "ces Messieurs grossirent leur
Compagnie de plusieurs personnes considerables pour leur merite." This
appears to have been begun at the official sitting of March 20, 1634,
and that may be considered as the date of the formation of the Academie.
Existing members sat round the table, no doubt, and names were suggested
and voted for. It would be a somewhat rough-and-ready choice, and the
critical attitude would not be precisely that which would meet with
approval at the Institut to-day. But the errors of choice have been
abundantly exaggerated by those who have written loosely on this
subject. Before the end of 1634 they had added, it seems, twenty-three
names to their original list of eleven (or twelve), so that the Academie
now consisted of about thirty-five men. Among these, it is perfectly
true that there existed many obscurities and some obvious nonentities.
But, besides those whom we have already described, the names now
appeared of Balzac, Maynard, Gomberville, Saint-Amant, Racan, Vaugelas,
and Voiture. All these were writers extremely eminent in the literature
of their own age, and not one of them but is interesting and
distinguished still. Not to have included them in a French Academy would
have been a grave and obvious error.
Some of the accusations brought against the infant Academy are absurd.
It has been vilified for omitting to make Moliere and Pascal original
members; the latter was eleven years of age at the time and the former
twelve! Descartes was, of course, already one of the intellectual
glories of France, but he was a wanderer over the face of Europe, and
still only known as a writer in Latin. Arnauld d'Antilly was elected,
but refused to take his place. Like Pascal, Brebeuf was still a
schoolboy. Pierre Corneille, who was very little known in 1634, and not
a resident in Paris, was elected later, and so was Lamothe le Vayer.
Charles Sorel, the author of _Francion_ and _Le Berger Extravagant_, who
was historiographer of France and a satirist of merit, was not invited
to join, it is true; but his caustic pen had spared no one, and he was
essentially "unclubable." Scarron in 1634 was only a wild young buck
about town. There remains unexplained--and I confess there seems to me
to remain alone--the strange omission of Rotrou, a tragic poet of high
distinction who never formed part of the French Academy. Since 1632 he
had been the friend of Chapelain, and the Cardinal was devoted to him.
That Rotrou's duties as a magistrate forced him to reside at Dreux is
the only reason which I can think of to account for his absence from the
list of 1634. If there was one other representative man of letters
eligible, and yet omitted from that list, my memory is at fault.
Among those who were invited there was one whose support was absolutely
essential to the youthful society. It may be said, without exaggeration,
that the Academie Francaise could not have survived contemporary
ridicule if it had failed to secure the co-operation of Jean Louis Guez
de Balzac. In 1634 Balzac was thirty-seven years of age and by far the
most prominent man of letters in France. The first volume of his famous
_Lettres_--which were not letters in our sense, but chatty and yet
elaborate essays on things in general--had appeared in 1624, and had
created what the Abbe d'Olivet described as "a general revolution among
persons of culture." Balzac immediately took his place as the official
leader and divinity of what were afterwards known as the Precieuses; but
he was a great deal more than that: he was the enchanting artist of a
new French prose. "Le grand Epistolier de France" was to French prose
all, and more than all, that Malherbe (who died in 1628) was to French
verse. Brunetiere has dwelt on Balzac's great service to letters, in the
studied cultivation of harmony and lucidity, order and movement. His
_Lettres_ ushered in a new epoch in the production of prose, far more
sudden and obvious than was brought about half a century later, in
English, by the _Essays_ of Sir William Temple, but similar to that in
character. The most agreeable present any man of fashion could make to
his mistress, says Menage, was a copy of Balzac's book, and yet the
gravest of scholars was not too learned to imitate its cadences.
The objects which the infant French Academy set before itself were the
encouragement of grace and nobility of style in all persons employing
the French language, and, as a corollary to this, the persistent effort
to raise that language, in all particulars, until it should become an
instrument for expression as delicate, as forcible and as comprehensive
as Latin and Greek had been in their palmiest hours. But these were the
very objects which Balzac had first, and most imperiously, impressed
upon his readers, and there was a sense in which it could be said that
the new body was merely emphasizing and extending, giving legislative
authority to, ideas which were the property of Balzac. It was therefore
obvious that whosoever was made an original member, the "grand
Epistolier" should not be missing. This was obvious to the wise
Boisrobert, of whom Balzac himself amusingly said that he was
"circomspectissime" in the smallest actions of his life. As early as
March 13, 1634, and therefore in all probability before anyone else was
approached, Boisrobert took care that Balzac was invited to join the new
Academie.
But it was one thing to whistle to Balzac, and quite another for him to
come at the call. His character was not an agreeable one; he was
excessively proud, painfully shy, quivering with self-consciousness,
ever ready to take offence. Tallemant des Reaux, putting the universal
opinion into an epigram, said that if ever there was an _animal gloriae_
it was Balzac. He was a finished hypochondriac, with his finger ever on
his own pulse; before he was thirty he described himself as more
battered than a ship that has sailed three times to the Indies. He was a
hermit, hating society, and scarcely ever leaving that garden of amber
and musk within the walls of his castle of Balzac which hung above the
mingling waters of the Charente and the Touvre. But Balzac, whose
character and temperament had many points of likeness to those of Pope,
knew the value of friendship, though he was capable of amazing
disloyalty under the pressure of vanity. Conrart, Boisrobert, Chapelain,
and even perhaps the magnificent Cardinal himself--for there is talk of
a pension--brought simultaneous pressure to bear, and Balzac consented
to let his name appear in the list of original members of the Academie.
This did not induce in him much zeal for the works or deeds of his
nominal colleagues, upon whom, from his far-away garden-terraces, he
looked down with great contempt. Still, the Academie Francaise was in
existence, for Balzac was of the number.
Among the other original members, Voiture and Gomberville, the author of
_Polexandre_, have never lost their little place in the crowded history
of French literature. Saint-Amant and Maynard, who sank out of sight for
a long time, are now regarded with more honour than ever before since
their death. Honorat de Beuil, Marquis de Racan, is one of the minor
classics of his country. A dreamy, blundering man, innocent and vague,
his whole outlook upon life was that of a pastoral poet. He had "no
common sense," we are told, but walked in a cloud conducting an
imaginary flock and murmuring his beautiful Virgilian verses. Racan
took the Academy more seriously than any other member; he never missed a
sitting. But he could not be depended on. Once, the Academy met to
listen to an address by the Marquis de Racan, who entered, holding one
torn sheet of paper in his hand. "Gentlemen," he said, "I was bringing
you my oration, but my great greyhound has chewed it up. Here it is!
Make what you can of it, for I don't know it by heart, and I have no
copy." The story of how old Mlle. de Gournay was gulled by successive
impostors who pretended to be Racan, and then at length spurned the real
poet, as an obvious idiot, is too long to be told here in detail. At the
close of his life, Racan had allowed himself to retain no friends except
his fellow academicians, so completely had he become absorbed in the
Academie.
These illustrious names, however, are not sufficient to prevent the eye
which runs down the list of original members from being startled by the
obscurity of at least half the names. It must be remembered that in 1635
it was no envied distinction or disputed honour to form part of this new
and untried corporation. The labours of the academicians were
disinterested, for the Academie was not yet endowed, and there was
little or no reward offered, besides the favour of the Cardinal, for the
zealous labours of scholarship. Moreover, it was necessary to silence
opposition and disarm ridicule. The general feeling of the public, as
reflected in the action of parliament, was hostile. Louis XIII himself,
although he had passed the Letters Patent, was far from favourable to
his Minister's literary project, as we learn from a letter of Chapelain.
But Richelieu was passionately bent on its success, and we see from
Tallemant that whenever the Academie made a step in advance, the
Cardinal was at no pains to conceal his lively satisfaction. But there
were more seats than eminent men of letters to fill them, and
consequently almost anyone who would consent or could be inveigled was
elected. Scarron says the only thing that some of the original Immortals
were fit for was to snuff candles or to sweep the floor. There was a
class of academicians who were styled "the children of the pity of
Boisrobert," because the "plaisant abbe," in filling up the _fauteuils_,
was merciful to needy men of letters without talent, and fetched them in
so that they might eat a piece of bread. They were buoyed up with the
hope that Richelieu would bring in an age of gold for scribblers.
But another element must not be forgotten. There was a great temptation
to turn poachers into gamekeepers, and a certain number of the original
members of the Academie Francaise were wits whose bitterness Richelieu
himself, or Chapelain, or Boisrobert, dreaded. Maynard was one of these,
but perhaps the most curious example was a man called Bautru. He was no
writer, for one scurrilous piece in the _Cabinet Satirique_ represents
his complete works. But he was a savage practical joker, whose tongue
was universally dreaded. His wit seems to have been ready. He was a
"libertine" in the sense of that day, and openly irreligious. One day,
he was caught taking his hat off to a crucifix as he passed in the
street. "Ah! then," said his friends, "you are on better terms with God
than we supposed?" "On bowing terms; we don't speak," Bautru replied. In
1642, he called our Charles I "a calf led from market to market; and
presently they will take him to the shambles," he prophetically added.
His was an evil tongue with a sharp edge to it, which it was safest to
have inside the Academie, and there were others of the same sort among
the false celebrities, _les passe-volans_ or dummies, whose presence in
the original list is at first so disconcerting.
In order to give dignity and discipline to their assemblies, the
Academicians now created three offices, those of Director, Chancellor,
and Perpetual Secretary; these were held by Serisay, Desmarets, and
Conrart respectively. They appointed the famous printer, Jean Camusat,
their librarian and typographer, meeting sometimes at his house for
easier correction of the press. On the 20th of March, 1634, they settled
on their all-important name, and thenceforth were to the world
"l'Academie francoise." Two days later, in a very long letter, they
detailed to the Cardinal the objects and functions of their body, not
failing to begin with the request that he would permit them to publish
his own tragedies and pastorals. This document is very interesting
to-day. In it the new Academy proposes to cleanse the French language
from all the ordure which it has contracted from vulgar and ignorant
usage; to establish the exact sense of words; seriously to examine the
subject and treatment of prose, the style of the whole, the harmony of
periods, the propriety in the use of words. Moreover, the Academicians
undertook to examine the books of one another with a meticulous
attention to faults of style and grammar. This "Projet," which was
drafted by Faret, was submitted to Richelieu, and printed in an edition
of thirty copies, in May, 1634.
In this first manifesto, which was kept extremely secret, nothing was
said about the plan of a Dictionary. But Chapelain's heart had been set
upon that from the first, and he did not forget to bring it forward. He
insisted, in season and out of season, on the necessity of labouring in
unison "for the purity of our language and for its capacity to develop
the loftiest eloquence." On the 27th of March he brought forward his
idea of a Dictionary. Balzac supported him by letter, Vaugelas offered
his invaluable grammatical services, and at last the Academy so far
accepted the idea as to instruct Chapelain and Vaugelas to report on the
subject. But this was not until 1637, so that we must realize that the
French Academy had existed three years before it finally settled down to
the work with which its early existence is most popularly identified.
But for the persistency of Chapelain this might never have been
commenced.
On the other hand, the Academicians were very busily engaged over their
statutes, which were drawn up by one of the latest of the original
members, Hay du Chastelet, a learned lawyer of high repute. They were
passed and accepted by the Cardinal, before the close of 1634. It was,
very properly, Conrart himself who drafted the Letters Patent, a very
long and dignified document, which Louis XIII signed in Paris on the
29th of January, 1635. But now came the first difficulty which beset
the primrose path of the young Academie. It was not enough for the King
to sign the Letters Patent; they had to be _verifiees_ by Parliament;
and this was not done until the 10th of July, 1637. There has been much
discussion as to the cause of this delay, which was intensely irksome to
the Cardinal and threatened the existence of the infant association. It
was early thought that the Parliament suspected Richelieu of having a
design in creating the Academie which was much more directly political
than appeared on the surface. If so, the placid and modest demeanour of
the Academicians ultimately disarmed hostility, and they obtained their
Letters Patent.
At this point we must draw our inquiry to a close, since the foundation
of the Academie Francaise was completed by this action on the part of
the Parliament. It will be seen that eight years had gone by since the
first meetings of selected men of letters had taken place in Conrart's
house, and that many tedious formalities had to be completed before the
body was in a position even to begin its work. The humble nature of the
origin of the Academie Francaise, the surprising and painful adventures
of its youth, and the glories of its subsequent existence, should make
us indulgent to the slow growth of any similar institution. Rome is not
the only corporation which was not built in a day.
ROUSSEAU IN ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Burke, in his _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ (1790), although
he called Rousseau an "eccentric observer of human nature," had not
attempted to deny his penetration. He wrote of him, already without
sympathy, as one who for the sake of playing upon that love of the
marvellous which is inherent in man, desired extraordinary situations,
"giving rise to new and unlooked-for strokes in politics and morals."
But he gave the Genevese philosopher credit for nothing worse than
levity; he had raised up political and social paradoxes in the spirit in
which a story-teller, eager to arouse the attention of an idle audience,
evokes giants and fairies to satisfy the credulity of his hearers. And
Burke has the indulgence to admit that, "I believe, were Rousseau alive,
and in one of his lucid intervals, he would be shocked at the fanatical
frenzy of his scholars, who ... are servile imitators; and even in their
incredulity discover an implicit faith."
But when events had rapidly developed, and Burke came to write the
flaming sentences of his great _Letter to a Member of the National
Assembly_ (1791), the importance of Rousseau's influence in bringing
about the events which Burke so passionately deplored had greatly
widened and deepened. He saw that the very blood of Rousseau had been
transfused into the veins of the National Assembly of France. "Him they
study," he wrote, "him they meditate; him they turn over in all the time
they can spare from the laborious mischief of the day, or the debauches
of the night. Rousseau is their canon of holy writ; in his life he is
their canon of _Polyclitus_; he is their standard figure of
perfection." Burke felt obliged to denounce, with his unparalleled
wealth of picturesque eloquence, the fatal character of the fascination
exercised by the author of the _Lettres de la Montague_ and the
_Confessions_.
To Burke, thus brought face to face with what he believed to be the very
Ragnarok of the gods, the ruin of all which made life in Europe worth
living, it now became a religious duty to expose the malefic character
of the charming, exquisite pleadings of the revolutionary of Geneva. He
declared that the virtue propounded by Rousseau was not virtue at all,
but "a selfish, flattering, seductive, ostentatious vice." This was a
theory new to Englishmen, a theory which had, of course, in faltering
accents, been here and there suggested by opponents, but never before
deliberately and logically asserted by a great master of English
oratory. Burke spoke, not merely with the immense prestige of his
position, but as one who had been subjected to the personal charm of
Rousseau, and who had studied him in his lifetime, not merely without
prejudice, but with sympathy and admiration. His grave censure of the
philosopher came with unction from the lips of one who was known to have
been in communication with him, during his first visit to London, almost
from day to day.[5] Burke spoke with authority to a large section of the
public when he stated that he had gradually become persuaded that
Rousseau "entertained no principle either to guide his heart, or to
guide his understanding, but _vanity_." He did not deny the charm of
Rousseau's writing, or pretend to depreciate his incomparable talents,
but he pronounced him to be deranged and eccentric, and to have gloried
in the illumination of the obscure and vulgar vices. He described the
_Confessions_, over which the English world had bowed in transports of
emotional adulation, as the record of "a life that, with wild defiance,
he flings in the face of his Creator." Violence carried Burke so far as
to describe Rousseau as a man, by his own account, without a single
virtue. There can be no question that this diatribe, prominently brought
forward by the first of English orators, in a work which was read by
every educated man in Great Britain, sapped the reputation of Rousseau
amongst our countrymen, and led to the gradual decline of his fame in
England all down the nineteenth century.
The attack on Rousseau, contained in many fulminating pages of the
_Letter to a Member of the National Assembly_, is extravagant and
unjust. We read it now with a certain indignation, tempered by a mild
amusement. It should have been injured by its absurd denunciation of
Frenchmen and of the French nation, in whom Burke saw little but a
furious congeries of dancing-masters, fiddlers, and _valets-de-chambre_.
But there were already in England, in the reaction of terror brought
about by the French Revolution, many who were delighted to accept this
grotesque perversion of the truth, and Burke, with all his powers of
speech, all his knowledge of his countrymen, knew how to play upon the
alarms and the ignorances of the English. He had, at all events, the
dangerous gift of unqualified statement, and when he solemnly declared,
as if by reluctant conviction, that "the writings of Rousseau lead
directly to shameful evil" both in theory and practice, there were
thousands only too ready to accept the warning.
We may observe, too, that Burke was the earliest English critic of
weight who suggested that the exquisite literary art of Rousseau had its
limitations. His remarks are worthy of being quoted at length, since
they contain the germ of the English attitude through the whole of the
nineteenth century:--
I have often wondered how he comes to be so much more admired and
followed on the Continent than he is here. Perhaps a secret charm
in the language may have its share in this extraordinary
difference. We certainly perceive, and to a degree we feel, in this
writer, a style glowing, animated, enthusiastic; at the same time
that we find it lax, diffuse, and not in the best taste of
composition; all the members of the piece being pretty equally
laboured and expended, without any due selection or subordination
of parts. He is generally too much on the stretch, and his manner
has little variety. We cannot rest upon any of his works, though
they contain observations which occasionally discover a
considerable insight into human nature.