CHAPTER XXII. THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV:[148] ASPECTS OF ITS CIVILISATION

Augustus, Leo X, Louis XIV appear to us in the illumination of

art and poetry. Alexander, Cæsar, and Napoleon are greater, but

have they such a divine cortège?--ARSÈNE HOUSSAYE.[f]

[Sidenote: [1610-1715 A.D.]]

That development of French civilisation and letters which attained its

apogee in the second half of the seventeenth century, the progress

of science and the taste for art, was not the work of Louis XIV. The

movement was begun; Louis XIV had only to support it and give it a

particular direction.

In order to seek and determine the causes, it is necessary to go further

back. They will be found in the language, which became polished through

the aspiration of society, which was reformed after the religious

wars, in a better education which had reacted on manners, in a more

general education and one more appropriate to the time--in fact, in

the development of all the moral energies of France since Henry IV and

Richelieu. Those great and independent geniuses, Richelieu, Corneille,

and Descartes, gave the impulse, aroused writers or thinkers, and

inspired the best society with that love, that admiration of the

beautiful, which elevates the soul of a nation.

The cares of war and of power were far from engrossing all the attention

of Richelieu. He completed the construction of the Palais Cardinal, which

was one of the most sumptuous dwellings ever seen, and which during his

lifetime he bequeathed to the king, with the sole proviso that only a

prince should ever inhabit it. He likewise embellished his house at Ruel,

and his château at Richelieu in Touraine. He patronised Simon Vouet,

recalled Poussin from Rome, bought paintings of Lesueur and Philippe de

Champagne. He established the royal printing house, and tried, although

with little success, to re-establish the royal manufactures established

under the preceding reign and almost abandoned since then.

FOUNDATION OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY

In 1635 Richelieu conceived the idea of founding an association whose

mission should be the perfecting of the language, and which should be

the highest authority in the criticism of literary works submitted by

their authors. Boisrobert, Conrart, Chapelain, Rotrou, and the great

Corneille are counted among the founders of this association, which was

the Académie Française. The men of letters, until then placed only too

often in the “domesticity” of the great--a name then far removed from

the sense given to it to-day--by means of this association acquired more

independence and influence. Formerly they had flattered the powerful;

now they began to develop a power of their own and to be flattered in

their turn. The parliament made some difficulty about the incorporation

of the academy, because it had an invincible distrust of the cardinal’s

ideas, whose works seemed to it always despotic, and because it feared

the new company might be invested with too great privileges and with

jurisdiction. It was far from imagining that the academy was to become

one of the glories of France, in a time when Corneille led the list of

great French writers, when Descartes wrote the _Méthode_, when French

society was the most polished in Europe, when Europe already borrowed the

language of France, and took France for a model in everything.[b]

THE PATRONAGE SYSTEM

In the first thirty years of the seventeenth century royalty did not yet

seek to exercise any influence in intellectual matters. Richelieu is the

first to have had the idea of offering royal patronage to the “Nurselings

of the Muses.” He distributed a few pensions.[c]

Of all styles of literature the drama was most encouraged by Richelieu.

Until then it had hardly been more than a popular amusement; it now

became that of the most refined and most polished society. Doubtless,

the talent of Rotrou and the genius of Corneille bore the principal part

in this, but Richelieu aided them. His wish was to replace the ballets

and other ordinary diversions of the court by amusements of a nobler

sort, by tragedies and comedies of intrigue. He had a theatre in the

Palais Cardinal and another in his mansion at Ruel. He often had plays

represented there whose plan had been submitted to him. He gave advice to

authors, worked with them, and even wrote himself.

His patronage extended also to tuition and studies. An important

transformation was taking place in the schools. The reform of the

university under Henry IV had had the effect of substituting the study of

the great authors for that of scholasticism. Since then the teaching of

theology had been renewed; it is well known what brilliancy it gave to

the seventeenth century. The teaching of literature was not long delayed,

and it is not to be doubted that a more healthful direction of men’s

minds had largely contributed to prepare the intellectual superiority of

this century over those preceding it. Richelieu built the Sorbonne. He

favoured competition between the university and the Jesuits and showed

his usual superiority in discussing questions of education.

He thought moreover that liberal education was not for everybody, and

that the greatest number of families ought to prepare their children for

trade or for war. Therefore he founded at his own expense an academy,--a

military college for the education of the young nobility.

However, until the end of the Fronde, the court, filled with soldiers,

or given up to ambitious rivalries of the noble, full of intrigues

with Marie de’ Medici, of sadness with Louis XIII, of suspicions with

Richelieu, of agitations under Anne of Austria, could not assume to be

the supreme regulator of taste, the theatre of the arts, and impose rules

or regulations upon genius. After the Fronde it was different. The

refined elegance and magnificence of Mazarin, the brilliant festivities

of the first years of the personal reign of Louis XIV, the transformation

of the great into courtiers, the spirit of subordination substituted

for a spirit of independence, increased the importance of the court.

Gradually one became accustomed to look to it alone. It surrounded

royalty like a luminous circle, and its brilliancy made all else pale. It

became even a means of government. It contributed by its preponderance to

annul parliaments and other national bodies.

Louis XIV, who instinctively sought everywhere for aids to his grandeur,

understood how to nourish the brilliant society which surrounded the

persons and the works of the great writers and artists. He offered the

latter a magnificent theatre and unparalleled publicity. He united the

scattered forces into a mighty group, displaying their talents in a

strong light, making of them a majestic whole. He had all the qualities

necessary for this--disposition, taste, the feeling for the beautiful,

and particularly the sense of rule and harmony. He established a sort

of concert of the great writers, in the same manner as he put the great

ministers in harmony with each other.

From this time, with the striking uniformity, regularity, and discipline

which was the character of letters and arts under his reign, the men

of genius had full sway, nothing held them back. But their place was

determined in the great ensemble, and they felt they were obeying a law.

A great and noble harmony was established among literary efforts of the

most diverse character, as among the arts destined to compete in the

grandeur of the same edifice.

Less spontaneous, less audacious, perhaps even less original than in the

time of the preceding generation, literature attained a perfection under

Louis XIV which it never had to such a degree in any other epoch. It

attained this perfection because it addressed itself less to the king and

sovereign than to the flower of society grouped around him. The highest

society had never before formed such a public. Bred in a grand school

of admiration and surrounded by masterpieces, it evinced the greatest

interest in matters of intellect. Conversation was an art and a talent,

the literary taste an affectation of fashion, in fact a point of honour.

The women took part in the movement, and to such a degree that it is

to one of them that we owe most of our appreciation of it. Madame de

Sévigné[h] in her correspondence, so well named written conversation,

immortalised the society of the great century in painting it from life.[b]

Colbert took up the idea of pensions with more liberality and amplitude

than did Richelieu. He created the _feuille des pensions_, which was

a sort of pendant to the _feuille des bénéfices_. It was started in

1663 partly on the suggestion of Chapelain. Among those on the list

was Chapelain, who called himself “the greatest French poet that

has ever lived, and the one with the soundest judgment,” but whom

Boileau simply characterises as “the wealthiest of all the _beaux

esprits_”; also some of the great names of literature--Molière, the two

Corneilles, Racine, Fléchier, Mézeray, Quinault, Charles Perrault, later

Boileau himself, besides many mediocrities. Along with Frenchmen were

foreigners--Graziani, the littérateur; the jurisconsult Conring; Ferrari,

professor of oratory at the University of Padua; the erudites Böklerus,

Gevartius, Heinsius, and Vossius; mathematicians and astronomers,

such as Cassini of Bologna, Viviani of Florence, Huygens of the Hague

and Helvelius of Dantzic. Louis XIV did more than pension some of the

artists. He ennobled Lully, Le Nôtre, Mansart, and Lebrun. To the savants

Colbert gave not only money but means of working; for them he created

new chairs in the Jardin du Roi, built the Observatory of Paris, and

subsidised missions and scientific expeditions. He was the founder of the

_Journal des Savants_ which exists to-day.[149]

The Renaissance was above all things a period of freedom. The age of

Louis XIV is characterised by order and monarchical discipline. The

historians soon perceived that the king was a more exacting protector

than the lords of olden times. The latter, provided their families were

eulogised, left their clients perfect liberty in other matters, but the

history of Louis XIV’s ancestors was the history of the whole country,

and as his glory reached out in all directions, the historian was no

longer free in anything. Colbert let Mézeray know that if he wished

to keep his pension of 4,000 livres he would have to speak with more

discretion of the _gabelle_ and the _taille_ and to abstain from too

free reflections on the policies of former kings. Mézeray only half

understood, and half his pension was suppressed.

Assuredly the royal protection had its good effect, but there was caprice

in the king’s favours. For a sovereign to control letters and art

without making mistakes, he would have to be infallible and with a mind

to embrace and understand everything. But Louis XIV did not understand

everything and was often mistaken. When, in 1667, he forbade the funeral

eulogy of Descartes did he know that the latter was the most eminent

thinker of the age?

LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS

In the literary history of the seventeenth century a division must be

noted. Voltaire[i] has neglected it when he introduces into what he calls

the _Siècle de Louis XIV_ such dissimilar geniuses as Corneille and

Racine, Bossuet and Fénelon. But even while retaining this time-honoured

expression, it should be applied only to that period during which Louis

XIV’s personality, the prestige of his glory and the action of his laws

and institutions were predominant. Now during an entirely earlier period

of more than sixty years a whole group of writers was absolutely outside

his influence. Régnier, Rotrou, Corneille, Descartes, and Pascal, to

speak only of the greatest ones, had accomplished their labours before

the personal government of Louis XIV began. On the contrary Racine,

Bossuet, La Fontaine, and Boileau, and for the greater part of his work

Molière, belong to the generation which saw the splendour of Louis XIV,

and which disappeared from the scene before the decadence of the monarchy

had commenced. Finally La Bruyère, Fénelon, Vauban, and Bois-Guilbert,

without mentioning the great Protestant writers of France, are the

products of an entirely different period. In reality the true “century”

of Louis XIV did not last more than a quarter of that time, from 1661 to

1685.

The seventeenth century may thus be divided into three periods which

present certain common characteristics, and are also distinguished by

special characteristics. All three are equally a continuation of the

sixteenth-century Renaissance. The charm of antiquity revealed by the

humanists is still felt. The gods of the _littérateur_ are those of

Greece, or rather Greek gods under Roman names. If the French literature

of the seventeenth century had perished in some great cataclysm, and if

after a score of centuries some erudite Australian or American had found

some of its fragments, he might have believed that the contemporaries

of Louis XIV worshipped the same gods as the Athenians and the Romans.

However, the French, so smitten with antiquity, knew little about it.

They were, after all, so original, so French, and so steeped in their own

age that they showed a singular inability to imagine what was really the

civilisation of Athens and of Rome. Louis XIV’s contemporaries studied

Demosthenes, Plato, and Plutarch to no purpose; they got from them

nothing but a deification of the monarchy. They read the ancient authors

with keen pleasure, but it did not occur to them to do so in the light

of the conditions of ancient life, and they applied to them the same

rules of criticism as to the authors of their own day. Since journeys

to the East were at that time most infrequent, and no archæological

research had yet been undertaken, the age had no idea as to what were

the architecture, the furnishings, the costumes, and the manners of

antiquity. The French dramatic poets give the title of “prince” to

Agamemnon or Theseus, and addressed Phædra or Andromache as “madame,” as

though these personages had been their contemporaries.

In spite of the cult, well or ill understood, of pagan antiquity, no

century was so profoundly Christian as the seventeenth. The absence

of the marvellous, from a Christian point of view, in literary works

is explained not by indifference for Christianity, but by respect and

scruple. Corneille wrote _Polyeucte_ and other sacred pieces; but let

his _Cid_ be compared with those of the Spaniards; all the supernatural

is banished to such a degree that the type of the Castilian champion

is transformed and almost mutilated. Santiago no longer appears on the

battle-field to revive the hero’s courage. One of the rules of taste in

the seventeenth century is precisely to avoid a mixture of the sacred and

the profane.

Seventeenth-century literature chose its subjects from antiquity, from

contemporaneous society, from human psychology, but almost never from

nature. The world of letters no longer lived in the field as in the

sixteenth century; it lived in the cities, especially in Paris, or at

the court. Malherbe boasts of going to learn the real French language on

the place Maubert; Régnier, Chapelle, Bachaumont, and many others were

habitués of the Parisian _cabarets_, and in the narrow streets of the

capital formed, as we say nowadays, a literary Bohemia. Racan and some

others claimed to have composed _idylles champêtres_, but what is their

background? It is no more the French countryside than their shepherds and

shepherdesses are French peasants.

A strophe of Malherbe on the banks of the Orne, a few laboured

alexandrines of Boileau upon his country house and its trees; one fine

page of Honoré d’Urfé upon a valley of Forez--this is almost all that

Louis XIV’s contemporaries have to say about nature. They looked too much

into their ancient authors and too much at themselves to see it well. It

is for the same reasons that Le Nôtre was able to create that strange

and unreal nature in the gardens of Versailles, and that in painting the

genre of pure landscape is almost unknown in the seventeenth century.

As for the special characteristics in the first period--an Italian and

Spanish influence is perceptible. Corneille takes from Spanish history

the story of the _Cid_, and Molière that of _Don Juan_. After Louis XIV

assumed the government, the French borrowed almost nothing from their

neighbours. French taste is formed; it is original; it is exquisite.

The first period is a period of freedom; it continues the sixteenth

century. Literature has not yet felt the yoke of literary rules. All

forms are attempted--tragedy, comedy, and burlesque, and the three are

even combined without scruple.

The theatre, the Christian pulpit itself, have singular license.

Descartes creates a philosophy and Pascal polemics. On the contrary the

first twenty years of Louis XIV’s government are signalled at once by

the domination of rules and by the apotheosis of the king. Parnassus

has a legislator, Boileau, and a sort of Congregation of the Index, the

French Academy.[c]

SCIENCE

The seventeenth century was one of the great scientific ages of humanity.

It saw the birth of analytical geometry and of the infinitesimal

calculus, the formulation of the astronomical laws of Kepler and

Newton, and the workings of astronomical discovery. It witnessed the

first great stride of physics, the progress of optics and acoustics,

the invention of the barometer, the thermometer, the manometer,

the air-pump, the electrical machine; the first rudiments of the

steam-engine; the first researches on plant life, and the first attempt

at botanical classification. Anatomy and physiology were revolutionised

by the discovery of the circulation of the blood, of the chyliferous

and lymphatic systems, by the beginning of histology and microscopic

research. Medicine made progress in all its branches and was enriched by

new medicaments.

But much of this was accomplished outside of France. In mathematics the

French may place the names of Descartes, Pascal, and Fermat alongside

of Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Leibnitz; but the great Keplerian and

Newtonian laws of universal gravitation; the great Leibnitzian theories

on the formation of our globe; the astronomic discoveries of Galileo,

Huygens, and Helvelius surpassed the work of Gassendi, Picard, Cassini,

Bouillaud, and Cassegrain. In physics, Pascal, Descartes, Mariotte, and

Denis Papin upheld the French name, but they have but one zoölogist[150]

(Claude Perrault also a physician and architect) to place alongside with

those of Italy, England, and especially Holland; in botany Tournefort let

himself be outdistanced by the English; in geology the French had but

Descartes and Maillet; in the medical sciences they had only Pacquet,

Duverney, and a few skilful practitioners. This comparative inferiority

of French science to art and letters proves that it needs an organisation

for work, and a liberality on the part of the public powers which at

that time it did not have. The yoke of authority, so harmful to free

research, was heavier in France than in the Protestant countries, where

scientific progress especially manifested itself. The French superiority

in mathematics is due perhaps to the fact that mathematics never had and

cannot have an Aristotle. Finally we must take into account the bent of

the French mind in that period when the people were above all artists,

orators, and moralists. “The physical sciences,” said Dacier at a later

date, “were little cultivated in an age which seems to find no charm but

in literature.” We might correct wherein this judgment goes perhaps too

far by this appreciation of Cuvier: he says that Francis I was the first

to make erudition flourish in France, Richelieu literature, and Louis XIV

science.

René Descartes, descendant of a noble family, was born in La Haye,

Touraine, in 1596. In 1612 he terminated his studies with the Jesuits at

La Flèche. The period between 1612 and 1629 was spent in travel, which

was followed by his stay in Holland. Just one year after the appearance

of the masterpiece of Corneille, _The Cid_, Descartes gave to the

world, in 1637, the _Discourse on Method_. This and his _Metaphysical

Meditations_ (1641) are his two chief works. In 1644 appeared his third

great work, _Principles of Philosophy_, in which is propounded his theory

of the world and the doctrine of Vortices. Descartes never married. In

1647 the French court granted him a pension; and shortly after he went to

the Swedish court, where he had been visited by Queen Christina.[a]

[Illustration: RENÉ DESCARTES

(1596-1650)]

France held it an honour to have given birth to René Descartes. While

still very young he solves certain famous mathematical problems; writes,

under the name of D’Abrégé, a treatise on music; and shuts himself up for

twenty years in a sort of retreat in Holland, where he devotes himself

with admirable assiduity to the research of truth, and composes those

works which are to have such an influence on the future progress, not

alone of science, but of civilisation. In 1629 he promulgates the law

of refraction, aspires to make clear the cause of celestial movements,

already demonstrated by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, by reducing

them all to a mechanical system. He conceives the idea of whirling

clouds of rarefied matter, in the centre of which he places the sun

and planets, supposing that the movement of the planets carries around

with them the satellites, and that planets and satellites are in turn

swept in a circular orbit round the sun. His theories seize upon the

popular imagination, and arouse keen enthusiasm; by what he calls his

system of “methodical doubting” he points out to humanity the true road

that leads to the intuitive perception of nature’s laws, and succeeds

in so impressing his lessons upon all minds that the absolute empire

given by the Arabs and their imitators to the theories of Aristotle--an

empire that would have been disavowed by that immortal man himself--is

completely destroyed. One of his aims is also to obtain command over

the human heart, that he may thereby fortify the basis of morality all

over the world, and to this end he gives forth his meditations on the

existence of God and the immortality of the soul.[q]

Meanwhile the theories of Descartes were invading France and all Europe.

In 1650, when occurred the death at Stockholm, at the age of fifty-four,

of the man who had given back to the modern world Pythagoras, Socrates,

and Plato, victory was assured, the science of philosophy was founded.

There are gaps and imperfections in the system which may expose it to

temporary eclipse, but as a whole it will never perish.[g]

Of the fifty-four years which Descartes thus passed on earth, more than

thirty were spent in a state of self-abnegation such as no anchorite

has ever emulated. It was little that his sleep and diet and exercise

were exactly regulated by the single purpose of securing, to the utmost

possible extent, the independence of his soul on his body. His mental

appetites were subjugated to a still more rigid discipline. To secure

to his reason an undisputed supremacy over all his other faculties, he

laboured, not only to cast down every idol of the cavern, but to consign

to oblivion all the interests, the sentiments, and the events with

which either his heart or his imagination had ever been occupied. He

even attempted to emancipate himself from the memory of those deceptive

languages, Greek and Latin, in which such subtle disguises have been

found for so many mental illusions. That he might ascend to the sanctuary

of truth, he thus aspired to become a pure abstraction of defæcated

intellect.

“_Cogito, ergo sum_” is the massive foundation stone of the colossal

edifice erected by Descartes. That famous proposition, though really

“the well-ripened fruit of long delay,” may perhaps sound not only as a

truism, but as of all truisms the most meagre. Such a judgment would,

however, prove nothing except the ignorance and incompetency of the judge.

“I think, therefore I exist,” is not the fragment of a syllogism which

might be reconstructed thus: “Whatever thinks, exists. But I think.

Therefore I exist.” It is rather an enthymeme--that is, an immediate

sequence of two propositions, of which the second is the necessary

offspring of the first. “I think”--that is, I am conscious of the act

of thinking. Myself and my thoughts are a plurality, not a unity. They

are the objects of which I am the subject. My consciousness of them is

my adjudication that such objects exist. Or suppose that I can doubt

even the existence of my own thoughts. Well, even so; that very doubt

is itself a thought of which I am conscious. Let my scepticism be so

absolute, and so universal, as to involve in uncertainty every other

conceivable position, yet that very scepticism is the affirmation of

myself as a thinking being.

Here, then, the naked reason has at length set her foot upon one

resting-place, narrow, if you will, but yet firm and immovable. Here is

one truth which cannot be assailed, even by doubt itself; or, rather,

here is a truth which doubt itself does but verify and confirm. Nor

is this a barren position. It is rather a ground which, when duly

cultivated, is prolific of results of the highest moment to every

thinking being.

Francis Bacon was not more the founder of rationalism in England, than

René Descartes was the founder of it in France. Nor was he content to

vindicate the rights of reason. He laboured, also, to determine and

enforce her obligations. In Descartes the characteristic logic of the

French understanding attained its perfection, as, in his writings, it

found its model.

Blaise Pascal was a Cartesian. Like Descartes he began with doubt,

in order that he might end in certainty. Like him he renounced all

allegiance to merely human authorities, however exalted, and however

venerable. In the spirit of his master, he received what was passing in

the microcosm of his own mind, as being, at least to himself, the primary

and indispensable witness of truth. As a true disciple of that severe

school, he not only revered his own reason as the supreme earthly judge

of every question so brought under his cognisance, but conducted all

such investigations by the aid of the same geometrical logic by which

Descartes himself had been guided.

But here the similitude ended, and the divergence began. Descartes

impersonated the “Pure reason,” sojourning among men, to occupy herself,

not with the business of their lives, but with the mysteries of their

nature. Pascal impersonated human sympathy, yearning over the world

from which he had withdrawn, and still responding to all the sorrows by

which it was agitated. Lofty as was the range of his thoughts, they were

never averted from that great human family to which he belonged. Every

afflicted member of it had in him a fellow-sufferer.[g]

[Illustration: BLAISE PASCAL

(1623-1662)]

Pascal was born at Clermont-Ferrand (1623), and died at Paris (1662).

He was, like Descartes, a universal scientist. His health, naturally

feeble, was still more injured by his intense thought. He was deeply

religious, and saw Christianity in Jansenism. A carriage accident, which

occurred on the Neuilly bridge, and which endangered his life, caused

him to become rigorously devout. He even became subject to visions and

hallucinations, and finally withdrew to Port-Royal, where he lived in

retirement. He devoted the last years of his life to collecting material

for a great work, destined to prove the truth of the Christian religion.

The fragments of this great work, notes, pieces of paper, strung together

without order or system, were found after his death. His friends at

Port-Royal made selections from these, and published them in 1670,--the

first edition, very incomplete, of his _Thoughts_ (_Pensées_). This book

of thoughts is above all a history of a great soul, tormented by doubt,

terrified, at the same time attracted, by the mysteries of the faith.[c]

_The Provincial Letters_ (1656), considered by many his masterpiece,

was a biting satire on the Jesuits. The greatest French critics,

including Voltaire and D’Alembert, agree in the statement that this work

contributed more than any other composition to form and polish the French

language. His ascetic life tended to shorten his life. He died in Paris,

aged 39.[a] After his death, appeared also two other little tracts, one

of which is _Equilibrium of Fluids_, the other _The Weight of the Mass of

Air_. To err on the side of rigour, is not the usual fault of genius: but

Pascal was in all respects singular, and differed, not only from ordinary

men, but from other men of genius. With every deduction that can be made

for a few errors arising out of his education, Pascal was undoubtedly

one of the ornaments of human nature; and if a few have rivalled him in

talents, no man of equal eminence, perhaps, can be found who lived so

innocently as Pascal.[r]

POETRY: BOILEAU

The writings of Descartes and Pascal, the doctrines of the French Academy

and of Port-Royal, had perfected the art of prose writing. This had not

been done for poetry nor yet for the art of writing in verse, which

constitutes the perfection of poetry. On this head much still remained to

be done, after the time of Malherbe, to consolidate his work. This was

the task of Boileau. To the glory of Port-Royal must be added that of

having enlightened, both by precept and example in the art of writing in

prose, the poet who best understood and perhaps best practised the art of

writing in verse.

For two centuries Boileau has been a bugbear, whom all poets fear. All

of them, in fact, find him on their road, threatening with innumerable

difficulties, with fatigue and labour, who so would aspire to the

glory of verse. The dramatic poet, the lyrist, the elegist, the

writer of comedies, and even the writer of sonnets, must take him

into consideration. They are all tormented by the ideal of style

which Boileau has set up, and by that other ideal of perfection of

language--indispensable to all styles, and without which nothing lasting

can be written.[d]

The taste of the great and the noble--in one word, the particular taste

of Louis XIV--dominated everything. Gallic and burlesque literature

disappeared. The admiration of Louis was universal, profound, and of such

sincerity that it excluded, in the grossest flatteries, all reproach of

flattery; love of the king was confused with love of the country, and

one would not have been believed more of an adulator in glorifying the

king than he would be to-day in glorifying France. The great care of

writers was studied elegance and perfection of form. Never was literature

so completely and exclusively literary and, with the exception of a few

works, especially those of Molière, one might say that it was void of

new ideas. The ideas which antiquity or Christian tradition furnished,

the great general ideas which belong to all ages and all countries, the

commonplaces of morality and human psychology were sufficient. It was on

this foundation that Racine pushed the analysis of passion to perfection,

that La Bruyère[j] struck off, as clean-cut and brilliant as medals from

the mint, his _Caractères_, and La Rochefoucauld[k] his _Maximes_.[c]

ORATORY: BOSSUET

The moral and social side of this great literature showed itself above

all in works of another kind. La Rochefoucauld wrote the thoughts of a

courtier, Nicole those of a director of consciences. The Christian pulpit

rose with Bossuet to an unparalleled greatness to keep with Bourdaloue

in that middle course, calm and regular, where wisdom tempers strength,

and dignity never lowers itself. Bourdaloue was the ordinary preacher

of the king and the court, and made for his audience as his audience

was made for him. In the pulpit he had the nobility and perfection of

Racine. As to Bossuet, he is above all comparison. If he does not for

one instant lose sight of rule and law, without which strength cannot be

sure of itself, he obeyed less the spirit of his time than he dominated

it. While leading the funeral cortège of all the grandeurs of the age,

he surrounded it with an incomparable lustre, which still retains the

illusion, by the majesty of his eloquence.

Bossuet has not treated of political subjects any more than Nicole or

Bourdaloue. He viewed society only from the heights of Christianity. If

he exalts the splendours of the court and the king, it is to humiliate

them all the more profoundly under the hand of God. The root of his

eloquence is in religion, as the form of it is in the Bible, the language

of which he applied so marvellously to the things of his time. He touched

on history and politics in only two works,[l] written for the dauphin.

Even there it is the preacher who speaks. He unrolls before the dauphin

the sequence of the purposes of God. He demonstrated to him according

to the Bible the sacredness of royalty, and if he deduced from this

sacredness the duty of obedience for subjects, he also deduced corelative

duties for kings. He recognises the fundamental law that kings should

be respected; he warns them against the danger of their passions, above

all against the mania for conquests which ruin the people. The clergy

of the seventeenth century ruled the court and the world because it

was disinterested. It took the temporal government of France, such as

Louis XIV had made it, and strove to raise it to a Christian ideal. The

government had a panegyrist of another disposition--Louis XIV himself.

Louis XIV was not content to be the author or inspirator of the acts

of his reign, he was also its first, one might say its only political

writer. His _Mémoires_,[m] of which the basis belongs to him, and of

which it matters little that the style has been polished by Périgny or

Pellisson, explain his conduct admirably. It is drawn there with the

fidelity which he himself admired and which he hoped would win so much

public admiration, that there was nothing to hide.[b]

[Illustration: JACQUES BÉNIGNE BOSSUET

(1627-1704)]

THE THIRD PERIOD

The third period has an entirely different aspect. Royalty has so much

abused its principle that it is being discussed. The Revocation, whose

aim was to complete the reign of silence at home, caused an outbreak of

a thousand rebellious voices beyond the frontiers which had its echoes

in France. The war which Louis XIV waged for one idea brought back

the reign of ideas. That confusion of king and country which hitherto

had been complete suddenly ceased. Formerly everything was admired;

everything was well. The plaints which arose from devastated fields and

ruined industries dealt a blow to this optimism. La Bruyère in a few

lines paints a terrifying picture of the French peasant. Fénelon in a

letter to Louis XIV judges with mournful severity both the government

and the character of the king. Now everything is not all right and other

things are sought for. Vauban proposes tax reform; Bois-Guilbert, a

whole new economic system. To this desolate reality Fénelon opposes in

his _Télémaque_ a Utopia, an ideal city--the Salento of King Idomeneus.

To the perpetual warfare the abbé de Saint-Pierre[n] would substitute

his project for perpetual peace, which appeared in 1713, and to the

government by one man a government by several. Finally in a room in his

hôtel at Versailles a man, a duke and a peer, every evening--his day as

a courtier over--shuts himself up and with what he has seen and heard

still vivid in his mind, adds a few pages to that colossal monument known

as the _Mémoires de Saint-Simon_.[o] It is from this that posterity,

disabused of eulogy and panegyric, will learn to know another king,

another Versailles from those which Racine and Bossuet have shown it.

In that period of French literature what is uppermost are new ideas.

What matters it now whether the form be elegant and harmonious as with

Fénelon, energetic and incorrect as with Saint-Simon, diffuse and dull

as with the abbé de Saint-Pierre? The interest no longer lies here; the

day of marvellous style and the time of art for art’s sake is past.

Henceforth the great writers will write only to uphold a thesis, propose

a reform, or prepare a revolution. Their greatness will be measured by

their success. The eighteenth century has begun.

THE DRAMA: TRAGEDY

The sixteenth century handed down, in France, two forms of dramatic

poetry, the mystery plays--that is to say, the religious drama--and the

tragedy, a so-called imitation of the ancient form. Mystery plays were,

in 1548, forbidden in Paris; the ancient tragedy had become sterile. The

real French theatre remained to be founded.[c]

_Corneille_

At last Corneille appears. _Mélite_ is the play given and the public

applauds it with transports under which there seems to lurk premonition

of the glory to which dramatic art is later to attain in France.

Corneille surpasses rather than falls short of this expectation. Having

made a deep study of the ancient tragic writers and the dramatic authors

of modern times, he weighs carefully all the rules which he observes them

to have used, and, while slavishly following none, adopts those which

he finds most conformable to his own needs. With the ease of one who is

their superior, or at least their equal, he reveals the inmost workings

of the minds and hearts of the famous men whom he introduces on the

stage; breathes into them, as it were, his own enthusiasms, raises them

up to his own high stature. He presents his characters with the fidelity

of history, but in proportions that would alone command admiration. He

paints portraits of a resemblance so striking that they seem to have come

from the hand of the subtlest of political writers, the most consummate

of statesmen, or the greatest of military leaders. To his astonished

and enraptured countrymen he gives _The Cid_, _Les Horaces_, _Cinna_,

_Polyeucte_, _Pompée_, _Rodogune_, and _Héraclius_, and may be said to

create French comedy when he writes _Le Menteur_. This genius seems the

more sublime when it is compared with the simplicity and modesty of his

private life. In his old age his head is crowned with laurels, and it

is of him that the great Racine says, “It is not easy to find a poet

who unites such a number of talents, so many excellent manifestations

of art, force, judgment, wit. We cannot too greatly admire the nobility

and economy of his subjects, the vehemence of his passion, the depth and

gravity of his sentiments, and the dignity as well as the prodigious

variety of his characters.”[q] Pierre Corneille was born at Rouen, 1606,

and according to a time-worn chronicle,[151] “of considerable parents,

his father holding no small places under Louis XIII.” He was brought up

to the bar but soon deserted it. His great success brought upon him the

enmity of his rivals, even Richelieu entering into this cabal. He was

chosen a member of the French Academy. His private life was uneventful,

due perhaps to the fact that his manners were simple and he was never

successful in paying court to the great. He died in Paris in 1684,

leaving several children. Corneille’s works consist of thirty plays,

tragedies and comedies.[a]

The drama of Corneille preserves a certain freedom of manner that is

not found in the succeeding generation. Thus he chooses sacred as well

as profane subjects; he restores Christianity to the theatre whence the

prejudices of a good society had banished it; from the acts of the

martyrs he borrowed the subject of _Polyeucte_ and _Théodore_. In such

works as _Nicomède_ or _Don Sanche_ the comic element mingles with the

tragic. Above all he finds it difficult to conform to the prescriptions

of Aristotle’s _Poetics_ to the rule of the three unities. Now Chapelain

had just discovered the _Poetics_; he had recommended its precepts to

Mairet for his _Sophonisbe_, Leagued with the Academy against the success

of the _Cid_, he tried to impose them on Corneille. Being commissioned

to draw up “the sentiments of the Academy” concerning this play, he did

not fail to denounce the author’s violations of the unity of time and

the unity of place. Corneille defended his tragedies. Finally, seized

with scruples and intimidated by this phantom of a system of poetics made

for a theatre wholly different from the French, Corneille submits. He

writes plays following all the rules, such as _Pertharite_, _Agésilas_,

_Attila_; but it is just these which are his weakest.[c]

_Racine_

[Illustration: JEAN BAPTISTE RACINE

(1639-1699)]

Racine, who rose when Corneille declined, founded his dramas on a very

different principle. With him the great motive is passion, and passion

no longer arrested by the conflict of duty. His characters are as though

carried away by their frenzies. The type of Racine’s tragedy is indeed

the drama of passion. What he excels in painting is love, furious

and cruel with Hermione, Roxane, Phædra; plaintive and resigned with

Iphigenia or Junia; grave and ready for sacrifice with Monima; full of

tears and of gentle reproaches with Bérénice.

This man, who divided with Corneille the glory of French classical

tragedy, was born in Ferté-Milon (1639) of bourgeois parents. He received

his education at the college of Beauvais and at Port-Royal. Becoming

disgusted with theology, which study he had entered into, he went to

Paris, where he formed his friendships with Molière and Boileau. It was

his ode on the marriage of Louis XIV, for which he received a pension,

which first brought him into prominence. Of a sensitive disposition and

inclined to melancholy, the criticisms and intrigues of the court made

him renounce dramatic composition. However after his marriage in 1677

he became reconciled with the gentlemen of Port-Royal and was appointed

historiographer by Louis XIV. At the suggestion of Madame de Maintenon he

wrote _Esther_ and afterward, _Athalie_. His tragedies are _Andromaque_,

_Britannicus_, _Bérénice_, _Mithridate_, _Iphigénie_, and _Phèdre_. “I

avow,” says Voltaire,[i] “that I regard _Iphigénie_ as the chef-d’œuvre

of the stage.” Racine was admitted to the Academy in 1673. The ill

reception of his _Athalie_ caused him to entirely renounce poetry. Hurt

by a disapproving criticism of the king on a memorial he had written,

“he conceived dreadful ideas of the king’s displeasure: and indulging

his chagrin and fears, brought on a fever, which surpassed the power of

medicine, for he died of it, after being grievously afflicted with pains,

in 1699.”[152][a]

With Racine French classical tragedy is finally constituted. It is a

quite peculiar species of literature, and one which could have arisen

only at one particular period of French history. It differs from Greek

tragedy for it dispenses with the accompaniment of music and does not

admit choruses.[153] It is the antipodes of the Shakespearian drama. The

latter journeys freely through time and space, multiplies characters,

allows the interposition of the crowd, mingles the comic with the tragic,

speaks alternately in the most poetic and the most trivial language,

evokes spectres from the tomb, brings shipwrecks, battles, murders,

executions on the scene. French tragedy makes the entire action take

place in a period which, according to the precepts laid down, must

not exceed twenty-four hours; it never changes the scene and to avoid

difficulties everything generally takes place in the vestibule of a

palace or the square of a city; it admits no more than three or at most

four characters, to whom are added confidants whose mission is to listen

to what the chief personages have to say to the public; when a valiant

army or an immense crowd is to be indicated an accessory character is

made to follow the principal actor. It never unbends, never exhibits

either a buffoon or a poltroon, it seldom takes its subjects from

elsewhere than Greek and Roman antiquity; it brings on the stage only

noble personages, gods, demigods, heroes, emperors, kings, or princes,

or servants who are not less dignified and who know how to keep their

places. It speaks the noblest and purest language; it leaves the spectres

in their vaults, and reduces the fantastic element to the recital of

some dream; all murders, the assassination of Pyrrhus, the poisoning

of Britannicus, the strangling of Monima, the execution of Haman or of

Athaliah are relegated behind the scenes, out of sight of the spectator.

If the actor cannot do otherwise than kill himself on the stage, he kills

himself neatly with a poniard or sword of a temper peculiar to tragedy,

for they do not draw blood. There is no action on the stage: we only see

the impression which the action produces on the characters, and hear the

reflections with which it inspires them.

This mould of classical tragedy maintained itself intact for nearly two

centuries. It contented the contemporaries of Louis XIV, of Louis XV,

of Robespierre and of Napoleon successively. The neighbouring nations

hastened to adopt it: even England herself did so though she continued to

play Shakespeare.

COMEDY

French comedy, during more than half the seventeenth century, was feeling

her way. She was hesitating between two types--antique comedy, so

difficult to transport to the French stage, and naturally cold because it

represented manners so very different from those of France; and Italian

comedy, in which under the most diverse names there incessantly recur

the old good-man who is deceived, the shrewd ward, the bold lover, the

cunning valet, or the complaisant soubrette. Most of the comedies on

which Corneille tried his hand and the first which came from Molière

belong to the Italian type.

When, in 1659, Molière put the _Précieuses ridicules_ on the stage,

there was a surprise almost equal to that which had been occasioned by

the _Cid_. After French tragedy, French comedy was now revealing itself.

The comical element proceeded not from some flimsy plot, a hundred times

repeated, but from the lively painting of contemporary manners. Molière

was to rise higher still and to paint not the absurdities of a day but

the eternal characters of humanity. Those whom he brings before us in his

great comedies--the hypocrite and dupe of his _Tartuffe_, the Alceste,

the Philinte and Célimène of his _Misanthrope_; the Harpagon of his

_Avare_; the vain _roturier_ of his _Bourgeois gentilhomme_, his _Femmes

savantes_, his _Malade imaginaire_--are so far as concerns their main

characteristics, of all times and all countries. Yet these personages,

though they are universal types, are quite specially of the time and

country in which Molière lived. Molière’s destiny required that he should

have to please three sorts of public: the court, the men of letters, and

the people. For the king he wrote _Amphitryon_ and the comic ballets; for

the literary men he drew his immortal types; for the people he returned

to the comic elements of the Italian theatre and the theatres at the

fairs and he raised them to the level of high art. If any one of these

three very diverse influences had been exercised alone upon the genius of

Molière, it might have refined, or ennobled, or vulgarised him to excess;

but by a happy combination he owed to the one that elegance and nobility,

to one that depth and knowledge, to the third that overflowing _verve_,

that power at once comic and dramatic, which are the characteristics of

his genius. He was not exclusively either the poet of the court or of

the Academy or of the crowd; this is why he has been and will remain the

national poet _par excellence_.[c]

Molière, whose true name was Jean Baptiste Pocquelin, was born at Paris

about 1620. He was both son and grandson to _valets de chambres_ on one

side, and tapestry-makers on the other, to Louis XIII and was designed

for the latter business, with a view of succeeding his father in that

place. But the grandfather being very fond of the boy, and at the same

time a great lover of plays, used to take him often with him to the hôtel

de Bourgogne; which presently roused up Molière’s natural genius and

taste for dramatic representations, and created in him such a disgust

to the trade of tapestry-making, that at last his father consented to

let him go, and study under the Jesuits, at the college of Clermont. He

finished his studies there in five years’ time, in which he contracted an

intimate friendship with Chapelle, Bernier, and Cyrano. Chapelle, with

whom Bernier was an associate in his studies, had the famous Gassendi

for his tutor, who willingly admitted Molière to his lectures, as he

afterwards also admitted Cyrano. It was here that Molière deeply drank

of that sound philosophy, and stored himself with those great principles

of knowledge, which served as a foundation to all his comic productions.

When Louis XIII went to Narbonne, in 1641, his studies were interrupted;

for his father, who was grown infirm, not being able to attend the court,

Molière was obliged to go there to supply his place. Upon his return to

Paris, however, when his father was dead, his passion for the stage,

which had induced him first to study, revived more strongly than ever;

and if it be true, as some have said, that he, for a time studied the

law, and was admitted an advocate, he soon yielded to the influence of

his stars, which had destined him to be the restorer of comedy in France.

What became of him from 1648 to 1652 we know not, this interval being

the time of the civil wars, which caused disturbances in Paris; but it

is probable, that he was employed in composing some of those pieces

which were afterwards exhibited to the public. La Béjart, an actress of

Champagne, waiting, as well as he, for a favourable time to display her

talents, Molière was particularly kind to her; and as their interests

became mutual, they formed a company together, and went to Lyons in 1653,

where Molière produced his first play, called, _L’Étourdi_, or _The

Blunderers_. In 1663, Molière obtained a pension of a thousand livres;

and, in 1665, his company was altogether in his majesty’s service.

His last comedy was _Le malade imaginaire_, or _The Hypochondriac_; and

it was acted for the fourth time, February 17th, 1673. Upon this very day

Molière died.

ARCHITECTURE

The fine arts, even more than literature, bear the impress of the period,

because a government has more means to act on them. If it cannot create

them, nor supply individual inspiration, it can at least impress a

certain direction by the nature of the works it orders from artists, and

the nature of the patronage which it affords them. For instance, Louis

XIV had a passion for building. His architectural constructions are of a

style apart, in harmony with his tastes, the needs of his court, and the

characteristics of his royalty.[b]

The French architecture of the Renaissance happily blended the elements

of ogival art and those of ancient art recovered in Italy. The

seventeenth century broke more completely with the national past. One of

the latest cathedrals is that of Orleans, constructed under Henry IV and

his successors, but which had been designed in the sixteenth century. The

ogival style was no longer in fashion; it was freely regarded as a relic

of ancient barbarism, and it was branded with the epithet of “Gothic.”

Numerous acts of vandalism were committed on the most venerable monuments

of the past. In 1699 Robert de Cotte, under the pretext of “restoring”

the interior of Notre Dame de Paris, destroyed the close, pulled down

the rood-loft, burned the wooden stalls, tore out the tombs and stone

effigies, and broke the coloured glass windows.

[Illustration: FRANÇOIS DE SALIGNAC DE LA MOTHE-FÉNELON

(1651-1715)]

The dominating influence of the age was that of the Italian monuments,

not only of the first epoch of the Renaissance but also that of its

decadence. However, French artists did not limit themselves to imitation;

and under the inspiration of those ideas of grandeur and majesty which

are the cachet of the seventeenth century, they created a truly original

art, as characteristic of Louis XIV’s reign as was its literature.

To obtain more imposing façades, instead of dividing them up as in

the preceding epoch into almost equal stories, each distinguished by

a different ornamentation, now only one principal story was admitted.

Below, it rests on a ground floor which sometimes is almost a basement;

above, it is surmounted by an attic which was only half or two-thirds

the height of the principal story. Everything is sacrificed to the

latter. To enhance still further the desired impression of unity

and grandeur the ornamentation is greatly reduced. None of those

architectural accidents, those happy caprices, or that ingenious

variety which in sixteenth century monuments interested the eye and the

mind--nothing but great sober lines severe to monotony. This is what is

called the colossal style and what might be called the Louis XIV style.[c]

Versailles is the indestructible monument of the royalty of Louis XIV.

One is struck at first by its large proportions; it is above all its

majestic regularity which produces such imposing effects. All is in

harmony with the habits of the court of the great king. One may criticise

the arrangements, and Saint-Simon[o] without being an artist has done so

with humour, sometimes with truth. But the ensemble leaves a profound

impression of admiration, almost of respect. One feels that Versailles,

to-day a vast solitude, was built to be peopled by an immense court,

where Louis XIV lived in the midst of a France made in his image.

Versailles, with its grandeur, its regularity, its majestic and classic

ornamentation, merits to be the type of an architecture truly royal. If

nobility is one of the principal conceptions of the ideal of beauty,

this ideal has never been attained in an equal degree. Also, even as the

court of Louis XIV gave the tone to the greater part of European courts,

Versailles has become the type and model of the greater part of royal and

foreign châteaux and gardens.

Other châteaux, like those of St. Cloud and Marly, were built almost

in the same style by Mansart and Le Nôtre, the one the architect of

the palace, and the other of the gardens of Versailles. St. Cloud was

the residence of Monsieur, brother of the king. Marly, which was begun

after Nimeguen, could offer a sort of retreat to the court fatigued by

magnificence. Meudon, Sceaux, Choisy, built for princes, princesses, or

ministers, produced in their more restricted proportions the essential

characteristics of this royal architecture.

Paris has kept fewer traces of Louis XIV; he rarely made long sojourns

there. The principal monuments he raised there were the triumphal arches

at the portes du Trône, St. Antoine, St. Bernard, St. Denis, and St.

Martin, monuments erected to celebrate his re-entry into Paris after the

Peace of the Pyrenees, or his victories during the war with Holland.

Meanwhile he also joined the Louvre to the Tuileries by means of the

magnificent colonnade designed by Perrault. To this reign also belongs

the northern boulevards arranged as great avenues, the Champs-Élysées,

and finally the garden of the Tuileries.[b]

SCULPTURE AND PAINTING

The taste for statuary did not revive until the time of the Italian

regent Marie de’ Medici. Puget (1622-1694) was an independent. The

other sculptors of the time bent themselves to monarchical discipline.

They entered academies of sculpture and painting and placed themselves

under the direction of Lebrun, for at that time it seemed natural to

subordinate sculpture to painting. The sculpture of the great epoch of

Louis XIV shows the influence of the vigorous studies the artists made

from the antique. It is a diversified sculpture, but skilful and strong.

The Renaissance had been in France more brilliant for architecture and

even sculpture than for painting. The French had still much to learn

from the Italians and the Flemish. They had a few painters, but they had

no French school. Besides it was in Italy that the first generation of

French artists of the seventeenth century was formed. Lesueur is perhaps

the sole great painter who did not leave France. Of these illustrious

travellers, some preferred to apply themselves to imitation of the severe

design of the Roman school; others stopped in the Venetian cities and

sought to worm from the canvases of Titian and Paul Veronese the secret

of their admirable colouring and obtain a knowledge of the science of

composition on a large scale. Whence comes the great variety in the

French school. But all got the feeling of classical beauty, from the

brilliant sky, the living types, and the magnificent antiquities of

Italy. Moreover the French artists found a hospitable welcome in the

peninsula; at a time when their kings were not rich enough to furnish

artists means of support, work was ordered of them by the popes,

cardinals, sovereigns, and great lords of Italy. Colbert’s foundation of

the Academy of Rome was to assure the education of French genius, for

centuries, by the genius of antiquity and of Italy.

In France the painters were organised as a corporation which was known as

the Academy of St. Luke, and into which no one was received, as in the

corporation of joiners or hatters, until he had served an apprenticeship

or had produced a masterpiece. The academy was all powerful in the

art-world until in 1648 it was confronted with a rival that eclipsed

it--the Academy of Painting and Sculpture. We must not forget that in

1673 the first exhibition of painting took place in the court of the

Palais Royal. Hitherto there had been open-air exhibitions--a kind of

picture fairs, as for example that held in the place Dauphine. In 1699

the exposition was held in the Apollo Gallery of the Louvre.

As in political and literary history, the history of painting in the

seventeenth century may be divided into three periods. The first sixty

years are years of artistic freedom; with the personal government of

the king the rule of Lebrun over the fine arts was established. At the

latter’s death a transformation took place. When the regent Marie de’

Medici wished to decorate the vast galleries of the Luxembourg palace,

she believed that she could not do better than to summon the great

Flemish painter, Peter Paul Rubens. But she soon became better acquainted

with the artistic resources of France, and sent for a number of Frenchmen

to collaborate in the decoration of the Luxembourg. Among them were Simon

Vouet (1590-1649), Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), and Philippe de Champagne

(1602-1674). If we examine the dates of the deaths of these artists and

others, such as Claude Lorraine (1600-1682), Lesueur (1616-1655), or

better, perhaps, the most brilliant period of their productiveness it

will be admitted that Louis XIV and Lebrun had no influence over them

whatever.

In the second period, Charles Lebrun of Paris (1619-1690) was the leader

of the French school. He might have, as has been said, paraphrased the

saying attributed to the king and have said “_L’Art, c’est moi_.” He was

the Louis XIV of the fine arts. The artist, whose genius sympathised so

completely with that of his sovereign, was nevertheless a very great

painter. He possessed the sacred fire; at the age of fifteen he had

produced two paintings that attracted attention, and he developed his

natural gift by arduous labour and incessant study. He went to Rome

and received instruction from Poussin. He painted for Louis XIV those

immense canvases representing the exploits of Alexander--the _Crossing

the Granicus_, the _Battle of Arbela_, the _Defeat of Porus_, and the

_Entrance into Babylon_--which form an epic series. Lebrun pushed

perfection of detail so far as to have horses sketched in Syria, so that

they would be typically Asiatic.

MUSIC AND THE OPERA

It is easy to count the musicians that France produced in the sixteenth

century; the true home of their art was then in Italy. Nevertheless the

French court acquired a taste for lyric representations, and the kings,

to free the art from religious domination, founded troops of lay artists,

and at the head of their singers and instrumentalists they placed a

superintendent of music.

These representations which the French called _ballets_ or _mascarades_

were an incoherent mixture of the three arts of poetry, music, and

dancing which the modern opera has brought into harmony. A ballet

was divided into _parties_ or acts, and the _parties_ into _entrées_

or scenes, both of variable number. There was no fixed plan for

the composition--or rather there was no composition. In front of a

great canvas the king and the nobles who were taking part in the

_divertissement_ composed or had composed the words at their fancy,

accommodated them to or made them accommodate familiar airs, putting the

words into the hands of the ladies, in order that they might follow the

piece, abandoning themselves in the end to the _boutade_, that is to say

to the inspiration.

Music was considered such an inferior art that the instrumentalists were

recruited from among the lackeys, and to be a violin player was almost a

sign of servitude. The airs were vulgar; the instruments were reduced to

lutes and viols, the dances were slow and monotonous like the _bourrée_

of the peasant of central France. Such was the court ballet, such, for

example, the ballet of the _Délivrance de Renaud_ danced by Louis XIII

and his courtiers in 1614. The court was lost in admiration and it was

declared that Europe had never heard anything so ravishing.

Mazarin tried to revive the fashion by bringing dancers, singers, and

musicians from Italy, obtaining the libretti and the music from composers

of the same country. The courtiers admired in order to please the

cardinal and the queen-regent, but Madame de Motteville[p] admits in all

frankness that these representations seemed to her mortally long and

tiresome. It is probable that French ears were not yet trained to Italian

music and that Madame de Motteville, like Molière’s Alceste, would have

given all the operas for one of the old popular airs like “_J’aime mieux

ma mie, au gué_.”

The taste of the court was too frivolous, the actors in their quality

of king or noble too unruly for opera thus conceived to raise itself to

the level of a serious art. Therefore the public but privileged theatres

succeeded to the aristocratic or court theatre. The abbé Perrin, a

prolific writer of _livrets_, although a most mediocre poet, associated

himself with Cambert, the most distinguished of French composers and with

the marquis de Sourdéac, who understood scenery and stage mechanism. He

obtained letters patent on June 28th, 1669. Thus was founded the Royal

Academy of Music, which has nothing in common with the learned academies

of the age; for the Italian word _accademia_ signifies simply concert.

The first result of this association was the representation of _Pomone_,

in 1671, words by Perrin; music by Cambert. The associates were preparing

to mount another opera when misunderstandings broke out among them. Lully

took advantage of this and through Madame de Montespan’s influence was

given the privilege. Cambert in vexation went to England where, although

he was well received by Charles II, he died of chagrin. Lully [himself

an Italian], who had claimed that it was impossible to write an elegant

score to French words, now became director of the first French National

Theatre of Music (1672).

Lully created a music distinctly French in spirit and his influence

extended over his contemporaries and successors, but his was the only

original work that appeared at the Academy. Its organisation was too

authoritative to lend itself easily to innovations. A large portion of

the public was not interested in that solemn monotonous music which only

concerned itself with mythological tragedies. Already in the seventeenth

century (1640) the _Comédie des Chansons_, sometimes attributed to

Timothy de Chillac and sometimes to Charles Beys, had furnished the type

of a kind that resembles both vaudeville and the French _opéra-comique_.

It was called the _comédie à ariettes_ and became universally popular.

In 1678 at the St. Laurent fair Allard and Maurice Vanderberg presented

the _Forces of Love and Magic_, which had a great success. This irritated

Lully, and invoking the privilege of the Academy he had an order served

upon these two itinerant directors to reduce their orchestra to four

violins and one oboe. The Academy decided however to sign a contract with

Catherine Vanderberg, permitting her to give pieces with song, orchestra,

and dance. Such was the origin of the _opéra-comique_, a term first

employed by Le Sage, in 1715.

RAPID DECLINE OF THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV

One characteristic of this age was that the efflorescence of arts and

letters was of short duration. The age was great so long as Louis was

surrounded by men whose talent had already seen the light when he began

to protect them; but new geniuses were not born and when that generation

was exhausted another did not arise to replace it.

The personal government presents but a single and very short period

of literary and artistic splendour. The last great work of secular

literature, _Athalie_, dates from 1691. If Bossuet, Fénelon, Bourdaloue,

and Massillon--that is to say the group of churchmen--were not there;

if Saint-Simon were not secretly writing his accusing _Mémoires_, one

might say that not a single work of high literary value was written in

France after the Peace of Ryswick (1697). The same observation may be

made of the arts. Many of the great painters of the seventeenth century

owed nothing to Louis XIV, for Le Valentin died in 1632, Lesueur in 1655,

Laurent de Lahire in 1656, Poussin in 1665. Claude Lorraine and Philippe

de Champagne, who died, the one in 1682, the other in 1674, were already

in the fullness of their genius when the king began to govern. Of the

four great architects of the age, Mansart, Claude Perrault, Blondel, and

Bruant, none lived to see the year 1697. Puget, the great sculptor, died

in 1694, Lully in 1687. The poet Quinault, who usually furnished the

latter the libretto of his operas, died the following year. After these

there is certainly a wide gap in the history of French art.[c] Indeed,

as Buckle says: “At the moment when Louis XIV died, there was scarcely a

writer or an artist in France who enjoyed European reputation.”[e]

A FRENCH VIEW OF THE EFFECT OF THE AGE

But it had been a royal epoch! Louis XIV had the rôle of a demi-god.

His Olympus was only a theatre, his _fêtes_ were only fairy-like scenes

and masquerades, but all was on a grandiose scale. Before his time the

king of France lived in a strong castle. He was, even after the time

of Francis I, a mighty baron shut up behind his battlements, his thick

walls, his deep moats. One can see the gloomy shadow of the monarch

flitting from window to window in the vast halls of the Château de Blois,

isolated, cold, imprisoned, anxious. Spies, guards, armed men; courts

where echoed the tread of sentinels; secret staircases where men charged

with dark errands mounted and descended--all proclaimed a shadowy king

watching with his hand upon his sword, spying out all, sharing the fear

which he inspired in others. But under Louis XIV all was changed. The

staircases widened, air and light circulated in the royal house; _fêtes_

replaced the gloomy official receptions; courtiers succeeded soldiers.

This time royalty was sure of victory. It trod on laurels, as half a

century later it walked on roses, without dreaming that either the

laurel- or the rose-strewn path would lead to the scaffold.[f] On that

splendid horizon of the seventeenth century great storm clouds appeared

one by one, lightning still unaccompanied by thunder flashed through

space; but the eyes of the multitude, blinded by the royal sun, did not

perceive these threatening gleams. Intoxicated France abandoned herself

to the contemplation of her present glory, without thinking to seize or

to understand the true reasons of that glory, and did not realise that

she was being dragged to a yawning chasm.

Never was error more excusable. How resist that seduction which all

realised, but which all contributed to exercise? Society is like an

immense concert all of whose parts mingle together to form, by their

divers accents, a universal harmony. Every class, every man, gave all

that he had to give to the work of common grandeur. The mass of the

people, confident in the good intentions of their prince, comforted

by the good order of the administration, bore their burden the more

lightly, and patiently awaited from the future a still greater relief.

The clergy, more worthy and more enlightened than in any other epoch of

French history, instructed and guided the society it no longer governed.

The nobility, which had gained in discipline not less than in polish what

it had lost in independence, furnished the majority of the warriors;

the third estate furnished almost all the rest, especially the great

administration and the great writers. By means of intellectual and

moral energy, of practical sense, of inventive and active force, the

French bourgeoisie reached the highest degree of its development--what a

bourgeoisie, to have produced within a half century Colbert, Corneille,

Pascal, Molière, Racine, La Fontaine, Boileau, Bossuet, Bourdaloue,

Arnauld, Nicole, Domat, Fabert, Poussin, Lesueur, Lorraine, Lebrun, the

Perraults, and Puget, without counting those men as powerful and more for

evil than for good--Fouquet and Louvois!

Marvellous assemblage of the most highly developed and complete society

that has appeared in the world since ancient times; vast and living

picture whose aspect produced on those who regarded it an enduring

fascination! All peoples admired and imitated it. The language, the

fashions, the ideas of France invaded Europe. Literary styles, like the

styles of costume, like the styles of objects of art and of luxury, like

the habits of life, formed themselves, at least in the upper classes, and

for long, after the French. It was not the breath of a momentary fancy,

but it was an atmosphere which enveloped little by little all objects and

all beings, a medium outside of which it became impossible for man to

live.[g]

FOOTNOTES

[148] By this term is meant the period covering the reigns of Louis XIII

and Louis XIV (1610-1715 A.D.).

[149] [Colbert’s foundation of learned academies is described in chapter

XIX.]

[150] An anecdote will show how much the science of zoölogy was still

in its infancy. In 1613 some fossil bones, probably those of a mammoth

or some other prehistoric quadruped, were exhumed near the Château of

Langon in Dauphiné. A surgeon, Habicot by name, recognised them as the

bones of the giant Teutobochus, king of the Teutons, and published a

ridiculous poem entitled _Gigantéostologie_. A physician named Riolan

suspected that they might be the bones of an elephant, but as that animal

was then unknown in France he searched for a description of it in the

Greek authors; then he abandoned this trail, which was the right one, and

came to believe that these bones were simply stones to which a caprice

of nature had given extraordinary forms. At that time the custom was to

explain thus what could not be understood.

[151] _Biographical Dictionary_, London, 1798, 15 vols.

[152] _Biographical Dictionary_, London, 1798, 15 vols.

[153] [Except in _Esther_ and _Athalie_; but these two sacred dramas are

not, for Racine, dramas for the theatre.]

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter [a] is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

CHAPTER I. THE LATER CARLOVINGIANS

[b] VICTOR DURUY, _Histoire de France_.

[c] THÉOPHILE LAVALLÉE, _Histoire des Français depuis le temps des

Gaulois jusqu’à nos jours_.

[d] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _Histoire de France depuis les

origines jusqu’à nos jours_.

[e] JAMES WHITE, _History of France from the Earliest Times to 1848_.

[f] THEODOSE BURETTE, _Histoire de France_.

[g] EYRE EVANS CROWE, _History of France_.

[h] HENRI MARTIN, _Histoire de France depuis les temps les plus reculés

jusqu’en 1789_.

[i] ORDERICUS VITALIS, _Historia ecclesiastica_.

[j] _Chronique de St. Denis._

[k] RICHER, _Chronique_.

[l] ADHÉMAR CHABANNES, in _Monumenta Germaniæ historica_, Scriptores iv.

CHAPTER II. THE FOUNDATION OF THE CAPETIAN DYNASTY

[b] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._

[c] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._

[d] ÉMILE DE BONNECHOSE, _Histoire de France depuis l’invasion des Francs

sous Clovis jusqu’à l’avénement de Louis Philippe_.

[e] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._

[f] JULES MICHELET, _History of France_.

[g] ORDERICUS VITALIS, _op. cit._

[h] FRANÇOIS GUIZOT, _Collections des Mémoires relatifs à l’histoire de

France_.

[i] J. C. L. S. DE SISMONDI, _Histoire des Français_.

[j] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._

[k] SUGER, _Vie de Louis VI_.

[l] G. H. LEWES, _Biographical History of Philosophy_.

[m] HASTINGS RASHDALL, _The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages_.

CHAPTER III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY

[b] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._

[c] VICTOR DURUY, _Histoire du Moyen Âge depuis la chute de l’empire

d’occident jusqu’au milieu du XVᵉ siècle_.

[d] JULES MICHELET, _op. cit._

[e] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._

[f] VICTOR DURUY, _Histoire de France_.

[g] HENRY HALLAM, _View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages_.

[h] H. WALLON, _St. Louis et son temps_.

[i] JEAN DE JOINVILLE, _Vie de St. Louis_.

[j] MATTHEW PARIS, _Chronica Majora_.

[k] WILLIAM LE BRETON (William of Armorica), _Histoire des gestes de

Philippe Auguste_.

[l] GEOFFROY DE BEAULIEU, _Vie de St. Louis_.

[m] FRANÇOIS GUIZOT, _History of Civilisation in Europe_.

[n] S. ASTLEY DUNHAM, _History of Europe during the Middle Ages_.

[o] ABEL FRANÇOIS VILLEMAIN, _Cours de Littérature Française_ (Table du

Moyen Âge).

CHAPTER IV. PHILIP III TO THE HOUSE OF VALOIS

[b] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._

[c] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._

[d] E. BOUTARIC, _La France sous Philippe le Bel_.

[e] JULES MICHELET, _op. cit._

[f] SAUVAGE, _Chronique traditionnelle continuée_.

[g] CONTINUATOR OF GUILLAUME DE NANGIS, _Chroniques des rois de France_.

[h] DANTE ALIGHIERI, _Paradiso_, Canto XIX.

[i] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._

[j] PHILIP DE BEAUMANOIR, _Coutumes de Beauvaisis_.

[k] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._

[l] GUILLAUME DE NOGARET, in _Chronique de St. Denis_.

[m] GIOVANNI VILLANI, _Istorie Fiorentini_.

[n] THOMAS WALSINGHAM, _Historia Anglicana_.

[o] _Chronique de St. Denis._

[p] FRANÇOIS GUIZOT, _Histoire de France_.

CHAPTER V. THE OPENING OF THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR

[b] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._

[c] CONTINUATOR OF GUILLAUME DE NANGIS, _op. cit._

[d] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._

[e] JOHN FROISSART, _Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and Adjoining

Countries_.

[f] JULES MICHELET, _op. cit._

[g] V. DURUY, _op. cit._

[h] _Chronique de St. Denis._

[i] HENRY KNIGHTON, _Chronica_.

[j] THOMAS WALSINGHAM, _op. cit._

CHAPTER VI. JOHN THE GOOD AND CHARLES THE WISE

[b] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._

[c] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._

[d] CONTINUATOR OF GUILAUME DE NANGIS, _op. cit._

[e] JULES MICHELET, _op. cit._

[f] VICTOR DURUY, _Histoire du Moyen Âge_.

[g] JOHN FROISSART, _op. cit._

[h] SIMON LUCE, _Histoire de la Jacquerie_.

[i] F. T. PERRENS, _La Démocratie en France au Moyen Âge_.

[j] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._

[k] PIERRE ROBIQUET, _Histoire Municipale de Paris_.

[l] VICTOR DURUY, _Histoire de France_.

[m] M. LEBER, _Essai sur l’appréciation de la fortune privée au Moyen

Âge_.

[n] JAMES WHITE, _op. cit._

[o] JEAN LEFEBVRE (Sieur de Saint Rémy), _Chronique_.

[p] CHRISTINE DE PISAN, _Le livre des faicts et bonnes mœurs du sage roy

Charles V_.

[q] MATTEO VILLANI, continuation by Jean Villani, _Istorie Florentine_.

CHAPTER VII. THE BETRAYAL OF THE KINGDOM

[b] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._

[c] JOHN FROISSART, _op. cit._

[d] _Chronique de St. Denis._

[e] EUDES DE MÉZERAY, _Histoire de France_.

[f] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._

[g] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._

[h] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._

[i] JUVÉNAL DES URSINS, _Histoire de Charles VI_.

[j] JEAN LEFEBVRE (Sieur de Saint Rémy), _op. cit._

[k] JEAN DE VAURIN, _Recueil des croniques et anciennes histoires de la

Grant Bretaigne_.

[l] TITUS LIVY, _Vita Henrici Quinti regis Angliæ_.

[m] THOMAS WALSINGHAM, _op. cit._

[n] ENGUERRAND DE MONSTRELET, _Chronique_.

[o] BARON BRUGIÈRE DE BARANTE, _Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne_.

[p] JULES MICHELET, _op. cit._

[q] LE BOURGEOIS DE PARIS, _Journal_.

[r] THOMAS RYMER, _Fœdera_.

[s] J. ENDELL TYLER, _Henry of Monmouth: or Memoirs of the Life and

Elevation of Henry the Fifth as Prince of Wales and King of England_.

[t] A. F. VILLEMAIN, _op. cit._

CHAPTER VIII. THE RESCUE OF THE REALM

[b] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._

[c] JULES MICHELET, _op. cit._

[d] GEORGES CHASTELAIN, _Chronique de Normandie_.

[e] ENGUERRAND DE MONSTRELET, _op. cit._

[f] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._

[g] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._

[h] _Chronique de la Pucelle._

[i] JULES QUICHERAT, _Procès de condamnation et de réhabilitation de

Jeanne d’Arc_.

[j] LAVISSE ET RAMBAUD, _Histoire générale du IVᵉ siècle à nos jours_.

[k] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _Histoire de France depuis les

origines jusqu’à nos jours_.

CHAPTER IX. THE CONVALESCENCE OF THE REALM

[b] JULES MICHELET, _op. cit._

[c] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._

[d] FRANÇOIS GUIZOT, _op. cit._

[e] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._

[f] H. MARTIN, _op. cit._

[g] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._

[h] JEAN CHARTIER, _Histoire de Charles VII_.

[i] LE BOURGEOIS DE PARIS, _op. cit._

[j] JAMES WHITE, _op. cit._

[k] GEORGES CHASTELAIN, _Chronique des ducs de Bourgogne_.

[l] PIERRE DE BOURDEILLES (Seigneur de Brantôme), _Vie des dames

galantes_.

[m] OLIVIER DE LA MARCHE, _La Parement et le Triomphe des dames

d’honneur_.

[n] G. DU FRESNE DE BEAUCOURT, _Histoire de Charles VII_.

[o] HENRI BAUDE, _Éloge ou portrait historique de Charles VII_ (in Jean

Chartier’s _Chronique de Charles VII_).

[p] ALFRED RAMBAUD, _Histoire de la civilisation française_.

CHAPTER X. THE REIGN OF LOUIS XI

[b] GEORGES CHASTELAIN, _Chronique des ducs de Bourgogne_.

[c] PHILIPPE DE COMMINES, _Mémoires_.

[d] NICOLO MACCHIAVELLI, _Le Prince_.

[e] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._

[f] JAMES WHITE, _op. cit._

[g] J. C. L. S. DE SISMONDI, _op. cit._

[h] OLIVIER DE LA MARCHE, _Mémoires_.

[i] FRANÇOIS GUIZOT, _op. cit._

[j] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._

[k] URBAIN LEGEAY, _Histoire de Louis XI_.

[l] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._

[m] CHARLES P. DUCLOS, _Histoire de Louis XI_.

[n] ALEXIS BELLOC, _Les Postes Françaises; Recherches historiques sur

leur origine_.

[o] JULES MICHELET, _op. cit._

[p] CONTINUATOR OF MONSTRELET.

[q] E. DE MONSTRELET, _op. cit._

CHAPTER XI. CHARLES VII AND LOUIS XII, THE INVASION OF ITALY

[b] PIERRE DE B. BRANTÔME, _Vie des hommes illustres et grandes

capitaines français_.

[c] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._

[d] PH. DE COMMINES, _op. cit._

[e] FRANÇOIS GUIZOT, _op. cit._

[f] SYMPHORIEN CHAMPIER, _La Vie de Bayard_.

[g] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._

[h] CLAUDE DE SEYSSEL, _Louanges de Louis XII_.

[i] PIERRE L. ROEDERER, _Louis XII et François I_.

[j] HENRY HALLAM, _op. cit._

[k] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._

CHAPTER XII. IMPERIAL STRUGGLES. FRANCIS I AND HENRY II

[b] F. GUIZOT, _op. cit._

[c] _Mémoires du Chevalier de Bayard._

[d] J. C. L. S. DE SISMONDI, _op. cit._

[e] LUCIEN A. PRÉVOST-PARADOL, _Essai sur l’histoire universelle_.

[f] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._

[g] GUILLAUME DU BELLAY, _Mémoires_.

[h] F. A. M. MIGNET, _Rivalité de François I et de Charles Quint_.

[i] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._

[j] MARTIN DU BELLAY, _Mémoires_.

[k] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._

[l] ROSSEEUW ST. HILLAIRE, _Histoire d’Espagne_.

[m] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._

[n] JULIA PARDOE, _Court and Reign of François I_.

[o] GABRIEL HENRI GAILLARD, _Histoire de François I_.

[p] PIERRE DE BOURDEILLES BRANTÔME, _Œuvres complètes_.

[q] MARGUERITE DE VALOIS, _L’Heptameron_.

[r] JEAN MAROT, _Le Recueil de Jehan Marot de Caen_.

[s] LEOPOLD VON RANKE, _Französische Geschichte_.

[v] JAMES WHITE, _op. cit._

[w] H. FORNERON, _Les ducs de Guise et leur époque_.

CHAPTER XIII. CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI AND THE RELIGIOUS WARS

[b] BERNARD DE LACOMBE, _Catherine de Medici_.

[c] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._

[d] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._

[e] P. DE B. BRANTÔME, _op. cit._

[f] JAMES WHITE, _op. cit._

[g] MICHEL DE CASTELNAU, _Mémoires_.

[h] MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE, _Essais_.

[i] HENRI-CATHERIN DAVILA, _Histoire des guerres civiles de France depuis

la mort de Henri II jusqu’à la paix de Vervins_.

[j] MAXIMILIAN DE BÉTHUNE (Duc de Sully), _Mémoires_.

[k] W. S. BROWNING, _The History of the Huguenots_.

[l] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._

[m] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._

[n] THÉODORE AGRIPPA D’AUBIGNÉ, _Histoire Universelle_.

[o] PIERRE DE L’ESTOILE, _Journal_.

[p] M. CAVALLI, _Relation de Marino Cavalli_ (Ambassador to France from

Venice).

[q] FRANÇOIS DE LA NOUE, _Mémoires_.

[r] MARGUERITE DE VALOIS (La Reine Margot), _Mémoires_.

[s] H. FORNERON, _op. cit._

[t] A. SORBIN, _Histoire contenant un ibrégé de la vie, mœurs et vertus

du Roy très chrétien et débonnaire, Charles IX_.

[w] J. STEPHEN, _Lectures on the History of France_.

CHAPTER XIV. HENRY OF NAVARRE, THE FIRST OF THE BOURBONS

[b] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._

[c] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._

[d] JAMES WHITE, _op. cit._

[e] T. A. D’AUBIGNÉ, _op. cit._

[f] H. C. DAVILA, _op. cit._

[g] J. C. L. S. DE SISMONDI, _op. cit._

[h] CHARLES MERCIER DE LACOMBE, _Henri IV et sa politique_.

[i] M. E. DE MONTAIGNE, _op. cit._

[j] C. F. LENIENT, _La Satire en France_.

[k] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._

[l] F. GUIZOT, _op. cit._

[m] G. W. KITCHIN, _History of France_.

[n] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._

[o] FRANÇOIS DE BASSOMPIERRE, _Mémoires_.

[p] M. DE BÉTHUNE (Duc de Sully), _op. cit._

[q] FRANÇOIS MARIE AROUET DE VOLTAIRE, _Le siècle de Louis XIV_.

[r] J. STEPHEN, _Lectures on the History of France_.

CHAPTER XV. THE LITERARY PROGRESS OF FRANCE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

[b] A. F. VILLEMAIN, _op. cit._

[c] J. STEPHEN, _op. cit._

[d] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._

[e] G. E. SAINTSBURY, article on “Rabelais” in the _Encyclopædia

Britannica_.

[f] MICHELET, _op. cit._

CHAPTER XVI. THE EARLY YEARS OF LOUIS XIII

[b] J. MICHELET, _op. cit._

[c] DAVID HUME, _Histoire naturelle de la religion, 1752_.

[d] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._

[e] ARMAND DU PLESSIS (Cardinal de Richelieu), _Mémoires_.

[f] VICTOR DURUY, _op. cit._

[g] FLORIMOND RAPINE, _Relation des États de 1614_.

[h] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._

[i] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._

[j] CHARLES SEIGNOBOS, _Scènes et épisodes de l’histoire nationale_.

CHAPTER XVII. THE DICTATORSHIP OF RICHELIEU

[b] J. MICHELET, _op. cit._

[c] E. DE BONNECHOSE, _op. cit._

[d] THÉOPHILE LAVALLÉE, _op. cit._

[e] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._

[f] _Mémoires de Pontis 1630_ (Journal de Bassompierre).

[g] FRANÇOIS DE BASSOMPIERRE, _op. cit._

[h] J. B. RAYMOND CAPEFIGUE, _Richelieu, Mazarin, La Fronde et le règne

de Louis XIV_.

[i] FRANÇOISE BERTAUT DE MOTTEVILLE, _Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire

d’Anne d’Autriche_.

[j] J. WHITE, _op. cit._

[k] L. D’ASTARAC DE FRONTRAILLES, _Relation des choses particulières de

la cour pendant la faveur de M. de Cinq-Mars_.

[l] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._

[m] ARMAND DU PLESSIS (Richelieu), _Testament Politique_.

[n] J. F. PAUL DE GONDI (Cardinal de Retz), _Mémoires_.

[o] CH. DE SECONDAT DE MONTESQUIEU, _Pensées diverses_.

[p] HENRI MARTIN, _op. cit._

[q] PIERRE ET JACQUES DUPUY, _Traité des droits et libertés de l’Église

Gallicane, avec les Preuves_.

[r] JULES CAILLET, _L’Administration en France sous le ministère du

Cardinal Richelieu_.

[s] CORNEILLE.

[t] F. GUIZOT, _op. cit._

[u] V. DURUY, _op. cit._

[v] J. STEPHEN, _op. cit._

[w] G. W. KITCHIN, _op. cit._

CHAPTER XVIII. THE SUPREMACY OF MAZARIN

[b] JULES MICHELET, _Richelieu et la Fronde_.

[c] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._

[d] H. MARTIN, _op. cit._

[e] A. RENÉE, _Les Nièces de Mazarin_.

[f] ADOLPHE CHÉRUEL, _Histoire de France pendant la minorité de Louis

XIV_.

[g] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._

[h] V. DURUY, _op. cit._

[i] F. M. A. DE VOLTAIRE, _op. cit._

[j] PAUL DE GONDI (Cardinal de Retz), _op. cit._

[k] FRANÇOISE BERTAUT DE MOTTEVILLE, _op. cit._

[l] FRANÇOIS, DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, _Maximes_.

[m] FRANÇOIS, DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, _Mémoires sur le règne d’Anne

d’Autriche_.

[n] CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH DE BAVIÈRE (Princesse Palatine, Duchesse

d’Orléans), _Correspondance_.

[o] G. W. KITCHIN, _op. cit._

[p] _Les Carnets de Mazarin._

[q] G. W. KITCHIN, article on “France” in the Ninth Edition of the

_Encyclopædia Britannica_.

CHAPTER XIX. L’ÉTAT, C’EST MOI

[b] F. M. A. DE VOLTAIRE, _op. cit._

[c] V. DURUY, _op. cit._

[d] H. MARTIN, _op. cit._

[e] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._

[f] LOUIS XIV, _Mémoires_.

[g] MARIUS TOPIN, _L’Homme au masque de fer_.

[h] M. N. BOUILLET, _Dictionnaire universel d’histoire et de géographie_.

[i] L. DE ROUVROY (Duc de Saint-Simon), _Mémoires de Louis XIV_.

[j] THÉOPHILE LAVALLÉE, _op. cit._

[k] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._

[l] JULES MICHELET, _Louis XIV et la Révocation de l’Edit de Nantes_.

[m] J. B. PAQUIER, _Histoire de l’unité politique et territoriale de la

France_.

[n] PIERRE LE PESANT DE BOISGUILLEBERT, _Detail de la France sous Louis

XIV_.

[o] LA BARONNE DE STAAL, _Mémoires_.

[p] J. STEPHEN, _op. cit._

[q] G. W. KITCHIN, _op. cit._

CHAPTER XX. LOUIS XIV, SPAIN AND HOLLAND

[b] A. E. C. DARESTE DE CHAVANNE, _op. cit._

[c] H. MARTIN, _op. cit._

[d] V. DURUY, _op. cit._

[e] OLIVIER D’ORMESSON, _Journal_.

[f] F. M. A. DE VOLTAIRE, _op. cit._

[g] F. GUIZOT, _op. cit._

[h] F. MIGNET, _Négotiations relative à la succession d’Espagne_.

[i] MME. LA MARQUISE DE SÉVIGNÉ, _Lettres_.

[j] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._

[k] GEORGES DURUY, _Vie de Turenne_.

[l] LE MARQUIS DE LA FARE, _Mémoires sur Louis XIV_.

[m] LOUIS RACINE, _Mémoires sur la Vie de J. Racine_.

[n] J. STEPHEN, _op. cit._

CHAPTER XXI. THE HEIGHT AND DECLINE OF THE BOURBON MONARCHY

[b] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._

[c] V. DURUY, _op. cit._

[d] F. M. A. DE VOLTAIRE, _op. cit._

[e] H. MARTIN, _op. cit._

[f] E. E. CROWE, _op. cit._

[g] MME. LA COMTESSE DE LA FAYETTE, _Œuvres_.

[h] DUC DE SAINT-SIMON, _op. cit._

[i] F. GUIZOT, _op. cit._

[j] J. STEPHEN, _op. cit._

CHAPTER XXII. THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV

[b] A. E. C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, _op. cit._

[c] A. RAMBAUD, _op. cit._

[d] D. NISARD, _Histoire de la littérature française_.

[e] HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE, _History of Civilisation in England_.

[f] ARSÈNE HOUSSAYE, _La Régence_.

[g] H. MARTIN, _op. cit._

[h] MME. DE SÉVIGNÉ, _op. cit._

[i] F. M. A. DE VOLTAIRE, _op. cit._

[j] JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE, _Caractères ou les Mœurs de ce siècle_.

[k] FRANÇOIS, DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, _op. cit._

[l] JACQUES BÉNIGNE BOSSUET, _Discours sur l’histoire universelle_.

_Politique tirée de l’écriture sainte._

[m] LOUIS XIV, _op. cit._

[n] CHARLES CASTEL (Abbé de Saint Pierre), _Projet de paix perpétuelle._

_Discours sur la Polysynodie._

[o] DUC DE SAINT-SIMON, _Mémoires_.

[p] FRANÇOISE BERTAUT DE MOTTEVILLE, _op. cit._

[q] BERNARD GERMAIN ÉTIENNE DE LA VILLE DE LACÉPÈDE, _Histoire de

l’Europe, Paris_, 1833.

[r] _A New and General Biographical Dictionary_, London, 1798, 15 vols.

[s] J. STEPHEN, _Lectures on the History of France_.

[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE DATES OF INCORPORATION OF THE PROVINCES

INTO THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE.]