We shall not live to see that fine unity of the west which lent the
latter seventeenth and eighteenth centuries their classical repose. No
common rule of verse or prose will satisfy men's permanent desire for
harmony: no common rule of manners, of honour, of international ethics,
of war. We shall not live to see, though we are young now, a Paris
reading some new Locke or Hume, a London moved to attentive delight in
some latter trinity of Dramatists, some future Voltaire.... The high,
protected class, which moved at ease between the Capitals of the World,
has disappeared; that which should take its place is not yet formed. We
are both of that one Faith which can but regard our Christendom as the
front of mankind and which, therefore, looks forward, as to a necessary
goal, to the re-establishment of its common comprehension. But the
reversion to such stability is slow. We shall not live to see it.
It is none the less our duty (if I may use a word of so unsavoury a
connotation) to advance the accomplishment of this good fatality.
Not indeed that a vulgar cosmopolitan beatitude can inspire an honest
man. To abandon one's patriotism, and to despise a frontier or a flag,
is, we are agreed, the negation of Europe. There are Frenchmen who
forget their battles, and Englishmen to whom a gold mine, a chance
federal theory, a colonial accent, or a map, is more of an inheritance
than the delicate feminine profile of Nelson or the hitherto unbroken
traditions of our political scheme. To such men arms are either
abhorrent, or, what is worse, a very cowardly (and thank God!
unsuccessful) method of acquiring or defending their very base
enjoyments. Let us forget them. It is only as nationalists, and only in
an intense sympathy with the highly individual national unities of
Europe that we may approach the endeavour of which I have spoken.
With us, I fear, that endeavour must take a literary form, but such a
channel is far from ignoble or valueless. He that knows some part of the
letters of a foreign nation, be it but the graces or even the vagaries
of such letters, knows something of that nation's mind. To portray for
the populace one religion welding the west together, to spread a common
philosophy, or to interpret and arrange political terms, would certainly
prove a more lasting labour: but you will agree with me that mere
sympathy in letters is not to be despised.
We have observed together that the balance in this matter is heavily
against the English. M. Jusserand is easily the first authority upon
popular life in England at the close of the middle ages. M. Boutmy has
produced an analysis of our political development which our Universities
have justly recognized. Our friend M. Angellier of the École Normale has
written what is acknowledged by the more learned Scotch to be the
principal existing monograph upon Robert Burns; Mr. Kipling himself has
snatched the attention of M. Chevrillon. You know how many names might
be added to this list to prove the close, applied and penetrating manner
in which French scholars have latterly presented our English writers to
their fellow-citizens.
We have both believed that something of the sort might be attempted in
the converse; that a view could be given--a glimpse at least--of that
vast organism whose foundations are in Rome, Coeval with the spring of
Christianity, and whose last growth seems as vigorous and as fecund as
though it were exempt from any laws of age.
But, I say, we know how heavy is the balance against us.
The Gallic ritual is unrecognized, even by our over-numerous class of
clerical antiquarians. The Carolingian cycle is neglected, save perhaps
for a dozen men who have seen the Song of Roland. The Complaints of
Rusteboeuf, the Fabliaux, all the local legendary poetry, all the
chroniclers (save Froissart--for he wrote of us), the tender simplicity
of Joinville, the hard steel of Villehardouin, no one has handled.
The fifteenth century, the storm of the Renaissance, are not taught.
Why, Rabelais himself might be but an unfamiliar name had not a northern
squire of genius rendered to the life three quarters of his work.
The list is interminable. Even the great Drama of the great century is
but a text for our schools leaving no sort of trace upon the mind: and
as for the French moderns (I have heard it from men of liberal
education) they are denied to have written any poetry at all: so exact,
so subtle, so readily to be missed, are the proportions of their speech.
If you ask me why I should myself approach the matter, I can plead some
inheritance of French blood, comparable, I believe, to your own; and
though I have no sort of claim to that unique and accomplished
scholarship which gives you a mastery of the French tongue unmatched in
England, and a complete familiarity with its history, application and
genius, yet I can put to my credit a year of active, if eccentric,
experience in a French barrack room, and a complete segregation during
those twelve memorable months wherein I could study the very soul of
this sincere, creative, and tenacious people.
Your learning, my singular adventure, have increased in us, it must be
confessed, a permanent and reasoned admiration for this people's
qualities. Such an attitude of mind is rare enough and often dangerous:
it is but a qualification the more for beginning the work. It permits us
to follow the main line of the past of the French, to comprehend and not
to be troubled by the energy of their present, to catch the advancing
omens of their future.
Indeed, if anything of France is to be explained in English and to
people reading English, I could not desire a better alliance than yours
and mine.
But if you ask me why the Renaissance especially--or why in the
Renaissance these six poets alone--should have formed the subject of my
first endeavour, I can only tell you that in so vast a province, whereof
the most ample leisure could not in a lifetime exhaust a tithe, Chance,
that happy Goddess, led me at random to their groves.
Whether it will be possible to continue such interpretation I do not
know, but if it be so possible, I know still less what next may be put
into my hands: Racine, perhaps, may call me, or those forgotten men who
urged the Revolution with phrases of fire.
H. BELLOC.
CHELSEA, _January, 1904._