CHAPTER IX

THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL--II

_From "Francion" to "La Princesse de Cleves"_--_Anthony Hamilton_[247]

[Sidenote: The material of the chapter.]

Justice has, it is hoped, been done to the great classes of fictitious

work which, during the seventeenth century, made fiction, as such,

popular with high and of low in France. But it is one of the not very

numerous safe generalisations or inductions which may be fished out from

the wide and treacherous Syrtes of the history of literature, that it is

not as a rule from "classes" that the best work comes; and that, when it

does so come, it generally represents a sort of outside and uncovenanted

element or constituent of the class. We have, unfortunately, lost the

Greek epic, as a class; but we know enough about it, with its few

specimens, such as Apollonius Rhodius earlier and Nonnus later, to warn

us that, if we had more, we should find Homer not merely better, but

different, and this though probably every practitioner was at least

trying to imitate or surpass Homer. Dante stands in no class at all, nor

does Milton, nor does Shelley; and though Shakespeare indulgently

permits himself to be classed as an "Elizabethan dramatist," what

strikes true critics most is again hardly more his "betterness" than

his difference. The very astonishment with which we sometimes say of

Webster, Dekker, Middleton, that they come near Shakespeare, is not due,

as foolish people say, to any only less foolish idolatry, but to a true

critical surprise at the approximation of things usually so very

distinct.

The examples in higher forms of literature just chosen for comparison do

not, of course, show any wish in the chooser to even any French

seventeenth-century novelist with Homer or Shakespeare, with Dante or

Milton or Shelley. But the work noticed in the last chapter certainly

includes nothing of strong idiosyncrasy. In other books scattered, in

point of time of production, over great part of the period, such

idiosyncrasy is to be found, though in very various measure. Now,

idiosyncrasy is, if not the only difference or property, the inseparable

accident of all great literature, and it may exist where literature is

not exactly great. Moreover, like other abysses, it calls to, and calls

into existence, yet more abysses of its own kind or not-kind; while

school- and class-work, however good, can never produce anything but

more class- and school-work, except by exciting the always dubious and

sometimes very dangerous desire "to be different." The instances of this

idiosyncrasy with which we shall now deal are the _Francion_ of Charles

Sorel; the _Roman Comique_ of Paul Scarron; the _Roman Bourgeois_ of

Antoine Furetiere; the _Voyages_, as they are commonly called (though

the proper title is different[248]), _a la Lune et au Soleil_, of Cyrano

de Bergerac, and the _Princesse de Cleves_ of Mme. de La Fayette; while

last of all will come the remarkable figure of Anthony Hamilton, less

"single-speech"[249] than the others and than his namesake later, but

possessor of greater genius than any.

[Sidenote: Sorel and _Francion_.]

The present writer has long ago been found fault with for paying too

much attention to _Francion_, and he may possibly (if any one thinks it

worth while) be found fault with again for placing it here. But he does

so from no mere childish desire to persist in some rebuked naughtiness,

but from a sincere belief in the possession by the book of some

historical importance. Any one who, on Arnoldian principles, declines to

take the historic estimate into account at all, is, on those principles,

justified in neglecting it altogether; whether, on the other hand, such

neglect does not justify a suspicion of the soundness of the principles

themselves, is another question. Charles Sorel, historiographer of

France, was a very voluminous and usually a very dull writer. His

voluminousness, though beside the enormous compositions of the last

chapter it is but a small thing, is not absent from _Francion_, nor is

his dulness. Probably few people have read the book through, and I am

not going to recommend anybody to do so. But the author does to some

extent deserve the cruel praise of being "dull in a new way" (or at

least of being evidently in quest of a new way to be dull in), as

Johnson wrongfully said of Gray. His book is not a direct imitation of

any one thing, though an attempt to adapt the Spanish picaresque style

to French realities and fantasies is obvious enough, as it is likewise

in Scarron and others. But this is mixed with all sorts of other

adumbrations, if not wholly original, yet showing that quest of

originality which has been commended. It is an almost impossible book to

analyse, either in short or long measure. The hero wanders about France,

and has all sorts of adventures, the recounting of which is not without

touches of Rabelais, of the _Moyen de Parvenir_, perhaps of the rising

fancies about the occult, which generated Rosicrucianism and "astral

spirits" and the rest of it--a whole farrago, in short, of matters

decent and indecent, congruous seldom and incongruous often. It is not

like Sterne, because it is dull, and at the same time quasi-romantic;

while "sensibility" had not come in, though we shall see it do so within

the limits of this chapter. It has a resemblance, though not very much

of one, to the rather later work of Cyrano. But it is most like two

English novels of far higher merit which were not to appear for a

century or a century and a half--Amory's _John Buncle_ and Graves's

_Spiritual Quixote_. As it is well to mention things together without

the danger of misleading those who run as they read, and mind the

running rather than the reading, let me observe that the liveliest part

of _Francion_ is duller than the dullest of _Buncle_, and duller still

than the least lively thing in Graves. The points of resemblance are in

pillar-to-postness, in the endeavour (here almost entirely a failure,

but still an endeavour) to combine fancy with realism, and above all in

freedom from following the rules of any "school." Realism in the good

sense and originality were the two things that the novel had to achieve.

Sorel missed the first and only achieved a sort of "distanced" position

in the second. But he tried--or groped--for both.

[Sidenote: The _Berger Extravagant_ and _Polyandre_.]

I am bound to say that in Sorel's other chief works of fiction, the

_Berger Extravagant_ and _Polyandre_, I find the same curious mixture of

qualities which have made me more lenient than most critics to

_Francion_. And I do not think it unfair to add that they also incline

me still more to think that there was perhaps a little of the _Pereant

qui ante nos_ feeling in Furetiere's attack (_v. inf._ p. 288). Neither

could possibly be called by any sane judge a good book, and both display

the uncritical character,[250] the "pillar-to-postness," the

marine-store and almost rubbish-heap promiscuity, of the more famous

book. Like it, they are much too big.[251] But the _Berger Extravagant_,

in applying (very early) the _Don Quixote_ method, as far as Sorel could

manage it, to the _Astree_, is sometimes amusing and by no means always

unjust. _Polyandre_ is, in part, by no means unlike an awkward first

draft of a _Roman Bourgeois_. The scene in the former, where Lysis--the

Extravagant Shepherd and the Don Quixote of the piece,--making an

all-night sitting over a poem in honour of his mistress Charite (the

Dulcinea), disturbs the unfortunate Clarimond--a sort of "bachelor," the

sensible man of the book, and a would-be reformer of Lysis--by constant

demands for a rhyme[252] or an epithet, is not bad. The victim revenges

himself by giving the most ludicrous words he can think of, which Lysis

duly works in, and at last allows Clarimond to go to sleep. But he is

quickly waked by the poet running about and shouting, "I've got it! I've

found it. The finest _reprise_ [= refrain] ever made!" And in

_Polyandre_ there is a sentence (not the only one by many) which not

only gives a _point de repere_ of an interesting kind in itself, but

marks the beginning of the "_farrago libelli_ moderni": "Ils ont des

mets qu'ils nomment des _bisques_; je doute si c'est potage ou

fricassee."

Here we have (1) Evidence that Sorel was a man of observation, and took

an interest in really interesting things.

(2) A date for the appearance, or the coming into fashion, of an

important dish.

(3) An instance of the furnishing of fiction with something more than

conventional adventure on the one hand, and conventional harangues or

descriptions on the other.

(4) An interesting literary parallel; for here is the libelled

"Charroselles" (_v. inf._ p. 288) two centuries beforehand, feeling a

doubt, exactly similar to Thackeray's, as to whether a _bouillabaisse_

should be called soup or broth, brew or stew. Those who understand the

art and pastime of "book-fishing" will not go away with empty baskets

from either of these neglected ponds.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Scarron and the _Roman Comique_.]

Almost as different a person as can possibly be conceived from Sorel was

Paul Scarron, Abbe, "Invalid to the Queen," husband of the future Mme.

de Maintenon, author of burlesques which did him no particular honour,

of plays which, if not bad, were never first rate, of witticisms

innumerable, most of which have perished, and of other things, besides

being a hero of some facts and more legends; but author also of one book

in our own subject of much intrinsic and more historical interest, and

original also of passages in later books more interesting still to all

good wits. Not a lucky man in life (except for the possession of a

lively wit and an imperturbable temper), he was never rich, and he

suffered long and terribly from disease--one of the main subjects of his

legend, but, after all discussions and carpings, looking most like

rheumatoid arthritis, one of the most painful and incurable of ailments.

But Scarron was, and has been since, by no means unlucky in literature.

He had, though of course not an unvaried, a great popularity in a

troubled and unscrupulous time: and long after his death two of the

foremost novelists of his country selected him for honourable treatment

of curiously different kinds. Somehow or other the introduction of men

of letters of old time into modern books has not been usually very

fortunate, except in the hands of Thackeray and a very few more. Among

these latter instances may certainly be ranked the pleasant picture of

Scarron's house, and of the attention paid to him by the as yet

unmarried Francoise d'Aubigne, in Dumas's _Vingt Ans Apres_. Nor is it

easy to think of any literary following that, while no doubt bettering,

abstains so completely from robbing, insulting, or obscuring its model

as does Gautier's _Capitaine Fracasse_.

It is, however, with this pleasant book itself that we are concerned.

Here again, of course, the picaresque model comes in, and there is a

good deal of directly borrowed matter. But a much greater talent, and

especially a much more acute and critical wit than Sorel's, brings to

that scheme the practical-artistic French gift, the application of which

to the novel is, in fact, the subject of this whole chapter. Not

unkindly judges have, it is true, pronounced it not very amusing; and an

uncritical comparer may find it injured by Gautier's book. The older

novel has, indeed, nothing of the magnificent style of the overture of

this latter. _Le Chateau de la Misere_ is one of the finest things of

the kind in French; for exciting incident there is no better duel in

literature than that of Sigognac and Lampourde; and the delicate

pastel-like costumes and manners and love-making of Gautier's longest

and most ambitious romance are not to be expected in the rough

"rhyparography"[253] of the seventeenth century. But in itself the

_Roman Comique_ is no small performance, and historically it is almost

great. We have in it, indeed, got entirely out of the pure romance; but

we have also got out of the _fatrasie_--the mingle-mangle of story,

jargon, nonsense, and what not,--out of the mere tale of adventure, out

of the mere tale of _grivoiserie_. We have borrowed the comic

dramatist's mirror--the "Muses' Looking-glass"--and are holding it up to

nature without the intervention of the conventionalities of the stage.

The company to which we are introduced is, no doubt, pursuing a somewhat

artificial vocation; but it is pursuing it in the way of real life, as

many live men and women have pursued it. The mask itself may be of their

trade and class; but it is taken off them, and they are not merely

_personae_, they are persons.

To re-read the _Roman Comique_ just after reading the _Grand Cyrus_ came

into the present plan partly by design and partly by accident; but I had

not fully anticipated the advantage of doing so. The contrast of the

two, and the general relation between them could, indeed, escape no one;

but an interval of a great many years since the last reading of

Scarron's work had not unnaturally caused forgetfulness of the

deliberate and minute manner in which he himself points that contrast,

and even now and then satirises the _Cyrus_ by name. The system of inset

_Histoires_,[254] beginning with the well-told if borrowed story of Don

Carlos of Aragon and his "Invisible Mistress," is, indeed, hardly a

contrast except in point of the respective lengths of the digressions,

nor does it seem to be meant as a parody. It has been said that this

"inset" system, whether borrowed from the episodes of the ancients or

descended from the constant divagations of the mediaeval romances, is

very old, and proved itself uncommonly tenacious of life. But the

difference between the opening of the two books can hardly have been

other than intentional on the part of the later writer; and it is a very

memorable one, showing nothing less than the difference between romance

and novel, between academic generalities and "realist" particularism,

and between not a few other pairs of opposites. It has been fully

allowed that the overture of the _Grand Cyrus_ is by no means devoid of

action, even of bustle, and that it is well done of its kind. But that

kind is strongly marked in the very fact that there is a sort of

faintness in it. The burning of Sinope, the distant vessel, the

street-fighting that follows, are what may be called "cartoonish"--large

washes of pale colour. The talk, such as there is, is stage-talk of the

pseudo-grand style. It is curious that Scarron himself speaks of the

_Cyrus_ as being the most "furnitured" romance, _le roman le plus

meuble_, that he knows. To a modern eye the interiors are anything but

distinct, despite the elaborate _ecphrases_, some of which have been

quoted.[255]

Now turn to the opening passage of the _Roman Comique_, which strikes

the new note most sharply. It is rather well known, probably even to

some who have not read the original or Tom Brown's congenial translation

of it; for it has been largely laid under contribution by the

innumerable writers about a much greater person than Scarron, Moliere.

The experiences of the _Illustre Theatre_ were a little later, and

apparently not so sordid as those of the company of which Scarron

constituted himself historiographer; but they cannot have been very

dissimilar in general kind, and many of the characteristics, such as the

assumption now of fantastic names, "Le Destin," "La Rancune," etc., now

of rococo-romantic ones, such as "Mademoiselle de l'Etoile," remained

long unaltered. But perhaps a fresh translation may be attempted, and

the attempt permitted. For though the piece, of course, has recent

Spanish and even older Italian examples of a kind, still the change in

what may be called "particular universality" is remarkable.

[Sidenote: The opening scene of this.]

The sun had finished more than half his course, and his

chariot, having reached the slope of the world, was running

quicker than he wished. If his horses had chosen to avail

themselves of the drop of the road, they would have got

through what remained of the day in less than half or

quarter of an hour; but instead of pulling at full strength,

they merely amused themselves by curvetting, as they drew in

a salt air, which told them the sea, wherein men say their

master goes to bed every night, was close at hand. To speak

more like a man of this world, and more intelligibly, it was

between five and six o'clock, when a cart came into the

market-place of Le Mans. This cart was drawn by four very

lean oxen, with, for leader, a brood-mare, whose foal

scampered about round the cart, like a silly little thing as

it was. The cart was full of boxes and trunks, and of great

bundles of painted canvas, which made a sort of pyramid, on

the top of which appeared a damsel, dressed partly as for

town, partly for country. By the side of the cart walked a

young man, as ill-dressed as he was good-looking. He had on

his face a great patch, which covered one eye and half his

cheek, and he carried a large fowling-piece on his shoulder.

With this he had slain divers magpies, jays, and crows; and

they made a sort of bandoleer round him, from the bottom

whereof hung a pullet and a gosling, looking very like the

result of a plundering expedition. Instead of a hat he had

only a night-cap, with garters of divers colours twisted

round it, which headgear looked like a very unfinished

sketch of a turban. His coat was a jacket of grey stuff,

girt with a strap, which served also as a sword-belt, the

sword being so long that it wanted a fork to draw it neatly

for use. He wore breeches trussed, with stockings attached

to them, as actors do when they play an ancient hero; and

he had, instead of shoes, buskins of a classical pattern,

muddied up to the ankle. An old man, more ordinarily but

still very ill-dressed, walked beside him. He carried on his

shoulders a bass-viol, and as he stooped a little in

walking, one might, at a distance, have taken him for a

large tortoise walking on its hind legs. Some critic may

perhaps murmur at this comparison; but I am speaking of the

big tortoises they have in the Indies, and besides I use it

at my own risk. Let us return to our caravan.

It passed in front of the tennis-court called the Doe, at

the door of which were gathered a number of the topping

citizens of the town. The novel appearance of the conveyance

and team, and the noise of the mob who had gathered round

the cart, induced these honourable burgomasters to cast an

eye upon the strangers; and among others a Deputy-Provost

named La Rappiniere came up, accosted them, and, with the

authority of a magistrate, asked who they were. The young

man of whom I have just spoken replied, and without touching

his turban (inasmuch as with one of his hands he held his

gun and with the other the hilt of his sword, lest it should

get between his legs) told the Provost that they were French

by birth, actors by profession, that his stage-name was Le

Destin, that of his old comrade La Rancune, and that of the

lady who was perched like a hen on the top of their baggage,

La Caverne. This odd name made some of the company laugh;

whereat the young actor added that it ought not to seem

stranger to men with their wits about them than "La

Montagne," "La Vallee," "La Rose," or "L'Epine." The talk

was interrupted by certain sounds of blows and oaths which

were heard from the front of the cart. It was the

tennis-court attendant, who had struck the carter without

warning, because the oxen and the mare were making too free

with a heap of hay which lay before the door. The row was

stopped, and the mistress of the court, who was fonder of

plays than of sermons or vespers, gave leave, with a

generosity unheard of in her kind, to the carter to bait his

beasts to their fill. He accepted her offer, and, while the

beasts ate, the author rested for a time, and set to work to

think what he should say in the next chapter.

The sally in the last sentence, with the other about the tortoise, and

the mock solemnity of the opening, illustrate two special

characteristics, which will be noticed below, and which may be taken in

each case as a sort of revulsion from, or parody of, the solemn ways of

the regular romance. There may be even a special reference to the

"_Phebus_" the technical name or nickname of the "high language" in

these repeated burlesque introductions of the sun. And the almost pert

flings and cabrioles of the narrator form a still more obvious and

direct Declaration of Independence. But these are mere details, almost

trivial compared with the striking contrast of the whole presentation

and _faire_ of the piece, when taken together with most of the subjects

of the last chapter.

It may require a little, but it should not require much, knowledge of

literary history to see how modern this is; it should surely require

none to see how vivid it is--how the sharpness of an etching and the

colour of a bold picture take the place of the shadowy "academies" of

previous French writers.[256] There may be a very little exaggeration

even here--in other parts of the book there is certainly some--and

Scarron never could forget his tendency to that form of exaggeration

which is called burlesque. But the stuff and substance of the piece is

reality.

An important item of the same change is to be found in the management of

the insets, or some of them. One of the longest and most important is

the autobiographical history of Le Destin or Destin (the article is

often dropped), the tall young man with the patch on his face. But this

is not thrust bodily into the other body of the story, _Cyrus_-fashion;

it is alternated with the passages of that story itself, and that in a

comparatively natural manner--night or some startling accident

interrupting it; while how even courtiers could find breath to tell, or

patience and time to hear, some of the interludes of the _Cyrus_ and its

fellows is altogether past comprehension. There is some coarseness in

Scarron--he would not be a comic writer of the seventeenth century if

there were none. Not very long after the beginning the tale is

interrupted by a long account of an unseemly practical joke which surely

could amuse no mortal after a certain stage of schoolboyhood. But there

is little or no positive indecency: the book contrasts not more

remarkably with the Aristophanic indulgence of the sixteenth century

than with the sniggering suggestiveness of the eighteenth. Some remnants

of the Heroic convention (which, after all, did to a great extent

reflect the actual manners of the time) remain, such as the obligatory

"compliment." Le Destin is ready to hang himself because, at his first

meeting with the beautiful Leonore, his shyness prevents his getting a

proper "compliment" out. On the other hand, the demand for _esprit_,

which was confined in the Heroics to a few privileged characters, now

becomes almost universal. There are tricks, but fairly novel

tricks--affectations like "I don't know what they did next" and the

others noted above: while the famous rhetorical beginnings of chapters

appear not only at the very outset, but at the opening of the second

volume, "Le Soleil donnant aplomb sur les antipodes,"--things which a

century later Fielding, and two centuries later Dickens, did not disdain

to imitate.

Scarron did not live to finish the book, and the third part or volume,

which was tinkered--still more the _Suite_, which was added--by somebody

else, are very inferior. The somewhat unfavourable opinions referred to

above may be partly based on the undoubted fact that the story is rather

formless; that its most important machinery is dependent, after all, on

the old _rapt_ or abduction, the heroines of which are Mademoiselle de

l'Etoile (nominally Le Destin's sister, really his love, and at the end

his wife) and Angelique, daughter of La Caverne, who is provided with a

lover and husband of 12,000 (_livres_) a year in the person of Leandre,

one of the stock theatrical names, professedly "valet" to Le Destin, but

really a country gentleman's son. Thus everybody is somebody else, again

in the old way. Another, and to some tastes a more serious, blot may be

found in the everlasting practical jokes of the knock-about kind,

inflicted on the unfortunate Ragotin, a sort of amateur member of the

troupe. But again these "_low_ jinks" were an obvious reaction from

(just as the ceremonies were followings of) the solemnity of the

Heroics; and they continued to be popular for nearly two hundred years,

as English readers full well do know. Nevertheless these defects merely

accompany--they do not mar or still less destroy--the striking

characteristics of progress which appear with them, and which, without

any elaborate abstract of the book, have been set forth somewhat

carefully in the preceding pages. Above all, there is a real and

considerable attempt at character, a trifle _typy_ and stagy perhaps,

but still aiming at something better; and the older _nouvelle_-fashion

is not merely drawn upon, but improved upon, for curious anecdotes,

striking situations, effective names. Under the latter heads it is

noteworthy that Gautier simply "lifted" the name Sigognac from Scarron,

though he attached it to a very different personage; and that Dumas got,

from the same source, the startling incident of Aramis suddenly

descending on the crupper of D'Artagnan's horse. The jokes may, of

course, amuse or not different persons, and even different moods of the

same person; the practical ones, as has been hinted, may pall, even when

they are not merely vulgar. Practical joking had a long hold of

literature, as of life; and it would be sanguine to think that it is

dead. Izaak Walton, a curious contemporary--"disparate," as the French

say, of Scarron, would not quite have liked the quarrel between the

dying inn-keeper, who insists on being buried in his oldest sheet, full

of holes and stains, and his wife, who asks him, from a sense rather of

decency than of affection, how he can possibly think of appearing thus

clad in the Valley of Jehoshaphat? But there is something in the book

for many tastes, and a good deal more for the student of the history of

the novel.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Furetiere and the _Roman Bourgeois_.]

The couplet-contrast of the Comic Romance of Scarron and the "Bourgeois"

Romance of Furetiere[257] is one of the most curious among the minor

phenomena of literary history; but it repeats itself in that history so

often that it becomes, by accumulation, hardly minor. There is a vast

difference between Furetiere and Miss Austen, and a still vaster one

between Scarron and Scott; but the two French books stand to each other,

on however much lower a step of the stair, very much as _Waverley_

stands to _Pride and Prejudice_, and they carry on a common revulsion

against their forerunners and a common quest for newer and better

developments. The _Roman Bourgeois_, indeed, is more definitely, more

explicitly, and in further ways of exodus, a departure from the subjects

and treatment of most of the books noticed in the last chapter. It is

true that its author attributes to the reading of the regular romances

the conversion of his pretty idiot Javotte from a mere idiot to

something that can, at any rate, hold her own in conversation, and take

an interest in life.[258] But he also adds the consequence of her

elopement, without apparently any prospect of marriage, but with an

accomplished gentleman who has helped her to _esprit_ by introducing her

to those very same romances; and he has numerous distinct girds at his

predecessors, including one at the multiplied abductions of Mandane

herself. Moreover his inset tale _L'Amour Egare_ (itself something of a

parody), which contains most of the "key"-matter, includes a satirical

account (not uncomplimentary to her intellectual, but exceedingly so to

her physical characteristics) of "Sapho" herself. For after declining to

give a full description of poor Madeleine, for fear of disgusting his

readers, he tells us, in mentioning the extravagant compliments

addressed to her in verse, that she only resembled the Sun in having a

complexion yellowed by jaundice; the Moon in being freckled; and the

Dawn in having a red tip to her nose!

But this last ill-mannered particularity illustrates the character, and

in its way the value, of the whole book. A romance, or indeed in the

proper sense a story--that is to say, _one_ story,--it certainly is

not: the author admits the fact frankly, not to say boisterously, and

his title seems to have been definitely suggested by Scarron's. The two

parts have absolutely no connection with one another, except that a

single personage, who has played a very subordinate part in the first,

plays a prominent but entirely different one in the second. This second

is wholly occupied by legal matters (Furetiere had been "bred to the

law"), and the humours and amours of a certain female litigant,

Collantine, to whom Racine and Wycherley owe something, with the unlucky

author "Charroselles"[259] and a subordinate judge, Belastre, who has

been pitch-forked by interest into a place which he finally loses by his

utter incapacity and misconduct. To understand it requires even more

knowledge of old French law terms generally than parts of Balzac do of

specially commercial and financial lingo.

This "specialising" of the novel is perhaps of more importance than

interest; but interest itself may be found in the First Part, where

there is, if not much, rather more of a story, some positive

character-drawing, a fair amount of smart phrase, and a great deal of

lively painting of manners. There is still a good deal of law, to which

profession most of the male characters belong, but there are plentiful

compensations.

As far as there is any real story or history, it is that of two girls,

both of the legal _bourgeoisie_ by rank. The prettier, Javotte, has been

briefly described above. She is the daughter of a rich attorney, and

has, before her emancipation and elopement, two suitors, both

advocates; the one, Nicodeme, young, handsome, well dressed, and a great

flirt, but feather-headed; the other, Bedout, a middle-aged sloven,

collector, and at the same time miser, but very well off. The second

heroine, Lucrece, is also handsome, though rather less so than Javotte:

but she has plenty of wits. She is, however, in an unfortunate position,

being an orphan with no fortune, and living with an uncle and aunt, the

latter of whom has a passion for gaming, and keeps open house for it, so

that Lucrece sees rather undesirable society. Despite her wits, she

falls a victim to a rascally marquis, who first gives her a written

promise of marriage, and afterwards, by one of the dirtiest tricks ever

imagined by a novelist--a trick which, strange to say, the present

writer does not remember to have seen in any other book, obvious though

it is--steals it.[260] Fortunately for her, Nicodeme, who is of her

acquaintance, and a general lover, has also given her, though not in

earnest and for no serious "consideration," a similar promise: and by

the help of a busybody legal friend she gets 2000 crowns out of him to

prevent an action for breach. And, finally, Bedout, after displacing the

unlucky Nicodeme (thus left doubly in the cold), and being himself

thrown over by Javotte's elopement, takes to wife, being induced to do

so by a cousin, Lucrece herself, in blissful ignorance (which is never

removed) of her past. The cousin, Laurence, has also been the link of

these parts of the tale with an episode of _precieuse_ society in which

the above-mentioned inset is told; a fourth feminine character,

Hyppolyte (_vice_ Philipote), of some individuality, is introduced;

Javotte makes a greater fool of herself than ever; and her future

seducer, Pancrace, makes his appearance.

Thus reduced to "argument" form, the story may seem even more modern

than it really is, and the censures, apologies, etc., put forward above

may appear rather unjust. But few people will continue to think so

after reading the book. The materials, especially with the "trimmings"

to be mentioned presently, would have made a very good novel of the

completest kind. But, once more, the time had not come, though Furetiere

was, however unconsciously, doing his best to bring it on. One fault,

not quite so easy to define as to feel, is prominent, and continued to

be so in all the best novels, or parts of novels, till nearly the middle

of the nineteenth century. There is far too much mere _narration_--the

things being not smartly brought before the mind's eye as _being_ done,

and to the mind's ear as _being_ said, but recounted, sometimes not even

as present things, but as things that _have been_ said or done already.

This gives a flatness, which is further increased by the habit of not

breaking up even the conversation into fresh paragraphs and lines, but

running the whole on in solid page-blocks for several pages together.

Yet even if this mechanical mistake were as mechanically redressed,[261]

the original fault would remain and others would still appear. A scene

between Javotte and Lucrece, to give one instance only, would enliven

the book enormously; while, on the other hand, we could very well spare

one of the few passages in which Nicodeme is allowed to be more than the

subject of a _recit_, and which partakes of the knock-about character so

long popular, the young man and Javotte bumping each other's foreheads

by an awkward slip in saluting, after which he first upsets a piece of

porcelain and then drags a mirror down upon himself. There is "action"

enough here; while, on the other hand, the important and promising

situations of the two promises to Lucrece, and the stealing by the

Marquis of his, are left in the flattest fashion of "recount." But it

was very long indeed before novelists understood this matter, and as

late as Hope's famous _Anastasius_ the fault is present, apparently to

the author's knowledge, though he has not removed it.

To a reader of the book who does not know, or care to pay attention to,

the history of the matter, the opening of the _Roman Bourgeois_ may seem

to promise something quite free, or at any rate much more free than is

actually the case, from this fault. But, as we have seen, they generally

took some care of their openings, and Furetiere availed himself of a

custom possibly, to present readers, especially those not of the Roman

Church, possessing an air of oddity, and therefore of freshness, which

it certainly had not to those of his own day. This was the curious

fashion of _quete_ or collection at church--not by a commonplace verger,

or by respectable churchwardens and sidesmen, but by the prettiest girl

whom the _cure_ could pitch upon, dressed in her best, and lavishing

smiles upon the congregation to induce them to give as lavishly, and to

enable her to make a "record" amount.

The original meeting of Nicodeme and the fair Javotte takes place in

this wise, and enables the author to enlighten us further as to matters

quite proper for novel treatment.[262] The device of keeping gold and

large silver pieces uppermost in the open "plate"; the counter-balancing

mischief of covering them with a handful of copper; the licensed habit,

a rather dangerous one surely, of taking "change" out of that plate,

which enables the aspirant for the girl's favour to clear away the

obnoxious _sous_ as change for a whole pistole--all this has a kind of

attraction for which you may search the more than myriad pages of

_Artamene_ without finding it. The daughter of a citizen's family, in

the French seventeenth century, was kept with a strictness which perhaps

explains a good deal in the conduct of an Agnes or an Isabelle in

comedy. She was almost always tied to her mother's apron-strings, and

even an accepted lover had to carry on his courtship under the very

superfluous number of _six_ eyes at least. But the Church was

misericordious. The custom of giving and receiving holy water could be

improved by the resources of amatory science; but this of the _quete_

was, it would seem, still more full of opportunity. Apparently (perhaps

because in these city parishes the church was always close by, and the

whole proceedings public) the fair _queteuse_ was allowed to walk home

alone; and in this instance Nicodeme, having ground-baited with his

pistole, is permitted to accompany Javotte Vollichon to her father's

door--her extreme beauty making up for the equally extreme silliness of

her replies to his observations.

The possible objection that these things, fresh and interesting to us,

were ordinary and banal to them, would be a rather shallow one. The

point is that, in previous fiction, circumstantial verisimilitude of

this kind had hardly been tried at all. So it is with the incident of

Nicodeme sending a rabbit (supposed to be from his own estate, but

really from the market--a joke not peculiar to Paris, but specially

favoured there), or losing at bowls a capon, to old Vollichon, and on

the strength of each inviting himself to dinner; the fresh girds at the

extraordinary and still not quite accountable plenty of marquises

(Scarron, if I remember rightly, has the verb _se marquiser_); and the

contributory (or, as the ancients would have said, symbolic) dinners--as

it were, picnics at home--of _bourgeois_ society at each other's houses,

with not a few other things. A curious plan of a fashion-review, with

patterns for the benefit of ladies, is specially noticeable at a period

so early in the history of periodicals generally, and is one of the not

few points in which there is a certain resemblance between Furetiere and

Defoe.

It is in this daring to be quotidian and contemporary that his claim to

a position in the history of the novel mainly consists. Some might add a

third audacity, that of being "middle-class." Scarron had dealt with

barn-mummers and innkeepers and some mere riff-raff; but he had included

not a few nobles, and had indulged in fighting and other "noble"

subjects. There is no fighting in Furetiere, and his chief "noble"

figure--the rascal who robbed Lucrece of her virtue and her keys--is

the sole figure of his class, except Pancrace and the _precieuse_

Angelique. This is at once a practical protest against the common

interpretation and extension of Aristotle's prescription of

"distinguished" subjects, and an unmistakable relinquishment of mere

picaresque squalor. Above all, it points the way in practice, indirectly

perhaps but inevitably, to the selection of subjects that the author

really _knows_, and that he can treat with the small vivifying details

given by such knowledge, and by such knowledge alone. There is an

advance in character, an advance in "interior" description--the

Vollichon family circle, the banter and the gambling at Lucrece's home,

the humour of a _precieuse_ meeting, etc. In fact, whatever be the

defects[263] in the book, it may almost be called an advance all round.

A specimen of this, as of other pioneer novels, may not be superfluous;

it is the first conversation, after the collection, between Nicodeme and

Javotte.

[Sidenote: Nicodeme takes Javotte home from church.]

This new kind of gallantry [_his removing the offensive

copper coins as pretended "change" for his pistole_] was

noticed by Javotte, who was privately pleased with it, and

really thought herself under an obligation to him.

Wherefore, on their leaving the church, she allowed him to

accost her with a compliment which he had been meditating

all the time he was waiting for her. This chance favoured

him much, for Javotte never went out without her mother, who

kept her in such a strait fashion of living that she never

allowed her to speak to a man either abroad or at home. Had

it not been so, he would have had easy access to her; for as

she was a solicitor's daughter and he was an advocate, they

were in relations of close affinity and sympathy--such as

allow as prompt acquaintance as that of a servant-maid with

a _valet-de-chambre_.[264]

As soon as the service was over and he could join her, he

said, as though with the most delicate attention,

"Mademoiselle, as far as I can judge, you cannot have failed

to be lucky in your collection, being so deserving and so

beautiful." "Alas! Sir," replied Javotte in the most

ingenuous fashion, "you must excuse me. I have just been

counting it up with the Father Sacristan, and I have only

made 65 livres 5 sous. Now, Mademoiselle Henriette made 90

livres a little time since; 'tis true she collected all

through the forty hours'[265] service, and in a place where

there was the finest Paradise ever seen." "When I spoke,"

said Nicodeme, "of the luck of your collection, I was not

only speaking of the charity you got for the poor and the

church; I meant as well what you gained for yourself." "Oh,

Sir!" replied Javotte, "I assure you I gained nothing. There

was not a farthing more than I told you; and besides, can

you think I would butter my own bread[266] on such an

occasion? 'Twould be a great sin even to think of it." "I

was not speaking," said Nicodeme, "of gold or silver. I only

meant that nobody can have given you his alms without at the

same time giving you his heart." "I don't know," quoth

Javotte, "what you mean by hearts; I didn't see one in the

plate." "I meant," added Nicodeme, "that everybody before

whom you stopped must, when he saw such beauty, have vowed

to love and serve you, and have given you his heart. For my

own part I could not possibly refuse you mine." Javotte

answered him naively, "Well! Sir, if you gave it me I must

have replied at once, 'God give it back to you.'"[267]

"What!" cried Nicodeme rather angrily, "can you jest with me

when I am so much in earnest, and treat in such a way the

most passionate of all your lovers?" Whereat Javotte blushed

as she answered, "Sir, pray be careful how you speak. I am

an honest girl. I have no lovers. Mamma has expressly

forbidden me to have any." "I have said nothing to shock

you," replied Nicodeme. "My passion for you is perfectly

honest and pure, and its end is only a lawful suit." "Then,

Sir," answered Javotte, "you want to marry me? You must ask

my papa and mamma for that; for indeed I do not know what

they are going to give me when I marry." "We have not got

quite so far yet," said Nicodeme. "I must be assured

beforehand of your esteem, and know that you have admitted

me to the honour of being your servant." "Sir," said

Javotte, "I am quite satisfied with being my own servant,

and I know how to do everything I want."

Now this, of course, is not extraordinarily brilliant; but it

is an early--a _very_ early--beginning of the right sort of

thing--conversation of a natural kind transferred from the boards to the

book, sketches of character, touches of manners and of life generally,

individual, national, local. The cross-purposes of the almost idiotic

_ingenue_ and the philandering gallant are already very well done; and

if Javotte had been as clever as she was stupid she could hardly have

set forth the inwardness of French marriages more neatly than by the

blunt reference to her _dot_, or have at the same moment more thoroughly

disconcerted Nicodeme's regularly laid-out approaches for a flirtation

in form, with only a possible, but in any case distant, termination in

anything so prosaic as marriage.[268] The thing as a whole is, in

familiar phrase, "all right" in kind and in scheme. It requires some

perfecting in detail; but it is in every reasonable sense perfectible.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Cyrano de Bergerac and his _Voyages_.]

It has been possible to speak of one of the pioneer books mentioned in

this chapter with more allowance than most of the few critics and

historians who have discussed or mentioned it have given it, and to

recommend the others, not uncritically but quite cheerfully. This

satisfactory state of things hardly persists when we reach what seems

perhaps, to those who have never read it, not the least considerable of

the batch--the _Voyage a la Lune_ of Cyrano de Bergerac, as his name is

in literary history, though he never called himself so.[269] Cyrano,

though he does not seem to have had a very fortunate life, and died

young, yet was not all unblest, and has since been rather blessed than

banned. Even in his own day Boileau spoke of him with what, in the

"Bollevian" fashion, was comparative compliment--that is to say, he said

that he did not think Cyrano so bad as somebody else. But long

afterwards, in the middle of the nineteenth century, Gautier took him up

among his _Grotesques_ and embalmed him in the caressing and

immortalising amber of his marvellous style and treatment; while at the

end of the same century one of the chief living poets and playwrights of

France made him the subject of a popular and really pathetic drama. His

_Pedant Joue_ is not a stupid comedy, and had the honour of furnishing

Moliere with some of that "property" which he was, quite rightly, in the

habit of commandeering wherever he found it. _La Mort d'Agrippine_ is by

no means the worst of that curious school of tragedy, so like and so

unlike to that of our own "University wits," which was partly

exemplified and then transcended by Corneille, and which some of us are

abandoned enough to enjoy more as readers, though as critics we may find

more faults with it, than we find it possible to do with Racine. But the

_Voyage a la Lune_, as well as, though rather less than, its

complementary dealing with the Sun, has been praised with none of these

allowances. On the contrary, it has had ascribed to it the credit of

having furnished, not scraps of dialogue or incident, but a solid

suggestion to an even greater than Moliere--to Swift; remarkable

intellectual and scientific anticipations have been discovered in it,

and in comparatively recent times versions of it have been published to

serve as proofs that Cyrano was actually a father[270] of French

eighteenth-century _philosophie_--a different thing, once more, from

philosophy.

Let us, however, use the utmost possible combination of critical

magnanimity with critical justice: and allow these precious additions,

which did not form part of the "classical" or "received" text of the

author, not to count against him. _For_ him they can only count with

those who still think the puerile and now hopelessly stale jests about

Enoch and Elijah and that sort of thing clever. But they can be either

disregarded or at least left out of the judgment, and it will yet remain

true that the so-called _Voyage_ is a very disappointing book indeed. As

this is one of the cases where the record of personal experience is not

impertinent, I may say that I first read it some forty years ago, when

fresh from reading about it and its author in "Theo's" prose; that I

therefore came to it with every prepossession in its favour, and strove

to like it, or to think I did. I read it again, if I remember rightly,

about the time of the excitement about M. Rostand's _Cyrano_, and liked

it less still; while when I re-read it carefully for this chapter, I

liked it least of all. There is, of course, a certain fancifulness about

the main idea of a man fastening bottles of dew round him in the

expectation (which is justified) that the sun's heat will convert the

dew into steam and raise him from the ground. But the reader (it is not

necessary to pay him the bad compliment of explaining the reasons) will

soon see that the scheme is aesthetically awkward, if not positively

ludicrous, and scientifically absurd. Throwing off bottles to lower your

level has a superficial resemblance to the actual principles and

practice of ballooning; but in the same way it will not here "work" at

all.

This, however, would be a matter of no consequence whatever if the

actual results of the experiment were amusing. Unfortunately they are

not. That the aeronaut's first miss of the Moon drops him into the new

French colony of Canada may have given Cyrano some means of interesting

people then; but, reversing the process noticed in the cases of Scarron

and Furetiere, it does not in the least do so now. We get nothing out of

it except some very uninteresting gibes at the Jesuits, and, connected

with these, some equally uninteresting discussions whether the flight to

the Moon is possible or not.

Still one hopes, like the child or fool of popular saying, for the Moon

itself to atone for Canada, and tolerates disappointment till one

actually gets there. Alas! of all Utopias that have ever been Utopiated,

Cyrano's is the most uninteresting, even when its negative want of

interest does not change into something positively disagreeable. The

Lunarians, though probably intended to be, are hardly at all a satire on

us Earth-dwellers. They are bigger, and, as far as the male sex is

concerned, apparently more awkward and uglier; and their ideas in

religion, morals, taste, etc., are a monotonously direct reversal of our

orthodoxies. There is at least one passage which the absence of all

"naughty niceness" and the presence of the indescribably nasty make a

good "try" for the acme of the disgusting. More of it is less but still

nasty; much of it is silly; all of it is dull.[271]

Nevertheless it is not quite omissible in such a history as this, or in

any history of French literature. For it is a notable instance of the

coming and, indeed, actual invasion, by fiction, of regions which had

hitherto been the province of more serious kinds; and it is a link, not

unimportant if not particularly meritorious, in the chain of the

eccentric novel. Lucian of course had started it long ago, and Rabelais

had in a fashion taken it up but a century before. But the fashioners of

new commonwealths and societies, More, Campanella, Bacon, had been as a

rule very serious. Cyrano, in his way, was serious too; but the way

itself was not one of those for which the ticket has been usually

reserved.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Mme. de la Fayette and _La Princesse de Cleves_.]

But the last of this batch is the most important and the best of the

whole. This is _La Princesse de Cleves_, by Marie Madeleine Pioche de

Lavergne, Comtesse de la Fayette, friend of Madame de Sevigne and of

Huet; more or less Platonic, and at any rate last, love of La

Rochefoucauld; a woman evidently of great charm as well as of great

ability, and apparently of what was then irreproachable character. She

wrote, besides other matter of no small literary value and historical

interest, four novels, the minor ones, which require no special notice

here, being _Zaide_, _La Comtesse de Tende_, and (her opening piece)

_Madame de Montpensier_. Their motives and methods are much the same as

those of the _Princesse de Cleves_, but this is much more effectively

treated. In fact, it is one of the very few highly praised books, at the

beginnings of departments of literature, which ought not to disappoint

candid and not merely studious readers.

It begins with a sketch, very cleverly done, of the Court of Henri II.,

with the various prominent personages there--the King and the Queen,

Diane de Poitiers, Queen Mary of Scotland ("La Reine Dauphine"),

"Madame, soeur du Roi" (the second Margaret of Valois--not so clever

as her aunt and niece namesakes, and not so beautiful as the latter,

but, like both of them, a patroness of men of letters, especially

Ronsard, and apparently a very amiable person, though rude things were

said of her marriage, rather late in life, to the Duke of Savoy), with

many others of, or just below, royal blood. Of these latter there are

Mademoiselle de Chartres, the Prince de Cleves, whom she marries, and

the Duc de Nemours, who completes the usual "triangle."[272] As is also

usual--in a way not unconnected in its usuality with that of triangular

sequences--the Princess has more _amitie_ and _estime_ than _amour_ for

her husband, though he, less usually, is desperately in love with her.

So, very shortly, is Nemours, who is represented as an almost

irresistible lady-killer, though no libertine, and of the "respectful"

order. His conduct is not quite that of the Elizabethan or Victorian

ideal gentleman; for he steals his mistress's portrait while it is being

shown to a mixed company; eavesdrops (as will be seen presently) in the

most atrocious manner; chatters about his love affairs in a way almost

worse; and skulks round the Princess's country garden at night in a

manner exceedingly unlikely to do his passion any good, and nearly

certain to do (as it does) her reputation much harm. Still, if not an

Amadis, he is not in the least a Lovelace, and that is saying a good

deal for a French noble of his time. The Princess slowly falls in love

with him (she has seen him steal the portrait, though he does not know

this and she dares say nothing for fear of scandal); and divers Court

and other affairs conduct this concealed _amourette_ (for she prevents

all "declaration") in a manner very cleverly and not too tediously told,

to a point when, though perfectly virtuous in intention, she feels that

she is in danger of losing self-control.

[Sidenote: Its central scene.]

Probably, though it is the best known part of the book, it may be well

to give the central scene, where M. de Nemours plays the eavesdropper to

M. and Mme. de Cleves, and overhears the conversation which, with equal

want of manners and of sense, he afterwards (it is true, without names)

retails to the Vidame de Chartres, a relation of Mme. de Cleves herself,

and a well-known gossip, with a strong additional effect on the fatal

consequences above described. It is pretty long, and some "cutting" will

be necessary.

He[273] heard M. de Cleves say to his wife, "But why do you

wish not to return to Paris? What can keep you in the

country? For some time past you have shown a taste for

solitude which surprises me and pains me, because it keeps

us apart. In fact, I find you sadder than usual, and I am

afraid that something is annoying you." "I have no

mind-trouble," she answered with an embarrassed air; "but

the tumult of the Court is so great, and there is always so

much company at home, that both body and mind must needs

grow weary, and one wants only rest." "Rest," replied he,

"is not the proper thing for a person of your age. Your

position is not, either at home or at Court, a fatiguing

one, and I am rather afraid that you do not like to be with

me." "You would do me a great injustice if you thought so,"

said she with ever-increasing embarrassment, "but I entreat

you to leave me here. If you would stay too, I should be

delighted--if you would stay here alone and be good enough

to do without the endless number of people who never leave

you." "Oh! Madam," cried M. de Cleves, "your looks and your

words show me that you have reasons for wishing to be alone

which I do not know, and which I beg you to tell me." He

pressed her a long time to do so without being able to

induce her, and after excusing herself in a manner which

increased the curiosity of her husband, she remained in deep

silence with downcast eyes. Then suddenly recovering her

speech, and looking at him, "Do not force me," said she, "to

a confession which I am not strong enough to make, though I

have several times intended to do so. Think only that

prudence forbids a woman of my age, who is her own

mistress,[274] to remain exposed to the trials[275] of a

Court." "What do you suggest, Madame?" cried M. de Cleves.

"I dare not put it in words for fear of offence." She made

no answer, and her silence confirming her husband in his

thought, he went on: "You tell me nothing, and that tells me

that I do not deceive myself." "Well then, Sir!" she

answered, throwing herself at his feet, "I will confess to

you what never wife has confessed to her husband; but the

innocence of my conduct and my intentions gives me strength

to do it. It is the truth that I have reasons for quitting

the Court, and that I would fain shun the perils in which

people of my age sometimes find themselves. I have never

shown any sign of weakness, and I am not afraid of allowing

any to appear if you will allow me to retire from the Court,

or if I still had Mme. de Chartres to aid in guarding me.

However risky may be the step I am taking, I take it

joyfully, as a way to keep myself worthy of being yours. I

ask your pardon a thousand times if my sentiments are

disagreeable to you; at least my actions shall never

displease you. Think how--to do as I am doing--I must have

more friendship and more esteem for you than any wife has

ever had for any husband. Guide me, pity me, and, if you

can, love me still." M. de Cleves had remained, all the time

she was speaking, with his head buried in his hands, almost

beside himself; and it had not occurred to him to raise his

wife from her position. When she finished, he cast his eyes

upon her and saw her at his knees, her face bathed in tears,

and so admirably lovely that he was ready to die of grief.

But he kissed her as he raised her up, and said:

[_The speech which follows is itself admirable as an expression of

despairing love, without either anger or mawkishness; but it is rather

long, and the rest of the conversation is longer. The husband naturally,

though, as no doubt he expects, vainly, tries to know who it is that

thus threatens his wife's peace and his own, and for a time the

eavesdropper (one wishes for some one behind him with a jack-boot on) is

hardly less on thorns than M. de Cleves himself. At last a reference to

the portrait-episode (see above) enlightens Nemours, and gives, if not

an immediate, a future clue to the unfortunate husband._]

It will be seen at once that this is far different from anything we have

had before--a much further importation of the methods and subjects of

poetry and drama into the scheme of prose fiction.

We need only return briefly to the main story, the course of which, as

one looks back to it through some 250 years of novels, cannot be very

difficult to "_pro_ticipate." A continuance of Court interviews and

gossip, with the garrulity of Nemours himself and the Vidame, as well as

the dropping of a letter by the latter, brings a complete

_eclaircissement_ nearer and nearer. The Countess, though more and more

in love, remains virtuous, and indeed hardly exposes herself to direct

temptation. But her husband, becoming aware that Nemours is the lover,

and also that he is haunting the grounds at Coulommiers by night when

the Princess is alone, falls, though his suspicion of actual infidelity

is removed too late, into hopeless melancholy and positive illness, till

the "broken heart" of fact or fiction releases him. Nemours is only too

anxious to marry the widow, but she refuses him, and after a few years

of "pious works" in complete retirement, herself dies early.

It is possible that, even in this brief sketch, some faults of the book

may appear; it is certain that actual reading of it will not utterly

deprive the fault-finder of his prey. The positive history--of which

there is a good deal, very well told in itself,[276] and the appearance

of which at all is interesting--is introduced in too great proportions,

so as to be largely irrelevant. Although we know that this extremely

artificial world of love-making with your neighbours' wives was also

real, in a way and at a time, the reality fails to make up for the

artifice, at least as a novel-subject. It is like golf, or acting, or

bridge--amusing enough to the participants, no doubt, but very tedious

to hear or read about.[277] Another point, again true to the facts of

the time, no doubt, but somewhat repulsive in reading, is the almost

entire absence of Christian names. The characters always speak to each

other as "Monsieur" and "Madame," and are spoken of accordingly. I do

not think we are ever told either of M. or of Mme. de Cleves's name. Now

there is one person at least who cannot "see" a heroine without knowing

her Christian name. More serious, in different senses of that word, is

the fact that there is still ground for the complaint made above as to

the too _solid_ character of the narrative. There is, indeed, more

positive dialogue, and this is one of the "advances" of the book. But

even there the writer has not had the courage to break it up into

actual, not "reported," talk, and the "said he's" and "said she's,"

"replied so and so's" and "observed somebody's" perpetually get in the

way of smooth reading.

So much in the way of alms for Momus. Fortunately a much fuller

collection of points for admiration offers itself. It has been admitted

that the historical element[278] is perhaps, in the circumstances and

for the story, a trifle irrelevant and even "in the way." But its

presence at all is the important point. Some, at any rate, of the

details--the relations of that Henri II., with whom, it seems, we may

_not_ connect the very queer, very rare, but not very beautiful

_faience_ once called "Henri Deux" ware,[279] with his wife and his

mistress; his accidental death at the hands of Montgomery; the history

of Henry VIII.'s matrimonial career, and the courtship of his daughter

by a French prince (if not _this_ French prince)--are historical enough

to present a sharp contrast with the cloudy pseudo-classical canvas of

the Scudery romances, or the mere fable-land of others. Any critical

Brown ought to have discovered "great capabilities" in it; and though it

was not for more than another century that the true historical novel got

itself born, this was almost the nearest experiment to it. But the other

side--the purely sentimental--let us not say psychological--side, is of

far more consequence; for here we have not merely aspiration or

chance-medley, we have attainment.

There is a not wholly discreditable prejudice against abridgments,

especially of novels, and more especially against what are called

condensations. But one may think that the simple knife, without any

artful or artless aid of interpolated summaries, could carve out of _La

Princesse de Cleves_, as it stands, a much shorter but fully

intelligible presentation of its passionate, pitiful subject. A slight

want of _individual_ character may still be desiderated; it is hardly

till _Manon Lescaut_ that we get that, but it was not to be expected.

Scarcely more to be expected, but present and in no small force, is that

truth to life; that "knowledge of the human heart" which had been

hitherto attempted by--we may almost say permitted to--the poet, the

dramatist, the philosopher, the divine; but which few, if any, romancers

had aimed at. This knowledge is not elaborately but sufficiently "set"

with the halls and _ruelles_ of the Court, the gardens and woods of

Coulommiers; it is displayed with the aid of conversation, which, if it

seems stilted to us, was not so then; and the machinery employed for

working out the simple plot--as, for instance, in the case of the

dropped letter, which, having originally nothing whatever to do with any

of the chief characters, becomes an important instrument--is sometimes

far from rudimentary in conception, and very effectively used.

It is therefore no wonder that the book did two things--things of

unequal value indeed, but very important for us. In the first place, it

started the School of "Sensibility"[280] in the novel, and so provided a

large and influential portion of eighteenth-century fiction. In the

second--small as it is--it almost started the novel proper, the class of

prose fiction which, though it may take on a great variety of forms and

colours, though it may specialise here and "extravagate" there, yet in

the main distinguishes itself from the romance by being first of all

subjective--by putting behaviour, passion, temperament, character,

motive before incident and action in the commoner sense--which had had

few if any representatives in ancient times, had not been disentangled

from the romantic envelope in mediaeval, but was to be the chief new

development of modern literature.

* * * * *

There seemed to be several reasons for separating Hamilton from the

other fairy-tale writers. The best of all is that he has the same

qualification for the present chapter as that which has installed in it

the novelists already noticed--that of idiosyncrasy. This leads to, or

rather is founded on, the consideration that his tales are fairy-tales

only "after a sort," and testify rather to a prevalent fashion than to a

natural affection for the kind.[281] Thirdly, he exhibits, in his

supernatural matter, a new and powerful influence on fiction

generally--that of the first translated _Arabian Nights_. Lastly, he is

in turn himself the head of two considerable though widely different

sub-departments of fiction--the decadent and often worthless but largely

cultivated department of what we may call the fairy-tale

_improper_,[282] and the very important and sometimes consummately

excellent "ironic tale," to be often referred to, and sometimes fully

discussed, hereafter.

The singularity of Hamilton's position has always been recognised; but

until comparatively recently, his history and family relations were very

little understood. Since the present writer discussed him in a

paper[283] now a quarter of a century old in print, and older in

composition, further light has been thrown on his life and surroundings

in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, and more still in a monograph

by a lady[284] whose researches will, it is hoped, sooner or later be

published. A very little, too, of the unprinted work which was held back

at his death has been recovered. But this, it seems, includes nothing of

importance; and his fame will probably always rest, as it has so long

and so securely rested, on the _Memoires de Grammont_, the few but

sometimes charming independent verses, some miscellanies not generally

enough appreciated, and the admirable group of ironic tales which set a

fashion hardly more admirably illustrated since by Voltaire and

Beckford[285] and Lord Beaconsfield, to name no others. Of these things

the verses,[286] unfortunately, do not concern us at all; and the

_Memoires_ and miscellanies[286] only in so far as they add another, and

one of the very best, to the brilliant examples of personal narrative of

which the century is so full, and which have so close a connection with

the novel itself. But the _Tales_ are, of course, ours of most obvious

right; and they form one of the most important _points de repere_ in our

story.

To discuss, on the one hand, how Hamilton's singularly mixed conditions

and circumstances of birth[287] and life[288] influenced his literary

production would be interesting, but in strictness rather irrelevant. To

attempt, on the other, at any great length to consider the influences

which produced the kind of tale he wrote would have more relevance, but

would, if pursued in similar cases elsewhere, lengthen the book

enormously. Two main ancestor or progenitor forces, as they may be

called, though both were of very recent date and one actually

contemporary, may be specified. The one was the newborn fancy for

fairy-tales, and Eastern tales in particular. The other was the now

ingrained disposition towards ironic writing which, begun by Rabelais,

as a most notable origin, varied and increased by Montaigne and others,

had, just before Hamilton, received fresh shaping and tempering from not

a few writers, especially Saint-Evremond. There is indeed no doubt that

this last remarkable and now far too little read writer,[289] who, let

it be remembered, was, like Hamilton, and even more so, an intimate

friend of Grammont and also an inmate of Charles's court, was Hamilton's

direct and immediate model so far as he had any such--his "master" in

the general tone of _persiflage_. But master and pupil chose, as a rule,

different subjects, and the idiosyncrasy of each was intense; it must be

remembered, too, that both were of Norman blood, though that of the

Hamiltons had long been transfused into the veins of a new nationality,

while Saint-Evremond was actually born in Normandy. The Norman (that is

to say, the English, with a special intention of difference[290]) in

each could be very easily pointed out if such things were our business.

But it is the application of this, and of other things in relation to

the development of the novel, that we have to deal with.

It is said, and there is good reason for believing it to be true, that

all the stories have a more or less pervading vein of "key" application

in them. But this, except for persons particularly interested in such

things, has now very little attraction. It has been admitted that it

probably exists, as indeed it does in almost everything of the day, from

the big as well as "great" _Cyrus_ to the little, but certainly not much

less great, _Princesse de Cleves_. But our subject is what Hamilton

writes about these people, not the people about whom he may or may not

be writing.

What we have left of Hamilton's tales, as far as they have been printed

(and, as was said above, not much more seems to exist), consists of five

stories of very unequal length, and in two cases out of the five

unfinished. One of the finished pieces, _Fleur d'Epine_, and one of the

unfinished--although unfinished it is not only one of the longest, but,

unluckily in a way, by far the best of all--_Les Quatre Facardins_, are

"framework" stories, and avowedly attach themselves, in an irreverent

sort of attachment, to the _Arabian Nights_; the others, _Le Belier_,

_Zeneyde_ (unfinished), and _L'Enchanteur Faustus_, are independent, and

written in the mixed verse-and-prose style which had been made popular

by various writers, especially Chapelle, but which cannot be said to be

very acceptable in itself. Taken together, they fill a volume of just

over 500 average octavo pages in the standard edition of 1812; but their

individual length is very unequal. The two longest, the fragmentary

_Quatre Facardins_ and the finished _Le Belier_, run each of them to 142

pages; the shortest, _L'Enchanteur Faustus_, has just five-and-twenty;

while _Fleur d'Epine_, in its completeness, has 114, and _Zeneyde_, in

its incompleteness, runs to 78, and might have run, for aught one can

tell--in the mixed tangle of Roman and Merovingian history in which the

author (possibly in ridicule of Madeleine de Scudery's classical

chronicling) has chosen to plunge it--to 780 or 7800, which latter

figure would, after all, have been little more than half the length of

the _Grand Cyrus_ itself.

We may take _L'Enchanteur Faustus_ first, as it requires the shortest

notice. In fact, if it had not been Hamilton's, it would hardly require

any. Written to a "charmante Daphne" (evidently one of the English

Jacobite exiles, from a reference to a great-great-grandfather of hers

who was "admiral in Ireland" during Queen Elizabeth's time), it is

occupied by a story of the great Queen herself, who is treated with the

mixture of admiration (for her intelligence and spirit) with "scandal"

(about her person and morals) that might be expected at St. Germains.

The subject is the usual exhibition of dead beauties (here by, not to,

Faustus), with Elizabeth's affected depreciation of Helen, Cleopatra,

and Mariamne, and her equally affected admiration of Fair Rosamond,[291]

whom she insists on summoning _twice_, despite Faustus's warning, and

with disastrous consequences. Hamilton's irony is so pervading that one

does not know whether ignorance, carelessness, or intention made him not

only introduce Sidney and Essex as contemporary favourites of Elizabeth,

but actually attribute Rosamond's end to poor Jane Shore instead of to

Queen Eleanor! This would matter little if the tale had been stronger;

but though it is told with Hamilton's usual easy fluency, the Queen's

depreciations, the flattery of the courtiers, and the rest of it, are

rather slightly and obviously handled. One would give half a dozen like

it for that _Second_ (but not necessarily _Last_) _Part_ of the

_Facardins_, which Crebillon the younger is said to have actually seen

and had the opportunity of saving, a chance which he neglected till too

late.

As _L'Enchanteur Faustus_ is the shortest of the completed tales, so _Le

Belier_ is the longest; indeed, as indicated above, it is the same

length as what we have of _Les Quatre Facardins_. It is also--in that

unsatisfactory and fragmentary way of knowledge with which literature

often has to content itself--much the best known, because of the

celebrated address of the giant Moulineau to the hero-beast "Belier, mon

ami,... si tu voulais bien commencer par le commencement, tu me ferais

plaisir." There are many other agreeable things in it; but it has on the

whole a double or more than double portion of the drawback which attends

these "key" stories. It was written to please his sister, Madame de

Grammont, who had established herself in a country-house, near

Versailles. This she transformed from a mere cottage, called Moulineau,

into an elegant villa to which she gave the name of Pontalie. There were

apparently some difficulties with rustic neighbours, and Anthony wove

the whole matter into this story, with the giant and the (of course

enchanted) ram just mentioned; and the beautiful Alie who hates all men

(or nearly all); and her father, a powerful druid, who is the giant's

enemy; and the Prince de Noisy and the Vicomte de Gonesse, and other

personages of the environs of Paris, who were no doubt recognisable and

interesting once, but who, whether recognisable or not, are not

specially interesting now. To repeat that there are good scenes and

piquant remarks is merely to say once more that the thing is Hamilton's.

But, on the whole, the present writer at any rate has always found it

the least interesting (next to _L'Enchanteur Faustus_) of all.

On the other hand, _Zeneyde_--though unfinished, and though containing,

in its ostensibly main story, things compared to which the Prince de

Noisy and the Vicomte de Gonesse excite to palpitation--has points of

remarkable interest about it. One of these--a prefatory sketch of the

melancholy court of exiles at St. Germains--is like nothing else in

Hamilton and like very few things anywhere else. This is in no sense

fiction--it is, in fact, a historical document of the most striking

kind; but it makes background and canvas for fiction itself,[292] and it

gives us, besides, a most vivid picture of the priest-ridden, caballing

little crowd of folk who had made great renunciations but could not make

small. It also shows us in Hamilton a somewhat darker but also a

stronger side of satiric powers, differently nuanced from the quiet

_persiflage_ of the _Contes_ themselves. This, however, though easily

"cobbled on" to the special tale, and possibly not unconnected with it

key-fashion, is entirely separable, and might just as well have formed

part of an actual letter to the "Madame de P.," to whom it is addressed.

The tale itself, like some if not all the others, but in a much more

strikingly contrasted fashion, again consists of two strands, interwoven

so intimately, however, that it is almost impossible to separate them,

though it is equally impossible to conceive two things more different

from each other. The ostensible theme is a history of herself, given by

the Nymph of the Seine to the author--a history of which more presently.

But this is introduced at considerable length, and interrupted more than

once, by scenes and dialogues, between the nymph and her distinctly

unwilling auditor, which are of the most whimsically humorous character

to be found even in Hamilton himself.

The whole account of the self-introduction of the nymph to the narrator

is extremely quaint, but rather long to give here as a whole. It is

enough to say that Hamilton represents himself as by no means an ardent

nympholept, or even as flattered by demi-goddess-like advances, which

are of the most obliging description; and that the lady has not only to

make fuller and fuller revelations of her beauty, but at last to exert

her supernatural power to some extent in order to carry the recreant

into her "cool grot," not, indeed, under water, but invisibly situated

on land. What there takes place is, unfortunately, as has been said,

mainly the telling of a very dull story with one not so dull episode.

But the conclusion of the preface exemplifies the whimsicality even of

the writer, and points to the existence of a commodity in the fashion of

wig-wearing which few who glory in "their own hair," and despise their

periwigged forefathers, are likely to have thought of:

[Sidenote: Hamilton and the Nymph.]

At these words [_her own_] raising her eyes to heaven, she

sighed several times; and though she tried to keep them

back, I saw, coursing the length of her cheeks and falling

on her beautiful neck, tears so natural, in the midst of a

silence so touching, that I was just about to follow her

example.[293] But she soon recovered herself; and having

shown me by a languishing look that she was not insensible

to my sympathetic emotion ... [_she enjoins discretion, and

then_:--] After having looked at me attentively for some

time she came closer to me, and as she gently pulled one

side of my wig in order to whisper in my ear, I had to lean

over her in a rather familiar manner.[294] Her face touched

mine, and it seemed to me animated by a lively warmth, very

different from the insensibility which I had accused[295]

her of shedding upon me when she came out of the water. Her

breath was pure and fresh, and her goddess-ship, which I had

suspected of being something marshy, had no taint of mud

about it. If only I might reveal all that she said to me in

a confidence which I could have wished longer![295] But

apparently she got tired of it[295] and let go my wig.

"'Twould be too tiresome," she said, "to go on talking like

this. Go out there, and leave us alone!" I turned round, and

seeing no one in the room, I thought this order was

addressed to me, so I was just rising....

This quaint presentation of a craven swain is perhaps as good an example

as could be found of the curious mixture of French and English in

Hamilton. Hardly any Frenchman could have borne to put even a fictitious

eidolon of himself in such a contemptible light; very few Englishmen,

though they might easily have done this, would have done it so neatly,

and with so quaint a travesty of romantic situation. But the main story,

as admitted above, is _assommant_, though, just before the breach, a

substitution of three agreeable damsels for the nymph herself promises

something better.

This combination of the dullest with some of the finest and most

characteristic work of the author, would be rather a puzzle in a more

"serious" writer than Hamilton; but in his case there is no need to

distress, or in any way to cumber, oneself about the matter. The whole

thing was a "compliment," as the age would have said, to Fantasy; and

the rules of the Court of Quintessence, though not non-existent as dull

fools suppose, are singularly elastic to skilled players.

We are left with what, even as it exists, is by far his most ambitious

attempt, and with one in which, considering all its actual features, one

need not be taking things too seriously if one decides that he had an

aim at something like a whole--even if the legends[296] about further

parts, actually seen and destroyed by a more than Byzantine pudibundity,

are not taken as wholly gospel.

The completed _Fleur d'Epine_ and the uncompleted _Quatre

Facardins_[297] are in effect continuous parts (and to all appearance

incomplete in more than the finishing of the second story) of an

untitled but intelligibly sketched continuation of the _Arabian Nights_

themselves. Hamilton, like others since, had evidently conceived an

affection for Dinarzade: and a considerable contempt for Schahriar's

notion of the advantages of matrimony. It is less certain, but I think

possible, that he had anticipated the ideas of those who think that the

unmarried sister went at least halves in the composition or remembrance

of the stories themselves, or she could not have varied her timing at

dawn so adroitly. He had, at any rate, an Irish-Englishman's sense of

honest if humorous indignation at the part which she has to play (or

rather endure) in these "two years" (much nearer three!), and the sequel

in a way revenges her.

I should imagine that Thackeray must have been reminiscent of Hamilton

when he devised the part of "Sister Anne" in _Bluebeard's Ghost_. Like

her, Hamilton's Dinarzade is slightly flippant; she would most certainly

have observed "Dolly Codlins is the matter" in Anne's place. Like her,

she is not unprovided with lovers; she actually, at the beginning,

"takes a night off" that she may entertain the Prince of Trebizond; and

it is the Prince himself who relates the great, but, alas! torsoed epic

of the Facardins,[298] of whom he is himself one. But as there are only

two stories, there is no room for much framework, and we see much less

of the "resurrected" Dinarzade[299] than we could wish from what we do

see and hear.

_Fleur d'Epine_, which she herself tells, is a capital story, somewhat

closer to the usual norm of the _Nights_ than is usual with Hamilton. It

bases itself on the well-known legends of the Princess with the

literally murderous eyes; but this Princess Luisante is not really the

heroine, and is absent from the greater part of the tale, though she is

finally provided with the hero's brother, who is a reigning prince, and

has everything handsome about him. The actual hero Tarare (French for

"Fiddlestick!" or something of that sort, and of course an assumed

name), in order to cure Luisante's eyes of their lethal quality, has to

liberate a still more attractive damsel--the title-heroine--putative

daughter of a good fairy and actual victim of a bad one, quite in the

orthodox style. He does this chiefly by the aid of a very amiable mare,

who makes music wherever she goes, and can do wonderful things when her

ears are duly manipulated. It is a good and pleasant story, with plenty

of the direct relish of the fairy-tale, Eastern and Western, and plenty

also of satirical parody of the serious romance. But it is not quite

consummate. The opening, however, as a fair specimen of Hamilton's

style, may be given.

[Sidenote: The opening of _Fleur d'Epine_.]

Two thousand four hundred and fifty-three leagues from here

there is an extraordinarily fine country called Cashmere. In

this country reigned a Caliph; that Caliph had a daughter,

and that daughter had a face; but people wished more than

once that she had never had any. Her beauty was not

insupportable till she was fifteen; but at that age it

became impossible to endure it. She had the most beautiful

mouth in the world; her nose was a masterpiece; the lilies

of Cashmere--a thousand times whiter than ours--were

discoloured beside her complexion; and it seemed impertinent

of the fresh-blown rose to show itself beside the carnation

of her cheek. Her forehead was unmatchable for shape and

brilliancy; its whiteness was contrasted with a Vandyke

point of hair blacker and more shining than jet--whence she

took her name of "Luisante"; the shape of her face seemed

made to frame so many wonders. But her eyes spoilt

everything.

No one had ever been able to look at them long enough to

distinguish their exact colour; for as soon as one met her

glance it was like a stroke of lightning. When she was eight

years old her father, the Caliph, was in the habit of

sending for her, to admire his offspring and give the

courtiers the opportunity of paying a thousand feeble

compliments to her youthful beauty; for even then they used

to put out the candles at midnight, no other light being

necessary except that of the little one's eyes. Yet all this

was nothing but--in the literal sense, and the

other--child's play; it was when her eyes had acquired full

strength that they became no joking matter.

[_The fatal effects--killing men in twenty-four hours, and blinding

women--are then told, with the complaints of the nobility whose sons

have fallen victims, and the various suggestions for remedying the evil

made at a committee, which is presided over by the Seneschal of the

kingdom ... "the silliest man who had ever held such an office--so much

so that the caliph could not possibly think of choosing any one less

silly." Tarare happens to be in this pundit-potentate's service; and so

the story starts._]

[Sidenote: _Les Quatre Facardins._]

But--and indeed the writer's opinion on this point has already been

indicated--Hamilton's masterpiece, unfinished as it is, is _Les Quatre

Facardins_. Indeed, though unfinished in one sense, it is, in another,

the most finished of all. Beside it the completed _Faustus_ is a mere

trifle, and not a very interesting trifle. It has no dull parts like

_Zeneyde_ and even _Le Belier_. It has much greater complication of

interest and variety of treatment than _Fleur d'Epine_, in which, after

the opening, Hamilton's peculiar _persiflage_, though not absent, is

much less noticeable. It at least suggests, tantalising as the

suggestion is, that the author for once really intended to wind up all

his threads into a compact ball, or (which is the better image) to weave

them into a new and definite pattern. Moreover--this may not be a

recommendation to everybody, but it is a very strong one to the present

historian,--it has no obvious or insistent "key"-element whatsoever. It

is, indeed, not at all unlikely that there _is_ one, for the trick was

ingrained in the literature and the society of the time. But if so, it

is a sleeping dog that neither bites nor barks; and if you let it alone

it will stay in its kennel, and not even obtrude itself upon your view.

To these partly, if not wholly, negative merits it adds positive ones of

a very considerable and delectable kind. The connection with the

_Arabian Nights_ is brought closer still in the fact that it is not only

told (as of himself) by the Prince of Trebizond, Dinarzade's

servant-cavalier, but is linked--to an important extent, and not at all

to Schahriar's unmixed satisfaction--with one of the earliest incidents

of the _Nights_ themselves, the remarkable story how the Lady from the

Sea increases her store of rings at the cost of some exertion and

alarm--not to mention the value of the rings themselves--to the Sultan

and his brother, the King of Tartary. This lady, with her genie and her

glass box, reappears as "Cristalline la Curieuse"--one of the two

heroines. The other, of whose actual adventures we hear only the

beginning, and that at the very close of the story, is Mousseline la

Serieuse, who never laughs, and who, later, escaping literally by the

loss of her last garment, twitched off by the jaws of an enormous

crocodile, afterwards the pest of the country, finds herself under a

mysterious weird. She is never able to get a similar vestment made for

her, either of day- or night-fashion. Three hundred and seventy-four

dozen of such things, which formed her wardrobe, had disappeared[300]

after the death (actually crocodile-devoured) of her Mistress of the

Robes; and although she used up all the linen-drapers' stocks of the

capital in trying to get new ones, they were all somewhat milder

varieties of the shirt of Nessus. For the day-shifts deprived her of all

appetite for food or drink, and the night ones made it impossible for

her to sleep.

This particular incident comes, as has been said, just at the end of

what we have of the book; indeed there is nothing more, save a burlesque

embassy, amply provided with painted cloth[301] and monkeys, to the

great enchanter Caramoussal (who has already figured in the book), and

the announcement, by one of the other Facardins, of its result--a new

adventure for champions, who must either make the Princess laugh or kill

the crocodile. "It is indifferent," we learn from a most Hamiltonian

sentence, "whether you begin with the crocodile or with the Princess."

Indeed there is yet another means of restoring peace in the Kingdom of

Astrachan, according to the enchanter himself, who modestly disclaims

being an enchanter, observing (again in a thoroughly Hamiltonian manner)

that as he lives on the top of a mountain close to the stars, they

probably tell him more than they tell other people. It is to collect

three spinning-wheels[302] which are scattered over the universe, but

of some of which we have heard earlier in the story.

One takes perhaps a certain pleasure in outraging the feelings of the

giant Moulineau, so hateful to Madame de Grammont, by beginning not

merely in the middle but at the end--an end, alas! due, if we believe

all the legends, to her own mistaken zeal when she became a _devote_--a

variety of person for whom her brother[303] certainly had small

affection, though he did not avenge himself on it in novel-form quite so

cruelly as did Marivaux later. It is, however, quite good to begin at

the beginning, though the verse-preface needs perhaps to be read with

eyes of understanding. Ostensibly, it is a sort of historical

condemnation of all the species of fiction which had been popular for

half a century or so, and is thus very much to our purpose, though, like

almost all the verses included in these tales, it does not show the

poetic power which the author of _Celle que j'adore_[304] undoubtedly

possessed. Mere tales, he says, have quite banished from court favour

romances, celebrated for their sentiments, from _Cyrus_ to _Zaide_,

_i.e._ from Mlle. de Scudery to Mme. de la Fayette. _Telemaque_ had no

better fate

On courut au Palais[305] le rendre,

Et l'on s'empressa d'y reprendre

Le Rameau d'Or et l'Oiseau Bleu.[306]

Then came the "Arabian tales," of which he speaks with a harshness, the

sincerity or design of which may be left to the reader; and then he

himself took up the running, of course obliged by request of

irresistible friends of the other sex. All which may or may not be read

with grains of salt--the salt-merchant of which everybody is at liberty

to choose for himself. Something may be said on the subject when we, in

all modesty, try to sum up Hamilton and the period.

But we must now give some more account of the "Four Facardins"

themselves. He of Trebizond is a tributary Prince of Schahriar's, much

after the fashion (it is to be feared here burlesqued) of the

innumerable second- and third-class heroes whom one meets in the

_Cyrus_. He begins, like Dinarzade,[307] by "cheeking" the Sultan on his

views of matrimony; and then he tells how he set out from his dominions

in quest of adventures, and met another bearer of the remarkable name

which his mother had insisted on giving him. This second adventurer

happened to be bearer also of a helmet with a strange bird, apparently

all made of gems, as its crest. They exchange confidences, which are to

the effect that the Trebizondian Facardin is a lady-killer of the most

extravagant success, while the other (who is afterwards called Facardin

of the Mountain) is always unfortunate in love; notwithstanding which he

proposes to undertake the adventure (to be long afterwards defined) of

Mousseline la Serieuse. For the present he contents himself with two or

three more stories (or, rather, one in several "fyttes"), which reduce

the wildest of the _Nights_ to simple village tales--of an island where

lions are hunted with a provision of virgins, chanticleers, and small

deer on an elaborately ruled system; of a mountain full of wild beasts,

witches, lovely nymphs, savages, and an enchanter at the top. After an

interruption very much in the style of Chaucer's Host and _Sir Thopas_,

from Dinarzade, who is properly rebuked by the Sultan, Facardin of the

Mountain (he has quite early in the story received the celebrated

scratch from a lion's claw, "from his right shoulder to his left heel")

recounts a shorter adventure with Princess Sapinelle of Denmark, and at

last, after a fresh outburst from Dinarzade, the Prince of Trebizond

comes to his own affairs.

Then it is that (after some details about the Prince of Ophir, who has a

minim mouth and an enormous nose, and the Princess of Bactria, whose

features were just the reverse) we recover Cristalline. It is perhaps

only here that even Mrs. Grundy, though she may have been uncomfortable

elsewhere, can feel really shocked at Hamilton; others than Mrs. Grundy

need not be so even here. The genie has discovered his Lady's little

ways, and has resolved to avenge himself on her by strict custody, and

by a means of delivery which, if possible, might not have entirely

displeased her. The hundred rings are bewitched to their chain, and are

only to be recovered by the same process which strung them on it. But

this process must be applied by one person in the space of twelve hours,

and the conditions are only revealed to him after he has been kidnapped

or cajoled within the genie's power. If he refuses to try, he is clad as

Omphale clad Hercules, and set to work. If he tries and fails, he is to

be flayed alive and burnt. Facardin, to the despair of his secretary,

enters--beguiled by a black ambassadress, who merely informs him that a

lady wants help--the enchanted boat which takes him to the fatal scene.

But when he is to be introduced to the lady he entirely declines to part

with his sword; and when the whole secret is revealed he, with the help

of Cristalline, who is really a good-natured creature in more senses

than one, slays the three chief minions of the tyrant--a watchmaker who

sets the clock, a locksmith who is to count the detached rings, and a

kind of Executioner High-priest who is to do the flaying and

burning,--cuts his way with Cristalline herself to the enchanted boat,

regaining _terra firma_ and (relatively speaking) _terra_ not too much

enchanted. But at his very landing at the mouth of the crocodile river

he again meets Facardin of the Mountain (who has figured in

Cristalline's history earlier) with the two others, whose stories we

shall never hear; and is told about Mousseline; whereat we and the tale

"join our ends" as far as is permitted.

It would be easy to pick from this story alone a sort of nosegay of

Hamiltonisms like that from Fuller, which Charles Lamb selected so

convincingly that some have thought them simply invented. But it would

be unjust to Anthony, because, unless each was given in a _matrix_ of

context, nobody could, in most cases at any rate, do justice to this

curious glancing genius of his. It exists in Sydney Smith to some

extent--in Thackeray to more--among Englishmen. There is, in French,

something of it in Lesage, who possibly learnt it directly from him; and

of course a good deal, though of a lower kind, in Voltaire, who

certainly did learn it from him. But it is, with that slight

indebtedness to Saint-Evremond noticed above, essentially new and

original. It is a mixture of English-Irish (that is to say,

Anglo-Norman) humour with French wit, almost unattainable at that day

except by a man who, in addition to his natural gifts, had the mixed

advantages and disadvantages of his exile position.

Frenchmen at the time--there is abundance, not of mere anecdote, but of

solid evidence to prove it--knew practically nothing of English

literature. Englishmen knew a good deal more of French, and imitated and

translated it, sometimes more eagerly than wisely. But they had not as

yet assimilated or appreciated it: that was left for the eighteenth

century to do. Meanwhile Hamilton brought the double influence to bear,

not merely on the French novel, but on the novel in general and on the

eccentric novel in particular. To appreciate him properly, he ought to

be compared with Rabelais before him and with Voltaire or Sterne--with

both, perhaps, as a counsel of perfection--after him. He is a smaller

man, both in literature and in humanity, than Master Francis; but the

phrase which Voltaire himself rather absurdly used of Swift might be

used without any absurdity in reference to him. He _is_ a "Rabelais de

bonne compagnie," and from the exactly opposite point of view he might

be called a Voltaire or a Sterne _de bonne compagnie_ likewise. That is

to say, he is a gentleman pretty certainly as well as a genius, which

Rabelais might have been, at any rate in other circumstances, but did

not choose to be, and which neither Francois Arouet nor Laurence Sterne

could have been, however much either had tried, though the metamorphosis

is not quite so utterly inconceivable in Sterne's case as in the

other's. Hamilton, it has been confessed, is sometimes "naughty"; but

his naughtiness is neither coarse nor sniggering,[308] and he depends

upon it so little--a very important point--that he is sometimes most

amusing when he is not naughty at all. In other words, he has no need of

it, but simply takes it as one of the infinite functions of human

comedy. Against which let Mrs. Grundy say what she likes.

* * * * *

It is conceivable that objection may be taken, or at any rate surprise

felt, at the fulness with which a group of mostly little books--no one

of them produced by an author of the first magnitude as usual estimates

run--has been here handled. But the truth is that the actual birth of

the French novel took a much longer time than that of the English--a

phenomenon explicable, without any national vainglory, by the fact that

it came first and gave us patterns and stimulants. The writers surveyed

in this chapter, and those who will take their places in the next--at

least Scarron, Furetiere, Madame de La Fayette and Hamilton, Lesage,

Marivaux, and Prevost--whatever objections or limitations may be brought

against them, form the central group of the originators of the modern

novel. They open the book of life, as distinguished from that of

factitious and rather stale literature; they point out the varieties of

incident and character; the manners and interiors and fantastic

adjustments; the sentiment rising to passion--which are to determine the

developments and departments of the fiction of the future. They leave,

as far as we have seen them, great opportunities for improvement to

those immediate followers to whom we shall now turn. Hamilton is,

indeed, not yet much followed, but Lesage far outgoes Scarron in the

raising of the picaresque; Marivaux distances Furetiere in painting of

manners and in what some people call psychology; _Manon Lescaut_ throws

_La Princesse de Cleves_ into the shade as regards the greatest and

most novel-breeding of the passions. But the whole are really a _bloc_,

the continental sense of which is rather different from our "block." And

perhaps we shall find that, though none of them was equal in genius to

some who succeeded them in novel-writing, the novel itself made little

progress, and some backsliding, during nearly a hundred years after they

ceased to write.

NOTE ON _TELEMAQUE_

It may not perhaps be superfluous to give the rest of that

criticism of Hamilton's on _Telemaque_, the conclusion of

which has been quoted above. "In vain, from the famous

coasts of Ithaca, the wise and renowned Mentor came to

enrich us with those treasures of his which his _Telemaque_

contains. In vain the art of the teacher delicately

displays, in this romance of a rare kind, the usefulness and

the deceitfulness of politics and of love, as well as that

fatal sweetness--frail daughter of luxury--which intoxicates

a conquering hero at the feet of a young mistress or of a

skilful enchantress, such as in each case this Mentor

depicts them. But, well-versed as he was in human weakness,

and elaborately as he imitated the style and the stories of

Greece, the vogue that he had was of short duration. Weary

of inability to understand the mysteries which he unfolded,

men ran to the Palais to give back the volume," etc., etc.

Hamilton, no doubt intentionally, has himself made this

criticism rather "mysterious." It is well known that, if not

quite at first, very soon after its appearance, the fact

that the politics, if not also the morals, of Fenelon's book

were directly at variance with Court standards was

recognised. At a time when Court favour and fashion were the

very breath of the upper circles, and directly or indirectly

ruled the middle, the popularity of this curious

romance-exhortation was, at any rate for a time, nipped in

the bud, to revive only in the permanent but not altogether

satisfactory conditions of a school-book. Whether Hamilton

dealt discreetly with the matter by purposely confining

himself to the record of a fact, or at least mixing praise

to which no exception could be taken, with what might be

taken for blame, one cannot say. By dotting a few i's,

crossing the t's, and perhaps touching up some hidden

letters with the requisite reagent, one can, however, get a

not unfair or unshrewd criticism of the book out of this

envelope. _Telemaque_, if it is not, as one of Thackeray's

"thorn" correspondents suggested, superior to "_Lovel

Parsonage_ and _Framley the Widower_," has, or with some

easy suppressions and a very few additions and developments

might have, much more pure romance interest than its

centuries of scholastic use allow it to have for most

people. Eucharis is capable of being much more than she is

allowed to show herself; and some Mrs. Grundys, with more

intelligence than the average member of the clan, have

hinted that Calypso might be dangerous if the persons who

read about her were not likely to consider her as too old to

be interesting. The style is, of course, admirable--there

has hardly ever been a better writer of French than Fenelon,

who was also a first-rate narrator and no mean critic.

Whether by the "mysteries" Hamilton himself meant politics,

morals, religion, or all three and other "serious" things,

is a point which, once more, is impossible to settle. But it

is quite certain that, whether there is any difficulty in

comprehending them or not, a great many--probably the huge

majority--of novel readers would not care to take the

trouble to comprehend them, and might, even if they found

little difficulty, resent being asked to do so. And so we

have here not the first--for, as has been said, the Heroic

romance itself had much earlier been "conscripted" into the

service of didactics--but the first brilliant, or almost

brilliant, example of that novel of purpose which will meet

us so often hereafter. It may be said to have at once

revealed (for the earlier examples were, as a rule, too dull

to be fair tests) the ineradicable defects of the species.

Even when the purpose does not entirely preclude the

possibility of enjoyment, it always gets in the way thereof;

and when the enjoyable matter does not absorb attention to

the disregard of the purpose altogether, it seldom--perhaps

never--really helps that purpose to get itself fulfilled.

FOOTNOTES:

[247] It is perhaps not quite superfluous to point out that the

principle of separation in these chapters is quite different from that

(between "idealist" and "realist") pursued by Koerting and others, and

reprobated, partially or wholly, by MM. Le Breton and Brunetiere.

[248] _L'Autre Monde: ou Histoire Comique des Etats et Empires de la

Lune_, etc.

[249] It must be remembered that even Gerard Hamilton made many more

speeches, but only one good one, while the novelists discussed here

wrote in most cases many other books. But their goodness shows itself in

hardly more than a single work in each case. Anthony Hamilton's is in

all his.

[250] It has been noted, I think, by all who have written about the

_Berger_, that Sorel is a sort of Balak and Balaam in one. He calls on

himself to curse the _Astree_, but he, sometimes at least, blesses it.

[251] The _Berger_ fills two volumes of some nine hundred pages;

_Polyandre_, two of six hundred each! But it must be admitted that the

print is very large and widely spaced.

[252] One remembers the story of the greater Corneille calling to the

lesser down a trap between their two houses, "Sans-Souci!--une rime!"

[253] I have known this word more than once objected to as pedantic. But

pedantry in this kind consists in using out-of-the-way terms when common

ones are ready to hand. There is no single word in English to express

the lower kind of "Dutch-painting" as this Greek word does. And Greek is

a recognised and standing source of words for English. If geography, why

not rhyparography?--or, if any one prefers it, "rhypography," which,

however, is not, I think, so good a form.

[254] There is, no doubt, significance in the fact that they are

definitely called _nouvelles_.

[255] _V. sup._ p. 204. The habit of these continues in all the books.

_L'Illustre Bassa_ opens with a most elaborate, but still not very much

"alive," procession and sham fight.

[256] Of course Cervantes is not shadowy.

[257] As far as mere chronology goes, Cyrano, _v. inf._, should come

between; but it would split the parallel.

[258] Scarron had, in Le Destin's account of himself, made a distinction

between the pastoral and heroic groups and the "old" romances, meaning

thereby not the true mediaeval specimens but the _Amadis_ cycle.

Furetiere definitely classes all of them together.

[259] The time is well known to have been fond of anagrams, and

"Charroselles" is such an obvious one for "Charles Sorel" that for once

there is no need to gainsay or neglect the interpreters. The thing, if

really meant for a real person, is a distinct lampoon, and may perhaps

explain the expulsion and persecution of Furetiere, by his colleagues of

the Academy, almost as well as the ostensible cause thereof--his

compiling, in competition with the Academy itself, of a French

Dictionary, and a very good one, which was not printed till after his

death, and ultimately became the famous _Dictionnaire de Trevoux_. Not

that Sorel himself was of much importance, but that the thing shows the

irritable and irritating literary failing in the highest degree.

Furetiere had friends of position, from Boileau, Racine, and Bossuet

downwards; and the king himself, though he did not interfere, seems to

have disapproved the Academy's action. But the _Roman_ was heavily

"slated" for many years, though it had a curious revival in the earlier

part of the next century; and for the rest of that century and the first

part of the nineteenth it was almost wholly forgotten.

[260] She falls in love with an ebony cabinet at a fair which they visit

together, and he gives it her. But, anticipating that she will use it

for her most precious things, he privately gets a second set of keys

from the seller, and in her absence achieves the theft of the promise.

[261] Any one who has, as the present writer has had, opportunities of

actually doing this, will find it a not uninteresting operation, and one

which "amply repays the expense" of time and trouble.

[262] This is a point of importance. Details of a life-like character

are most valuable in the novel; but if they are not "material" in the

transferred sense they are simply a bore. Scott undoubtedly learnt this

lesson from his prentice work in finishing Strutt's _Queenhoo Hall_,

where the story is simply a clumsy vehicle for conveying information

about sports and pastimes and costumes and such-like "antiqu_ar_ities."

[263] To us small, as are not those of its predecessors.

[264] Not a bad instance of the subacid touches which make the book

lively, and which probably supply some explanation of its author's

unpopularity. The "furred law-cats" of all kinds were always a

prevailing party in Old France, and required stout gloves to touch them

with.

[265] This (often called by its Italian name of Quarant' ore) is a

"Devotion" during an exposure of the Sacrament for that time, in memory

of the interval between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Our

Lord. It is a public service, and, I suppose, collections were made _at

intervals_. No one, especially no girl, could stand the time straight

through. The "Paradise" was, of course, a "decoration."

[266] Javotte says "shoe the mule"--"ferrer la mule"--one of the phrases

like "faire danser l'anse du panier" and others, for taking

"self-presented testimonials," as Wilkie Collins's Captain Wragge more

elegantly and less cryptically calls it.

[267] Of course the regular "thanks" of a collector for pious purposes.

[268] He does later seek this, and only loses her (if she can be called

a loss) by his own folly. But his main objective is to _conter_ (or as

Furetiere himself has it, _debiter_) _la fleurette_. It ought, perhaps,

to be mentioned, as a possible counterweight or drawback, that the

novelist breaks off to discuss the too great matter-of-factness of

bourgeois girls and women. But he was to have great followers in this

also.

[269] He was born and baptised Savinien de Cyrano, and called himself de

Cyrano-Bergerac. The sound of the additional designation and some of his

legendary peculiarities probably led to his being taken for a Gascon;

but there is no evidence of meridional extraction or seat, and there

appears to be some of Breton or other Western connection.

[270] There is nothing in the least astonishing in his having been

this--if he was. The tendency of the Renaissance towards what is called

"free thought" is quite well known; and the existence, in the

seventeenth century, of a sort of school of boisterous and rather vulgar

infidelity is familiar--with the names of Bardouville, and Saint-Ibal or

Saint-Ibar, as members of it--to all readers of Saint-Evremond,

Tallemant, the _Ana_, etc.

[271] Perhaps the dullest part is where (save the mark!) the Demon of

Socrates is brought in to talk sometimes mere platitudes, sometimes tame

paradoxes which might as well be put in the mouth of any pupil-teacher,

or any popular journalist or dramatist, of the present day.--Of the

attempt to make Swift Cyrano's debtor one need say little: but among

predecessors, if not creditors, Ben Jonson, for his _News from the New

World discovered in the Moon_, may at least be mentioned.

[272] The key-mongers, of course, identify the three with the author,

her own husband, and La Rochefoucauld.

[273] He has ensconced himself in one of the smaller rooms of a garden

pavilion outside of which they are sitting, having left their suite at

some distance.

[274] _Maitresse de sa conduite_, a curious but not difficult text as to

French ideas of marriage.

[275] I have been obliged to insert "trials" to bring out the meaning of

"_exposee au milieu_." "_Exposee_" has a fuller sense than the simple

English verb, and almost equals the legal "exposed for sale."

[276] Mme. de la Fayette was a very accomplished woman, and, possibly

from her familiarity with Queen Henrietta Maria, well acquainted with

English as well as French history. But our proper names, as usual,

vanquish her, and she makes Henry VIII. marry Jane _Seimer_ and

Catherine _Havart_.

[277] This does not apply to the _main_ love story but to the atmosphere

generally. The Vidame de Chartres, for instance, is represented as in

love with (1) Queen Catherine; (2) a Mme. de Themines, with whom he is

not quite satisfied; (3) a Mme. de Martignes, with whom he is; (4) a

lady unnamed, with whom he has _trompe_ them all. This may be true

enough to life; but it is difficult to make it into good matter of

fiction, especially with a crowd of other people doing much the same.

[278] It ought, perhaps, to be added that though manners, etc., altered

not a little between Henri II. and Louis XIV., the alteration was much

less than in most other histories at most other periods. It would be

easy to find two persons in Tallemant whose actual experience covered

the whole time.

[279] You _had_ to call it so when I first saw it; when I last did so it

was "Oiron." No doubt it is something else now.

[280] For that, see Chapter XII.

[281] See below on the version Introduction to the _Quatre Facardins_.

[282] Including miscellaneous imbecility and unsuitableness as well as

moral indecorum.

[283] Written for the _Fortnightly Review_ in 1882, but by a chapter of

accidents not printed till 1890. Reprinted next year in _Essays on

French Novelists_ (London, 1891).

[284] Miss Ruth Clark.

[285] The conclusion of _Vathek_ is of course undoubtedly more

"admirable" than anything of Hamilton's; but it is in a quite different

genus.

[286] The piece _Celle que j'adore_ is the best of the casual verses,

though there are other good songs, etc. Those which alternate with the

prose of some of the tales are too often (as in the case of the

_Cabinet_ insets, _v. sup._) rather prosaic. Of the prose miscellanies

the so-called _Relations_ "of different places in Europe," and "of a

voyage to Mauritania," contain some of the cream of Hamilton's almost

uniquely ironic narrative and commentary. When that great book, "The

Nature and History of Irony," which has to be written is written--the

last man died with the last century and the next hour seems far off--a

contrast of Hamilton and Kinglake will probably form part of it.

[287] As a member, though a cadet, of a cadet branch of one of the

noblest families of Great Britain and Ireland.

[288] As a soldier, a courtier of Charles II., and a Jacobite exile in

France.

[289] I may perhaps be allowed to refer to another essay of mine on him

in _Miscellaneous Essays_ (London, 1892). It contains a full account,

and some translation, of the _Conversation du marechal d'Hocquincourt

avec le Pere Canaye_, which is at once the author's masterpiece of quiet

irony, his greatest pattern for the novelist, and his clearest evidence

of influence on Hamilton.

[290] There are some who hold that _the_ "English" differentia, whether

shown in letters or in life, whether south or north of Tweed, east or

west of St. George's Channel is always Anglo-Norman.

[291] The "Marian" and Roman comparison of Anne Boleyn's position to

Rosamond's is interesting.

[292] It is a sort of brief lift and drop of the curtain which still

concealed the true historical novel; it has even got a further literary

interest as giving the seamy side of the texture of Macaulay's admirable

_Jacobite's Epitaph_. The account would be rather out of place here, but

may be found translated at length (pp. 44-46) in the volume of _Essays

on French Novelists_ more than once referred to.

[293] The most unexpected bathos of these last three words is of course

intentional, and is Hamilton all over.

[294] The nymph is lying on a couch, and her companion (who has been

recalcitrant even to this politeness) is sitting beside her.

[295] This is as impudent as the other passages below are imbecile--of

course in each case (as before) with a calculated impudence and

imbecility. The miserable creature had himself obliged her to "come out

of the water" by declining to join her there on the plea that he was

never good for an assignation when he was wet!

[296] If they are true, and if Madame de Grammont was the culprit, it is

a sad confirmation of the old gibe, "Skittish in youth, prudish in age."

It can only be pleaded in extenuation that some youth which was not

skittish, such as Sarah Marlborough's, matured or turned into something

worse than "devotion." And Elizabeth Hamilton was so very pretty!

[297] "Completions" of both _Zeneyde_ and _Les Quatre Facardins_, by the

Duke de Levis, are included in some editions, but they are, after the

fashions of such things, very little good.

[298] The name is not, like "Tarare," a direct burlesque; but it

suggests a burlesque intention when taken with "facond" and others

including, perhaps, even _faquin_.

[299] The Sultaness is almost _persona muta_--and indeed her tongue must

have required a rest.

[300] As Hamilton's satiric intention is as sleepless as poor Princess

Mousseline herself, it is not impossible that he remembered the incident

recorded by Pepys, or somebody, how King Charles the Second could not

get a sheet of letter paper to write on for all the Royal Households and

Stationery Offices and such-like things in the English world.

[301] _I.e._ colour-printed cotton from India--a novelty "fashionable"

and, therefore, satirisable in France.

[302] Or "distaffs and spindles"?

[303] She is indeed said to have "converted" both him and Grammont, the

latter perhaps the most remarkable achievement of its kind.

[304] Mr. Austin Dobson's charming translation of this was originally

intended to appear in the present writer's essay above mentioned.

[305] The chief region of bookselling. Cf. Corneille's early comedy, _La

Galerie du Palais_.

[306] For note on _Telemaque_ see end of chapter.

[307] Who is here herself an improved Doralise.

[308] To put it otherwise in technical French, there is a little

_grivoiserie_ in him, but absolutely no _polissonnerie_, still less any

_cochonnerie_. Or it may be put, best of all, in his own words when, in

a short French-Greek dialogue, called _La Volupte_, he makes Aspasia say

to Agathon, "Je vous crois fort voluptueux, sans vous croire debauche."