CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Cornell University Library PQ 118.N73 1922

of French literature :

3 1924 027 184 955

The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library.

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A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE GREAT WAR

BY

WILLIAM A. NITZE

AND

E. PRESTON DARGAN

PROFESSORS OP FRENCH LITERATTJRB IN THE UNIVERSITT OF CHICAGO

NEW YORK

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1922

-pa

/ij 6^ / ^ y 7

COPTBIGHT, 1922, BY

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

First Printinc, September, 1922 Second Printinc June, 1823

PRINTXD IN XT. S.A.

PREFACE

The present History of French Literature, intended both for the general reader and for students, does not aim to be exhaus- tive. It is divided into three parts: Medieval, Renaissance and Modern; and within these parts it emphasizes in turn the chief literary movements and writers, leaving minor tendencies and figures out of consideration or mentioning them only inci- dentally. Mere lists of names and dates, valuable as they are for reference, belong rather to bibliography than to literary his- tory as such. Thus our aim has been to give a connected ac- count of the " main currents " of French literature from the earliest times down to the present day.

In this attempt we have had several further considerations to guide us. In the first place, the book is written primarily for American and English readers. The one key to literary treasures is not erudition but sympathy. Needless to say, we would instill in our readers a liking for French literature; but such sympathy will come only through an appreciation of the French, as distinguished from the Anglo-Saxon, point of view. Hence the introductory chapter on the " Spirit of French Letters " and, in the body of the book, the frequent references to what appear to be dominant French traits. Another result of this method is the attention we give to the historical and social background. Whether we have succeeded or not, we have consistently tried to depict for each age the historical and social elements that produced it; briefly of course, with the ex- pectation that the reader will complete the outline by reference to works dealing directly with these subjects.

In the second place, the authors are convinced that a litera- ture must be learned — if learned is the proper word — by the stimulus of suggestion rather than by any dogmatic method. The opinions we state are by no means new. They necessarily reflect the views of others on the subject; in fact, for each par- ticular movement and author, we have tried to discover the best

iv PREFACE

authorities, from a scholarly and critical point of view, and to incorporate their conclusions in the text and the titles of their treatises in the bibliography. Yet in each case we have stated these opinions in our own way, with reference to our general plan of treatment, and we have not shunned the expression of an original opinion when circumstances justified it. We make no claim for the absolute value of these views, but we ven- ture to hope that they will rouse the reader's interest and lead him to formulate ideas of his own on the authors and books we have considered. If our book wins new readers for French literature itself, our main purpose will have been achieved.

Again, the authors are well aware that in a work of conden- sation such as a history of literature the statement of " facts " is necessarily difiBcult to make. One reason is that the facts in a given case are not always ascertainable. We have, as far as we have been able, given the correct dates for both writers and works of literature. With regard to other facts, such as liter- ary sources and influences, we have — especially in doubtful cases — cited and even quoted the best authorities on the sub- ject. But truth in literary matters, depending as it does on interpretation and taste, is of course relative; and we have no doubt that many readers, more competent than ourselves, will regard much of our material as open to question or in need of correction. We do not cling to the determinism of Taine, nor do we deny that it expresses a great truth. The French may not be a " race," but they are certainly a " nation " with a dis- tinct civilization of their own; and it is the history of the liter- ary manifestations of this civilization that we have attempted to write. If our critics will take the same pains to correct our mistakes as we have takien to avoid them, they will earn our gratitude and, what is even better, help us to mend our ways.

As for matters of detail, it may be pointed out that the col- laborators have divided their task in such a way that the re- sponsibility for the treatment of the Middle Ages and the Renais- sance (through French Classicism) belongs to W. A. Nitze, and for that of Modern Times to E. P. Dargan. Provencal literature is not treated by us, nor is the rich Latin literature of the Middle Ages, except as these incidentally affect French literature in one

PREFACE T

of its own stages. The substance as well as the structure of our book owes much, of course, to the admirable treatises of Gaston Paris, Lanson and Brunetiere, and in the Medieval and Renais- sance periods, to the works of Suchier and Morf. In the field of criticism, Saintsbury's important work has again and again been laid imder contribution. For Modern Times, the essays of Sainte-Beuve and Brunetike, the treatises of Villemain and Taine have been found particularly valuable. To these and to our numerous special authorities we here acknowledge obliga- ■tion. For all titles we refer the reader to the selected bibli- ography at the end of the work.

As regards the question of proportion, a word remains to be said. The increasing niunber of chapters and authors in Part III is due to the increasing complexity or " heterogeneity " of French literature in the last two centuries. Since our intention is to stress both ideas and form, a full treatment has been accorded to the liberalism of the eighteenth century and to the various artistic currents of the nineteenth. This has been done, it is hoped, without detracting from the importance of previous periods, especially the great Classical Age.

The illustrations have been chosen to symbolize the spirit of each epoch. They are masterpieces dating, in each case, from the period under consideration.

In conclusion, we most sincerely thank those friends and col- leagues whose guidance and criticism have been at our disposal. Professors Jenkins and Pietsch of the University of Chicago have assisted us materially with their knowledge of the Middle Ages. In particular, our selections from the Chanson de Roland have had the benefit of Professor Jenkins' revision. Our col- league, Professor Coleman, has been gracious enough to revise the chapters on the early seventeenth century. Professors Lan- caster, Lovejoy and Chinard of Johns Hopkins University have performed a similar service for portions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and Professor Guerard of the Rice Insti- tute has been unsparing in his help on matters concerning modern French thought. For additional services, willingly and carefully rendered, we are indebted to Professors Albert Schinz of Smith College, Hemi David of the University of Chicago, B. E. Young of the University of Indiana and Henry M. Dargan of

vi PREFACE

the University of North Carolina. Obviously none of these friends are responsible for the errors and imperfections of our book. It is owing to them, to their generous suggestions and criticisms, that its sins of omission and commission are not more numerous. On the other hand, if our book has — as we hope — points to commend it, their assistance should not be forgotten:

Secundas res splendidiores facit amicUia.

W. A. N. E. P. D. CmcAGO, September, 1921.

Note. — In spelling French words, our aim has been to modernize the titles of important works. The titles of less well-known works are often given in their archaic forms. Citations of text, however, are not modernized until we reach the seventeenth century. At the same time, Montaigne's Essais are cited in a modernized form according to Jeanroy's Priricipaux chapiiret it extraita de MoTttaigne.

CONTENTS

PAQE iNTBODUCnON 1

PART I: TBE MIDDLE AGES BOOK I. FEUDALISM AND CHIVALRY

CHAPTER

I. The Middle Ages and the Epic :.jy. 13

II. The Ltbic and the Romance .^ 30

III. The AiLBGOBT and the Eablt Dbama . f. 65

rV. History, Didactic Litbrattjrb and Storiologt 73

BOOK II. THE BOURGEOIS INFLUENCE

I. The Lyric Poets op the School op Machaut and Deschamfs. 87 II. The University and the Humanism op the Fourteenth

Cbntcby 98

III. The Cyclic Drama and the Farce op MaItre Pathelin . . 104

IV. Three Individuals : Antoine db La Sale, Villon, Comminbs. . 114

PART H: THE RENAISSANCE

BOOK I. HUMANISM AND THE REFORMATION

I. The Inplubncb op Italy and the Rh^toriqueub Poets. . . 127

n. Marot and His Immediate Followers 136

ni, Rabelais and Calvin: the Epicurean and the Stoic 145

IV. Platonists and Nbo-Platonists 161

BOOK n. LITERARY THEORY AND THE RETURN OF THE BOURGEOIS IDEAL

I. The Docthinb op Imitation and the Pl&aoe 170

II. The Chiep Poets op the PuSiade 178

III. Amyot, Montaigne and Brant6me 193

rV. The Age op Henry IV and the Common-sense op Malherbe 207

BOOK III. PRE-CLASSICISM

I. Social Form and the Salon Writbrs 219

n. HoNOk£ D'URPfi AND THE ROMANESQUE 229

viii CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGB

III. The Drama Previous to Cobneillb 238^

,- IV. Pierre Corneillb 251

.^^V. Descartes 263

BOOK .IV. CLASSICISM »

I. Louis XIV and the Cl'^J^ical Spirit 273

II. The Writers op MEiiorasljiD Maxims, and Women Writers . 283

III. MoLiiJHE AND La Fontainev^. ^M|p

-IV. Pascal and Racine m : .^^^^^^^06

V. Boileau and Bossubt .'. .^^^0^^^. . 323

PART m: MODERN TIMES

BOOK I. THE TRANSITION FROM CLASSICISM

*"JKI. The Quarrel op Ancients and Moderns: Results 339

II. Writers of the Transition: La BRuyfeHE, Saint-Simon,

FfiNELON 349

•••JII. The Eighteenth Century: Histort and Societt 361

BOOK II. THE NEW PHILOSOPHY

•■«.»I. The Popularizers: Batlb and Fontenellb 373

II. Voltaire : Literature and Life 383

III. Montesquieu 395

IV. Miscellaneous Writers 406

BOOK HI. THE OLD AND THE NEW GENRES

I. Tragedy : Voltaire, Cb£billon, Ducis 415

II. Comedy and Drame 424

III. Fiction : Lesagb, Marivaux, PufivosT 434

IV. Poetry 444

BOOK IV. THE WAR OF LIBERATION

>- -^I. The Encyclopedists and the Later Philosophes 451

II. Voltaire at Ferney: Polemics and Philosophy 463

III. Diderot 4^3

BOOK V. PRE-ROMANTICISM

I. Rousseau. Saint-Piebkb 400

II. Madame de StaEl. Constant 403

III. Chateaubriand gm

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACTNG PAGE

Illustration from a Graal Lancelot (Manuscript) 12

Illustration from Froissart's Chroniques (Fifteenth Century- Manuscript) 86

Raphael, "School of Athens" 126

Bigaud, "Louis XIV" 272

Watteau, "L'Embarquement pour CythSre" 364

Pils, "Rouget de I'Isle chantant la Marseillaise" 448

Girodet, "LaMiseauTombeaud'Atala" 510

Bastien-Lepage, "LesFoins" 624

Q

INTRODUCTION

THE SPIRIT OF FRENCH LETTERS

"L'histoire de la litterature d'un peuple, j'ai eu occasion de vous le dire souvent deja, est l'histoire de sa vie morale, et par- ticulierement de sa conscience nationale." Gaston Paris, La Poesie du moyen age, I, 94.

It is said that distinctions are invidious. But surely only for the unintelligent or uneducated. If we find pleasure in Shake- speare, this does not prove that we miist dislike Racine. On the contrary, a thorough understanding of both authors should lead us to like both ■ — but for different reasons. The qualities we admire in the Englishman are not and cannot be the traits we find in the Frenchman, quite aside from the fact that each is a different individual and not the same person. Thus every literature, so-called, is an embodiment of the national life. And while certain writers, and especially certain literary epochs, are less clearly national than others, yet it remains true that no author can divorce himself from his people and represent a point of view that is really alien to them. Indirectly, at least, he will reflect their type of emotion, their brand of ideas, their par- ticular way of viewing and expressing things — in a word, their psychology or vie morale,^ as Gaston Paris says in the quotation made above. Hence literature is not only a matter of individuals but of groups; and not the least of its functions is to portray the interactions between the poet and the social con- sciousness of the nation to which he belongs.

If, then, French literature has certain essentials or funda- mental traits, they are not always easy to define, since national characteristics appear only by contrast with those of other peoples. At the same time, as far as they can be ascertained, they are seen in the selection French writers make of their ma- terials and in the tendencies they follow in working them out. It will be the object of this introductory chapter to state what are some of the distinguishing features of French literature.

* Let us note, at the outset, that the French word moroU means "psychological."

1

2 INTRODUCTION

The remark has been repeatedly made that the French value truth more than beauty — not that they scorn the beautiful, but their attachment to truth is stronger. To quote one Reason ^^ ^^^^ modern critics : " Ce qu'il nous f aut, c'est le

vrai dans I'art encore plus que le beau." As early as the seven- teenth century Boileau crystallized this ideal when he wrote:

Rien n'est beau que le vrai, le vrai seul est aimable; II doit regner partout, et meme dans la fable.

If we substitute the word " rational " for the word " true " in these quotations,^ we shall come nearer to the French point of view ; for French art, and especially French literature, is largely a product of the human reason. With English literatiire it thus offers an interesting contrast.

We of English tradition are accustomed to look upon a liter- ary work as " holding the mirror up to nature " — to use Shake- speare's phrase. We see life as an endless complexity, and by nature we mean not only man but man in his surroundings, as part of the natural world that enfolds him. To a greater degree than the French, we are conscious of the fact that the imiverse holds us in its grip ; and we struggle to be " free," to make our- selves felt for what we are as " individuals." But whatever the problem may be with which man contends, to us the human be- ing is never separated from the background of reality in which life is passed. So that Dickens, like Wordsworth, like Milton, like Chaucer, deals with the setting of human character as a matter of prime and essential importance. " Character," said Emerson, " is nature in the highest form." Thus English liter- ature is primarily the record and the product of individuals, in their manifold surroimdings. It is varied rather than homo- geneous. It deals with things rather than with ideas. It is imaginative rather than logical; concrete rather than abstract. It tends to embrace creation and not merely the life of man.

In comparison, French literature is essentially a reflection of the mind. Not only the treatment of life but the French con- ception of it is intellectual. Types, not individuals, appeal to the logical sense of the French; and types are not direct obser-

' French distinguishes between the two types of truth, rational truth and truth to fact, by the two expressions le vrai and la vMU.

INTRODUCTION 3

vations of life but deductions or classifications we Baake from it. The Frenchman views' life primarily as idea, secondarily as fact. His chief interest lies not so much in character or nature as in the permanent traits of humanity and the universality of their application. Hence his method is analytic and comparative, whereas ours is empirical and absolute. He works from the sur- face of life inward, not from the kernel to the surface. Meta- physics is not his forte — that " art de s'egarer avec m6thode," as Michelet called it. The French have no counterpart to a great lyric genius like Shelley, who takes his own visions for reality, who hopes

tUI Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates.

Yet England has no equivalent to Voltaire: the embodiment of the pure reason and the sworn enemy of all illusion. The follow- ing selection from Montaigne might be taken as a general defini- tion of the French point of view, so widespread is its applica- tion to the French:

I propose a life mean and without luster, but 'tis all one; all moral philosophy is applied as well to a private life as to one of the greatest employment. Every man carries the entire form of the hiunan condition. Authors have hitherto com- municated themselves to the people by some particular and foreign mark; I, the first of any, by my universal being, as Michel de Montaigne, not as a grammarian, a poet or a lawyer. If the public complain that I speak too much of -myself, I complain that they do not think exclusively of themselves.

French literature, therefore, is social. " La critique etrangere et la critique frangaise se sont accordees a le proclamer," said Gaston Paris. The public, whose approval Mon- ocia ity tajgng craves, is always in a French writer's confi- dence. He writes to the public, for the public, about public questions generally. Discussion is the breath of French life, as conversation is one of its greatest arts. Even so individual a writer as Pascal addresses his Pensees to an unseen companion; and Pascal said, "the ego is hateful." The dialogue is a fa- vorite form in French, from the medieval debat down to the confidente r61e in Classical French drama. Descartes defined

4 INTRODUCTION

reading as " a conversation with the best people of bygone ages." And one of the most personal of modern poets, Musset, liked poetry because " it is intelligible to the world, though spoken by the poet alone."

As a consequence, French writers choose their themes broadly with reference to their apphcation. They seem to ask not only: is this my problem? but also, is it yoiir problem? because, in Montaigne's words, it is a fundamentally himian problem, as well as the problem of a grammarian, a poet or a lawyer. Look at any representative French work and you will see how generally true this is. The author makes an abstraction of his experience and then views it in the form of action. He exploits his idea or emotion to the full extent of its social value.

This accounts for the hospitality of French art, to which in a very real sense nothing human is inacceptable. " The [French] cathedrals," says Mr. Brownell, " are not feudal. They are the products of a spirit partly ecclesiastical, partly secular, but always social — the true Gallo-Roman spirit which, great as was the perfection attained by German feudalism in France, constantly struggled against and finally conquered its foreign Frankish foe." The same thing is true of French letters. Time and again, the French have borrowed an idea from without: it is they who socialize the idea, widen its application, standardize it, and thereupon send it broadcast over the world to bear fruit in a larger, more extended form. Thus during the Middle Ages France took over the Germanic idea of obligation and, through the efforts of her scholars and her poets, made it domi- nant over Europe; likewise in the Renaissance she chose the Italian idea of formal perfection or virtu, and in the later eighteenth century the northern idea of personality, and worked them over into their broadest, most social expression. France has been, and still is, the intellectual clearing-house of Europe.

A literature that is social is necessarily a literature of form

fully as much as of content. To be sure, the sense of form

has grown in France since the sixteenth century,

.owing to the cult of antiquity. But the trait is

nevertheless inherent in French culture. Kant once said: " The

French may have the flowers of the tree of knowledge but they

INTRODUCTION 6

rarely possess its roots," and sweeping as the generalization is, there is this truth in it: that to them the form is often as im- portant as the idea. By form the French mean technique; that is, the observed principles or laws of form rather than the ethos of form itself, which is always individual, as it is in the Divine Comedy or in Goethe's Faust, or in most of Shake- speare's tragedies. A French play or novel is a very conscious product: the author is an adept in the laws of the genre, and his work is generally the best that training and talent can pro- duce. At least, a minimum is left to chance or individual in- spiration; the maximum is artistry, schooling, the interaction of critical power and the creative mind. The result is a high average: general proficiency in place of sporadic preeminence. "La France est en tout un pays de moyennes," said a distin- guished Russian in a spirit of praise. Probably no literature has been so productive or so continuous as that of France. Cer- tainly none is so rich in criticism, in reflections on the manner of life. Thus, in a very real sense, it is possible to speak of the " schools " of French literature, in which the critics play an im- portant role. And the highest literary expression in France is, as Anatole France says of the landscape about Florence, une parjaite et meswree ceuvre d'art. On the other hand, idiosyncrasy of genius has never flourished there as it has elsewhere, and it would be useless to look in French literature for a Hamlet, an Iliad or a Don Quixote.

It is clear that whatever the French may lack in range, they make up in homogeneity and poise. Witness their language with its strong Latin tradition toward balance and unity. The few words which the Roman conquerors of Gaul took over from the Celts did not perceptibly affect the word-stock of French. Even the Franks, whose conquest of Gaul in the fifth century gave to France her name and many of her institutions, did not alter the language except by the addition of a few hundred new words. So that in structure and even vocabulary French is an offspring of Popular Latin as it was spoken by Caesar's soldiers in Gaul, supplemented from time to time by other elements, one of which is Literary Latin. Here again, England presents an interesting contrast. There the Germanic form of speech, Anglo-Saxon, triumphed; until in the eleventh century (after

6 INTRODUCTION

1066) it was temporarily thrust aside and French became the language of the higher classes, and consequently of literature. Hence English is dual in nature; at once Teutonic and Latin, a mixtvire of two opposing tendencies, which manifest them- selves again and again in English writing; whereas, conipara- tively speaking, French is a unit, and the literature as well as the language is informed throughout with the Latin genius of clarity and precision. " Ce qui n'est pas clair, n'est pas frangais," said Rivarol in a famous essay on the universality of French. To state a thing in French is to state it well ; that is, with accuracy and distinction. Renan aflSrmed that " truth lies in a shading " (" la verite est dans una nuance ") . The shadings, those subtle boundaries of truth, rarely escape a French writer's eye.

At the same tirae, there is a tendency in French to overstate an idea or emotion, to make it more pressing and effective than it really is. An excellent example is the French drama, where the difficulty presented so often leads to a logical but not to a very convincing conclusion. Hervieu's Le Dedale and Bernstein's Samson, to cite only modern instances, are dramatic but they are inconclusive: the cases depicted are too special to warrant a general inference such as the dramatist would have us make. The best literature proves nothing since demonstration is not its function. Or take Maupassant in the realm of fiction. As an expression of irony, of human stupidity, his Necklace {La Parure) is perfect, but as a picture of reality, this story is an argumentum in vacuo. It assimies a mistake — the necklace is " paste," not genuine — and it carries this mistake to an abstract conclusion. Thus the love of argument, so strong in the French, is also a limitation; granting that logical precision makes for clearness and intelligibility, it satisfies the mind but not the imagination. Yet, in the hands of a genius like Racine, this very control intensifies the emotion and achieves effects of flaw- less and inevitable beauty.

Such an attention to form and method has given to French poetry a tendency which the Anglo-Saxon may find hard to grasp. France has had many wonderful poets: Hugo, Musset, Vigny, Chenier, Ronsard, Villon; and her collected poetry fills volumes. Nevertheless, French poetry has the externality of a

INTRODUCTION 7

fine art. The Gallic spirit is inventive. It is too critical, too self-conscious, too mathematical and logical to be deeply lyrical. The social instinct works havoc with the world of illusion and mystery in which the great lyrist moves. At all events, the French illusions are short-lived. They are the illusions of the market-place, they affect the masses more than the individual: honor, vanity, glory, equality — rather than loyalty, ambition, iminortality, freedom. And the loneliness of genius, while it is seen in such a writer as Vigny, is rare in France. So, too, the French poet's attachments are to the visible world — the world of light and sunshine. It has been said that no verses express more clearly this side of the French temper than Regnier's Le Secret:

Car la forme, Todeur et la beaute des choses Sont le seul souvenir dont on ne souffre pas.

Racine, the poet of deep feeling and with a vision turned in- ward, manages to externalize his emotions in the most tangible of forms: " II rase la prose," observes Lemaitre, " mais avec des ailes." Or take Hugo, who has sweep and sustained utterance, and a gift of imagery such as few poets can equal: again it is the artist in him that dominates the lyrist; his power of execution is greater than his inspiration, and his verse is oratorical and brilliant far more than it is passionately deep and sincere. If, then, the " lyric cry " is rare in France, and the quality of French verse is prevailingly temperate and moderate in com- parison with ours, let us not forget that French poetry is for- mally the more artistic. There are " gems " of French verse which as regards technical perfection it would be diflBcult to match in other literatures. The French are apt at seizing the fleeting and transitory aspects of man's nature, at inomortalizing a mood or whim, at endowing not only the himible but the commonplace with the eternity of art. The much-quoted line of Musset:

Mon verre n'est pas grand, mais je bois dans men verre,

well expresses the crowded experience which French verse can portray, and Musset for all his technical imperfections is a great French poet.

8 INTRODUCTION

On the other hand, while French poetry is often like prose, it must not be forgotten that French prose is in a class by itself. There are pages of Pascal, Flaubert, Rabelais, Chateaubriand, Anatole France, which are superior to anything else that has ever been written. Here the national genius for expression conies to full fruition. Rarely does one find in French prose an idea that is obscure, a character whose psychology is not intel- ligible, a situation the outlines of which are not visible to the inner eye. Of Flaubert, Henry James says: " To be intensely definite and perfectly positive, to know so well what he meant that he could at every point strikingly and conclusively verify it, was the first of his needs." Moreover, style to the French is at once the garment and the method of thought. The control the French show in their writing is proverbial. Limpid, de- scriptive, harmonious, suave, picturesque, as the case may be, French prose is the elaboration of thought, the presentation of the idea in action, the concrete realization of the impression the author wishes to convey. " Le style est I'homme meme," said Buffon, and deflected as this phrase has been from its original meaning, the statement is often literally true. It is frequently in style, rather than in newness of idea, that the individuality of the French writer triumphs ; and the personal accent we look for in literature the French manifest not in what they say but in the way they say it. Hence, of the two kinds of prose, la bonne prose and la belle prose, France exemplifies the latter.

II

To simi up: the dominant traits of French literature are poise, harmony, reason, sjnnpathy; a sense of structure and a sense of delicacy ; a preference for ideas over things, but for ^ active social ideas, not metaphysical personal ones. French literature is an immediate reflection of the esprit gaulois: brilliant, vivacious, good-natured, ironic, curious of everything essentially human; as M. Lanson has said: "more sensible than sensuous, but more sensuous than ethical." A race singularly conscious of itself, firm in the conviction that:

all the world's a stage And all the men and women merely players.

INTRODUCTION 9

Consciously to play a part in life, to be an actor and at the same time an observer and a critic, never to take life too seriously nor yet to neglect it; this is the touchstone of the French point of view, and when all is said, French literature is its expression.

Many readers will therefore find in French authors a marked uniformity; or rather they will fail to see that variety must be sought in elaboration and detail, and not in background or theme. They will miss the more pronounced display of per- sonality, the greater emphasis on idiosyncrasy, to which English literature has made them accustomed — often overlooking the fact that they have been blind to the swift analysis, the care- ful distinctions, the exquisite sense of form wherewith the greatest French writers have set forth life. Thus, little can be gained by reading a French writer hastily or with insufficient knowledge of the language. The reader must weigh the phrases, evaluate the words, institute comparisons, take account of the fact that the highest art is apparently the most simple ; other- wise the literature of France will remain to him, in large meas- ure, a book sealed with seven seals.

Further, the intellectual and emotional relations of the French are not primarily moral, in the English sense of the word. This could hardly be expected of a nation which views life so clearly as contact with humanity or to which living itself is an " art." " Montaigne," says Emerson, " is the frankest and honestest of men." You cannot deal with the social ideas on a large scale and not be outspoken. On the whole, the French would rather boast of imaginary crimes than pose as more vir- tuous than they are. With us conduct is personal and there- fore inviolate ; with the French it is conventional and thus more easily shifted to others' shoulders. Moral lapses in the strict sense are more easily pardoned in France than lapses in good form or etiquette, since the former affect the individual and not society directly. Moliere remarks : " On veut bien etre me- chant; mais on ne veut point etre ridicule " — a distinctly social attitude, in harmony with his conception of comedy and its flay- ing of the social vices: affectation, hypocrisy, avarice and mis- anthropy. For Moliere's Le Misanthrope is a " comedy," how- ever tragic its chief character may seem to Anglo-Saxon eyes. On the other hand, in our workaday world nothing is a safer

10 INTRODUCTION

guide than le bon sens — and bon sens, as the social reason is called, has generally been uppermost in French character.

Lastly, the doctrinaire attitude of trusting to ideas is what the person of Germanic traditions finds hardest to imder- stand. We are the children of expediency. We react more readily to impulse or sentiment — to the " inner fact of things," as Carlyle used to say — and we distrust logic. Centuries of struggle with the material universe have impressed on us the fact that theory and practice are two very different things, and we would follow our instinct rather than reason the thing out.

Not so the French. The one definite link between the Gauls whom Caesar describes and the modern French is their passion for ideas. Being and thinking may be at variance, therefore it is the duty of man to make them one — that is, to identify facts with logic. In short, the problem of humanity is to make the universe rational. A dream, we should say. To this the French reply in the phrase of Descartes: " je pense, done je suis "; and in its length and breadth their literature is a con- scious striving to realize this ideal. In general, English litera- ture is more lyrical and varied, Italian literature possesses a richer and more voluptuous sense of beauty, Spanish literature is closer to the well-springs of popular inspiration in the ballad and the epic — but French literature is by all odds the most broadly human: it speaks to the large audience of les honnetes gens the world over, and for him who has mastered the French language it does so in terms that are at once stimulating to the mind and satisfying to the artistic sense.

PART I THE MIDDLE AGES

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BOOK I FEUDALISM AND CHIVALRY

CHAPTER I THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE EPIC

The Middle Ages in France extend from the treaty of Ver- dun in 843 to the expedition of Charles VIII into Italy in 1494. The first date represents the earliest recognition of the French as a nation, and the second their appearance as a world-power vying with other nations, notably with Spain and England, for the political control of Europe. Between these dates lies an inter- esting and significant development which, however transitional it may seem on the surface, has a distinct character of its own.

The ruling features of this era are: the Christianization of cul- ture, with its emphasis on man's sinful nature — the redemp- tion of which is considered essential ; the feudalization of society and the rise of chivalry as an expression of the new social order ; and, finally, the growth of city life under the control of a bour- geois class. The last division is coincident roughly with the Middle French period (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries) as distinguished from the Old French or medieval period proper. If we add to these features the growing importgince of Paris as a political and intellectual center, the chief elements of the en- tire epoch lie before us.

The collapse of the Empire of Charlemagne marks the begin- ning of France. With all his enthusiasm for Latin culture, Charlemagne was virtually a Teutonic monarch; so that when in 843 the country west of the Meuse, the Saone and the Rhone fell to the sceptre of Charles the Bald, it was the birth of a new nation that men witnessed. The language of this territory had received formal recognition a year earlier. The dialect of Popu- lar Latin spoken by Charles' subjects was no longer the same speech that the Franks had found when they invaded Gaul. It

13

14 THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE EPIC

had undergone changes in structure and especially in vocabulary, which, while in no sense identifying it with the lingua teutomca of the Germanic tribes, yet distinguish it sharply from the Lingua romana as spoken in the South. Some of these differences ap- pear in the Serments de Strasbourg of 842. Here, Louis the German and Charles the Bald pledge themselves in each other s language to maintain their respective interests agamst their brother Lothaire. Louis' part of this covenant is the earliest document extant in the langue d'ail or French, and although it has no literary value it is important evidence of the fact that a national speech is being formed.

But the kingdom of Charles is only partly France. The des- tinies of the country are henceforth distinct from those of the rest of continental Europe, but they are not yet strictly under French control. The imperial regime is weakened, notably by the spread of feudalism in the ninth century; its power, how- ever, is definitely broken only with the death of Louis V in 987. With the accession of Hugh Capet, Count of Paris, in that year the Carolingian epoch ends completely, and the history of France proper, of her institutions, her culture, her art and her literature, begins.

It is not our purpose to trace that history except as it is re- flected in literature. At the same time, it may be useful to re- Cultural ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ Duchy of France, or the territory Aspects immediately surroimding Paris, is the nucleus from

which the national development spread. Although Hugh Capet was nominally King of France, his real power extended little be- yond his own domain and those fiefs whose obedience he could command. Thus, broadly viewed, the history of medieval France was a struggle of the monarchy against feudal aggressi(m on the part of the great barons. It was a struggle waged with varying fortunes until one by one the great provinces are brought under the rule of the crown: Normandy in 1204, Anjou and Languedoc shortly after. Champagne in 1274, Provence in 1486; and, finally, a highly centralized state is established. In this nation the three dominant races of Europe are represented — the Nordic in Normandy and the northeast, the Alpine in Sa- voy and Auvergne, and the Mediterranean in the south. The French, therefore, are a racial epitome of Western Europe.

OLD FRENCH DIALECTS 15

Turning now from this hasty glance at history to the condi- tions of medieval society in general, we may note first: iJiat in place of a uniform language for the whole territory each prov- ince develops its own dialect. The main dialects are: Norman and Picard in the north, Champenois and Burgundian in the east; Angevin in the west, with Francian or the dialect of the Duchy of France in the center. While these dialects belong to the Umgue d'dil or Old French, just as the langue d'oc or Old Provengal consists of the various forms of southern speech, none of them is supreme during the medieval period. Each has its official and literary monuments — the Vie de Saint Alexis, Wflrce's Brut, the Lais of Marie de France are in Norman; a masterpiece like the Aucassin et Nicolette is in Pibard; the ro- mances of Crestien de Troyes are partly in Champenois, and so on. Not until the end of the twelfth century does Francian assume the leading role. And even then it is still far from being the sole literary speech, although the tendency is more and more in that direction. In 1173 Gamier de Pont-Sainte- Maxence (near Paris) is able to boast:

Mis langages est buens, car en France fui nez;

and the recognition of Paris in the thirteenth century as the intellectual capital of Europe does much to establish Francian — especially the speech of Paris — as standard French. Whoever knows his Chaucer will recall the famous quip on the Prioress inihe Canterbury Tales:

And Frensch sche spak ful faire and fetysly After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, For Frensch of Parys was to hire unknowe.

But important as it is, the question of language is secondary to the cultural aspects of the age. And in these the laity were not the prime movers. Latin, not French, was the language of the clergy, and the Middle Ages are primarily an ecclesiastical epoch. When Hugh Capet relinquished the rich abbeys of Saint- Denis, Saint-Germain-des-Pres, Saint-Riquier and Saint- Valery to thie clergy, he received in exchange the title of "De- fender of the Church," and France became, if not the focus, at least the mainstay of Roman Christianity.

16 THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE EPIC

The influence of the church shows itself on every hand: in the development of new lands and out-of-the-way districts, in the building of monasteries and churches, in giving impetus to the movement which leads to the crusades in Spain and in the East, but above all in the spread of such learning and culture as the age allowed. It was the clergy who composed the music, developed the arts of MS illumination, of woodcarving and the like, and it is to them we owe much of the classical literature that survived the destruction of Rome by the barbarians.

It is but natural that they gave to their work, secular as well as sacred, an ecclesiastical interprdiation. Alone responsible for man's spiritual guidance, they reinterpreted — as every age has done — the past in terms of the present. But they had no sense of history, or rather their history was the history of the " soul," as revealed in the Bible and the writings of the Church Fathers. Thus they saw life mainly from one angle, that of salvation; and all created things, including Nature herself, as- sumed a symbolic, theological value. To them Aristotle was no longer an independent thinker, a philosopher who had sought the boundaries of truth, but the inventor of the laws of reason; and reason was given man, they thought, to apprehend the faith. Through faith alone, it was thought, the human being attained to complete knowledge, the wisdom of God which passeth imdra*- standing. Credo ut intelligam (" I believe in order that I may understand ") , said St. Anselm, a statement that we may con- trast with the Cogito ergo sum (" I think, therefore I am ") of Descartes.

Thus the medieval method is exegesis. The sage is he who can interpret the divine order in things by discovering their underlying sensus or " meaning " — the idea recurs in the Old French romances (see Ch. II). And the dominant philosophical idea is that of " fixity." For the church taught that the universe, in its narrow scope as men then knew it, according to the Ptole- maic system, was limited. There is no conscious effort to change it, to widen its horizons, to better its conditions materially. The highest aim is the liberation from sin, its avoidance or its expia- tion. But since the age is at once too sophisticated and too childlike to grasp in full measure the spiritual side of Chris- tianity, it conceives of it picturesquely, in terms of a material

FEUDAL SOCIETY 17

Heaven, a material Hell and a material Purgatory, in hier- archies of saints and demons, in pilgrimages, fastings and physi. cal suffering. He who gave ahns, gave them primarily to re- deem himself, not to benefit his neighbor. A crucified Saviour, a Christ victorious through physical pain, is the quintessence of the mystical, medieval spirit.

But if the ch\u*ch dominates society in its outlook upon life, the forms of the church are themselves the product of social forces. These are of course feudal. The guiding force of feud- alism is obligation. The freeman and small proprietor, unable to guard his own interests, " commended himself " to his more powerful neighbor, and thereupon received back his property in the shape of a " fief," for the loan of which he promised service or money, or both. That is, feudalism is a mutual guarantee of person and property in an age of weak government. It flour- ished in France from about the ninth to the fourteenth century, and it gave to medieval life its distinctive hierarchal form.

The result was that, while in the tenth and eleventh centuries the political power of the church is still great and that of the king — in reality little more than a tribal leader — is weak, the twelfth century witnessed a notable change. Not only does feudalism become a national institution but society itself con- forms to its ideals, and the distinctions between noble and serf, knight and yeoman, courtois (" courtly ") aiid vilain (" vul- gar") are definitely worked out. Thus four great classes or castes arise: (1) the nobles, (2) the clergy, (3) the townsfolk or bourgeois and (4) the peasantry. In addition, the crusades begin and chivalry as a military and social organization spreads over Eiu-ope. In short, polite or courtois society comes into being. All this gives to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a cultural florescence in which art and literature share. But, like everything else, human institutions decay; by degrees the mon- archy allies itself with the lower classes, especially the bour- geoisie, the power of the great nobles wanes and feudalism dis- integrates. Finally, with the fall of the feudal order, the medieval " fixity " is broken and the Renaissance sets in. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries mark the beginning of this change.

The literature of such an epoch is necessarily one-sided. For

18 THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE EPIC

the emphasis is on one ideal, faith in the established order, and on the expression of one dominant emotion, that of honor or obligation to one's trust. The knight does homage to his liege, the courtier to his lady, the cleric to his God, in much the same manner and in about the same terms. But because of this restriction the literature is vivid and intense, poetic and imaginative rather than real, and, like all mystical literature, it is fraught with personal longings and with the aspiration, in the words of St. Augustine, " to grasp the infinite within the vessel of the finite." In the second place, it is didactic and formalistic. It moralizes on life, lays down a code for human conduct, even in the affairs of the heart, and neglects the intrinsic values of life itself, such as beauty, individual happiness and justice. Nothing could be more significant than the numerous bestiaries, lapidaries and astrologies (computi) in which the Middle Ages sought to reveal the symbolic or ethical meaning of Nature her- self. When the reaction begins, the note that is heard is satire and irony, a reflection of Gallic common-sense, voicing its pro- test in the fabliavx and the beast-epic. Thus the divisions of medieval literature are mainly these:

(1) The saints' legends, the epics or chansons de geste, di- dactic treatises of various kinds, and the serious drama. These are mostly clerical ; at least, their source of inspiration is the church, directly in the saints' legends and the drama, or indirectly in the epic.

(2) The various forms of the lyric, — largely an importa- tion from Provence — the romances of chivalry and the alle- gory. Here the inspiration comes largely from aristocratic feudal society, or what we may call by tiie generic name of courtly or courtois.

(3) The increasing current of bourgeois expression, appear- ing first in the fabliavx and the beast-epic, then in the second part of the Roman de la Rose, and finally in various produc- tions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

In October, 878, the discovery of the supposed bones of a Christian saint was made in Barcelona, Spain. This event led to the composition in French of the chm-ch " sequence " of Sainte Eulalie — so far as we know, the first French work of literary

CHANSONS DE GESTE 19

merit. It inaugurates the large literature in the vernacular, in- spired by the passion of piety, of which the saints' lives of Saint Leger (tenth century) and Saint Alexis (about 1050)

® ^^^ are early, and to some extent illustrious, examples. A short poem on the Passion (tenth century) should be added to these as showing the beginnings of French literary composition. But whatever incidental interest these works may have, they do not yet reflect a truly national spirit. To find this we must turn to the French epic, or chansons de geste.

The title geste (Lat. gesta) originally meant deeds, and the " songs of deeds " are the products of the race which Hugh Capet and his successors were called upon to govern. As the number of epic poems increased, the jongleurs or " minstrels " who sang them arranged them in families or " cycles," each headed by the name of an ancestor. Thus the poems concerned witlT] Charlemagne and his family went under the name of Pepin, or the geste du roi; others treating of the south of France and its struggle with the Saracen invaders, under the names of Garin de Monglane or Guillaume d'Orange; while those relating the deadly strife of the feudal barons among themselves were classed under the name of Doon de Mayence. But this classification, \ probably made long after the composition of the actual epic, fs conventional rather than real. The various groups are inter- related, and other groups besides those mentioned existed. A separate cycle is that of the crusades. To it belong such poems as the Chanson de Jerusalem and the Chanson d'Antioche, and linked to the crusade-cycle are romantic compositions like the Chevalier au cygne — the story of Lohengrin — and Oodejroi de Bouillon, the ancestor of the House of Brabant. In the four- teenth century this last group became the object of burlesque and parody, a fate that awaited all epic and chivalric expres- sion at the close of the Middle Ages.

In form the chansons de geste consist of laisses or stanzas, composed at first on one vowel-rime or assonance, and later on one rime, for each laisse, the whole being set to music. The stanzas are of imequal length and are Written, generally but not always, in ten-syllable verse, which is the heroic verse of the French until Ronsard's time, when it was superseded by the twelve-syllable, or Alexandrine.

20 THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE EPIC

Since the epic celebrates heroes for the most part contem- poraneous with Charlemagne, who himself is the focus of a group of poems, the theory early arose that the epic is Germanic in origin and inspiration. Of this theory there are several varik- tions. One view is that the Frankish invaders of Gaul sang epico-lyric songs or cantilenae — somewhat like our English ballads — and that, although none of these is extant in the orig- inal form, the epic itself is due to a combination of them made by the jongleurs. Another hypothesis is that there existed a sort of " poetic history " constructed out of the legendary remnants of the Germanic past, and that this, transmitted either by writ- ing or by word of mouth, inspired the extant poems, none of which antedate the close of the eleventh century.

The modern view combats these earlier theories by aflBrming that the French epic is virtually contemporaneous in origin with the twelfth-century chansons. In other words, the epic — it is now thought — was the immediate product of the warlike condi- tions of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in France: the period of pilgrimages to holy places, of expeditions against the Sara- cens in Spain, and of the wars of the crusades. The part that Charlemagne has in it is a recollection of the past, but a con- scious one, supplied by proselyting monks from monastery chronicles and shreds of oral tradition for ecclesiastical and national ends. Thus the chansons de geste would have origi- nated at the hands of some poet along one of the great pilgrimage routes leading to St. James of Compostela in Spain, St. Peter's in Rome, or some shrine within the borders of France. In any case, French feudalism and the Christian chiu-ch combine to make the epic what it is, and whatever view we take as to its ultimate origin, the actual epic belongs to the twelfth century.

The greatest and probably the earliest example of the epic is the Chanson de Roland, in 4002 assonanced verses. Found in The this form in a manuscript of the end of the twelfth

" Roland " century (now in the Bodleian library at Oxford) , the work itself must be nearly a century older. The poet Wace (in 1160) afiBrms that the minstrel Taillefer chanted a Song of Ro- land at Hastings in 1066. Later versions occur in the Latin prose Pseudo-Turpin, which is part of a pilgrimage guide to Compo- stela, and in the Carmen de proditione Ouenonis, emphasizing

THE SONG OF ROLAND 21

the treachery of Ganelon. In its French fonn, however, the Roland stands at the threshold of a literature of which it is one of the most inspired and characteristic expressions.

The story is simple and fairly commonplace. For seven years Charles " the king, our mighty emperor " has battled against the Saracens in Spain. Bereft of his strongholds, Marsile, the Saracen — who differs from a Christian only by being a pagan — sends delegates to Charles to promise peace falsely. The embassy is headed by Blancandrin, a wise pagan, who conspires with Ganelon for the death of Roland, nephew of Charles and bravest of the French. Ganelon is no coward, but he hates Roland for the obvious reason that Roland, rich in worldly pos- sessions, is his step-son:

Qo set hem bien que jo sui tis padrastres.

Thus Ganelon's hatred becomes the ruin of the French.

Won by the promises of Marsile, Charles withdraws his main army across the Pyrenees to celebrate Michaelmas at Aix, the minster-town. Roland, left behind in Spain with the rear- guard of 20,000, including the flower of French knighthood (the Twelve Peers) , is attacked at Roncevaux near the defiles of the Pyrenees by an overwhelming host of Saracens. Oliver, his boon companion, who personifies wisdom as Roland does bravery —

Rodlanz est proz et Oliviers est sages

Roland is brave and Oliver is wise —

scents the danger and pleads with his friend, but in vain, to summon the Emperor's aid. The French are massacred. One by one they fall until of the Twelve Peers only two or three are left. Then, at last, Roland blows his horn and, with his failing strength, summons Charles:

Rodlanz at mis I'difant a sa boche, Empeint lo bien, par grant vertut lo sonet. Halt sent li pui e la voiz ert molt longe, Granz xxx. liwes I'odirent il respondre.

Unto his lips he raised the ivory horn, And from his breast drew forth a mighty blast; High are the hills the soaring strain breaks o'er And thirty leagues the answering echoes roll.

>.

22 THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE EPIC

In a last effort to break his sword in order to save it from the pagans, Roland sacrifices himself for his king, his country and his honor.

Charles braves Ganelon's scorn to hasten to the rescue. But, although the Almighty arrests the sun in its course to grant him time for vengeance, when Charles arrives Roland is dead. Ab- solved of his sins by Turpin of Rheims, the archbishop, he lies amid his fallen companions, with his face turned toward France:

Deus i tramist son angele cherubin E saint Michiel de la Mer del Peril, Ensembl'od els sainz Gabriel i vint; L'amne del conte portent en paredis.

God sent to Viim His angel cherubim, Saint Michael of the Peril of the Sea, Together with them came holy Gabriel. To Paradise they bear the Count's soul home.

Having crushed the Saracens, Charles returns to France with the bodies of his beloved knights. Aide, Roland's betrothed, falls dead at Charlemagne's feet. Ganelon is brought to jus- tice and torn to pieces by four stallions, while the Emperor under the weight of his sorrows, and despite his two himdred years, lives wearily on.

Historically the poem rests on the slightest of foimdations — the expedition of Charles into Spain in 778, an episode of which was the destruction of his rear-guard by the Basques in the Pyrenees. Among the slain, according to the chronicler Einhard, who reports the event, was Hruodlandus, Britanrdci limitis jrrae- fectus; that is, Roland prefect of the March of Brittany.

Concerning the author we know next to nothing, save that he may be identical with the Turoldus mentioned at the end of the last laisse:

Ci fait la geste que Turoldus declinet. Here ends the poem which Turoldus relates.

But whoever he was (whether or not an archbishop of Bayeux by that name), his poetic gift was of the highest; to this his poem bears ample testimony.

In the first place, the poem is a unit in subordinating details to the theme of Christian feudal valor. Religion and

THE SONG OF ROLAND 23

patriotism are one; the knights of Charles fight for the greater glory of Christian France: la dolce France, la Tare major-.

Faien ont tort e Chrestieu ont drsit

Wrong the pagans, right the Christians are —

this idea, in one form or anoither, rmis through the whole poem. The narrative consists of three parts: the treachery of Ganelon, the pride and loyalty of Roland, the vengeance and sorrow of Charles. Clear as crystal, these motives emerge from the mass of episode and control the action. Thus the poem has an obvious kinship with French Classical tragedy, showing that' clarity of outline and a sense of proportion are characteristic of French literary' art from the beginning.

In the second place, the characters are ideal contrasts. The fact that Rolan3 has the typical epic motive of desmesure or " lack of measure " renders the work intensely dramatic. When the pagan messengers have spoken, Roland designates Ganelon as the return-messenger to Marsile. But Ganelon is equal to the part; enraged at his step-son's presumption, he singles him out for vengeance. Ganelon is no commonplace traitor: he does not directly betray the French; he not only (braves Marsile, he defies him, as any follower of Charles would ; but he cannot forgive Roland, and in his passion he makes Mar- ' sile believe that the destruction of the rear-guard will destroy the French. Again, Oliver, who represents reason, remains reasonable to the end. In the eleventh hour his logic tells hun that Roland is responsible for the French defeat, and in his affection for his friend he mingles the cruelty of a reproach, for thus his conscience compels him to do. One of the most poign- ant scenes in the poem is when Roland and Oliver, in the face of death, speak the words of their hearts:

Qo dist Rodlanz: "Per quel me portez ire?" E oil respont: "Com proz vos lo feistes, Kar vasselages par sens nen est folie: Mielz valt mesure que ne fait estoltie. Franceis sont mort par voetre legerie."

Then Roland said: " Why do you bear me ill? "

And he replied: "Bravely you fought for us, ,

Yet fealty's not courage uncontrolled

But measure which through madness goes not blind.

The French are slain: your foUy is to blame."

24 THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE EPIC

Thus each character is true to his nature; Roland to his un- measured prowess, Oliver to his calm, cool reason, Ganelon to his insensate hatred, and Charles, most to be pitied of all, to his sense of solitary grandeur amid the warring factions of his race. To this extent has the poet seen in legend the working out of human character and fate — and this is the acme of epic art.

The style of the Roland is of a piece with its elemental char- acter. The thought does not flow, it comes in leaps and bounds, or, as Gaston Paris has said, " par une suite d'explosions succes- sives, toujours arretees court et toujours reprenant avec soudainete." The lyric mood, intensely simple and over, powering, dominates the whole; yet separate lyric passages are few and generally conventional. Transitions from one episode to another are abrupt, as befits their dramatic quality, but this again is the abruptness of detail, " like a broken sea with a larger wave moving under it." So, too, the language of the ^ poem is lapidary; each verse, if possible, is a imit. Metaphors are rare; when used they designate an act, as when the dying Roland proffers his gauntlet to the angel Gabriel. In short, the

^ language is action rather than description; like the tnmipet-call of Roland it speaks to the ear, since the Roland was to be sung, not read. When, however, the poet does depict, as in giving the

^ setting, he uses simple, bold strokes. To the pagan messengers Charles appears thus:

Desoz un pin delez un aiglentier Un faldestoel i out, fait tot d'ormier, La siet li reis Id dolce France tient; Blanche at la barbe e tot florit le chief, Gent at le cors e lo contenant fier: S'est qui'I demandet ne'l estoet enseignier.

Beneath a pine, beside a wild white thorn, An armchair stands, inlaid with mother-of-pearl" There sits the king who governeth sweet France; White is his beard, all hoary is his head; Graceful is he and proud his countenance. Who asks his name? He needs no pointing out.

Or if we turn to the background of the battle, the pass above Roncevaux, its bleak outlines are revealed in:

Halt sent li pui e li val tenebros, Les roches bises, li destroit merveillos.

THE SONG OF ROLAND 25

High are the hills, the valleys filled with gloom; Gray-brown the cliffs, and wonderful the passes.

As for the social aspects of the work, these are clearly feudal. The characters are " barons," even Turpin, the archbishop, be- ing a vassal of Charles. But the feudalism depicted is early, reaching back possibly to the tenth century. The Roland is not^ courtois in the sense we defined above. The manners of the knights are crude, the tribal or family bond is strong; Roland is a typical " sister's son " (a frequent character in primitive literature in general) and the Twelve Peers represent an institu- tion known as compagnonnage, which hardly extended beyond the eleventh century. When not fighting, these paladins of France play warlike games; the old men play chess and the young men fence or joust:

E escremissent oil bachelier legier.

Of the refining influence of women there is scarce a trace. Says Oliver to Roland in their final interview:

Se puis vedeir ma gente soror Aide, Vos ne jerreiz ja mais entre sa brace.

If I could see my lovely sister Aide,

Thou should'st ne'er lie within her arms' embrace.

And Charles can think of no gentler consolation for the grief- stricken Aide than to offer his son Louis as a substitute for- Roland. Surely the Roland, with its fighting bishops and its Valkyrie-like angels, ready to carry the souls of the valiant to Paradise, has no place for the sophisticated emotions we asso- ciate with a cultivated form of society.

Thus the Roland is not lacking in art; indeed, technically it shows remarkable artistry, as we have seen. But the point of view it represents is simple, at times fairly naive ; the emotions ■ it breathes are elemental, and its plane of life is primitive and direct. In this it shows the influence of the Latin works on the first Crusade.

The atmosphere of elemental contrast pervades all except the latest forms of epic. In the Pelerinage de Charlemagne a Con- stantinople (before 1150) the serious tone of the Roland gives way to a spirit of braggadocio and rollicking fun. Incidentally

26 THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE EPIC

the work, which is written in twelve-syllable laisses, accounts for the presence at Saint-Denis of the relics of the Passion. Charles, who wears the crown at Saint-Denis, asks the Queen whether there can be a more imposing monarch er epics ^j^^^ himself. Rashly she names Hugo of Constan- tinople. At once Charles anl the Twelve Peers journey to the Orient for the purpose of disproving the Queen's assertion. In Jerusalem, which they visit first, they occupy the chairs formerly used by Christ and the apostles, and the sight of them thus seated so overwhelms a Jew that he straightway seeks baptism. And in Constantinople, where they linger on the return, the relics which they had acquired enable them to execute a series of preposterous boasts or gabs. Thus King Hugo, majestic as he is, gladly does homage and admits that a Frangais de France is no ordinary mortal. The poem epitomizes its particular note of vanity in the verse:

Ja ne vendrons en terre, nostra ne seit 11 los.

Never shall we come into a land where renown is not ours.

The Pelerinage, then, is a popular counterpart to the more in- spired Roland; it is a market place epic addressed to the popu- lace of a great church fair, the Endit (Lat. indictilm) of Saint- Denis, near Paris, and it aims to amuse rather than to uplift.

But, in general, the epic muse is tragic, " reiterating and re- inforcing the heroic motives," and glorifying France and the Second church. This can be seen in the second or William

Group of Orange cycle, the central theme of which is the

exaltation of Christianity: essaucier la sainte crestiente. Linked to this motive is the idea of loyalty to the Carolingian dynasty, tottering to its fall in the successors of Charles. For instance, the Cowonnement de Louis (about 1130) shows us William hastening to the aid of Charles' son, Louis, who is too timid to grasp the reins of power single-handed. William takes the feeble King under his protection, kills off the usurpers and marries Louis to his own sister. Yet Louis, characteristically weak, is ungrateful:

En grant bamage fu Loois entree; Quant il fu riches, Guillelme n'en sot gre.

In great domain had Louis been installed; When he was strong, to William he bore no love.

OTHER EPICS 27

Again, in the Aliscans (close to 1150) the Saracen host is vic- torious and the battle-field is strewn with Christian dead (a fiction suggested by the Graeco-Roman cemetery at Aries). William, who despite his heroism is unable to rescue his favorite nephew, Vivien, is forced to seek refuge at Orange, where Guiborc, his wife, fails to recognize him, partly because she cannot believe that William would have fled. On hearing of the slaughter of all his companions, she persuades him to seek the King's aid at Saint-Denis. At first the latter turns a 'deaf ear to his appeal, imtil cowed by William's wrath Louis finally yields, as he always does, and sends assistance. William's final victory is due to the help of a burlesque creature, Renouart — the Morgante of the French epic — and the second half of the work is a mock heroic, in which the in- spiration flags. The story of William survives also in an early form, the Chanqun de GuUlelme — which some scholars place above the Roland in merit. This is rather the " draft of an epic," interesting because of its vigor and primitive traits, but hardly the literary equal of the chansons proper.

The third division of the epic, the cycle of Doon de Mayence, deals with the feuds between the great barons and the crown, Third ^°^ i® "^^i ^^ *^^ delineation of character. Excel-

Group lent examples are Raoul de Cambrai and Girard de

Roussillon (extant in versions composed after 1150).

A " sister's son " like Roland, Raoul has strong attachments to his imperial uncle. But Louis, unlike Charlemagne, for- sakes his nephew's cause. Grown to manhood, Raoul is driven to demand of Louis his just inheritance. Louis promises and then wavers in favor of another. This act of perfidy so in- furiates the hero that he destroys the town of Origini and its cloister of nuns, although in true medieval fashion he refuses to eat meat on Friday. Among the innocents who perish is the mother of Bemier, the " boon companion " of Raoul. Ber- nier breaks his bond of companionship in order to kill Raoul, and the vendetta that ensues between the families of the two heroes lasts for years. Finally a reconciliation is effected, in which the King also pays a forfeit. In mere force of conception this story is perhaps unique among the chansons de geste. Al- though it fails to depict any imaginative passion, it is supremely

28 THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE EPIC

tragic in its realism and the barbaric truthfulness of its utter- ance. The character of Bemier, "dull, expostulatory, help- less," is an excellent example of the hero marked by fate.

The church and the pilgrimage routes again play a role m Girard de Romsillon. Here the strife is between Charles the Bald and his most powerful vassal in the east, for Rous- sillon is placed by the poet near Vezelay, famous for its shrine t)f Mary Magdalen. Charles and Girard had married sisters, but Charles' wife was once the betrothed of Girard, who had yielded her to his liege as an act of fealty, in return for which service the King gave Girard certain property rights. These Charles violates, and a long and bitter struggle follows. In the end Charles triumphs, Roussillon is razed to the ground, and Girard and his faithful wife flee into the forest of the Ar- dennes. Through the influence of a hermit, Girard now re- nounces the world and becomes a charcoal-burner, while Bertha, his wife, earns a pittance by sewing. But the sight of her husband's degradation moves Bertha to appeal to the Queen, and a reconciliation with Charles is brought about. Once more Girard's wrath (his desmesure) flares up and he holds the King at bay. At last, however, his proud spirit is broken, and both he and Bertha devote the remainder of their lives to building churches (Vezelay and Pothieres), in honor of her who at Bethany washed the Saviour's feet. Here we see clearly the process whereby chronicle-history, saint's legend and monastic foundation combine to produce a literary work of enduring human interest. The Girard de Roussillon is typi- cal of the composition of many a French epic, and the ecclesi- astical and feudal ideas on which it rests are on the whole the controlling ideas of the first half of the twelfth century, when king and baron, castle and monastery, were struggling with one another for the possession of the land.

Out of the welter of this striving the great cultural up- heaval of the second half of the century was to come. Mon- astic schools and feudal castles arose on every hand. Polite society took form in definite molds. Women began to play a part in the affairs of state and gave tone to the ideals of which they themselves were the object. The new era is still war- like, yet war is no longer an opposition of popular forces,

OTHER EPICS 29

the conflict of rival clans, but a social game, waged according to fixed rules: those of chivalry. In this period epic desmesure or " excess of character " is no longer the inspiration of narra- tive. The heroic gives place to the sentimental and adventur- ous ; and gradually epic poetry dies out or becomes merged with a new genre, the " romance." Thus Huon de Bordeaux (about 1220), with its main theme of the, story of Oberon, is an example of the heroic followed by the purely fanciful ob magical; whereas Aiol (before 1250) transfuses an epic back- ground with romantic motifs and a vein of real humor. Finally, after 1250, heroic motivation disappears altogether, and the chansons de geste translated into prose become a part of the romantic narrative lore of Europe,

CHAPTER II THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE

As the epic was set to music and sving, so also there were in twelfth-century France songs of personal or " lyric " inspiration. An essential feature of these songs is that originally they were written as accompaniments to the dance {la carole), so that " the leader would sing the successive lines, while the rest of the dancers holding hands all joined in the refrain." Of this custom our modern May-dances, with the crowning of the May Queen, are a survival. In the Middle Ages, however, such festive gatherings were popular in a wide sense, ana lyric songs set to the dance were the diversion of castle and bower fully as much as of the people. In principle, then, we may say that the lyric originates with the folk — provided we bear in mind that the individual poet or singer (the jongleur) was capable of using it for his own ends and of infusing it with a spirit that was anything but popular. A dividing line is hard to draw; and the term " folk-poetry " often implies no more than that the particular lyric deals with traditional themes, dating from a time when there was no formal division between polite society and the people as such.

At the same time, the Old French lyric undoubtedly owes more to the influence of Latin models than has commonly been admitted. Such an influence would be especially strong in the south of France, where the juxtaposition of springtide, the nightingale and love is a recurrent feature of Latin verse. Ob- serve, as an example, the last quatrain of a Latin song (eleventh century) from one of the manuscripts of St. Martial's at Limoges:

Jam nix glaciesque liquescit, Folium et herba virescit, Philomela jam cantat in alto, Ardet amor cordis in antro.

30

LYRIC POETRY 31

Now are melted ice and snow, Trees and grass their verdure show, Philomela sings on high, Loving hearts burn secretly.

Thus there arise two classes of twelfth-century French lyrics: those in which the emotion is presented objectively as part of a popular dramatic setting^ and those in which a fixed subjec- tive experience determines the burden and the form of the song.

The first class embraces the northern French types: the chan- son a toile or d'histoire, the reverdie, the chanson de mal mariee Northern ^^^ ^^^ pastowelle. As a rule, these "are "mdepen- Types dent of southern, Provengal influence. While often

intended for sophisticated audiences, they betray their popular origin by the use of dance refrains, and they are addressed to society at large, without any expresse3' distinction of caste. Their form is narrative, the love experience being told as a story.

Thus the chanson a toUe is virtually a ballad, a spinning ori weaving song adapted to women at their work. The theme is' a maiden's love for a knight, Doette's for Doon, Gaiette's for Gerard, Eremborc's for Renald — notice the alliteration of names — and the whole is presented as a kind of miniature drama in stanzas of ten-syllable lines, ending in a refrain of one, two or three shorter verses. The beginning of La belle Doette may be regarded as typical:

Bele Doette as fenestres se siet, Lit en un livre, mais au cuer ne I'en tient;' De son ami Doon h ressovient Qu'en autres terres est alez tomoier, E or en ai dol.

Fair Doette at the casement sat, Read in a book, but in her heart is sadji To Doon her thoughts turn back Who's gone away to fight, alack!

How sorrowful am I. ,;

Closer to the dance in movement are the reverdies and the chansons de mal mariee. The former, as the title indicates, have reference to the spring-tide, the season of love and joy;

32 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE

whereas the latter, pungent and cynical in tone, embody the lament of those wedded unhappily. Here, as elsewhere in this early work, the protagonist is a woman — who in the chansons de mal mariee usually consoles herself by taking a lover.

With the pastourelle we approach a type more complicated indeed but having considerable inherent charm. It has, more- over, a corresponding southern form in the Provengal pastorela or pastoreta. The name refers to the " shepherdess " whose graces the poem celebrates. But again the popular origin is remote, since the extant pastourelles all halve an aristocratic tinge. The poet, generally a knight, while riding through the coimtry meets a shepherdess whose love he implores. When she re- mains obdurate to his entreaties, it is because Marion — the name of the rustic belle — wishes to remain true to Robin or Perrin or Guiot; indeed, the latter at times comes to her rescue and attacks the importunate nobleman, frequently to the re- gret of the girl. A typical setting is the follomng, though most pastourelles have a more involved stanza form:

L'autrier me chevalchoie Toute ma senturelle, Trovai en mei ma vole Cortoise pastourelle; Lou cors ait bel et avenant,

La color vermeillete. Ausi tost come je la vi,

E je li prix a faire.

As I rode forth the other day,

I found, what would you guess?

Upon the winding country-way

A charming shepherdess.

Her shapely form brought joy to me,

Her glpwing color too;

And stopping there, her close to see,

I straightway 'gan to woo.

The knight wins his suit. Despite the fear of her relatives the lady succumbs to his beau parler and forgets her rustic Robin in the arms of the new lover. The delightful Jeu de Robin et Marion by Adam de la Halle (thirteenth century) dramatizes the main situation of the pastourelle.

LYRIC POETRY 33

By degrees, and almost simultaneously with the objective lyric, a new spirit manifests itself. In 1150, signs of a great Southern cultural change are everywhere evident. The risei Types of chivalry, noted above (Ch. I), and the develop- I

ment of a courtois state of society, attended by the growth of | great school centers like Le Bee, Chartres and Paris, and en- CGiu-aged, along artistic lines, by the rivalry of the courts of Champagne, Blois, Flanders and England — all of this gave to the new age a distinction second only to that of the later Renais- sance. The century which follows, the thirteenth, represents the florescence of the Middle Ages, in many ways as complete an expression of the French national genius as the Classical age of Louis XIV.

The quickening impulse came from the region associated with Provencal or the langue d'oc, whose dominion had reached as far north as Poitou. From Poitou came William IX (1087- 1127), the earliest known trobador (the Provengal form for trcuvere, meaning " poet ") and the grandfather of the light- hearted Eleanor, successively queen of Louis VII of France and Henry II of England, and mother of Marie of Champagne and Alice of Blois. Thus the avenue northward was established, and the Provengal lyric was the literary baggage of the poets who travelled over it: in the suite of Eleanor, the troubadours Bernart de Ventadom and Bertran de Born, and in that of Marie, Rigaud ^"Barbezieux. But these noble ladies were themselves adepts in the gai saber, as the new poetic art was called; and Marie herself suggested topics to Crestien de Troyes (see below), while in her behalf Andre le Chapelain (Andreas Capellanus) wrote the new Ovid of the age, the Tractatus Amoris or De Amore.

In this way the subjective lyric was a poetry of " art " in our modem sense of the word. Its point of departure is the identi- fication of love and religion: Omnia vincit amor. Only in place of the piu-ely sensuous ideal of antiquity, the Provengal lover mingled with the reactions of sense the conviction of the un- attainable, and like the mystic before his God he humbled him- self before his lady. The result was a philosophical interpre- tation of love as the sovereign or infinite good, and the development of a system whereby the lover became the perfect

34 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE

worshipper of his unattainable mistress. This system had its precepts, its laws, its remedies — in a word, its code — complex in the extreme and administered by Love, whom Dante called " the Lord of Terrible Aspect."

With such an ideal, poetry becomes subtilized and thoroughly conventional. Conceits and euphuisms abound. Every natural note is banished as dishonorable and vulgar, or vilain. The true courtois glows only with an illicit passion, for love and marriage are regarded as inimical. On the other hand, the gain in poetic expression is considerable. The psychology of emotion is worked out in detail and with some variety; and it is note- worthy that the emotion depicted is not without a real back- groimd in aristocratic circles, for the Provengal lyric is not of the people. But the greatest triimaph of the new genre was in artistic form, and the best known varieties of.Provengal verse were adopted almost without a change by the rest of cultured Europe. The German Minnesong is largely an importation from Provence.

Of the southern forms which found favor in French the most popular are: the chanson (Prov. canson), the tenson (Prov. ten- son) and the jeu-parti (Prov. joe partit) . The first of these is a lyric of five or six stanzas, usually with the rime-scheme abab- baba, and ending in a half stanza, called envoi (Prov. tomada), in which the poet draws his conclusions and apostrophizes his lady or his patron. The themes of the chanson vary, some being suggested by the crusades. Thus Conon de Bethune (1180), who was a well known trouvere and also a crusader, begins one of his chansons as follows:

Ahi, amors, com dure departie

Me covient faire a perdre la millor,

Qui onques fust amee ne servie!

Deus me ramainst a li par sa dolgor,

Si voirement com j'en part a dolor I

Deus! qu'ai-je dit? ja ne m'en part je mie:

Se li cors va servir Nostra Signer,

Toz li miens cuers remaint en sa baillie.

Oh, Love! how hard it is to sever Myself from her whose sweet embrace I fondly woo, forsaking never: God bring me back, I beg this grace

LYRIC POETRY 35

As truly as I part in sorrow. What did I say? I do not part: My body serves the Lord tomorrow, But with my love remains my heart!

Gracefully as it is used here, this conceit of the wandering body (cots) and the captive heart (cuers) is characteristic of courtly literature, and shows how easy it was for the poet to glide from the facts of life into the subtleties of the mind and turn art into rhetoric.

The acme of this tendency is reached in the tenson and the jeu parti. These are debates or contests in verse on some prob- lem of love casuistry; such as, should a lover prefer the mar- riage or the death of his beloved? which lover has the greater chance, one who is blind, or one who is deaf and dumb? In form these types resemble the chanson, except that in the tenson different persons, feigned or real, sing alternate stanzas, while in the jeu parti one poet offers to another the alternate side of a debate. Here poetry degenerates and becomes a foster cljild of scholasticism, with which these types are contemporary. Gace Brule, Thibaut de Navarre (the royal lover of Blanche of Cas- tille), and the Chatelain de Coucy (in legend the lover of the Dame de Fayel), are among those who plied this difficult art. Their game was to toy with ideas, and in them we have the fore- runners of the preciosity and Petrarchizing of a later day.

Fortunately not all of the courtly poetry moved in these arti- ficial channels, nor was lyric expression henceforth confined Other Lyric *° courtois circles. For poetry is ever ready to Types draw on popular soiu-ces, just as the people are will-

ing to adopt courtly forms and modify them. Thus the avbe (Prov. alba) or " morning song " maintains the externals of a set type with some freedom of expression, so that the situation it embodies is still apparent in Romeo and Juliet:

"Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day: It was the nightingale and not the lark, That pierced the fearful hoUow of thine ear: Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree: Believe me, love, it was the nightingale."

More varied in form than its Provengal model is the salut d'amour, a verse epistle, beginning with a greeting to the lady

36 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE

for whom the poet writes. An adept in this type was the cele- brated Philippe de Beaumanoir (1250), known widely for hie code of laws, the Coutumes du Beauvaisis. Other measures, like the motet, descort and lai lyrique are musical in origin, deriving from the sequences of the church, although the lai lyrique, which had a notable practitioner in Colin Muset, a jongleur who moved in the courtly world (thirteenth century), may have arisen from the musical accompaniment of the Breton contes (see p. 52).

Finally, a freer spirit breathes in those forms which, while based once more on popular dance refrains, later become courtly in tone. Such are the rondels, from which the more modem triolet and rondeau descend; and especially the hallete, subse- quently known by the name ballade. The rondeau remains essentially a one-strophe composition, while the ballade consists of three strophes having the same rimes and ending in the same refrain, to which there was later added an envoi. With the rise of the literary guilds or pwys (from the Latin podium or " hill ") in Arras and other northern cities, the ballade and the rondeau become the dominant lyric forms, especially in the hands of the fourteenth-century poets, Guillaimie de Machaut and Eustache Deschamps (see Bk. II, Ch. 1). And so they re- main until displaced, in the Renaissance, by the sonnet. In them the characteristic grace of French verse appears anew, and there is something almost national in the suspensive phras- ing in which these forms excel. A modern triolet by Austin Dobson reproduces this quality well:

I intended an ode

But it turned into triolets, It began a la mode, I intended an ode; But Rose crossed the road,

With a bunch of fresh violets. I intended an ode

But it turned into triolets.

From the courtly lyric it is but a short step to the lyricism 1 of narrative. The courtois ladies who were enamored of the The Rise of ^""^ of Provence also reacted to the wonder of the the Romance Orient, now made accessible by the crusades, and to the tales of marvels and enchantments the crusaders brought

ORIGINS OF FICTION 37

back to France. It was with a new interest that they heard the legend of Troy, the adventures of Aeneas, and all that an- cient story had made illustrious. Thus by degrees the past seemed contemporaneous and actual, and a genuine renascence set in — in which, however, antiquity was dressed up in chival- ric garb. Hector became a knight in medieval armor, Alexan- der a princely patron — incidentally the symbol of largesse or bounty — and Troilus a fate-stricken lover. Above all, and here the courtois spirit is obvious, the women of the past as- sumed a new value, and to be matchless like Helen, tragic like Dido, or bewitching like Medea, was the aim of most twelfth- century heroines.

The monasteries play an important part in this innovation. Here, according to the method of exegesis outlined in Chapter I, the past was exploited as to its sensws or " meaning " ; and as culture became secular, and the clerks depended more and more on the favor of the great, they drew from their manuscripts ever fresh examples of worldly fame and grandeur. In this proc- ess not only the Aeneid but also Statius' Thebaid, Lucan's Phar- salia, and especially Ovid's Metamorphoses and Herdides were laid under contribution. But the monks studied other works of a more doubtful origin as well. Owing to their ignorance of Greek, Homer was practically unknown except as a name ; and so they took their account of Troy from Latin versions of Dares Phry- gius and Dictys Cretensis, 'erroneously reputed to have been eye- witnesses of Ilion's fall. For the monks were themselves com- pilers, and any authority with the sanction of age was accepted as reliable. With the help of this material they then fashioned the instruments of a new narrative style. Incidents were elabo- rated by the use of metaphor and hyperbole. Physical traits are " catalogued " as preliminary to character drawing. But particularly, the eight-syllable couplet, with its tendency to " overflow," replaces the ten-syllable line as a vehicle of expres- sion, and poetry gains almost the freedom of prose. The result is that by the year 1160 a whole literature " drawn from the Latin," as the phrase is, begins to appear in the vernacular. And to this literature, irrespective of its derivation, the name reman or Romance (from the fact that it is translated from Latin into a Romance tongue) is attached. It is this form which gradually

38 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE

assumes the function of a distinct genre, independent of any Latin origin, and becomes the prototype of our modern " novel."

The Middle Ages classified its narrative literature under the head of matiere, according to its derivation. There was the Typgg Of Matter of France or the National Epic, which we Romances treated in Chapter I; the Matter of Rome, deriving from classical and pseudo-classical sources; and the Matter of Britain or what we call today the Arthurian romances. Differ as they may in derivation, the last two divisions show very much . the same method {sens) of narrative treatment.

Chief among the works of the Matter of Rome are the Alez- andre, the Thebes, the Eneas and the Troie.

The life of the great Alexander, always the beau ideal of gen- erosity to the Middle Ages, is the theme of the first work men- The Matter tioned. It survives in three forms, of which the of Rome earliest (about 1100) is a fragment, in monorime laisses, by a certain Alberic de Besangon or Briangon. Written near the Provengal border, this version incorporates the idea, attributed to Solomon, that " all is vanity," which it applies to the career of the hero. The second or ten-syllable version, by a poet from Poitou (twelfth century), has been praised for its style; whereas the last or French form proper (1177) is the work of three poets from the vicinity of Paris and employs the twelve-syllable line, whence the well-known vers alexandrins of French Classical poetry. This finished form makes a strong appeal to the reader's love of the fanciful: Alexander's cam- paigns become the exploits of an adventurous knight-errant; strange animals and amphibious men beset his path, he visits Valleys from which None Return, he and his hosts are rejuve- nated in a Fountain of Youth, and speaking trees foretell his doom. For all this the authors had Latin sources, derived ultimately from a Greek romance, by a certain Callisthenes, written in Alexandria, Egypt (about a.d. 200) . But it is they who popularize the work as the Wonder-book of the East by reason of their spirited style and their richly flowing narrative.

The Thkbes (after 1150), is the medieval interpretation of the legend of Oedipus, as its derivation from Statins would imply. Formally it differs from the Alexandre by being written in eight-' syllable couplets; but in spirit the work is still close to the

^.

THE MATTER OF ROME 39

ehansons de geste. Accordingly, the fate of Oedipus is con- ceived as epic desmesure, and while the grief of Jocasta and her maidens is graphically depicted — when they learn the terrible truth of Oedipus' crime — the position of woman in this ro- mance is still subordinate to that of man. This last feature of exalting woman becomes the distinctive trait of the Eneas and to a greater degree of the Troie.

In the Eneas (probably later than the Thebes) the c&urtois element manifests itself in the handling of the source. Im- agine an Aeneid with the founding of Rome all but forgotten. In the six thousand lines of the Old French poem, the hero does little else but circle about Dido and Lavinia, as the moth plays about the flame; through Dido he becomes uxorious and neglect- ful of chivalry, and through Lavinia, more skilled in the artifices of love, he regains his prowess and accomplishes the high em- prise of defeating Turnus — and, incidentally, of founding Rome. This emphasis on the " love-sickness " of Aeneas made the work popular with other romancers and also shows the growing influence of Ovid on the narrative literature of the time. Although the language of the Eneas is often shockingly unrefined, the style is marked by the deft and vivid handling of dialogue — a notable innovation.

Finally, with the appearance (about 1165) of the Roman de Troie by Benoit de Sainte-More, the Matter of Rome loses its anonymity and scores its most lasting success. Benoit, a younger contemporary of the poet Wace (see below) — whom he replaced in the favor of Henry II of England — wrote his poem of thirty thousand verses in honor of Eleanor of Poitou. For this expansion of the Troy theme his sources. Dares and Dictys, fur- nished only the background and the main characters; medieval elaboration,' largely by Benoit himself, furnished the rest. Thus the fall of Troy becomes a typical twelfth-century military exploit, with knights in armor and ladies in castles and bowers, and behind it all the trials and tribulations of courtly lovers. A prominent position among the latter is given to the un- Homeric Troilus and the lady of his dreams, the lovely Briseida (later Cressida) . As Professor Saintsbury justly says, " Helen was too puzzling, as well as too Greek; Andromache only a faithful, wife; Cassandra a scolding sorceress; Polyxena a

40 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE

victim; whereas Briseida had a fairly clear record. Benoit undoubtedly has his longueurs, but he knew his public and he did for the Middle Ages what Virgil had done so majestically for imperial Rome: he gave feudal society an ancestry in the halls of Ilion. In some respects he did not himself harvest the full reward of his achievement. His romance was put into Latin by an Italian, Guido delle Colonne, and in this later form was diffused all over Europe. In this general way it became the source of Boccaccio and then of Chaucer, whose Troilus is one of the masterpieces of medieval English fiction:

In which ye may the double sorwes here,

Of Troylus, in loving of Criseyde,

And how that she forsook him er she deyde.

Benoit lacks the insight of this prince of story-tellers; indeed, he has a mere suggestion of Chaucer's masterly conception of Criseyde as a character. Yet his narrative has both flow and charm, and Benoit is not without a sense of the picturesque. As late as the sixteenth centiuy it was the medieval concept of Troy that inspired Jean Lemaire de Beiges, from whose version Ronsard drew material for the Frandade.

The Norman Conquest (1066) had brought the French into contact with Celtic stories: in England through Wales and The Matter Cornwall, and on the continent through Armorica of Britain or Brittany — for there were Breton knights in the army with which William conquered England. It would not repay us to discuss whether the Matter of Britain came into French literature by the one or the other channel. Suffice it to say that both were open, and that commerce, and therefore liter- ature, could travel over either route. Moreover, the rich litera- ture of ancient Ireland contains many a parallel to Arthurian material, and Irish monks were frequent visitors to England, as they had been to continental Europe. But the spread of Celtic stories was undoubtedly facilitated by the Breton conteurs, who. to a musical accompaniment on the "rote" or the harp told their tales (see below, the lais) in the French court circles. Much of this material was of a folklore character. Thus the romantic fancy of the Celts is brought into contact with the artistic ideals of Provence and the storied memories of antiquity.

THE MATTER OF BRITAIN 41

The fountain-head for the history of King Arthur is the His- taria regum Britanniae (1136) by the Welsh monk, Geoffrey of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Written in Latin, this work furnishes a Monmouth parallel to the classical sources mentioned above. As the title states, the Historia is an account of the kings of Britain, with whose lineage Geoffrey wishes to link the Nor- man regime. But he deals with his subject romantically — in the spirit of his times. He traces the genealogy of the kings back to Troy through a certain Brutus (eponymic of Britain), grandson of Aeneas, and he elaborates Arthur's career with the aid of oral and written tradition; so that Arthur appears as the exemplar of chivalry, the courtois British counterpart of the French Charlemagne. In general, the story is the one familiar to us from the paraphrase of Sir Thomas Malory and the Idylls of Tennyson. But Geoffrey does not mention the Round Table, Mordred — not Lancelot — is the lover of Guinevere, and no reference is made to Tristan or to the Holy Grail. On the other hand, Arthur himself is still a " leader in battles," and his court at Caerleon-on-Usk is a center of " politeness, which people of other countries thought worthy of imitation " — thus speaks the Welshman in Geoffrey. Most interesting of all, for its influence on the romances, is the idea that " love " inspires " knighthood." This is the crux of a discussion ending in the conclusion that " the women of Arthur's court esteem none worthy of their love who have not given proof of their valor in three days' battle."

To Geoffrey is also attributed a Vita Merlini, written probably in 1148. In 1155 the Historia was put into French verse by the Norman poet Wace. In this somewhat elaborated form, knowii . as the Roman de Brut, — Wace adds an account of the Round Table — it became the framework for later Arthurian story.

The legend of Tristan is one of the greatest tragedies hi lovb in literature. Here the Celtic " magic " has wrought a com- The " Estoire bination of human passion, primitive adventure and de Tristan" custom, which is unique in French romance. As Gaston Paris has said:

Qui aurait pu, en dehors des Bretons de Cambria, de Cornouailles ou d'Armorique, concevoir ce theatre multiple et y derculer libre- ment les episodes du vaste drame?

42 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE

Unlike the story of Arthur, the Tristan romances apparently come straight from the vernacular. The lost Estoire to which the extant versions refer was presumably written in England, in Norman French. This work told of Tristan's expedition to Ireland to fetch the blond-haired Isolt for his maternal imcle. King Mark of Cornwall. One need hardly recall how by a fatal mistake Tristan drains with Isolt the " love-philter " in- tended for the bridal pair; how Tristan, stung by repentance on account of his passion for his uncle's lawful wife, again and again endeavors to renounce Isolt; how in fact he flees to Brittany and marries a second Isolt, her of the White Hands; and how, deceived by the false report that the boat which was to bring the true Isolt from Cornwall carries a black sail (instead of a white one, as he had hoped), Tristan falls dead. All this is familiar to most modern readers.

But B^roul, who came from Brittany, and Thomas, who wrote in England (about 1165), dealt with the story in the manner of their contemporaries. In particular, they represent the two forms which the legend takes with subsequent writers. B^roul still clings to primitive traits, such as Mark's Midas-like ears, concealed under a cap; the cunning of the dwarf Frocin, who reveals Tristan's guilt to Mark; Tristan's leap to freedom from the chapel window at Tintagel, and Isolt — called by the older form Iselt — handed over to a band of lepers. Nevertheless, he shows insight into character and a subtle sense of humor, and he connects the legend with Arthur, from whom the Tristan was originally quite distinct. On the other hand, Thomas moves in another world. He does not narrate, he psychologizes on the basis of a narrative already familiar. He dwells on the gene- alogy of his hero as a knight of Brittany; in true scholastic fashion he treats Tristan's desir (which binds him to Isolt) and his volonte (which tears him from her), and he develops the conceit of Isolt's cuers, which is Tristan's, and her cors, which to his and her shame Tristan shares with Mark. Thus he lays the foundation for a theme popular in his day, the menage a trois, and his work foreshadows that of his great contemporary Crestien de Troyes. But Thomas was also a poet. He pene- trates the tragedy of Mark's life, and his lyricism appears in lines like:

CRESTIEN DE TROYES *3

"Iseut ma dnie, Iseut m'amie, En viis ma mort, en vus ma vie! "

addressed by Tristan to Isolt after drinking the love-philter and symbolizing the triumph of love over death.

In Germany, the version according to B6roul was the source of a long poem by Eilhart von Oberge (1190-1200), whereas Thomas was the model for the more poetic work of Gottfried von Strassburg (about 1200) . In France, a later Prose Tristan, taken from a source perhaps independent of the other versions, was also popular. Finally, the story according to Thomas was current in Old Norse (in 1226) and served as a source for the English strophic poem, Sir Tristrem {between 1294 and 1300). From all these sources, and from the so-called Folie Tristan — wherein Tristan appears disguised as a " fool " — Professor B^dier has reconstructed the tale in Modem French.

With such models as a guide, the Romance enters upon a fruit- ful career. To " read " romances now became the fashion, and Crestien ^^^^ inevitably led to an improvement in technique

de Troyea and to the evolution of a fixed form. In this con- nection Crestien de Troyes is of supreme importance. Says Gaston Paris:

On pourrait citer tel morceau de Chretien de Troyes qui ne le cede pas en verite, en ingeniosite, parfois en subtilite, aux plus celebres monologues de nos tragedies, aux pages les plus fouillees de nos remans contemporains.

This is perhaps high praise for one who still lacks the full- ness of life, whose plots are often imperfect and wearisome, and whose style, clear as it is, in places seems affected and trifling. But his age thought otherwise and accorded him the greatest honor.

Of Crestien's life we know next to nothing. As he hailed from Troyes and wrote in a dialect which shows many local traits, he evidently was in contact with the aristocratic circles that surrounded Marie of Champagne. .It was she who gave him the matiere and the sens of one of his romances, while Philip of Alsace (before 1191) — better known as ruler of Flanders — provided him with the source for another. At one time he may have resided at Beauvais, from the cathedral library of which

44 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE

he derived the source of his Cliges. Beyond this we have no facts, and it is idle to speculate on his station in life. But he was well educated and he glories in clergie, which, he declares, is now domiciled in France:

Par les livres que nos avons Les fez des anciens savons Et del siecle qui fu jadis.

His point of view is courtly; in fact, in the Ivain he prefers un cortois mort to un vilain vif. Nevertheless, he was an observer and a psychologist, and he makes distinctions. Love and mar- riage are not necessarily inimical but can be reconciled — this is his great thesis. The only work which controverts this idea is precisely the work for which Marie of Champagne gave him the theme, and this romance Crestien did not complete.

In addition to his translations from Ovid (one of which may be the Philomela, attributed to him by some scholars) and a lost poem on King Mark and Isolt, Crestien wrote five romances, possibly six, in case the Guillaume d'Angleterre, a somewhat colorless version of the legend of St. Eustace, is really by him. These five all center rnore or less about the court of Arthur and, with the exception (3f the Cliges, belong to the Mat- ter of Britain.

The Erec, which is still close to the older epic in style, brings up at once the conflict between chivalry and love. Can Erec be a lover and also an active knight? Can Enid be an amie and also a dutiful and long-suffering femme? So Crestiai would have it. After the adventures in which Erec, avenging an insult to Guinevere, wins the matchless Enid, he falls a prey to sloth and in his uxoriousness neglects his knighthood. As Tennyson says in the idyll drawn from the Welsh version of this story, the hero became

Forgetful of the tilt and tournament, Forgetful of his glory and his name, Forgetful of his princedom and its cares.

It is on this account that Enid weeps and, weeping over her sleeping lord, rouses him to his sovereignty as a knight and a husband — for the second part of the romance is one long peril- ous adventure, in which Enid's part is to play the r61e of a

CRESTIEN DE TROYES 45

Griselda. But all's well that ends well, and the romance closes with the crowning of the reconciled pair at Nantes in Brittany, attended by the entire Arthurian court. The " matter " out of which this story is constructed is thoroughly romantic: Erec originally wins Enid as the prize of a " sparrow-hawk contest " ; Arthxu" and his knights go on a hunt for a mysterious " white stag " ; Erec destroys the enchantment of a " magic garden " in which his opponent, Mabonograin, leads a charmed life. All these incidents bear the impress of an original fairy tale, Celtic at least in concept, and recalling in the garden episode the Irish Otherworld into which heroes were thought to stray when lured by love and adventure.

With the Cliges the poet comes closer to the polite world. An Eastern story connected with the legend of Solomon's wife, the Cliges becomes in Crestien's hands a remodeled Tristan, in which the heroine's virtue is saved by a trick practiced on Cliges' usurping uncle. Thus does Crestien gratify courtois sophistry and please the fashionable people of his day, who took delight in the thought that an Athenian Greek should go to Arthur's court, and who liked the Ovidian sentiments which the characters express. The heroine, Fenice, is a typical young msee, the an- cestor of th« Agnes and Celimenes of a later day. What saves the romance from the taint of the unnatural is its occasional appeal to real sentiment, as in the lines reechoing the Erec:

De s'amie a feite sa fame, Mas il I'apele amie et dame, Ne per ce ne pert ele mie, Que il ne Taint come s'amie.^

The sophisticated Cliges was followed by the still more arti- ficial Lancelot or, to use the correct title, the Chevalier de la char- rete, for Crestien now affects the pseudonym for his heroes. The background of the story is the abduction of Guinevere to the Otherworld and her rescue by Lancelot — a Celtic theme similar to the Persephone myth. But Marie of Champagne obviously influenced the poet to subordinate the plot to the Provengal

• CSompare the words of Chaucer in the Franklin's Tale: Sith he hathe bothe his lady and his love, His lady, oertes, and his wy( also, The which that lawe of love accordeth to.

46 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE

conception of love. Thus Lancelot — whose relationship to the Lady of the Lake is barely mentioned — rides in a very un- chivaWo cart and otherwise lowers himself by playing the coward in a three days' tournament (see Geoffrey of Mon- mouth), all for the sake of Guinevere's illicit love. Clearly the Lancelot legend, which is known from a later Prose Lancelot, is here diverted from its true channel and made to serve a special ccmxtois purpose. In general, the Lancelot is not so well written as Crestien's other works; moreover, he left the romance to be completed by a certain Godefroi de Leigni. Yet few love stories have enjoyed a greater vogue than that of Lancelot and Arthur's Queen. The flame that sweeps through Paolo and Francesca in the Divine Comedy ultimately has this source — for it was a prose version of the Lancelot story that these lovers found, and reading it read no more:

Quel giomo piu non vi leggemmo avante.

In the Ivain or Chevalier au lion we return to the land of faery and adventure. A storm breaks over the fountain of Broceliande when water is poured on a rock at its brim, and a combat ensues in which Ivain slays the foimtain's defender. He then woos and weds the latter's widow, since the truth is

Que fame a plus de mil corages.

Vergil and Ovid said so before Crestien, and Shakespeare after him ; the ironies of life change little. At least Crestien's heroine has the excuse that by nature she is a fairy-mistress, whose fountain, like Diana's at Nemi, needs a protector, and that the valiant and gracious Ivain is fitted for this role. It is true he subsequently revisits Arthur's court and overstays the leave granted him by the imperious Laudine. The result is that love drives him mad and he wanders distraught until finally, with the aid of a helpful lion — which like Androcles he be- friends — he wins his way back to the fountain and to the favor of Laudine. As firmly conceived as the Erec, this romance excels it as to style and expression of sentiment; in fact, Cres- tien never wrote better narrative than in the picturesque lines of the Ivain. Crestien died before he could complete the Conte del grad

THE GRAIL LEGEND 47

or Perceval; this a continuator of the work affirms. But he composed some ten thousand lines in which inspired by a livre The Holy given him by Philip of Flanders, he gave the earli- Grail est literary expression to the world-famed legend of

the Holy Grail. What the Grail originally was no one knows, al- though explanations have not been lacking. To Crestien the word was still a common noun, graal meaning a dish or platter ordinarily used in the houses of the wealthy. Yet he himself speaks of it as une sainte chose and gives it qualities which are marvelous and in part mystical. When the dish is carried in a procession, the "gleam" of the Grail is beheld by hundreds of knights; and a single wafer on it sustains the life of a century- old king. What makes it, however, the central motive of Cres- tien's story is the question the hero should ask with respect to it, failing in which he neglects the cure of a wounded Fisher King and inflicts harm and suffering on the land and people of Logres, or Britain.

For such a part the naive and uncultured Perceval the Welsh- man is dramatically well chosen. Brought up as a fatherless boy, Perceval escapes from a too vigilant mother and makes his way to Arthur's court and finally to the Castle of the Grail. He then learns the bitterness of failure, is cursed by the Grail messenger, and like so many of Crestien's heroes roams madly through the forest. From this plight he is rescued by a hermit uncle, who on Good Friday gives him a lesson in humility as another uncle had previously instructed him in chivalry. Then the action starts anew: Perceval resumes his quest for the Grail, in which other knights now join, especially the courtly Gawain — whom Crestien treats as the exemplar of bravery and sens — until suddenly the story breaks off in the middle of a phrase.

Those who continued it (to the extent of some fifty thousand verses) were, three: Wauchier de Denain, otherwise known as a translator of saints' legends, a certain Manessier, and Gerbert de Montreuil, the author also of the Roman de ia violette. Wauchier, who like Manessier wrote for Joanna of Flanders, varies from Crestien by giving a Gawain-quest in which the Grail is described as rich-e, not holy, and its food-providing qualities are connected in some special way with the reproduc-

48 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE

tive, vegetative forces of nature — so that most scholars have seen in Wauchier's continuation a more primitive form of the legend than that of Crestien. On the other hand, Manessier represents a more advanced stage of the story: the Grail has become Christianized into the vessel in which Joseph of Arima- thea caught the Saviour's blood, and the lance, which ac- companies the Grail in most versions, is that with which Longinus pierced the Saviour's side. Lastly, Gerbert fluctu- ates between these two accounts, although both he and Manessier end the story with Perceval's final achievement of the quest.

But none of these continuations has the literary merit of the original Perceval. Not only does Crestien write well, he pene- trates the hvunan relationships of his chief character; with him Perceval is the untrained youth brought through the experience of life to the fulness of wisdom. Crestien's romance abounds in touches of naive wonder at the terrible splendor of life ; a ro- mantic attachment of Blanchefleur for the hero is portrayed with a simplicity that Crestien lacks in his more sophisticated Cliges and Ivain; and all the episodes emerge from the general background of adventure with great vividness. How mighty the contemporary appeal of the Perceval was can be seen from the warning a pious monk gives Blanche of Navarre, a later Countess of Champagne:

Laissiez Cliges et Perceval

Qui les cuers perce et trait a val,

Et les romans de vanite.

Crestien's Perceval is not the only form which the Grail legend had in France. Near the close of the twelfth century a y certain Robert de Boron (probably from Bur-

sions of the gundy) wrote the so-called Metrical Joseph, a Grail Legend much-confused poem on the career of Joseph of Arimathea. This connects the Grail definitely with the cup of the Last Supper and relates how the followers of Joseph brought the Grail to England. Thus the foundation is laid for an en- tire Christianization of the legend and a general remodeling of the Grail quest, which is largely the work of the first quarter of the thirteenth century.

THE GRAIL LEGEND 49

Early in the century the prose Perlesvaus added Lancelot to the questers and brought the legend into connection with Glas- tonbury Abbey. For Glastonbury had come to be regarded as the Avalon from which King Arthur was some day to return; and to this claim it had added the other of being the primate church of Great Britain. Meanwhile, Robert de Borpn's Joseph, to- gether with a fragmentary Merlin — also by Robert — had been remodeled in prose; and thereto was joined a new Prose Perce- val— the whole constituting a trilogy on the subject of the Grail. In this way, by successive accretions, there arose (about 1215) the huge Grail-Lancelot Cycle, in which Galahad, the ascetic son of the sinful Lancelot, replaces Perceval as the suc- cessful Grail hero. Attributed to Walter Map, for a reason that no one has been able to discover, this combination of Ar- thiu'ian material in prose has continued to fascinate the imagi- nations of Europe down to the present day. It furnished the matter and much of the spirit of Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur in the fifteenth century; and this in turn inspired Tennyson and the Victorian poets. Thus was Lancelot's sin fated to destroy the Arthurian order, while the pure and blame- less Galahad follows a Grail " clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful " and devoid of all material attributes. In the words of Tennyson's Sir Percivale:

Lo, if I find the Holy Grail itself

And touch it, it will crumble into dust.

At the same time, Crestien's own poem was to inspire a masterpiece in Germany — the Middle High German Parzival (1215) by Wolfram von Eschenbach. Although Wolfram claims to remodel Crestien with the help of a version by an unknown Kiot (apparently a Frenchman), in reality he makes Parzival an exemplar of German tretie or fidelity of character ; and in so doing he creates a type second only to Faust, allowing always for the differences of time and circumstance.

The Middle English Sir Percyvelle, a fourteenth-century poem in tail-rime strophes, relates the Perceval tale in bare out- line, making the hero, however, a sister's son of King Arthur and never once referring to the Grail or to the characters asso- ciated with it.

50 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE

The themes of Crestien's three romances, Erec, Ivain and Perceval, are also treated in the famous Welsh Mabinogion, a delightful collection of partly indigenous Celtic tales of tht Middle Ages. But the relationship between the Welsh and the French romances is still a matter of controversy among scholars,

The genre so ably illustrated by the Champagne poet con- tinues to flourish in Europe throughout the medieval period, until it receives its coup de grace in the imdying tory of the pages of Don Quixote — although the last state- Romance ment applies mainly to the exaltation of chivalry and not to the romances as such.

Next to Crestien, the best-known wielder of the Matter of Britain is Raoul de Houdenc (after 1200). His Meraugis de PffT-tlesguez accords the prize of beauty to Idoine, a superior Enid, and lets the hero accomplish impossible tasks in the piu-- suit of prowess, while Raoul's Vengeance de Ragvidel is one of the numerous tales in which Sir Gawain plays the chief part. But these stories have little to hold the reader except the thrill of adventure; and of this the Chevalier as deus espies and the justly popular Bel Inconnu, by Renaud de Beaujeu, are better examples. Yet none of these stories contains the character- drawing we find in the Middle English Sir Oawain and the Green Knight (about 1370). Here the romance of chivalry produced one of its fairest blossoms. Written on a theme that goes back to Old Irish — the so-called jeopardy whereby the green enchanter proffers his head provided the hero will accept a "return-stroke" — the motivation of the story is thoroughly French, Gawain's bravery and courtesy are nowhere better de- veloped, nor does any Arthurian romance show more humor and fancy.

Meantime, the genre had an offshoot that goes under the some- what misleading name of romans d'aventure or fate-romances. The Chivalry having become a thing apart, the courtly

Romans " love adventure," treated with more and more

d'aventure realism as time passed, was allowed to pursue its own path. Thus love is considered for its o'rni sake, as an ex- pression of the droit de vivre; in a word, as fate. Another trait is the mingling of Eastern and Arthurian matter, as in Crestien's Cliges. The charming Partenopeus de Blois (before 1188) from

ROMANCES OF ADVENTURE 51

the region north of Poitou, combines a motive related to the story of Cupid and Psyche with an Arthurian setting and names taken from the Thebes. But the earliest exponent of the new form is Gautier d'Arras, a contemporary and in a sense the rival of Crestien. Attached to the court of Thibaut of Blois, who had married Alice of France, another daughter of Eleanor of Poitou, Gautier first wrote an Erode (about 1160) , where historical and Eastern features are blended in a love intrigue, and then his better known Ille et Galeron. This tale deals with the theme of the husband and two wives by elaborating a point discussed in courtly circles; namely, the extent to which blindness is an ob- stacle in love. In much the same way, the anonymous Amadas et Idoine (before 1200) contains the triangular arrangement of the Tristan, with the important difference that the heroine acts conventionally and seeks a divorce.

Thus the romans d'aventure approach realism, and characters as well as motives and incidents are drawn from contemporary life. Crestien's pseudonyms of the Knight of the Lion and the Knight of the Cart, so widely imitated, now make room for actual personages, such as Joujroi (Geoffrey), the Comte de Poitiers, the Chatdo-in de Coucy and the touching Chatelaine de Vergy, who dies because her lover stupidly betrays their secret. And, lastly, the background itself becomes real and courtois society is analyzed in detail. An excellent example of this is the sensuous but very artistic Guillaume de Dole. The plot of this story belongs to the widespread " cycle of the wager " involving a woman's honor, of which the Roman de la violette by Gerbert de Montreuil and Shakespeare's Cymbeline are later and better examples. But the plot of the Guillaume is second- ary; what makes the romance so readable today is the vigor and beauty of its descriptions, the picture we get of a ripe and joyous existence which no care can darken for long. The mas- terpiece, however, of the realistic genre is the Provengal Fla- menca. Again it is the background, a tourney at the Baths of Bourbon, that gives the author his opportunity. We see the gathering of the princely guests, the splendor of their apparel and their worldly pursuits; and we listen to their intrigues, great and small, grouped about the central affair of the lady Flamenca. Bound to a jealous and insupportable husband, this

52 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE

heroine cleverly deceives him and thereby not only cures his jealousy but retains her own lover. The Provengals called this story a novas. Except for its metrical form, the Flamenca differs but little from a modem novel.

But narrative fiction also had a " short-story " form in the twelfth century. This went under the name of lai. And the The Nana- counterpart to Crestien, in this field, was Marie tive Lais de France, who spent most of her life in England and may have been the half-sister of Henry II. Written for the same courtois society as the romances, the lais are artis- tic presentations of a simple situation, based generally on a widespread folklore motif. Their art, if not their substance, is perpetuated in the later fabliau and, as respects prose, in the novella (see Ch. IV).

There is little doubt that Marie de France derived her ma- terial from the contes which the Bretons told in the Norman and French courts to the accompaniment of their songs (Irish loid or laid) — whence she took the name for her stories. What determined her preference, she says, was that others were writ- ing romances and she regarded this field as preempted. Marie was also the author of a collection of Fables, modeled on a medieval Romulus — as such fable collections were then called — and under the title of L'Espurgatoire de Saint Patrice she paraphrased in French a medieval Latin " vision " by Henry of Saltrey. These works are presumably later than the Lais, with which she seems to have begun her literary career (about 1165).

Her subjects are the love of a fairy for a luckless knight, compelled by a jealous queen to reveal his secret XLanval) ; the metamorphosis of a knight in the one case {Yonec) into a hawk, and in the other {Bisclavret) into a were-wolf whom a faith- less wife betrays; the self-effacement of a wife (Eliduc), in another case of a maiden (Fraisne), for the man she loves; the love-tryst of Tristan and Isolt {Chevrefeuille) , symbolized by the honeysuckle twining about the hazel bush, and so on. Like Crestien, Marie exploits the rich mine of Ovid, and of her own she adds a strong romantic sentiment which gives her tales a wistful, meditative tone. Best of all, perhaps, is her simple, translucent style: the narrative of the Lais flows easily, and the various situations stand out clearly and dramatically without

AUCASSIN AND NICOLETTE 63

the clumsy interruptions which mar the narrative of many romances.

Few French lais are equal, and none superior, to Marie's. Several anonymous ones treat Breton subjects; notably Graelent, Tydorel and Tyolet. The Lai du Cor and the Mantecm mal taille are written on the theme of the fidelity of women. Guiron tells the story of the husband who forces his wife to eat the heart of her lover — a motif that is incorporated in the romance of the Chdtelain de Coucy (see above). One of the best sur- vives in the form of the Middle English Sir Orfeo. Here the classical tale of Orpheus and Eurydice is retold as a typical Breton lay: the tone and the atmosphere are made courtly, the motivation is built up on the basis of a Celtic fairy-tale, the sad ending is changed to a happy one, and the poet clev- erly places his own interest in the foreground — Sir Orfeo is a minstrel. This lai is as complete a reduction to type as medieval literature has to offer. Derived from a French source, it may be referred to as a standard, " to show " — says Professor Ker — " what can be done in the medieval art of narrative, with the simplest means and the smallest amount of decoration."

One important narrative, however, defies classification. This is the charming story of Aucassin et Nicolette (about 1200).

_. In matter it resembles the Floire et Blanchefieur,

" Aucassin one of the earlier types of romans d'aventure. But et Nicolette " gjnce it is written in alternating prose and verse, an arrangement found in Arabic and Old Irish, its form is unique in France and may have been the invention of the unknown author. The verse portions are in seven-syllable assonant lines.

To judge by the single extant manuscript, the author com- posed his work in the Picard dialect, but he laid its scene in the south of France, in the country near Beauoaire. Here Aucassin, the count's son, is desperately in love with Nicolette, a Saracen captive, the daughter of the " King of Carthage." The deep love of the youthful pair, their flight from the stern parent who is planning a loftier match for his son, their separation by pirates and their final reunion, effected by Nicolette disguised as a jongleur: these are the principal episodes of the action, and show the kinship of the plot with such tales as the Apollonius of Tyre and its derivatives. But again the plot is secondary

54 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE

to the author's insight into human passion, his faith in the beauty of life and his great gift of expression. Thus he fastens our attention on his characters, whom he describes as taken from his own observation and experience. He knows that his tale is " noble and courtly," that no man, " sick as he may be," will not rejoice to hear it. Having said this, he lets his characters reveal themselves. " Nicolette," says Aucassin, " were she em- press of Constantinople, or of Germany, or Queen of France or England, 'twould be little enough for her, so noble is she and gracious and well-bred and compact of all good qualities." Or take the famous passage in which Aucassin denounces the color- less Christian Paradise and concludes: "But to Hell will I go. For to Hell go the fine clerks and the fine knights, who have died in tourneys and in great wars. . . . And there go the gold and the silver, and the vair and the grey ; and there go too harpers and minstrels and the kings of this world." Could youthful enthusiasm speak plainer? Moreover, romantic as it is, the story does not lack contrasts with the darker side of life. Witness Aucassin's conversation with the ploughboy who, hav- ing lost one of his oxen, dares not to enter town where he will be cast into prison — and who yet worries most because his mother is sick at home and would have no support. In this way does the poet set the love story over against the real world of fact, and by his sense of values raise his narrative to an epic plane. Stereotyped phrasings, courtly conceits, snatches of in- cident from this tale or that, bits of burlesque out of some legend of a land of Cockayne — all these the poet has gathered into his web and fused with his narrative. Aucasdn et Nicolette is the idyll of medieval literature; the polished jewel of its best narrative art. The story has been admirably translated into English by Andrew Lang.

CHAPTER m THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA

Love of abstraction, which, appears in thirteenth-century "learning" and, indeed, in Gothic art after 1200, is also seen in the rise of literary allegory. Allegory, that peculiarly cleri- cal product which places the imagination in the service of the reason, is not merely a personification but the conscious repre- sentation of one action in terms of an entirely different action. Thus " the book of life, without ceasing to be a true story, becomes a volume of symbols."

This is not the place to examine the origins of allegory in de- tail. Suffice it to say that, aside from Biblical interpretation or senstis, which is of course allegorical, independent allegoriza- tions are current early. Examples in Latin are the Concilium Amoris (about 1100) and the influential De Phyllide et Flora (shortly after) , types of debate which symbolize the comparative merits of clerical and chivalric life. And French instances are to be found in the various visions and dreams re- flecting the state of the soul when freed from the body, which go back to the Psychomachia of Prudentius and to Cicero's Som- nium Scipionis as well as to the rich " vision " literature of the medieval church. Moreover, such treatises as the De Amore of Andreas Capellanus, together with the influence of Ovid, lead authors to personify moral and physical traits and to discuss the love motive in abstract forms.

In the Dit de la Rose, a short poem of the close of the twelfth century, a rose figures as the symbol of the heroine; and in Ilje Raoul de Houdenc's Songe d'Enfer (see above, Ch.

"Soman II ) consistent allegory in the form of a dream ex-

1* Rose presses a personal experience. The combination of these two features is characteristic of the Roman de la Rose, except for the Divine Comedy, which it foreshadows, the great- est allegory of European literature.

55

56 THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA

The Roman de la Rose, in some twenty-two thousand eight- syllable verses, falls into two parts. These are so different in concept and execution as to constitute two separate works, although the plot is continuous throughout. The first part, by Guillaume de Lorris, comprises four thousand and sixty- eight verses of the poem, and was written before 1234, probably between 1225 and 1230. The second and in some respects the more important part, by Jean Clopinel from Meun on the Loire, did not appear until close to 1270. Thus the work bridges the thirteenth century and represents, in its contrasting elements, the passage from the courtois to the bourgeois point of view. In Guillaume the courtly ideal reaches its apogee, and in Clo- pinel, aptly called the Voltaire of the century, the hard common- sense of the " third estate " scores its earliest victory. The first part is a poem on the psychology of love, the second a philippic against the evils of medieval society in general. ^^ Guillaume relates that in the spring-time of life he had a dream, which has since come true. At the command of the God of Love he has put it into verse, for the delight of his readers and in honor of her

Qui tant est digne d'estre amee Qu'el doit estre Rose clamee.

The dream is as follows: In May, when Nature weaves her chaplet of leaves and flowers and joy reigns supreme, the lover strolls " cousant ses manches " (a curious fashion) toward the bank of a river. Having washed his face in the river's clear waters, he comes to a high wall, surrounding a spacious garden. On its outer side the wall is decorated with ten wonderful paint- ings in gold and blue colors. The art with which they are fash- ioned arrests his eye (obviously Guillaume is a connoisseur) , and he lingers to describe them. They represent respectively, Hatred and her boon companions, Felony and Villainy, and surround- ing this central group on the one side, Cupidity, Avarice, Envy and Sorrow, and on the other, Old Age, Hypocrisy {PapelardiR) and Poverty. In spite of these significant figures, the lover knocks at the " door " of the garden and is admitted by a noble lady, called Idleness {Oiseuse). Her friend is Delight {Deduit), who had built the garden in order to enjoy it with her. Led

GUILLAUME DE LORRIS 57

by Idleness over paths scented with fennel and mint and shaded by trees from Saracen lands, the lover reaches a lawn where Mirth (Liesse) is dancing with Delight. Courtesy asks him to join in the " carole," an invitation he accepts. The other couples in the dance are: Cupid who leads Beauty, Riches who showers favor on Bounty (Largesse), and Candor and Youth, each with an appropriate partner. Passing on through groves of domestic and foreign trees of various descriptions, the lover arrives at the Fountain of Youth, the water of which is of crys- talline purity and on the border of which stands the inscription:

Here died the handsome Narcissus.

Looking down into its depths, he sees reflected in a mirror — C'est li mireors perilleus —

amidst a multitude of lovely objects some rose-bushes in bloom. The beauty of one particular rose fascinates him, and willingly he would have picked it were it not for ,the brambles and thorns which protect it. In the meantime, unseen by him, Cupid has approached, and seeing the lover lost in rapture, he pierces his heart with the arrows of Beauty, Simplicity and Courtesy. By the use of further arrows Cupid then completes the capture, and the lover declares himself his vassal. There- upon, Cupid locks the lover's heart with a golden key, and in- structs him in the rules of love, its trials and tribulations, and the support to be derived from Hope, Sweet Thoughts, Sweet Speaking and Sweet Looks.

After this exposition of the Art of Love, Cupid disappears. But presently the gracious figure of Welcome invites the lover to approach the Rose. This summons he follows with avidity, but when he grows bold and proclaims that as the servant of love he intends to pick the Rose, Welcome cries out, and Dan- ger forces the lover to retreat. In despair the lover now la- ments, and is reproached by Reason — descending from her lofty tower — for foolishly associating with Idleness and Delight. Better for him, she says, if he had never listened to Cupid. It is needless to say, Reason's advice falls on deaf ears, and the lover seeks consolation of Friendship {Ami), who teaches him how to appease Danger. The result is that he is again allowed

68 THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA

to see the Rose, and encouraged by the intercession of Venus, Welcome grants him permission to kiss it.

Unfortunately, Slander {Malebouche) sees the kiss, and by sending the news broadcast arouses Jealousy, who after chiding Shame {Horde) for her indifference, builds a wall about the Rose and locks up Welcome in a tower, guarded by an old woman. The lover, his grief increased by the remembered savor of the Rose —

Car je suis a greignor meschief Par la joie que j'ai perdue, Que s'onques ne I'eusse eue,

For I am in greater trouble. Through the joy which I have lost, Than if never I had had it, —

is left helpless outside.

It is obvious that Guillaume did not intend to have his poem end quite so abruptly, and in fact Jean de Meun states that Guillaume's death prevented its completion. But what was the end to be? Most of the manuscripts — and there are some two hundred — contain the continuation by Jean de Meun. Two alone have the separate ending of about eighty verses. Accord- ing to the latter, the lover is finally put in complete possession of the Rose. Granting that Guillaume considered his work as almost finished, it is clear that little remained to be said except to explain the dream in terms that all would understand. Thus, allow;ing for this addition, we may conclude that Guillaume's poem is practically a unit.

" To comprehend a Gothic cathedral," says Professor Saints- bury, " the Rose should be as familiar (to us) as the Dies Irae. For the spirit of it is indeed, though faintly ' decadent,' even more the medieval spirit than that of the Arthurian legend, precisely for the reason that it is less universal, less of humanity generally, more of this particular phase of humanity." It is true, the Rose is typical of an age and a civilization. But what distinguishes Guillaume de Lorris' work from that of his con- temporaries is its art. Guillaume has caught the vividness of the dream experience. His personifications are alive; they act within their roles; there are no tiresome digressions, no scho-

JEAN DE MEUN 69

lastic jeux de mots. So, too, the various aspects of the garden are well depicted; we are made to see the paths traversed by the lover and we scent the flowers.

L'odour des roses savorees M'entra ens jusques es corees —

The odor of the perfumed roses Penetrated to the depths of my being,

exclaims the impassioned poet. All critics are agreed that the portraits on the wall are remarkable for their delineation. In a different genre Guillamne de Lorris approaches the virtuosity of Botticelli, and the noble distinction of the latter is also his. As for his plot, it is firmly conceived from start to finish; far superior in this respect to his continuator, Guillaume makes his action rapid, well-proportioned and consecutive. More than once the poet has drawn on Ovid, especially when dealing with the rules of Love, but he borrows with measure and always adapts his imitations to the spirit of his age and the exigencies of his composition. In short, few works of the Middle Ages show more careful planning or a richer and more poetic tech- nique.

Turning now to the continuation by Jean de Meun, we at once perceive the change from a poetic to a philosophic and satiric attitude. The general narrative is carried through but the " values are all transvalued." The lover is reproved, indeed scorned, for his attachment to his lady (the Rose) because

Amours, ce est pais haineuse, Amours est haine amoureuse. C'est loiaute la desloial, C'est la desloiaute loial.

Love is peace full of hate. Love is hate full of love. It is loyalty most disloyal. Disloyalty that proves loyal.

*

These words — and there are sixty verses of them — borrowed by Jean de Meun from the De Planctu Naturae of Alain de Lille, are placed in the mouth of Reason, whom the lover in his misery has invoked. But the lover would prefer an outright definition.

60 THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA

Reason replies by citing Andreas Capellanus: "Love is an af- fection of the soul which draws together two people of different sex." For some the object of love is pleasure, and this object is base; for others it is the continuation of the race, and this Reason approves. But, retorts the lover, one must love or hate, and hatred is worse than love. This leads Reason to define friendship, with its obligations — an imitation of Cicero. Friend- ship she recommends, provided it does not mean association with the rich; for Fortune is fickle, she says, and the rich are not happy, whether they be merchants, lawyers, physicians or preachers:

Maint ribaud ont les cuers si bauz, Portant sas de charbon en Grieve, Que la poine riens ne lor grieve —

Wretches often have joy in their hearts,

Carrjdng coal to the pubUc place,

For the trouble they have does not smart.

Far happier are they than kings with their treasures and ser- vants, since no king can call these his own. But there are other forms of love; namely, the love of humanity and the love of off- spring. Neither of these, however, interests the lover, and finally Reason offers herself as a worthy mistress.

All these argiunents do not convince the lover, who further dislikes Reason because she has used an indecent word. This leads Reason to attack the prudery of women, and to defend frankness of speech with a citation from Plato's Timaeus.

The lover now seeks out Friendship {Ami) and is instructed in the Ovidian method of treating women. A description of the Golden Age — also from Ovid — develops the idea of equality, which man has long since lost:

Un grant vilain entre eus eslurent Le plus ossu de quant qu'il purent, Le plus corsu et le graignour, Si le firent prince et seignour.

A powerful serf men elected, The strongest they could ever find, The heaviest and the tallest: Him they made prince and lord.

JEAN DE MEUN 61

Nowadays women must be bought, and Ovid's precepts show us how to dupe without being duped. Thus the lover turns to Extravagance {Twp Dormer), but Riches blocks his path — again with a long disquisition.

This brings us back to Cupid and the main thread of the nar- rative. Cupid gathers his troops, and divided into four groups they lay siege to the tower. Fearing a defeat, he sends mes- sengers to Venus, the avowed enemy of Chastity. Finding her hunting with Adonis, they win from her a promise that henceforth Chastity shall be banished from women. Then fol- lows perhaps the most striking passage in the whole poem: Nature is depicted as laboring at her forge against death, who strives to destroy the race which Nature has produced. Art imitates Nature, but in vain, for the artist cannot give life, movement, sensation and speech to his creations. Nature com- plains bitterly to her companion Genius, who recalls to her

Les figures representables De toutes choses corrompables.

The representative forms Of all corruptible things.

This complaint simamarizes the entire physical, geographic and astronomical knowledge of Jean de Meun (twenty-six hundred verses). Of all of Nature's creatures, Man alone does not ob- serve her laws. Genius seeks to absolve Man but is ordered by Nature to join Cupid's army. Genius first sermonizes the combined forces on the vices of Man, and then exhorts them in the quest of natural love. Thus the tower is taken; a maid, more beautiful than Pygmalion's, appears; Welcome, set free, grants the Rose to the hero, and the latter picks it.

Such is the substance of Jean de Meun's work: an encyclo- pedia of views on every possible subject,- supported by great learning, and revealing a master-mind. Some of the ideas are astonishingly bold, and one wonders that the poet dared express them. To be sure, in a long description of Faux-Semblant, as a member of Cupid's army, Jean is careful to distinguish hypo- crites from

62 THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA

ome vivant Sainte religion siuant, Ne qui sa vie use en bone uevre, De quelque robe qu'il se cuevre.

any living man Following holy religion, Or who employs his days in noble works/ To whatever class he may belong.

Nevertheless, the animus against the church is clear, and Jean's hatred of class privilege breathes in every line he writes. As to his views on women we shall hear more later; suffice it to say here that his scorn of the fair sex helped to keep his work alive at a time when many of his other ideas were out of date or in- appropriate. On the positive side, it is interesting to note that Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy was so to say his hand- book, that he admired the writings of Roger Bacon, and that he never fails to uphold science against superstition — another reason for comparing him to Voltaire. Lastly, Jean's style is energetic, imaginative (his account of a storm is almost the equal of Rabelais') and often eloquent, a number of his lines having become proverbial.

As an artist, however, Jean de Meua is inferior to his prede- cessor. His continuation lacks harmony, emotional unity and a dominating idea, to say nothing of its prolixity. Apparently he wrote- the " continuation " in his youth, but his other works of a later date — a Testament and a CodicUle — while showing unabated energy, are scarcely more artistic. Thus, while Jean de Meun made the Roman de la Rose a vehicle of philosophic thought, as a work of literature it owes most to Guillaume de Lorris.

The vogue of the poem was almost as great in foreign countries as in France. As early as 1300 it was translated into Flemish

Influence ^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^- ^^ adaptation in sonnet form, of the called II Fiore, and an imitation in rimed couplets,

°^^ II Detto d'Amore, probably both by a certain Du-

rante (who is perhaps identical with Dante Alighieri) , were made in Italy. Two translations into English verse, the one by Chaucer, the other anonymous, are extant in fragmentary forms. Petrarch considered the romance the greatest French

INFLUENCE OF THE ROSE 63

poem and sent a copy of it to Guido di Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua.

In addition to its many manuscripts, various tapestries illus- trating scenes from the poem testify to its popularity in France. In 1290 Gui de Mori reworked it by making various changes, but his rifacimento had little success. On the other hand, a much later prose version, in which the allegory has been made religious, by Jean Molinet — the rhetoriqueur poet — was pub- lished in several editions. And in 1526, Clement Marot, who calls Guillaume de Lorris the French Ennius, modernized the language of both parts for an edition which was very popular.

There is little doubt that the Rose furnished inspiration to other poets. It is mentioned as a source in the Dit de la Pan- there by Nicole de Margival and in the Cmir d'Amour by Mahieu le Poriier, works of the end of the fovurteenth century. But allegory was then in fashion, and a direct influence, except in general idea, is hard to trace. In the Middle French period (especially the fifteenth century) Jean de Meun's attack on woman led to a debate which shows how important was the influence of the Rose. The debate began with the Pelerinage de la vie hwmaine by Guillaume de DiguUeville, written about 1335. This allegory, which was to enjoy great popularity — Chaucer translated selections from it and John Bunyan modeled his Pilgrim's Progress on it — is prefaced by the remark that Jean de Meun was inspired by lust {hixure). But the question does not become acute until some fifty years later Christine de Pisan and Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris, lock arms against Jean de Montreuil (Bk. II, Ch. II), one of the earliest French humanists and apologist of Jean de Meun. This " grant guerre " lasted three years, the most important doctmaent in the quarrel being Gerson's Tractatus (1402) — also an alle- gory. And even at the end of this discussion the strife does not cease, for men continued to take sides for or agaiinst Jean de Meun until interest in the position of women abated with the triumph of the Renaissance. The poets of the Pleiade (1550), in spite of their neglect of the Middle Ages, look upon the Rose as a work of which every Frenchman should feel proud.

Another great allegory, the Roman de Renard, derives its method from a genre known in antiquity, namely, the Aesopic

64 THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA

fable. Differing from the Rose in the use of animals instead of personified human traits, the Renard resembles it in allegorizing . the animal world. While parts of the Renard doubt- Fable and less go back to the twelfth century, the body of the the " Renard "^Qj-jj (arranged in "branches") was composed after 1200 — a time when courtly idealism was disintegrating and boxirgeois irony scored its first victories.

The Aesopic fable had reappeared in Old French under the title of Ysopet. Such was the name of the fable collection of Marie de France (see Ch. II), and in the thirteenth century there was an Ysopet de Lyon, and so on. These works, however, were not derived from Greek but from medieval collections called Romuli, which also included fables by the Latin writers Phae- drus and Avianus, and which owed their name to the erroneous belief that a certain Romulus, son of Tiberius, had composed them. In the hands, then, of the medieval rhetorician the fable underwent considerable expansion. Any tale, whether strictly animalistic or not, having a moral to preach could be told as a fable; and oriental apologues (including exempla of Sanskrit origin) were often incorporated in the genre. In general, says M. Sudre, " les fables medievales les meilleures n'offrent que des qualites secondaires: clarte d'exposition, rapidite du recit, par- faite appropriation de la morale a Taction." True as this is, the fables of Marie are gracefully and deftly told, and the trait of making the fable reflect contemporary manners is seen in Marie's defense of feudalism as a system. It is from a complete identification of the animal world with society, in the manner of an epic or a romance, that the Roman de Renard sprang.

In this direction, too, there were antecedents. As early as the tenth century, the Ecbasis captivi allegorized society in the guise of animals — the wolf appears as a hypocritical priest, the story of the Sick Lion is told with all the byplay of an epic action, and the flight of the calf from its stable is made to rep- resent the escape of a monk from his cloister. It needed but the appearance of the Latin Ysengrimus (1150), by Nivard, a monk of Ghent, to add the characteristic names of Renard, Ysengrin, Noble, etc., by which the animals are henceforth known — and the beast-epic is born. To this Latin work the French Renard is indebted for much, if not most, of its material.

THE ROMANCE OF THE POX 65

In its complete form the Roman de Renard consists of some thirty thousand eight-syllable verses, divided into twenty-seven branches, sixteen of which antedate the rest and give the main thread of the narrative.

The sixteen branches relate how Renard, the Fox, and Ysen- grin, the Wolf, wage a hard-fought struggle of cunning and strength until, apparently vanquished, the Fox is carried forth in funeral procession by the court of Noble, the Lion. But Renard's death is only feigned, and before the end of the would- be burial, he is in full flight to the amazement and terror of the other animals. Thus Renard is really immortal — ever ready, at the beck of the medieval romancer to begin his tricks anew. These are the subject of the various branches or contes that com- prise the Renard.

Some embody a well-known fable, such as the Sick Lion (X) , the Cock and the Fox (H), the Crow and the Cheese (II). Others are probably of folklore origin, as, for example, the League of the Weak (VIII) or the amusing account of How the Wolf lost his Tail (III), a story foimd also in our American Brer Rabbit collections. The names of the animals are either personified traits, like Noble the Lion; or they are traditional names, such as Renard (German Raginhart) himself, Brichmer the Stag and Bernard the Ass. Hence, although typical, the animals are treated as individuals, with distinctive traits of their own, and the structure of feudal society is carried over into their world. Renard is the compere of Ysengrin, he resides in chastel Renard; and both animals are heroically conceived.

Nevertheless, it is the Fox who occupies the center of the stage. He is the light-footed and ingenious rogue, a " furred Jonathan Wild," whose cunning triumphs constantly. His main exploit, that which gives epic texture to the cycle, is the rape of Ysengrin's wife. Dame Hersent. This event forms the climax of branch II, about which the other branches can be grouped. Thus an attempt is made to bring Renard to justice; it fails be- cause Noble, with characteristic weakness, himself impugns the reliability of Hersent as a witness. What sensible man, argues Brichmer, would not doubt her word since Hersent is clearly an interested party. And so the reader is treated to an exquisite example of the miscarriage of justice — a masterful satire on social conditions.

66 THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA

But the best rendering of the feudal world is found in branch I, the Plaid or Judgment of Renard. Here the irony of the situ- ation rises to a climax, both in idea and in style. Renard is now accused by Ysengrin before the assembled court of Noble. His acquittal seems assured, when enter Chantecler and his four wives carrying upon a litter the body of a member of their family, killed by the Fox. The body is prepared for burial, the prayers for the dead are recited, and Renard is remanded for justice. He tries lie after lie, and when these fail to win his judges, he audaciously pretends to have a contrite heart and asks leave to undertake a pilgrimage outre mer. Sainte-Beuve has pertinently asked " si le hasard seul a pu produire une paro- die si fine qu'elle ressemble a la vie meme? " Not chance, as- suredly, but a great poet. Yet we do not know who the author of the Renard was. Some of the branches have been attributed to a certain Pierre de Saint-Cloud. The only fact we have is that the main part of the Renard was written in the northeast of France, not far from Flanders.

As for the influence of the French romance, the earlier sec- tions of it inspired the Middle High German Reinhart Fuchs (1180) , by Heinrich der Glichezare. On the other hand, Goethe's famous Reinecke Fuchs is derived from a Dutch version of the French poem, the Reinaert, made in the thirteenth century by a certain Willem. In France the character of Renard gradually lost much, if not all, of its charm. Whatever was base and cruel in humanity was associated with the Fox's name, and almost any contemptible act was called a renardie. Such is the spirit of the Couronnement de Renard, written in Flanders about 1260. More cynical still is the Renard le nouvel by Jacquemard Gelee of Lille — an out-and-out allegory, of the close of the thir- teenth century. Here Renard is the enemy of Noble, symboliz- ing the struggle between evil and good in the bosom of the church. The poet Rutebeuf wrote a Renard le BestovmS, a short satiric piece with obscure allusions. Finally, the encyclo- pedic Renard le Contrefait, by an unknown poet of the four- teenth century, contains a history of the world which throws many interesting side lights on social customs. All these works show how. popular this form of satirical allegory became in the latter Middle Ages. It afforded an opportunity to speak plainly,

ORIGINS OF THE DRAMA 67

and it stimtilated the French love of ridicule — as th« original Benard had stated:

tel chose dire Dent je vos puisse fere rire, Quar je sai bien, ce est la pure.

such things to tell Whereby, I know, laugh you may, For that forsooth is the way of truth.

The drama in France does not reach its florescence until the later Middle Ages, in the fifteenth century. It waited for a pub- The Early ^^^ which came with the development of the great in- Drama dustrial centers and the rise of the bourgeoisie to

a place of prominence. Henceforth the drama filled the gap left by the decline of the national epic.

Before this time, however, drama had existed in several well- known and on the" whole distinct forms, comprised under the generic name jeu. There was the liturgical play, having its origin in the ceremonies and festivals of the church and later developing into the so-called mystere or Mystery-play (1374) ; the miracle or Miracle-play, which applies the dramatic method to the life of a saint; and the secular, comic jeu, peculiar to Adam de la Halle, a poet of Arras. Of these types, the first two represent the real dramatic tradition of the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages had lost the distinction between tragedy and com- edy as applied to the theater, and while pure comedy forms were plentiful, being found, for example, in the farce and the sottie,' these have no coimection with the literary comedy of antiquity.

Thus, the French drama is primarily of religious origin. The point has often been made that in this respect it offers an analogy to the dramas of Greece and India. And, in fact, the Christian mass contains the essential elements of dramatic action: (1) as to content or idea, in that the mass symbolizes the sacrifice of the Saviour's body for the sinful world; and (2) as to form, in the dialogue by recitation and song (responsorium) between the priest and the choir. On this foundation it was easy to build, especially as the life of the time centered so largely in the church.

The first step in the dramatic evolution was the introduction into the mass of a brief dialogue, called a "trope," and the

68 THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA

use of antiphonal song in the accompanying music. Thus we find the Easter service adorned with a trot)e on the Resiu-- rection — the Qiiem quaeritis in sepulcro, 6 Christicolae? (Whom seek ye in the tomb, O Christians?) — and presently the Christmas mass is similarly expanded. But these are only the beginnings. Finally the Holy Script itself is taken over into the dialogue, in which the vulgar tongue then appears by the side of Latin, and we get (early in the twelfth century) a genuine liturgical play in the form of the Sponsus or Bride- groom. Derived from the story of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, this " drama " consists of ninety-four verses, arranged in strophes, part of which are in Latin and the remainder in French. The action, which is extremely simple, begins with the prediction by the choir of the advent of the Bridegroom, who at the close . pronounces the doom of the Foolish Virgins. The Sponsm was composed in Angoumois, near the Provengal border.

The next stages in the growth of drama inplude the enlarge- ment of the central theme, the complete vulgarization into French, and lastly the separation of the play from the mass. An important advance in these respects is found in the Repre- sentation d'Adam, of the middle of the twelfth century. Here the text is almost entirely French and the scene is laid on the parvis or square in front of the church doors. But this work has also a distinct merit of its own. In form of a trilogy, it sum- marizes for the Christmas service various aspects of Christian dogma, as seen in the fall of Adam, the murder of Abel by Cain and the prophecy of Christ. Unequal as these parts are, some of the characters are well delineated — especially Eve, strikingly described as " faiblette et tendre chose " — and an element of realism pervades the action. The third and principal part of the Adam is the most interesting. This is a version of the fa- mous sermon falsely assigned to St. Augustine (known separately as the Prophetes du Christ), in which a long line of prophets from Adam to Nebuchadnezzar foretell the coming of the Sa- viour. Theme and method are thus alike significant, for while the subject is of the highest dramatic import the opportunity for character-drawing is excellent. Of interest, too, are the stage directions. These call for Paradise on a " raised place " in front of the church door and for the abduction of the prophets into

MIRACLE-PLAYS 69

" hell," the location of which, however, is not stated precisely. It requires no stretch of the imagination to see how from this simple setting later playwrights pass to the elaborate scenery, with various booths or " mansions," such as we shall find in the mysteres.

The Representation d'Adam is in Norman dialect and was pre- sumably written in England. The Miracle-play (miracle) , which Xhe ^s *^^ chief dramatic form of the thirteenth century,

" Miracle " brings us back to France proper. Its first and best example is the Jeu de Saint Nicolas, by Jean Bodel of Arras, best known as a writer of epic. In origin the miracle is a drama- tized saint's life. Its connection with the liturgy is therefore slight. Indeed, its beginnings have recently been traced to " musical serv- ices as an un-ecclesiastical feature of St. Nicholas' feast day cele- bration (Dec. 6)." Thus, when Bodel wrote, he followed an es- tablished tradition. Because of its personal touches his play has often been termed the "first romantic drama." With great freedom Bodel sketches a battle between Christians and Saracens, and when the former are all dead but one, he allows the saint to per- form the " miracle " whereby the survivor's life is spared. A scene between thieves in a tavern is made almost as striking as the main action. Evidently Bodel was no respecter of sources. His play abounds in lyrical passages and in realism of detail. Incidentally, the first thieves' slang — later called argot — is found there.

Another early example of the same genre is the Miracle de Theophile (thirteenth century) by Rutebeuf. This embodies the theme later found in the Faust stories: a monk has bartered his soul to the Devil and finally, having grown repentant, he re- covers it through the intercession of the Virgin. Rutebeuf was a jongleur, a satirist of considerable power, who counted among his patrons the eldest daughter of Louis IX, Isabella of Navarre. For her he composed a Life of St. Elizabeth and a Complainte on Thibaut V, her husband, who died in 1270. He also had a hand in writing allegory; but his shorter poems, especially the Dis des Jacobins, are among* his best productions. In these his individualism has a free rein and he approaches Villon as a singer of the outlaw class. His Theophile is the first dramatiza- tion of a miracle of the Virgin. The plot follows the Greek

70 THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA

legend (Theophilus is a priest of Cilicia) and the action is distributed over eight " mansions " — as the booths designating the place of the action were called — extending from Heaven to Hell. While the play as a whole is tedious, the lyric parts throb with genuine emotion.

It is in the fourteenth century, however, that the Miracle-plays reach their apogee. The Quarante Miracles de Notre Dame of that period form a kind of cycle, which in volume exceeds the entire extant drama of the early period. But their chief value today is sociological rather than literary. Written for a pay or literary guild of Notre Dame, probably located in Paris, they throw a side light on manners and customs of the age such as few other works do. Thus they differ as to style and structure ; some are preceded by short sermons in prose, some contain serventois — a lyric form — in honor of the Virgin, a recurrent feature is the use of the rondel to celebrate her ap- proach, and so on. But all agree in introducing the Virgin as a sort of Dea ex machina. A favorite theme is that of a wife slandered by a revengeful lover — occurring in the Miracle de Notre Dame de la Marquise de la Gaudine and in a host of other examples, including one of the Mysteres de Notre Dame de Liesse (sixteenth century). The authorship of the Miracles de Notre Dame is unknown. In modern times, the type has been revived for the stage by Maeterlinck in his version of the Legend of Sister Beatrice.

As indicated above, the dramatic work of Adam de la Halle or Adam Le Bossu stands in a class by itself. The attempt to Adam de connect his name with the puy or guild of Arras (his la Halle home town) fails because it cannot be shown that

this puy occupied itself with the drama. The probability is that Adam wrote for a company of friends who had no official func- tion. In any case, we now come to the most independent dra- matic form of the Middle Ages: the secular, comic jeu} It is Adam himself who has the chief part in the Jeu de la Feuillee (between 1255 and 1264) , the title of which refers to the arbor ifeidllee) beneath which the May-festivals took place.

• In origin Adam de la Halle's jeux doubtless go back to folklore sources. They have parallels in the wooing plays, jigs and "mummings" found in northern Europe, especially England. Of such survivals there is a delightful account in Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native.

ADAM DE LA HALLE 71

The action begins with Adam's wishing to leave Arras and his wife Maroie, who wearies him, in order to become a clerk in Paris. But one cannot travel without money, and his father, on the score of his own maladies, refuses to provide any. A physician tells the father that his disease is avarice and men- tions others similarly afflicted. This leads to a tirade against the abuses of the times, in which a blind boy, an itinerant monk and others take part. It happens to be the first of May, and Morgan the fairy is expected. She arrives to the wild notes of the maisnie Hellekin (Harlequin), a fairy-king resembling the German Erlkonig. Among the fairies present is Maglore. She feels slighted, and while her companions promise Adam fame as a poet she condemns him to forget his desire for learning in the arms of his hated wife. The play closes with the monk's sur- render of his relics to his host as bail. The analogy with Aris- tophanes is clear, while the similarity to A Midsummer-Night's Dream is striking. The Jeu de la Feuillee is at once poetic and gross, purely fanciful and harshly satiric. Certainly, in the ex- tant literature of the time, it is unique.

Of Adam's other play, the Jeu de Robin et Marion, the 'most characteristic feature is the obvious adaptation of a pastourelle (see above, Ch. II) to a musical, dramatic form. Thus it is spoken of as a forerunner of comic opera. Robin loves Marion, and together they ward off an importunate knight. This occurs amid scenes of merry-making and frolic; a wolf is driven from the flock attended by the two shepherds, and the play ends in a dance which carries the company off to the woods. The beauty and grace of the entire composition has often been noted. Cer- tain lines breathe the spring-time of life, although many of the motifs are commonplaces — for example, the refrain

Robins m'aime, Robins m'a, Robins m'a demandee, si m'ara,

is found in a pastourelle of Perrin d'Angecourt (1250 and after) . From the Jeu du Pelerin, by another author, though it was added to Adam's work as a kind of " filler," we learn that Adam died in Naples. It is probable that his comedy was performed there before the court of Charles of Anjou in 1283 or 1284.

72 THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA

With the dramatization in 1395 of the story of the patient Griselda — the so-called Estoire de Griseldis — the early drama in France may be said to close. Although a secular work, the Estoire de Griseldis, consisting of two parts, forms a kind of miroir des dames exalting the unnatural role of the long-suffering wife. In the fifteenth century the drama enters the more definite channels of the mystere, the moralite, the sottie and the jarce. These types involve a consideration of the drama as an organ- ized social product, toward which the preceding age had been feeling its way.

CHAPTER IV

HISTORY, DIDACTIC LITERATURE AND STORIOLOGY

Aetistic prose is always a late arrival in the literary field. To this France is no exception. It is not until the close of the twelfth century that Pierre de Beauvais, translator of the Pseudo- Turpin (see Ch. I) , chooses prose, he says, because " rime re- quires the addition of words not foimd in the Latin." About the same time, as we have seen, many of the Arthurian romances appear in prose, and the AiLcasmi et Nicolette employs prose in most of its narrative portions.

But it is chiefly in the domain of history that prose-writing w'as to flourish. The vernacular histories of the twelfth century were exclusively rimed chronicles. Like Wace's Brut, the Es- toire des Engleis by Geoffrey Gaimar is an expanded paraphrase in verse of the Historia regum Britanniae (Ch. II). Wace him- self also wrote a Roman de Rou or Geste des Normans (1174) ; and Benott de Sainte-More carried his Chronique of the Norman kings down to the death of Henry I. But the only approach to modern historical writing — in this early period — is a biog- raphy. This is the Vie de Saint Thomus Becket by Gamier de Pont-Sainte-Maxence, which we have mentioned before as the earliest document in the Francian dialect. Garnier still writes in verse and his outlook is strictly clerical ; but he shows a sense of historical fact and he is impartial enough to condemn the arrogance of Henry II without mincing the hypocrisy of the Roman church. He wrote in 1173, just thirty-six years before the appearance of Villehardouin's Conquete de Constantinople. With this work historical prose-writing is born.

Geoffroy de Villehardouin (1160 to about 1212) was a knight of Champagne and planned his work primarily as an apologia of Viiie- *^® Fourth Crusade. The success of the expedition

hardouin had been jeopardized by rival political interests, in

73

74 HISTORY AND STORIOLOGY

which those of Venice (then mistress of the Mediterranean) had a paramount role. An emissary on behalf of Philip of Cham- pagne in 1199, Villehardouin had committed himself to the Venetian policy. The consequence was that the crusade was divided between those who went directly to the Holy Land and others who, like Villehardouin, accompanied the Venetians to Constantinople. The latter, after besieging Zara (on the Dal- matian coast) , twice eaptvired Constantinople and then founded the so-called Latin Kingdom, with Baldwin of Flanders at its head.

In this campaign it was Villehardouin's part to act as a special pleader. He was both brave and astute; and besides rescuing a band of French knights from annihilation by the Bulgarians at Adrianople, and otherwise winning distinction in military ex- ploits, he seems to have been the guiding mind of the expedition. In his castle at Messinople he wrote his book for his friends in France. His real motives have been often impugned. In fact, many historians doubt his sincerity, but his ability as a poli- tician and as a writer is admitted by all critics.

In prose which is remarkable for its austere simplicity he dwells on the merits of his case. He solemnly states that " bien fust la crestientes hauciee et la terre des Turs abaissiee " if all parties had been united. For the aged doge, Henry Dandolo, he has unbounded admiration, and throughout his work the feudal sense of obligation to his trust runs high. The tone of the Con- quite is aristocratic, the whole being cast in the epic mold of re- strained statement and noble aims. But despite its interesting subject the work is poor in picturesque details. Villehardouin rarely describes ; whenever he does, as in the account of the blind doge or the siege of Constantinople, he paints in outline on a large canvas and leaves it to the reader to fill in the sketch. Hence the writer dominates his material. We see the expedition stripped of its vagaries, in broad outline, coldly but clearly, as Villehardouin wishes us to see it.

The warmth which Villehardouin lacks is seen in the works of his contemporaries, Robert de Clari and Henri de Valen- ciennes. The first describes the Fourth Crusade from the stand- point of the simpler folk, " la menufi gent," whom the great barons scorn. Here all is detail — the reverse of the Conquete.

JOINVILLE 75

We hear the camp-fire talk, the recital of individual deeds of bravery, the author's rapture at the wonders of St. Sophia, and so on. He wrote his work in the Picard dialect but on French soil, whither he returned soon after 1210. On the other hand, Henri de Valenciennes was a poet, the Histoire de I'empereur Henri — successor to Baldwin of Flanders — which is found in many of the Villehardouin manuscripts being a marred prose redaction of an original poem. Unfortunately this poem is lost, but such glimpses as we get of it in the prose show that it possessed considerable literary value.

Another knight of Champagne, Jean de Joinville (1224-1317), accompanied Louis IX on the Sixth Crusade. After an adven-

. turous experience, in which he took part in the ill-

managed campaign along the banks of the Nile (1248), was captured by the Saracens, and later shared in va- rious exploits in Syria, Joinville returned to France in 1254, not yet thirty years of age, and spent the rest of his life in peaceful pursuits. Years later, at the advanced age of eighty, he com- posed for his sovereign, Jeanne, Countess of Champagne and Queen of France, a Livre des saintes paroles et des bonnes ac- tions de Saint Louis. On this work, which is more of a memoir than a consecutive history, his fame rests.

Joinville is above all a causeur. Though he professes to have a plan, Joinville gives us a chaplet of anecdotes ^rung about the career of the great King and his relations with him. Thus the Livre offers a strong contrast to the work of Villehardouin. Joinville has a bent for the picturesque and even the trivial. He relates that on the island of Lampedusa the crusaders found plenty of rabbits and two skeletons in a cave, that at Cyprus the King received many foreign delegations, that Louis sent to the Tartar princes a tent of woolen cloth (escarlate), adorned with an image of the Annunciation and other Christian mysteries — but as to the political side of the campaign he leaves us in the dark. Nevertheless, his failure as a historian is amply redeemed by his vividness as an artist. Joinville is never at a loss for the proper expression to fit the characteristic feature which his eye catches. In particular, the noble figure of Louis, with his strong temper but his innate sense of justice and excessive bounty, emerges into the clearest possible light; and by his side the far

76 HISTORY AND STORIOLOGY

more material character of Joinville himself wins us by his sin- cerity and his frank interest in " life." We learn that he was courtois, well-read, and never recoiled from what he considered his duty; but we are told also that he revolted at the idea of washing the feet of the poor and that a vilain did not enter into his scheme of salvation. A crusader's prejudice breathes in the lines he pens on the Bedouins: " De touailles sont entorteilliees (wrapped) leur testes qui leur vont par dessous le menton, dont laides gens et hisdeuses sont a regarder." On the whole, his work is a most valuable cultural document of the time. But it remained for Jean Froissart (1337-1404 ? ), chronicler of the Hundred Years' War, to glorify individual Froissart prowess as no one else had glorified it. In the preface to his Chroniques he warns us:

Vous veres et trouveres en ce livre comment pluiseur chevalier et escuier se sont fait et avanciet plus par leur proece que par leur lignage. Li noms de preu est si haus et si nobles, et la vertu si clere et belle que elle replendist en ces sales et en ces places oil il a assamblee et fuison de grans signeurs, et se remoustre dessus tous les autres.

Thus prowess is his thepie — prowess which advances men irre- spective of their country and birth. In its bearing on Froissart, the remark is significant.

He was born at Valenciennes, in French Flanders. In 1361 he went to England to offer his services to Queen Philippa and obviously in order to faire fortune. Here he soon became the intimate of the great and won for himself the title and functions of royal historiographer. Apparently he took the post seriously, as much so as his vain and childlike nature permitted. " Se je disoie," he remarks, " ainsi et ainsi advint en ce temps, sans ouvrir n'esclaircir la matiere, ce seroit cronique et non pas his- toire." Fortunately, his patron allowed him to travel. He visited Scotland, where he knew Robert Bruce; he went to southern France in the suite of the Black Prince; he journeyed to Italy for the marriage of Lionel, Duke of Clarence. He had met Chaucer; at Milan he saw Petrarch; at Ferrara he came into contact with Pierre de Lusignan, King of Cyprus. For a person of Froissart's observant eye these were fruitful years.

But in 1369 Philippa died, and the reaction against her party

FROISSART 77

at the court of Edward III drove Froissart back to Hainault in Flanders. Here he won in 1373 the curacy of Lestinnes and for the next ten years devoted himself to writing the first book of his Chroniqites, the first version of which, composed from the " English point of view," covers the period of 1325-1377.

A change of heart now brings him under the influence of Gui de Blois, whose family and sympathies were French. The curacy at Lestinnes is exchanged for a canonship at Chimai, and about 1390 Froissart becomes Gui's private chaplain. Under the latter's inspiration he published a " French revision " of his Chroniques; and to this he soon added a second book, embodying the disturbances in Flanders, which he himself had witnessed. Once more he sets his sail to the wind, and provided with letters from his new patron he visits the court of the renowned Gaston de Foix in Gascony. This visit, recorded about 1390 in the third book, is the most vivid of Froissart's many experiences. At the same time he is busy on his fourth and last book. However, in 1394 the truce signed between France and England arouses in him the desire to revisit the scenes of his youthful triumphs, and he readily accepts the invitation of Richard II to pass three months at the English Court. Although flattered by the recep- tion given him, Froissart is not blinded to Richard's misrule and leaves England abruptly in order to complete his fourth book. This recounts the beginning of the Civil Wars and ends abruptly with the abdication and death of the English King.

During his last ten years Froissart revised once more the first book of his Chroniques, adding an attack on the English people and an elegy on Richard. His own death is wrapped in mystery — the tradition is that he died at Chimai, destitute and bereft of friends.

Obviously, Froissart is an historian, " double d'un romancier " as the French say. With his poetry we shall deal elsewhere; it shares in the learned sophistications of his contemporaries. But it may be said of all his work that the pageantry of life made a far deeper impression upon him than did the hidden mo- tives of human action. It is characteristic that in England the translation of the Chroniques in 1523-1525 became a rich source of dramatic inspiration. Froissart has the " curiosity " of the French, but he lacks their attachment to ideas. At bottom he is

78 HISTORY AND STORIOLOGY

a Fleming, artistic, fond of color, sensual and essentially unmoral. His divided allegiance may be pardoned since he depended on the favor of patrons and was neither French nor English by birth. Moreover, his social background was, so to speak, Arthurian; and the tilt and tournament were part of the atmosphere he breathed. What is harder to understand is " his incurable optimism, his innate contentment in the face of so much shame and suffering, of so many crimes and outrages left unpunished " (Lanson) . Persuaded that all heroism and virtue consist in " adventure," Froissart represents his century in terms of an interminable feat of arms, the brilliant facets of which delight the eye Jaut confound the reason. If this be chivalry, then chivalry has come to a sad pass: a tinkling cjrmbal and an empty name.

Nevertheless, the stream of life flows strong in the pages of this prince of chroniclers. The battles of Crecy and Poitiers will live forever in the glowing colors in which he has set them forth. In prose that was then unmatched for its lucidity and flow he gave to the great families of Europe the first worthy narrative of their illustrious deeds. That the English, on the whole, fare better in his pages than the French is due to fortune, not to prejudice. With due allowance for his aristocratic leanings he had genuine admiration for those " povres brigans," who " s'en allant par voies couvertes " waylay the rich and gain their lives by pillaging castles and cities, for their valor is the equal of any. And who, having read them, can forget the admirable speech of Aymerigot Marches on the adventurous life of the past or the insolent words of Jean Chandos challenging his adversary? Froissart had a good ear, a retentive memory and the gift of drawing men out. He wished to be an echo, says Gaston Paris, " mais il est le plus sonore et le plus fidele des echos."

The writing of history, however, is only one of the manifesta- tions of the " learned " thirteenth century. The monastic schools Didactic °^ *^^ preceding age were now followed by the rise Literature of the universities (by 1200, Orleans is competing with Paris, Bologna and Toledo), and this in turn led to the vulgarization of a vast body of didactic literature. We have the great Dante's word that because of her " easier and more agreeable vulgar-tongue " France is also the home of works of a learned character. Witness the Italian, Brunetto Latini, who

DIDACTIC TREATISES TO

in 1265 wrote his famous Tresor in French prose. But the didac- tic spirit is abroad among the French long before this date. And here it was the Normans (many of them in England) , with their practical sense, caring more for fact than for poetry, who took the lead. It was among the Normans that the Physiologus, used as a text-book on natural history, was first put into French, that parts of the Bible were translated, and that the learned spirit generally was fostered and promulgated. On this foundation the thirteenth century built. In numerous " lapi- daries," " bestiaries " and " calendars " the allegorizing method is applied to the realm of Nature. In compendia of various kinds, sommes, bibles, images du monde or mappemondes, in- formation of every sort, fantastic and real, is arranged and codi- fied. In the form of chastiements, doctrinavx or enseignements, the age embodies its laws of behavior and its views on education.

Plentiful as these works are, few of them reveal any superior talent or can be ranked as literature. Rarely do they give an insight into the larger questions of hmnan life. The great prob- lem of scholastic philosophy — the relation of ideas {universalia) to facts ires) , on which the master minds of Anselm and Abelard were engaged — does not get down into the vernacular, for not until Descartes (seventeenth century) is philosophy written in French. The sources of scientific knowledge were of course books: treatises which like Aristotle's Organon, Solinus' Geog- raphy, the Latin versions of the late Greek Physiologus, had sur- vived the blight of the early Christian era, to be overlaid with a mass of commentary. Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, translated into Provencal as early as the tenth century, was a stock theme of exegesis down to the threshold of the Renaissance. The books of travel due to pilgrims and crusaders, however rich in detail, were insignificant as to matter or based on hearsay and therefore fanciful. But the greatest obstacle to enlightenment was the church dogma (see Ch. I) that since truth is " revealed " it is the purpose of science to " understand," not to " investigate," the universe.

Let us not forget, however, that Latin, and not French, was the medieval language of scholarship. Thus, if we include theology, the greatest of the medieval " sciences," the minds of the time were not only active — they were encyclopedic. Here, as else-

80 HISTORY AND STORIOLOGY

where in matters of culture, France was the leader as well as the disseminator. In the Summa Theologia of her " universal doc- tor," St. Thomas Aquinas ^ (1225-1274) , she gave to the medieval fixity its final form. In this way, the implements of the reason (if not reason itself), logic, grammar, rhetoric, are sharpened and controlled as never before. So, too, a fresh impulse is given to mathematics, together with its complementary art, music. All this made for expression, in the vernacular as well as in Latin; but for its formal or dialectic elements, structure and style, not content or thought.

How sophisticated and yet naive medieval science could be is seen in the works of Philippe de Thaon, an Anglo-Norman writer Natural °^ ^^^ court of Henry I (early twelfth century).

History In six- and then eight-syllable verse Philip wrote a

Comiput, a Bestiaire and a Lapidaire. His style, says M. Lan- glois, " est d'une indigence, d'lme nullite et d'tme gaucherie sans pareilles." Yet Philip aims to instruct the clergy, whose ig- norance moves him to compassion. In the Corn-put he treats like Bede and John of Garlande the ins-and-outs of the ecclesi- astical calendar: the days, months, church festivals, equinoxes, solstices, and so forth. For all these arid themes he points a moral lesson. For instance, he derives the word August from Lat. gustus, and since God is " pur gustement " it follows that August signifies God. The same kind of reasoning is typical of the Bestiaire and the Lapidaire. The former follows the Physiologus in allegorizing animals: the lion with his large head and comparatively small body represents " Jhesu filz de Marie"; if the pelican opens her breast to feed her young this action is symbolic of the Saviour:

par le sane precius

que Des (Dieu) laissat pur nus

— as centuries later Musset made it a symbol of the poet.

The Lapidaire puts into French the Latin version of a work by

Damigeron, a first-century Greek. Here Philip dwells on the

curative value of certain minerals and gives short directions for

their use — another testimony to medieval credulity.

Other bestiaries were composed in the Middle Ages. In the thir-

> Thomas Aquinas (d' Aquino) was an Italian, but he studied and taught in Paris.

BRUNETTO LATINI 81

teenth century, Richard de Fournival, Chancellor of Amiens, had the fantastic idea of celebrating his lady in a Bestiaire d'amour-. Richard's subtleties are in prose, but they were easily turned into verse. As for lapidaries, numerous translations into various European languages testify to the vogue of a Latin lapidary by Marbode, Bishop of Rennes (eleventh oentxu-y). All of these works, however, vary in character but slightly from Philip's, which may thus be considered typical of the genre.

A good illustration of the medieval encyclopedia is the Image du monde (about 1245) by Gautier de Metz. Preserved in many Encyclo- manuscripts with handsome miniatures, this poem of pedias eleven thousand verses aims to embrace all creation,

including geography and astronomy. Here the sensation-loving layman would receive food for his imagination, together with considerable moral edification. The work gives some facts, but on the whole it abounds in descriptions of fanciful lands, unheard-of monsters, and treasures of stupendous value. The majority of images were a similar bait for the unwary. One, however, has a distinct literary and cultural value. This is the Livre du Tresor (1265), by the Florentine Brunetto Latini, mas- ter of Dante. As we have said, he wrote his treatise in French because (to quote his exact words) this " parleure est plus deli- table et plus commvme a toutes gens." Knowledge, which Bru- netto compared to the small change which we daily spend, is, he says, necessary in life. ■ Accordingly, in three long books he runs through the gamut of the knowable. Today the interesting part of the treatise is the section on politics. Here Brunetto has col- lected some real information, with finely drawn distinctions, on national and civil government in France and Italy. But it is the language which constitutes the noteworthy trait of the Tresor. Brunetto, whom Alain Chartier later compared to Livy, writes better French than many a native Frenchman. His style is clear and succinct, and remarkably idiomatic. The Tresor enjoyed a long and merited popularity and was twice translated into Italian.

Moral precepts, akin to the type still current in the " Letters The Chas- °^ ^ Father to his Son," are embodied in the chastie- tiements merit. This genre began with the Chastiement d'un phe a son fils, which is a twelfth-century verse translation of

82 HISTORY AND STORIOLOGY

the Disciplma cleriailis by the Spanish Jew, Petrus Alphonsus, The educational features of the work are secondary, however, to the tales or exempla with which the discussion is illustrated. Indeed, this feature is what saved much medieval edification from oblivion. In the course of time, a large body of such tales, derived chiefly from the Orient, found their way into the vernac- ular and served not only to instruct but also to entertain and amuse. We have observed the fact in dealing with the " fable " (Ch. Ill) and we shall have occasion to mention it again.

A chastiement of genuine educational value is the prose work, Des quatre tens d'aage d'home (about 1270), by Philippe de No- vaire (Novara) . Here the moralizing tone yields to the mellow reflections of old age. Philip wrote at the close of an adventurous career. His Gestes des Chiprois, giving an account of the tragic struggle of Cyprus against Frederick II, was in the nature of a memoir ; this is followed by the chastiement as an essay on wis- dom. Philip deals at some length with the various " ages " of man, but dwells particularly on the age of childhood, about which he makes several telling observations.

On the other hand, the Chastiement des dam£s (about 1250), by Robert de Blois, is filled with a didacticism of a purely worldly tj^e. Written in verse, this work is a veritable manual on courtesy for the noble ladies of Robert's time. Mapy of the instructions given are of course conmionplace ; others, however, are quite characteristic — as, for example, the precept that a lady should always love secretly (celeement) or her reputation will be at stake. In exalted, almost religious verse, Robert in- tones the praise of courtaisie, bien parler and douce acointance, which are the sterling traits of a woman's education. Obviously, he follows Ovid, but never slavishly.

A more serious type of moral treatise is inaugurated by the

Livre des manieres of Etienne de Fougeres (1170) at one

time chaplain of Henry II of England. The anonymous Poeme moral (thirteenth century) incorporates in its moralizing the legend of Thais. For the most part, however, such works are satirical. Their anunus against certain classes grows more and more violent until in the so-called Roman de charite, by Bai^ th^lemy de MoUiens (thirteenth century) , the sombemess of the author's picture holds out little hope for the ideals for which the Middle Ages once stood.

HENRI d'ANDELI 83

We may fittingly close this section on didactic literature with a glance at the BataUle des sept arts (after 1235) by the cele- Th " B brated trouvere, Henri d'Andeli. In form this work taUle des belongs to the genre of verse-dispute or debat de- sept arts " rived from late Latin literature. A typical example is the Debat de I'hiver et de Pete, which embodies the im- memorial theme of the conflict of the seasons. The appellation bataille — and there are other works of this name — was inspired by the Psychomachia of the poet Prudentius (fourth century), in which a battle of the virtues and vices is narrated. But Henry's poem transcends the limits of a mere genre. Henry is one of the enlightened spirits of the thirteenth century. He has individuality, grasp and variety of idea, and skill in statement. Like the later seventeenth centm-y, the medieval period had its quarrel as to the relative merits of the ancients and moderns. It was Henry's distinction to stand up for the classics and de- fend Orleans against Paris, where, he says, " students care for naught except to read books on nature":

Et li arcien n'ont mes cure Lire fors livres de nature.

In eight-syllable couplets Henry marshals the representatives of " literature " [grammaire) against the converts to " dialectics " (logique). But in vain; the former are worsted, and the poem closes on the despairing note that " the times are given to empti- ness " and only a new generation can restore culture to its true status. Henry was over-sanguine; the culture he had in mind had to await the appearance of Petrarch, and even then the new humanism made its way slowly in France. But through its emphasis on the classics Henry's poem heralds the Renaissance. From every point of view it is a cultural docimient of the first rank.

No picture of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries could be complete without a reference to the vast body of floating contes, dits, fabliaux and lais in which the age delighted. Storiology Moralizing and instructive, or purely imaginative or ironical, these stories often have no special hall-mark, are addressed to no particular class, and must be assigned to the field of general European folklore. This, however, does not preclude

84 HISTORY AND STORIOLOGY

the fact that many such tales may be of individual French inven- tion; nor does the group embrace the large class of Oriental stories which came into Western Europe directly through the crusades and the Saracen domination in Spain.

The " fable " and the romantic lai we treated above (Chs. II and III). As for the fabliau or fablel, it is defined by "M. Bedier as a " conte a rire en vers." The shortest D^* ^d c'^te ^^^ eighteen verses, the longest thirteen hundred. Essentially anecdotes by nature, the fabliaux are akin to the gabs or boasts which are told in some forms of the Old French epic. The fabliau of Barat et Hairnet, which a certain Jean Bedel set to verse in the thirteenth century, has also been recorded in Armenia and Albania.

Thus, universal and perennial as stories, the fabUavx flourished particularly in the thirteenth century, when they supplanted more and more the lais of the preceding age. Reflecting the ironic, bourgeois spirit, they were well fitted to make a person while away an idle moment on a long journey or at an inn. In fact, one of the most amusing, Les deux bordeors (jesters) ribauz, recounts the " half -clumsy, half-satiric boasts of two members of the order, who misquote the titles of their repertoire, make by accident or intention ironic comments on its contents " and thus show that their wit cuts both ways.

In short, the fabliau ridicules society. It is brief, to the point, and effective. It strikes at the priestly class, as title after title shows, dethrones the lofty heroine of romance, and pictures the " real and practical, not the ideal or sentimental." One of the earliest and best examples of the genre is Richeut. This is the story of a courtesan who together with her son and servant plies her unsavory trade among various classes and in this way furthers her own and her offspring's career. Certain traits re- mind the modern reader of Manon Lescaut — except that the \m- known author is neither a sentimentalist nor a cynic but a cool observer of brutal fact. Most fabliaux, however, deal less with a situation than with a traditional theme. Such is the so-called Lai d'Aristote, by Henri, d'Andeli, which repeats the age-old plot of the scholar duped by a woman; or the Vilain Mire, which furnished the basis of Molike's comedy, Le Midecin malgre M; or Le Mali qui fist sa femme confesse, whence La Fontaine ex-

FABLIAUX AND EXEMPLA 85

traoted his Chevalier confessew, and so on. Thus by means of the fabliau the " real world " in the Middle Ages jostles and elbows the courtly and the fanciful. Many a story of Boccaccio is but a fabliau retold; and how lacking in contrasts would be the Canterbury Tales if Chaucer had not seen fit to make use of the genre!

But not all fabliaux are ironical or satirical. Or rather the genre is not always distinguishable from the dit and the conte. The dit, in particular, is supposed to point a moral lesson. It is characteristic of all these compositions, however, that they deal with " ordinary life " and are to the point. Thus La Housse partie (" The Saddlecloth Divided into Portions ") — a fabliau — has an ethical purpose; namely, to show the dangers of filial in- gratitude- A special class is perhaps the contes divots, similar in spirit to the pious Miracles (in this case, legends) de la sainte vierge by Gautier ^e_Coincy. Such a one is the Dit dou vrai aniel (" The Parable of the True Ring") , an eastern tale retold by Boccaccio and later embodied in Lessing's drama, Nathan der Weise; or the charming Tombeor Nostre Dame, which Mas- senet has put into opera. In the first of these the theme is philosophical ; in the second it is lyric — in the best sense.

Finally, the edifying spirit reigns in the Latin exempla or parables with which the medieval preacher embellished his ser- The Exempla mons. These are mainly of Arabic — indirectly, and Oriental of Sanskrit — origin and are preserved in such col-

** lections as that of Jacques de Vitry (before 1240)

or the Disciplina clericalis, mentioned above. The Arabian Nights did not reach France until the eighteenth century, yet the Oriental plan of setting a group of stories in a framework is found as early as 1155 in the Roman des sept sages — which existed in a host of European versions. This work was planned to set forth certain traits which the Brahmins thought youth should guard against. Here a young prince is rescued from the treachery of his step-mother by seven wise men, each of whom delays the prince's execution by telling a story. In a similar way, an account of the Buddha, turned into a Christian Greek legend in the sixth century, found its way into Latin and thence into French. Of this Barlaam et Josaphat there are three French rimed-versions (the last about 1250), which tell how

86 HISTORY AND STORIOLOGY

Barlaam converts Josaphat (originally the Buddha) to Chris- tianity, largely through the influence of Oriental stories skill- fully adapted for the purpose.

Here our sketch of medieval storiology ends. As to form, be it noted that by the fifteenth century the French verse-tale dis-. appears, on the one hand, into the prose conte, and on the other, into the farce, a type of the drama. The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles' (1461) show the influence of the Italian novella and are the direct forerunners of our modern short-stories. As we observed in the case of the Flamenco (Ch. II), the Provengals had used the word novas for narrative fiction, but without any distinction between its longer and its shorter forms.

mt(Cc maniarcefiutaiie caU}

Illustration from Froissart's Chroniques (Fifteenth Century Manuscript)

BOOK II THE BOURGEOIS INFLUENCE

CHAPTER I

THE LYRIC POETS OF THE SCHOOL OF MACHAUT AND DESCHAMPS

We have now come to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which, as we noted above (Bk. I, Ch. I) , represent the Middle French period, as distinguished from the Middle Ages proper.

Politically this was an age of hesitation, not to say, of dis- integration. The Valois princes, who came to the throne in The Middle ^^^^' ^^^^ *^^ trappings of chivalry, but their love French of display and luxury is out of all keeping with the

Period j.ga,l misery of the times. The retinue of minor kings

and nobles surrounding them is often brilliant; especially in such persons as John of Luxemburg who, though ruler of Bohemia, kept open house in Paris, where his gaiety became proverbial. The fact is that feudalism is tottering, and such examples are prophetic of its fall. The political security it once gave is lost in the Hundred Years' War (between France and England) , and as in the case of Froissart, " fealty " has become a matter of convenience, to be treated lightly according to one's self-interest. The great nobles still respond to the glamour of feudal life, but they have long wearied of its obligations. The terrific struggle (1405-1421) for the control of the crown, between Louis of Orleans and John Without-Fear, of Burgundy, is indicative of this fact. At last the monarchy is forced to seek other means of support; and these it finds in the great cities among the rapidly rising merchant class; Here Artois and Flanders, cen- ters of the textile arts, Lyons at the head of the Rhone Valley, and Rouen with the commerce of the Seine at her feet, were of

87

88 THE LYRIC POETS

great importance. With an instinct close to genius, Louis XI (1461-1483) worked for the future of France by his control of the feudal barons. And, finally, with the Renaissance, when national unity is achieved, its mainstay is an enterprising and self-reliant bourgeoisie.

The effect of this period on literature is reactionary rather than progressive. Here and there the gleam of a new humanism shines forth, especially during the reign of Charles V, in the works of Pierre Berguire and Nicolas Oresme, in imitations of Boccaccio and to a less degree of Petrarch. But, in the main, the attempts at innovation are abortive or in any case super- ficial; and the older literary forms continue, mannered and flam- boyant in response to Italian and Flemish influences, but other- wise changing little. One fact, however, is noteworthy. The great lord who has his own library, and the bourgeois now a client of the jongleur, insist on the portrayal of their opinions and their emotions; and these are anything but poetic. The result is a sharp contrast between form and thought; the poets consiune their efforts in seeking new and striking effects, and to represent an idea by the image most foreign to it becomes the rule of rvdes. A Songe du Vergier clothes a treatise on politics; Le roi Modus et la reine Racio is a manual on falconry. Hence, most of the poetry is a labyrinth of allegory framed to a purpose for which it was never intended. And it is significant that the art of poetry — the technique of which now becomes the serious con- sideration of the jmys (see above) — is officially termed rheto- rique and the poet assumes the ominous name of a faiseur. In this way, the formal elements of the Middle Ages survived long after the time when the spirit that produced them had fled.

Meanwhile, the French language itself is undergoing a marked change. Many learned words derived from the classics come to enrich the vocabulary. Not at once, but certainly by the close of the fifteenth century, the feminine e ceases to be soimded before other vowels: veu is reduced to vu; further, the diph- thong oi acquires the sound of we or e or wa, and most of the final consonants become silent. Above all, the language loses all but the last vestage of case-forms in the merging of the nominative and the oblique (thus on and homme, both derived from Latin homo, continue not as separate cases but as distinct

MACHAUT 89

words) ; and the sentence structure of Modern French, less flexible but far clearer than that of Old French, is inaugurated. In short, the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries are the bridge between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, between the age of faith and the age of reason. On the political and cul- tural side, the period is marked by the decay of feudalism and by the rise of the township and the bourgeois spirit. Intellectually, the beginnings of humanism are apparent; sporadically, however, and then only as a veneer. As for literature, it flows prevail- ingly in the former channels; where there is a revival, as in the lyric, the tendency is toward a polished and involved form — the ballade and the rondeau are supreme, like the sonnet later on — and poetic expression is artificial, complicated, or only " graceful," ' like the Gothic architecture of the time. On the other hand, the point of view is more and more personal and autobiographic, and as regards the one genius of the age, Fran- 5ois Villon, it is strikingly modern.

The founder of the poetic school of the fourteenth century is Guillaume de Machaut (about 1300-1377). In acknowledging this fact, we need not go the length of Rene of Anjou, who gave him a place above Petrarch and Boccaccio, although Chaucer's imitation of him in the Book of the Duchess is in itself high praise. He was born in Champagne and early entered the service of John of Luxemburg, who took him to Ger- many, Austria, Italy and even Russia. After John's death on the field of Crecy, Guillaume found a new patron in the Dauphin, the future Charles V, and had leisure for literature. Others who supported his pen were Charles of Navarre, for whom he wrote a Jugement and the Confort d'ami, and the famous Pierre de Lusignan, whose exploits he celebrated in the Prise d'Alexandrie. But Guillaume's true vein lay in the shorter genres, the bal- lade and the lyric lai. Artificial as these are in his treatment, their preciosity is redeemed by the alliance of verse to music, a feature which Guillaume developed, and by marked dexterity in the detail of expression. In the Livre du voir-dit (about 1363) Guillaume has collected the best of his lyric experience. Made up of the shorter forms, such as ballades, lais, rondels, this work purports to be the amorous exchange of the aging poet

90 THE LYRIC POETS

and the young and charming Peronelle d'Annentieres. In fact, the work has been called the " journal amoureux du quatorzieme siecle," but for all that the exchange may have been a poetic fiction. In any case, the Voir-dit reveals to perfection the gal- lant love-making of the time. Guillaume plays gracefully with his passion until the inevitable happens: Peronelle deserts him for another, and the poet consoles himself with an avowal of friendship. Thus the work has the outward semblance of a novel.

Guillaume's best remembered short poem is probably the following rondel or triolet:

Blanche com lys, pius que rose vermeille, Resplendissant com rubis d'oriant, En remirant vo biaute non pareille, Blanche com lys, plus que rose vermeille, Suy si ravis que mes cuers toudis veille Afin que serve, a ley de fin amant, Blanche com lys, plus que rose vermeille, Resplendissant com rubis d'oriant.

White as a lily, rosier than the roses red, Outshining far the ruby of the East! To see your peerless beauty being led — White as a lily, rosier than the roses red — So charmed am I straightway my heart is sped Humbly to serve you where true love holds feast. White as a lily, rosier than the roses red. Outshining far the ruby of the East!

Guillaume's pupil and friend was Eustache Deschamps (about 1340-1405), who bewailed the former's death in harmonious Descliamps words :

Tons instrumens I'ont complaint et ploure, Musique a fait son obseque et ses plours, Et Orpheus a le cors enterre.

Deschamps, who wrote some eleven hundred ballades, was the lawgiver of the school and composed an Art de dictier et fere chansons, etc., the first treatise of its kind (in French) that has come down to us. Yet he differed much from Guillaume in character and temperament. A frequenter of taverns and the

DESCHAMPS AND FROISSART 91

common people, Eustache had an aversion for the rich and high- placed. This attitude led him to write a Mirair de mairiage in which he jeers at women and the abuses of the courtly world. But he was not courageous enough to abjure the artificiality of verse and write in the more suitable medium of prosiC. Deschamps lacked taste, and voluminous as his output was, it is often dull and incoherent. At the same time, he is capable of occasional lapidary effects and a manly and personal accent that does him credit. He stood in persona,! relations with Chaucer, to whom his sturdy character appealed and to whose genius Deschamps does homage in a well-known ballade, with^ the refrain:

Grant translateur, noble Geoffrey Cbaucier.

Another poet whom Chaucer imitated is Froissart. Justly famous for his prose Chroniques (see above, Bk. I, Ch. IV), Froissart also composed various light forms of verse, as well as the Paradis d' amour — the work which Chaucer used — and the tiresome Arthurian romance, Meliador. Passing through Avignon, he was stupid enough to allow himself to be robbed of two florins given him by Gaston de Foix. This untoward event he bewails gracefully in the Dit dou florin, which thus remains a good index of his lighter verse. A courtier by instinct, Froissart is less stilted than most of his contemporaries, and he achieves greater unity of thought and expression. One of his characteristic rondels — On doit le temps ensi prendre qu'il vient — has been charmingly translated by Longfellow:

Take time while yet it is in view. For fortune is a fickle fair: Days fade, and others spring anew; Then take the moment still in view. What boots to toil and cares pursue? Each month a new moon hangs in air. Take, then, the moment still in view. For fortune is a fickle fair.

As we approach the fifteenth century, the outstanding figures in poetry are Christine de Pisan, Alain Chartier and the royal poet, Charles d'Orleans.

92 THE LYRIC POETS

Time has dealt rudely with the fame of Christine de Pisan. An Italian by birth, she yet was once considered one of the Christine glories of France. In general, she is remarkable for de Pisan her knowledge and her ideas, and the tragedy of her life again and again infuses her writing with lyrical feeling — although she cdnnot escape the allegorizing fashion of her age.

Christine was born in Venice (1364) and not, as her name might suggest, in Pisa or Pezzano. Her father, Thomas de Pezano, a scholar of Bologna, took his family to France, whither he had been called as physician and astrologer to Charles V. While Charles lived the family fortunes of the Pezanos flourished, Christine received an excellent education and was married young and advantageously to a Picard gentleman, Estienne de Castel. But fortune plays strange tricks, and after a few years of happi- ness Christine lost not only her husband and her father but through litigation and debt much of her property. With a fortitude unusual in her youth and sex, she braved the insolence of law-courts and the injustice of the world, and rescued what little she could from the family disaster. Her real help, and incidentally her consolation, was her writing. After the battle of Agincourt she retired more and more from the world, and finally took religious orders. She died in 1429, shortly after celebrating in song Joan of Arc, whose triumph she had lived to see.

Besides her early lyrics and the poems in which she defended her sex against the attack of Jean de Meun (Bk. I, Ch. Ill), Christine left three poems of a meditative nature: the Mutacion de Fortune, the Chemin de long estude and a so-called Vision. She also wrote a prose Life of Charles V for his successor, in which her hero's courage, chevalerie and sagesse are proved by illustration.

All of these works (barring perhaps the last) have a marked personal touch ; a good part of them indeed is out-and-out auto- biography. Of the shorter lyrics, the ballades, forming a kind of sequence in the manuscripts, are among the best. Note the bal- lade beginning:

Seulete sui et seulete vueil estre, Seulete m'a mon douz ami laissiee; Seulete sui, sanz compaignon ne maistre, Seulete sui. dolente et courrouciee,

CHRISTINE DE PISAN 98

Seulete sui, en langueur mesaisiee, Senlete sui, plus que nulle esgar^e, Seulete sui, sanz ami demouree.

Alone am I, alone I wish to be,

Alone my sweetest friend hath left me here,

Alone am I, in my sole company.

Alone in sorrow bent, and without cheer.

Alone am I in languorous disgrace,

Alone far more than wanderer from God's grace,

Alone, without a friend, the world I face.

Or another, which reveals Christine's classical reading:

Ovid relates a messenger there is Who sleeping bears his tidings unto men. Making them dream, and in their dreams, I wys. See joy and sorrow to the full again, etc.

Taking her title from Dante — Vagliami U lungo studio — she relates in the Chemin de long estude how Almathea, the Cu- mean sibyl, leads her after various wanderings to the fifth heaven. Thither Earth has sent a messenger to ask Reason where the perfect man can be found. Nobility, Riches, Chivalry and Wisdom take part in the discussion, and the question ■ — unanswerable as it is — is left for a decision to the King of France to whom Christine is dispatched as an ambassador. Thereupon Christine awakes to find that she has been dreaming. The other two philosophical poems are of the same general char- acter as the first. The Mutadon de Fortune throws light on the author's early Jife and education, while the third part of the Vision, inspired largely by Boethius, abounds in philosophizing on life and stresses a strict adherence to duty as the only road to happiness.

Thus Christine's traits are a firm grasp of moral values, a quick and broad sympathy, and a learning quite out of the or- dinary. In her day Christine was an enlightening force wRich slowly but emphatically cleared the way for the Renaissance. Compared to this " virile " woman, the so-called " father of French letters " at first seems a weakling. Son of a bourgeois Alain "^ Bayeux, who was a pillar of the state, Alain

Chartier Chartier (1394-1440) early prepared for a life at court and for literature. In the Esperance des trois vertus he

94 THE LYRIC POETS

mentions Homer, Virgil, Livy, Horace, Statius and Lucan. To this substantial knowledge must be added Cicero and Seneca — whose vogue Alain began — and among the modems, Brunette Latini, Dante and Boccaccio. The legend, circulated in the sixteenth century, that Margaret of Scotland, finding the poet asleep, kissed the lips that had framed such beautiful verse, is probably an invention. But Alain was skillful, and besides maintaining himself in the royal favor — Charles VI sent him on diplomatic missions — he wrote in the court manner-

In one of his early works, the Livre des quatre dames, each of whom had lost a suitor at Agincourt, Alain shows how vapid was the period in its hopeless neglect of the real woes of France. Similarly, the Lay de Plaisance and the famous Belle Dame sans merci reveal the same indifference to the horrors wrought by Orleanists and Burgundians. It has often been said that this callousness is conventional. In any case, the Belle Dame fulfills all the sophisticated rules of gallantry. Can one die of love? The heartless lady thinks not; the lover dies and thus disproves her point. Could stilted artifice go further? Yet the poem was translated into English by a follower of Chaucer, in part as follows:

Full oftentimes to speak himself he pained, But shamefasteness and drede said ever nay, Yet at the last, so sore he was constrained When he full long had put it in delay, To his lady right thus than gan he say, With dredeful voice, weeping, half in a rage; " For me was purueyed an unhappy day, When I first had a sight of your visage!"

Fortunately, Alain's fame does not rest on his verse. It was his prose, modeled on that of Seneca, which dazzled his contem- poraries and made him a classic to the sixteenth century. Among other admirers, Etienne Pasquier speaks of " les mots dorez et belles sentences de Maistre Alain Chartier." Marot also mentions him with praise.

Le Quadrilogue invectif (1422) is the most important of Alain's prose works. The three estates, the nobility, the clergy and the people, debate with France on the crying abuses of the time. The clergy, acting as judge between the other orders, is particu-

ALAIN CHARTIER 95

larly severe on the nobles and accuses them of sacrificing the country to their own lawlessness. Alain's style is grave, periodic, sententious. In an argument rising occasionally to eloquence he preaches the destruction of feudalism and pleads for a national army in which royalty and people shall unite. The Quadrilogue is the earliest work to treat feudalism unsparingly. A satire on the life of the courtier, Le Curial, is less convincing in its invec- tive ; but the Esperance des trois vertus — composed in the tenth year of Alain's exile from the capital (1429), whence he had been driven by the Burgundian faction — again strikes a clarion note. Here the poet blames the church openly for her temporiz- ing attitude: the triumph of evil on earth is to a large extent her work. Nevertheless, the poet is confident that France will some day rise against her foes, foreign and domestic, and crush them. This work, in which prose and verse are intermingled, contains some of Alain's best imitations of Seneca and approaches the Tprose oratoire of a later day.

Within this book of my thought The tale of my heart is related, The grief of my soul can be sought With tears illuminated!

So sang Charles d'Orleans (1391-1465), the last exponent of the graces and refinements of chivalry. His life falls into three Charles periods of almost equal length. The son of Louis

d'Orleans of Orleans and Valentine of Milan, from both of whom he inherited the love of art and letters, his first twenty- five years were spent amid the ruin of the Hundred Years' War and the enmity of Burgundy and Orleans. He was educated at Blois and married (at the age of fifteen) his cousin, Isabella of France, the widow of Richard II of England. In 1407 his father was murdered at the instigation of John Without-Fear, and his mother and his wife died barely a year after. For seven years, with the aid of the Armagnacs, he waged continuous war- fare against the Burgundian faction, relieved by occasional but momentarjr truces. In 1415 he was captured by the English at Agincourt and taken to England a prisoner. The next twenty- five years -f- his second period — he languished in captivity. It was then that most of his poetry was written. Releaised on con-

96 THE LYRIC POETS

dition that he make peace with Burgundy — and the grace with which he accepted these terms lives in the words he addressed to the Duchess of Burgundy:

Madame, vu ce que vous avez fait pour ma delivrance, il est juste que je me rende votre prisomiier —

he married Marie de Cleves and settled down to a life of artistic enjoyment at Blois. During this, his third, period he gave to the poetry of chivalry a brief but brilliant afterglow, and he died gladdened by the thought that his infant son was destined to mount the throne of France as Louis XII.

As his recent biographer points out, there is in the poetry of Charles d'Orleans. a note that recalls at once Petrarch and Heine. Of the one he has the longing, of the other the intimacy, while he has the tenderness of both. But he undoubtedly lacks their penetration and force, and despite his own experience the tragedy of life affected him little. To rank him with Villon — his con- temporary and friend — is to compare a reed with an oak.

His poems fall into two groups: those written in captivity — of which a number were translated into English — and those composed after Charles' retiu-n to France. The first group, the ( so-called Livre de la Prison, imitates, in narrative interspersed ' with ballades, the allegory of the Roman de la Rose. The second, . containing the standard lyric forms, again celebrates " love," ' but it also represents the progress of the poet's experience: daily occurrences, anniversaries. May-festivals, and so on. Charles excels in crystallizing such details, in making the fleeting perma- nent. The famous,r(mdeaM.*

Le temps a laissie son manteau De vent, de froidure et de pluye,

is in all anthologies and has been beautifully rendered by Andrew Lang:

The year has changed his mantle cold

Of wind, of rain, of bitter air;

And he goes clad in cloth of gold,

Of laughing suns and seasons fair;

No bird or beast of wood or wold

But doth with cry or song declare

The year lays down his mantle cold.

CHARLES D'ORLEANS 97

All founts, all rivers, seaward rolled, The pleasant summer livery wear. With silver studs on broidered vair; The world puts off its raiment old. The year lays down his mantle cold.

But again, Charles was indifferent to the misery of his time, and charm and grace are the main assets of his verse. In one bal- lade, rather freely translated by Longfellow,^ the longing for France is at least genuine; it begins:

En regardant vers le pays de France, Ung jour m'avint, a Dovre sur la mer. . .

By a singular fate, the poems of Charles d'Orleans remained virtually unprinted until the seventeenth century.

1 8ee Longfellow's Poetry of Europe^

CHAPTER II

THE UNIVERSITY AND THE HUMANISM OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

Amid the political and social turmoil of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the University of Paris represents one of the few elements of stability. In upholding the medieval point of view and thus assuming more and more a reactionary role, it nevertheless served the cause of learning (see especially Oresme's vulgarization of Aristotle) and it championed the rights of the people against the nobles. The outstanding figure of the Uni- versity group was the great chancellor, Jean Gerson. We know him already, along with Christine de Pisan, as an opponent of Jean de Meun in the " grant guerre " concerning the Roman de la Rose. But he was also a fighter for " justice against political interests, a reformer of the inner life of the church, a steadfast worker for church unity, and — above all — the greatest religious writer and preacher of his age in France." ^ In this last respect he is a parallel to Bossuet.

But Gerson had his intellectual forbears, and with these we shall deal first. An important scholar and translator of the Early middle of the fourteenth century is Pierre Berguire.

Humanists. He lived for a while at Avignon (1320-1340) and there met Petrarch in retirement at Vaucluse. Aptly the latter calls him "vir insignis pietate et litteris." In 1342 Berguire was busy at Paris on a large encyclopedia in three parts: the Reductorium, Repertorium et Breviarium morale. He then be- came secretary to John the Good, and like Vincent de Beauvais (the translator of the Legenda aurea and other widely-read books), he set himself the task of translating Livy into French. The Rommans de Titus Livius (completed in 1356) , as the title is, deals only with the better known portions of Livy's history. But it does so in vivid, forceful language, which won the work

• D. H. Carnahan, University of lUinois Studies, III, p. H.

THE AGE OF CHARLES V 99

readers beyond the borders of France, in Spain and in Italy. The translation, which is addressed to those " qui vouldront savoir I'art de chevalerie et prendre exemple aux vertus an- ciennes," is still strictly medieval ; at the same time, Roman hero- ism is exalted and a differentiation as to classical traits is already apparent. In a less degree than Oresme, but to a considerable extent certainly, BerQuire enriched French by the introductioil of words of a learned character.

The greatest impetus to learning, however, at this date was given by the circle surrounding Charles V (1364-1380), justly surnamed the Wise. Charles' own part in this movement was preeminently that of a Maecenas. The most noteworthy among those he encouraged was Nicolas Oresme. Of Norman birth, Oresme studied in Paris and was subsequently maitre and grand mwitre in the University; in 1361 he became dean of the Church of Rouen, and in 1377 he was appointed bishop of Lisieux. An intimate of Charles, he yet enjoyed the privilege of voicing his own convictions; and when the King became deeply interested in astrology — an art which the French borrowed from the Arabians — he had the boldness to write Des Divinations (1370) , an attack on the futility of such superstitions. Encouraged by the King, Oresme was the first to translate Aristotle into French — to be sure, from a Latin version derived from the Arabic. Slight as is the merit of this translation, since Oresme wrote Latin far better than French, the work was an innovation and thus paved the way for futiu-e students of the Stagirite. Oresme himself remarks prophetically: '' Ou temps advenir pourra estre baillee par autres en frangoys plus clerement et plus complecte- ment " — a criticism which we admit and admire. The Latinism of his style, in which such words as industrie, cure, fortitude, con- stance, architectoniqv£ occur, is indicative of a new strain in the language and shows that humanism,^ astir in Italy, is having some effect in France.

One writer, but only one, is indeed frankly humanistic. This is Jean de Montreuil (1354^-1418) , secretary to Charles VI and to the Dukes of Burgundy and Orleans. Although his writing was mainly Latin, he deserves mention here because of his defense

* On humanism, see Part II, Bk. I, Ch. I

100 THE UNIVERSITY AND HUMANISM

of Jean de Meun against the attack of Christine de Pisan. He also undertook various embassies for Charles: to England, to Germany and to Italy. Later, in 1418, he fell a victim to the fury of Armagnacs because he refused to flee from Paris. What characterizes him, however, in both his life and his writings is his overt paganism. He inscribed the ten laws of Lycurgus on the portico of his house in bold defiance of the church. Thus he presents the dilemma of the Renaissance: divided between faith and reason.

This brings us back to Gerson, who admitted the need of greater enlightenment, especially as regards justice, but found the jgjm solvent for the conflicting currents of the age in the

Gerson Universal Church. Jean Le Charlier was a native

of Gerson in Champagne (1363) — hence the name. Of peasant stock, he had it in him to enter the College de Navarre and work his way to the doctorat en theologie (1392). He then taught theology and became court preacher to Charles VI. In 1395 he succeeded his former teacher, Pierre d'Ailly, in the chancellorship of the University of Paris. In this role he became conspicuous as a reformer and a thinker, and his eloquence appeared in the great number of brilliant sermons which bear his name. But the " great schism " in the Church (1378-1449) was a source of deep sorrow to this ardent unifier; further, the courageous part he played in having the University condemn the murder of the Duke of Orleans made his position as chancellor difficult. After the Council of Constance he went into voluntary exile in Austria, and his last years were spent in meditation at Lyons. He died in 1429, when the clouds hung heavily over France.

Gerson united in his work the subtlety of scholasticism and the qualities of a brilliant but somewhat uneven orator. His masters were Saint Bernard, of whom he had the simplicity; Saint Bonaventura, whose conciliating and mystical theology was more to his liking than the more abstruse thinking of Thomas Aquinas; and Cicero, who was his model in style. His great traits are sincerity, simplicity of language, and a profound love of the people. Was not Christ a carpenter's son and he, Gerson, the son of a peasant? Thus he encouraged teaching in French and sought to make truth, as he saw it, accessible to all.

Some sixty of his sermons are extant in their French forms.

GERSON 101

Many of these have the devices of the medieval genres. A ser- mon on the Immaculate Conception is a debat between Nature and Grace; another, on the Sins, is a bataille des vertus et des vices. Allegory of course is frequent: the apostles are armed with the sword of true wisdom and protected by the shield of faith, and so on. But his greatest discours, the Vivat Rex, delivered before the King, is laden with classical allusions. Yet he addresses the monarch in accents as bold and striking as Bossuet's:

Le pauvre homme n'aura pain a manger, sinon par advanture aucun peu de seigle ou d'orge; sa pauvre femme gerra, et auront quatre ou six petits enfans au fouyer, ou au four, qui par ad- vanture sera chauld, demanderont du pain, crieront a la rage de faim. ... Or, devroit bien sufBre cette misere . . . viendront ces paillars qui chergeront tout . . . tout sera prins et happe; et querez qui paye.

The same graphic power is seen in the famous sermon on the Passion, the Ad Deum vadit, delivered before the court in 1402. The picture Gerson gives of the streets of Jerusalem as Christ is led away from Pilate is so vivid that the reader has a con- vincing impression of being there himself.

Or taking the Tractatus contra Romantium de Rosa, written (in 1402) in the form of a " vision," we note the same forceful traits in Gerson's Latin style:

Quis succendit magnam Trojam crudeliter igni et flamma? Stultus amator. Quis turn interire fecit plures quam centum miUe Nobiles: Hectorem, Achillem, Priamum, et alios? Fatuiis amor. Quis expulsit urbe Tarquinium Regem et ejus sobolem? Fatuus amor.

Gerson, somewhat differently from Christine, saw in the Roman de la Rose a work subversive of private and public morality; in fact, in his Sermon contre la luxure (1399) he had condemned the poem to be burnt. Thus to him ethical standards outweigh other considerations, and he challenges those who, like Jean de Montreuil and Pierre Col — canon of Paris — see in Jean de Meun the apostle of freedom and social betterment.

In short, the chancellor remains the representative of his time : a traditionalist with a sense of political justice and an en-

102 THE UNIVERSITY AND HUMANISM

thusiasm for formal learning but withal a subservient son of the church. On the whole, he retarded the enlightenment of the spirit more than he aided it. At the same time, his champion- ship of the masses and his cult of Cicero were not without sig- nificance. The fifteenth century was to see the appearance of the printing press. Not the least influence of this abortive humanism was to increase the reading public, by making new material accessible and encouraging the use of French for erudite purposes. Its great defect is that it also inaugurated la verbo- cination latiale (the abuse of Latinism) , from which both prose and poetry were to suffer.

It must not be thought, however, that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the University of Paris enjoyed the literary Education distinction it had had during the Old French period in general proper. To be sure, the Sorbonne, foimded in 1250 for poor students in theology, continued to number important persons among its graduates, and the College de Navarre, its rival in importance, fulfilled as in the case of Orseme the role of providing scholars for the court. Both of these colleges were to maintain their hold until well into the Renaissance; while the Sorbonne, though no longer a church institution, is, of course, even today, an important part of the University. Nevertheless, as we saw above, in 1236 Henri d'Andeli bewailed the passing of the arts students in Paris and the increasing attention given to logic and dialectics. As regards education, the current of the thirteenth century was in the direction of science. Contact with the Orient, and especially with the Mohammedan world, had spread the knowledge of Aristotle's treatises on natural' phil- osophy, and thus the " New Aristotle " became the controlling factor in educational affairs. Again it was to be part of the work of the Renaissance to dethrone this narrow interpretation of Aristotle in favor of Plato and the Aristotle of the Poetics. Thus, one emphasis succeeds another.

On the whole, then, the study of the classics declined in this period, while that of medicine and the law rose. This was not true of all French universities; the southern ones, among them Toulouse, continued to have a lingering regard for classical learmng. But the decline was sufficient to enable Petrarch in a letter (1367) to Pope Urban V, to deride the French " as' bar-

EDUCATION 103

barians among whom there could be no orators or poets." The original Seven Arts had consisted of the trivium, that is gram- mar, rhetoric and dialectic; and the quadrivium, or arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. This was the program of the lesser medieval schools, upon which the university was built; either by elaborating these subjects, as for instance dialectic, or by adding others, such as law or theology. After the stimulating twelfth century, the general development was as follows: for the time being the quadrivium flourished in accordance with the new interest in natural philosophy — we must not forget that Roger Bacon was a student at Paris before 1240; then this influence lapsed, and the subjects of the trivium, originally connected with the classics or literature proper, were cultivated in relation to numerous translations from the Latin. The result was that granunar, rhetoric and dialectic became ends of learning in themselves, quite apart from the subjects to which they were related.

It was in spite of the trend of education, therefore, rather than because of it, and then only in sporadic cases, that the university formed the background for literary and artistic inspiration in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. When we come to con- sider Rabelais, we shall see how his soul rose against the kind of education we have been describing. As late even as Des- cartes, medieval pedantry seems to have retained its hold on education.

CHAPTER III

THE CYCLIC DRAMA AND THE FARCE OF MAITRE PATHELIN

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centiiries the drama had been largely a product of the literary guilds or puys (see Bk. I, Ch. HI) . During the fifteenth century it passed into the hands of special societies known as confreries, and it then attained its apogee in the medieval fonn. As a popular genre the drama now takes the place of the epic, which continues to be written, but in prose redactions, based on the earlier chansons and in- tended more and more for the " reading " public.

The confrSries were not what we should today call profes- sional troupes, but companies of artisans and trades-people de- voting their Sundays and holidays to acting. Weekday per- formances were unknown xtntil 1597. Serious plays were of course preferred. Thus in 1443 shoemakers played the Mystere de Saint Crispin et Saint Crispian, and in 1512 masons and carpenters performed the Mystere de Saint Louis. The best known of such societies was the famous Confrerie de la Passion, mentioned as early as 1380, to which Charles VI, in 1402, gave an exclusive privilege for Paris and its environs. Here it flourished until 1548, when Parliament, unwilling to tolerate the further profanation of Holy Writ, suppressed the mysteres sacres. But this dat^e also marks the purchase — by the Confrerie — of the Hotel de Bourgogne, the most important Parisian theater during the hundred years that followed, and thus the beginning of the modern secular stage.

As applied to a dramatic performance, the word mystere was first used at Rouen in 1374. Henceforth it supplants the older The terms jeu and miracle. Its derivation goes back to

Mysteres Greek through the Latin form misterium (indicating a religious origin), although Lat. ministerium^ (" perfonn-

' Compare the Spanish auto 104

THE MYSTERY PLAY 105

ance ") was contaminated with it. Except for the moralite, which is a dramatiaed allegory, the name mystere came to em- brace all forms of serious drama, sacred as well as secular.

About sixty mysteres are extant today. Of these only some twenty treat Biblical subjects; the remainder deal with the lives of saints or occasionally an important secular event, such as the siege of Orleans or the fall of Troy. Beyond the central event which they celebrate, the mysteres have no particular unity ; in- deed, generally their parts hang together loosely like rings upon a string; for example, the Passion of 1431 is composed of several distinct plays. The majority are of inordinate length, a mystere by the brothers Greban having some sixty-two thousand lines. Like the epics, they fall into families or cycles, according as they treat the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Acts of the Apostles, and the like. Most of the mysteres are in eight- syllable verse, although other measures are also found and short- stanza forms, like the triolet, occur in the lyric passages of the text. It is only natural that, with the tendency to be encyclo- pedic, the author of a mystere should vary the tone of his com- position to suit the situation he is treating; not only do realistic details abound but the serious dialogue, consisting of scholastic and moralizing quips, is frequently interrupted with interludes of fun and satire (see the farce). Thus, in the main, it is the drama that epitomizes the real life of the time.

In order to visualize such a dramatic performance in the fif- teenth century the reader should bear in mind the background of town and city life. A town has just escaped the scourge of the Black Death and its citizens in a burst of gratitude celebrate the event by giving a play. This was the case in 1508 at Ro- mans (Dauphine) , where it required the efforts of all the citizens and an outlay equivalent to about fifteen thousand francs to have a mystere performed, and even then the preparations took some ten months. Or the visit of some prince or potentate is expected and the town welcomes him with a dramatic performance. In either case, the representation would be entrusted to the con- frerie or directly to an acteur (author) , who would get the play ready or, if need be, write it. It took Andrieu de la Vigne five weeks to write the twenty thousand lines of his Vie de Saint Martin. The intention of giving a play would be announced to

106 THE CYCLIC DRAMA

the town by a popular appeal, called cry; and when the play was ready the festivities would begin with a grand parade or monstre through the city streets. As the performance usually lasted sev- eral days, the plays were divided into journees (in place of acts) , each journee having a prologue and an epilogue, and the entire representation concluding with a Te Deum, in which the public joined. In this last respect, at least, the liturgical character was preserved.

In preparing such a show considerable attention was given to the scenery. Since the representation took place in the open air, in the square next to the church (see Bk. I, Ch. Ill), or, as at Autun and Bourges, in an amphitheater seating many people, it was possible to depict practically the whole of creation. The manuscripts show that the stage was sxirrounded by various booths or mansions representing the chief places of the action. Thus a miniature of the Passion, as given in Valenciennes in 1547, portrays an elaborate set of structures, which represented Para- dise, Nazareth, the Temple, Jerusalem, the Palace of Pilate, the House of Bishops, the Golden Gate (with the sea in front of it) , the Limbo of the Fathers, and Hell. A sign or esmtel might be attached to each booth stating what it represented. Es- pecially graphic, of course, was the mansion of Hell, since this appealed strongly to the popular imagination. !

As to the actors, these were recruited from various classes, ' particularly the guilds. The female parts were generally taken by men, whereas the roles that amused the public most were the " devils," the " beggars " and the sot or fool. An important mystere might have as many as five hundred participants.

It follows that the mystere is a much confused genre. Out- wardly it was a kind of pageant, with as strong an appeal to the eye as to the mind. Unity of action, in our modern or the clas- sical sense, is of course lacking. A similar freedom exists with respect to the unities of time and place. Since the genre was popular in its aim, it is inevitable that few mysteres can be said to rank high as literature. In England the transcending genius of Shakespeare built his theater on medieval foundations. But in France, although the tragi-comedy of the sixteenth century is really an offspring of the miracle and the mystere, the Clas- sical drama of the seventeenth century transforms tragi-comedy

THE MYSTERY OF THE PASSION 107

by conformity to Aristotelian rule and precept. With all this we shall deal presently. Meanwhile, several mysteres deserve notice here.

Most noteworthy of them all is the Mystere de la Passion by Amoul Greban, written before 1452. Greban was a native of Le ,, Mans, studied in Paris and later held a post at the

Passion " University, while also acting as master of the choir by Gieban ^oyg of Notre-Dame. His brother, Simon, was like- wise a plajrwright. Indeed, Marot eulogizes the pair for their " bien resonnant stile," and as late as 1547 Du Bellay speaks of them as " divins esprits." In later life they collaborated on the Actes des Apotres, performed at Bourges in 1536. What dis- tinguishes the Passion is the framework in which the drama is set. The action itself contains nothing to stir the modern reader; Christ, the central figure of the plot, goes willingly to his fate, and although the forces that oppose him are vividly portrayed, there is no dramatic conflict in the accepted sense of the word. On the other hand, the setting is skillfully and poetically worked out. This consists of a familiar medieval motif: the dispute of four virtues. Justice, Truth, Peace and Mercy, before the throne of God, as to the fate of Man. Mercy makes a strong plea for human salvation; but as Wisdom points out, this can be effected only through the sacrifice of God Himself. At the close of the drama the virtues reassemble, this time in blissful concord; Truth embraces Mercy, and Peace makes friends with Justice. As Gaston Paris observes, Arnoul has at times "des vers bien frappes, des elans poetiques, un maniement heureux du rythme "; but more often he is stilted, merely rhetorical and affected. His best passages are undoubtedly those in which he forgets his lofty theme and speaks the simple every-day speech of the common folk — and such passages on the whole are rare. In its totality the work may be compared to a Flemish painting on the same subject; it is rich in color, grotesque and often somber in detail, heart-rending in some of its naive pathos, but diffuse in concept and execution.

Greban's play was exceedingly popular — indeed, it was imi- tated four times. Of these reworkings, that by Jean Michel (about 1486) — physician to the city of Angers — is the most celebrated. Michel's text passed through fifteen editions and

108 THE CYCLIC DRAMA

was oflScially adopted by the Confrerie de la Passion, thus sup- planting its own more illustrious prototype.

Two well-known mysteres based on the lives of saints are the Vie de Saint Martin and the Mystere de Saint Louis. Q., _ The author of the former, Andrieu de la Vigne

Biblical (1457-1527), was the court poet of Charles VIII, in

Mysteres whose honor he wrote the Vergier d'honneur. He is also known by his ballades, rondeaux and complaintes. He was a member of the Basoche (see below) and composed his play in 1496 for the citizens of Seurre, who wished thus to honor their patron saint. In Andrieu piety and cynicism mingle; as a curtain raiser to the mystere he produced his farce of Le Meunier, which is one of the most licentious works of the age. The Mystere de Saint Louis is a tour de force by the famous Gringoire or Gringore, whose perplexing figiu"e Hugo has revived romantically in Notre-Dame de Paris. We shall hear more of him presently. It is enough to note now that in this play Gringoire did not do himself justice; not only is his account of Louis IX drawn from inferior sources but the play itself is dull and platitudinous, at least to modern ears.

Far superior to the preceding are two extant secular mysteres: the Siege d'Orleans and the Destruction de Troie la grant. The first, begun before 1439, is of unknowui authorship and celebrates in dignified, patriotic accents the tragedy of Joan of Arc; in addition, it is interesting because of its reference to John Falstaff , "the worthy knight," a character whom Shakespeare was at once to ridicule and to embellish. The second, by Jacques Millet, a law-student of Orleans, composed about 1450, was intended chiefly for reading. Millet's main source was Guide delle Colonne (see above) , whose Troy legend he treats in true medieval fashion, exalting the bravery of the Trojans and under- scoring the perfidy of the Greeks. The use of musical interludes m this play is probably an innovation. Curious, too, is the name of transgredie (tragedy) which Millet gives to his work.

Dealing directly with every-day life, comedy in France was less subject than tragedy to classical influences and therefore Types of presents a more continuous history from the Middle Comedy Ages down to the present. This is especially true

of its dominant form, the farce. Moreover, like tragedy, comedy

MEDIEVAL COMEDY 109

owea little as regards origin to the drama of antiquity. Medieval society possessed the means to develop the comic in all its satire and irony; for this the playwright found ample provision in the licence of the lower classes and their hatred of the powerful and great. Besides, the " comic spirit " — that readiness to contrast the exaggerated and imnatural with hard common sense — is one of the inborn and abiding traits of the Gallic race.

It is customary to divide medieval comedy into farces, sotties and moralites, although the last class is more often serious than truly comic. As its name implies, the farce (meaning " stuffing ") is a comic interlude placed, between the parts of a mystere in order to vary the intellectual diet of the audience at the oppor- tune moment. In spirit it is akin to the fabliau, the aim being to amuse at the expense of the characters shown. Ethics is thus the weakest side of the farce, which is " moral " only in the French sense that it may be psychologically true to life. The sottie, which takes its name from the fact that the performers were sots or fools, serves the more definite purpose of political satire. And the moralite, a dramatized allegory like the well- known English Everyman, could be either constructively moraliz- ing or merely cynical; its purpose, like that of the sottie, was often political.

The two Parisian societies that played comedy were the Basoche and the Enfants sans Souci. In other cities there were similar groups, such as Comards at Rouen, who continue until the time of Corneille. The members of the Basoche (from the Latin basilica) were clerks of the Parisian law court or Par- liament. They were well organized, possessed such special priv- ileges as that of coining a kind of money (tokens) , and on Shrove Tuesday held a feigned lawsuit, called cause-grasse. Their repertory was limited to moralites and farces, although the Cry de la Basoche (1548) is the only extant play that can be attrib- uted to them with certainty. The sottie was the specialty of the Enfants or Gallants sans Souci, who as fools or sots paraded about in parti-colored costume with cap and bells. At the head of this company stood the Prince des Sots, and about equal in importance was La Mere Sotte, a post worthily filled by Gringoire — in the words of a contemporary:

110 THE CYCLIC DRAMA

Robert Porcin devers Auxerre Bien scet coucher sa rithme en serre; Mere Sotte appele Gringoire Est dit docteur en cest affaire.*

This type of organization was popular also in the provinces; in Dijon it bore the motto: Stultorum numerus est infnitus {" The number of fools is unlimited ") , of which the implication is clear. An excellent idea of the scope of medieval comedy is ob- tained from Gringoire's Jeu du prince des sots, produced at "the Halles in Paris in 1512. Pierre Gringoire or Gringoire Qringore (about 1475-1539) was of Norman descent, and in spite of various attempts to regard him as the Villon of the French stage, he seems to have been a thoroughly respect- able member of the bourgeoisie. Of his youth we know nothing, but about 1500 he appears as the poet of the Chateau de Labour, written in the allegorical style of his day ; and he helps organize a performance in honor of an archduke of Austria. The brilliant period of his life is from 1505-1512; it is then that he shines as a pamphleteer, oflBcial mouthpiece of Louis XII, popular jester and entertainer — in a word, as La Mere Sotte. We have already mentioned the Mystere de Saint Louis; his minor works are Les foUes Entreprises and Les Abus du monde. Gringoire's forte is satire; he can be simple and incisive, sparing neither morals nor personalities. He knew what the public wanted and supplied it. Thus, Louis XII, aware of the poet's power, took pains to befriend him; and Gringoire was not slow to appre- ciate the royal favor, as appears from his praise of Louis in the words:

Mais il est si humain tousjours

Quand on a devers luy recours,

Jamais il n'use de vengeance.

But Francis I preferred Italian players to this popular favorite, so that in 1518 Gringoire moved to Nancy and became tourna- ment-herald to Antoine de Lorraine. Here he found shelter for his later years and without ceasing to write saw the dawn of a new epoch break over France.

' Robert Porcin from Auxerre

Is skillful in compressing his verse;

M%re Sotte called Gringoire

Is acknowledged master in such matten.

GRINGOIRE 111

To revert to the Jeu of 1512, this play not only shows Grin- goire at his best but also is typical of medieval comedy as a whole. It consists of four parts: a cry to summon the people, a sottie to provoke them against the Pope, a moraZite to win th^m to the policy of Louis — whom Julius II had shamefully be- trayed — and a farce to satisfy their thirst for ribaldry and fun.

The sottie constitutes a sort of revue or " follies " of the burn- ing question of the day. Sotte Commune (the People) cares little about the merits of the quarrel ; her cue is

Faulte d'argent, c'est douleur non pareiQe.

Prince and Church are equally acceptable to her provided she does not suffer; but she exaggerates rumor and easily believes the worst; thus Mere Sotte (the Church) by her very appearance evokes Sotte Commune's enmity, whereas the Sots that surround the Prince are at least joyful and generous, like Louis himself:

Touiours gay et joyeulx En despit de voz ennemys.

Gringoire's moralite is the logical sequel of his sottie. The tone of this part is graver, and Sotte Commune is now the French People. Previously the Church had been blamed for leaving her pacific role and becoming warlike. Here the poet opposes the Italianate Frenchman to the French patriot, who thinks first of his own country. The conclusion is that both the Church and the People are reproved for their respective faults.

Totally different from the preceding is the farce, Faire et Dire. Gringoire is as licentious, as gaulois, as any of the writers of this genre. Raoullet, the hero, has deferred marriage too long, and Doublette, his wife, has a reason — if not a justification — for the contemptible part she plays.

In general, Gringoire's Jeu is to the point, its characters are life-like and real, and the psychology is keen — anticipating not a little that of seventeenth-century comedy.

As a type, the moralite throve especially during the second Other ^^^^ °^ *^^ fifteenth century. Some sixty moralites

Comedies are extant. These vary in manner and theme, the oldest and best being Bien-avise, Mal-avise, written at Rennes in 1439. This play enforces a general lesson: Bien-avise arrives

112 THE CYCLIC DRAMA

through Reason and Faith to Good End, whereas Mal-avise is led by Licence and other evil traits to Bad End.

On the other hand, but few sotties have been preserved and these few belong mostly to the sixteenth century. Perhaps the most popular was Monde et Abuz, composed about 1513. Here we are shown an old and weary World, whom Abuse has put to sleep. The latter them releases Sot-corrompu (a lawyer), Sot- trompeur (a merchant), Sot-ignorant (a peasant), and Sotte-folle (a woman) ; together they try to make a new world after fleecing the old one. The result of course is anarchy. In the end, the old world wakes up and warns the public against Utopian ideals.

None of the types of drama we have mentioned produced a masterpiece. This distinction was reserved for the medieval farce. The great body of farces (some one hundred and fifty are extant) appeared between 1440 and 1560. According to Gaston Paris, the play called Du gargon et de Vaveugle, given in Tournai about 1277, is in reality a farce, though this word does not occur until later. Farcical in nature, but termed a bergerie, is Mieulx que devant, produced during the reign of Charles VII. The characters are: Flat-Country, Long-suffering People, a shepherdess and Better-than-before. The action con- sists of diatribes against the miseries and devastation of France, and the play concludes with Better-than-before offering pro- tection under Roger Bontemps, a topical character. The folk- lore theme of a husband, wife and mother-in-law, furnishes the plot of Le Cuvier. Here, as also in the Farce de la Comette by Jean d'Abondance, the husband is the prospective victim; but in the end the wife falls into the tub — the cuvier — and he refuses to rescue her unless she releases him from servility, a request which in the circimistances she is only too willing to grant. This brings us to the one masterpiece mentioned above, the Farce de Maitre Pathelin.

Michelet has said that Pathelin is the " epic of an age of rogues." And roguery is indeed its key-note; but the handling of the theme, its marvelous characterization and its economy of detail place it in a class by itself.

The plot runs as follows: Pathelin, a village lawyer, with the aid of his scheming wife, Guillemette, cheats a Draper out of a piece of cloth. To the Draper's insistent calls, Pathelin pretends

THE FARCE OF PATHELIN 113

to lend a deaf ear by feigning illness. The Draper, who refuses to pay his shepherd, Thibaut Aignglgt, is in turn cheated by him out of one of his sheep. Thematter is brought to court, and Pathelin defends the shepherd, who wins his case by assuming stupidity and replying " ba-a " to all the court's questions. But when Pathelin asks for his pay the wily shepherd continues to say " ba-a " ; thus one rogue outwits the other.

The authorship of Pathelin is still unknown, though the play has been recently assigned to Guillaume Alexis, author of Le Blason de faidses amours. It must have been written about 1469; probably in the Seine-et-Marne district, not far from Paris. The play scored a great success; it was frequently re- printed, it had two sequels, and was often quoted. Fournier has revived the play for the modern French stage.

The characters of course are types, not one of which, says Professor Holbrook, has " any sense of right. Their morality . . . is to succeed; their greatest weakness, their only ab- surdity, is to be outdone. Philippe de Commines sums up their ethics in the maxim: 'Ceulx qui gaignent en ont tousjours rhonneur! ' " Yet each is also an individual: the lawyer who craves to be arrayed like his fellow barristers " in silks and satins " {de camelos et de camocas) , the judge who sups with a criminal fresh from the stocks, the wife who knows and fears her husband's foibles, and the numskull of a shepherd " with his bump of villainy." The irony of the situation lies in its eternal verity. It is the function of this farce to set in a clear light the lead which French comedy was to take, as revealed by the unsparing representation — and caricature — of life in its familiar, domestic situations. From this point of view Moliere was not to depart, and the best French comedy remains a gen- uine descendant of its medieval prototype, in theme and often in plot.

CHAPTER IV

THREE INDIVIDUALS: ANTOINE DE LA SALE, VILLON, COMMINES

A STORY-TELLER, a poet, an historian; the common feature of these writers is their individualism. Belonging to the fifteenth century, all three draw their material from the traditional chan- nels, yet each gives to his work the imprint of a thoroughly personal reaction: La Sale in his ability to characterize several points of view, Villon in the directness of his emotion, and Com- mines in his unfettered sense of political fact. With them the ifaedieval period formally closes.

The life of Antoine de La Sale was unusually rich in experience. Born in Provence in 1388 as the son of a famous condottiere, at Antoine de ^^^ ^8® °^ fourteen he became page to Louis II of La Sale Anjou. This prince took him to Italy and Sicily,

where he visited Messina and attempted to ascend Stromboli (1407). He then made several short stays at the Bm-gundian court and wrote a summary of Louis II's Italian expedition. In 1415 he volunteered in the bombastic crusade of the Portuguese against Morocco and was present at the capture of Ceuta. On the death of Louis he accompanied the latter's successor again to Italy. In 1425 he reappears in the ofiBcial records as viguier (provost) of Aries. Seven years later Rene of Anjou praises La Sale for the service he had rendered his son as a tutor. About this time La Sale seems to have married. In 1438 we find him again in Italy, where Rene made him commander of Castel Capuano (Naples), while he himself took the field. But the Angevin cause did not prosper, and in 1440 La Sale is back in Provence. He now devotes himself to literature, La Scdade, his first extant Work, being of this period.

In 1448 La Sale left the service of the Angevins, to whom he had been attached for nearly half a century, and entered that of Louis of Luxemburg, Comte de Saint-Pol, who appointed him to

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LA SALE 115

educate his three sons. In this function he spent the next ten years at Chatelet-sur-Oise and there wrote his remaining liter- ary works: La Sale in 1451; Petit Jean de Saintre in 1456; Le Beconfort, completed during a casual visit to Vendeuil-sur- Oise m the same year; and Des anciens tournois, finished in 1459. It is probable that the last years of his life were spent with Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, in Flanders. At least, the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (1462) speak of him as " premier maistre d'hostel de monseigneur le due," and one of his own manuscripts is dated from Brussels in 1461. This is also the probable date of his death.

There was room in this variegated life for the most discordant elements. Sober fact, history, legend, superstition — all have La Sale's their place in it and are reflected in La Sale's works. Works He was well-read; he had seen the art of Italy and

of Flanders; and he knew himian nature on a broad scale. His first work. La Salade, a medley, is a symbol of the man's nature. It begins with a sober disquisition on governments and rulers; then comes a list of the authors La Sale would have had his pupil read: Livy, Orosius, Suetonius and Lucan; and these are followed by examples or models for the future politician and warrior. Suddenly, then, didacticism gives place to a real- istic account of the author's visit to the mountain grotto of Queen Sybilla together with a description of the Lipari Islands and the ascent of Stromboli. Lastly, there is a chronicle of the Houses of Sicily and Aragon and a chapter on heraldry. Thus, in spite of its longueurs, the work predicts La Sale's most strik- ing qualities: his ability to wed the serious with the fantastic, his sense of detail, his grasp of the art of the nouvelle — com- pressed, simple and psychological.

This modern love of a dramatic situation is especially evident in the Reconfort de Madame de Fresne, offered to this lady on the death of her only son. The theme is illustrated by two exempla. The first, in which La Sale ignores historical fact, tells of the Sire du Chastel, governor of Brest, which the English Black Prince is supposed to be besieging. Chastel, hoping for relief, has signed a truce with the Prince and has given his only son as a hostage. The relief arrives but the Prince, false to his word, threatens to put the youth to the sword unless the town is

116 ANTOINE DE LA SALE, VILLON, COMMINES

surrendered. In his despair Chastel turns to his wife, who refuses to take the responsibility of a decision but points out to her husband what his decision must be:

Nous sommes assez jeunes pour avoir encore des enfants; mais si vous perdez votre honneur, vous ne le recouvrerez plus.

The second exemplum is taken from an event in the crusade against Morocco in which La Sale was a participant. Here, also, a mother seeks consolation in the heroic thought that her child died in a patriotic cause. In both instances, but particularly in the first, La Sale shows a power of communicating emotion and an understanding of character that are rare at this time.

His greatest work, however, is the combined novel and short- story, Petit Jean de Saintre. At the court of the French King The "Petit there lives the beautiful young widow Madame des SidBtre*" Belles Cousines. Having vowed not to remarry, she devotes herself to the education of one of the King's pages, Jean, eldest son of the Lord of Saintre. Jokingly at first she introduces him to the subject of " courtly love " and the deeds of the great lovers of the past: Lancelot, Gawain and Tristan. Thus she plays with fire, and as the youth grows up her relation- ship to him assmnes the outward aspect of a liaison. But Jean, she thinks, must win fame, and so she sends him forth against the Saracens of " Pruyse." This enforced absence, however, has one result; namely, that on Jean's return she tries henceforth to hold him for herself. During fifteen months she wages a losing battle. When the break comes, as it of course must, the Dame des Belles Cousines is in the anguish of despair. Here begins the second part of the story. This consists of a nouvelle in which the formerly virtuous lady falls a victim to her confessor, a pleasure-loving abbe. Gay and amiable, but tricky, the latter is a type worthy of the eighteenth century. Jean is soon forgotten by the lady in her new lover's embraces. Then the unforeseen happens. Jean, who had left the court on a military expedition, suddenly returns home and broods vengeance on the faithless pair. At first he is no match for the abbe's superior cunning and strength. But finally, dur- ing a dinner at which the lady is present, Jean proposes that he and his rival joust in armor. In vain does the lady try to

LA SALE 117

dissuade him from this plan; Jean insists, and the result is that the abbe is defeated and his helpless mistress is held up to the scorn of the court.

The second part of this narrative — the nouvelle — is su- perior in workmanship to the first part. M. Soderhjelm speaks of it as:

un morceau d'art du premier ordre, empreint des meilleures qualites que la prose fran§aise ait jamais possedees: clarte, viva- cite; verite, grace, et d'un esprit superieurement raUleur.

The first part — the roman — for all its poetry, suffers in com- parison. But how reconcile these seemingly disparate parts, with their respective qualities of idealism and cynical reality? Some critics have thought that La Sale purposely wished to satirize imder the same cover the first part of his story. But a second reading will show that the contradiction lies not in the story but in life itself, of which La Sale gives a genuine picture. From the start the Dame des Belles Cousines has the two sides to her character, and the art of La Sale consists precisely in making them appear successively, in accordance with the thwarting of her first love and the triumph of the second, for even her idealism is not lacking in a sensual back- ground. Thus depth of observation is the quality of this work, "the first," says Saintsbury, "in point of date of the long series of realistic novels for which French literature is so famous."

Little literary value can be attached to the author's La Sale and his Des anciens tournois et faictz d'armes. They are both didactic and lack originality. A poem of his, La Journee d'oru- new et de prouesse (1459), is a frigid and wearisome allegory.

On the other hand, a word is in place on the Quinze joyes de mariage (date uncertain) and the Cent Noxtvelles nouvelles The (1462), since several prominent scholars attribute

'! ^"'"^ them to La Sale and they are among the really manage" notable works of the period.

The first of these belongs to the rich misogynic literature of the Middle Ages, of which we had an example in the second part of the Roman de la Rose. It is written in a terse, force- ful style, and excels by its well-drawn and realistic pictures of marital infelicity. The victim of the marriage relation is,

118 ANTOINE DE LA SALE, VILLON, COMMINES

of course, the " husband," described as " debonnaire comme le boeuff a la charue " — a type so abject in his humility that the author is forced to exclaim: " je croy que c'est cy une des grans douleurs qui soit sur terre." Each chapter of the work — and there is one for each " joy " — ends on a variation of the victim's misery. The objection to assigning the Quinze joyes to the authorship of La Sale is partly their early date (about 1400) and partly the fact that his imitation of the Quinze joyes in his own La Sale is dull and awkard, indicating that the force- ful style of the original was after all beyond his power.

As for the Cent Nouvelles nauveUes^ they are a revival of , the fabliau in the Italian garb of the novella.

NouveUes The influence here of the Decameron is obvious, nouvelles" although the themes are taken from Poggio's Facetiae. Again, tmlike Boccaccio, the author remains aloof from his material ; he relates for the mere sake of the story and he has no sympathetic interest in his characters. Thus he is extravagantly indecent, and the point of his tales lies wholly in their wit. But he is dramatic and manages the technique of narrative ably. A distinct merit of his work is its use of every-day French — " la langue alors parlee." But most of these traits make it unlikely that the collection is by Antoine de La Sale.

Frangois de Moncorbier (or des Loges), surnamed Villon, is so romantic a character that at times he has seemed legend- Francois ^^- -^"^ °°^ thing, his weatherbeaten figure has Villon wielded a strong fascination over poets and novel-

ists, many of whom — from Victor Hugo to Stevenson — have overdrawn his traits. As a matter of fact, life dealt more sternly with him than with most of his race. He was bom (1431) at the moment when the English Duke of Bedford reigned in the Louvre and the theological faculty of Paris had just decreed that Joan of Arc deserved to be burned:

Jehanne la bonne Lorraine Qu'Englois brulerent a Rouan,

as Villon sang later. Although the Montcorbier family was poor, the poet had relatives among the well-to-do; from one of these, Guillaume de Villon, chaplain of a collegiate church near the Sorbonne, Villon derived help and took his name.

VILLON 119

He was both a Bachelor (1449) and a Master (1452) of the University. But apparently he led in larks and brawls of the Latin Quarter rather than in the classroom. Pathetically he himself said:

He! Dieu, se j'eusse estudie Ou temps de ma jeunesse folle Et a bomies meurs dedie, J'eusse maison et couche molle. Mais quoi! je fuioie I'escolle, Comma fait le mauvais enfant —

lines which show both the sincerity and the weakness of his nature.

A burlesque roman, written by Villon but lost, clearly refers to the events of 1451-1453, when the University had to suspend its courses because of the licence of its students. But the poet knew also the Paris of the rive droite and its haunts, especially the Cemetery of the Innocents and its far-famed fresco of the Dance of Death or danse Macabre. Occasionally he mentions the great and powerful. But generally his companions were of a different sort: irresponsible creatureg like Gui Tabarie, Colin des Cayeux (Villon's particular bad angel), and the edifying galaxy of fair ladies, from " la petite Macee d'Or- leans " to " la grosse Margot," not to mention his " chere Rose," who preferred to the poet:

Quoi? una grant bourse de sole Pleine d'escus, parfonde et large.

Of his actual life we have only meagre facts. In 1455 he was involved in a scrape that led to the murder of a parish priest, one Philippe Sermoise. Later he figures among a band of ruffians who broke into the College de Navarre. Then after writing his Petit Testament, more accurately termed Les Lah, he appears in Angers and was present in 1457 at the " court " of Blois, held by Charles d'Orleans. Soon after he was arrested at Meun-sur-Loire. Pardoned by the general amnesty of Louis XI when he ascended the throne, Villon returned for a brief visit to Paris and shortly after composed his [Orand] Testament, which contains the best part of himself. In 1462 he was again locked up, this time in the Chatelet, and, upon

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being released, he soon after returned to prison under sentence to be hanged. In the face of death he then wrote his admirable Ballade des Pendus. But Parliament relented and changed the decree to one of banishment from Paris during ten years. Sub- sequently Villon disappears completely from view; we know only that the first dated edition of his works was published in 1489.

Villon is preeminently the poet of the unfortunate. Like Jlein^, to whom critics have compared him, he knew the pathos of life and also its ironies; and in an eternal union he welded the tender note with the shrill. He says himself, " Je ris en pleurs." Thus he stands out from amidst chivalric conven- tion and interminable allegorizing as the one profoundly lyric figure, sinning and sinned against, sorrowful and gay, blas- phemous and idealistic ; above all, sincere. Of all French poets, he is probably the least rhetorical.

The total of his verse is small. It consists mainly of the Lais (Mod. Fr. legs) , or Petit Testament, and the [Grand] Testament. In both works, written in stanzas of eight-syllable verse, he. has followed a medieval convention of making imaginary legacies to one's friends and foes. Such already were the conges of Jean Bodel. But into this framework Villon has breathed all that was most vital to him, and he relieves the monotony of the form by the dexterous introduction of wonderful ballades and rondeavx. Most lovers of poetry have read, if not in the ori- ginal, then in the English rendering by Rossetti, the Ballade des Dames du temps jadis. The theme is immemorial, but the refrain:

Mais ou sent les neiges d'antan?

has an allusive quality equalled only by the telling adjectives whereby Villon visualizes each of the heroines enumerated. So, too, the picturesque horror and the deep pathos of the following frona the Ballade des Pendus will live as long as poetry is read:

La pluye nous a buez et lavez Et le soleil dessechiez et noircis; Pies, corbeaulx, nous ont les yeux cavez Et arrachie la barbe et les sourcis. ' Jamais nul temps nous ne sommes assis*

VILLON 121

Puis ca, puis la, comme le vent varie,

A son plaisir sans cesser nous charie,

Plus becquetez d'oiseaulx que dez a couldre.

Ne soiez done de nostra confrairie;

Mais priez Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre!

We are all blanched and soddened of the rain, And eke dried up and blackened of the sun: Ravens and corbies have our eyes out-ta'en And plucked our beard and hair out, one by one. Whether by night or day, rest have we none: Now here, now there, at the wind's lustihead, We swing and creak and rattle overhead. No thimble dinted like our bird-pecked face. Folk, mock us not that are forspent and dead: The rather pray, God grant us of His grace!

John Payne ^

The wonder is that Villon could be so expressive and so utterly- simple in his means of expression. Or take his description of Christmas, so wintry and desolate:

morte saison. Que les loups se vivent de vent Et qu'on se tient en sa maison. Pour le frimas, pres du tison.

' But all this is the simplicity of a great imagination, which sees a situation as it is and renders it with fidelity. As a final example, the reader should turn to the Ballade pour prier Nostre Dame, where Villon immortalizes his own mother, " povrette et ancienne," praying to the Virgin in her humble unlettered faith. And if a contrast be needed, there is the sensually satiric Contreditz de Franc-Gontier, an answer to Philippe de Vitry's poem on the joys of rural life. For all his wanderings, Villon remained the poet of Paris, indeed of the quartier in which he had tasted life to the dregs. One ballade, beginning " Je meurs de soif aupres de la fontaine," is purely conventional, in the antithetical style so much favored by the Petrarchists of the Renaissance.

* Prom the Poems of Master Francis Vitton, London, 1878 — a masterly translation of the poet's works.

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As an historian Philippe de Commines ranks with Ville- hardouin and Froissart, although his style lacks the precision of the one and the opulence of the other. Like de Com^ Froissart, he was really a Fleming, the family mines name being Van der Clyte. He was born about

1445 near Aire, not far from Ypres. His father, of wealthy bourgeois extraction, had been bailli of Ghent and then of Flanders, but died leaving a dubious financial reputation to cloud his name. At twenty Philip went to the Burgundian Court and soon became attached to the Comte de Charolais -^lE^ter Duke of Burgundy — whom he followed on various warlike expeditions.

In 1471 he was in London, negotiating in behalf of the Burgundian Court, of which he was now a counselor and chamberlain. He also visited Brittany and Spain for the pur- pose of reviving the coalition against Louis XI. In fact, how- ever, this secretissimorum secretarius deftly played into the French King's hands, for he had never liked Charles of Bur- gundy. Won either by the wiles of Louis or more probably by his gold, he went over completely to his side in August, 1472, apparently without the slightest thought of his former bene- factor.

Louis XI, always astute, at once employed Commines on matters worthy of his talents. Besides a liberal pension, Louis enriched his favorite with spoils which Commines helped him to take from others. And, when in 1473 Commines married Helene de Chambes, the King enlarged this lady's dowry so that her husband became one of the richest men of France. In 1475 Commines rose to be the head of the French diplomatic service; he then won over the English to the French cause and went to Italy to form a league against the Pope. As long as Louis lived Commines continued to thrive; characteristically, it was he who as valet de chambre faithfully attended Louis in his last illness.

But Fortune, against whom Commines warns his readers in the Memoires, forsook her favorite with the advent of Charles VIII. Accused of favoring the Orleans party (Louis XII), Commines was compelled to make restitution of his ill- won property and to suffer imprisonment. In 1492, however,

COMMINES 123

he returned for a brief period to the royal favor, employing his great talent in successful negotiations in Italy. But the accession of Louis XII, in 1498, robbed him of all further political power. He now lived in retirement, except for various lawsuits which further reduced his revenue, and tried to for- get his sorrows by writing his Memoires. He died on October 18, 1511.

This grandeur et decadence of the man is the background and much of the substance of his writing. The Memoires fall into two parts: the period of 1464-1483, and that of 1484r- 1498 (the Italian campaign). A born politician, Commines is exact, clear, forceful and, above all, clever. He is the first French apostle of " success," and has frequently been com- pared, as to point of view, with Machiavelli. Personally he was cold and calculating, and of course lacks the extraor- dinary culture of the great Italian. But he was far-seeing, especially in regard to England, and his insight into human motive and character is remarkable.

He claims in his work to give instruction {enseignements) : " non point aux bestes et simples gens mais aux princes et gens de court." Practically he claims to inculcate foresight and dis- trust, on the part of the ruler, as regards his fellow men. Trust no one but yourself, especially not Fortune, is the moral of all his writing. His attitude toward religion is essentially that of Louis XI, though he is probably less superstitious than the latter. At the same time, he lacked the moral courage to regard religion as other than a cult, and Commines was a scrupulous observer of religious rites.

Thus the effect of his work is depressing. We miss the en- thusiasm of a great purpose, the belief in the worthiness of a cause, a glint of any spirit of sacrifice and honor. The world which Commines lays bare is ignoble and corrupt — like his own soul it is tainted with an underlying falsehood. As he said, " Ceulx qui gaignent en ont tousjours I'honneur." Commines is no man's fool: he observes with penetrating clarity and often justly. On the whole, his style matches his thought. In an age of bombast, he manages to be lucid and direct even if he is often digressive and never eloquent. His main value lies in his grasp of politics and the record he gives of his own age.

PART II THE RENAISSANCE

BOOK I HUMANISM AND THE REFORMATION

CHAPTER I

THE INFLUENCE OF ITALY AND THE RHETORIQUEUR POETS

The great cultural movement called the Renaissance began

m Italy and swept over Europe in the course of two centuries.

The Rebirth It came to France in the sixteenth, following the

in Italy campaigns of Charles VIII and Louis XII on Italian

soil. Renaissance means " rebirth," and the rebirth was that of

humanity itself aroused to a new sense of its own powers, new

opportunities and new concepts of the physical universe. For

Columbus discovered a New World (1492), and Copernicus laid

the foundation of the modern system of astronomy (1517), both

of which events made the medieval " fixity " a dead letter, quite

aside from their influence on the development of commerce

and the rise of a scientific spirit. The printing-press, a German

contribution, stimulated the diffusion of knowledge amd the

interchange of ideas on all subjects. The Reformation — to

some extent a reaction — represents a rebirth of the human

conscience and a return to Christian origins. How conscious

the awakening was is seen in the words Rabelais addressed to

his friend Tiraqueau:

Hors de cette epaisse nuit gothique, nos yeux se sent ouverts a I'insigne flambeau du soleil.

And light and simshine are forever associated with the period upon which we are now entering. But the Renaissance has also another side, no less important

127

128 , THE INFLUENCE OF ITALY

than those we have mentioned, in the revival of the art and lit- Greek and erature of the ancients. Being the seat of Roman Latin Art civilization, Italy possessed not only a large share of the relics of antiquity but also the facilities for turning them to account when the enlightenment came. In Italy the awakening occurred earlier than elsewhere owing to her contact with the East and the early development of her city life. The forerunners were Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio: first, because they made Italian as well as Latin a vehicle of artistic expression; and second, in their intuition as to the truth of ancient thought and the beauty of classical style. In Petrarch especially, aptly called " the first modern man," the chief features of the revival are essentially revealed. Poet, scholar, diplomatist and patriot, he prized Greek and Latin literature in the spirit of a discoverer, and in his own sonnets he perfected a poetic form which other nations besides Italy were to regard as classical. So that when after 1400 many Greek scholars came to Italy, that country underwent a paganization of culture which is in sharp contrast to medieval thought as we have described it. Greek and Latin models now became supreme, a new style of architecture arose, academies, and libraries were founded, and the modern self- suflScient political state came into being. Above all, -human life is considered an object in itself; the problem is to gain mastery over it, by every means possible — wealth, statecraft and scientific inquiry — and to enjoy it for its own sake by the cultivation of art and literature. In short, the point of view is worldly (mondain) and not theological. To this attitude, based on antiquity, we give the generic name of "humanism."

The true humanist, then, was many-sided. The imity he sought he found in himself: in the development of his various . faculties, physical as well as spiritual — for a healthy

soul can flourish only in a healthy body; and the cult of the body is again a point in which the period is anti- medieval. In the beginning the great men of the Renais- sance were reconcilers of opposing ideals. This was their " universality." Petrarch's position between St. Augustine and Vergil is essentially that of Ficino (1433-1499), the harmonizer of Plato and Christianity, as it remains that of Erasmus (1465- 1536) , scholar and reformer, and of Montaigne. Naturally, the

HUMANISM 129

highest product of humanism was aristocratic, since birth and wealth alone could provid& the education ^nd leisure needed to win distinction. Castiglione's II Cortegiano, or " Book of the Courtier" (1528), portrays this ideal. Here the "complete man," the uomo di virtu, is set forth in detail, and on this model are built the French honnete homme and the English gentleman. The courtier is the embodiment of the world's culture. His loftiest expression is the prince, the state his handiwork ; the rest of humanity being but the marble out of which he — the political artist — " should hew the form that pleased his fancy best " (J. A. Symonds). Thus it is significant that the Renaissance type of man is primarily undemocratic, self-centered and mun- dane; yet he is gracious, well-bred and high-minded. His greatest and characteristic virtue is magnanimity. In making Prospero say, in the Tempest:

The rarer action is in virtue,

Shakespeare has his character speak as a Renaissance gentleman should.

In Italy, then, the Renaissance signifies a conscious cult of the beautiful. " Art," in the classic sense of harmony and order, is the commanding word. Beauty is divine; but its recovery by mankind demands cultivation, effort, rational endeavor. For a short period, at least, the Italians exploited the aesthetics of every subject. Confronted with the marvelous literatures of Athens and Rome, they sought to dis- cover and codify the rules whereby they were produced. Plato's Dialogues, Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory and Horace's Ars poetica were to them so many literal guides in the art of expres- sion, of which the Iliad, the Aeneid, the tragedies of Euripides, Sophocles and Seneca were the startling confirmation. Lastly, Aristotle's Poetics, in innumerable Italian interpretations, came to complete the list of critical works. If the Classic Age were to return, the Italians thought, it behooved them to " imitate " the ancients. The fact that it is never possible to prescribe, much less to follow logically^ the means by which great literature and art are produced seems never to have occurred to them. In so far only as the imitation of the ancients was not an

130 THE INFLUENCE OF ITALY

imitation but a new creation did the men of the Renaissance produce the great works for which they are known today.

At the same time, no age ever carried further the enthusiasm for beautiful things. The papacy of Leo X (1513-1521) in its artists alone equalled the splendor of the age of Phidias; and, as for literature, the Orlando furioso (1516) of Ariosto is the best illustration of what aesthetic treatment could achieve. More- over, henceforth literary criticism is itself a branch of literature, and for France certainly the " restraining influence " of classical form becomes an invaluable acquisition.

The Renaissance broke upon French shores in three distinct waves, or rather, after the first impact the French reverted to Italian inspiration on two different occasions.

The first period is roughly coincident with the reign of Francis I (1515-1547). Thisistheageof scholarly inquiry, of humanism _,. jj . in general as a counter-current to the " medievalism " in France. of the church and the imiversity (Sorbonne). Its Periods characteristic trait is enthusiasm born of a fresh

and vivid experience. It saw the rise of great individuals, like Bude, Rabelais, Calvin; and it culminated in the Reformation, a movement which France shares with Germany and England

The second period, extending from the accession of Henry H and covering the second half of the century, is concerned more particularly with literature. The aesthetic theories of the Italians now take hold of belles lettres; a new school of poetry, the Pleiade, arises and inaugurates the conscious " imitation " of the classics, while, on the other hand, bourgeois " common sense " reasserts itself and in the person of Montaigne establishes the boundaries of the human reason.

Finally, the third influx of the Italian spirit occurs in the second quarter (1620-1640) of the seventeenth century. This phase of the movement is mainly social and based on the idea of decorum. The French salons be^n, with their tendency toward preciosity of thought and speech, under the leadership of the Marquise de Rambouillet, herself an Italian; the rules of the drama are worked out according to Aristotelian treatises imported from Italy; the French Academy is founded, under Richelieu, for the purpose of regulating the language and litera- ture of the realm — a dictatorship which is the forerunner of the social and political absolutism of Louis XIV.

THE AGE OF FRANCIS I 131

During all this time Italy is the inspirer and guide of France. Not that other tendencies were not manifest nor that reaction^^, did not occur. The Precellence du langage frauQais (1579) by Henri Estienne is directly aimed against the supposed superiority of Italian. But such protests were rare, for the reason that Italy after all was the road to the classics, and French Classicism was to be built on ideals and models furnished by Rome and Greece. In place of the scholastic " dogma," the Renaissance established a new principle of authority in Graeco-Roman tradition. In what respects the change represents a revival and yet a French creation this and the following chapters will show.

When Francis ascended the throne, literature was in the bond- age of the rhetoriqueur school. The prevailing literary forms The Age of ^^^^ those of Machaut and Deschamps, and in longer Francis I compositions that of the Roman de la Rose. Except for a reaction against the tendency to Latinize {la muse latiale) and to be florid, these forms persist until the Pleiade.

As for the King himself, although known as the restaurateur des bonnes lettres he merits this title less than one would at first suspect. Married to Claude, the eldest daughter of Louis XII, not only did he continue the Italian campaigns of his prede- cessors — until' defeated and captured at Pavia in 1525 — but his love of glory and display made him an active promoter of the revival. He was the friend and patron of great artists and sculp- tors: Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, Benvenuto Cellini and Jean Goujon. He knew personally and encouraged Casti- glione: it was his secretary, Colin d'Auxerre, who first translated (1537) the Cortegiano into French. The Louvre (1515) and the handsome Renaissance wing of the Chateau de Blois testify to the encouragement Francis gave to architecture. Above all, he inaugurated, even if he did not always uphold, vital educational reforms. Under him Bude established the Trilingue et noble Academie (the future College de France), which, attracted the attention of scholars the world over and mitigated the influence of the reactionary Sorbonne. Francis signed a concordat with the Pope which gave the former control over the French clergy. He established a royal press for the publication of Greek texts. In 1539 the royal decree of Villers-Cotterets substituted French for Latin in all legal documents. " How happy is France under

132 THE INFLUENCE OF ITALY

such a prince," says Erasmus in a letter of 1517. Nevertheless, Francis had neither the grasp nor the force of character to lead his age or give it direction.

The first impression we thus get of the new epoch in France is of intellectual confusion. Humanism is in the air. Paris, Rouen and especially Lyons, open their gates toi Italian scholars and to the influx of the new culture. The chief figures, Rabelais, Calvin, Dolet, Marguerite d'Angouleme, seek the light of classical scholar- ship to guide them. Translations are eagerly made from Latin, Greek and Italian. Bude writes his Commentarii linguae graecae (1529), a pioneer work in the field of classical learning; and Ramus advocates the study of Plato (1543). Yet literature as such (poetry and the drama) shows little, if any, fundamental change. It took time for the new ideas to become clarified sufficiently to compel artistic expression; and, then, the medieval forms were not easily dislodged. Besides, the House of Bur- gundy, allied to Flanders during the second half of the fifteenth century, had given to poetry the tortured and complicated im- print of Flemish art. Gothic architecture became " flamboyant," and poetry rhetoriqueur. With the union of Burgundy to the French crown (1482) this influence spread. Marot, the one " modern " poet of the early sixteenth century, still uses the medieval forms. Thus the grands rhetoriqueurs represent the decadence of the later Middle Ages. To what lengths they car- ried their complicated measures is seen from the Grand et vrai ■art de pleine rhetorique (1522), by Pierre Fabri.

Written for the Puy de Rouen, Fabri's work is a guidepost for the poetaster bent on winning royal or princely favor. The genres The treated are all lyrico-didactic: the rondeau, the

Hh^^ri- ballade, the chant royal, and so on, to which may be queurs added the epitre as the form in which Lemaire and

Marot were to excel. Here, at least, we see the influence of Ovid's Herdides, rendered into French (1496) by Octovien de Saint- Gelais; and poetry assumes the trappings of classical imagery. Indeed, Fabri warns against tasteless Latinizing, a common fault of the time. But he has no inkling as to the real value of ancient and Italian models, and he never refers to the epic or the drama. What the versifier or jaiseur would draw from this work were directions about rime, figures of speech, alliteration, sound-to-

RHETORIQUEUR POETRY 133

sense effects, and the like. Fabri is perhaps the first to urge the alternation of masculine and feminine endings, and he opposes the so-called lyric and epic cesuras (a reform that Lemaire was to put into effect) ; otherwise he merely confirms established views.

Of the grands rhetoriquewrs, mentioned by Fabri as exemplars • of their art, Meschinot and Cretin — " le bon Cretin au vers equivoque " — hold a prominent place. A Breton, Jean Meschinot (1420-1491) belonged to the en- tourage of Anne of Brittany, later the wife of Louis XII, and wrote much occasional verse and a political allegory, the Lunettes des princes. Like most of his associates, unable to see reason in life, Meschinot beholds the realm of reason through spectacles. He produced a huitain which made equally poor sense when read in thirty-two different ways. But he ably characterized Louis as an " innocent feint, tout fourre de malice," and he enjoyed great popularity.

More representative of the school, however, is Guillaume Cretin (before 1525), who forms also the connecting link be--^ tween Burgundy and France proper. Cretin rose to be historiographer of Francis I, at whose behest he put the fabulous history of his country (beginning with Troy and including the Pseiodo-Turpin) into verse, which still slumbers in manuscript form. Marot calls him " souverain poete frangais," which remained the verdict of contemporaries until it seems Rabelais ridiculed him as " Raminogrobis, vieux poete frangais " in his Pantagruel. The acme of Cretin's poetizing is seen in the elegiacal lines on Bissipat, with their absurd rime leonine:

O Bissipat, Qui eust pense que Mort anticipast. Ainsi ta vie et si tost dissipast.

Still, he was not incapable of a natural, incisive note, particularly when he satirizes the clergy or pleads with his patron for money. With Jean Lemaire de Beiges we reach a poet of a distinctly higher order than his contemporaries. Rhetoriquewr that he is, , he has both personality and distinction. He was

Lemaire bom (about 1473) in the Low Countries at Bavai, de Beiges ^jjg Latinized form of which is Beiges. For some un-

134 THE INFLUENCE OF ITALY

known reason Fabri fails to record his name ; some think because of Lemaire's early death, variously placed between 1514 and 1520. He grew up in the household of his imcle Molinet, the histori- ographer of Burgundy, to whom he also owed several positions he held. Lemaire himself attributes his attachment to the muses to the persuasion of Cretin, who honored him with a visit. In 1503 he entered the service of Margaret of Austria, and passed some time on her estates at Pont-d'Ain near Lyons, in which city Italian influences were then dominant. In fact, he later visited Italy and was the first to imitate the terza rima in French. In 1512 he became historiographer of Louis XII. Although his Concorde des deux langages (1511) advocates a harmonious co- operation of France and Italy, he had long been a supporter of Louis' nationalistic policy. Thus, while Lemaire is still a long way from being a real humanist, metrical ingenuity is not his first consideration and he gives evidence of a knowledge of classical culture, especially in his prose. Taken all in all, he begins the transition in poetry which leads through Marot to the Pleiade; and his technique was apparently carefully studied by both Du Bellay and Ronsard.

His verse compositions are: the Temple d'honnewr et de vertu, the Couronne margueritique, the Ejnstre de I'Amant vert and the musical Plainte du desire. Titles as well as concept of these are thoroughly rhetoriqueur. Yet with considerable variety and firmness of expression Lemaire imites occasional humor and a vivid sense of color. Brunetiere justly lauds the verses beginning:

TJn grave accent, musique larmoyable Est bien scant a ce jour pitoyable Pour parfoumir nos lamentations.

But his best poetic work remains the semi-humorous Amant vert. This consists of a letter supposedly sent by Margaret's dead parrot from the Netherworld. The poem is gracefully turned, remmiscent in substance and style of Vergil and particularly Ovid (the Amores II, vi), and appropriate in tone to the matter treated. Lemaire is not profound, but he is never commonplace. His chief work, however, is in prose. This is the ambitious Illustrations de Gmde et singularites de Troie (1510-1513) a curious blending of erudition, pedantry and charming naivete;

JEAN LEMAIRE 135

incidentally, a mine of patriotic inspiration for the century and the source of Ronsard's Franciade. Lemaire's idea was to revise the Troy story, that theme so dear to the Middle Ages, in accord with more reliable authorities. With this in mind, he followed during the first book the f abulations of Annius of Viterbo connecting in typical Renaissance fashion the m3rthical ancestors of the human race; thus Priam is related to Noah (Je bon pere Noe) and Jupiter is identified with Osiris. In the sec- ond book, which treats of Troy proper, the model is Lorenzo Val- la's prose rendering of all the Iliad (1502), with the reservation always that Francus (a neglected son of Hector) is to become the ancestor of the French nobility — after the fall of Ilion — and thus the progenitor of the royal houses of France and Burgundy. Besides seeing in the work a sort of Almanach de Gotha, Le- maire's contemporaries (so Brunetiere suggests) were won by the style sdutenu with its predevx coloring. Thus the author speaks of the " detroits d'insatiable avarice," the " rochers de cupidite effrenee," the " plage d'outrage sanguinolent " ; and he makes Athena say: "Sejoiune les pupilles . . . au miroir de ma speciosite celeste." Yet, such allegorizations are nothing new in French and when the occasion arises, as in depicting the idyll of Paris and Oenone, Lemaire is both simple and poetic, with touches recalling Sannazzaro, resident in France in 1501- 1504. A trait which Lemaire does not share with his epoch is his scrupulous decency of expression.

It may have been Lemaire's misfortune that he was ahead of his age. As it is, he gave impetus to Jboth. literature and art (he was also a niusician), and we understand why Du Bellay acclaimed him as having " iHustre et les Gaules et la langue, luy donnant beaucoup de mots et manieres de parler poetiques " {Defense et Illustration II, Ch, 2).

CHAPTER II

MAROT AND HIS IMMEDIATE FOLLOWERS

Elusiveness has long been recognized as one of the main traits of Clement Marot. This is half his chann. He characterized himself in the following lines:

Sur le printemps de ma jeunesse foUe, Je ressemblois I'arondelle qui vole . Puis ga, puis la: I'aage me conduisoit. Sans paour ne soing, oh le cueur me disoit.

And it is not only in his youth that he eludes us, but throughout his life, up to the day of his death.

Of an apparently frivolous nature, more or less a temporizer as his position of valet de chambre to King Francis required, Marot has not a little courage, a wonderful command of the subtler shades of language, luminous clarity and the eternal quality of wit. La Bruyere, certainly not superficial, considered him more modern than Ronsard:

II n'y a guere entre ce premier et nous que la difference de quelques mots.

We must not look to Marot for lyric passion or depth of sentiment. His gifts are common sense, lightness of touch and a determination to say nothing that is not said well. In so far as he thus discards the fetters of medieval pedantry he represents the Gallic side of the Renaissance.

His father, Jean Marot, had married a lady of Cahors in Quercy. Here Clement was born in 1496 or 1497. When the Marot's ^°y ^^® *^°» ^^® elder Marot, anxious to have him Life succeed in the " rhetorical art," took him north to

France proper.

Que j'oubliay ma langue matemelle Et grossement apprins la patemelle Langue frangcyse,

136

MAROT 137

is the poet's significant comment on this step. Thus Marot, like Monluc and Montaigne, is virtually a child of the south.

Like Villon, he was not an industrious student, and humanly he blames his instructors. Even his knowledge of Latin was de- fective, as the inaccuracies of his translations show. But he was an extensive reader, and his library contained such works as the Spanish Celestina, Boccaccio's Fiammetta, various books con- demned by the Sorbonne, the chief Latin writers, the works of Villon and of course the Roman de la Rose. In verse his master was Jean Lemaire de Beiges, whom he ignorantly compares to Homer. Cretin was also a youthful admiration. Character- istically, however, he regarded court life as his most important teacher:

La court du roy, ma maistresse d'escole.

And, in fact, after a short period as a law student, when he was a member of the Basoche, Marot became page to Nicholas de Neufville, seigneur de Villeroy (1513). Henceforth he trod the uncertain path of princely favor. In 1515 he greeted the youthful Francis in his Temple de Cupido, with its burst of allegory but revealing also the poet's innate charm. Three years later he became secretary of Marguerite d'Angouleme, under whose influence his spiritual sympathies were broadened so as to make him at least a doubtful Protestant. His translation of the Sixth Psalm appeared in the edition of Marguerite's Miroir de I'ame pecheresse (1533). The Epistre du Despourveu, addressed to her in 1517, however, still shows the poet as a typical rhetori- queur:

Ces motz finiz, demeure mon semblant Triste, transy, tout terny, tout tremblant, Sombre, songeant, sans seure soustenance, Dur d'esperit, desnue d'esperance, Melancolic, morne, marry, musant.

And rhetoriqueur he remains until after 1524.

In this year he accompanied the King to Italy and was present, if not actually wounded and made a prisoner, at Pavia (1525). On his return to Paris he was arrested and confined in the Cha- telet, whence, however, influential friends (among them a certain Lion Jamet) had him transferred to more comfortable surround-

138 MAROT AND HIS IMMEDIATE FOLLOWERS

ings at Chartres, where he was soon set at liberty. The charge was that Marot had broken the ecclesiastic rules as to fasting during Lent. However this may be, the poet whom the King finally liberated is the real Marot, the author of the Epistle to Bouchart, in which he denies his heresy, the famous Epistle to Jamet containing the Fable of the Lion and the Rat, and the Enfer — a satirical poem on his treatment in the Chatelet. All these show Marot's vigor, directness and dramatic power, in full play.

In 1526 Francis appointed Marot to the post left vacant by his father's death. According to M. Lefranc, the same year marks also the beginning of the one serious love-affair of the poet's life. But the date is uncertain, just as it is doubtful that Anne d'Alengon, the niece of Marguerite, inspired Marot's love — as Lefranc also maintains. The sincerity of the poet's emotion, however, can hardly be doubted, fleeting as it may have been; witness the lines:

J'ayme le cueur de m'amye Sa bonte at sa doulceur, Je Tayme sans infamie Et comme un frere la soeur.

Such frankness is matched only by the more characteristic note which Marot strikes in the Epigram satirizing the unjust execution of Samblangay, superintendent of finances (1527), and the de- licious Epistre au Roy pour avoir este derobe with its vivid char- acter sketch of the poet's rascally valet —

Au demourant, le meilleur filz du monde.

Marot is now famous, and to guard against pirated copies of his works he employs Geoffrey Tory to publish his poems under the playful title of Adolescence Clementine (1532). So, too, a feel- ing of piety for the poetic art prompts him to reedit Villon in 1533 and to translate several of Petrarch's sonnets. Yet the times are fraught with danger, and a person of Marot's liberal associa- tions is none too secure. On October 17-18, 1534, the Protestants, goaded to action, placard the King's door with an attack on the Mass. Hesitating before, Francis now allows Parliament to act, and the result is that our poet is forced to flee. He goes first to

MAROT 139

Nerac, seeking the protection of Marguerite, but very soon moves to Italy, where he finds an asylum at the court of Francis' sister- in-law, t-he Duchess Renee of Ferrara. Here he meets the Pe- trarchist Tebaldeo and Serafino dall' Aquila — whose influence he shows in several huitains and particularly in his revival of the blason (a versified catalogue of physical traits) — and he celebrates his new protectress as the embodiment of vertu:

De quoy Vertu perpetuoit sa vie: Dont il trouvoit sa perte et son soucy Moins ennuyeux.

But the ornate and affected Ferrarese were not suited to one of Marot's frolicsome temper. Besides, his heretical leanings were distasteful to the Duke, Ercole d'Este, who did not share his wife's generous spirit. Marot longs for France, and thither he goes in 1537, after making a public disavowal of his " errors " with an apparently light heart. He thanks Francis officially for his return to grace in the Eglogue au Roy sovbs les noms de Pan et de Robin, a mingling of the medieval and classical forms of the pastoral and one of the most biographically rich of Marot's works. In 1539 Francis seals the compact by presenting the poet with a house in the suburb of Saint-Germain-des-Pres.

Meanwhile, however, Marot's enemies had not been, idle. Profiting by the poet's equivocal attitude, a Norman priest, Fran- 5ois de Sagon — whom Marot had offended personally — launched against the absentee a truculent Cowp d'essai, in which amid much other abuse occur the lines:

Marc sans t est excellent poete Mais avec t il est tout corrompu.

The quarrel that ensued is not without its interest. It marshaled the literary men of the time into two opposing camps: rhetori- qufiwrs and Marotiques; and on the latter side were Desperiers, Fontaine and Mellin de Saint-Gelais. The broadsides put forth by the opposing parties were adorned with wood-cuts of the grossest sort; thus printing joined in onje of its earliest battles, and invective followed invective. As for the documents, the most noteworthy for its satire is the witty but scurrilous Valet de Marot centre Sagon, in which the poet hides under the name

140 MAROT AND HIS IMMEDIATE FOLLOWERS

of his servant Frippelippes. FinaHy, the matter was settled to Marot's advantage when the Confrerie des Cornards declared that even in Rouen Sagon was considered inferior to his opponent. The year 1538 sees Marot busy with a new edition of his works (including the Enfer and a Dialogue de deux amoureux) , which was finally printed by both his friend Dolet and the publisher Gryphius of Lyons. With the encouragement of the King and the help of Vatable — the Biblical scholar — Marot now works on his translation of the Psalter. This Saint Cancionnaire of thirty Psalms, whose couplets were sung according to popular tunes on the spinet, appeared in 1541 with a dedication to Francis. But when the Sorbonne protests against such profanation of the Bible, the King with characteristic weakness deserts his favorite, and Marot flees to Geneva (1542), never to see France again. There his Psalms were incorporated into the Protestant liturgy and republished in more than twenty-four editions before 1550. They were thus the greatest poetic success of the time, though their author was not to profit by this popularity. After a year's sojourn in Geneva Marot left for Chambery and died the following year (1544) in Turin.

In an epistle, A un sien amy, written shortly before his end, he takes leave of the world and propheti- cally voices the judgment of posterity with regard to his work:

Ne voy tu pas, encore qu'on me voye Prive des biens et estats que j'avoye Des vieulx amys, du pays, de leur chere, De ceste Royne et maistresse tant chere, Qui m'a nourry (et si, sans rien me rendre. On m'ayt tollu tout ce qui se peult prendre), Ce neantmoins, par mont et par campaigne Le mien esprit me suit et m'accompaigne?

Abandomie jamais ne m'a la Muse

Et tant qu'ouy et nenny se dira Par Tunivers le monde me hra.

Thus Marot is especially a writer of occasional verse. This was his forte, and in this field he remains the master. We may regret his lack of direction, the absence in him of any one lofty ideal, the inability to grasp and make his own the moral

ij.

MAROT'S WORKS 141

strength of Protestantism; what we cannot deny is his captivat- ing charm and his great virtuosity.

His Epistles are his best product. Mostly written in ten- syllable verse, which he handles with great skill, they are rapid in movement, picturesque and concrete in language, and humorous, pathetic, pleading or satiric, as the poet wishes them to be. Take the detail of a passage like the following from the Epistle to Jamet:

Trouva moyen et maniere et matiere D'ongles et dens, de rompre la ratiere, Dont maistre rat eschappe vistement, Puis meit a terra un genouil gentement, Et en ostant son bonnet de la teste, A mercie mille foys la grand beste, Jurant le Dieu des souris et des ratz Qu'il lay rendroit;

and contrast it with the distinguished grace of the three-sylla- bled Epistle A une Damoyselle malade:

Ma nugnonne, Je voiis donne Le bon jour; Le sejour C'est prison. Guerison Recouvrez, Puis ouvrez Votre porte, Et qu'on sorte Vistement.

Or compare the familiar tone of one of Marot's Coqs-a-l'asne — thus the poet designates his helter-skelter discussion of contem- porary topics in epistle form:

Tu ne SQais pas? Thunis est prinse, Triboulet a freres et soeurs, Les Angloys s'en vont bons danseurs, Les Allemans tiennent mesure.

On ne preste plus a usure, Mais tant qu'on veut a interest.

A propos de Perceforest, Lit on plus Artus et Gauvain?

with the sustained utterance of one of his Elegies:

142 MAROT AND HIS IMMEDIATE FOLLOWERS

Ton gentil cueur si haiiltement assis, Ton sens discret a merveille rassis, Ton noble port, ton maintien asseure. Ton chant si doulx, ton parler mesure. Ton propre habit, qui tant bien se conforme Au naturel de ta tres belle forme.

Again esprit is the note of his epigrams, where he imitates Martial. The rondeau with the refrain Au bon vieux temps is in most anthologies, while the ballade, De frere Imbin, is also well known.

As for the sonnet, he did little more than introduce the genre into French and lay the foimdation for the standard French type (where the tercets rime ccd eed or ede) — yet this is not unimportant in view of the popularity of the sonnet with the Pleiade.

Marot was not a successful translator, though his range in- cluded Erasmus as well as Vergil and Ovid ; nor was he a striking innovator in rhythm. In both respects, his Psalms perhaps are an exception. Obviously, he was not exactly at home in the lofty religious atmosphere of Hebraic inspiration; but his renderings are singularly close at times and his arrangement of rimes is original. The translation of the Thirty-third Psalm contains the ten-line strophe which we later find in the French ode:

ResveUlez vous, chascun fidele, Menez en Dieu joye orendroit. ■•

Louange est tresseante et belle En la bouche de rhomme droict.

Sur la doulce harpe,

Pendue en escharpe,

Le Seigneur louez.

De luz, d'espinettes

Sainctes chansonnettes

A son Nom jouez.

In short, it was Marot's function to deliver French poetry from rhetoriqueur complexities and to guide it into the high- road of clear and sensible expression. On these grovmds the contempt with which Ronsard and his followers treated him is unmerited. At the same time, he utterly lacks the afflatus of the Renaissance, its great enthusiasm and its towering thoughts.

MAROT'S FOLLOWERS 143

It is interesting that in such an age a poet could display "the literary characteristics of the ordinary Frenchman " (Saints- bury) . This is at once his achievement and his limitation.

Of Marot's immediate successors, the so-called Ecole marotique, little need be said. In general, they maintain the position The Maro- outlined above. Among them are Charles Fontaine, tiques Lg, Borderie, Eustorg de Beaulieu, Charles de Sainte-

Marthe and Mellin de Saint-Gelais.

Fontaine (1515-1570?) , the honest defender of the " master," was also the champion of the rights of love. An ardent dis- cussion divided the literary circles of the years 1541-1546. In some respects a revival of the dispute launched by Jean de Meun on the nature of woman, it assumed an entirely new aspect under the influence of Neo-Platonism, recently imported from Italy and cultivated by Marguerite d'Angouleme. With her and Rabelais' share in the quarrel we shall deal presently. Fontaine's part in it was to answer a cynical attack on the fair sex by La Borderie, who in his Amye de Court (1541) had repre- sented the " coiui; lady " as a materialist. To this slur Fontaine replied with his Contr'Amye de Court, which, rambling and prolix as it is, contains an interesting adaptation of Plato's con- ception of " imiversal love ":

Amour partout sa bonne, graine seme, Et de la vient que toute chose s'ayme.

Eustorg de Beaulieu (1505-1552) continued Marot's blasons, which had become popular, together with other forms of the Marotic type; and having reformed, morally and religiously, he published at Geneva religious songs set to his own music. Charles de Sainte-Marthe (1512-1555) at least is frank enough to say:

Que dira Ton de me veoir si hardy De composer apres toy, 6 Clement?

His " rather weak attempts at Platonism " have the merit of form- ing one of the links between Marguerite's court at Nerac and the flourishing Renaissance city of Lyons, where his poems appeared in 1540.

lU MAROT AND HIS IMMEDIATE FOLLOWERS

Thus Mellin de Saint-Gelais (1481-1558) is the only notable standard-bearer of the group. A natural son of Octovien (see above), he was highly cultured, quite a student of Italian and a rival of Marot for the credit of having introduced the sonnet into French. He was aptly called I'Homere des vers d'album. Mellin was a favorite at the court of Henry II, who liked his Italianate manner. Mignardises is the name of the formal blossoms which he culled for the court circles of his time (1547). He prepared an edition of the French translation by Colin of the Cortegiano, and he himself translated into French the Sophordsba of Trissino, a play that is important in the development of the drama. In triumphing over Mellin, Ronsard triumphs over the Marotic muse in its Italianized form. An excellent sample of Mellin's style is found in his rendering of a sonnet by Sannaz- zaro, also translated by the English poet Wyatt. We cite the first quatrain:

Voyant ces monts de veue ainsi lointaine, Je les compare a mon long desplaisir: Haut est leur chef, et haut est mon desir, Leur pied est ferme, et ma foy est certaine.

CHAPTER III

RABELAIS AND CALVIN — THE EPICUREAN AND THE STOIC

FKANgois Rabelais and Jean Calvin are respectively the pos- itive and negative poles of the Renaissance. Drawing alike their inspiration from the newly discovered classics, with an equal opposition to medieval pedantry, they yet represent the parting of the ways in their conflicting ideals: Rabelais the exuberant apostle of freedom, and Calvin the rigid disciplin- arian. To the one, human nature appeared essentially healthy and hence trustworthy ; to, the other it appeared totally depraved and therefore in pressing need of renewed contact with the Deity. Thus, if personal emphasis is characteristic of this period, they are its representatives. Moreover, the principles for which they stand continue in favor through the epoch of French Classicism. As regards point of view, Moliere and Racine are their descendants.

Today we think of Rabelais primarily as a humorist. We are swept along by his laughter — the expression of his prodigious Fransois vitality — and we are apt to overlook his wisdom. Rabelais j)Qgg }jg q^^ gj^y jjj jjig dedication to his readers:

Vray est qu'icy peu de perfection Vous apprendrez, si non en cas de rire;

and quote Aristotle to the effect that

rire est le propre de ITiomme?

His contemporaries, however, knew him as a great scholar and physician, whose mirth — gross and indecent as it is — is sec- ondary to the profounder qualities of the man. In him, if any- where, the asceticism of the Middle Ages finds a corrective in an exultant but thoughtful expression of life; and this side of him should not be overlooked. But his genius has also another

145

146 RABELAIS AND CALVIN

characteristic aspect — strange as it may seem — in his art as a writer. Rabelais is one of the great molders of French prose. This shows itself in a tremendous rush of words, overflowing the page or concentrated into telling phrases, as the case may be, but always with an rmderlying rhythm, an indication of the truly masterful nature of the man.

It is not known exactly when he was bom. The traditional date is 1483 — the year of the birth of Luther and Raphael. This is certainly wrong, as is the tradition that Rabelais' father was an inn-keeper of Chinon, a town in Touraine. It is now es- tablished that his father was Antoine de Rabelais, seigneur de Chavigny, a barrister of Chinon, and owner of the farm and vine- yard of La Deviniere, where Frangois was bom at a date esti- mated as 1494 or 1495. Little is known of his early education except that it was pedantically medieval and that the Thubal Holofernes satirized in the Gargantua was probably his first preceptor. He doubtless went to the Franciscan convent of La Bamnette, near Angers. In 1519 he qualified as jrere mineur at Fontenay-le-Comte in Poitou, and here it was that he imderwent the humanistic influences that were to shape his career.

In general, these were Greek studies, piu*sued in conjunction with his brother-monk Pierre Amy under the supervision of Bude. The two friends also discussed problems with Andre Tiraqueau, later a member of the Parisian Parliament, and with Geoffrey d'Estissac, Bishop of Maillezais. But difficulties were soon to disrupt this learned coterie. Tiraqueau had written a pamphlet attacking the female sex, the De legibus conubialibus et jure maritali (which Rabelais later quotes in his Third Book) ; and the controversy to which the pamphlet gave rise, as well as the fact that the young himianists were suspected of friendliness towards the religious reformers, led to the flight of Amy and the transfer of Rabelais to the more lenient Benedictine order at Maillezais (1524).

The succeeding years were crowded with events. It is uncer- tain how long Rabelais tarried at Maillezais but it is probable "Gargantua *^** ^® ^°°° began the study of medicine at Paris

et and of law at Bourges. In 1530, we know, he re-

Pantagruel" ceived his baccalaureate in medicine at Montpellier, and he then gave lectures to large audiences on the Aphorisn^

RABELAIS 14j7

of Hippocrates and the Ars Medica of Galen. By 1532 he had migrated to Lyons, and here in the thriving Renaissance city he divided his time between his profession as a physician and the editing and publication of books.

Among the latter he either wrote or merely edited a chap- book called Les grandes et inestimables Chroniques du grand et enorme geant Gargantua, following the general lines of an Ar- thurian prose-romance. Published in 1532, this work was im- mensely popular, more copies of it being sold in two months " than there will be Bibles in nine years " — as Rabelais himself testifies. The account which he there gives of Grangousier, Galemelle and their son Gargantua, who, transported over the sea by Merlin, takes service with King Arthur, was followed in the same year by a far superior continuation, the Pantagruel, and a facetious almanac, the Pantagrueline Prognostication. The first of these is now the Second Book of Rabelais' immortal work.

In form of a romance, the Pantagruel relates the origin, birth, education and adventures of the hero, interspersed with copious references to burning questions of the day and an account of Pantagruel's sojourn in Orleans and Paris [Chs. II-XXXIII], which doubtless reflects Rabelais* own ex- perience. Rabelais' sources were practically evers^thing he read: from classical authors to the Italian Folengo (from whose Cingar he took the attributes of Panurge), and books of travel and science. But the backgroimd of the work rests on the romances of chivalry, of which the Pantagruel is a burlesque interwoven with modern instances and classical illustrations.

Thus Pantagruel, originally a salt-water demon in the mysteres, is in part Rabelais himself, who later [Book III] apos- trophizes his hero as

le meilleur petit et grand bon homet que oncques ceigneit espee. Toutes choses prenoit en boime partie, tout acte interpretoit a bien. Jamais ne se tourmentoit, jamais ne se scandalisoit.

Book II describes the pedantic collection of the Library of St. Victor, provides an antidote to this pedantry in the admirable Letter of Gargantua to his son, aptly called "the triumphal hymn of the Renaissance," and records Pantagruel's disputations

148 RABELAIS AND CALVIN

on the study and practice of law. It then relates his meeting with Panurge, companion and counterpart to himself, whom Rabelais describes in terms borrowed from the account of Marot's " valet de Gascogne." The actual plot of this Book, however, is chiefly an attack on the Dipsodes or Thirsty, to which Gargantua surmnons his son and which includes an account of a voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to Utopia or Cathay in India.

Rabelais was now physician to the hospital of the Pont-du- Rhone in Lyons. But his studies could not have been exacting, for he maintained his connection with printers and writers, addressing a remarkable letter to Erasmus in 1532, and accepting early in 1534 an invitation to go to Rome in the suite of Jean du Bellay, soon to be made a cardinal. All this time, however, he was busy on an elaboration of his romance, and soon after his return from Rome (the close of 1534) he brought out the Vie inestimable du grand Gargantua, pere de Pantagruel — now reckoned as Book I. The year 1534 was the date of the Placards (see Ch. II) , and the sneering remarks in the book on the doctors of the Sorbonne probably made Rabelais cautious of his own safety; at any rate, by March, 1535, he had been so long absent from his post at the hospital that another was elected to fill his place. In July of that year he was once more in Rome, this time as physician to the Cardinal.

The Gargantua, meant to replace the earlier chap-book of this name, is a more elaborate performance than the Pantagruel, whose general lines it follows in the manner of the enfances of some epic hero. There is a prologue burlesquing the medieval device of the literal and figurative meanings or sensus, which has led many commentators astray in the belief that the book veils a political or religious attack. The book proper gives a description of the young giant's birth and education; Gargantua steals the bells of Notre-Dame and listens to the amusing protest of Janotus de Bragmardo, a pedant of the Sorbonne; his tutor Ponacrates initiates him into the new learning by first demonstrating the absurdities of the old, and so on. But the central episode of the book is the war between Grangousier and Picrochole, ending in the foundation of the Abbaye de Theleme.

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This war, beneath which lies a family squabble of the Rabelais and their neighbors in Touraine, the Sainte-Marthes, satirizes in the guise of an attack of the cake-bakers of Lerne on the shep- herds of Grandgousier the frivolous causes that may lead nations to fight — an obvious echo of the pacifistic ideals of Erasmus. The Abbaye de Theleme, a monastery without " rule," open to both sexes with the right of free entrance and departure, symbol- izes Rabelais' concept of humanism. A model of Renaissance architecture, this institution has but one precept, Fay ce que vouldras — considering that " men who are free, well-bred, well-educated, conversant with genteel folk, have by nature an instinct and spur which impels them to virtuous actions and restrains them from vice; and this they call honor." The atti- tude is aristocratic: the model of the Cortegiano doubtless hov- ered before the author's mind; but the important fact is that Rabelais invokes instinct and not dogma, freedom and not re- striction, for the salvation of man. If we add hereto the^ observation that the Thelemites never have an idle moment we get activity, or work, as the other essential condition of human happiness. These, together with Pantagruel's trait of cheerful- ness even in the face of adversity, are the leading features of; Pantagruelisme or the Rabelaisian philosophy of life. — '

In March, 1536, we find Rabelais _once more in Paris attending a dinner to Dolet, who speaks of him on this occasion as " the glory of the healing art." Indeed, the next few years are devoted to medicine. Rabelais takes his Master's and Doctor's degrees at Montpellier ; there and at Lyons he dissects a human body — an event which Dolet has celebrated in Latin verse; and but for a Latin poem on the exploits of Guillaume du Bellay, and new editions of the Gargantua and Pantagruel, he is not active in literattire. Not until 1546 was the Third Book so far written as to be ready for the printer. In the meantime, Francis I had taken stringent action against the Protestant heresy. Rabelais, whose courage was tempered by common sense or, as he states, extended " jusqu'au feu exclusivement," again took his precautions. The Third Book appeared with a thoroughly patriotic preface, doubt- less inspired by the fact that France was having trouble with Spain, and with a ten-year privilege from Francis calculated to prove the author's orthodoxy. Nevertheless, Rabelais found it

150 RABELAIS AND CALVIN

prudent to flee to Metz, where he remained as town physician until the summer of 1547.

Thus the Third Book, which is contemporaneous with the Qu&relle des femmes (see Ch. II) , is in the opinion of M. Lefranc a document in the quarrel. Certainly Rabelais' Book III treatment of the sex is far from flattering. Panurge, now governor of Salmigondin, has gone heavily into his revenue {mange son hie en herbe) , and when taken to task by Pantagruel he enters upon a rollicking but eloquent eulogy of Debt as the unifying principle of the universe. He treats this theme first in the large, under the heading of the " macrocosm," and then in the small as the " microcosm " (here choosing the Fable of the Belly and the Members for his illustration) — a procedure em- ployed later by Pascal, who draws on this passage. Then Panurge, who had pretended to be miserable, suddenly changes his tone and proposes to marry. This leads to a tirade against divination, extending from Cicero to Cornelius Agrippa, whom Rabelais humorously calls Her Trippa. Finally, the attack on women — strong throughout the Book — reaches its climax in the mouth of Rondibilis, the physician:

Quand je dis femme, je dis un sexe tant fragile, tant variable, tant muable, tant inconstant at imparfaict, que Nature me semble (parlant en tout honneur et reverence) s'estre esgaree de ce bon sens par lequel elle avoit cree et forme toutes choses, quand elle a basti la femme.

As a piece of " learned drollery," much of this section is indebted to borrowing from Rabelais' friend Tiraqueau, as we noted above. The upshot of the discussion is that Pantagruel, Panurge and Frere Jean decide to visit the oracle of La Dive Bouteille in Cathay and consequently equip themselves for the long voyage thither.

Once more Rabelais returns to Rome, whence he writes a series of letters {La Sciomachie) on the festivities held by his patron; and he seeks friends and supporters in the Cardinal de Lorraine and others. About this time (1551) he was appointed by Jean du Bellay to the vacant cure of Meudon. In 1552 he published his Fourth Book, which despite his usual precautions was condemned by the Sorbonne and forbidden by Parliament to be sold. But before the printing was complete, he had resigned

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the positions he held — the reason for this step is unknown — and he utterly disappeared from view. He must have died before May, 1554, the approximate date of the epigram entitled Rabelais trepasse. An obscure ending for one of the keenest, wisest and most genial of writers; a man admired and loved by his con- temporaries, who doubtless revelled in his romance though they hardly saw in it one of the greatest works of all French literature. The voyage to Cathay or India via the Northwest passage, planned in the Third, is carried out in the Fourth Book. The Odyssey of Pantagruel and his companions takes the °° travelers to a series of islands, in each of which

some human infirmity or abuse is held up to ridicule. Thus Procuration is infested with the Chicanoux or Lawyers ; Tapinois is ruled by Lent, a revolting, misshapen creature; Papefigv£s belongs to people who scorn the Pope, just as Papimanes are those who adore him. As elsewhere in his writings, Rabelais here mingles the real and the fanciful: the episode of Panurge's sheep [Ch. VI] and the description of the great storm at sea [Ch. XVIII] are mosaics of fact and imagination. But he also knows and uses the literature of geographical discovery, and again he amazes us with his erudition.

A Fifth and concluding Book appeared after Rabelais' death; first in sixteen chapters, the so-called Isle sonnante (1562), and then as Le dnquieme et dernier livre des jaits et dits heroiques du bon Pantagruel (1564). Thus its authenticity is doubtful. There are evident interpolations, the allegorizing is overdone and the tone is severe, at times strident. On the other hand, countless passages show that an outline by Rabelais himself was used. Here, in addition to the Isle son- nante where the voyagers encounter such ecclesiastical " birds " as Clergaux, Cardingaux and Papegaut, Pantagruel and his company visit the haunts of the Chats-fourres or Furred Law- cats and the kingdom of Dame Quintessence or Abstraction, and finally reach the priestess Babuc, who leads them to La Dive Bouteille. It is significant that the answer to Panurge's elabo- rate questionings, as given by the oracle, is the simple word Trine. " Car Trine," says Rabelais, " est un mot celebre et entendu de toutes nations et nous signifie: Buvez." In other words, " experience " is the solvent of life, and on this note the romance ends.

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The paradox of Rabelais is the contrast between his exuber- ance and his unshakable sanity. He addresses his work to drinkers, and drinking is his recurrent symbol; he Summary affirms that he wrote his livre sdgneurial while beuvant et mangeant. This is far from being derision. It is the affirnQatifflB--DlJife_itg.elt: the resolve to live it and the courage to see it through. For^exggnence alone^can keep us soundand sane; whereas speculation, absliactiQP, monastic rule and abnegation — when placedjii.£ontral-:^.,wreck-lJataFe~flJid are its negation. Among moderns, only Goethe has this philo- sophic vision. As scholars have been everlastingly pointing out, the quotations in Rabelais, the borrowings, the references and the allusions, if put together, would constitute a small encyclopedia. The vast erudition of the Renaissance is liter- ally there on the printed page. The wonder is that it is so well fused, so flowing, so much a part of the common purpose. Titanic is the suitable wo,rd: characters, events, details — whether it be the accoutrement of Gargantua riding to Paris on his giant mare, or the description of the storm at sea, or Panurge's excursus on debt — everything is tributary to one large, over- flowing stream of thought and expression. And the reason for this, as Bruntiere says, is that the work is a prose poem. " Elle en a I'apparence et I'allure; elle en a I'inspiration profonde; elle en a le charme ou la seduction du style: on pourrait dire qu'elle en respire encore et surtout I'enthousiasme."

But having made this assertion, we should observe some dis- tinctions. The four or five books of the Gargantua and Panta- gruel are in a sense coextensive with their author's life. Hence the repetitions and changes in point of view. This many-sided- ness is typical of the Renaissance itself. The first two books stand for the earlier period of humanism, when the " new en- thusiasm" and the Reformation are still indistinguishable: Grandgousier's letter to his son refers to the " free will," which, however, must be guided by " grace." In general, a spirit of benevolence prevails, which is indeed the keynote of the program outlined by Gargantua for Pantagruel's direction. But with the Third Book the tone changes and becomes aggressive — just as patriotism is underscored, and policies and discoveries that are French are upheld (see Book IV) . Not only does Rabelais

SUMMARY OF RABELAIS 153

now poke fun at the medieval spirit, he strikes at its foundations and excoriates its specific and lasting abuses: Physis and An- tiphysis are represented as rival progenitors, and the offspring of the latter are all "fools and senseless people," not excepting les demoniacles Calvins, imposteiurs de Geneve. In addition, the work as a whole betrays its medieval basis, which it cannot entirely shake off. It is humorous and grotesque, but unaes- thetic. In particular, the attitude towards women — des femmes je n'ai cure — is not only temperamental, it is directly medieval ; for all his references to Plato (and there are many), Rabelais is out of sympathy with the the Neo-Platonists and especially with Marguerite d'Angouleme. But this again is in harmony with his conviction that all doctrine, all education must be an expansion, a development, not a suppression, of Nature's gifts. Egotism, if you will, but not " ambition and self-interest," for in Rabelais being and action, nature and life are one — a thoroughly French point of view (see Introduction) . It is well to remember that Rabelais was a physician.

As we have seen, he came to literature through humanism; that is, via Bude, Erasmus, Politian, Sir Thomas More, and all the rest. He is the first to represent the afflatus of the Renaissance in French, and he does so preeminently as a realist. This ex- plains his style, which again is of a piece with himself. He does not portray impressions, for he lacks our modem subjectivity. Rabelais is never sentimentaj. But Panurge, Pantagruel, Frere Jean^ Gargantua are as real in his pages as if we saw them our- selves — the figures are on a large scale, like the Moses of Michel- angelo; that is their characteristic feature. As for words and expressions, they flow from his pen in abundance but also with precision. How he sketches each detail of the great storm; how controlled in its eloquence is the praise of Debt; and, on the other hand, how riotous are the verbs designating the rolling of Diogenes' tub! A single phrase, Je me pers en ceste contem- plation, is the model of Pascal's Notre imagination se perd dans cette contemplation. As for the sources of this vocabulary, it is drawn from every conceivable source: dialects, foreign tongues, classics, contemporaries like Geoffroy Tory and Marot, even the rhetoriqueurs and Villon. Modern French is indebted to Rabelais for more than six hundred words.

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Thus Rabelais is a giant among men ; an expression of French common sense wedded to elemental, earthborn strength and himior. Jonathan Swift and Sterne are among his English fol- lowers; wEereas in France, in addition to Moliere, Montaigne and Anatole France have understood him best. Without Rabelais, the lie des Pingouins is unthinkable.

In a sermon of 1516 Luther speaks of " Our Picards and other schismatics." Such a one was Jean Calvin, or really Cauvin, born at Noyon, in 1509. Compared to Rabelais, the ^™ jovial and robust son of Touraine, Calvin the Picard

was high-strung, dyspeptic, solitary and disputatious. There is little doubt that he waged a continual battle with himself, his prodigious productivity being the triumph of an imperious and indomitable will over a frail physique. But like all " heroes of the spirit," forced to struggle alone, he saw life intensely but narrowly, opposition was to him anathema, and once well started his mind went forward in a groove, carving out geometrical, rec- tilinear figures for the administration — and as he profoundly believed, the salvation — of man. Calvin was bom to be a Protestant d outrance. However, the Renaissance needed him, and it is part of his glory that his influence in literature is second only to what it is in theology.

Mindful of the boy's fervid nature and with an eye to the prac- tical, Gerard Calvin directed his son's education at first towards the church. The Cathedral loomed large in the little town of Noyon, and Gerard, who was a lawyer, served as its attorney. Thus he secured for his twelve-ytear-old son an ecclesiastical appointment, carrying a slight income, to which was added somewhat later another — this practice being common in France at the time and requiring of the boy little more than that he should undergo the tonsure. But in 1523 Jean was sent to Paris, first to the College de la Marche, where Cordier gave him system- atic training in classical Latin, and then, somewhat against his will, to the College de Montaigu with its austere rule and strict discipline in dialectics. The story that Calvin bore the nick- name at school of " the Accusative " is probably a legend. It is certain that he made influential friends and that he was mentally alert and interested. Already the Reformation was in the air. Luther's Ninety-Five

CALVIN'S LIFE 155

Theses against indulgences had been posted on the church door at Wittenberg in 1517, and in 1521 the Faculty of Theology in Paris had formally denounced the Lutheran " heresy." Moreover, France had her own reformers though of a milder, less radical sort. Lefevre d'Etaples, also a Picard, early translated the Psalms, upheld the doctrine of the Word of God and justification by the faith in a Commentary on the Pauline Epistles, and in 1523 translated the New Testament — an act which roused the watchfulness of the Sorbonne. But whatever interest the young Calvin took in these preliminary skirmishes, we have no reason to believe that his attitude was other than humanistic: a sympathy for the benignity rather than the heterodoxy of the enlightenment. And he maintained this attitude until 1533, which thus becomes the turning point in his career.

Meanwhile, Gerard started his son in a new direction by train- ing him for the law. At Orleans, whither Calvin was sent in 1528, he won a reputation as a rising jurist, and at Bourges, one year later, he continued his legal studies under the celebrated Alciat and began the study of Greek. Both influences were soon to bear fruit. After a serious falling out with thte Cathedral chapter at Noyon, Gerard died in 1531, and, left to his own choice, Calvin settled in Paris as a devotee of the new learning, to which he now added the study of Hebrew. The result is that in 1532 he pub- lishes a Commentary on Seneca's De dementia, which enrolls him imder the himianistic banner. Not unlike the Gargantua in one point, this work breathes . the hopefulness of the early Renaissance. Its learning is unquestionable — Calvin cites one hundred and fifty-five Latin and twenty-two Greek authors — its judgments are sound and scholarly, and if it discusses the duties of a king it does so without animus, in the same spirit in which it demonstrates the weakness of Stoicism and the superiority of Christianity, which appeals to the affections and " does not forbid tears." Obviously, it is primarily the work of a scholar and not of a theologian.

But the decisive event was close at hand. In November, 1533, Calvin's friend Cop was inaugurated as rector of the University of Paris. The speech on this occasion dealt with the Beatitudes, which are interpreted as proof of the good-will of God towards man and as opposed to the teaching of the Old Testament. The posi-

156 RABELAIS AND CALVIN

tion, while characteristic of Calvin, was not in itself provocative, but it was stated in phrases obviously culled from Erasmus and Luther, and the address, which is partly in Calvin's own hand- writing, sought to commit the Sorbonne to the Protestant doc- trine. This was more than the reactionary University could tolerate, and after a futile defense Cop was forced to flee. Calvin also fled, xmfortunately leaving the incriminating papers behind, and henceforth his life is that of a wanderer and flnally of an exile.

The immediate reason for Calvin's declaration of attitude is unknown. Perhaps it was merely the indiscretion of youth. At any rate, a stand had been taken — and the die was cast. Calvin thereby became the champion of the non-German side of the Reformation, though only indirectly in France through the effect of his writings; his life work was to be performed beyond her borders. For a while he merely keeps moving; he goes to Noyon, then to Angouleme, next to Nerac, the seat of Mar- guerite's court, then back to Paris. Twice he undergoes a short imprisonment. At last, there comes the day of the Placards (October 18, 1534), and Calvin flees to Bale, whither Cop had preceded him.

Here, in March, 1536, Calvin published the first Latin version of his Institution de la religion chretienne. The first draft was The "Insti- a small octavo of some five hundred and twenty

tution " pages, intended as a "brief manual " for those whose religion was defamed in France. For Calvin was of course un- aware that in subsequent revisions his work was to grow into the apologia of Protestantism in general. At the moment it behooved him to point out that his French coreligionists were not the " anarchists," not the " enemies of peace and order," such as Francis I was representing them to their German breth- ren. And so in a letter, which is remarkable both for its elevation and its force, prefixed to the book, Calvin reminds the King that it is the duty of the monarch to acknowledge himself the minister of God; that no kingdom can prosper that is not ruled by God's word; that sinners as the Protestants are and having nothing to boast of but God's mercy, their doctrine is yet superior to the sovereignties of this world:

CALVIN'S LIFE I57

Car elle n'est nostre; mais de Dieu vivant et de son Christ; lequel le Pere a constitue Roy, pour dominer d'une mer a I'autre, et depuis les fleuves jusques aux fins de la terre.

Calvin then attacks the clergy, the instigators of the accusation, and refutes the charges against the Protestants, point by point. The early Christian fathers condemn the errors of the present Church of Rome: the celibacy of the priests, the doctrines of fast- ing and the " real presence," and the withholding of the sacra- ment from the people. Finally, the King is urged to read the exposition of religion that follows.

The letter was a courageous appeal, couched in courteous yet trenchant language, and impeccable in its logic — given the major premise.

Soon after the publication of the Institution Calvin left for Italy to visit Renee, Duchess of Ferrara, whom we already know as a friend of the reformers. However, by June, 1536, he is back in France, profiting by a momentary change in Francis' attitude towards the reformers. Farel now appealed to him to assist in the organization of the Church of Geneva, which had recently de- clared its political independence. Hesitating at first, Calvin finally goes to Geneva and lays the foundation of the repressive policy which he was later to carry into execution. But in 1538 the Genevans turn on the reformers, Farel and Calvin are forced to leave, and in September of that year Calvin becomes pastor of the small French congregation of Strassburg. Here, in comparative poverty, he develops the marvelous energy and stoicism of charac- ter which marked the remainder of his career. With his duties as an evangelist we are not concerned. What interests us is the form he now gave to his great intellectual and literary treatise. In 1539 he expanded the original six chapters of the Institution into seventeen, and two years later (1541) he himself translated these into French. This edition, while not the final or most elaborate text, is yet the standard whereby Calvin's achievement as a thinker and a stylist is to be judged. It is now recognized as the edition of the Institution de la religion chretienne.

We may pass quickly over the subsequent events of his life. During the Strassburg period he married and also joined in the famous Colloquies, which were the last attempt to reconcile the two forms of Christianity. In 1541 the Genevans revoked their

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decree of banishment and Calvin returned to Geneva an absolute master, having previously stipulated that discipline should be enforced and the power of excommunication should lie in his hands. A new Catechism was promulgated, the strictest Ordon- nances were drawn up, and Geneva, in the words of John Knox, became "the most perfect school of Christ that was on earth since the days of the Apostles." As head of the Church of Geneva Calvin was virtually commander of the Protestant world. His correspondence, addressed alike to great and humble, was volu- minous. Certainly he spared himself neither effort nor tribu- lation. The one blot upon his career — the burning of Servetus at the stake — has at least the extenuating featm-e that it had the approval of many contemporaries, including the mild-mannered Melancthon, and that it was consistent with the doctrines in which Calvin believed. At last, in 1564, Calvin succumbed to the frailties of a body no longer able to bear the enormous burdens that were laid upon it. As his own Ordonnances provided, he was buried simply and without ostentation, like his " humbler associ- ates in death."

As a man of the Renaissance, Calvin's point of departure is the reconciliation of the moral life of man with antiquity; the „. Bible being to Calvin what Homer and Vergil were

naissance to others: a guarantee of truth. What is more, the Attitude Bible was the highest form of truth, the truth of the spirit; the living, undying Word of God. This the "medie- val " Church had excluded from men's view by a mass of doc- trine, commentaries and practices. Thus Calvin's method does not differ from that of any other humanist, from that of Rahelais, for example, in being a protest in the favor of reason and a benignant Deity against the asceticism of Rome: Celui grand bon piteux Dieu, lequel ne crea oncques le Caresme (Rabelais) . Wherein Calvin differs from his great contemporary and the bulk of himianists is his appraisal of man. Here his own physical infirmities, the corruption of the Roman clergy, his study of Seneca and his knowledge of the Old and New Testa- ments, not to mention St. Augustine, united to make him con- sider man a weak and miserable creature, incapable by his own efforts of doing anything good and durable. Pessimistic as this view is, Calvin is not only a moralist (in our restricted sense

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of the word), he is also and primarily a psychologist, and he analyzes human nature with an insight, a directness and a vividness that are astonishing. Thus the reactionary and Ro- manist Bossuet, finds elements in him to praise (see Les Varia- tions des eglises protestantes) and Pascal, author of Les Pensees, ideas and even passages to imitate.

To all of this the Institution of 1541 bears ample and convinc- ing testimony. With unaffectjed simplicity Calvin says at the beginning:

Toute la somme de nostra saigesse, laquelle merite d'estre appel- lee vraie et certaine saigesse, est quasi comprinse en deux parties a scavoir la congnoissance de Dieu, et de nousmesmes.

The sources of this knowledge lie within ourselves and in the Bible. There is no nation so barbarous, no people so savage, that g-jg has not implanted in its heart the conviction that

Theology there is a God. Even Plato — and Calvin does not hesitate to use Plato — teaches that the sovereign good of the soul is the similitude with God. But the nexus has been broken, if not entirely, by Adam's fall, whence the utter depravity of human nature [Chs. I-II]. Therefore; salvation is to be won not merely through the Law or by the performance of Works but through Faith — Faith which moves mountains and also humbles the pride of man by making him realize his own worth- lessness. To be sure, Christ is the redeemer, but only because God willed him to be, and in the inscrutable will of the Almighty lies the fate of each of us. From this abject state we are saved, not through any merit we may possess, but through God's grace, and to be receptive for election into the Divine grace we must aspire after piety and lead holy lives [Chs. III-IX]. Thus, by the rigor of his logic, Calvin avoided the danger of contradiction; the suspicion that his doctrine is a theory of salvation rather than a system of ethics. As for the sacraments, they are a manifestation of our Faith, a confirmation and strengthening of our submission to the Divine order. Hence, the false ones, superimposed by the Roman Church, are to be shunned [Chs. X-XVII]. " II faut procurer leur bien," said Calvin of the people, " maulgre qu'ils en ayent." The dramatic quality of the Institution is beyond cavil.

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In the confrontation of Man and God, stripped of all accessories, Calvin has stated the problem of the Renaissance in its simplest form. And in submerging the former in the latter he has antici- pated the absolutism of the seventeenth century: une loi, un roi, une foi. His logic was ethical, that of the seventeenth century, social and political. Again, the appeal to the emotions in the redemption by Faith has a parallel in the quickening of the soul through the Love and Beauty of the Neo-Platonists. In fact, in Marguerite d'Angouleme the two ideals, theirs and his, are merged. Thus Calvin's references to Plato are significant. That he actu- ally operated the break between the Renaissance and the Reforma- tion is here beside the question, nor was this probably his inten- tion. What impresses us is his humanistic origins.

These again manifest themselves in the French he writes and in his wealth of apt and telling quotation. The Institution is not Calvin's ^nly the first theological treatise in French, it is

Style also a moniunent of French style. Brunetiere, in-

imical as he is to Calvin's ideas, cannot withhold his praise from the Institution as a literary composition. Ungrudgingly he terms it: " Le premier livre que Ton puisse appeler classique." This is due above all to its Latinity. Calvin carried over into his translation the compactness, the clearness and the precision of the Latin original. Moreover, the work is by its nature argumentative and oratorical — another approach to Classicism. But it does lack the suavity and grace of the French of a century later. Calvin is still rude, he does not temper his expressions, he calls his opponents harsh names; and it is not strange that Bossuet gave his style the epithet of triste. In short, while the French were to reject their "reformer," his treatise passed into the heritage of their literature and served to carry a knowledge of the French language far beyond the boundaries of France. Habent sua fata libelli.

CHAPTER IV

PLATONISTS AND NEO-PLATONISTS

OuE study of the Renaissance has now reached the point where we can consider the dominant philosophical idea of the age: an idea that culminates in definite form about 1540. Opposed to the Pseudo-Aristotelianism of the Middle Ages, this philosophy is known by the generic name of Flatonism, since it is in the name of Plato that it finds its justification. Two currents, however, are visible: the one, dialectic or metaphysical and based more or less directly on the Plato of antiquity; and the other, literary or emotional and derived especially from the Neo-PIatonism of Marsilio Ficino (Ch. I) , whose works began to appear in France in 1489 and whose translation of Plato — republished there in 1533 — calls him " the god of philosophers."

The advocate of the " original " Plato in the imiversity group was Ramus or, to give him his French name, Pierre de la Ramee. Pierre de His Dialectique (1555), which employs the Socratic la Ramee method of the Platonic Dialogues, is the earliest phil- osophical treatise in the French tongue. The humanists Bude and Dolet had both attempted to extract from the ancients the wisdom of which their age stood in need. In his De studio Ut- terarum the former had advocated a form of French bon sens under the guidance of the Greeks, and it was for an alleged mis- translation of Plato that the latter had been condemned to death. But it remained for Ramus to establish the Socratic rationalism on French soil and thus to inaugurate the free discussion of philosophic questions.

By birth (1515) a Picard, like Calvin, Ramus took the arts course at the College de Navarre in Paris. At that time Aris- totle's Organon was still the apostle's creed of philosophy. Ramus' own words are instructive:

161

162 PLATONISTS AND NEO-PLATONISTS

When I came to Paris I fell into the subtleties of the sophists, and was taught the Uberal arts by questions and disputes . . . never did I hear a single word on the apphcations of logic. . . . Having devoted three years and six months to the scholastic phil- osophy according to the rules of our academy. ... I wanted to learn how I should afterward apply the knowledge I had gained at the cost of so much labor and fatigue. At last I met with Galen's work on the opinions of Hippocrates and Plato. That . . . inspired me with an ardour still greater to read all the dialogues of Plato which treat of logic.

What I loved in Plato was the method by which Socrates refutes false opinions, attempting above everything to elevate his hearers above the senses, the prejudices, and the testimony of men, in order to lead them to their own Natural Sense of Right and Liberty of Judgment. For it appeared to him insane that a phi- losopher should let himself be led by the opinions of the vulgar, who for the most part are false and deceitful, instead of apply- ing himself only to facts and their true causes. . . . Perhaps Aristotle has deceived us by his authority; if so, I need not be sur- prised at my having studied his books without deriving profit from them, since they contain none. . . . What if all that doctrine should be false! ^

The conviction which Ramus here voices is of a piece with the famous burlesque which Rabelais [Bk. I] places in the mouth of Janotus de Bragmardo:

Apres avoir ergote pro et contra, fut conclud en baralipton que Ton envoiroit le plus vieux et sufRsant de la faculte theologale vers Gargantua, pour lui remonstrer 1 'horrible inconvenient de la perte d'icelles cloches (the Bells of Notre-Dame).

In Ramus' case the reaction was so strong that in 1536, at his examination for the Master's degree, he enunciated the extrav- agant thesis that all of Aristotle's writings were wrong. * This was followed in 1543 by the Dialecticae pourtitiones — which Ramus put into French in 1555 — and the Aristotelicae ani- madversiones.

The excitement produced by this attack spread to every university in Europe. But, in spite of various reproofs and condenmations, Ramus managed to gain the support of the power- ful Cardinal de Lorraine, through whose influence he advanced

' Quoted from Owen, Skeptics of the French Renaissance, 1893. • The title of Ramus's dissertation is Quaecumgue ab Ariatotele dicta essent crnn- mentitia esse.

RAMUS 163

to a professorship at the Royal College (College de France) , iji 1551. In this capacity he busied himself with other matters be- sides logic: he wrote on Cicero and Quintilian and on linguistic problems generally, he is the advocate of the consonantal ; and V of the alphabet {les lettres ramistes) , and he published a Latin (1559), a Greek (1560) and a French grammar (1562). Thus he contributed not a little to the improvement of French, a move- ment in which Louis Meigret (the advocate of nationalism in grammar) , Peletier and others took part. Without being a polit- ical Huguenot, he later in life became a Protestant and met with a violent death during the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, in 1572. It was Ramus' endeavor to place the French mind on an objec- tive basis, with the ancients as a guide; to free it from the incubus of theology as to material and of the syllogism as to method. His opposition to Aristotle was due to the perversion of the Aristotelian method by the church, just as his espousal of Plato arose from the weighing of the pros and cons of which the Platonic Dicilogues are the eternal model. In short, his impor- tance lies not in his conclusions, many of which are clearly false, but in the new start he gave to dialectics. By appealing to the spirit of " reason," as Socrates does in the Platonic Dialogues, Ramus more than anyone except Montaigne prepared the way for the dogmatism of Descartes, by whom, as we shall see, " rea- son " and " truth " are made identical and even the ancients are accepted only in so far as they seem rational. In this way, humanism locks arms with " rationalism," and all that is needed to make the French Classical doctrine complete is the codification of»artistic rules on the basis of Aristotle's Poetics. This, however, belongs to a later chapter of our book. Meantime, let us bear in mind that it is Plato whom Ramus helps to enthrone in the minds of his time; and that the Platonic Dialogues, interpreted in the light of Neo-Platonic feeling or mysticism, constitute the background from which the middle period of the sixteenth century draws its inspiration.

When in 1549 Du Bellay refers to "ces idees, que Platon constituoit en toutes choses, aux queles ainsi qu'a une certaine Neo- espece imaginative, se refere tout ce qu'on pent voir,"

Platonism jjo^ Qjjy jjg^g jjg jq mjinj a well-known passage of the Symposium (212) but he is speaking in terms which all his con-

164 PLATONISTS AND NEO-PLATONISTS

temporaries understood. Plato's ideas or "types," of which reality was thought to be only a dim copy, belonged to the fami- liar topics of discussion in the court circle that surrounded Marguerite d'AngouIeme — as Heroet, the chief defender of the fair sex in the famous querelle, had simg:

II me souvient luy avoir ouy dire, Que la beaute que nous voyons reluyre Es corps humains n'estoit qu'une estincelle De ceste-la qu'il nommait immortelle; Que ceste-cy, bien qu'elle fust sortie De la celeste et d'elle una partie Si toutes foys entre nous perissoit. Si s'augmentoit, ou s'eUe decroissoit, Que I'aultre estoit entiere et immobile.

Heroet's verse paraphrase in 1542 of the Androgynos myth (according to Ficino's translation of the Symposium) was accom- panied by the three cantos of the Parfaicte Amye, where he took the position of the Cortegiano and upheld the court lady against La Borderie. Thus the ideal lover would find in his lady an embodiment of tnrtii, which in turn was a reflection of the celes- tial type; and the human soul retaining a remembrance of the latter would strive for it in a spiritual love far above the love springing from the senses.

This central idea of the object of love in the " sovereign good " (le souverain bi'en) , intuitively remembered and therefore passion- ately desired, is the crux of the entire Neo-Platonic system. During the Renaissance it occurs in innumerable forms, notable among which is Spenser's rendering in inmiortal English :

The noble hart that harbours vertuous thought, And is with childe of glorious great intent. Can never rest, untill it forth have brought Th' eternal brood of glorie excellent.

Socially the idea falls in with the new aristocratic ideal of the times, with its fresh category of worldly virtues, such as virtu, glory, fame, magnanimity, foresight, and the like. But the system is also related to, and thus easily confused with, the amour courtois of the Middle Ages, the Petrarchism of the son- nets to Laura, and the Christian concept of charity found in the

MARGUERITE d'ANGOULEME 165

Pauline Epistles. As we noted before (Ch. I) , the Renaissance is rife with the spirit of identification. Its impulse is constantly towards unity of the works of the mind. Ficino's De Triplid Vita (1489) is one of the earliest examples of the identifying process, whereas Corneille's Christian drama Polyeucte (1642) is one of the latest. Both works are Neo-Platonic. That is, Neo-Platonism is characteristic of the Renaissance in general; its influence is found in such divergent writers as Rabelais and Calvin, and it is the inspiration of much of the poetry of the Pleiade. Its main difference from Platonism proper is that it is a " system," which true Platonism never is. In a much confused form it afforded solace to the agonized soul of Mar- guerite d'Angouleme.

Marguerite was born in 1492 and died in 1549. Neither of her marriages was happy: the first with Charles d'Alengon and the

second with Henri d'Albret, King of Navarre, were Marguentei . . .

Sister of due to a state policy in w'hich Marguerite was

Francis I guided by the interests of her brother Francis I.

Indeed, it was upon him that she lavished the affection which was

part of her ardent nature.

Oh, qu'il sera le bien venu

Celuy qui, frappant a ma porte

Dira: Le roy est revenu

En sa sante tres bonne et forte. . . .

she wrote when Francis lay seriously ill. Her chief works are: the evangelical verses known as the Miroir de I'dme pecheresse (1531) ; the Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses (1547), a collection of her lighter verse ; the Prisons, a long composition in five thousand ten-syllable lines on the errors of mankind ; and the Heptameron (not published until 1558), an imitation of Boccaccio.

Opinions as to the value of this output vary. M. Lanson, on the whole Marguerite's apologist, thinks that in spite of many admirable traits she lacks " metier " and art. Critics are agreed however, that the Heptameron is her best work.

The keynote of her poetry is disquietude. Amid the welter of conflicting ideals Marguerite finds none to which she can give undivided adherence, and so she yields to the sentiment of

166 PLATONISTS AND NEO-PLATONISTS

the unattainable, towards which the Neo-Platonism of her neo- phytes directs her. Thought leads to madness, and faith alone can save. Thus, the Prisons mingle the allegory of the Rose, the gallantry of Alain Chartier, the sombemess of Dante and the aspirations of the Protestant. Marguerite's thought and style are a mixture of the medieval and the modern, of the religious and the mundane. She delves into mathematical formulae and mystical symbols but with no definite purpose except to fortify her own ungratified longing.

To all this the prose of the Heptameron offers a partial correc- tive, for the tales of which it is composed have a practical' lesson to teach. In reality exempla, they exemplify — to repeat Brunetiere's jest — " les jeux de I'amour et du hasard." The Decameron is perhaps too obviously their model, just as the dia- logues which accompany the narrative are often severely Neo- Platonic. Yet outspoken as the tales are, what dignifies them is an element of real tragedy, and Marguerite affirms that they were drawn from actual life.

The background is Notre-Dame de Servance in the Pyrenees, whither the company of " bathers " has retired after a summer at Cauterets. Some of the narrators are probably contemporaries in disguise: Oisile may be Louise of Savoy; Parlamente, who gives the definition of the parfait amant, Marguerite herself, and Hircan her second husband; whereas Dagoucin represents the ideal Platonist, and Saffredent and Simontault the ironical esprit gaulois. Thus we obtain a vivid impression of a sixteenth- century salon, so different from the precieux product of the seventeenth century.

As for the tales themselves, one of the most typical is Les Amans en religion (XIX). Here a knight and a lady being unable to marry decide each to enter a monastic order. Thus they give each other " le saint baiser de dilection " and realize their love in God. " Si est-ce," says Geburon, " que Dieu a plusieurs moyens de nous tirer a luy, dont les commencemens semblent estre maulvais, mais la fin est bonne." And Parlamente subjoins the general maxim that never did a man love God perfectly without first lov- ing some creature in this world. Another tale (XXV) philosoph- izes on a gallant adventure in the life of Francis I. Again, in Rolandine et le bastard (XXI) the sentiments of woman, " fondfe

DESPERIERS 167

en Dieu," are opposed to those of man, " fondes sur le plaisir." Marguerite does not hesitate to mingle exempla of a lofty type with descriptions of every sort of infidelity, for the paradox of idealism and licentiousness is singularly hers.

Fortunately, her prose. is more fluent than her verse. She can be serious or sprightly, sentimental or ironic, as the occasion requires. Doubtless the model of the Decameron here helped to clarify her style. Unlike Boccaccio's work, the Heptameron is incomplete.

To the free-thinker Bonaventure Desperiers (about 1510- 1544), Marguerite entrusted the translation of Plato's Lysis. Bonaventure Desperiers was her secretary and had published, Desperiers g^g g^rly as 1537, a Cymbalum Mundi, where in four dialogues he gently upbraids the " resveurs theologales." But Parliament understood the satiric vein of this composition and ordered the book to be burned. A better fate awaited the author's Nouvelles recreations et joyeux devis. Inspired by an easy-going sensualism, Desperiers here refines on Rabelais and accepts the philosophy to enjoy life aesthetically. The book was very popu- lar, going through seventeen editions before 1625. The tales, of which there are on'e hundred and twenty-nine, remind one of Sacchetti. But Desperiers depicts admirably, often with a few strokes ; and as a romantic ironist he has few equals, even in French. He is thus the most " modern " story-writer of the epoch. He died by his own hand, apparently in order to escape persecution.

It is rare in French history to find another city rivaling Paris as a center of culture. Such, however, was the r61e of Lyons The Ecole towards the middle of the sixteenth century. While

l-yon j^ ^^g ^}jg tendency of Marguerite's group to enforce the desire for a chosen and lofty literary art, and although it transmitted this desire to the poets of the next generation — the Pleiade — it was especially through the influence of Lyons that the idea was to be brought to a head. The Ecole de Lyon being close to Italy emphasized the value of Italian models and especi- ally the example of the Petrarchists in the treatment of love. Both of these traits are found in the Pleiade.

In Maurice Sceve (exact dates unknown) , the chief of the Lyon- ese school, the Neo-Platonist and the Petrarchist combine. In

168 PLATONISTS AND NEO-PLATONISTS

1533 he won notoriety by his supposed discovery of the grave of Laura. In 1544 he published under the title Delie, objet de -plus Maurice haute vertu, a collection of four hundred and forty-

Sclve ujijg dixains in honor of his lady, probably Pernette

de Guillet. The arrangement of the volume is symbolic. Delie is an anagram for I'ldee, the prototype of tlie numerous Delias, Ideas, and Diellas that occur later on in English. The poems themselves are printed in groups of nine, separated by various figures and em- blems. Sceve follows closely the conceits of the Italian strambot- tists, particularly Tebaldeo and Serafino dall'Aquila. But like the earlier Italian lyrists, he also likes to fill his works with scientific arguments. This last trait is characteristic of his Microcosme, a long poem in Alexandrines, which was not printed until 1562. Sceve's Platonizing appears in such a dixain as this (306) :

Ta beaute fut premier et doulx Tyran Qui m'arresta tres violentement; Ta grace apres, peu a peu m'attirant, M'endormit tout en son enchantement : Dont assoupi d'un tel contentement N'avois de toy, ni de moy connoissance. Mais ta vertu, par sa haute puissance, M'esveilla lors du sommeil paresseux, Auquel Amour, par aveugle ignorance, M'espouvantoit de maint songe angoisseux.

On the other hand, as Brimetiere observes, the adaptation of the Petrarchizing spirit to the circumstance of Sceve's own life is best seen in the following:

Sur le printemps, que les aloses montent. Ma dame et moy sautons dans le bateau, Ou les pescheurs entre eux leur prise comptent, Et une en prend: que sentant I'air nouveau, Tant se debat, qu'en fin se sauve en I'eau, Dont ma maistresse et pleure et se tourmente. — Cesse, luy dis-je, il faut que je lamente L'heur du poisson que n'as su attraper, Car il est hors de prison vehemente, Ou de tes mains ne peux one eschapper.

It is only natural that Du Bellay should have hailed the author of these " alembicated " verses as one who

Premier emporte le prix Auquel tous vont aspirant.

THE SCHOOL OF LYONS 169

Louise Labe (1526-1566) and Pernette de Guillet {Petites et lovables jeunesses, 1545) belong to the emancipated women of Louise Lyons. While they were hardly types of the aristo-

^^^^ cratic cortegiana, onesta so much lauded in Italy,

we need not go to the extreme of certain of their contemporaries who called them by a harsher name. Of Pernette we know little beyond the fact that Sceve was in love with her and that Du Bellay, in the Defense et Illustration, deprecates her lyrics. Louise Labe, however, won lasting fame under the name of La Belle Cordiere, a title due to her being the wife of Ennemond Perrin, the Rope-maker.

Her work consists of three elegies, twenty-four sonnets (one of which is in Italian) and the prose Debat de folie et d'amour, based on classical myth. In all these compositions Louise com- bines Italianate conceits with accents of real passion and poetic inspiration. The poet Olivier de Magny addressed her in no uncertain terms, and after passing in review the " un- fortunate " heroines of antiquity she herself sums up the ex- perience of life in the following melancholy reflection:

Comme ce pale essaim de malheureuses Ombres, Du Styx au triple tour couvrant les rives sombres, Au penser doux-amer de son ancien martyre S'agite tristement et doucement soupire! Ainsi par un beau soir, au milieu de la pleine, La tige que le vent bat d'une tiede haleine.

Obviously the Ecole de Lyon had one of its most inspired singers in Louise Labe.

In conclusion let us note that one member of the Pleiade, Pontus de Tyard, was spiritually akin to the Lyons group. Trans- lator of the far-famed Dialoghi d'amore of Leo Hebraeus and author of Les Erreurs amoureiLses (1549) — a sonnet collection showing the influence of Sceve — he defined the "poetic madness " as:

Tunique escalier par lequel I'ame puisse trouver le chemin qui la conduise a la source de son souverain bien et felicite divine.

The last point is also brought out in the Art Tpoetique of Thomas Sebillet published at Lyons in 1548. But of this more in the next chapter.

BOOK II

LITERARY THEORY AND THE RETURN OF THE BOURGEOIS IDEAL

CHAPTER I

THE DOCTRINE OF IMITATION THE PLEIADE

The idea of formal perfection or virtii, mentioned above, when applied to literature results towards 1550 in the doctrine of Imitation. Incidentally, literature is recognized as a branch of art. In both respects Du Bellay's Defense et lllmtration de la larigue frangaise (1549) is important. It is not the origin- ality of Du Bellay, nor his critical depth, nor indeed his style — for the work gives every evidence of being hastily written — but mainly the timeliness and the enthusiasm of the work that place it among the great critical documents of Eiirope. What Dante's De Vulgari Eloquentia is for Italy, that and even more the Defense et Illustration is for France.

The Greeks had no specific name for "creative literature." To them all art was primarily an " imitation." But they thought of imitation as itself experimental and creative. For while Art imitates Nature, it appeared to the Greeks to go a step further in seeking out and realizing Nature's " unfulfilled intentions " — to use Aristotle's phrase. That is, the Greek view was that Art employs the particulars furnished by Nature to arrive at the unity, the ideal or the universal truth that lies behind Nature. Thus Nature produces blindly, the artist consciously. Nature gropes, the artist discerns. In this way Art aims at a higher reality than that given by Nature, and the poet or genius is the person with the insight and control to set this higher reality before men's eyes. Fundamentally, then, the classicism of the ancients rests on the inner or psychological apperception of the \ 170

DU BELLAY'S THEORIES 171

universal in a world that presents itself to the senses as con- stantly changing; and the balajice, the repose, the completion (all important elements) in Greek art are the outcome of this fact.

As far as the terms go, this was also the standpoint of the neo- classicism of the Renaissance. But between the world of Nature and themselves the men of the Renaissance saw the perfection of the finished products of antiquity, and this gave them a different point of departure. Thus their approach was through preexisting literature, and they began by imitating the ancient " forms." Critically viewed. Renaissance literature has two marked features: matters of form outweigh matters of content, and for a long time there is considerable dualism of thought and expression. In the lyric this attention to external form served to curb an exuberant and often violent emotion, and hence did not fail to produce very happy and beautiful results, especially in the sonnet, which has been aptly called le precieux condensateur de U emotion lyrique. Other genres — the epic and the drama — were not so fortunate, for the desire of Ronsard in his Franciade to be Vergilian and of Jodelle in his dramas to be Senecan accounts largely for the sterility of these works. Not before the second part of the seventeenth century did French critics understand that the ancients were great, not because they were ancient, but because they were true — as Boileau maintained, rien n'est beau que le vrai. . Thus the dualism of form and matter is finally overcome in the works of the great French Classicists, and the seventeenth century is the Classical Age in France.

In 1549 Du Bellay ostensibly aimed his treatise at the Art poetique of Sebillet (see above), which despite references to classical models moves in the atmosphere of Marotic fense et*" experimentation and lacks the force of a definite lUustration " purpose. Du Bellay supplies this deficiency by his patriotic appeal throughout to the resources of French as capable of the best and loftiest expression.. Mistaken are they who would consider the French as barbarians; it all depends on la jantasie des hommes and the conscious effort towards quelque plus haut et meilleur stile such as the ancients had evolved. As the Romans imitated the Greeks, so the French must imitate both Greeks and Romans:

172 THE DOCTRINE OF IMITATION

se transformant en eux, les devorant; et apres les avoir bien digerez, les convertissant en sang et nourriture (I, 6).

Thus it is not a question of translation but of innutrition; the recovery of the methods of the ancients and their absorption into French. The idea is not new, but Du Bellay expounds it with freshness and vigor. Of Aristotle he seems as yet to know only the name, but he quotes Horace, Quintilian and Vida (1527), whose adoration of Vergil the neo-classicists shared as a group, and he pilfers with liberal hands the ideas of Sperone Speroni (1534) on language.

The two parts of the treatise are divided into twelve chap- ters each. The first part, or Defense proper, presents arguments on behalf of tHeTanguage ; the neglect it has suffered artisti- cally even from those who like Marot should have known better, the folly of Frenchmen trying to write literary Latin, and the un- tried possibilities of French itself. Here, then, Du Bellay vindi- cates his position and holds out promises for the future. In the second part or Illustration he outlines his specific reforms, ^e would not leave the two pillars of artistic speech, ,the poet a^d the orator, to the guidance of Platonic ideals; definite instruc- tions are necessary. Talent (le natwrel) alone is not suflBcient, the artist needs also knowledge (la doctrine), and knowledge can be won only through work. The charge of excessive eru- dition, later brought against the Pleiade, here finds its expla- nation. Thus Du Bellay summons the poet to " finger by day and by night " his ancient authors and to renounce once for all the literary genres of the Middle Ages. Epiceries they are, unworthy of the temple of fame. The one exception he would make is the epitre — a Middle French genre — provided it is elegiacal like the Epistles of Ovid or sententious like those of Horace. His emphasis, however, is placed on the ode and the sonnet for the expression of emotion, and on the epigram and satire for the display of wit; and he hopes for the restitution of ancient tragedy and comedy. The eclogue, already employed by Marot, is to be modeled on the practice of Vergil, Theocritus and Sannazzaro. An entire chapter (V) is devoted to the epic. The models for the epic are of course the Iliad and the Aerteid, but the French poet is to rework such Old French works as the Tristan and the Lancelot over into these classical forms, or

DU BELLAY'S THEORIES 173

else like Jean Lemaire to exploit chronicle sources for the pur- pose. The real spirit of the epic, its raison d'Stre in national feeling, utterly escapes Du Bellay (as well as most of his con- temporaries), and he again appeals to the poet's quest of fame:

la gloire, seule eschelle par les degres de laquelle les mortels d'un pied leger montent au ciel et se font compagnons des dieux.

In all this we see Du Bellay's scorn of the popidavre igno- rant. The school which the manifesto inaugurates is aristocratic. Varied meters, classical reminiscences and metaphors, rich rime are to be the rule — though quantitative verse is not directly advised. Above all, poetic speech is to be representatively French, and the patriotism of the appeal is evident. Archaic terms, dialect words, expressions drawn from the trades and pro- fessions, are to be deliberately chosen, especially when justified by classical prototypes. The names of ancient heroes are to be Gallicized: thus Thesee, Achille, Horace. And the enriching process is to include the use of the epithet for the proper name (antonomasia) , such as Pere joudroyant, as well as neologisms, like jour-apporte and aiie-pied, according to ancient models. Syntactically, Du Bellay recommends the use of the adjective and the infinitive as nouns, the extension of the definite article and the employment of gerundive constructions. Carried to excess, many of these changes were later to be attacked by Malherbe (see Ch. IV) . For the most part, however, Du Bellay proceeded in accord with the genius of the language, and his reforms — especially at the hands of such a master as Ronsard — led to considerable gain in poetic expression. Tor the time being, French certainly acquired a richness and exuberance comparable to Elizabethan English.

Thus the Defense et IlliLstration brought a new and vitalizing spirit into French literature. It made the man of letters a leader and inspirer of his people. It put literature frankly on a founda- tion that is ultimately aesthetic. And while the treatise is shame- fully weak in its estimate of the French literary past, it was the source of creative impulses that were long to survive the particular theory Du Bellay aidj/ocated.

An insignificant protest, the Quintil-Horatian by Barthelemy Aneau, on behalf of the old school, was unable to mar the rapid

174 THE DOCTRINE OF IMITATION

triumph of Du Bellay's ideas. The fact is, the position of the Defense was also that of his friends and collaborators, Other Jacques Peletier and particularly Pierre de Ronsard.

Poetic Arts Peletier's Art poetique is in some respects more mature than the Defense, but it did not appear until 1655, and by that time the new school was in full blast. Peletier's idea that French poetry must be daring and aristocratic is again typical of the poets of the Pleiade, who differed from the later Classicists mainly by their " unsociable and scornful " attitude of mind. Yet Ronsard's chief critical document, the Abrege de I'art poetique (1565), while it upholds the doctrine of inspiration elaborated in his earlier Ode a Michel de I'Hospital, dwells on the factor of " conscious invention " upon which the successful imitation of the ancients would depend. In this advocacy of a rational control of the imagination he voices the growing tendency in favor of poetic rules. Important, too, is his choice of the Alexandrine as the future heroic verse of the French, a dictum which makes one regret that he rejected this meter for the Frandade. The Art poetique frangais (1605) by Vauquelin de la Fresnaye represents the extreme of Pleiade theorizing and is important — if at all — because it gives expression to the late- comers of the school. The era of " rules " was now at hand ; Vauquelin spoke of his own poem as " cet art de regies recher- chees." He was a lavish borrower from the Italian critic Minturno (1564). His idea that the poet should choose scrip- tural themes:

Si les Grecs, comme vous, Chrestiens eussent escrit, lis eussent les hauts faits chantes de lesus Christ,

was derived from Minturno ' and foimd favor with the Protestants, who combined the two antiquities: the classics and the Bible.

The crux of Italian criticism during the sixteenth century, the doctrine of verisimilitude or vraisemblance as deduced from the study of Aristotle's Poetics, does not essentially affect the French until the seventeenth century. Aristotelianism is, so to speak, in the air. Jodelle (1552> has an allusion to the imity of time in his tragedy, Cleop&tre; Jean de la Taille's Art de la

> This is the begiimiug in art of 2« meneOleux chritien.

THE PLEIADE 175

iragSdie formulates the three unities in imitation of Castelvetro (1570) ; Vauquelin voices Minturno's views on the subject; and Scaliger, whose Poetics were published at Lyons in 1561, calls Aristotle imperator noster, omnium bonarum artium dictator perpetuus, thus inaugurating the Stagirite's hold on criticism for centuries. But, as we shall see, Aristotle does not become a factor in French literary composition until the generation of 1630, when rationalism and taste together — le bon sens et le bon gout — force the French to turn to Aristotle for a practical theory of dramatic composition (see Bk. Ill, Ch. Ill) . In general, the French sixteenth century worshiped Plato rather than Aris- totle; as for literary precept, the influence of Horace and of Vida remained paramount.

The group of enthusiasts who put the new theories into prac- tice— and the Defense shows how deliberate the attempt was — are today known as the Pleiade. The restrictive nature of this term, however, should not lead us to think that the new school was limited to seven stars in the poetic firmament. To be sure, Ronsard, by reason of his genius the- Ifeader of the movement, twice celebrates seven names: in 1553, when he mentions Baif, Du Bellay, Jodelle, Tyard, and along with himself, Des Autels and La Peruse ; and again in 1555, when Belleau and Peletier replace the last two. Only in 1556, when Belleau published the Odes d'Anacreon, does Ronsard welcome him as " the seventh of the Pleiade." His favorite term for the group of his associates and followers was la brigade. " Ce fut une belle guerre," said Pasquier, " que Ton entreprit lors contre I'ignorance." And to both Ronsard and Du Bellay the proselyt- ing character of the enterprise stood uppermost. In reality, many besides those mentioned cooperated to further the cause. Among these were the humanists Daurat and Lazare de Baif, who contributed towards the inception of the movement, Marc- Antoine de Muret, the commentator of Ronsard's works, Olivier de Magny, known for his skill as a Petrarchist, and so on. So that brigade was the general and appropriate name. On the other hand, Ronsard's enemies fixed derisively on the name Pleiade ; it was further given currency through use by the poet's biographer, Binet; and from Binet it has passed into literary history as the name of the school.

176 THE DOCTRINE OF IMITATION

In this larger sense, then, the poets of the Pleiade may be considered in three successive groups: (1) The Pleiade proper or the intimate associates of Ronsard, altogether the nine he mentions. Of these Du Bellay alone merits a place by the side^^ of the master, as his equal and counterpart. Jodelle, the only Parisian of the group, is also the only one who has left a name for himself in the drama, a genre which he cultivated in imita- tion of Seneca and the Romans (see Bk. Ill, Ch. III). Antoine de Baif, an early friend of Ronsard's, devoted himself to reforms in prosody and meter. This is probably the reason why Du Bellay called him the " docte, doctieur et doctime Baif." At all events, Baif founded an Academy for poets and musicians under the aegis of Charles IX and strove to broaden the function of French verse by inventing a line of fifteen syllables, the so-called vers bdifin; but this, like his experiments in quantita- tive French meter, was doomed to failure. No less learned and certainly more philosophical was Pontus de Tyard (1521-1603), the author of Les Erreurs amoureuses (1549), in sonnet form. As we have seen (Bk. I, Ch. I) , he is the link between the school of Schve and the Pleiade. A Burgundian, of noble origin, he strengthened the stream of Platonic inspiration by rendering into French the Dwloghi d'amore of the Spanish Jew Leo. Remy Belleau, called le gentil, was the " miniaturist " of the school, though to his contemporaries he was mainly the honored translator of Anacreon (1556). Peletier we mentioned above and shall refer to again. Des Autels and La Peruse have only an incidental interest.

(2) The so-called seconde volee, headed by the predeux and Italianate Desportes. They appear after the accession of Henry III in 1573 — the date which marks the retirement of Ronsard from court. As we shall see, it was against this group in partic- ular that Malherbe was to aim the shafts of his common-sense mind.

(3) What is often regarded as an offshoot of this second class ; namely, the Protestant school of Du Bartas and D'Aubigne. In reality, however, these gifted poets are akin to the Ronsard of the Discours and even of the Franciade (1572), and although they belong to the generation of Henry III, they stand outside of its control inasmuch as they represent the militant Protee-

THE PLEIADE I77

tantism of Henry of Navarre, later the apostate Henry IV, into whose reign much of their work falls. Thus by a stroke of irony they most resembk Ronsard in technique, inimical as they are to him in religion. At the same time, they had little influence in France, where the cause they advocated met with disaster.

Such is a working outline of the Pleiade movement, with the prominent figures of which we shall deal presently. Mean- time, it will be well to keep in mind certain general features. First, as a matter of background, the cultivated but corrupt \ court, which under Catherine de Medicis (wife of Henry II and mother of Charles IX and Henry III) was more Italian than French, ever ready in the unequal battle it waged with the Protes- tants on the one hand and reactionary Catholics on the other to resort to intrigue and double-dealing. Then, there is the cult, of ephemeral and evanescent beauty — the carpe diem or carpe' rosam theme of the classical poets — so persistent in the lyricism of the age. Imitative as this idea was, it drew impetus from the insecurity of fortune and it encouraged poets to seek per- manence in artistic form. Thirdly, there is the romantic appeal of Nature, in her bucolic aspects, constantly renewing herself in a glorious rebirth. With his Vergil or Theocritus in mind, the poet finds a balm for his troubled spirits in effects, gentle and slight as they may be, that are reposeful and idyllic in character. And when he is a Ronsard or a Du Bellay his identi- fications are not only imitative but also rich in personal obser- vation and originality of detail. Undoubtedly, the poetic pro- duct is uneven. For one thing, the frequent quips and conceits\ annoy the modern reader; for another, the repetition of theme' and manner is considerable. A genuine defect is excessive erudi- tion, which frequently cloys the verse and renders it unintelli- gible. But, on the whole, the verse is at once plastic and rich in color, varied in meters and genuinely musical, with a rhythm and stateliness — particularly in Ronsard — closer to the Greek than anything earlier or later in French. A realization of beauty was the Pleiade's preoccupation and main asset.

CHAPTER II THE CHIEF POETS OF THE PLEIADE

PiEERE DE RoNSAKD WES bom in 1525 at the Chateau de la Poissonniere near Vendom*. His father was a lesser French noble, who had won distinction abroad and made himself useful to the household of Francis I. The poet would have us believe that the Ronsards descended from a Danubian baron domiciled in France at the time of Philip of Valois. It befits such traditions that Pierre was removed at the age of eleven from the College de Navarre in Paris and made a page at court. In this capacity he went twice to England and Scotland and was finally attached to Francis' third son, the Duke of Orleans. In 1540 he was sent to Germany with Lazare de Bai'f on an official mission. Returning, Ronsard contracted an illness which left him partly deaf and ended his diplomatic career. In 1543 he received the tonsure.

He now joined Baif's son, Antoine, in the study of classical literature under the direction of the Hellenist Daurat. This apprenticeship lasted five years (1544-1549), first at Baif's house and then at the College de Coqueret, of which Daurat be- came the enthusiastic and successful principal. The legend is that the two students kept the candle bvu-ning throughout the long winter nights by alternating at the study table. Others who shared their zeal at Coqueret were Belleau and Jodelle; and in 1547 came Joachim Du Bellay, whose literary career, pre- viously guided by Peletier, is henceforth allied with that of Ronsard.

Daurat's teaching bore rapid fruit. It is apparent in all of Ronsard's early work, and, among countless other examples, is seen in the enthusiastic sonnet beginning:

Je veux lire en trois jours I'lliade d'Homere.

It is not surprising that Ronsard took to imitating the ancients with enthusiasm, while the care he lavished on his productions

178

RONSARD 179

has become proverbial. His first odes date from 1547, but it was not until the year following the Defense (1549) that he could bring himself to publish his first collection. In the following we shall, consider his works in three fairly distinct periods:

1550-1560 — or the period of the Odes, Amours, Hymnes, Socage Royal and Melanges. This is the innovating epoch of Hellenistic and Petrarchian imitation.

1560-1574 — the time when Ronsard is the ofiicial court poet and writes his Elegies, Mascarades, Bergeries, Discours and the Frandade. He is now the poete oratoire, in conscious pos- session of his own genius, with a distinct tendency towards nationalism.

1574-1584 — when retired from active life Ronsard meditates and seeks fresh inspiration in the tranquillity of field and forest. The works of this autumnal period are the Sonnets pour Helene, the Demieres Amours and the last part of the Bocage Royal.

Ronsard's rise to fame is as significant as it was rapid. Follow- ing so soon on the Defense, the first four books of the Odes (1550) First boldly announce the poet's break with the school

Period of Marot and his imitation of Horace and Pindar.

As " father of the French ode," he claims the title of first lyricist of France. This vainglory is typical of the epoch in which he lived; and in the Ode a Michel de I' Hospital — one of the successful imitations of Pindar — he sings with astonishing virtuosity of the victory of the Muses, triumphing in himself:

C'est luy dont les graces infuses Ont ramene par I'univers Le choeur des Pierides Muses, Faites illustres par ses vers.

This ode is of 1552, the year that saw the publication of a fifth book of Odes and the Amours de P. Ronsard, a collection of one hundred and eighty-one sonnets. In the latter Ronsard sounds the gamut of mingled classical and Italian imitation in honor of Cassandre Salviati, a proud beauty of Blois. Both here and in his Odes he reveals artistic powers of the highest order. " Eloigne du vulgaire," as the Defense had said, he follows the new path of complicated Pindaric forms, plastic and picturesque imagery, and mythological allusions. Yet his natural sense of

180 THE CHIEF POETS OF THE PLEIADE

harmony and beauty is striking, as when in celebrating the muses he says:

Et a qui vrayment aussi

Les vers furent en souci,

Les vers dont fiattez nous sommes,

Afin que leur doux chanter

Petist doucement enchanter

Le soin des Dieux et des honunes.

How completely the ancients had him in their thrall appears in the elegiacal Election de son sepulcre, written at the age of twenty-three and reminiscent of Propertius, Vergil, Ovid and Horace. Here romantic imagination, love of Nature and clas- sical imitation are welded into a verse that reminds Sainte- Beuve of a " clocher funebre":

Antres, et vous fontaines De ces roches hautaines Qui tombez contre-bas D'un glissant pas.

All this is far removed from the triflings of the Marotiques. Mellin de Saint-Gelais, still in the ascendency at court, fore- saw his own eclipse. But if Mellin lacked genius, he did not lack friends and he enlisted the envious against his rival. That Ronsard resented the opposition he shows clearly in his gratitude to Marguerite de Valois for taking his part:

N'est-ce pas toy, Vierge tres-bonne, ... qui tant me fus favorable Quand par I'envieux miserable Mon oeuvre fut Mellinisef

Outwardly, at least, the quarrel with Mellin is over by 1553, and there follow Ronsard 's most fruitful years.

In 1553 the poet published forty new sonnets, an ode on his reconciliation with Saint-Gelais and the famous Mignonne, aliens voir si la rose: the final expression of the carpe rosam theme, which Ronsard here borrows from the Fourteenth Idyll of Ausonius. Assured of success, he now makes concessions in be- half of clearness and simplicity, composing with that " ardeur et allegresse d'esprit " lauded by Du Bellay, and with all France at

RONSARD 181

his feet. The Bocage and the Melanges (both of 1554) , the one predominantly serious, the other frolicsome and gay, reflect an interest in Anacreon — after Homer and Pindar,Hhe third Greek poet to influence Ronsard. But the greatest compositions of this time are the Hymnes and the Continuation des Amours, both of 1555-1556. The former definitely establish Ronsard's position as a skillful panegyrist of his patrons, while the latter inaugurate his second manner.

Dedicated to Marie Dupin — a village beauty of Bourgueil Second ^° Anjou — the new Amours are arranged on the

Period Petrarchian plan of celebrating first the living and

then the dead Marie. The poet apostrophizes Marie as:

Douce, belle, gentille et bien flairante Rose, Que tu es a bon droit a Venus consacree

— a notable softening in tone from that in which he sang the lofty and haughty Cassandre. His models now are Theocritus, Vergil and the neo-classic MaruUus. Further, the Alexandrine supplants the ten-syllable as the true vers heraique. One poem in the collection. La Quenouille (" The Distaff ") , is a splendid adaptation of an idyll by Theocritus — again illustrating the principles of the Defence as to language:

Aime-laine, aime-fil, aime-estaim, maisormiere, Longue, Palladienne, enflee, chansonniere, Suy-moy, laisse Cousture, et aliens a Bourgueil.

But most characteristic of the Renaissance spirit is the celebrated sonnet Comme on voit sur la branche au mois de May la rose, with its anapaestic movement, its rich rimes, its vivid imagery and its complete aesthetic appeal which death itself does not mar:

Afin que, vif et mort, ton corps ne soit que roses.

Here the poet has seized the essence of classical antiquity — pagan, fatalistic, sensuous and beautiful.

In 1559 Ronsard received the post of royal almoner, the success of the Amours having long since won him the unoflficial title of " Prince des poetes frangais." Fame had confirmed his self-esteem. We find him reminding Henry II that kings are responsible to their people and that

182 THE CHIEF POETS OF THE PLEIADE

apres votre mort, fussiez-vous empereur, Vous ne serez non plus qu'un simple laboureur

— this was still before the outbreak of the disastrous religious wars which were to lay France waste. With the accession of Charles IX his ties with the monarch are even closer, and he speaks out boldly in behalf of his native land. The Discours des Miseres de ce temps, the Continuation du Discours and the Remonstrance au peuple de France were produced in 1562- 1563, at the beginning of the First Civil War. While Ronsard is unequivocal in his support of the Romanists, he does not hesitate to score their faults. Only when the Protestants resort to abuse does he actually take up arms against them, showing as the Protestant D'Aubigne admiringly states that " Les vers n'avoient pas oste I'usage de I'espee." Again poetry profited by Ronsard's directness; discarding all mjrthology, he makes his Alexandrines speak the language of the hour — forceful, ironic and eloquent: the first example of the poesie oratoire. Note the dramatic visualization of Christ in Ronsard's con- fession of faith:

II arresta les vents, il marcha sur les ondes, Et de son corps divin, mortellement vestu, Les miracles sortoient, temoins de sa vertu;

and observe how regal is the imagery.

Meanwhile, Catherine ordered the " royal poet " to send Queen Elizabeth a collection of his " occasional verse " under the title of Elegies, Mascarades, Bergeries (1565). Ronsard's attach- ments had been wholly for Mary Queen of Scots, and the diamond which Elizabeth sent him in return could have warmed his heart but little. Yet the poems had his usual verve, reflecting the glamour of his surroundings, not a little humor and a wistful tenderness for the young Charles IX, of whom Ronsard was genuinely fond and whom he was sincerely to mourn.

St. Bartholomew's Day (1572) drew not a line from Ronsard, though many others stooped to laud its horrors. If Ronsard was discreet, his silence left no doubt as to his opinion. In 1560 he had published the first edition of his collected works, others followed at close intervals, and in 1572 there appeared four books of the Franciade — the longed-for French epic, the dream

RONSARD 183

of the Defense, heralded twenty years earlier in the Ode a Michel de I' Hospital. Its failure was complete. Why? Ron- sard seemingly never knew. No more did his continuators, the last of whom, a certain Viennet, rewrote the work in Alexan- drines under the Bonapartes. Ronsard himself attributes the collapse to matters of detail: lack of rigid application of the " epic " rules, erroneous choice of ten-syllable verse, and so on. He explained himself in three prefaces, made revisions in 1572 and 1578, and then desisted. The subject of the Frandade was bookish (the Troy legend) , the technique Vergilian and the mythology classical: three factitious elements in a poem which should have had an unquestioning feeling of human destiny to guide it — the sine qva, non of any successful epic. As we shall see, Chapelain in the seventeenth century, and Voltaire in the eighteenth, fared no better in their attempts at epic verse, whereas D'Aubigne in the sixteenth and Victor Hugo in the nineteenth came closest to the coveted goal. On the other hand, the real epics of the Renaissance are Tasso's Germalemme liberata and Milton's Paradise Lost.

The last period of Ronsard's life was passed mostly in the country, either at Montoire and Croix Val or in his priory at Third Saint-Cosme near Tours. He was now quite gray,

Period often ill, and bereft of his friends: Du Bellay, Jo-

delle and finally Belleau (1557). Yet his genius was to shine forth on two further occasions. The one was the publication of his last sonnets, the Sonnets pour Helene; and the other, the com- pletion of the Bocage royal, included in a celebrated folio edition of his works (1584). With Helene de Surgeres the poet held a position of equality; as a consequence the sonnets to her are more intimate and truer to reality than those he dedicated to Cas^ sandre or Marie. Here Ronsard does not fail to give us " lesser details ":

Seule, sans compagnie, en \me grande salle Tu logeois I'autre jour, pleine de majeste,

and the well-known Quand vous serez hien vieille,, au soir, a la chandelle illustrates this trait without sacrificing the earlier, more literary features. Characteristic of this period is also an ode, Magie ou delivrance d'amour, where the verse itself is

184. THE CHIEF POETS OF THE PLEIADE

suggestive, as M. Jusserand points out, of evanescence and

liberation:

Vents qui soufflez par cette plaine, Et vous, Seine, qui promenez Vos flots par ces champs, emmenez En rOcean noyer ma peine.

Lastly, in one poem at least of the Bocage royal the poet's sym- pathy with Nature reaches a climax in an expression of uni- versal melancholy, and the forest of Gatine falling before the woodman's ax:

Tu deviendras campagne et en lieu de tes bois, Dont I'ombrage incertain lentement se remue,

becomes the symbol of universal change:

La matiere demeure et la forme se change.

Thus when Ronsard died in December, 1585 — regretted by the civilized world — he had roimded out his life and his experience. A lesser star, that of Desportes, was in the ascend- ency, and a new age was preparing. But Ronsard remains the poet by preference of the sixteenth century. Both in variety of genius and in wealth of performance he transcends the others. " C'est le premier poete de ce siecle," said Du Verdier in the very year of Ronsard's death.

The princely Ronsard has a counterpart in the gentle Du Bellay. Contemporaries likened him to Ovid; another com- Du BeUay P^^'i^on would be to Lamartine. In any case, Du Bellay was by nature a romantic. More modem in this respect than Ronsard, he was at odds with the world, fell short of the program he had planned, and died prematurely and broken in spirit in 1560. Not to be compared to his fellow crafts- man for poetic sweep and power of execution, he had a finer per- ception and a more delicate, less sensuous temperament. Hence his Petrarchizing seems more natural and his Neo-Platonism is more effective. Sainte-Beuve applies to him the lines written by Du Bellay himself to a friend:

L'amour se nourrit de pleurs, Et les abeilles de fleurs; Les pres aiment la rosee, Phoebus aime les neuf soeurs, Et nous aimons les doulceurs Dont ta muse est arousfe.

DU BELLAY 185

Joachim Du Bellay was born about 1525 at Lyre, upon the left bank of the Loire, not far from Angers. His father Jean Du Bellay was a Sieur de Gannor, governor of Brest, and be- longed to a family made illustrious by Cardinal Du Bellay and M. de Langey, a notable general. Losing his parents during boy- hood, Joachim fell to the care of an elder brother, who neglected his education and his health. Thus necessity rather than choice led him to seek in French the glory that was denied him in the field of the classics. This idea lies back of the Defense.

When Du Bellay joined Ronsard's circle in Paris his devotion to poetry was already established. He says pointedly in L'Olive, his first sheaf of poems (1549) : " Ce fut pourquoi a la persuasion de Jacques Peletier, je choisi le sonnet et I'ode." Two thirds of the sonnets of this collection (2nd ed. 1550) are from the Italian, while the odes follow the model of Horace. But already Du Bellay shows great metrical skill and his particular spiritualizing trend, for his lady's name, Olive, is symbolic of Pallas Athena. The climax of this Platonizing mood is reached in Sonnet 113 (Si notre vie est moins qu'une joumee) , the theme of which can be traced back to Petrarch through Daniello, and forward into Lamartine's Isolement. Yet the inconstancy of his enthusiasm appears in his translating the Fourth Book of the Aeneid (1552) — he who had inveighed against translators in the Defense. A year later his RecueU, de poesie goes so far as to ridicule in sprightly verse the excesses of the Petrarchian style. The fact is that Du Bellay 's sensitiveness easily turned upon itself. This is seen in the ironic close he gave to many of his sonnets and, above all, in the capital Poete courtisan (not published until 1559) , where he mockingly advises those whom a desire for suc- cess has lured into the servilities of the court circle. Possibly his " com^ poet " was Mellin de Saint-Gelais, though the satire also reflects Du Bellay's personal experience.

In 1553 his relative, the Cardinal, invited him to come to Rome. This trip marks the turning-point in Du Bellay's life and inspired his distinctive verse: the Antiquites de Rome, the Regrets and the Jeux rustiques — all published after his return to France in 1558. With what high expectation Du Bellay entered the Eternal City can be imagined. The enthusiastic Descriptio Romae, in Latin heroics, depicts the renascent city recovering

186 THE CHIEF POETS OF THE PLEIADE

the treasures of antique sculpture and architectvire. As a matter of fact, Du Bellay promised himself the impossible;

Je me feray sgavant en la philosopMe, En la mathematique et medicine aussy: Je me feray legiste, et d'un plus hault soucy Apprendray les secrets de la theologie: Du lut et du pinceau j'esbatteray ma vie, De I'escrime et du bal. Je discouray ainsy Et me vantois en moy d'apprendre tout cecy Quand je changeay la France au sejour d'ltalie.

The Antiquites de Rome, in soimet^form, are the record of his early impressions. For pathos of vanished grandeur and for sentiment of ruins they have seldom been surpassed, certainly not in French. On the Horatian theme of Suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit Du Bellay builds a vision of Rome's ancient splendor:

Rome seule pouvoit Rome ressembler,

Rome seule pouvoit Rome faire trembler:

Ainsi n'avoit permis I'ordonnance fatale

Qu'autre pouvoir hmnain, tant fust audacieux,

Se vantast d'egaler celle qui fit egale

Sa puissance a la terre et son courage aux cieux.

But only the memory of that power now remains, and in an admirable sonnet the poet muses on what the shades of the old Romans — les ombres poudreuses — would say if they could behold their city under the rule of the popes, the ruined city which

Chascun va pUlant: comma on voit le glaneur Cheminant pas a pas recueillir les reliques De ce qui va tombant apres le moissonneur.

Du Bellay's post in the Cardinal's household was that of a head steward. In this capacity he had to attend to the hundreds of details which his Eminence imposed, and he accompanied his master to the consistory. It was an interesting but on the whole a wearisome life, especially for one of Du Bellay's ideals. For a while the glamour of the official life held him. But soon his heart sickens at the corruption in high places ; an unfortunate passion for the Faustina of his Poemata and a longing for his native heath hasten the break, and in 1557 he sets out for home. The stages of the return trip (via Venice, the Grisons and Switz-

MINOR POETS 187

erland) are recorded as a part of the Regrets, the most intimate of the poet's sonnets and those in which his mingled sentiment apd satire are best expressed. Every Frenchman knows the sonnet beginning:

France, mere des arts, des armes et des lois;

though few know that it is modeled on a Latin hymn by Petrarch. Unsurpassed, however, in all respects is the Sonnet du petit Lire witb its ringing conclusion:

Plus me plaist le sejour qu'ont basti mes ayeulx

Plus mon Loyre gaulois que le Tybre latin, Plus mon petit Lyre que le mont Palatin, Et plus que I'air marin la doulceur AngCvine.

This same douceur is characteristic of the poem which more than all others is associated with Du Bellay's memory: the fa- mous Vanneur de BIS imitated from the Neo-Latin poet Navagero. Here the silvery grace of Du Bellay's fancy comes into full play, and his love of the fields, typical of his later Jevx rustiques, finds an echo in the very texture of his versification. But Du Bellay did not long survive his return to Anjou. Weakened in health, grown entirely deaf, he also found himself deserted by the relatives from whom he had sought support. When he died he was barely thirty-seven. A complete edition of his works did not appear imtil after his death.

" Depuis . . . Ronsard et Du Bellay," said Montaigne, " je ne vois si petit apprenti qui n'enfle les mots et qui ne range les Lesser cadences a peu pres comme eux." This is unfortu-

®^*" nately true of almost all of their associates, not to

mention the large band of purely servile imitators. Antoine de Baif (1532-1589) wrote various Amours, the second collection of which, addressed to the lady Francine, consecrates the use of the Alexandrine in the sonnet (1555). Baif tried to make up in learning what he lacked in genius; but his attempts at spelling- reform, vers baifins (Ch. I) and quantitative blank verse, while laudable in themselves, met only with a passing success. Remy Belleau (1526-1577) had at least more talent, which he expended on his version of Anacreon and especially in adapting

188 THE CHIEF POETS OF THE PLEIADE

the medieval " lapidary " to Renaissance taste in the Nouveaux echanges des pierres predeuses. When at his best, he paints with a delicate brush, in miniature style. One of his songs, Avril, reveals the same delicate feeling for Nature and owing to its charm is still a favorite anthology piece. To mention a poet who stood outside the immediate circle of the Pleiade, Olivier de Magny (1529-1561) has a certain freshness of expression. He was in love with Louise Labe and won honor at the court of Henry II with his Soupirs, a collection of Italianate sonnets in predeux style; but although he also wrote odes imitating Anacreon his personal contribution is nowhere significant.

With the rise of the seconde volee, represented by Desportes and Bertaut, the Hellenizing period in poetry is practically at an end. The well-known lines of Boileau on Ronsard,

Ce poete orgueilleux, trebuche de si haut, Rendit plus retenus Desportes et Bertaut,

however, express only a half-truth. For if the generation of 1573 shows restraint with respect to Greek and Latin, its imi- tations of contemporary Italian can hardly be called retenues.

Philippe Desportes (1545-1606), remembered chiefly because of the criticism by Malherbe — the famous Commentaire sur Des ortes Desportes (see below) — "made flattery into a fine and art." Taken early to Italy, he became secretary to

Bertaut Nicolas de Neufville, minister of state, and in 1572,

the Duke of Anjou — the future Henry III — gave him "dix mille ecus " to publish a sumptuous volume containing his Premieres Poesies. On Henry's accession to the throne Des- portes became court poet. As such, he lived the life of a grand seigneur, celebrating in verse the supposed virtues of the royal favorites and receiving from his master benefices that annually amounted to some 30,000 livres. Says Sainte-Beuve: "Plus on regarde dans la vie de Desportes, plus on y trouve d'abbayes." Yet sycophant that he was, he remained a grand seigneur, and his munificence and liberality charmed friends and foes alike.

In addition to elegance, Desportes' verse has a certain formal compactness wedded to an abiding gift of esprit. He is the Marot of the Pleiade school, and like Marot or the English poet Herrick he wrote both worldly and devotional poems.

MINOR POETS 189

How polished his verse could be can be seen from the sonnet later translated into English by Daniel :

Sommeil, paisible fils de la nuit solitaire.

But his Chansons, set to music, were even more popular in his day; and one in particular, imitated from Ariosto, is the essence of graceful expression:

0 Nuit! jalouse Nuitl contra moi conjur^e, Qui renflamme le del de nouvelle clarte, T'ai-je done aujourd'hui tant de fois desires Pour estre si contraire a ma felicite?

For the most part, however, Desportes is merely facile and mundane — a slave to the worst type of Italianism. Here his models were Tasso, Tebaldeo, Angelo di Costanzo; in imi- tation of whom he abounds in hyperbole, exaggerated conceits and antitheses. His Poesies chretiennes contain the strange Italian device of uttering in the same breath the name of Christ and that of the poet's " belle meurtriere."

Less talented than Desportes, Jean Bertaut — later bishop of Seez — is at least free from the latter's exaggerations. Indeed, Bertaut, whose productive period (1580-1602) falls within the reign of Henry IV, is a transitional poet, having some of the impersonality we later find in Malherbe. Certain of his lines have the sonorous melancholy of Lamartine:

Et vous, humbles costeaux ou les pampres foisonnent Et vous, ombreux vallons, de sources arroses,

Chantez-la sur les vents qui vous servent de voix.

But such passages are rare; only occasionally and then in his religious verse (such as paraphrases from the Psalms, fimeral panegyrics, and the like) does Bertaut attain this lofty tone; more often he is prosaic and stilted. Less of a plagiarist than Desportes, he nevertheless imitates the Italian Tansillo and — in his most inspired moments — Tasso. Ronsard lauded his sagesse. His works, however, were not published until 1601-1602. The French, says M. Lanson, are often severe to minorities and to the awkward genius who dresses out of fashion. This

190 THE CHIEF POETS OF THE PLEIADE

remark does not apply to Du Bartas, whose imperfections did Du Bartas ^°^ prevent him from winning a contemporary suc- and ^ cess second only to that of Ronsard; but it fits D'Aubisne exactly that far more original genius D'Aubigne, whose poetic works, appearing between 1616 and 1630, were hardly noticed.

The Huguenot poet Guillaume de Salluste, Seigneur du Bartas (1544-1590), was a Gascon by birth and by temperament. He was faithful to Henry of Navarre, who sent him on various missions, including one to England and Scotland. The last poem Du Bartas wrote was a celebration of the victory of Ivry. En- dowed with a picturesque imagination, he carried the principles of Ronsard to the extreme. Enjambement, inversion, neologisms, aboimd in his work. While his poetry has sweep and a certain grandeur, it startles the reader with such grotesque effects as:

Mais le coeur de Judith, qui sans cesse ba-bat or

Le ciel d'un far rouille sa face voilera.

But this love of the baroque would shock a foreigner less than a Frenchman ; and it is significant that Goethe admired Du Bartas sufficiently to translate him.

Du Bartas began his poetic career by answering Du Bellay's call for an epic. The subject, given him by Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre, was the liberation of Jerusalem from Holo- fernes by Judith. This Judith, written in 1565 but not published until 1573, gains its interest mainly from the fact that Du Bartas treats the Biblical subject according to the Vergilian technique then in vogue. But at least Du Bartas had vindicated poetry by the choice of a lofty theme and prepared the way for the publication of La Semaine, a work on the Creation, in 1578. A comparison of this work with the original Genesis shows at once that he had overestimated his powers of thought and expres- sion. The subject was epic — certainly for a Protestant — the plot was well planned, but again Du Bartas had neither the depth nor the restraint to achieve more than a contemporary success. Yet La Semaine received twenty editions in fiv>e years ; and in 1584 the poet began to publish La Seconde Semaine, which though never completed was to reach to the Last Judgment. The expla-

DU BARTAS AND D'AUBIGNE 191

nation is that not only Protestants but the entire world honored the seriousness of the attempt. Here was a Christian poet with vigor and imagination, and so Du Bartas was translated into Latin, Italian, Spanish, German and English (by Silvester in 1605-1606). Notre Milton manque M. Morillot calls him, a verdict that sums up aptly Du Bartas' noble failure. In France the magnificent folio edition of his works in 1611 properly marks Du Bartas' tomb (Sainte-Beuve) ; for neither Malherbe nor Boileau mentions his name.

Theodore-Agrippa d'Aubigne (1550-1630) was by nature ardent, intolerant and pleasure-loving — quite a contrast to Du Bartas. Reared in a world of strife by the most Protestant of father's, he studied in Paris and Geneva, and took up arms in the Protes- tant cause at eighteen (1568). But warfare was not his profes- sion; in the intervals of peace he enjoyed life and cultivated the arts with the same whole-hearted passion that characterized the Huguenot. He boasts in his Vie, a ses enfants that at " seven and a half," he translated Plato's Crito. He was proficient in engi- neering and in magic. And between the two Civil Wars he shone at court sufficiently to compose the HScatombe a Diane, one hundred Ronsardian sonnets addressed to Cassandre Salviati's niece, and he pleased Charles IX with a lyric tragedy called Circe. Ronsard himself could have done no better. It was D'Aubigne who helped the later Henry IV to escape from the Louvre during the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Though the poet never forgave Henry his apostacy he continued to serve him as governor of Maillezais and vice-admiral of Guyenne and Brittany. In 1620 — under Louis XIII — he retired to Geneva, where he died. The great sorrow of his life was the betrayal of the Protestant cause at La Rochelle by his son Constant, whose daughter — strange to say — was no less a person than Madame de Maintenon.

Thus D'Aubigne sums up in his person the Renaissance and the Reformation. He mingles the enthusiasm — la jougue — of both movements in a last expression. With the Renaissance exuberance of life he combines the intensity of the Calvinistic point of view. Hence his really great work, the epico-lyric Tragiques, resembles an alloy of gold and iron, beaten out on an anvil. Divided into seven cantos, half historical and half satir-

192 THE CHIEF POETS OF THE PLEIADE

ical, the work is the Jeremiad of the religioxis wars. D'Aubigne is neither a Dante nor a Milton. His work, as a whole, is hastily- written and poorly revised; above all, it is not firmly conceived from start to finish, the supernatural in it — le merveUleux Chretien — lacks clearness, and the style, while forceful, is devoid of harmony and cadence. In short, the poem is a torso rather than a finished work of art. Nevertheless, the Tragiques contain some of the finest and most inspired passages of which French poetry can boast — passages that are comparable to the best we find in the Chdtiments of Victor Hugo. For concision, let us note the following:

Ici le sang n'est feint, le meurtre n'y defaut. La mort joue elle-mesme en ce triste eschafaud;

for irony and satire, the whole section on Agrippa d'Aubigne a la Cow, where the poet outstrips Du Bellay in excoriating the king's favorites; for love of country, the section beginning:

O France desolee, 6 terre sanguinaire!

and lastly, for dramatic visualization, the description of Cain:

II estoit seul partout, hormis sa conscience,

Et fut marque au front, afin qu'en s'enfuyant

Aucun n'osast tuer ses maux en le tuant.

As was said, D'Aubigne's Tragiques did not appear in print until 1616. Between this date and 1630 his prose works were published. Chief among these are the Histoire universelle, in which he patiently strives to give a nonpartisan view of human history, and the amusing, almost picaresque, Aventur^s du Baron de Faneste. This latter is an account, interspersed with delight- ful tales, of a parasitic nobleman, a sort of courtly Panurge living on the toil of others; whereas the Confession catholique du Sieur de Sancy is a mordant satire of a recalcitrant nobleman. In all these works D'Aubigne shows his dominant traits: im- agination, directness and color — coupled with unrestraint, lack of taste and carelessness. The best in D'Aubigne is " personal " ; this we should not forget in considering that his works were published at the beginning of the most impersonal age of French literature, the age of les idees gen&raUs.

CHAPTER III AMYOT, MONTAIGNE AND BRANTOME.

The three writers treated in this chapter, the first a trans- lator, the second an essayist and the third a compiler of memoirs, are embraced under what the French call by the generic name of moraUstes. That is, they were all three interested in the problem of conduct, not that like Calvin they necessarily wished to reform it, but rather that they sought to extract from human affairs whatever practical philosophy they could. Ronsard and his school had revived, as we saw, the cult of ancient forms. In the manners and customs of the ancients they took little stock. What if antiquity had no practical lesson to teach? if the pagan world so long misunderstood had no vital force to transmit? It was such an estimate of the life and ideas of the ancients apprehended in their everyday aspect that Amyot and especially Montaigne were to give. Last in the procession comes Brantome, disillusioned as to general principles, but vividly curi- ous as to the doings of his contemporaries. But whatever the translator revives, or the essayist dissects, or the writer of memoirs records — the portrayal is striking, an image of mankind as in a mirror: graphic, detailed and very human.

Jacques Amyot's life practically covers the century (1513- 1593) . Born of plain folk in the little town of Melun, he rose by 4^ . dint of toil to be Master of Arts at nineteen and tutor

to the nephews of Abbe Colin, translator of the Cortegiano. Won by his personality. Marguerite d'Angouleme appointed him to a professorship at Bourges. Here he remained until in 1547 Francis I made him abbot of Bellozane, the last foundation to which Francis chose the appointee. Some think Amyot owed this favor to his translation of the romance Theaglne et Chariclee. Thanks to the studies of M. Sturel, however, we now know that as early as 1542 Amyot received the commission " par le commandement du grand roy Frangois " to translate the

193

194 AMYOT, MONTAIGNE AND BRANTOME

Parallel Lives of Plutarch. This translation, achieved nearly seventeen years later, when the magnificent in-folio containing the Vies appeared in Paris, is the monument of Amyot's life. To accomplish it he spent four years in Italy, searching through libraries and collating manuscripts, and incidentally discovering the works of Diodorus the Sicilian. In Rome he won the friend- ship of the Cardinal du Tournon, through whose influence he returned to France as the tutor of the Dukes of Orleans and of Anjou, the future Charles IX and Henry III. In 1559 he became " grand aiunonier de France," and in 1570 bishop of Auxerre. His last years were darkened by tragedy. In December, 1588, the Due de Guise was murdered at Blois. Amyot, who unfortu- nately was in Blois at the time, was indirectly accused of having been an accomplice in the crime. He wrote an Apologie and even obtained an absolution from the papal legate in 1590. But he died, more or less under the cloud of the tragic event, in February 1593. His charge of aumonier had been taken from him two years earlier.

Passing over Amyot's lesser works, which include a rendering of the Daphnis and Chloe story, we may center upon his Vies des homines illustres de Plutarqii£ and the CEuvres morales of the same author (published in 1572) as the works upon which his fame rests. We all know the importance of North's translation of Plutarch for the works of Shakespeare. The Parallel Lives are in themselves inspiring reading, and Amyot's Vies is one of the masterpieces of French prose. "Nous autres ignorants," says Montaigne, " etions perdus si ce livre ne nous eut releves du bourbier: sa merci, nous osons k cette heure et parler et ecrire . . . c'est notre breviaire." Aad the book retained this function down through the seventeenth century, when Corneille took from it subjects for his dramas and Racine read it to Louis XIV, up to the very threshold of the Revolution, when it stirred Rousseau and still fascinated Madame Roland. In this tremendous vogue the CEuvres morales are a close second to the Vies.

First of all, Amyot was fortunate in choosing such an author. As a writer Plutarch suited the social genius of the French pre- cisely. Through him they felt at one with the world of antiquity. If the ancients loved glory, here were examples of glory; if they

MONTAIGNE 195

were heroic, here were the illustrations of this heroism, saisi sur le vif — the expression occurs in Amyot. In other words, Plutarch enabled the French to see how the ancients lived, how they worked, thought, spoke, conducted themselves at home and abroad, with all their virtues, vices, foibles and idiosyncracies laid bare.

In the second place, Amyot did not attempt in any sense a literal translation. On the contrary, keenly alive to Du Bellay's warning that observing " la loy de traduyre, qui est n'espacier point hors des limites de I'aucteur, vostre diction sera contrainte, froide, et de mauvaise grace," he deliberately made Plutarch over into a French author by giving him a form which, while true to the original in idea, never slavishly followed the wording of the original Greek. And in so doing he made his Plutarch the best collection of the words and idioms of sixteenth-century speech. Coming after Rabelais and Calvin, he is thus the third to reveal the capacities of French literary prose. Not that he has not faults both of style and of interpretation. His sentences are often involved and loose in structure, just as he mistakenly calls the vestals reUgieuses and the favorites of Alexander des gentUshommes de chambre. But this is all a part of his larger purpose; namely, to give his author contemporaneousness. Thus it is that he made Plutarch the most accessible of the ancients to his and to future generations: to mention Plutarch to a Frenchman is to name Amyot.

If Amyot was the mentor, Etienne de la Boetie (1530-63) was the friend of the great Frenchman whom we are now to con- jj . sider. La Boetie is the author of the Discours de la

Servitude volontaire or Contfun (not published until 1574), a violent but youthful invective against tyranny, but he is probably remembered with better reason for his relationship with Montaigne — a relationship which the latter has immortal- ized in the words: " Parce que c'etait lui, parce que c'etait moi."

Michel Eyquem, .Seigneur de Montaigne, was born near Ber- gerac at Perigord in 1533. His father, whom Montaigne always remembered with affectionate reverence, was an original figure: a public-spirited citizen of Bordeaux, who after leading for a while the life of an Italian campaigner, was pleased to forget that the iamily fortune rested on the sale of wine and of fish.

196 AMYOT, MONTAIGNE AND BRANTOME

His mother came from a family of Portuguese Jews named Louppes or Lopez — a fact that may account for the intellectual curiosity which our author valued so highly in himself. The Eyquems were a sturdy lot; une race fameuse en prud'hommie. Of Pierre's eleven children, eight grew up, the oldest being Michel.

The father gave his eldest the full benefit of his originality. Michel's first two years were spent in a peasant village; thus was he to absorb a sympathy for the poor and lowly ; the father's idea, says the poet, " succeeded not ill." The boy's next tutor was a German physician who spoke Latin to him. With Greek, attempted next, the experiment was not very successful. As an instance of parental care, Montaigne records that he was waked in the morning to the sound of music. From the age of six to thirteen he was at the College de Guyenne, where he took leading parts in Latin tragedies by Muret and Buchanan. In the essay called De I'institution des enfants Montaigne regrets that this education did not profit him more.

Little is known of Montaigne's life from 1^47 to 1554 — the supposition is that he studied law at Toulouse. In the latter year he succeeds his father as a member of the Cour des aides at Perigueux, and, upon its suppression (1557), he replaces him in the Parliament of Bordeaux. Here he meets and makes friends with La Boetie, whose untimely death in 1563 he mourns with all the poignancy of youth. But nature did not fit him for the magis- tracy; he is often absent from his post: at Paris or at Rouen, where in 1562 he sees in the suite of Charles IX the Brazilian natives whom he mentions in Des cannibales. Three years later he married Frangoise de la Chassaigne, who was eleven years his junior, and whom he esteemed but did not love. With his father's death (1568) Montaigne lost the one person after La Boetie for whom he seriously cared. A year later he published a translation of the Theologia naturalis of Raymond de Sebond, a piece of work undertaken at his father's request and the publication of which marks his appearance as a writer.

Choosing, as Professor Dowden has said, " rather to fail in justice than humanity," Montaigne now retires from his post and devotes himself to private affairs and to study. For this the Chateau de Montaigne was beautifully adapted. In its tower Montaigne arranged a study with long galleries leading from it

MONTAIGNE 197

(like Aristotle he was a peripatetic) , and collected a rich library. Of his one thousand books eighty have survived to this day, and on the margin thereof we can still read his observations on his favorite authors. These commentaries jotted down on the inspiration of the moment are the groundwork of his famous Essais, of which the first two books appeared in 1580.

Meantime, however, Montaigne discovered that along with many admirable traits his father had left him a tendency toward^ravel. In order to correct this malady he travels in foreign lands. For the advice of physicians — la mer trouble et vaste des erreurs medidnales — he has little use. But he trusts nature, and after a journey of a year and a half through Switzerland, Germany and Italy he settles in Rome. The Journal de voyage, first pub- lished in 1774, is a record of his observations as a traveler. These are mainly about human nature, as we should expect of one who says " I have an apish and imitating character " and " I like a Pole as well as a Frenchman." He is, however, impressed with the vanished grandeur of Rome; and the gift of Roman citizen- ship conferred upon him greatly flatters his pride.

It is during a sojourn at the Baths of Lucca that Montaigne receives news of his election as mayor of Bordeaux. Reluctantly he wends his way home (1581) to acquit himself of a duty but not a pleasure. He tells his constituents that he will take the affairs of the city in hand — non pas au poumon et au joie, de m'en charger et non de les incorporer. Montaigne's casualness, the unprofessional attitude of the Renaissance gentleman, is nowhere more evident than in this remark. In 1583 his fellow- citizens reelect him ; yet when the city is swept by the plague he takes excellent care to avoid the danger-zone and, at the expira- tion of his term of office in July, 1585, he gladly lays down the reins of government. At the same time, his contemporaries never whispered a reproach, and Montaigne assures us that he shunned " no action which duty rightly demanded of him."

His final retirement into private seclusion now took place. Such worldly honors as a knighthood in the Order of St. Michael and membership in the King's Chamber were long since his. Henceforth he lived for his thoughts, shared often with his newly won friend Charron, whose Sagesse is a codification of Montaigne's ideas. The Essais had appeared in new editions

198 AMYOT, MONTAIGNE AND BRANTOME

(with additions) in 1582 and 1587. In 1588 Montaigne pub- lished a so-called " fifth edition," which contained a third book, with " six cents additions aux deux premiers." Having gone to Paris to supervise the publication, he there met Marie de Gournay, whose idealistic devotion to him won for her the title of sa fllle d'alliance. She it was who directed the editing of the posthiunous edition of Montaigne's works in 1595. He was now growing old, mais a reculons. The library of Bordeaux still has his copy of the 1588 edition into which he wrote his last corrections and additions. It shows how he constantly sought to improve his text, cancelling repetitions, modernizing or shortening sentences, and so on. Montaigne died on Sep- tember 13, 1595 — of quinsy or grippe — surrounded by his family and friends, and having received the last rites of the church according to his own wish.

It would be a mistake to look in Montaigne's writings for any consistent philosophy. His point of view is more nearly prag- The matic than anything else, provided always we remem-

" Essais " T^Qj. ^jjg^^ Montaigne the epicurean, the lover of peace and tranquillity, furnishes the background. This granted, the Essais give the general impression of a kaleidoscope: the groimd seems constantly to shift, the thesis is never maintained, at least not for long. The letter-writer Balzac said: "Montaigne com- mence et finit pour ainsi dire a chaque phrase." And Etienne Pasquier thought that more than one of the essays might be called a coq-a-l'dne. The position to which Montaigne constantly re- turns is found in the words: " Certes, c'est un sujet merveilleuse- ment vain, divers et ondoyant, que I'homme: il est malaise d'y fonder jugement constant et uniforme." ^ Consequently: " Je n'ai rien a dire de moi entierement, simplement et solidement, sans confusion et sans melange, ni en im mot. Distinguo est le plus universel membre de ma logique."

To understand Montaigne, then, there is but one cMrect method'; namely, to follow the evolution of his thought, to gather as it were the mosaic, of his differentiations, piece by piece, and see what conclusion can be drawn from the completed picture.

The bulk of Book I and the beginning of Book II, composed before 1573, show the influence of Seneca and Plutarch. The I The spelling is modernized according to the edition of Jeanroy.

MONTAIGNE 199

first problem attacked is that of our passions, which Montaigne considers in the light of the Stoics. Essay I contrasts pity with resolution: it is right to alleviate suffering but not to grow soft with it. Alexander was stern but he was magnanimous. In Essay III the theme is that our passions destroy our sense of reality: "la crainte, le desir, I'esperance, nous elancent vers I'avenir et nous derobent le sentiment et la consideration de ce qui est, pour nous amuser a ce qui sera." Essay Vll, on the question of intention, concludes : " qu'il n'y a rien en bon escient en notre puissance que la volonte, en celle-la se fondent par neces- site et s'etablissent toutes les regies du devoir de I'homme." Finally, the culmination is reached in Essays XIX and XX, which deal with death and reproduce the maxim of Cicero, deduced from Plato's Phaedp, that " le but de notre carriere, c'est la mort." In all this there is little that is personal except the method; that is, the constant comparison, of ideals with facts in dealing with himaan life, the subject of Montaigne's inquiry. But Book I contains also three extremely original contributions: Essay XXVII, De I'amitie, which, according to Montaigne, (cf. his friendship with La Boetie), is the highest and noblest of our affections; Essay XXX, Des cannibales, where the idea of the " noble savage " — so important for the later Rousseau — is first exploited, and Montaigne ironically concludes that I'homme simple et grassier may be a better witness of the eternal truth than les fines gens, just as what really distinguishes the savage from the Frenchman of the period, accustomed to war and pillage, is that he is morally better and does not wear trousers; and Essay XXXVIII, De la solitude, in which the author inveighs against public life with its ambitions and servilities and' points out that " la plus grande chose du monde, c'est de savoir etre a. soi." This is probably the most Socratic of his ideas, that which has found most favor outside of France, and certainly the least French,

We now reach the second period in the evolution of Montaigne's thought. In 1576 he became acquainted with the late Greek skep- tic, Sextus Empiricus, a Latin translation of whose Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes was published by Henri Estienne in 1562. There were ten quotations from Sextus on the walls of Montaigne's library. Book II, Essay XII, the so-called 4pologie de Baimond

200 AMYOT, MONTAIGNE AND BRANTOME

Sebond, has as its subtitle Ou la vanite de la raison humaine, and amounts really to an attack on the human mind — especially on the proud Reason which the Renaissance had exalted. Essay II, De I'ivrognerie, had shown how easily the mind is carried away. Essay VIII had dealt with the treatment of children: our affection for them should be neither animalistic nor artificial; parents must be the companions of their children, who should not be beaten into obedience or they will not love honor and liberty. This essay, dedicated to Mme d'Estissac, should be compared to XXV, Book I, De I'institutioTi des enfaMs, dedi- cated to Diane de Foix but not composed until 1579. Here Montaigne advocates ah imstoical severe douceur: the object of education is to train the judgment, not to amass facts; children must be made to like learning, not to fear and abhor it; above all, the world is the school in which the great minds are trained. Finally, Essay X, Des livres, corroborates these ideas: Mon-" taigne admires the moral works of Cicero but he abominates his \ style; to Vergil and Lucretius he gives imdivided admiration. Thus, when we reach the Apologie — aptly termed le recueil de toutes nos ignorances, incoherences et contradictions — the current of skepticism has grown into a mighty river threatening the solvency of man himself. " La presomption," says Montaigne, " est notre maladie naturelle et originelle. La plus calamiteuse et fragile de toutes les creatures, c'est I'homme et . . . la plus orgueilleuse." Here Montaigne is at one with Calvin, though his attack is against the intellect and not the will. And in another passage he all but writes a page of Pascal:

Considerons done pour cette heure rhomme seul, sans secours etranger, arme seulement de ses armes, et depourvu de la grace et connaissance divine, qui est tout son honneur, sa force et le fondement de son etre. . . . Qui lui a persuade que ce branle admirable de la voute celeste, la lumiere etemelle de ces flambeaux roulant si fierement sur sa tete, les mouvements epouvantables de cette mer infinie, soient etablis et se continuent tant de siecles pour sa commodite et pour son service? Est-il possible de rien imaginer si ridicule que cette miserable et chetive creature, qui n'est pas seulement maitresse de soi, exposee aux o£Penses de toutes choses, se die maitresse et emperiere de Tunivers, duquel il n'est pas en sa puissance de connaitre la moindre partie, tant s'en faut de la commander?

MONTAIGNE 201

And there follows a long disquisition on the life of animals, all to the disadvantage of man, who is blamed for deserting Nature:

Le soin de s'augmenter en sagesse et en science, ce fut la pre- miere ruine du genre hnmain; c'est la voie par ou il s'est precipite a la damnation eternelle. . . . Comme la vie se rend par la simplicite plus plaisante, elle se rend aussi plus innocente et meil- leure.

— again an approach to Rousseau.

Finally, with Book III — written in 1586-88 — he takes him- self as the object of study, as exemplifying the genus Man. Pascal once said: " ce n'est pas dans Montaigne, mais dans moi que je trouve tout ce que j'y vols." A remark that justifies Montaigne's superb avowal as to mankind in general and himself in particular which we have had occasion to admire before (see Introduction) .

On attache aussi bien toute la philosophie naorale h une vie populaire et privee qu'a une vie de plus riche etoffe. Chaque homme porte la forme entiere de I'humaine condition. Les auteurs se eommuniquent au peuple par quelque marque speciale et etran- gere; moi le premier par mon etre universel, comme M. de Mon- taigne, non comme grammairien, ou poete, ou juris-consulte. Si le monde se plaint que je parle trop de moi, je me plains de quoi il ne pense seulement a soi. (Essay I.)

This concept of the " universal being " — inherent in all of us — now furnishes the counterpart to the "relativity " in which om* limited life as individuals has placed us. The obstacles of time, space, ignorance, the differences of religion, nationality, manners and morals, vividly set forth in the Apologie, are thus overcome in the experience of mankind as a whole. Insular and circum- scribed we remain; our institutions which have grown up with us we cannot shake off. But we can become circumspect and open-minded in proportion to our self-knowledge and our ac- quaintance with other human beings. " Le prix de I'ame," Montaigne now maintains, " ne consiste pas a aller hautement, mais ordonneement." There is no " plus utile science " than wis- dom (III) ; moderation is the best maxim. Socrates was right: " le mourir lui semble accident naturel et indifferent (IV)." In the essay Sur les vers de Virgile {V) , and there is no essay less Vergilian, Montaigne advocates measure in temperance: even

202 AMYOT, MONTAIGNE AND BRANTOME

" la sagesse a ses exces." Here the worldly, epicurean note rings clear and confronts us with the antithesis to stoicism in the words: " A mon avis, c'est le vivre heureusement non comme dit Antisthenes le mourir heureusement qui fait I'humaine felicite."

Concerning Montaigne there may be as many opinions as there ,are minds. His very popularity has been prodigious. In English alone the Florio (1603) and the Cotton (1685) translations of the Essais have been frequently reprinted, whereas Shakespeare and Bacon are among his most notable debtors. Our own Emerson never wearies of paying him., tribute. Besides, as Montaigne himself said, un abrege sur un bon livre est un sot abrege. Mon- taigne is no logician; " carried along on the wings of his subject from one mountain top to another " (Miss Norton) , he is reckless in argument, digressing, interpolating, giving us opinions for fact, and the like. Thus, even the single essays lack unity and cogency. The famous Apologie, when closely studied, shows signs of being hastily made up of several originally distinct essays. All of this a summary necessarily misses. Neverthe- less, on one thing his critics may agree, and! that is his repre- sentative character. He portrays mankind in its characteristic and conflicting moods as possibly no other writer ever has. And this remains his greatest quality.

In the Essais we see the " man " Montaigne in every detail: vain, alert, peace-loving, inquisitive and tolerant. Despite a tendency to startle — epater — no writer is intellectually more honest. He is, it seems, precisely what he claims to be, neither more nor less. Such probity is not only interesting, it is en- ticing. It leads the reader — for once at least — to be himself, to imitate his author and look narrowly into his own soul, no matter how shallow it may be, for profimdity was not the long suit of this gentleman of Perigord. Important in this connection are the charm and vividness of Montaigne's style. Sans couture is the epithet that has been applied to it. But this is equivalent to saying that it is conversational and sprightly. On the other hand, Montaigne can be elevated in tone and even eloquent: wit- ness the passage quoted above on I'homme seul. Few writers, however, have had a juster sense of the value of words. " Cut these words," said Emerson, " they are vascular and alive " — an

MONTAIGNE'S SKEPTICISM 203

opinion that rather belies Montaigne's own conviction that the French language lacked vigor:

II succombe ordinairemeat a une puissante conception; si vous aUez tendu, vous sentez souvent qu'il languit sous vous et flechit.

Montaigne, then, is preeminent in at least two respects. First, with reference to his negations. This aspect is Montaigne the skeptic: the Pyrrhonist whom Pascal both admired of and feared, feared because of his lighthearted ac-

Montaigne ceptance of our human limitations; the ancestor of the Voltaires, the Sainte-Beuves, the Renans and the Anatok Frances of French literature. The Montaigne, in short, of the sentence: Que sais-je?

Skepticism — says Emerson. — is the attitude assumed by the student in relation to the particulars which society adores, but which he sees to be reverenced only ia their tendency and spirit. The ground occupied by the skeptic is the vestibule of the temple . . . it turns out that he is not the champion of the operative, the pauper, the prisoner, the slave. It stands in his mind that our Ufe in this world is not quite so easy of interpretation as churches and school-books say. He does not wish to take ground against these benevolences, to play the part of the devil's attorney, and blazon every doubt and sneer that darkens the sun for him. But he says, there are doubts.

This is the Montaigne who belongs to world-literatm-e. In many respects he represents the best the French spirit has to give. It is true he is a constant interrogation. But he leads us through doubt to take pleasure in thinking and to admit views that are not necessarily ours. For, as Emerson concludes:

The lesson of life is practically to generaUze; to believe what the years and the centuries say against the hours; to resist the usurpation of particulars, to penetrate to their catholic sense.

This brings us to Montaigne's second or positive side; namely, Montaigne the generalizer. In this respect he stands in close relation to his own time as the solvent of its conflicting forces. Rabelais, Calvin and Ronsard, to mention only the greatest, were enthusiasts. Each pressed and exaggerated his particular view. Each saw in antiquity an image of himself and forced the note as all enthusiasts will. By the seventies the world was disrupted

204 AMYOT, MONTAIGNE AND BRANTOME

into hostile camps on the basis of the litre examen. Montaigne the pacifier came; he compared, he leveled. In his haphazard way he objectified human experience. The result was that he humbled the pride of man, very much like Calvin; but, unlike Calvin, he himself submitted to the conclusion he had reached. If, therefore, from his bourgeois and worldly standpoint, he recog- nized the value of human tradition and bent his head before the ' authority of Rome, it was not as a believer but as a forerunner of the seventeenth century, as one convinced of the validity of the opinion generale. And this opinion generale he created, on the basis of the common traits of mankind. " The proper study of mankind is man"; this would express the essence of his humanism, for the realization of which he indicated both the direction and the method that the seventeenth century was to pursue.

If Montaigne is the moralizer of this period, Brantome has been correctly called its Suetonius. What Suetonius did for the lives of the Caesars, that Brantome has done for the Valois, especially Charles IX and Henry III. Like Montaigne, he was intensely curious as to life and persons, and he was well-bred and fond of travel, but whereas Montaigne reacted against his age, Brantome takes an almost childish joy in his surroundings, which were anything but elevating. The end of the sixteenth century produced a flood of memoir writers, who like Monluc, Margaret of Valois and La Noue all have an interest for the historian of social customs and manners. But while some of these are Brantome's superiors in style and most of them his betters in decency, none excel him in vividness or in the peculiar flavor with which he reproduces the nonchalance of the dying sixteenth century. As in a brightly colored picture-book he marshals before our eyes the pageantry, the bigotry, the corrup- tion and also the charm of that troubled period. Of all this he himself was part and parcel.

Pierre de Bourdeille, reverend pere de Dieu, as this lay- holder of the Abbey of Brantome called himself, was born about 1540 and lived until 1614. Originally from P^rigord, he spent his early youth at the court of Marguerite d'Angouleme, and after studying in Paris he went to Italy, where he served as a soldier. He sailed with Mary Stuart to Scotland, joined the Spanish forces

BRANTOME 205

in Africa, was present at the relief of Malta against the Turks, and in general led the life of a condottiere. Returning to France diiring the wars of religion, he finally became gentleman of the King's Chamber and aspired to be made governor of Perigord. But Henry III refused; whereupon Brantome planned to desert his ungrateful sovereign and enter the service of Spain. From this seditious step he was saved by a fall from his horse (1584), which, besides incapacitating him physically, turned him into a writer. During the next twenty years he recorded in his anec- dotal way the occurrences of the preceding thirteen.

Brantome's works fall into two parts, treating respectively of the lives of men and of women. The Hommes consists, in M. Lalaniie's edition, of the Grands capitaines, French and Spanish, the Couronnels, the Discours sur les duels — an institution which Brantome exalts — and the Rodomontades espagnoles. The original draft of the Hommes was completed as early as 1599. The Premier et second livre des Dames is better known today as the separate treatises of Dames illristres and Dames ga- lantes. A circumstance to be remembered is that Brantome left an elaborate will directing that his works be published en belle et grande lettre et grand volume, pour mieux paroistre. That this wish was not carried out was due to his niece, who feared the scandal that the publication might cause. Indeed, the works were not published until 1665-1666, just in time it is said to inspire Bussy-Rabutin.

Brantome is too inaccurate to be a good biographer. His works abound in expressions like j'ai ouy parler and j'ai veu, which often not only conceal his source but permit him to have no source at all. Some of his more detailed " lives," like that of the Due de Guise, are too rambling and discursive to give an adequate idea of the personage concerned. On the whole, the figures of Catherine de Medicis, Anne of Brittany, Charles IX and Michel de I'Hospital come off best. But if Brantome fails as a historian, his portraits are life-like and striking. His art consists in nailing a trait and then making us see its significance. For example, he records of Catherine:

Quand elle appelloit quelqu'un man amy, c'est qu'elle restimoit sot, ou qu'elle estoit en colere;

or, in depicting Anne of Brittany, he slyly remarks:

206 AMYOT, MONTAIGNE AND BRANTOME

Au reste elle estoit tres bonne, fort misericordieuse et fort chari- table, ainsy que j'ay ouy dire aux miens. Vray est qu'elle estoit fort prompte a la vengeance;

and there follows a startling example of how cruel she could be. It is such vivid snatches as these that explain Brantome's vogue with later generations. Monluc's Commentaires (1592) are better planned than anything of Brantome's, but they are concerned with military history and despite their excellent struc- ttre contain far less of real life. So, too, the Discours politiques et militaires (1585) of La Noue — of whom we have a sketch from Brantome's pen — are remarkable for their impartiality and tolerance, a valuable asset in a historian, but again La Noue's refinement, which was considerable, does not make up for the solemn dullness of his style. Thus, licentious as he is — and this trait is confined largely to the Dames galantes — Brantome remains the most gifted chronicler of his epoch: his range is large, his sparkle delightful, and his sense of detail as keen as it is frank. In many ways he is comparable to Froissart.

CHAPTER IV

THE AGE OF HENRY IV AND THE COMMON SENSE OF MALHERBE

The accession of Henry IV in 1594 heralds the restoration of peace and order on French soil. The Gascon King united in himself high political wisdom, a love of panache and a forgiving and tolerant nature. The famous Satire Menippee — the first successful journalistic satire in France — amid considerable jocularity and buffoonery made short shift of the opposing Lea- guers and vigorously welcomed Henry as " Notre vrai roy legi- time, naturel et souverain." From now on, politics were to converge more and more towards the absolutism of Louis XIV.

It is characteristic, however, that the reign of Henry IV and the beginning of Louis XIII's stand for a transition; certainly in things artistic and literary. Side by side, we find literary rule and literary freedom. The epicurean common sense (bon sens) set free by the Essais of Montaigne culminates on the one hand in the stoical and religious reactions of Du Vair and Frangois de Sales, and on the other in the brilliant but erratic satire of Mathurin Regnier — to which, however, the final answer is the triimiphant, impersonal muse of Malherbe. Freedom again there is in the new-bom tragi-comedy, made popularly successful by Hardy, and in the heroic pastoral, D'Urfe's Astree, of which so sensible a person as La Fontaine could say:

Etant petit gargon je lisais son reman Et je le lis encore ayant la barbe grise.

But in these genres also (see Book III) the effort is nevertheless toward uniformity of the spirit, which accompanies the great socialization that French literature is to undergo before becoming "Classical."

Thus, on the whole, the sixteenth centiuy ends and the seven- teenth begins with a confident look into the future. This vision

207

208 THE AGE OF HENRY FV

includes: peace; a stable and unified government; a surcease of the turbulent individualism of the Renaissance proper ; above all, a growing recognition of the social function of man ; and finally, a gradual nationalization of language and culture and a closer welding of thought and expression — that is, a sense of style.

In Etienne Pasquier, whose Recherches de la France began to appear in 1560, we already find a judicious spirit as regards . life and letters. Pasquier was a magistrate ; his turn

of mind was not original, but he belongs to that large group of French jurists whose breadth and solidity have done honor to the legal profession. His Recherches consist of a desultory but thoroughly interesting collection of remarks on the history, politics, culture and literature of France. lu' all this there is much keen appreciation, not a little hiunor and, among other matters, an excellent account of the Pleiade movement. Pasquier does not hesitate to combat Ronsard's excessive imita- tions, throughout he upholds common sense and a certain innate taste, and while honoring the ancients he also defends French against Latin. He has the charm of an engaging and sensible causeur. Though he belonged strictly to the age of Ronsard, he lived until 1615 and took an active part in the royalist polemics against the Leaguers.

With Henri Estienne (1528-1598), also of the earlier genera- tion, we reach a writer whose nationalistic views on language Henri did much to prepare the field for Malherbe. Author

Estienne ^f ^ Thesaurus of Greek, with which language he ad- vocated the " conformity " of French, Estienne was a Huguenot, a Hellenist and a bourgeois to the core. Belonging to a family distinguished for its scholarship, he published (1554) a manu- script of Anacreon which deeply interested the Pleiade, and he wrote an Apologie pour Herodote, in which he aired his Prot- estant and scholarly ideals. His main importance, however, is that he fougjit the Italianate influence at court. In his Dialogues du nouveau langage frangais italianise (1578) Es- tienne speaks through the mouth of Celtophile — admirer of French — and upbraids the courtiers who, like Philausone, would corrupt the native stock of rich and pure words. The same theme is treated in his better written but incomplete Pricellence

THE SATIRE MENIPPEE 209

du langage frangais (1579) : not only is Italian foreign to France, it is actually inferior to French in grace, force and excellence.

In 1567 Jean Bodin published the six books of his Republique, where in words devoid of passion — but also of charm — he laid jj,g down the theory of the French monarchical state.

"Satire_ ^^ ^With singularly clear vision Bodin saw in absolute

emppee monarchy the extension of the tribal or family idea, and in the monarch the patriarch of the French people. The Satire Menippee (1594) confirms this idea at the very moment when the efforts of patriotic Protestants and Catholics triumphed in the victory of Henry IV. Thus the pamphlet lacks the political influence often attributed to it. As a matter of fact, it is a literary parody of the Estates of the League that had been imsuccessfuUy called to choose a king.

In its original form (the present title is taken from the Saturae . Mentppeae of Varro and did not appear until the sixth edition) the satire was the work of Jean Leroy, whose collaborators were Gillot, clerk-advocate of the Parliament, the poets Passerat and Rapin, and Chrestien and Pithou, converted Protestants. The Menippee opens with a harangue in Rabelaisian style on the panacea Catholicon — quintessence catholique-jesuite-espagnole — whereby the Leaguers would achieve their own fortune and the enslavement of France. Then follows an account of the open- ing of the Estates; a description of the tapestries with which the hall is hung, each portraying some betrayal of the French cause; a catalogue of the leaders of the League, with pointed remarks on their imsavory private and public lives ; and finally, in mock- heroic style, the speeches of the Leaguers themselves. These display imusual variety and skill of treatment. Partly burlesque, partly true to reality, always witty, they culminate in the speech of Claude d'Aubray, which is wholly serious and eloquent. It covers about half the book and is a happy combination of histor- ical retrospect, analysis of politics and arraignment of the Leaguers. D'Aubray was the leader of the Politiques or enemies of the League; and it is likely that his speech was actually delivered before the Estates.

While the Menippee is too disproportionate and uneven to tank as a classic, it yet shows a great advance in the scope and art of French satire. It analyzes political corruption with a

210 THE AGE OF HENRY IV

minuteness worthy of Rabelais, and it drives its lessons home by a series of thrusts that are in the best vein of Gallic irony.

But the ethical force of the time is found in Charron and Du Vair, both of whom followed in the footsteps of Montaigne. In Charron and fact, Pierre Charron (1541-1603), who had been Du Vair Montaigne's pupil, was the chief organizer of his master's thought. Like Du Vair, Charron was a legist and a theo- logian, who began his literary career with a treatise on the Trois V elites (1593), in which the existence of God, the truth of Chris- tianity and the orthodoxy of the Roman Church are defended as unassailable. This work was followed by his philosophical Traite de la sagesse (1601), where he systematized Montaigne's ideas in orthodox forrii. Taking the Apologie seriously, Charron turned the Que sais-jef into a positive Je ne scds, and set up this maxim as a rational basis of the Christian religion. Thus he antici- pates Pascal, but he does so without genius, heavily and dully. How closely he builds on Montaigne is evident from the state- ment:

La nation, le pays, le lieu donnent la religion — rhomme sans son seu est fait Juif ou Chrestien, a cause qu'il est ne dedans la Juiverie ou Chrestiente.

But Charron would use tolerance to uphold tradition. Mindful of the "three truths," he would reintegrate his nation in Roman Catholicism, which makes citoyens du monde and avoids the daiigers of the opinion triee et particuliere. This is an important step toward the French Classical point of view. Charron's book had great success, although the Sorbonne found it reprehensible. As a personality Guillaume du Vair (1556-1621) is far superior to Charron. Councilor of the Parliament of Paris, envoy to England, and finally bishop of Lisieux, Du Vair was one of the leading Politiques, defending this cause with steadfastness and eloquence. To him the stoicism of the early Montaigne was the rule of life. Accordingly, his De la philosophie des stdiques and De la Constance show him as a practical moralist to whom philoso- phy is a guide to conduct. Direct and even poetic in style, Du Vair discards all show of erudition and comes out strongly for Reason in its two-fold function: first, as the liberator from passion, and second, as the guide to faith by its demonstration

FRANgOIS DE SALES 211

of our human limitations. In all this there is nothing new ex- cept the force and cogency of statement. But Du Vair's sense of conviction, shown again in his De I'eloquence frangaise, won him readers and explains his hold on the next generation, especially on Malherbe.

Although the stoicism of Du Vair gave strength it did not con- sole; and the times were now ripe for a conciliation of religion Saint Fran- ^^^^ ^^® emotions of the heart. To have achieved sois de this was the beatitude of Saint Francois de Sales.

The path he mapped out was, like that of his teachers, the Jesuits, a chemin de velovrs: a path festooned with roses, where religious devotion became attractive and moral regenera- tion was opened to the " worldly " by an appeal to their sense of delicacy and refinement. De Sales' psychology is essentially a casuistry of love, with the gradations and nuances carefully drawn. But beneath his docile exterior this reformer concealed an austere and unshakable will. He knew that the Christian life demanded humility, and humility before God on the part of his aristocratic flock became the goal of his unsparing efforts.

He was born in Savoy, whose prince he served in trying to redeem the district of Chablais from the Protestant heresy. This attempt met with little success, and being sent to Paris in 1602 on a mission, he associated himself with a group of mystics, the chief of whom was Mme Acarie. He now gave up the plan of con- verting Protestants, and although he resisted the allurements of- fered by Henry IV and returned to Savoy as titular bishop of Geneva, he never loosened his hold on his French followers. His influence was great with women; through Mme de Chantal, grandmother of Mme de Sevigne, he established the order of the Visitation, and it is to her that his best Ejntres spirituelles are addressed.

But his great work, second in popularity only to the Imitation of Thomas a Kempis, is the Introduction a la vie devote. This and the complementary Traite de I'amour de Dieu (1606) con- tain all that is most distinctive in de Sales' teaching and theology. Starting with the premise that the Christian life is essentially a life of love — an idea already exploited by Luther — de Sales evolves the thesis that the redemption of man proceeds, not from sudden abnegation and sacrifice, but from the gradual diffusion of

212 THE AGE OF HENRY IV

love into every act, even the smaller ones, of this earthly life. Thus he mollifies the externals of religion, without, however, giving up its main doctrines, and by beginning with the social virtues — such as good breeding and consideration of others — he seeks to insinuate into the social complex the sterner, unworldly qualities of Christianity. Frangois de Sales' style — langage de la paix he calls it — is in the main winsome, however flowery it may seem at present. Many of his images are far-fetched, though it is part of his general purpose to draw them with abundance from Nature and literature. On the other hand, with an eye to le commun usage, he writes excellent, singularly modern French, and in this respect as in so many others he leads up to Bossuet and • Bourdaloue.

In short, the Introdiiction a la vie devote, begun as a formal course of instruction for Philothee — in real life, Mme de Charmoisy — anticipates the courtly, religious literature of the era of Louis XIV. Its special significance is that for the first time de Sales bridges the gulf between theology and worldly society. Its author was canonized by the Roman Church in 1665.

While the new movement towards socialization was thus claim- ing the support of the church, its influence was also manifest in the domain of pure literature, in poetry. And in this trans- formation Malherbe is the outstanding and significant factor.

Frangois de Malherbe is best known by the title of docteur en negative, which relates him to the Pleiade as the antithesis of jj „ . Ronsard and as the orderer and purifier of poetic

style. A curious mixture of pedant and artist, Malherbe is one of the pillars of Classicism because of an in- stinct for harmony and his unswerving common sense:

Le sens commun, centre lequel, la religion a part, vous savez il n'y a orateur au monde qui me put rien persuader.

No man was surer of himself than he. We can picture him to our- selves, in his room at the Hotel de Bellegarde in Paris, deliver- ing orders on the distinction between pas and point, the gerund- ive and the present participle — as if, says Balzac, it were a matter of two neighboring peoples, jealous of their frontiers. But it was this meticulous care that gave to the French language the clarity, purity and cadence which it has in Corneille and

MALHERBE 213

Racine. Thus what Malherbe took away in variety, exuberance, and emotionalism, he restored in firmness, structure and restraint. In his treatment of the Alexandrine he fashioned the vehicle in which the generation of 1660 was to find glorious expression. Hence the aptness of Boileau's appraisal:

Enfin Malherbe vint; et le premier en France Fit sentir dans les vers una juste cadence.

Marchez done sur ses pas, aimez la purete, Et de son tour heureux imitez la clarte.

Malherbe's ascent to Parnassus was slow and painstaking. He was born at Caen, Normandy, in 1555. Having been trained for the bar at Bale and Heidelberg, he went with the Duke of ' Angouleme to Provence, and there he married a widow from whom he had two children, both of whom he survived. It is significant that Malherbe, whose best remembered poem is the Consolation de Monsieur du Perier sur la mart de sa file, never gave expression in verse to his own grief. He believed that a poet should be the objective purveyor of rationalized emotions, and he could never bring himself to regard the death of his own children in this stern light. His fitst publisihed poem, Les Larmes de Saint-Pierre, is an imitation of Tansillo and still in the Italianate manner of Desportes. But with the famous Consolation (1598) and an Ode to Marie de Medicis (1600) Malh«rbe comes into his own. Henceforth he follows un- erringly the path of simplicity and versified prose.

In 1605 Malherbe took steps to be appointed poet laureate of the Bourbon dynasty. Besought by the poet's friends, Henry IV, who hesitated at, first, was charmed by Malherbe's Priere pour le Roi allant en Ldmousin and finally gave orders to M. de Belle- garde to provide for the poet in Paris. Under Louis XIII Malherbe's prestige suffered no relapse; on the contrary, Marie de Medicis clung to the person who had celebrated her charms, and in spite of opposition from without, his position as arbiter of French letters was unshaken until his death (1628) .

The amount of his published verse is small — some four thou- sand lines. In these, as has often been said, Malherbe follows the lead of Ronsard — but of the Ronsard of the odelette and the elegie. And these genres he emasculates and rationalizes.

214 THE AGE OF HENRY IV

"Malherbe," says Brunetiere, " consoit un sonnet ou une elegie comme une unite logique qui demontre, discute, tout au moins expose quelque chose de bien determine." Poetry to him is a metier like any other; it is not a matter for the learned, and least of all for the " divinely inspired." Therefore his re- mark that the porters of the Port au Foin were his guides in speech, by which he meant that even they would xmderstand his verse, so clear and unmistakable it was. Negatively, then, he opposed the Pleiade, accepting the classical genres, but restrict- ing their scope, omitting everji;hing that seemed obscure or learn- ed or imaginative. Positively, he developed la poesie oratoire — so peculiarly French — with its sumptuous commonplaces, its in- •stinct for the right word in the right place, its succession of harmonious Alexandrines. This type of verse lacks color; it is architectonic, not picturesque; it does not move the reader, it persuades him; it appeals to the universal reason and not to the individual imagination. Malherbe's most famous verse:

Et, rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses, L'espace d'un matin,

is a case in point. Embodied in a long argument on the inevi- tability of death — and what could be more commonplace? — this line is the expression of the Pleiade's favorite theme in as simple, as clear, as grammatical and as universal a form as possible. And yet the line carries a sense of conviction, a stoical peace and tranquillity, which are perhaps unique. It need hardly be added that Malherbe achieved such impeccable effects rarely. An Ode on the victory of Louis at La Rochelle, written at the ripe age of seventy-two, is probably Malherbe's most " artistic " success.

But if Malherbe's muse was oratory rather than poetry, this quality stood him in good stead as a critic of language and versi- fication. His Commentaire sur Desportes, although merely a mar- ginal comment on a copy of Desportes' works, embodies the prin- ciples of his reforms.

Here the leading idea is " usage," controlled by the trinity of purity, ■ clearness and precision. Desportes seemed to him " padded " and " redundant," and his first desire was to put French vocabulary into a strait-jacket. In this he followed the

MALHERBE'S DISCIPLES 215

tendency of his period against improvisation. Besides, many of the Pleiade's archaisms were out of date ; qiiite a number of their foreign borrowings and dialect words had remained un-French; Desportes and even Ronsard had made too free a use of diminu- tives. In these directions Malherbe's pruning was wise. On the other hand, he went too far in his objection to certain adjectives like soucieux, to all gerundives, to the use of technical terms in literature, above all to the word ideal — " un mot d'ecole et qui ne se doit point dire en choses d'amour." With much better reason he tried to fix the exact meaning of words ; he practically estab- lished the modem word-order; and he correctly considered rime as the important feature of French versification, thus his opposi- tion to " overflow " (enjambement) and his advocacy of " rich rime." As Brunetiere observes, Malherbe is in many respects the ancestor of the Parnassian poets of the nineteenth century. Chapelain affirmed that " il a ignore la poesie." But certainly Malherbe understood the instrument of poetry better than Chapelain. This we should not forget when we have in mind the sum total of his negations.

It must not be thought, however, that the reforms of Malherbe won easy or immediate acceptance. Those followers who did Malherbe's him most honor were of the generation of Boileau. Disciples Among his immediate disciples were Francois Maynard (1582-1646) and Honorat de Bueil, Marquis de Racan (1589-1670) . It has been justly said that these two, if combined, would have made one excellent poet. Malherbe himself thought that Maynard lacked force and that Racan was careless in style ; probably the reverse is closer to the truth. In any case, despite much repetition and monotony, Maynard has left us two note- worthy selections: the one a charming Dedicace to his own book —

Petit livre que j'ai poli;'^

and the other, an ode entitled La belle VieUle, where for a brief moment he soars on the wings of sentiment:

Ce n'est pas d'aujourd'hui que je suis ta conquete, Huit lustres ont suivi le jour que tu me pris, Et j'ai fidelement aime ta belle tete Sous des cheveux chatains et sous des cheveux gris.

' See Catullus, liber I, 1.

216 THE AGE OF HENRY IV

Yet Racan, who had a distinguished career in the army and at court, excelled both Maynard and Malherbe in the musical quality of his verse and in a truly poetic grasp of simple and natural situations. His Arthenice ou les Bergeries, a pastoral drama, is charmingly written; while his celebrated Stances a Tircis is a melodious development of a poetic commonplace and elicited the admiration of La Fontaine.

Foremost in the opposition to Malherbe were Mathurin Regnier, Mile de Gournay, and the libertin but truly lyrical Theophile de Malherbe's Viau. In general, they represent the last outbiurst of Opponents ^tjg Renaissance juror poeticus before it was smoth- ered under the weight of Classical laile and decorum.

Mathurin Regnier (1573-1613) was the nephew of Desportes and Malherbe's junior by eighteen years. He spent part of his youth in Italy and later enjoyed the protection of the Marquis de Cceuvres, who wished to present him at court. But Regnier refused, quite content to bask in the glory reflected by his uncle, whose excellent dinners, however, he did not fail to attend. It was at one of these that Desportes invited Malherbe to listen to one of his compositions, whereupon the latter replied: "Let us dine first, your soup is better than your psalms." Whether this tale is literally true or not, Regnier took his imcle's side; and every word he wrote breathes opposition to Malherbe. His fame rests on his Satires, the best of which is Macette, and, as regards Malherbe, the well-known Ninth Satire, addressed to Rapin.

The key note of Regnier is gayety; it is characteristic of his satire that it is never ill-humored. Thus he unites the Gallic wit of Marot with the enthusiasm of the Pleiade, and he owes not a little to Ovid and the Italians, especially Ariosto. But he has also the defect of his quality. However sprightly, he lacks moral indignation; the only exception to this being Macette, which is also his best written work. As his satire is social and not political, Regnier has given it a note of imiversality; and Boileau, who condemned his platitudes and lack of order, yet saw that for knowledge of human natme Regnier is compa- rable to Moliere.

Regnier excels in bold' strokes and brilliant flashes rather than in sustained utterance. Already in the Second Satire, on poets, he hits off the telling line:

Meditant un sonnet, mddite un 6vechl —

MALHERBE'S OPPONENTS 217

which might apply to Desportes. Nowhere does his insight ap- pear better than in describing the pedantry of Malherbe. It ia the old problem of art versus nature, and Regnier is of course for nature. The Ninth Satire is a brilliant excursus on this theme, negatively presented:

lis rampant bassement, faibles d'inventions, Et n'osent, peu hardis, tenter les fictions, Froids a I'imaginer; car s'ils font quelque chose C'est proser de la rime, et rimer de la prose.

And so in Macette, Regnier combines nature with wit in order to give us one of the best portraits in French literature. Macette is the pandering woman: a kind of female Tartuffe, a descendant of the Faux-Semblant of the Roman de la Rose, but admirably individualized by Regnier, who detested hypocrisy:

Sans art elle s'habille, et simple en contenance Son teiat mortifie preche la penitence.

Loin du monde eUe fait sa demeure et son gite, Son ceil tout penitent ne pleure qu'eau benite, Enfin c'est un example, en ce siecle tortu, D'amour, de charite, d'honneur at de vertu.

Such portraiture as this redeems Regnier's faults of style — and of person. He is, if we make due allowances, the Villon of his time ; and because of his spontaneity he has never lacked readers. Mile Le Jars de Gournay (1556-1645) had no such good for- tune. She who called herself the fille d'alliance of Montaigne, whose works she edited, was old-maidish in appearance and character. On the other hand, she was not lacking in esprit, and her prose work L' Ombre (1627) defends Ronsard and banters Malherbe in an engaging and picturesque style. It appeared to her that Malherbe's entire contribution consisted in polissure, and she regretted, but in vain, that

ils tondent la poesie de liberte, de dignite, de richesse, et pour le dire en un mot, de fleur, de fruit et d'espoir.

The third figure of the opposition, Theophile de Viau (1596- 1626), is described better as a free-lance than as an ally of Regnier and Mile de Gournay. Indeed, he was not above combining

La douceur de Malherbe et I'ardeur de Ronsard.

218 THE AGE OF HENRY IV

But life made him a profligate, and he squandered hie powers on unworthy objects and in defying — per bel air — the pedantry of Malherbe. He is generally remembered by his irregular tragedy Pyrame et Thisbe (1617), where with true Elizabethan freedom he produced the hyperbole:

Le voila, le poignard qui du sang de son maitre S'est souille lachement; il en rougit, le traitre;

and thus merited the censure of Boileau. But libertin^ that he was, he possessed an inborn sense of form and a feeling for Nature. Note the harmony of the lines that he attributes to Apollo :

C'est moi qui penetrant la durete des arbres

Qui fais taire les vents, qui fais parler les marbres, Et qui trace au destin la conduite des rois;

and compare the soft, caressing mood of his SoUtvde:

Un froid et tenebreux sUence Dort a I'ombre de ces ormeaux, Et les vents battent les rameaux D'une amoureuse violence.

If Theophile was a late-comer, a survival of the age of Ronsard, his verse shows that after Malherbe lyrism was not dead in France but only slumbering. Twenty-two editions of his works appeared in fifty years, and the youthful Academy picked him as one of the authors on whose vocabulary its Dictionary should be based. It was the satire of Boileau that killed his vogue; but some of his quality passed into Voiture and Racine, until finally Romanticism gave it a glorious rebirth.

> On the libertins or epicureans, see Bk. Ill, Ch. V.

BOOK III PRE-CLASSICISM

CHAPTER I SOCIAL FORM AND THE SALON WRITERS

The seventeenth century is the grand siecle of the French. It is for them what the age of Elizabeth is for the English, the Cinquecento for the Italians. It is then that France has her most representative writers, those who reflect the national qualities at their best. It is then that the Renaissance ideal of absolute monarchy, realized in Louis XIV, places France at the political head of Em-ope. Not only does the much abused phrase I'Etat c'est moi express the degree of imity to which French cultiu-e was to attain, but the coiurt at Versailles is the symbol of this resplendent time. Here politics and art and literatm-e, centering about the person of the King, achieve a harmonious cooperation that is the keynote of Classicism.

This " point of perfection in art," which La Bruyere later compares to "ripeness in Nature," was however not reached Different at once. The Classical Period itself does not begin Periods \mi\\ 1653, with the triumphal entry of Mazarin

into Paris after the Wars of the Fronde, and it ends before the centxuy is over, with the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns in 1687. The preceding age, from 1624 — when Richelieu came into power — until 1653, is one of struggle and preparation. We give it the name of Pre-Classicism, as showing at once its direction and its formative character.

In politics this period stands for the destruction of the enemies of the crown, both within and without the kingdom. With great singleness of purpose Richelieu shattered the last stronghold of the Protestants (La Rochelle, 1628), combatted the supremacy

219

220 SOCIAL FORM AND THE SALON WRITERS

of Spain, crushed the conspiracy of the nobles led by Cinq-Mars, and in every way strove for national unity. His own interest in letters, and Richelieu's literary gifts were not conspicuous, was made contributory to this purpose. He worked for the principle of national authority in literature with the same zeal with which he discouraged the French admiration for Spain (see below, his attitude on the Cid). The hand he took in the establishment of the French Academy in 1629 is another proof of his policy; namely, to give the country a standard of speech which though national should be universally clear and precise. Mazarin, who succeeded Richelieu as prime-minister — a post that he held during the minority of Louis XIV — was the in- direct cause and central figure of the Wars of the Fronde. These were the last attempts of the feudal aristocracy to throw off the usurpations of the crown. Serious as the revolt was, it had in it the elements of opera-bouffe. The Frondeurs, including such illustrious persons as the Grand Conde, Cardinal de Retz and the Duchess of Longueville, were divided among themselves; personal vanity and bombast influenced greatly their actions; and when peace and order were finally restored in Paris, the effect on the youthful Louis XIV was to discourage in him any attempt to govern the country by constitutional means.

It was principally in the development of social form or etiquette that the Pre-Classical period was fruitful. Under the impact, first of Italy, but also of Spain, social intercourse is cultivated on a new scale; good manners and deportment are encouraged for the distinction they give ; and this movement furnishes the background for most of the art and literature of the century.

The courtiers of Henry IV deserve that name only by tolerance. Fresh from the battle-field, they carried into social relations the swagger, the rudeness, the license of their honest but boisterous natures. It is true that Henry's own attitude was offset by his marriage in 1600 to Marie de Medicis, who invited the Italian Marino to Paris in 1615. Marino was a representative of the euphuistic or affected style, and he undoubtedly had an influence on the refinement of manners and speech in France. At the same time, the birth of social form

HOTEL DE RAMBOUILLET 221

occurred not at the French court but in the house of a private citizen: the famous Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Ram- bouillet.

Catherine was the daughter of Jean de Vivonne, French ambassador to Rome, and Julia Savelli, a Roman lady of The Hotel de distinction. She had married Charles d'Angennes, Rambouillet ^ho in 1611 became the Marquis de Rambouillet. Of her social and intellectual charms Mile de Scudery writes as follows in one of her well-known " literary portraits ":

L'esprit de Cleomire [one of the names applied to Catherine, Arthenice is another] n'est pas un de ces esprits qui n'ont de lumiere que celle que la nature leur donne, car elle I'a cultive soigneusement. Elle salt diverges langues, et n'ignore presque rien qm_merit£-diltFe su; mais elle le salt sans iairfi-semUant dejfi-sayoir, et on dirait, a I'entendre parler, tant elk estjnodBSte, qu'eUe ne parte de toutes choses admirablement que par le simple sens commun et par le seul usage du monde.

But distinguished as Catherine was, her delicacy was overdone. Her sensibilities were offended by such a word as teignevx (" scm-vy ") , and, as Tallemant des Reaux records, she and her husband " vivaient un peu trop en c6remonie."

Yet it was precisely through ceremony that she aimed to give her countrymen that much needed refinement. Withdrawing in 1613 from a court which seemed to her barbarous, Catherine opened her house near the Louvre to her own circle of admirers and friends. The house had been previously remodeled, ac- cording to plans made by the Marquise herself, to receive a larger company than did most dwellings of the period. The drawing-room, which was also the Marquise's bed-room, had been tinted in blue — hence the Chamhre hleue — and had been divided by a railing, behind wmcfi" stood tETbed. On each side of the bed were spaces known respectively as the devant and the ruelle. It was the habit of Catherine, seated on the bed, to receive the evening's guests first in one passage and then in the other; so that ruelle soon became synonymous with a reception itself — just as later on, when with advancing years the Marquise moved her bed into an alcove, an alcoviste is one who frequents such receptions.

The company who were invited to share this ofiicial intimacy

222 SOCIAL FORM AND THE SALON WRITERS

were not only people of rank but also men of letters. Among the former were Richelieu, the Due de la Tremoille, Mme de Longueville, the Marquis de Montausier, ^ and later, Mme de La Fayette and Mme de Sevigne. The men of letters included most of the illustrious; notably, Malherbe, Chapelain, Voiture, Scudery, Rotrou and Corneille. Conversation, of course, was the great attraction of this feast of reason; although actual parlor games — imported from Italy — dancing, music and impromptus of various kinds, were part of the entertainment. Yet conversa- tion claimed the foreground with these adepts of culture, and their discourse sparkled with conceits after the manner of Marino and hyperboles in the style of the Spaniard Gongora.

Affected purism or " preciosity " has a bad name. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, forms of affectation,

p , . . , partly independent of each other, spread through Europe like a disease. Lyly's Euphues appeared in England as early as 1579; considerably later in Spain came the culteranismo of Gongora. But in France the ■precievx move- ment was probably the most productive of good results. The Marquise lived until 1665, and the Hotel de Rambouillet had several periods of influence.

Its greatest brilliancy was from 1630 to 1648. Between these years it served the useful purpose of listening eagerly to a letter from Balzac, a criticism by* Chapelain, a play by Corneille — even if it pronounced Chapelain's epic ^ " beautiful but excessively tiresome " and went into raptures over the Guirlande de Julie, a chaplet of poems presented by Montausier to the Marquise's daughter on her birthday. The effect of such feminine control was bound to be two-sided. On the one hand, conversational and epistolary style flourished; both language and literature shook off the last vestiges of pedantry and gained measurably in precision and sparkle; never was wit more brilliant or more trenchant. On the other hand, the cleavage between "society" and the "people" is increased; literature becomes mainly the expression of a super-refined class; the quip or pointe is cultivated for it-s own sake, and ttie

' Montausier was the suitor of Julie d'Angennes, the Marquise's daughter. It is characteristic that he was kept waiting fifteen years before Julie married him, ' ZjO Pitcelle...

PRECIOSITY 223

commonplace shunned. It is enough, in order to understand the loss to language, to note that a useful word like poitrine was tabooed because the butcher said poitrine de veau or that Somaize in his Dictionnaire des Pretieuses records soustien de la vie for " bread." Most of all, the romances of the age were to suffer from this restriction: their chai'acters do not eat or drink, nor breathe any other atmosphere than that of their own sublimated sentiments.

For many of these characteristics the Hotel de Rambouillet was not to blame. The word jwecieifae, meaning an " affected woman " gains currency about lb5S','"while a " marmered style " is a recurrent phenomenon in French from the Middle Ages forward. But what a distinguished woman mi^t permit herself, in an imitator would seem distorted and out of place, and Catherine had many imitators. Among them were Mme de Sable — the friend of Pascal — and Mile Paulet, called la belle lionne because of her tawny hair. Most noteworthy of all is Mlig^de-Scudfiry, whose samedis, over which she presided under the name of Sappho, gave the entree to people quite as literary as the' frequenters of the Marquise, but less distinguished in social rank and thus visibly more affected in their attitude. Finally, when we add to these great ladies those numerous provincial dames who easily fell a victim to the refining habit, we understand the reason in 1659 for Moliere's Precieuses ridicides, where not only the imitation but preciosity itself is satirized. From this date on, ^precieuse could have no other than an unfavorable meaning, while the movement itself lapsed of its own ineptitude. As Menage remarked, when after the performance of Moliere's comedy he took Chapelain aside:

Monsieur . . . nous approuvions, vous et moi, toutes les sottises qui viennent d'etre critiquees si finement et avec tant de bon sens. II nous faudra bruler ce que nous avons adore et adorer ce que nous avons brule.

Moreover, at that moment the eyes of the cultivated world were fixed on another spectacle: the rising glory of the court of Louis XIV. With this arbiter of elegance no other could compete, though the literary and artistic salon is henceforth a French institution.

224 SOCIAL FORM AND THE SALON WRITERS

Associated intimately with the Hotel de Rambouillet are two letter-writers of note. The first is Jean-Louis Guez, Sieur Louis Guez de Balzac (1597-1654), whose grandiloquence laid de Balzac ^jjg foundation for French oratory and the rise of a Classical style.

Educated by the Jesuits, Balzac traveled and then entered the service of a French grandee, the later Cardinal de la Valette, with whom he passed two years in Rome. But the greater part of Balzac's life was spent on his estates in Angouleme, whence he kept in contact with the refined world by his writings, especially his Letters. In addition to these and various discours addressed to Mme de Rambouillet, Balzac also wrote a Prince, the Socrate chretien and Aristippe ou de la cour. But it was his Letters, the first of which appeared in 1624 and which were an event at the Hotel de Rambouillet, that made him famous.

In Balzac's ideas there was nothing very original; little that cannot be found in Amyot or Montaigne or the ancients. Moreover, no writer is less intimate; Balzac has no abandon, no moment when he is not consciously building a phrase. As Lanson remarks, it is the author and not the man who speaks to us in him. Balzac wraps in a cloak of rhetoric even the little things of life. Thanking a friend for a gift of peacocks, he writes:

Je connais mes richesses et en suis connu, et apres avoir lu jusqu'a ne voir goutte, je viens delasser ma vue travaiUee dans cet admirable vert, qui m'est tout ensemble un divertissement et un remede.

But he accomplished two notable things. He made French prose eloquent by giving it cadence, and he incorporated into it the Renaissance concept of the Roman patriot and of the honnete homme. It is easy to imagine with what effect his high-sounding phrases fell on the ears of Mme de Rambouillet's circle, especially when they contained such grandiose common- places as:

Un peu d'esprit et beaucoup d'autorit6, voila ce qui a toujoure gouverne le monde.

BALZAC AND VOITURE 225

Thus Balzac did for prose what Malherbe had done for verse. His type of Roman lives again in the plays of Corneille; note the following from the Letter on Cinna, addressed to Corneille himself:

L'empereur le fit consul, et voua I'avez fait honnete homme: mais vous I'avez pu faire par les lois d'lin art, qui polit et orne la verite.

That is, the French Cirma is a Roman plus the rules of decorum, and it is the fimction of art to embellish nature.

The significance of Balzac, then, lies in the impetus he gave to writing as such. He lacked the genius to create ideas or to invent new forms. He spent his life in making phrases, but of these he was a master-builder. He understood the harmonies of French to an eminent degree, and he taught his generation the value of paragraphs, transitions and the mot propre. His sentences, unlike those of his predecessors, are balanced and well-proportioned. Thus he fashioned the instrument of rhetorical French prose for future writers; the style of Bossuet is built upon that of Balzac.

On the other hand, the so-called CEuvres of Vincent Voiture (1598-1648) remain landlocked in Mme de Rambouillet's Vincent salon. They are in every way its expression; and

Voiture therefore the elegant badinage with which they are

filled has long since lost its flavor. However, Voiture was not a professional writer, and his poems and letters were not published until after his death.

Son of a wine merchant of Amiens, Voiture was another of Cardinal de la Valette's proteges. He was presented early in life to the Marquise, whose unofficial master-of-ceremonies he became. Grace and wit fitted him well for this role; and he organized dances and excursions, played practical jokes on the Marquise and bantered his associates in trifling verse and prose. These gifts and an undercurrent of sound judgment won him the favor of Richelieu, who sent him on diplomatic missions and permitted him to round out his career as an honnete homme.

In his Letters Voiture displays finesse and an innate delicacy of phrasing, which are in sharp contrast with the Spanish bombast then in fashion. How effective his mockery was appears from

226 SOCIAL FORM AND THE SALON WRITERS

the Letter to Mme de Rambouillet on the word car, which it was rumored the Academy would banish from the language. He writes:

Je ne sais pour quel interSt lis tachent d'oter a car ce qtii lui appartient pour le donner a pour ce qiie, ni pourquoi ils veulent dire avec trois mots ce qu'ils pouvaient dire avec trois lettres. On ne fera point de difficulte d'attaquer mais, et je ne sais si si demeurera en surete.

But his greatest merit is as a writer of vers de sodete — a genre of which he really established the vogue. He revived what was best in the lighter lyric vein — for example, the rondeau — and he made these shorter forms the perfect vehicle of grace and distinction. His charming Sonnet a Uranie, with its time-old hyperbole —

Je benis man martyre, et content de mourir, Je n'ose murmurer centre sa tyrannie,

had the honor of rallying a group of partisans, the Uranists, during the Fronde; while Mme de Rambouillet's praises, but hardly her traits, survive in the following madrigal from his pen:

Jamais I'oeil du soleil

Ne vit rien de pareil,

Ni si plein de delice,

Rien si digne d'amour,

Si ce ne fut le jour

Que naquit Arthenice.

Among Voiture's rivals and followers were Benserade, whose sonnet on Job was preferred to that on Uranie; Boisrobert, the favorite of Richelieu; Maleville, another sonneteer; and Sarrasin, a clever writer of ballades and of prose. Yet none of these could surpass the exquisite gallantry of Voittire.

While polite society was thus cultivating manners, a smaller group, known oflBcially as les doctes, was busy at codifying the Ihe rules of art. At first the meetings were secret.

Group"*^ They began in 1626 when various literary men formed the habit of dropping in on Valentin Conrart, a wealthy Parisian, for the exchange of ideas. The group included Gombault, a minor dramatist, Godeau, bishop of Vence and known to the precievx world as th« Mage de Mon,

THE FRENCH ACADEMY 227

and the critic Chapelain. In 1629 Richelieu proposed the formation of a formal body for the pursuit of literature. This plan was finally accepted, and the new society took the simple and effective name of I'Academie frangaise — in imitation, more or less, of the various Academies then flourishing in Italy.

The first meeting of the Academy was in March, 1634, although Parliament, jealous of its own prerogatives, waited until 1637 before granting a charter. From the very start the memtiership of the organization was limited to forty, and in 1640 Patru introduced the custom of receiving a new member with a discours. The members themselves also propounded various topics; thus Chapelain spoke against " love," Gombault discussed the still more elusive matter of the Je ne sais quoi, and, lastly, Chapelain proposed the excellent idea of making a Dictionary and of compiling a Grammar, a Rhetoric and a Poetic Art.

The Dictionary alone saw the light, though not until 1694, the date of the first edition. The work had been entrusted to Claude Favre de Vaugelas (1585-1650), a native of Savoy and the author in 1647 of the excellent Remarques sur la langue frangaise. Vaugelas followed Malherbe in declaring for a , purified form of French, based on " usage." But unlike Malherbe, he meant by usage the speech pf_the^ court and of " the best authors of the time." So that again thetendency was toward aristocratic norms and a neglect of the every-day French of the people. In fact, the Dictionary urged the elimination of " les vieux miots," " mots nouvellement inventes," " les termes d'emportement et qui blessent la pudeur," as well as the technical words once dear to Ronsard. This severity, however, did not pass unnoticed. As early as 1650 Menage — the grammarian — launched a witty satire, which began:

A nos seigneurs academiques, Nos seigneurs les hypercritiques, Souverains arbitres des mots, Doctes faiseurs d'avant-propos, ] ''.' Cardinal-historiographes.

And Furetiere, driven from the Academy because of his indepen- dence, found in Holland an asylum for a Dictionary of his own, published after his death in 1690. Moreover, Vaugelas

228 SOCIAL FORM AND THE SALON WRITERS

himself — with all his prestige — did not live to complete his own work: he died insolvent, and his imfinished manuscript was among the papers seized by his creditors. Nevertheless, when the Dictionary was restored to the Academy it was completed along the lines Vaugelas had laid down. Only in the fourth edition is the " language of the people " considered, to- gether with various words taken from the " arts and sciences." In general, then, the role of the Academy has been reactionary from the beginning. Even in the seventeenth century such illustrious names as Descartes, Pascal and Moliere are lacking on its roster. Preserver of tradition, the Academy has often been fifty years behind the times. But this conservatism has lent weight to its pronouncements. Time and again its definitions have been invoked to solve knotty questions, even in diplomacy, and amid the changing policies and politics of France the Academy has been the guardian of the best French culture. The oft-cited witticism on the Academicians:

lis sont quarante, mais ils ont de I'esprit comme quatre

is brilliant but unjust.

Academic in criticism, Jean Chapelain (1595-1674) was thoroughly so in poetry. An eclectic as to culture, he lacked the inspiration and the talent to be creative. His long-heralded epic, La Pucelle — on the theme of Joan of Arc — appeared in 1656, and although it met with a succes d'estime among people like Mme de Longueville, even she admitted that it was a bore. But while we may admit with Boileau that Chapelain is a mediocre poet, as a critic he had an important share in formulating the Classical doctrine. He wrote an ode on Richelieu which ingratiated him in the latter's favor. In 1632 he even became secretary to Louis XIII. It was by virtue of the esteem he enjoyed that he wielded his influence on the Academy and that he molded the Sentiments sur le Cid in a way not to be unfavorable to Corneille. His Letters, though without literary merit, are valuable in reconstructing the details of his time. Finally, his library, rich in Italian works, contained the treatise of Castelvetro on Aristotle's Poetics from which the " rules " of the drama were to be derived ; but of this, more in a subsequent chapter. Between Malherbe and Boileau the notable name in criticism is that of Chapelain.

CHAPTER II HONORE D'URFE AND THE ROMANESQUE

The devotees of " society," however, craved other outlets of expression than the quips and conceits of Mme de Rambouillet's circle. They had youth and imagination, and they sought a larger canvas for the portrayal of their ideals than the framework of the salon permitted. This they found in a revival of prose fiction, which leads us back momentarily to the sixteenth century.

The barber in Cervantes' immortal work proclaims the Amadis de Gaula — the Spanish version of which appeared in 1508 — "the best of its kind in the chivalric line," and so it remains until long after the time we are considering. In 1540 d'Herberay des Essarts translated the Amadis into French. Although the supernatural agencies of the story did not appeal to its Gallic admirers, the purely chivalric adventures, the love-making and the tone of courtesy it breathed struck upon sympathetic ears. Another work that stimulated the portrayal of adventure in the service of love was the Greek tale of Theagenes and Chariclea, translated in 1549 by the able hand of Amyot. But again it was Italian influence, coming this time through Spain, that gave the real start to a revival of French fiction. Throughout the sixteenth century the pastoral romance had flourished in Italy, notably in forms modeled upon Sannazzaro's Arcadia. So that when in 1607 Honore d'Urfe undertook to adapt to French sur- roundings the Diana Enamorada of Montemayor, itself an adap- tation of Sannazzaro's work, the ground was prepared and the times were ready for such an attempt. Since love is " the desire for immortality in beauty," ^ it follows (so argued d'Urfe) that loving is to seek the person worthy of this ideal. This quest, minutely pursued, is the theme of the thirty and more episodes, with their seven pairs of lovers, of d'Urf^'s Astree.

' See Plato's Symposium, § 207, 229

230 HONORE D'URFE AND THE ROMANESQUE

Chance placed the birth of Honore d'Urfe (1568-1625) in the busy port of Marseilles, whither his mother had gone on a visit. D'Urfe's ^^^ ^^^^ home and the Arcadian scene of his story- Life was the county of Forez, near Lyons. Here the d'Urfes had lived for centuries and here Honore, fresh from the College de Tournon in 1585, spent the most peaceful and enjoyable years of his life. Thirty years later he sentimentally reflects on these haunts of his boyhood:

Belle et agreable riviere de Lignon, sur les bords de laquelle j'ai passe si heureusement men enfance et la plus tendre partie de ma premiere jeunesse ... a I'ombre de tes arbres femllus et a la fraicheur de tes belles eaux, quand I'innocence de mon age me lais- sait jouir de moi-meme, et me permettait de gouter en repos les bonheurs et les felieites que le ciel . . . repandait sur le bien- heureux pays que tu arroses de tes claires et vives ondes.

From this peaceful retreat Honore was torn by the civil wars in France. He joined the party of the Leaguers, was twice thrown into prison by his adversaries, and finally retired to Aimecy in Savoy and devoted himself to literatm-e. A notable fact is that he is thus a contemporary and compatriot of Saint Frangois de Sales. Besides his great romance, he wrote a pastoral poem named, after its hero, Sereine (160Q-1604), and an un- finished heroic on the House of Savoy, La Savoysiade. Of the Astree, Honors actually wrote three volumes, the first of which appeared in 1607, with a dedication to Henry IV.* But so great was their success that he planned at least a fourth, which was published a year before Honore's death through the efforts of his niece and his secretary, Baro. This was followed in 1626 by two additional spurious volumes, appearing over the name of Borstel, Sieur de Gaubertin.

The charm of the Astrie lies in the reality of its setting and the nobility of its sentiment. Its characters are the virtuosi The "AstrSe"''^ *^® pastoral, won to a life of peace and frankly in disguise. All are courtly, adepts In conversa- tion, if need be, poets. The events are staged in Merovingian times, on the banks of the Lignon. Celadon has been in love for three years with Astree; but Alcippe, father of Celadon, is a Capulet, and the lovers arrange that Celadon shall feign devotion

' The third volume, dedicated to Louis XIII, appeared in 1619.

THE ASTREE 231

to another shepherdess. Misunderstanding ensues: Astree scorn- fully banishes Celadon from her presence, and the unhappy youth seeks death in the waters of the Lignon. Rescued by nymphs, he escapes the amorous pursuit of Galatee, their princess, and finds refuge in a cave, near which he raises bowers to his beloved, also a temple of leaves, where are inscribed the Twelve Laws of Love. Celadon then places in the hand of the sleeping Silvandre a letter to Astree, who infers that it is Celadon's wraith who is writing. At last, the Druid Ademas brings together Astree and her lover, now disguised as the fair Alexis, daughter of Ademas. The consequence is that Astree loves the supposed Alexis. A second banishment ensues. Celadon in despau- offers his body to the lions of the Fountain of Love, but they refuse to prey on so true a lover, and the work closes with a grand reunion, in which Celadon and Astree, Silvandre and Diane, the light-hearted Hylas who refuses to believe in the constancy of love, all take part.

Into this framework are woven the " affairs " of many other lovers, each with his particular traverse, as well as considerable warlike adventure and much edifying discussion of I'honneste amitie or gallantry. Thus, Ademas explains to Celadon the genesis of love in Neo-Platonic terms:

Toute beaute precede de cette souveraine bonte que nous appe- lons Dieu, et c'est un rayon qui s'elance de lui sur toutes choses creees.

We learn that lovers attract one another like magnets, and that thus joined, their souls mount to the pure essence of all loving. But the real expositor of this theme is Silvandre, the model of fidelity, just as Hylas, the inconstant shepherd, is the foil to the extravagances of others. Indeed, there is a peculiar irony in the fact that d'Urfe has made Hylas, a Provengal, the voice of Gallic common sense. Hylas, to whom inconstancy was an article of faith, seems the master-creation of this idyll; and one can picture the delight with which some of Mme de Rambouillet's frequenters read the passages in which Hylas' raillery brings back to earth his nympholept companions. If the heroic romance of the century derives from the Astree, its counter- part— the roman comiqv^ — may well have taken hints from d'Urf e's mocking shepherd.

232 HONORE D'URFE AND THE ROMANESQUE

But it would be easy to exaggerate the merits of d'Urfe's work. The Italian pastoral is a poetic fiction consistently maintained. D'Urfe's attempt to make it a lesson-book in which the crude would learn good manners, and above all, the mixture of the heroic with the idyllic, jar on the modem reader as infractions of good taste. Granted that the period rather than d'Urfe is responsible for the blemishes in the Astree, it is yet true that d'Urfe's tendency to treat the sentimentalizings of his characters as important moral truths needs but the confrontation with a Montaigne or a Du Vair to show how vaporous his idea is. D'Urfe has the suavity of Saint Frangois de Sales, but he lacks the latter's underlying strength, and successful as the Astree was, it should not be forgotten that the author and his public were both enamored of panache — that quality which Rostand wittily defined as " a delicate refusal to take life seriously."

On the other hand, d'Urfe has considerable descriptive power (the Astree still was a favorite with Rousseau) , a marked sense of distinction, charm of style, and the ability to render courtly traits effectively. All this made for the vogue of his romance during the first half of the century. The Astree supplied endless themes of conversation to the salons. It was a veritable mine for plots and characters of the drama; a year before the Cid a troupe of actors still advertised plays by Du Ryer, Scudery and Mairet, as containing " subjects borrowed from the Astree." Particularly, it committed the novel in France to an analysis of sentiment, and in its union of a pastoral with a pseudo-historical setting, it laid the foundation for numerous romances that were to follow in its wake.

The first of these is La Carithee (1621) by Marin le Roy, Sieur de Gomberville (1600-1674). This is a pale reflection of the Historical Astree, with scarcely more history than the iSoman Romances jj^j^g ^f Germanicus, its hero. But the same author's Polexandre (5 vols., 1629-1637) replaces the pastoral by the full- blown heroic, developed amid exotic surroundings, which gave the work an immense success. The principal scene of this romance is the Canary Islands, where the heroine Alcidiane is protected by a shore that disappears from view as the mariner approaches it. To win this inaccessible bride Polexandre goes through inextri- cable adventures with Turks, Moroccans, Portuguese and

HISTORICAL ROMANCES 233

Spaniards; he patiently listens to a whole course on Mexican history by Zelmatide, heir to the Empire of the Incas; and he himself becomes Prince of the Isle of the Sun, to which gorgeous ships bear gifts. Wild and extravagant as Gomberville is, he has an eye for color, and his fantasies on America found favor with a generation to whom the New World was the land of marvels and of gold.

If Polexandre is French in background, Desmarets' Ariane (2 vols., 1632), which excels through its brevity, transports us to the Rome of Nero. It contains the usual love intrigue, inter- woven with the burning of the city and a number of unlikely adventures, until the hero Melinte weds the sumptuous Ariane. But Desmarets, known also by his successful comedy, Les Visionnaires, has a direct style, which graces particularly the numerous letters and oracles with which his tale abounds.

The historical subject was now to the fore; Corneille was exploiting it in the drama, when the Gascon, Gautier Coste de La Calpre- la Calprenede (1609-1663), began staging it mag- nede nificently in his romance Cassandre (10 vols., 1642-

1645). This work was soon followed by the still more elaborate Cleopatre and Faramond ou I'Histoire de France, each in twelve volumes.^ La Calprenede also wrote tragedies, but he owed his reputation to his romances, which continued to be read in England until Richardson's Pamela destroyed their hold in the eighteenth century. What distinguishes La Calprenede is the adroit handling of long narrative. His works abound in " oracles," "letters," descriptions of tournaments and disguises. The author plunges inXmedias res and develops his characters through narrative which is given either by themselves or by subordinate personages. One feature, the " literary portrait," found in previous romances, is elaborated. But the main trait is that the plot moves rapidly on, uncloyed by long-spun dis- quisitions on love; also the Oriental setting is deftly unfolded, and the separate episodes have point and direction. All this was a great gain, aside from the fact that the names of La Calprenede's heroines were soon on all lips and that " fier comme Artaban " — one of his heroes — has become proverbial in French.

• The last five volumes of Faramond are by a continuator, Vaumorifere.

234. HONORE D'URFE AND THE ROMANESQUE

Still Oriental and Roman, though contemporary in their refer- ence to actual figures and events of the day, are the works of The Madeleine de Scudery (1608-1701), with whom her

ScudSrys brother George collaborated, at least in name. With these authors, the sentimental romance reached its greatest popularity, which was destroyed only by the combined satire of Moliere and Boileau.

The Scuderys, brother and sister, were from Normandy. George early entered the army, but resigned in 1630 and began cultivating the dramatic muse. As we shall see, he took a leading part in the Quarrel of the Cid, and like many contempo- raries he tried his hand on an epic, Alaric, which had the honor of making Boileau very angry. His position in the world gave him the entree to the Hotel de Rambouillet. Hither he led his sister (about 1639), and two years later they published their first romance, Ibrahim ou I'lllustre Bassa, the scene of which is laid in Constantinople under Soliman II. In 1649-1653 their joint labors resulted in the ten parts of the celebrated Artamene ou le Grand Cyrus. Here, beneath the thin veil of the Persian war, the entire aristocratic world — from the Grand Conde (Cyrus) to Voiture (Aristhee) and Chapelain (Callicrate) — found itself reflected in detailed " portraits." The stir that this work produced can be imagined. Tallemant des Reaux aflSrms that a key to the romance was in circulation ; and we may be sure that more than one key was used. Meanwhile, however, Madeleine de Scudery had begun her ownjmtii^, where precievx gallantry rose to melodramatic proportions in the form of maps and indices of sentiment, like the well-known Carte de Tendre in Clelie and the so-called Conversations galantes. Once more, it is a question of whether it is sweeter to be loved than to love, of love via friendship, of absence as a cure to love, and so on.

The Scuderys' third romance, Clelie, histoire romaine (10 vols., 1654^1660), plants these flowers of preciosity on Roman soil and surrounds them with the noisy atmosphere of the Fronde. Clelie is the daughter of a noble Roman, Clelius, whose family Tarquin has compelled to fly from Rome to Carthage. On the voyage thither Clelius' own son is lost and in his place Aronce, son of Porsenna, is rescued and later brought up with Clelie, who of course becomes the lady of his choice. Then follow

REALISTIC ROMANCES 235

various adventures and rivalries. Clelie has other suitors for her hand — among them the tyrant Tarquin himself, a conspi- racy is formed against Tarquin by Brutus, and this patriot's history is narrated in detail. Finally, Porseima, in obedience to an oracle, deserts Tarquin and allows his son, Aronce, to marry Clelie, while Tarquin retreats to Cumae. But the interest of the work lies in the " conversations " and the twenty-seven or more " portraits," including such notabilities as Louis XIV, Fouquet, Mile de Scudery herself, the Duchess of Longueville, Ninon de Lenclos and Scarron — in short, most of the social set of the age. In Clelie the long-winded heroic romance attains its summit, and fortunately its term.

Thus, differing from La Calprenede mainly in the systematic use of the disguised character. Mile de Scudery supplies the sociology with which to judge the grand siecle in its making. Her works offer an opportunity to the historian which Victor Cousin {La Societe frangaise) has not failed to seize. Outside of the idealized " portrait," however, they contain little that coinmon sense and art could approve, and the ridicule that they evoked came near destroying the genre they represent. Luckily, Mme de La Fayette rescued the novel for Classicism by substi- tuting psychology for heroics in her Princesse de Cleves, but Mme de La Fayette was a follower not of the Scuderys but of Comeille (Ch. IV). As for the sentimental novel, Moliere derided it in his Precieus^s-ndJssdes, and Boileau sounded its death-knell when in Les Heros de roman (1664) , a Lucianic dia- logue, he marched the heroes of the romances down to Hades, to be cast into Lethe.

Such reaction and satire, however, were not new. As early as 1622, Charles Sorel (1602-1674), obviously inspired by Spanish The Realistic works, began his Histoire comtique de Francion, Typ«8 a tale of picaresque character, in which such writers

as Malherbe, Racan and Balzac appear in disguise. Five years later he published Le Berger extravagant, where in the manner of Cervantes he recounts the mishaps of a young Parisian whose mind has been upset by reading the Astree. Amid the latter's pastoral ravings is placed an attack on all fiction, both prose and verse. The work, which was extremely popular, is also directed against the pompous and precieiix style. But the weak

236 HONORS D'URFE AND THE ROMANESQUE

side of Sorel is his pedantry. His wit is too obvious, his ar- raignment too sweeping, and he lacks the realistic and sympa- thetic insight for which the Don Quixote is immortal. A similar fault, that of pettiness, attaches to the Roman bourgeois (1666) of Antoine Furetiere (1620-1688), the friend of Moliere and Racine. Here the types are Parisian bourgeois; Sorel himself figures among them, and precieux society comes in for its due, Mile de Scudery (Polymathie) being extolled for her wit but derided for her ugliness. A telling stroke of Fm-etiere's is the tariff of prices he gives for the insertion of a character in a romance. As satire, the Roman bourgeois is the most graphic account the century produced of the foibles of the middle class, however inferior it may be as art to Moliere's Bourgeois gentil- homme.

The novelist of the period in whom realism does approach art is Paul Scarron (1610-1660). Hopelessly deformed and bent by disease, Scarron, in spite of his loose morals, had an inflexible spirit which evidently won him the affection of the remarkable lady he married: Frangoise dAubigne, granddaughter of the Protestant poet, and later, as Mme de Maintenon, the most influential woman in France. Scarron had a turn for the burlesque, which he manifests in his plays and also in his Virgile travesti, a vulgar satire on the epics of his day that he should have allowed to die by their own dead weight. His one noteworthy feat was Le Roman comique (1651), the history of a strolling troupe of comedians, thought by some critics to be Moliere's. Here we have nol only types but genuine characters, individualized in their proper setting and possessing the imprint of actuality. The narrative is short and sprightly, and its vigor contrasts sharply with the sugary tone of La Calprenede and the Scuderys.

It must be apparent from the foregoing survey that the French novel of the seventeenth century does not stand for that Tjjg observance of rule and order toward which French

Romanesque, literature as a whole was moving. The reasons for this are clear. In the first place, the romance was not an Aristotelian or Horatian form. Thus there were no classical rules to follow; and as for the influence of the late Greek romances, their tendency was entirely in favor of the dif-

THE ROMANESQUE 237

fuseness and complicated intrigue that one observes in the Amadis and the Astree. In the second place, those Italian critics who treated the romance were careful to note its distinctive, modern character, as not bound by form but as open to this imagination in search of the new and adventurous. Lastly, feudalism itself, the survival of Arthurian themes in Ariosto, Tasso and the Amadis, as well as the printing in the sixteenth century of many Old French romances, are factors that served, each in its way, to further the revival of prose fiction.

However, the Age of Louis XIII was romantic, if not emo- tionally in the modem sense, at least, intellectually or ration- ally. The salons with their extravagances, their cult of Spanish and Italian mannerisms, their dabbling with the je ne sais quoi, their naive desire to see themselves " portrayed " ideally, illus- trate this fact. In the field of politics the Wars of the Fronde exemplify it again: it was the toying with politics rather than any systematic attempt at revolution that made the Frondeurs such easy victims to the astuteness of a Richelieu or a Mazarin. It was these intellectual vagaries, impelled by a laudable desire to excel and be brilliant, that inspired seventeenth-century romance. Rostand has revived the spirit of the time in his Cyrano de Bergerac, which brings back not only the relatively obscure author of the Etats et empire de la lune but also the whole epoch of his life (1619-1655), with its buoyancy, its af- fectations, its humor and its heroism.

Moi, e'est moralement que j'ai mes elegances,

says Cyrano in the play. This is not yet the grandeur d'dme of a Cornelian hero, but an approach to it. The truth is that with all its faults the romanesque always possesses a moral element of generosity and distinction. As a literary form, however, the sentimental novel of the period failed because it lacked the necessary curbs, both from within and from without. These it was finally to acquire from the drama, and thus seventeenth-century fiction excels only in the single instance -oLiMPnncesse de Cleves (see Book IV, Ch. I) .

CHAPTER III THE DRAMA PREVIOUS TO CORNEILLE

The Edict of 1548, by which Parliament established the Confrerie de la Passion in control of the Parisian stage (Bk. I) , had relegated the mysteres sacres to the provinces. Such plays of medieval inspiration as survived in the capital assumed a secular, classical form, which — as we shall see — was often more apparent than real. In 1578 the Confrerie itself, unable to change with the changing world, took professional actors into its pay; and finally it rented the Hotel de Bourgogne to outside troupes of actors. In 1583 its boards were occupied by Italian players, the Gelosi, famous for their portrayal of the so-called Improvised Comedy or Commedia dell' arte; and these were followed in 1599 by the Comediens frangais ordinaires du roi, a strolling troupe which under the leadership of Valleran Lecomte had won favor at court. It was to compete with this troupe that the actor Mohdory opened a second Parisian theater, in the quarter of the Marais, in 1628. But the Confrerie was not easily dispossessed; clinging to the proprietorship ' of the Hotel de Bourgogne, it interfered in theatrical affairs until in 1676 Louis XIV, annoyed at its meddling, dissolved the corporation.

Within these dates (1548-1676) came the rise and development of French Classical drama.

In considering its origins it is important to keep two facts in mind. First, in the sixteenth century the French shared with the rest of Europe the view that the drama is " an exposition of emotion, of misery or joy " rather than " a conflict of wills in the form of action." Secondly, it is less from tragedy or comedy thus conceived that the Classical drama descends, than from a hybrid form, called tragi-comedy, as developed by Gamier and Hardy, and as perfected by Corneille. Tragi-comedy is the real link between the medieval theater, with its multiplex stage-

238

RENAISSANCE TRAGEDY 239

setting, and the plays of Moliere and Racine. Thus we can distinguish two preliminary periods: (1) 1548-1600 — the period when France, together with other countries, is striving to pro- duce a type of expository lyrical drama; and (2) 1600-1636 — the period when the more popular tragi-comedy is definitely established and then (1628), through the influence of the unities, is transformed into the Classical forms of tragedy and comedy.

The Renaissance had inherited the name " tragedy " from the medieval granomarians. A tragedy was any plot, whether The Renais- drama or not, that ended in bloodshed and horror: sance Type " Injustices que I'on raconte es tragedies," said o rage y j;[-i{.olas Oresme. But the concept that tragedy is a dramatic representation of human misery is Senecan. In this respect the Italians again anticipated their northern neighbors, the first vernacular drama on a Senecan model being the Sophonisba of Trissino in 1515. Italian actors and stage-settings were popular at the court of Francis I; and in 1548 Sebillet (see Bk. II, Ch. I) said in his Art poetique:

La moralite frangoise represente en quelquechose la tragedie grecque ou latine, singulierement en ce qu'elle traite sujets graves et principaux. Et si le Frangois s'estoit range a ce, que la fin de la moralite fust toujours triste et douloureuse, la moralite seroit tragedie.

Greek influence was added to Senecan by the translations of Lazare de Baif from Euripides and Sophocles, and with the same insistence on the tragic ending, foir Baif defines as follows:.

Tragedie est une moralite composee des grandes calamitez, meur- tres et adversitez survenus aux nobles et excellents personnages comme . . . CEdipus qui se creva les yeux apres qu'U lui fust declare comme il avoit eu des enfants de sa propre mere, apres avoir tue son pere.

Thus, it is clear that when, after 1548, the French began writing tragedies of their own, the underlying concept was lyric rather than dramatic; the chief element of the plot was the ^fMnau£mmji;. and the subject invariably was the misfortune which befalls several souls or the misfortunes which befall one soul. A typical model was the Hecuba of Euripides, of which there were four

240 THE DRAMA PREVIOUS TO CORNEILLE

translations besides innumerable editions. Here the audience delighted in the spectacle of a queen who has become a slave, a wife who witnesses her husband's death, a mother who sees her son and daughter perish; three calamities overwhelming a noble and virtuous character. And the best example in all literature of this lyrical form of tragedy is Shakespeare's King Lear, where, with characteristic lack of poetic justice, the destruction of Lear carries with it the just and the unjust to a terrible end. It is needless to say that no lyrical tragedy written in France is com- parable to this masterpiece.

The main difference between Renaissance tragedy and the old moralite therefore was one of form — granting the adoption also of the Greek or Latin subject. The plot was now divided into acts instead of journees, to agree with Horace ; the occasions for lyrical verse were increased through the use of monologues, descriptions and choruses, modeled on the ancients; above all, attention was given to stylistic expression, and when a tragedy was acted — though few sixteenth-century tragedies were — an elaborate Renaissance setting was the rule. Obviously, such plays had but little action, since the victim, and not the agent of the drama, was the main character in the plot.

Most of the above traits appear in the first French tragedy, Cleopatre captive, by Etienne Jodelle (1552). Here the action begins only after the death of Antony. In the first act the ghost of the murdered Roman recounts the story of his tragic love, Cleopatra discusses with her attendants a dream she has had, and the chorus dilates upon the inconstancy of fortune. In the second act Octavius deliberates on the fate reserved for the Egyptian queen. The agony of Cleopatra is then the sub- ject of the third and fourth acts, which are followed by a reci- tal of her death. In the entire play there is but one real epi- sode (that of Seleucus), the work being an endless elegy on an inevitable death. Unfortunately, Jodelle for all his association with the Pleiade was an inferior poet, and rare are the lines in which beauty of expression redeems paucity of incident and action. Yet there is imagination in the words in which Cleopatra envisages Antony's love:

Ha! rorgueil et les ris, la perle detrempee. La delicate vie effeminant ses forces, Estoient de nos malheurs les subtiles amorces.

RENAISSANCE TRAGEDY 241

Jodelle's tragedy was played before the court at the Hotel de Reims. In 1560 Jacques Grevin's La Mort de Cesar was performed at the College de Beauvais. Republican Rome was a favorite subject with the Renaissance, and Grevin followed the general outlines of a Latin tragedy on Caesar by Muret. Being a superior poet, he infused the well-ordered original with warmth and idealism. Mark Antony, with the toga of the dead Caesar in his hands, is not yet the Shakespearean spellbinder, but his plea for the rights of conquest over against the rights of the people, as set forth by Cassius, is dramatic in concept and expression. There is, in fact, in the clash of Grevin's lines an occasional approach to the rhetoric of Corneille:

Cesar

C'est peu d'avoir vaincu puisqu'il faut vivre en doute.

Antoine

Mais s'en peut-il trouver un qui ne vous redoute?

Better than either of the plays mentioned is Saul le furieux by Jean de la Taille, in 1562. Like Grevin, La Taille was a Protes- tant with a classical education; but he had greater knowledge of dramatic technique. When his tragedy appeared in print (1572), it was preceded by a treatise on the Art de la tragedie in which the dramatic unities are borrowed from the Italian work of Castelvetro (see below) . The theme of Saul is the man crushed by fate. Saul, who had been the instrument of the Divine will, now becomes its victim. But his spirit, struggling with doubt, open revolt and heroic despair, remains uncon- quered in the face of death. Meeting destruction at the head of his troops, he says:

. Je ne veux, abaissant ma haute majeste,

Eviter le trepas qui predit m'a este; Je veux done vaUlamment mourir pour ma patrie; Je veux acquerir gloire en vendant cher ma vie.

The play closes on this note of moral grandeur, which is the more firmly conceived inasmuch as the opposing fate is God Himself.

Thus Biblical and Graeco-Roman themes alternate as the subjects of tragedy. A trilogy by Louis Desmasures — a friend of the Pleiade — covers the life of King David: David combat-

242 THE DRAMA PREVIOUS tO CORNEILLE

tant, David triomphant and David fugitif (1566). By the early age of eighteen Jacques de la Taille (a brother of Jean) had composed a Ddire and an Alexandre. But the most prolific, and in general the most original, dramatist of the age was Robert Gamier (1535-1601).

Of Garnier's six classical tragedies, the Hippolyte (1573) is the most interesting because it continues the tradition of Seneca. Robert Far from aliticipating Racine, Gamier makes

Gamier Phaedra die of love, not remorse, and lets her find

in death the union with Hippolytus. Thus the lyrical strain is strong in Gamier, and death crowns Phaedra's passion with a halo of glory:

Mes pensers ne sont plus d'amoureuse detresse, Je n'ai rien de lascif qui votre ame reblesse —

is the final reflection of this chastened heroine. On the other hand, as Faguet has shown, Garnier's Les Juives (1580) is the Athalie of the sixteenth century. Elegiacal by nature and hence slow in action, this Biblical tragedy is yet powerful in dramatic suspense. The plot is the story of Zedekiah, King of Judea, overwhelmed by the cruelty of Nebuchadnezzar. The first act reveals the situation: the life of the King and his city are threatened; the chorus of Jews bewails the oncoming doom. In the second, an appeal to the conqueror's wife gives new hope. In the third, Nebuchadnezzar veils his grim purpose in obscure language. The fourth shows the family of Zedekiah, imprisoned, but trustful as to their final release. In the fifth, the blow falls as from a clear sky: Zedekiah 's children are murdered, his high- priest is beheaded, and he himself is blinded.

Garnier's style lacks richness, but his motivation is well-knit and his characters stand out as individuals. With his tragi- comedy Bradamante — his most original work — we shall deal in another place. As for his verse, it often has the harmony of the Pleiade. How Ronsardian he can be appears in such lines as these, from the chorus of Hippolyte:

Faisons, 6 mes compagnes, Retentir lea montagnes Et les rochers secrets De nos regrets!

MONTCHRETIEN 243

In Gamier, lyrical tragedy had reached its apogee; with An-

Montchretien *°^^^ de Montchretien (1575-1621) it had a final

flare before its extinction in the seventeenth century.

Montchretien's life was full of incident, with which the spn- tentious rhetoric of his writings is in sharp contrast. Son of an apothecary of Falaise, left an orphan and robbed of his patri- mony in youth, he made his way as a servant, won back his estate and became embroiled in duels. In 1605 he was in Eng- land. There his tragedy, L'Ecosscdse, on the subject of Mary Stuart, won the approbation of James I, who effected his return to France. He then engaged in the manufacture of steel. But he agitated against Louis XIII, joined the recalcitrant Protes- tants and was shot down with several of his followers. He left considerable lyric and some epic poetry, six tragedies and a bergerie.

Of the dramas the Biblical tragedy, Aman ou la vanite, and the aforenamed L'Ecossaise ou le desastre are the best. But they are good only in their lyrical qualities: a smooth and elegant dic- tion and an abundant imagery which is all too harmonious. "What is man? " asks Montchretien:

Une fleur passagere Que la chaleur flestrit ou que le vent fait choir, Une vaine fumee, ou une ombre legere. Que Ton volt au matin, qu'on ne voit plus au soir.

His Aman has five acts; Racine, a far greater poet, found in the same subject material for only three. The first two acts of L'Ecossaise are composed of rhetorical speeches, ending in the death-sentence pronounced by Queen Elizabeth; the next two contain the expostulations and prayers of the victim; and the last act is the recital of Mary's execution. Thus, Montchretien closes a type of tragedy which lacked the vigor and originality to make it blossom into life. It was not, as a type, suited to the French sqnse of clarity and poetic justice. Moreover, those Frenchmen who essayed it were not of the first rank.

As regards comedy, the failure of the sixteenth century was even greater than in tragedy. " Comedy," said the best comic Renaissance writer of the time, " shows dexterity of the mind," Comedy ^^^ ^ comedy writer who is merely dexterous is not

244 THE DRAMA PREVIOUS TO CORNEILLE

apt to be true to life. This misconception, however, was not due to inadequate models. By 1339 the plays of Terence had almost all been translated into French. In 1567 Baif gave a clever rendering of the Miles gloriosus of Plautus. The types of Italian comedy of intrigue, the commedia dell'arte, were gaining rapid and lasting recognition: we shall see how Moliere learned from them. That curious medley of genres, the Spanish Celes' Una, went through five translations. Nevertheless, the French were neither first-class imitators of foreign wares nor wielders of a successful comedy of their own.

Thus Jodelle's Eugene (1552) is a jarce dressed up in classical costume. It is divided into regular acts and scenes, and some of the characters have a gravity of tone that is not unlike the later bourgeois drama or drame. But the pointed satire of the wealthy and dissolute priest, Eugene, is farcical in concept with- out achieving the light and frolicsome spirit of the medieval genre. A similar wavering spoils the effect of Jacques Grevin's La Tresoriere, although the same author's Les Ebahis (1561) has the merit of ridiculing Italian affectation in the character of Pantalone — himself a favorite comedy type — and of realistically portraying the dotard in , love. In imitation of the Italians, Jean de la Taille's Les Corrivaux (about 1563) and Odet de Turnebe's Les Contents (1584) employ prose instead of eight-syllable verse. The latter play is also noted for its sprightly dialogue and its clever delineation of the " nurse," another popular Renaissance type. Lastly, the best sixteenth-century comedy in French is a direct adaptation from the Italian; namely, Larivey's " Ghosts " or Les Esprits.

A descendant of the Florentine publishers Giunti, whose name he Gallicized, Larivey was a cleric of Troyes who mingled re- Larivey hgion with a bent for the burlesque and licentious.

Although his Six premieres comedies facetieuses in prose (1549) were never performed, Larivey had an eye for the dramatic and knew the French equivalents for Italian roguery and picaresque phrase. Les Esprits, based on Lorenzino's Aridosio, has fewer characters than its original, but these are well drawn, and in particular the third act — with the conjuring of the " ghosts " by M. Josse, sorcerer, and the delud- ing of RuflSn, the importunate creditor — devdops excellent

ALEXANDRE HARDY 245

farce. As late as 1611 Larivey published other comedies, none of which reach the high level of the earlier group. It should be noted that Moliere read Larivey with profit.

A position between tragedy and comedy was given by the Renaissance to the dramatized bergerie or pastorale. As the last The Pas- name indicates, the chief features of this genre are torale the disguise of the characters as shepherds and the

idyllic. Arcadian setting made fashionable by Sannazzaro. The traits in question appear first in a comedy called Les Ombres (1566), by Filleul. The translation of Tasso's Aminta and Guarini's Pastor Fido thereupon increased the vogue of such idealized portraiture, especially among the aristocratic- But it was not until after 1600 that Hardy made the pastorale a distinct genre by separating it from the leading dramatic form of his time, tragi-comedy.

The striking thing about Hardy is his timeliness. He came at a moment when the theater needed a practical person to guide Alexandre it: one who was not primarily a poet or a theorist Trari^ *°* ^^^ ^ playwright trained to the stage and the ro- comedy manesque taste of the theater-going public. This

role Alexandre Hardy (1570-1632) was eminently qualified to fill. Employed by the comedians of Valleran Lecomte as a sort of poete a gages, Hardy slaved to supply them with a reper- tory, at first in the provinces and then in Paris at the Hotel de Bourgogne. That his output does not rank high as literature is not surprising — particularly when we consider that he pro- duced hundreds of plays, of which only eleven tragedies, twenty- five tragi-comedies and five pastorales were ever published. Lanson thinks he scented the importance, without being able to realize it, of psychological action, and queries whether Hardy had not read Montaigne. Certainly he knew, besides much miscellaneous literature, the Astree with its elaborate love analyses.

In the main. Hardy followed the lead of Gamier and pushed 'the drama toward a freer and yet firmer issue. The tragedies, with which he apparently began, retain the Renaissance feature of a long denouement: in La mort d' Alexandre, Alexander drinks poison early in the play, thus leaving two full acts for a dis- play of his suffering. But Hardy innovated even in tragedy,

i

246 THE DRAMA PREVIOUS TO CORNEILLE

from a practical point of view: he eventually gives up the chorus, increases the number of characters and strives in every way to set the action before the eyes of the spectator. The result is a fortified unity of action. In Coriolan the question is, Shall Rome or Coriolanus be the victim of ingratitude? But this strengthening is coupled with a disregard for the imities of place and time. Thus Hardy's tendency was toward a form of the drame libre, and in view of the stage setting of the Hotel de Bourgogne, which represented several localities at once, he next turned to tragi-comedy.

This genre had arisen out of the detritus of the medieval stage. The name " tragi-comedy " alone is classic, Plautus hav- ing used it to designate a comic plot containing characters of high rank (gods and kings). In 1545, however, the Italian critic Giraldi applied the term to a tragic plot with a happy ending, and with this usage the sixteenth century fell in. Indeed, after 1552 the name was employed for any play of medieval origin which possessed " a happy denouement and at least a partly classical form " (Lancaster) — so that not only the miracle but also the mystere and the farce came thus to be disguised. When, therefore, the generation of 1600 became enamored of the romanesque (Ch. II), it was the non-historic, romanesque plot for which tragi-comedy was used. In Hardy the genre is vir- tually a dramatized novel.

Here again Hardy takes his departure from Gamier, whose Bradamante (1550) was the best model to follow. Borrowed from the Orlando Fvrioso — and it is noteworthy that Gamier drew directly on a " romance " — the subject of this play is the marriage of Roger and Bradamante. Charlemagne had decreed that the latter should marry the man who could conquer her in combat. Roger wins the contest but in behalf of Leon, who had previously saved Roger's life ; an appeal is then made to the Em- peror, who declares that the matter shall be decided by a duel between the rivals. Leon now discovers Roger's identity and, rather than oppose him, magnanimously gives up Bradamante. The double marriage of Roger and Bradamante and Leon with Charlemagne's own daughter then brings the play to an end.

How closely Hardy adopted Garnier's technique can be seen

\

ALEXANDRE HARDY 247

from his Oesippe ou les devx amis and his Elmire ou I'heweuse bigamie. Both plays are novelistic in origin, Oesippe being a tale of Boccaccio's, and Elmire the well-known Legend of the Count of Gleichen. Both deal with a love-affair; both disregard the unities; and both end happily. Thus Hardy brought the stage into active cooperation with contemporary taste, and won for the drama what it had previously lacked; namely, popular support. His style is undistinguished, his attempts to imitate Ronsard often absurd, and his lack of probability startling; but his drama has action and he enormously enriched its sources of material. From Amyot's Theagene et Chariclee he drew eight plays of five acts each; La Force du sang and La beUe Egyptienne are dramatized novelas of Cervantes; Phraate is taken from Giraldi Cinthio, and so forth. Finally, Hardy made the pastorale a distinct genre by giving it a completely bucolic atmosphere (no chivalry, no royal personages) and a light, bantering tone, in ten-syllable verse.

In short, it was Hardy's achievement to reconcile stage- craft and dramatic art, and to set up tragi-comedy as a point of departure for future experimentation. It is significant that Schelandre's Tyr et Sidon, a tragedy in 1608, is transformed into a tragi-comedy in 1628 and is preceded by the words of Ogier:

That to separate the coinic and tragic elements in the same play is to ignore the condition of men's lives, of whom the days and hours are often intermingled with laughter and tears, with contentment and affiction, according as they are moved by good or evil fortmie.

This sounds like the practical creed of Shakespeare. More es- pecially it voices the opinions of De Laudun, whose Art poetique (1598) had argued against the unities, and of Lope de Vega, whose Arte nuevo de hacer comedias (1609) was having its effect in France by the side of Spanish subjects and models.

The period from 1628 to the appearance of the Cid (1636) is

marked by unusual productivity, considerable quibbling as to

dramatic principles and the final establishment of

the unities. In this struggle the court and the

public were on one side; on the other were the theorists led by

Chg.pelain and Richelieu, and known as les doctes.

248 THE DRAMA PREVIOUS TO CORNEILLE

At first Hardy's irregularity was all the rage. The leading dramatists, Rotrou, Du Ryer and Scudery, all wrote tragi- comedies; and the more romanesque the subject the better. As late as 1639 it was by means of a tragi-comedy ^ that Scudery tried to silence the Cid; whereas Rotrou's Occasions perdues (1633) added the direct imitation of the Spanish comedia to that of the novel. There was, in fact, scarcely a dramatic freedom (blank verse, prose, murders on the stage) that did not find some defender in France.

Nevertheless, the generation of Malherbe was now in the

saddle. The Hotel de Bourgogne might favor the romanesque

drama: the friends of rule and order had the offi- Segulars

cial world on their side, and when the Theatre du

Marais opened its doors (1628) it did so for a presentation of their wares. The spokesman of this movement, Jean de Mairet (1604-1686), lacked genius but he heeded the critics, who, to- gether with the followers of the Marquise de Rambouillet, pushed him to the front.

As early as his Chryseide et Arimant (1625), a tragi-comedy, Mairet had shown a tendency toward unity of plot. In 1631 he published Silvanire, another tragi-comedy, with a preface on the unities which emphasized two points: (1) the subject of a tragedy must be known and hence grounded in history, and (2) the law of verisimilitude must be observed — and he adduced the example of the Italians and the ancients. Finally, in 1634 he put forth the first concrete example of such a tragedy in his Sophonisbe. The expense lavished on the performance, marked by the use of special scenery and " crystal chandeliers " was equalled only by the enthusiasm with which the Hotel de Rambouillet welcomed the play. Dramatically speaking, how- ever, there was little to recommend it — except that it was superior to Mirame, a " regular " tragedy by Richelieu and one of his favorites, Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin. The Three Meantime, the main critical factor in the struggle Unities foj, " regularity " was Castelvetro's version of Aris-

totle's Poetics (1570) , a copy of which was in Chapelain's library.

' L' Amour tirannigue, praised highly by Balzac. Scudfiry was constantly passing from one dramatic camp to the other.

THE DRAMATIC UNITIES 249

Castelvetfo supplied the technique, for which Scaliger (Poetics, 1561) had outlined the theory, that led to the triumph of the dramatic unities.

From Aristotle, Scaliger deduced the fundamental ideas that each literary genre has its discoverable norm and that the drama in particular should approach as closely as possible to the por- trayal of actual truth. The spectator, he thought, should be moved by the actions of the play exactly as if they were those of historical reality. This interpretation of verisimilitude or vraisemblance — which is quite opposed to Aristotle's own idea of " poetic truth " — is fvmdamental in French Classicism. What made it so is that Castelvetro based the technique of the drama entirely upon stage representation. Since the stage is a cir- cumscribed space, he argued, it follows that the action must be limited in time to the period spent by the spectators in the theater. Thus, out of Aristotle's unity of action and his obser- vation that " tragedy endeavors, so far as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sim," there arose the fixed unities of time, place and action. It is evident why after a lapse of some fifty years Chapelain should have advocated them anew, about 1630. The stage area of the Hotel de Bourgogne was restricted, yet the multiplex stage-setting forced the actor into that part of the background in which the action was located. Not only verisimilitude but common sense demanded a simpli- fication: this the imities gave.

But the drama suffered thereby in picturesqueness ; and despite Chapelain many authors refused to sacrifice le beau sujet to the rules. How Comeille found a solution of this difficulty by mak- ing thp drama psychological — through the substitution of the external action by an inner one, often in defiance of verisi- militude— the ensuing chapter will show.

In the main, Chapelain won the day: the Abbe d'Aubignac's Pratique du theatre (1640-1657) proclaimed the sacred nature of the rules ; they became part of the " decorum " of the drama at the very moment when kings and lovers alike were condemned to observe the forms of polite society. The unities did not sup- press the emotions; on the contrary, they made their expression intense. Thus the French drama attained that , concentration which it alone has. This last step is the achievement of Racine.

250 THE DRAMA PREVIOUS TO CORNEILLE

As to criticism, the final attitude of Classicism is foimd in the words of Boileau:

Un rimeur, sans peril, dela les Pyrenees, Sur la scene en un jour rassemble des annees.

Mais nous, que la raison a ses regies engage. Nous voulons qu'avec art Taction se menage; Qu'en un lieu, qu'en un jour, un seul fait accompli Tienne jjisqu'a la fin le theatre rerrvpli.

CHAPTER IV PIERRE CORNEILLE

Pierre Corneille, surnamed the Great, " non-seulement," said Voltaire, " pour le distinguer de son frere mais du reste des homines," was by origin and disposition a Norman- The poet rejoices at the fact in one of his early playS. He was born in Rouen, in 1606, as son of a barrister who by dint of long and faithful service came to be made a noble ; indeed, in the very year that his son produced the Cid. The eldest of six. children, Pierre was first educated at a Jesuit school, where he twice won prizes for excellence in Latin verse, and then he studied law. But he made little use of his legal training until, in 1628, he purchased the ofiBces of attorney-general in the " department of waters and forests " and " of harbors." This double duty he fulfilled con- scientiously for over twenty years, returning from Paris to Rouen as occasion required. Public documents show him as "investigating" an illegal sale of wood made by the Duke of Orleans and as " defending " the ship-builders of Havre against the pilots of Rouen. Thus in reality the law was Corneille's pro- fession; the theater his avocation. In addition, Corneille was a church-warden in 1652 and kept the accounts of his parish. Another singular post for a great dramatic poet.

But poetry, especially the drama, was the ruling interest of his long and fruitful life. Tradition aflBrms that his first play, Melite (1629), embodies a love affair of his youth: an attach- ment he had formed for a certain Catherine Hue who in 1637 became Mme du Pont. Certain it is that Melite, performed in Paris by Mondory at the opening of the Theatre du Marais, was a success, and that Corneille had found a public for his pro- ductions. At a stroke, he had won all hearts by the simplicity and grace with which he had presented the rather common- place theme of the girl who prefers charm to riches in her suitors. Prom now on, Corneille was a constant visitor to the capital and

251

262 PIERRE CORNEILLE

a regular producer of plays. So well had he succeeded that in 1633 he ventured to boast: " few are my equals in the drama and none surpass me." This he states in a Latin poem declining an invitation to welcome in verse the visit of Louis XIII and Riche- lieu to Forges-les-eaux near Rouen. But apparently the Cardi- nal did not resent the refusal, for in 1635 We find Comeille among the five collaborators on Richelieu's Comedie des Tuileries. A year later he rose to fame with the tragi-comedy of the Cid.

But the Cid also provoked opposition. Corneille's rivals in the drama were Mairet and Scudery; the fact that Mondory's troupe had won such a triumph aroused their irritation, which broke loose against our poet when in some verses entitled Excuse a Ariste he flagrantly said: " I owe to myself alone all my re- nown." Such vainglory could not be brooked, and after some preliminary skirmishes Scudery published his Observations sur le Cid, the main points of which were that the play violates the " dramatic rules " and that the subject is worthless and stolen from the Spanish. At length the matter was submitted to the newly formed Academy for a decision; this body demurred, pre- sented an opinion largely the work of Chapelain, and then in 1637 issued the well-known Sentiments upholding Scudery on the ground of verisimilitude but lauding Corneille for

la force et la delicatesse de plusieurs de ses pensees et eet agre- ment inexplicable qui se mele dans tous ses defauts.

For the nonce the rivals seemed to have scored. Corneille's pride was hurt ; how deeply it is impossible to say. It is known that in 1639 he paid Chapelain a visit. At all events, after three years, spent partly in Rouen, whither business and family cares had called him, Corneille produced Horace. Here was a tragedy according to the " rules," on a historical Roman subject, glori- fying patriotism — a combination sure to please Richelieu. Corneille had found the type of " moral " tragedy in which not only he but also his successors were to excel.

Shortly after the appearance of Cinna in 1640 Corneille mar- ried Marie de Lamperike, a lady belonging to the same noblesse de robe or legal gentry as himself. He was now in the plenitude of his powers as a dramatic poet. With that mixture of self-

CORNEILLE'S LIFE 253

assurance and bourgeois timidity which was peculiarly his, he alternately mingled with the gay life of the capital and kept a watchful eye on his interests in Rouen — writing verses for the Guirlande de Julie, exchanging visits with men of letters, or ex- ercising the sedate and exacting duties of a provincial magistrate. In 1647 he was elected to the Academy, five years after Riche- lieu's death, and after twice having seen others preferred to himself. Then came the failure of his tragedy Pertharite (1652) and his retirement to Rouen, where he remained seven years, devoting himself mainly to a verse translation of the Imitation of Christ.

His return to the theater followed a performance of Moliere's troupe in Rouen toward Easter, 1658. The irresistible charm of one of the actresses, Mile du Pare — then in her prime — doubt- less rekindled Corneille's enthusiasm for the stage. This and the fact that at the instance of Pellisson his pension had recently been renewed led Corneille to reappear on the boards with (Edipe. Other plays followed, but his hold on the public was only for a time. A second failure awaited him in Attila, 1667.

Meantime Corneille had published his plays in a three-volume edition (1660) together with explanatory prefaces, the Examens, and three essays on dramatic art — the latter in reply to the critical Pratique du theatre of the Abbe d'Aubignac (Ch. III). Moreover, he had the courage, in the admirable prologue of his Toison d'or, to warn Louis XIV against the dangers of his im- perialistic policy:

Ah! Victoire, pour fils n'ai-je que des soldats? ■

A vaincre tant de fois mes forces s'affaiblissent; L'Etat est florissant, mats les peuples gemissent; Leurs membres dechames courbent sous mes hauts faits, Et la gloire du trone accable les sujets.

But later on this critical note disappears entirely from Cor- neille's works and the Roi-Soleil is lauded to the skies.

The chief embitterment of this later period was the rising fame of Racine. Boursault, who to be sure was no friend of Racine's, depicts Corneille for us, alone in his box, gloomy and sulking, at the first performance of Britannicus (1669). A year later the two poets are brought into active competition on the stage with

264 PIERRE CORNEILLE

the subject of Berenice, which Fontenelle — Comeille's biog- rapher— avers was given them independently by Henrietta of England, the sister-in-law of Louis XIV. However that may bp, Corneille's Tite et Berenice, performed exactly eight days after Racine's great tragedy, was a distinct failure. Comeille still had his partisans; Mme de Sevigne was one of them; but it is abundantly clear that neither his gifts nor his method were able to vie with the genius of Racine in treating such a subject. Obviously he had outlived his day. The world- empire of Louis XIV was not romanesque but real; its dramas were externally unheroic in order to be internally the more in- tense— just as the spirit of comedy had ceased to be sentimental and had become actual and mordant, striking at the foimdations of the society which Comeille had so gloriously idealized. Val- iantly, it must be said, the old poet struggled on. He had long since moved to Paris and was sharing his home with his less gifted but suaver younger brother, Thomas Corneille, who was also writing for the stage. He even tried the Racinian manner — he who in his prime had essayed every dramatic expression — but in vain; the collapse of Surena in 1674 forced him into definite rptirement. The last years of his life were clouded by sorrows, personal and domestic. An occasional poem addressed to the King alone reminds us that he was still among the living. At last the end came ; in 1682 he finished the labor of half a century with a final revision of his works, and two years later his proud but shattered spirit was at rest. He was buried at Paris in the church of Saint-Roch. His brother Thomas succeeded him in the Academy, and Racine — now living in retirement himself — pro- nounced a eulogy which for critical insight and beauty of diction is one of the noteworthy docimaents of that august body.

Corneille's career as a dramatist thus falls into three distinct periods.

The first, the period of preparation, begins with Melite. This comedy, written practically without rules or models, was Corneille's followed by a trial of tragi-comedy in Clitandre. Dramas Then came four additional comedies, interrupted

by the Senecan tragedy Medee and eclipsed by the Cid. These early comedies, however, are far from being second- rate. It was something to have swept away the conven-

THE CID 255

tional comedy types of Rome and Italy, with their intrigues, disguises, concealments of sex and the like, and to have gone directly after " life." It was even more to the poet's credit that the figures with which he replaced them are true to the courtly world of Louis XIII. In the Place Royale and the Galerie du Palais he shows the places this society frequented: the shops and bookstalls where they made their purchases and waged the warfare of youth and love. If their speech is precieux, it represents that part of Paris brought up on the Astree. A creation of Comeille's is the suivante or soubrette who replaces the nurse of earlier comedy. Thus the first plays of Corneille approach the sentimental comedy of the later dramatist Marivaux: in La Veuve — the best of them — a trickster is caught in his own trap and the situation is deftly and delicately handled. On the other hand, L'lllusion comique is a boisterous fantasy on a Spanish model, a type of comedy that the poet was to perfect in Le Menteur (1643).

The Cid (1636) begins for Corneille, as well as for France, the period of dramatic masterpieces. Now indeed " the sun had arisen and the stars might retire," as Scudery had said on an earlier occasion. Everyone knows that Comeille's play is in- diebted to the Mocedades del Cid, by the Spanish dramatist Guillen de Castro. But Corneille shifted the interest from the outer world of incident to the inner world of psychology — the truly French world — and thereby created a new type of action. FoiroaUythe Cid may be a tragi-comedy_3Jt|i__a rpmanesque subject and aliappy ending, yet intrinsically it is the first French Iragedy. The youthful Chimene loves the youthful Rodrigue, not for himself, but because of his heroism; and to merit his heroism she herself becomes heroic.

Tu n'as fait le devoir que d'un homme de bien, Mais aussi, le faisant, tu m'as appris le mien,

says Chimene to the lover whom fate has made the slayer of her father. If love triumphs in this play, it is yet true that in the intellectualized atmosphere which these characters breathe in- dividual impulse must always submit to public duty. The Cid is a tragedy inasmuch as it involves this renunciation, over and over again. Contrary to the Spanish, Comeille's characters are

256 PIERRE CORNEILLE

contending forces of will, impulse, pride and duty — and the greatest of these is duty. Compare Romeo and Juliet and you will note in the treatment of a similar situation the gulf that divides not only two poets but two civilizations.

With his next two plays, Horace and Cinna (both 1640),

Comeille chose subjects better suited to illustrate his theme. Both

plays deal with Roman history, both are termed "tragedies"

and observe the imities. The combat between the Horatii and

the Curiatii is turned into a mental conflict because the two

families are bound by marriage and love: Horace, more patriot

than lover, wins out, whereas Curiace, less heroic but more

human, dies in battle — leaving his beloved to be slain by her

own brother, Horace, for cursing his patriotism. In Cinna the

inain struggle occurs in the mind of Augustus, swaying between

/magnanimity and vengeance as regards the conspirators against

'his life, and choosing magnanimity, as Prospero does in the

^Tempest — but with more rhetorical emphasis:

Je suis maitre de moi comme de I'univers, Je le suis, je veux I'etre.

In Polyeucte (1641 or 1642) Corneille carries the theme of duty into the field of religion. The Christian martyr, Polyeucte, has a Roman wife whom duty teaches to love her husband, and finally as a Christian convert to win others to his cause. In all this there is an overstrain, a tendency to carry the victory of the human will to an extreme, to produce " admiration " rather than pity and fear, as is generally the case in tragedy. Yet in the four plays mentioned we see the genius of Corneille at its best. Enamored of spiritual strength in the service of society, he had portrayed it under the guise of family, country, monarchy and religion, in original and enduring dramatic form.

The winter of 1643 brought another tragedy. La Mort de Pompee, in which the stoicism of the dead Pompey is the energizing force of the characters in the play, and then follows Le Menteur — Corneille's most distinguished comedy. Again the subject is borrowed from the Spanish; this time a more or less free adaptation of Alarcon's La Verdad Sospechosa. Dorante, the victim of the comedy, is not so much a liar as a prey to his inborn bent for romancing. His lies are thus a

LATER DRAMAS 257

continuous extravaganza — lightly and gayly expressed, yet in a style remarkable for its fitness and measure. Corneille could not resist writing a Suite du Menteur, which besides having the defects of a sequel shows that his return to comedy was only a digression. The extraordinary or exceptional was henceforth his field, but seriously and even solemnly conceived, and tending more and more to melodrama as time went on.

Rodogune (1645) was Corneille's own favorite and over a cen- tury later called forth the special criticism of Lessing. Only the strictest attention, it is true, will enable the spectator to follow the complicated motivation of the first four acts of this tragedy — never did Corneille " invent " more — but the fifth act in which the Medea-like heroine, Cleopatre, stands revealed has some of the majestic terror of ancient tragedy. And like an idyll, in the midst of so much horror, Corneille has set the fraternal love of Cleopatre's two sons, both in love with Rodogune, their mother's rival, yet each longing to sacrifice himself for the other. Once more only, in Nicomede, is Corneille able to attain the grandiose; but this play is properly a tragi-comedy and adds little to Corneille's previous achieve- ments. Andromede, a spectacle-play set to music, and Don Sanche d'Aragon, in some respects the prototype of the romantic drama of 1830, are evidence of his undiminished versatility as a playwright. However, his inspiration is waning, and as we enter upon his third and last period this fact is all too apparent.

CEdipe, brought out in 1659 at the request of Fouquet, Louis XIV's notorious Chancellor, of the Exchequer, is a strange misconception of this epic character coupled with a protest — placed in the mouth of Theseus — in behalf of free-will. Stranger still is the fact that the love affair with which Corneille tried to embellish it ga^e the play great popularity during the second part of th^^. seventeenth century. Politics — the raison d'Etat — becomes the obsession in these last plays. As early as Horace, Camille, when speaking of the gods, had said:

lis descendent bien moins dans de si bas etages Que dans I'ame des rois, leurs vivantes images, De qui I'independante et salute autorite Est un rayon secret de leur divinite.

258 PIERRE CORNEILLE

The Marechal de Grammont is supposed to have called Othon (1664) " the breviary of kings." Certainly the exaltation of the monarchy, in the Machiavellian sense, never rose higher than in the maxim of this play that:

Tous les crimes d'Etat qu'on fait pour la couronne, Le ciel nous en absout, alors qu'il nous la donne.

Thus Othon, Pulcherie, Sertorius, are rhetorical, financially perhaps profitable to Comeille, but evoking the opprobrimn of Boileau and Bossuet. " God," said the latter, " sends kings to His Law to learn their duties." Such, as we said, is the fate of a genius who has outlived his time, although personally the poet never compels our admiration more than when he hau^tily admits the truth in the lines, addressed to Louis himself:

C'est le dernier eclat d'un feu pret a s'eteindre; Sur le point d'expirer il tache d'eblouir Et ne frappe les yeux que pour s'evanouir.

As Brunetiere makes clear, Corneille's sense of style remained unimpaired to the end.

Comeille, therefore, belongs definitely to the Pre-Classical Period: the age of the _£omanesque. His dramas, which Point of bristle with the word vertu, are like a long- view ana drawn-out page of Balzac's Discours sur le summary n

II estime [says Balzac] plus un jour employe a la Vertu, qu'une longue vie delicieuse; im moment de gloire qu'un siecle^e Volupte . . . Rome etait la boutique, ou les dons du ciel etaient mis en oeuvre. . . . EUe a su melerj comme il faut, I'art aveo I'a venture; la conduite avec la fureur; la qualite divine de I'intel- ligence dans les actions brutales de la partie irascible.

Three propositions that fit Comeille to the dot. It has been claimed that his characters are modeled on real life: Richelieu, Retz, Turenne, being heroic in the Cornelian sense. But this is merely to say that in his quest of life he souglit the exceptional. His was an age of actiQn, of strengthj_of rapid and simple decisions; wken, men were .atruggling_ to realize an ideal, and intelligence and will-power were ia.tbe_ascendency. Of such a view of humanity the dramas of Corneilfe are the quintessence: in their constant appeal to the reason, in their

LITERARY QUALITIES 259

0YeE:flinpha,sis on the will, in their complex_..^et-,sad£lciaaving plots, and in the crashing rhetoric of their jt;^e; nay even in the vgnM^^ffi£P]^io^SlaM3M^^l^^l2iS^'^S.they contain.

Having said this, there remains that inexplicable thing called " genius," which no amount of background can even partially explain. Corneille took the irregular drama of the age of Hardy and gave it <iontent and form. In comedy, which he made presentable to a cultured audience, he shows, in a joyous rather than a critical mood, the extravagances to which human nature is liable and the foibles to which it succumbs. Le Menteur has none of the trenchant ridicule of the later Moliere, but it also lacks the cruel pessimism of that observer of men. In lyrical tragedy Corneille could emulate Seneca, but his Medee remains an emulation, little else. What made tragi-comedy his medium is that his genius was romantic, but romantic in an unusual and very definite sense. His muse was the Reason, not my reason or yours, but the ' spcm^ed reason^I jEocTij^iythe peculiarly i^'fench contribution to the Renaissance. Imaginative as'"Ee "^117 Corneille saw its possibilities, and lawyer-like he states them as only a lawyer could: bereft of their accessories but with " an intensity of intellectual precision that bums and blazes." Of all this the four great dr amas,"''SienCtd, ""Horace, Cinna and Polyeucte, are a continuous illustration. Each has ^jgreat subject, timely and yet universal — boBaL. patriotism, absolutism and martyrdom — anoeacK'pfoblem Corneille solves by a victory of^he dey^CTatiw^ will, Te!ore™wK "MEidCTations, no matter how human tlieYlmay be, give way. Indeed, his failures may be explained by the fact that one cannot multiply such victories indefinitely and write successful plays.

As a consequence, Corneille's characters are_ Neo-Platonic types, actuated by a superimposed rational self. They do* not Cha t succumb to Fate, they make Fate subserve their

particular ends. The poet's interest in them may be psychological; they themselves are generally poor psychol- ogists. They understand but one thing and strive for it in a straight line. Horace, exasperated by his sister, justifies his fury with the strange words:

C'est trop, ma patience a la raison fait place; Va dedans las enfers plaindre ton Curiace.

260 PIERRE CORNEILLE

And the villains of Corneille's plays are similarly motivated; rarely, as in the case of Felix in Polyeucte, do they show any criminal subtlety or political astuteness. This masculine simplicity is of course imfavorable to the portrayal of women types; and, but for such notable exceptions as Camille (Horace) and Emilie {Cinna) , Corneille's hf-rninps nrp. not wnmanly in the usual sense. aLthg-Word. Either, like Pauline, in Polyeucte, they are " obedient " to the point of mysticism, or they are furies with scarce a vestige of humanity, like Cleopatre in Rodogune.

As for plot and action, Corneille's dramas stand midway between the loosely constructed tragi-comedies of Hardy and the finished Classical product of Racine. Although he accepted the unities in Horace, he was never more than a nominal Aristotelian. Again and again, but especially in his Discours, he used the Italian critics to justify himself against Aristotle. His whole conception of drama — as of life — was invraisemblable. In the preface of Heraclius he has the boldness to say that " le sujet d'une belle tragedie doit ne pas etre vraisemblable." Corneille understood as little as his critics the real purport of Aristotle's distinction between the truth of history and the truth of poetry, and so, like Mairet before him, he tried to conform to the critics by treating a historical subject. While his plots culminate in a " crisis " — as all French Classical tragedy does — he constantly confuses the spectator by multiplying the obstacles which his heroes have to overcome, and he never quite succeeds in obtaining more than a conventional observance of the unities. The stage direction for Horace reads:

La scene est a Rome, dans une salle de la maison d'Horace

— this arrangement whereby the characters all meet in the same room being, to a large extent, casuistical. Thus, master-play- wright that he was, Corneille is not yet formally a Classic.

Of the last fact, his style — that truly Cornelian style — is probably the best evidence. His lofty and grandiose ideas Style have a fitting garment in his high-sounding and

brilliant diction. Certain of his lines rise to a climax like a storm, and then break on the ear with a crash of sovind unique in French poetry. Occasionally he attains a simple grace that is all too rare in his work, as when he writes:

DU RYER AND ROTROU 261

Souvent un je ne sais qu'on ne peut exprimer Nous surprend, nous emporte, et nous force d'aimer.

On the other hand, Corneille oftem lacks taste: some of his lines are sublime ;^>others are banal or unconsciously grotesque. Too often he is over-emphatic, merely sententious as when he answers one maxim with another (the well-known coupe cor- nelienne), and unnecessarily precieux — in short, a rhetorician. Further, he repeats rime-words and even entire verses. But let us not forget that Malherbe had placed poetry on stilts; in Corneille it was learning once more to soar, not in images of sense but in unadorned flashes of thought. The genius of Cor- neille must be sought in his best verse as well as in his best plays.

Out of the oblivion into which the greatness of Corneille has cast his contemporaries in the drama, two names survive as Du Ryer possessing some of the glamour of their illustrious andRotrou comrade. They are Pierre Du Ryer (1605-1658) and Jean Rotrou (1610-1650) .

Du Ryer began to write earlier than Corneille in the manner of Hardy. Indeed, his Cleomedon (1633) is still taken from the Astree, although it contains such Cornelian lines as:

Qui conserve un sceptre est digne de I'avoir, and

Qui vante ses aieux ne vante rien de soi

— another proof that rhetoric was what people liked. After the C-id, Du Ryer took to writing tragedies. The best of these is Scevole (1644) , in many ways a counterpart and to some extent a copy of Cinna. While Du Ryer knew his audiences, whose emotions he echoes — especially in Alcionee, a tragedy with a romanesque subject — his verse lacks distinction and his talent was not original. »

On the other hand, Rotrou fills a niche of his own, although he was a great admirer and a friend of Corneille. His gifts are a vivid imagination — shown particularly in the range of his subjects — and a real sense of pathos. Thirty-five of his plays have come down to us, consisting of comedies, tragi-comedies and tragedies. He began to write young, presumably as a successor of Hardy, for the Hotel de Bourgogne. His first play was L'Hypocondriaque (about 1628) , containing the motive

262 PIERRE CORNEILLE

of letters that are intercepted and the ensuing madness of one of the characters. It is possible that Corneille borrowed this motive for his own Melite, although it was a commonplace at the time. Besides borrowing from the Romans and Spaniards, Rotrou preceded Racine as a student of Sophocles, and while his version of the Antigone is not remarkable, Racine mentions it in one of his Examens. But his leaning was nevertheless in the direction of the Cornelian type of drama.

His best tragi-comedy is Lawre persecutee, where we find the vigorous line:

Je veux 08 que je veux, parce que je le veux;

and his masterpiece in tragedy, Le veritable Saint-Genest (1645), while partly drawn from Lope de Vega's Lo Fingido verdadero, recalls Polyeucte. Rotrou's tragedy represents an actor who in performing the martyrdom of Adrian is so carried away by the heroism of his role that he openly professes his faith and receives a martyr's crown. The play within a play — as in Hamlet — was a favorite device of the time ; Corneille had used it in his Illusion comique, but Rotrou's tragedy is the best example of it in French.

Rotrou wrote two other noteworthy tragedies: Venceslas (1647) and Cosroes (1648). The latter, which goes back to the same source as Heraclius, is close in situation to Nicomede. The former, taken from a Spanish play by Francisco de Rojas, exhibits Rotrou's emotional genius in a plot that would have pleased Corneille. Venceslas is king of Poland; his sons are both in love with the same woman ; the one kills the other rashly and through an error; Venceslas, placed in the dilemma of passing judgment on his own son, abdicates in his favor. In the main the situation is that of Rojas, the title of whose drama is: No hay ser padre siendo rey; but the motivation, as well as the compassionate language of the characters involved, is Rotrou's — an indication that with more care and less haste he might have produced a really great drama. But Rotrou, in addition to being a playwright, was a public-spirited citizen of the little town of Dreux, whose inhabitants honored him with an official post. His death has a halo of glory: he died during an epidemic at Dreux, a victim to his sense of public duty.

■'■■ ' ' /■'' !.+

X

(

CHAPTER V DESCARTES

The rational spirit of the Renaissance has its purest expression in Cartesianism or the philosophy of Descartes. As we have seen, Calvin defined the province of knowledge as limited to God and ourselves. Similarly, Ramus had appealed .from scholastic philosophy to human reason, although the reason he had in mind was that revealed by the ancients. Finally, Montaigne set his own reason by the side of that of the ancients and, skeptical a,s he was in regard to both, he thereby demon- strated the necessity of a method of thought. It remained for Descartes (1) to discover the method; and (2) to show by it that the moderns are equal, if not superior, to the ancients.

Thus Descartes is the founder of modern philosophic thought: he began where the ancients stopped, with the problem of cognition (" By what means do we know? ") ; he defined the reason scientifically {Cogito ergo sum — "I think, therefore I am ") ; and he opened the door to the idea of progress, so essential to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Rene Descartes (Cartesius) was a survival of the sixteenth- century type of Frenchman. Apparently, no man was less social. Yet no man, certainly no philosopher, traveled about the world more in order to acquaint himself with the subjects he was to treat. He was born at La Haye, between Tours and Poitiers, in 1596. His family belonged to the nobility, and as a matter of fact Descartes was never compelled to make a living or do anything he did not like. Educated at the Jesuit college of La Fleche, he left it in 1612 thoroughly con- vinced of the futility of book learning but with a strong aptitude for mathematics. After a short stay in Paris, where like Pascal he developed an interest in gambling, Descartes took his law degree at Poitiers (1516) and then enlisted in the army of Maurice of Nassau in Holland, in order to gain experi-

263

264 DESCARTffl?*^^^*

ence of life. Here he wrote his first treatiSB?" ft Xj^mpendivm musicae, which applies to music the principles 'pf geometry, The Thirty Years War then led him to take service with the Bavarian army, and it was in 1619 that — being in winter quarters, " alone in a room with his stove" — the idea came to him of making mathematics the foundation of a universal theory of knowledge.

With characteristic caution, Descartes was willing to abide his time. His first concern was with Nature, not with meta- physics. Accordingly, we find him at Prague, seeking traces of Tycho Brahe and of Kepler; he visits Rome and Florence in search of Galileo, whose astronomical views are in accord with his own ; in the Alps he makes observations as to avalanches and lightning. From 1626 to 1628 he is again in Paris, meeting with the men of his time and active in their discussions. At one of these gatherings Descartes sets forth the error of reasoning by syllogisms and thus wins the plaudits of the Cardinal de Berulle, who urges him to publish his own philosophy. Accordingly, Descartes definitely left France for Holland on the maxim that bene qui latuit, bene vixit (" he who has been well hid has lived well ") in order to procure the necessary philo- sophical repose.

His first residence in Holland was at Franeker, where it is said he wrote the Meditationes de prima philosophia in 1629. All the while he is also busy with experiments in physics. Yet his chief scientific work, the Traite du monde, was never published as such. Hearing of the condemnation of Galileo, Descartes destroyed his treatise and vowed never to publish any of his writings. From this resolve he was fortunately shaken by his affection for his illegitimate child Francine. For her, the only human being that he really loved, he planned to issue at least a summary of his ideas. To this wish, more than to anything else, we owe the Discours de la methode, printed anonymously at Leyden (1637) and the first of his works to be published. But Francine died soon after and thus never read her father's " autobiography of a thought," as M. Lanson has cleverly named the Discours.

Emboldened by this first adventure in print, Descartes brought out his Meditationes (1641), and there followed a period of

HIS WORKS 266

controversy in which he was as ardently defended as he was bitterly attacked. But among his adherents was one amiable and powerful person: the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Frederick V, Elector Palatine. She had long been Descartes' favorite pupil. In 1649 he completed for her the Traite des passions de I'dme — next to the Discours the most important French work that he wrote. Through Elizabeth, Descartes now became acquainted with Catherine, Queen of Sweden. Finding Holland no longer safe, he accepted Catherine's invitation to visit Stockholm and be her tutor. But the northern climate and the early hour of five in the morning, set by the Queen for their interviews, were too severe a drain on a constitution that had never been robust. Soon after his arrival Descartes fell ill of pneumonia and died in February, 1650. His body together with his unpublished manuscripts was returned to France in 1667. But the oration prepared for Descartes' funeral was never pronounced; a royal order forbade it just as the Congregation of the Index in 1663 had forbidden the circulation of his works. As early as 1641, however, a Jansenist, the Due de Luynes, had translated the Meditationes into French.

While Descartes' works constitute an entity in that all are applications of the same mathematical ideal, yet the Discours Works and de la methode and the Traite des passions have Significance particular significance for the student of literature. Written designedly in French for the purpose of bringing philosophy — or the problem of being — within the ken of les honnetes gens, they respectively establish the two pivots upon which this problem turns: (lJ_J;hejtaTitii_.'?dth_Xfigaxd.-.ta--our ^existence; and (2) the truth with regard to our conduct. LeariTl to see things rationally, says Descartes, and you will realize that / two plus two makes four not only in theory but in fact; act onj this principle, and error will disappear from the world.

Of the two works in question, the Traite des passions, though posterior to the Discours in date, belongs essentially to the The "Traite Pre-Classical age. It contains the mechanics of des Comeille's conception of character. Not that the

treatise accounts for Corneille's conception, but it elucidates it — rationally. Descartes explains our passions on the basis of what he terms the " animal spirits." Being

266 DESCARTES

particles of blood, to which the heart communicates its heat, the " animal spirits," according to Descartes, are the channels through which the brain receives impressions of the external world. When excited by a stimulus from either the external world or the brain, they produce passion and thus influence our actions. It was not Descartes' fault that his knowledge of physiology was defective; he could not go beyond the discovery of Harvey on the circulation of the blood; " qu'on me donne I'etendue et le mouvement," he said, " et je vais faire le monde "; — more important is the fact that he views the passions un- sentimentally as part of this "movement," and that he views them as originating with the body.

Morally, then, a passion is to be judged by its action or result, with which it is inextricably bound up. A passion is good or bad only in so far as the ensuing action is beneficial or harmful to mankind ; and the latter question can be decided only by the reason- For the reason supplies the judgment with which to approve or condemn a passion. Thus love is good when it leads us to choose good things:

pour ee que, joignant a nous de vrais biens, eUe nous perfectionne d'autant.

The love of Rodrigue and Chimene, Descartes would have said, is good inasmuch as it makes them sacrifice self to duty ; Horace was justified in killing Camille because his passion had the approval of his reason. It is clear that Descartes considers the reason as autonomous: no passion can sway it, and therefore no passion is in itself interesting or worthy of detailed description. To the Cartesian there are no mysteries, no obscurities, no shades of feeling — such as we shall find in Racine. What is important to him is the mind, wi,th its faculty of judgment, a vicious act being invariably attributed to a false or bad judgment.

But if reason, argues Descartes, is the absolute judge of good and evil, it yet has no power to enforce its choice between them- This depends on the will, which is the faculty whereby we set one passion against another or with the help of the imagination evoke a good passion which is lying dormant. There is no stronger advocate of the free-will than Descartes. He summarizes:

THE DISCOURS DE LA METHODE 267

La volonte est tellement libre de sa nature qu'elle ne peut ja- mais etre contrainte . . . les actions sont absolument en son pouvoir (de Tame) et ne peuvent qu' indirectement etre changees par le corps.

Such an extreme attitude is, as we noted above (Ch. IV), ro- mantic. In this respect Descartes is the child of his age, the traite des passions being a complete (though probably un- conscious) vindication of its ideals.

The Discours de la methode, while maintaining the dualism — essential to Descartes' philosophy — of thought and matter, is The "Dis- ^ ^^^ more sober piece of reasoning. Its object is cours de la no other than to show how Descartes arrived at a ™® " * criterion for scientific truth, and it records the experience step by step for the benefit of the reader, the subtitle being Pour bien conduire sa raison et chercher la verite dans les sciences. Thus it is the method that matters in philosophy or science, not the conclusions, which will vary according to the material at hand. Herein lies the progressiveness of Cartesian- ism as a whole.

Descartes begins ab ovo, by rejecting the acquired learning of the ages. In a memorable sentence he states that:

le bon sens est la chose du monde la mieux partagee.

Why not use it? since it constitutes the greatness of man. Let us therefore accept nothing that after examination our bon sens does not inevitably sanction. Under the ban of this analysis would fall most of the things that Descartes had learned at La Fleche, more especially of course scholastic philosophy. An apparent exception is made of mathematics and theology ; of the first because Descartes is convinced a priori of its value, and of the second because he would remain orthodox and is not concerned with the immortality of the soul.

Assuming, he says, .that we can doubt everything — the authority of the senses, the truthfulness of God, the accuracy of mathematics — there remains one thing that we who doubt cannot question; namely, that we think. And if we think, we exist; hence cogito ergo sum. Upon this, the most logical of all propositions, the certainty of all our knowledge /depends. Thaf is, whatever the mind perceives clearly and distinctly must be

268 DESCARTES

\_true. The later objection of Gassendi, that thinking does not prove existence, that we might as well say " I walk, therefore I am," Descartes answered with the statement that of all our actions we can be certain only of the one; namely, that we think.

On this simple foundation Descartes proceeds to construct the existence of God and of the universe.

The existence of God is capable of three proofs. The first is that we find the idea of God within us, and that there must be a primal substance behind the idea. Again, the reality of God may be inferred from our own imperfection, the consciousness of which shows our dependence on a being that is perfect. And thirdly, the strongest proof of God is gained from our clear and entire conception of Him. Just as the mind knows that in every triangle the three angles are equal to two right angles because the fact is involved in the idea of a triangle, so, says Descartes, existence is a necessary predicate of a perfect being. This proof, the so-called ontological one, of a Supreme Being, had ali'eady been used by Saint Anselm of Canterbury. Wherein Descartes' argument differs from Anselm's is the fact that actiudity to Descartes is contained in perfection: you cannot conceive that a being is perfect who does not exist.

Upon this perfect and eternal Being, Descartes then throws the responsibility for the external world. He is, so to speak, the Deus ex machina who establishes the union between our thinking selves and the natural world about us. God is the only complete substance, containing within Himself the attributes of the other two incomplete substances, mind and matter. Mind has as its attribute thought, and matter has as its attribute extension. God possesses both qualities; and therefore it is from Him that our knowledge of matter is derived. It is inconsistent with God's perfection to deceive us, and thus our notions of matter, in proportion as we think them clearly and distinctly, must be true.

The style in which Descartes has propounded these ideas is not always of the best. His aloofness from society had kept him in ignorance of the contemporary worship of form. He has neither the delicacy of Voiture nor the eloquence of Balzac. Too often his sentences are involved and his thought burdens and chokes his phrase. Yet his expression has order and sequence,

HIS INFLUENCE 269

his definitions are clear and accurate, and his similes are simple and well chosen. His two treatises are addressed to the general reader; it was an achievement to have done this with so diflBcult and abstruse a subject. With Descartes, philosophy ceases to occupy exclusively the learned, and supplies reading-matter also for the average educated person in France. He himself has defined such reading in the famous words:

Une conversation avec les plus honnetes gens des siecles passes . . . et meme une conversation etudiee en laquelle ils ne nous decouvrent que les meilleures de leurs pensees.

It must not be thought that Cartesianism won immediate or complete acceptance. First of all, Descartes' ideas were too Influence of bold, his conclusions too far-reaching, not to produce Descartes opposition even among those who were his partisans. His mechanical theory of nature, dependent only on extension and movement, penetrated the salons and provoked at least the discussion that such a novelty would. In the Femmes savantes Moliere ridicules the blue-stockings who revel in such Cartesian terms as tourbUlons and mondes tombants. Mme de Sable and Mme de Grignan were themselves confirmed Cartesians; whereas Mme de Sevigne, fond of animals, objected to a philosopher who would deny her pets a soul, just as did La Fontaine, who in his Discours a Mme de la Sabliere expostulated:

Qu'est-ce done? une montre. Et nous? c'est autre chose. Voici de la fagon que Descartes I'expose, Descartes, ce mortel dont on eut fait un dieu Chez les paiens. . . .

In the second place, there was tradition: that of antiquity and that of the church. The current of the times was strongly set for a triumphal union of the two in the absolutism of Louis XIV. Against this current the scientific method of Cartesianism struggled in vain; it could at best move with it, not against it, and add its power to the general stream. And this it accomplished by giving clarity and precision to the ideas which Classicism was to treat; and also by insisting — more effectively than would otherwise have been possible — on the subordination of beauty to truth: the type of rational truth which Descartes had defined. Even to Pascal, who regarded Descartes as inutile et incertain, the dignity of man consists nevertheless in reason-

270 DESCARTES

ing. It was the dogmatism of the reason — the tendency of Cartesianism to deny the soul all other qualities but this, to make the existence of God Himself depend on the thinking ego — that brought forth the greatest opposition.

In the field of philosophy the enemies of Descartes were the so-called libertins. We have met with a similar group among the Opponents of poets of the first quarter of the century (Bk. Ill, Descartes ch. IV). They now combatted the dogmatism of Descartes with the skepticism of Montaigne; while not denying the " reason," they questioned its unerring validity. Specififcally they objected to the Cartesian theory of innate ideas, and temperamentally they had an aversion for the severity of Descartes' ethics, they themselves being epicureans. Bayle and Fontenelle continue this line of attack in the eighteenth century (see Part III, Bk. II) . Meantime, the libertins were all those to whom nature — in the Rabelaisian sense of Mother Nature — is the safest guide in life. Guy Patin, the physician, and es- pecially Moliere belong to this group; whereas Pierre Gassendi (1592-1622), the chief philosopher of the libertins, was Moliere's teacher.^

Gassendi, who claimed to be an orthodox Christian, was a frank epicurean. He wrote in Latin and applied the philosophy of Lucretius (the atomic theory) to' the domain of physics. This was in direct opposition to Descartes, for whose " innate ideas " Gassendi substituted an empiricism which made the mind an emanation of the body. Like the Jesuits, he held to the view — handed down from the Middle Ages — that "there is nothing in the mind which was not first in the senses." But he coupled this view with a rather broad eclecticism or tolerance, and the force of his arguments won him a large following, despite his unoriginality. Thus Gassendi represents the liberal current of the century, running counter to its idealism and dogmatism.

But Cartesianism was to have a recrudescence during the

Malebranch ^^coi^*^ P^^"* of the century. This was due mainly

to Nicholas Malebranche. Born at Paris in 1638,

Malebranche at the age of twenty-two became a member of the

' other Merlins were Cyrano de Bergerac, La Mothe le Vayer, Saint-Evre- mond, and the notorious Ninon de Lenclos of whom Mme de S6vign6 said: 'Qu'elle est dangereuse, oette Ninon!"

MALEBRANCHE 271

Congr^ation de I'Oratoire, and, being won over to the phil- osophy of Descartes, he enlarged its scope in the Recherche de la verite ^ and then applied his theory to controversial questions in his Traite de la Nature et de la Grace — a book that Bossuet criticized tersely in the words " pulchra, nova, falsa." Male- branche died in the heat of controversy in 1715.

Malebranche's point of departure was Descartes' separation of mind and matter, and their coalescence in God. The problem had already disturbed his predecessor, Arnold Geulincx (1625- 1669) , a Dutch Cartesian. Geulincx had sought the principle of union in what he called " occasionalism." My will is the occasion

— he argued — whereby my body moves. It is not that my will moves my body, but that God who has imparted motion to matter has so arranged the world that my body moves when my will acts. This type of casuistry Malebranche expands by a return to Neo-Platonism.

In this way, God not only becomes the author and cause of all things but it is in ilim that all things have their being and perfection. The Deity comprises, says Malebranche, the world of matter as well as the archetypes (the Platonic Ideas) to which it is related. As to reason, God is its supreme form; and ac- cording as man grows intelligent he beholds the operation of reason in everything — in Nature, in himself and in religion. Reason is the logos, made visible in Christ.

Malebranche was a mystic and a theologian. Hence, he took the step from which Descartes held back; namely, that of identi- fying theology with philosophy. His system, as such, based on the confusion of reason with God, was to lead straight to the monism of Spinoza, to whom all individual being seemed accidental and God alone the exclusive reality.

On the other hand, the appeal to reason " as authority is the logical and extreme position of Cartesianism. Applied to the world of phenomena, reason is made the driving force of the eighteenth century. It destroys tradition, places the moderns — in their self-consciousness — above the ancients, suggests the

> Thus in 1674 Malebranche did for Descartes what Charron had done for Montaigne at the close of the sixteenth century.

' On reason as bans gens — the practical, as distinguished from abstract, reason

— see below, under Classicism.

272 DESCARTES

idea of progress and perfectibility, and in its attention to the sciences undermines the rule of art as incorporated in the ancients. On the last question, the pages of Malebranche's La verite deal- ing with Aristotle are significant.

The seventeenth century, however, was more literary than scientific, in spite of Descartes. As Voltaire said, it was a century " de grands talents bien plus que de lumieres." Al- though the philosophy of Descartes stands at the apex of the Renaissance, of which it is the philosophy, we should bear in mind that in the seventeenth century it was merged with the current of Graeco-Roman tradition, as pointed out above. From this happy fusion came the underlying restraint of the Classical Spirit.

Rigaud, "Louis XIV'

BOOK IV CLASSICISM

CHAPTER I

LOUIS XIV AND THE CLASSICAL SPIRIT

The reign of Louis XIV, the longest in French history, ex- tended from 1643 to 1715. Louis was but a child of five when he came to the throne, and the Queen-mother, Anne of Austria, continued the policy of Richelieu with the help of the astute but unscrupulous Mazarin. Thus the young King was bred in the school of the most uncompromising absolutism under the direction of an Italian. A " realist " in politics, Mazarin had but one aim: to serve himself by serving his king. In this he was aided by a sentimental attachment for the Queen-mother herself. Mazarin's greatest achievement, the Peace of West- phalia (1648), had made France a self-sufiBcient modern state. By the annexation of Metz and Alsace, it had indicated her present boundaries, and by reducing the Holy Roman Empire to an empty shadow it left France the leading continental power. Through this peace, says Lavisse, " la France a pratique la premiere avec eclat la politique de I'egoisme national." Other nations could but follow in her wake. So that when Mazarin died in 1661, the framework of absolute monarchy was complete: the Roi-Soleil had only to step into it and supply the picture of his own commanding personality. Louis was not a genius. He was, in the common opinion of historians, more of an actor than a creator — in the political sense. But until the fatal Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 he strove wisely, on an ever as- cending scale, for the development of those qualities for which France and French culture are justly famed. In the words of Voltaire: " I'Etat devint un tout regulier, dent chaque ligne aboutit au centre." This center was the king — in art and literature as well as politics. Louis is the embodiment of the

273

274 LOUIS XIV AND THE CLASSICAL SPIRIT

cultural ideal inherent in the Renaissance. He is the uomo di virtu made real. But being a realization, he is also an end. The year 1685 marks the pinnacle of his career. With the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Modems in 1687 a new period of French history begins.

Personally, Louis blended admirably the qualities of mind and body required for such a difi&cult role. He was twenty-two when ^ Mazarin died, and besides the charm and grace Traits of of youth he had a majesty of bearing which ^°^^ reflected a self-possessed but generous attitude of

mind. " Le metier de Roi," he tells us in his Memoirs, "est grand, noble, delicieux." If fortime had honored him, he at least meant to prove worthy. Never was a king more industrious nor, with few exceptions, more circumspect' In his work of organization, it is true, he was assisted by the cool-headed Colbert — him whom Mme de Sevigne had fitly termed " le Nord." Colbert was a Cartesian and an in- defatigable worker; he prepared for his royal master a dossier on every conceivable matter: law, commerce, politics, war, and even literature and painting. It behooved Louis, he thought, to " divide up " the affairs of state and set them in their " natural order." Owing to Colbert the fiscal and the legal system were modernized, the French colonies were developed through the establishment of a merchant-marine, and the Canal du midi, connecting the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, was planned and in part carried out. But if Colbert proposed, it was Louis who " disposed " and where it was feasible executed his own orders. Doubtless Louis should have followed Colbert's advice and given his country peace; whereas, glorious as they were, his wars exhausted his people's strength. When Louis realized his mistake, Colbert was dead and the damage irreparable. On the other hand, Louis did not generally lack prudence. Not be- ing a quick thinker, he improvised nothing. His speeches — one might add, his every act — were prepared with care. Passion- ate by nature, as his successive " afifairs " with Marie Mancini, La Valliere, Madame de Montespan and Madame de Maintenon show, he was in no sense a profligate and rarely allowed emotion ' to control his mind. When his own brother, the weak Duke of Anjou, asked him for a sinecure, he slyly replied: "the best

VERSAILLES 275

sinecure is the heart of your King." Thus, in the main, Louis was hard-working, intelligent, moderate and extraordinarily regular. " With a calendar and a watch in hand," wrote Saint- Simon, " one could at a distance of three hundred leagues pre- dict what he was doing."

But it should be observed that the chief function of this monarch was to " act a part." Where pomp and ceremony are The Court of the rule, pride and vanity become a second nature* Louis XIV ^ji(j mindful of the disruptive forces that produced the Fronde, the monarchy bent every energy to organize its "glory" in a concrete form. Says Lavisse:

Louis voulut, dans cette concupiscence de gloire . . . etre glorieux comme Augusta, le protecteur des lettres, comme Con- stantin et Theodose, les protecteurs de I'Eglise, comme Justinian, le legislateur. " II faut," pensait-il, " de la variete dans la gloire."

But however varied the manifestations of glory, they were clearly to center upon the King. Colbert, who in 1664 bought the office of superintendent of buildings, virtually became a minister of fine arts. He awarded pensions to scholars and writers, he acted as vice-protector of the Academy, he gave employment to artists and architects — in short, he directed the intellectual life of the country with the same masterful design as he did the finances and the laws. But it was Louis himself who created Versailles — the focus of all this activity, the vast stage of French grandeur, the symbol at once of his absolutism and his uni- versality.

It is unnecessary to dwell on the magnificence and cost of the court of Versailles. The palace, which, with its galleries, court- yard, park, fountains, embodied the art of Le Vau, Mansart, Le N6tre, Le Brun and Perrault, was planned to admit a multitude — not as guests but as spectators and workers. Taine estimates that the official household of the King involved some fifteen thousand individuals with an outlay of forty to fifty million francs or one tenth of the public revenue. What concerns us here is the symbolic aspect of the place, the fact that human life could be organized on so formal a plane, that it was in effect possible to compress the activities of a nation into the dimensions of a well-ordered salon. For the Court of Versailles was not

276 LOUIS XIV AND THE CLASSICAL SPIRIT

an inner circle — closed to the eyes of the world — but a con- tinuous public function, in which every act of the monarch, from his getting out of bed {le lever) to his evening prayer and retire- ment {le coucher) was elaborately staged and observed. When, for example, the youthful Louis wished to proclaim his attach- ment for La Valliere, he gave at Versailles the " Plaisirs de rile enchantee " — a fete that lasted nine days, and in which Moliere was the chief entertainer. Riding on a chariot, the great dramatist impersonated Pan, the most pagan of the gods; and he celebrated in verse the justification for Louis' passion:

Dans I'age oil Ton est aimable

Rien n'est si beau que d'ajmer.

Thus the court of Louis XIV appealed to the sociability and the histrionic sense of the French. It was exclusive only in the respect that training and genius made it so. It is noteworthy that the main talents of Louis' reign were of bourgeois extrac- tion: Racine, Boileau^^Ioliere and La Fontaine. Only La Ilochjyoucauld,J\iadame3iIEaTF^ were of

the hereditary noble class. Yet noble or cleric or bourgeois, it was part of Louis' deliberate plan to make them all contribute to his fame: Racine and Boileau as historiographers, Bossuet as chaplain to the court and as tutor to the Dauphin,^ Moliere as chief entertainer and comedien du roi. ' To ignore such a king was practically to forego worldly success. " Sachez," says one of Moliere's characters, " que les courtisans ont d'aussi bons yeux que d'autres; qu'on pent etre habile avec un point de Venise et des plumes-, aussi bien qu'avec une perruque courte et un petit rabat uni," and finally, " que la grande epreuve . . . c'est le jugement de la cour." Even the vagabond La Fontaine — as free a spirit as France has ever produced — was to recognize the fact. '

It would have been impossible, however, for Louis to con- centrate upon Versailles unless he had had the resources of Paris Paris: The *° draw from. By the seventeenth century Paris ^"^^an Aspect had become what it has remained since: the metrop- olis with a character and temper of its own; "the torch-bearer of France," as Victor Hugo has called it, but not

* Known as Monseigneur.

CLASSICAL TRAITS 277

the whole of France nor the expression of a single faith, religious, political or artistic. Yet if French literature has a metropolitan aspect, this was never more the case than during Louis' reign. The ancients had seen in their cities — Athens and Rome — the opportunity for a definite and well-rounded life of culture; and the French succeeded to this idea, again through the medium of Italy. Ronsard and Du Bellay had been proud of the fact that they hailed from the provinces; but the Classical Boileau is first and foremost a Parisian. Nicolas Poussin, the court painter, admits without hesitation:

J'ai choisi la demeure de la ville, et non pas celle des champs ou je vivrais deconsole.

Thus Classical culture has the two phases, summed up in the expression la cour et la ville, and between them it would be hard to choose. For if the court gave form and polish, it was the city that furnished matter and ideas to literature and art. Vaugelas, that arbiter elegantiarum in respect to language, is forced to grant that:

Le consentement des bons auteurs (most of them Parisians) est comme le sceau, ou une verification, qui authorise le langage de la cour, et qm marque le ban usage.

And so it happens that Racine, a Jansenist at heart, produces the most courtly form of tragedy; that Moliere, a radical in almost any other age, lifts his voice in behalf of the social virtues; and that Pascal, a dissenter if there ever was one, clothes his thought in the most aristocratic of styles. Variety in xmity is therefore the hall-mark of French Classicism. It is without doubt a literature of form, but it is also a literature of great individuals, whose personal qualities are none the less marked for being artistically on much the same plane. In the alignment of Classical traits, reason would come first, ihenjTt, thensociaZj2n2i»-aod finally nature. With all of these The Classical except the last we have dealt in preceding chapters. Tiaits ^g TffQ have seen, the idea of reason permeates the

Renaissance as that of faith does the Middle Ages and as the idea of personality characterizes modern times. In regard to art, its influence dates from the Pleiade and the introduction of criti^l theories from Italy. In both respects there was — as

278 LOUIS XIV AND THE CLASSICAL SPIRIT

we have observed — a return to Graeco-Roman antiquity ; thus the authority of the ancients became in a measure sacrosanct. Yet there could be no organization without social form, which would harmonize conflicting ideals under the banner of decorum and give to the social body ease and grace of expression. This was the work of the Hotel de Rambouillet and the various salons arising therefrom. Lastly, as a culmination of these traits, came a better understanding of man's intrinsic qualities, a psychological grasp of his actual being — in a word, nature, which thus is the crowning feature of the Classical edifice.

It cannot be too strongly stated that to the seventeenth century nature was primarily " human nature." The generation of 1660, thinks Brunetiere, was quite capable of enjoying land- scape; but it enjoyed it objectively, sans phrases. It was far from conceiving landscape, in its primitive majesty and beauty, as an inspiration for poetry and art. That revelation was to be reserved for Rousseau and the eighteenth century to make. Meantime, this was the age of the formalism of Le Notre, when the regularity of the drawing-room was the model for gardening, when trees and shrubbery were arranged like furniture, and lawns were currently called des tapis verts. In general, then, the fundamental idea was la belle nature; that is, " civilized nature," a world thought of as conforming to the universal laws of the human mind. The more the opposing factors of mind and matter could be harmonized, the better — provided always that reason or mind remained in the ascendency. On this basis Boileau laid down the rule:

Jamais de la nature il ne faut s'ecarter; and, in England, Pope repeats this thought in the dictum:

True wit is Nature to advantage dressed, What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed.

On the other hand, a departure from nature was now the predeux, the bizarre, the grotesque and the ijwrg^^emblabl^ -^ike flie lawless and savage aspects of a universe untouched by the civilizing hand of man. " Let there be no mistake," says that later-day Classicist Brunetiere, " if the heroes of Shakespeare are more passionate than others, they are not on that account more true to life but only more brutal " —

CLASSICAL TRAITS 279

ils sont plus proches de la nature dans la mesure oh lersont aussi les sauvages et les barbares.

Classicism would admit of no such imperfection.

But if Classicism is at once natural, artistic and rational — it is by its very definition opposed to an exaggeration of any one feature. The real Classicists (Pascal, Boileau, Racine, La Fontaine, Bossuet and Moliere) held not only to reason but also to intuition as the two essential qualities of man. They did so with Pascal, who maintained — and this is the most ex- treme statement of his position:

Le cceur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point;

and again with Boileau, who said:

Mais la nature est vraie, et d'abord on la sent.

There has been much discussion of the famous passage in which Pascal sets in opposition these two functions of man as the esprit de geometrie and the esprit de finesse. By the one, he aflBrms, we reason abstractly, and by the other we apprehend immediately and concretely. Other terms are: Ig^Qijpn (the pure reason) and le bons sens (the^ practicai^jre,ason) . And it is the second quality, so frequently emphasized by both Moliere and Boileau, that is invoked for the guidance of mankind. Cer- tainly, the trait is typical of the French honnete homme, who by antecedent training has acquired the aptitude to judge delicately and therefore correctly.^ Cleante in Tartuffe holds this point of view when he says:

Les hommes la plupart sont etrangement faits! Dans la juste nature on ne les voit jamais.

— whereas the man of good breeding is considerate and balanced in his conduct. But names are deceptive, and the esprit de finesse ranges all the way from le bon sens to the most delicate intuition. Similarly, in the field of art it appears as le bon gout or taste; and, again, to some critics taste is based on inflexible rational laws, whereas to others it is mainly delicacy of perception

' "Measure" as eharacteristip of the honnSte homme — a reflection of the Italian sprezzaiura — is seen in La Rochefoucauld's maxim that "I'honnfete homme est celm qui ne se pique de rien."

280 LOUIS XIV AND THE CLASSICAL SPIRIT

or feeling. La Bruyere, who believed that there is " un bon et un mauvais gout," nevertheless made the criterion of taste a matter of cultivated instinct.^ The important point, however, is that Classicism conceives of man's nature as " complete." The gesta- tion, of centuries is achieved: man has become conscious of him- self, of his position in the universe, of his functions, of what he can and cannot do in life. If he is sensible like the Chrysaldes and Aristes of Moliere's Comedy, he will know that the " middle course " {le juste milieu) is the best, that it is folly to fly to extremes,* that only he is happy who can bring his life into accord with the lives of his fellow-men. But even when he is not sensible, when like the Phaedra or Orestes of Racine he is mad with passion, or like Pascal he is at odds with the universe, his reason mirrors his weakness and justifies the position that:

Toute notre dignite consiste . . . en la pensee. Travaillons done a bien penser: voila le principe de la morale.

In other words, Classicism clings to reason as the foimdation of intuition, and its " nature " is the harmony between idea and fact.

In this essential position, Classicism is the realism of seven- teenth-century literature. Racine and Moliere are related to Corneille as Honore de Balzac is to Victor Hugo. The difference is that neither Balzac nor Hugo regards man as a finality, and least of all as a rational finality, such as he is to both Corneille and Racine. The Classical world, we repeat, is a closed universe. Its tendency is constantly to identify the city and the world (in urbe et orbe). Classicism gravitates towards a center, not away from it. Humanity is not asked in Nietzsche's phrase, " to surpass itself," but to be itself. The breadth of Classicism lies in the supreme fact that it considers nothing human as alien to it — though this is true only as an ideal. In fact, having decided what is normal for man or a special group of men, the Classicist sets up this norm as his model and imitates it. And how is this norm determined? The simplest answer to this ques-

' "Celul qui le sent et qui I'aime a le goftt parfait: oelui qui le sent et qui I'aime en degk ou au del& a le goftt d6feotueux." — Dea Ouvrages de I'eiprit.

< Compare Pascal, Penaiea, 378: "C'est sortir de rhumanit^ que de sortii du milieu."

CLASSICAL TRAITS 281

tion is to say : by a comparison of civilized men throughout the ages; and to the seventeenth century such a comparison neces- sarily embraced the ancients. Thus French Classicism is not merely a revival of ancient classicism, but an attempt to define the genus Man by eliminating from him all that seemed local and ephemeral. Racine's tragedies are not Greek, Roman or French; they are — within the limits we have stated — universal.

Having said this, we must grant that there is little or no room in such a program for the imagination. " The fairyland of fancy," where genius "may wander wild," is in itself contrary to the Classical creed. The Classical vocabulary is restricted to words that were socially approved as universally expressive. ° Even the rational imagination, considered as " quickness," or " wit," or " conceit " — qualities so much lauded in Pre-Classical days — had become abhorrent to the age of Boileau and La Bruyere, who regarded false wit as lacking in common sense and judg- ment. The amiable and sensible Bouhours defines le bel esprit as le bon sens qui brille.^ In all this. Classicism again repre- sents a reaction, and correctness or " decorum " easily became a tyranny. Above all, and here is the objector's best argument, Classicism would leave no illusions, no mysteries, no undis- covered bourns, in man's spiritual makeup. Where the momen- tum is towards clearness and precision it is away from lyricism or metaphysics.

On the other hand, genius is always an exception and no system can fully explain the great work of art. Racine has a lyrical side just as Pascal is metaphysical, if any Frenchman ever was. If Classicism means anything it signifies control and not suppression. Indeed, the French spirit is so nearly Classical that it would be hazardous to attempt a distinction. What makes it so is the sense of balance: the ability of the cultivated Frenchman, illustrated again and again in history, though never better than in the generation of 1660, to strike a middle course. The Classical traits of reason, art, social form, and nature were then held, so to speak, in suspension — not in fixed proportions, but in deference to the value of each. Beneath the veneer ,of art, there were the social problems, rationally

* Racine's vocabulary is much leas than one-half that of Shakespeare.

• See Wright, French Classicism, page 104.

282 LOUIS XIV AND THE CLASSICAL SPIRIT

considered, with great wealth of observation. Or the emphasis might be reversed: a social or scientific problem is to the fore and art is accessory; yet the form being artistic the problem treated carries delight and conviction to its public. It may be doubted whether, as " truth," the character types of Racine and Moliere have ever been equalled. They have their limitations, of course. They may lack individual freedom, power — some may say — beauty. But that they are " real " is beyond cavil. Thus the Age of Louis XIV is the representative French age. Classicism is the harmonious inter-working of life and art. It is the time when the individual and the type are most evenly matched; when men look beyond the individual for the actual traits of the type, and when, at the same time, " a mesure qu'on a plus d'esprit, on trouve qu'il y a plus d'hommes originaux. Les gens du conmiun ne trouvent pas de difference entre les hommes." Into these words Pascal has distilled the essence of French seventeenth-century culture.

CHAPTER II

THE WRITERS OF MEMOIRS AND MAXIMS WOMEN WRITERS

The first Classicist, in his attitude towards human nature, was La Rochefoucauld. There is an exquisite page by Sainte-Beuye La Roche- in which the great critic recalls that Mme de Sevigne foucauld once suggested papering a bedroom with the backs of playing-cards. Thus the trumps of the evening before would appear to us in the morning in a wholly different light: we had retired believing in Chimene, Polyeucte, Auguste or some other queen or king of romance ; we would awaken to behold the other side of the picture. This other side of life, le revers de la medaUle, is La Rochefoucauld. He, too, has his interest, the interest of a fresh discovery. And as we proceed to drain his bitterness and wax enthusiastic over it, we ourselves grow calm and collected, aware of the fact, which La Rochefoucauld never allows us to forget, that life has the two sides, ideal and real, separated by an attitude.

Frangois VI, Due de la Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marsillac, was bom at Paris in 1613. He had an adventurous and noisy youth, taking a very active part in the Fronde. " II y eut," sai9 Cardinal de Retz, " toujours du je ne sais quoi en tout M. de La Rochefoucauld." This irresolu- tion, seen chiefly in a sentimental attachment for women — Mme de Chevreuse, the Duchess of Longueville, Mme de Sable and Mme de La Fayette — led him to turn his back on fortune. Wounded at the combat of the Porte Saint-Antoine, and disap- pointed at the triimiph of Mazarin, he retired in 1653, first abroad, and then to his estate at Verteuil. In 1656 he returned to Paris to enjoy a disillusioned but peaceful old age in the dis- tinguished circles which he helped to create. He died in 1680, in the arms of Bossuet. His Memoires were first published in 1662, and his Maxifnes in 1664-1665.

283

284 THE WRITERS OF MEMOIRS AND MAXIMS

Unlike Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld prizes his personal ob- servation as on a par with general truth; he distinguishes the two, does justice to each, and hence is aware of the bearing of each on the other. His truest observa- tion is probably that " Nobody deserves to be praised for doing good unless he possesses the power of doing evil." Goodness to him is an exceptional act — this is the keynote of his aris- tocratic code. The fact that humanity is mostly a failure is no reason why it should always be one. Thus La Roche- foucauld's " truths " are the reflections of a spirit essentially idealistic.

The Memoires are the record of his own failures, objectively told. With intentional coldness the work recounts the fiasco of the Fronde and the futile attempt of La' Rochefoucauld to free the Queen from the tyranny of Richelieu. The Maximes crystallize the. poignancy of himian experience in a phrase. In " itself, the maxim was a pFoduct of the salon of Mme de Sable. This great lady, daughter of the Marechal de Souvre, united good breeding with a keen intelligence and an interest in the Jansen- ists of Port-Royal. Under her direction it became a social game not only to draw portraits in words but also to summarize discus- sions in a sentence. For this there were Italian models,^ and Mme de Sable's own " maxims " were not without merit, while those by a certain Esprit — the Faussetes des vertus humaines — attained considerable vogue. Those of La Rochefoucauld were offered at the lady's shrine as incense: years were given to polishing and improving each maxim; and when the slender volume at last appeared it was to undergo both excision and expansion and, thanks to the later influence of Mme de La Fayette, considerable softening in tone. The success of the Maximes rests as much on the happy turn of the thought — the trimness and ingenuity of expression — as upon the observations expressed. La Ro.che- foucauld has an instinct, improved by practice, for the jaot jjrogre. " Quand les vices nous quittent," he says, " nous nous flattens de la cr^ance que c'est nous qui les quittons." And again, " Les vices entrent dans la composition des vertus, comme les poisons entrent dans la composition des remedes." For the most part, however, the exaggeration is slight and the observa-

< See espeoially Guazio, La civil Conversaaone, 1574.

RETZ 286

>

tion is not only telling but also profound. Thus poetry unites with truth in such maxims as " With true love it is as with appa- ritions— every one talks of them but few persons have seen them," and " Virtues lose themselves in self-interest as rivers lose themselves in the sea." Like Moliere, La Rochefoucauld is a^CTSoiseless^ritic of life. He is not without pity, but he is as relentless to himself as to society in regard to the motives which we constantly misrepresent, for " Society rewards more often the appearance of merit than merit itself."

Finally, there is his Parnassian style — a style that has the/| quality of an inscription: lapidary, concise, completely adequate] But it is a style without relief, having no transitions, and hencelj/ wearisome in the long rim. La Rochefoucauld is not a greats writer: he harps too much on one string, but the vibrations from that string are true to human nature the world over.

Without a scintilla of La Rochefoucauld's nobility but possess- ing far more dash and brilliancy was his contemporary, Paul de The Cardinal Gondi, Cardinal de Retz (1614^1679). Never a de Retz sentimentalist, Retz was an Italian by birth and tradition, and he sought to play a role as a worldly and profligate churchman. At seventeen he wrote the Histoire de la conjuration de Fiesque, a work that opened Richelieu's eyes to the potential dangers of this fledgling. In 1652 he was made a cardinal through intrigue. Imprisoned because of his part in the Fronde, he es- caped, passed eight years in Spain, Holland and Rome, and in 1662 returned to France after having resigned his bishopric with a grandeur d'dme which was truly Cornelian (Lanson). His Memoires, written about 1671 though not published until 1717, are an attempt to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of posterity — another trait of the Frondeur. In an admirable portrait of him La Rochefoucauld emphasizes these qualities: " beaucoup d'ele- vation, d'etendue d'esprit, et plus d'ostentation que de vraie grandeur de courage."

There is something demoniac in Retz's audacity (Dowden), of which the Memoires are the expression. This work relates what Retz desired to be believed. He changes dates, falsifies facts and motives, but is always vivid and intensely real. In particular, his account of the " Journee des Barricades " pulsates with the vigor of an actual occurrence and reveals his power as a de-

286 THE WRITERS OF MEMOIRS AND MAXIMS

scriptive artist of the first rank. The same trait appears in the extended correspondence he exchanged with the notables of his time. Retz is particularly strong in his discussion of politics and in his portraits. In both directions he shows astuteness and a sense of color, although brilliancy of idea and of style remains his chief asset. Thus in every regard he is a survival of the age of Corneille.

Another Frondeur, but this time an ardent defender of the royal faction, was Charles de Marguetel de Saint-Denis, Seigneur Saint- de Saint-Evremond (1613-1703). Yet in his writ-

Evremond jngg he maintains a detached point of view. Hav- ing publicly criticized the Peace of the Pyrenees, he had to leave France (1661) in order to escape the Bastille. He retired to England and there spent forty-two years of his life, dying on the threshold of the eighteenth century and being the only Frenchman buried in Westminster Abbey. Thus Saint-Evre- mond spans the century, touching only its extremes and unin- fluenced by Classicism itself. He is one of the really "free" spirits. Precieux and libertin by origin, he holds to Corneille against the rising fame of Racine, and he concludes by admiring Bayle and by breaking a lance for the Modems (see below) in his treatise Sur les Poemes anciens (1685). Less of a writer than a cosmopolite of liberal ideas, he was not keen to publish, and in fact his Veritables CEuvres did not appear until after his death in 1705. These works consist of reflections on diverse topics, generally more interesting than sound, but always expressed with ease and simplicity. Sainte-Beuve re- garded him as the most distinguished example of the courtiers of 1660.

Others there were of a similar but less worthy type, such as the vainglorious Chevalier de Mere (1609-1684) and the captious but Women very able and witty Bussy-Rabutin (1618-1693).

Writers Mere gave one of the earliest and most elaborate

definitions of the honnete homme, besides suggesting to Pascal various fruitful reflections ; whereas Bussy excelled by the perfect trimness of his epistolary style, seen above all in his cor- respondence with distinguished women. But it is these latter who illustrate best the mundane spirit and the background of social brilliancy and intrigue upon which Classicism was nurtured.

MME DE LA FAYETTE 287

This background is still covered with a veil of romance in the works of Mme de La Fayette, the " truest " woman whom La Mme de Rochefoucauld had ever known. Her maiden name La Fayette ^^g Marie-Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne, and she was born in Havre (1634) , of which city her father was governor. She received an excellent education, partly at the hands of Menage and of Rapin, and was early introduced to the precieux circles of the capital. Married at twenty-one to the Comte de La Fayette, she became the intimate of Mme de Sevigne and of the gracious but tmhappy Henrietta of England, whose Memoirs she wrote. During the later years of his life La Rochefoucauld found in her a devoted friend, and she in him doubtless a helpful literary mentor. She survived him by thirteen years, dying in 1693.

Her greatest work is La Princesse de Cleves (1678), one of the classic novels of French literature. This was preceded by several works " published \mder the name of Segrais, the most interesting of which is Zayde, histoire es-pagnole, in which Mme de La Fayette attempts to reduce to reasonable proportions the complicated intrigue of the heroic romances (see Bk. Ill, Ch. ,n). But success along this line was reserved for the first- mentioned work; borrowing the technique of the Cornelian drama and applying it for the first time to the domain of the novel, the author here presents a simple situation in terms that are psychologically true to life.

The subject of La Princesse de Cleves is, according to Lanson, that of " Polyeucte moins la religion." A married woman loves a courtier who is not her husband, and becoming aware of the growth of her affection appeals to her husband to protect her against herself. Thinking himself deceived, M. de Cleves falls ill and dies, though not without being told of his error; where- upon his wife, free to choose her lover, chooses a life of seclusion instead. The plot and personages were borrowed in part from Perefixe,' who recounts an event at the court of Henry II. But the motivation, the characterization and, above all, the charm of the novel belong to Mme de La Fayette. There is about the

story an air of the medieval roman d'aventure; and although

>

' She began with a short-story, Mile de Montpensier, 1662. • Histoire de Henri le Grand, 1662.

288 THE WRITERS OF MEMOIRS AND MAXIMS

realism is not its strongest side, its pathos and its beauty are alike impressive — and its psychology is that of an aristocra,tic soul. As regards form, La Princesse de Cleves is a landmark in the history of its genre. With it the historical romance acquires not only depth but proportion as well.

On the whole, Mme de La Fayette writes simply and without affectation ; her style is luniinous rather than passionate, nor does it lack ironic touches and an occasional bit of malice.

A letter-writer only, but probably the greatest one the world has ever had, is Mme de Sevigne. Her correspondence is the Mme de " tableau-vivant " of the seventeenth century, and Sevigne fQj. social portraiture it equals the works of Saint-

Simon, while written with much more fairness though less scope.

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, who at eighteen married the Marquis of Sevigne — a Breton nobleman — was born at Paris in 1626 and died at Grignan in 1696. A granddaughter of that Mme de Chantal whom Frangois de Sales knew, and a cousin of Bussy-Rabutin, she belonged to one of the best families in France. Left an orphan in childhood, she fell to the care of an uncle, the Abbe de Coulanges, who gave her an excellent educa- tion, to which both Chapelain and Menage contributed instruc- tion in foreign languages. Personally, she had beauty despite the square nose and the yeux bigarres with which she reproached herself. In addition, she possessed a sparkling wit and, what is more remarkable for her time, an outright and sincere manner of speech. Thus she was fitted to become a social leader with- out falling a prey to preciosity or to worldly intrigue.

Her husband, another light-hearted Frondeur, was killed in a duel (1651), leaving his young wife with two children, a daughter Frangoise, and a son Charles. She married her daughter (1668) to the Comte 4&-€r«^^a, a lieutenant-general of Provence, and supported her sonTn the army. Meanwhile, she consoled herself for her solitude by leading an active social life. In 1677 she bought the Hotel Carnavalet, where she kept open house until her death. But she also visited other parts of France, passing the summer at Les Rochers, the family estate in Brittany, or going to Provence for a sojourn with her daughter. Mme de Sevign6 was fond of bucolic Nature, while the great passion of her life — the only passion that ever blinded her — was her affection for her daughter.

MME DE SEVIGNE 289

The great bulk of her Letters, and they fill many volumes, are addressed to Mme de Grignan. Others were written to Tiie L tt Bussy-Rabutin, Mme de La Fayette, and a few friends — in short, a rather intimate circle. But in a day when the means of commimication were slow and journalism was in its infancy,* the arrival of a letter was an event and the composition thereof a matter of consequence. Thus, writing from the center of the world to her daughter in the provinces, Mme de Sevigne was not merely a purveyor of information on all important subjects, but also a sympathetic and imaginative critic. Indeed, her greatest gift is a vivid imagination, one which permitted her to gauge at a distance the effect that her messages would make upon the recipient. As M. Lanson has observed, her Letters have light, color and move- ment. They are not over-emotional: the execution of the Mar- quise de La Brinvilliers (convicted of poisoning) becomes under her pen a masterpiece of piquant description. Or take her Letter on the Death of Turenne, written a full month after this general died; nothing that is significant is omitted, the details are presented vividly, with extraordinary freshness — but what is more, they are intelligently presented, the particular passes over into the general, and such facts as escaped her eye her fancy supplies. Having no theory to uphold, she thus becomes the mirror of her age. In a style that is at once brilliant and rational, she touches upon all aspects of her time: the court, the city, the country-side, her own domestic life and, lastly, her extensive and solid reading. The Letters are not only an in- valuable social and literary document but also the expression of a spirited and sensible woman of the world. They include also the doings of her many friends, for she was amiable and widely esteemed.

Masculine perseverance, rather than feminine charm and wit, accounts for the remarkable role which Mme de Maintenon Mme de was to play in the destinies of France. Noteworthy, Maintenon ^q^^ jg ^jjg paradox between her common-sense mind and the startling romance of her career. " C'est une fortune d'aventuriere, avec I'esprit le moins aventurier du monde," says M. Lanson.

' La Gazette de France published four pages weekly, from 1631 on, and LeMer- eure Gaiant began as a auarterly in 1672.

290 THE WRITERS OF MEMOIRS AND MAXIMS

Granddaughter of the great Protestant poet, Frangoise d'Aubigne (1635-1719) ' was born in a prison. Taken to the West Indies by her father, whom she lost in childhood, placed in a convent in order to be converted to Catholicism, dependent on her own efforts for an education, she married early the talented but broken-down Scarron. On the latter's death, her steadfastness won her the position of governess to the children of Mme de Montespan and Louis XIV. This was her " stroke of fortune." Painstaking, regular, faithful to the point of self- effacement, she gradually became the confidant and friend of the King — and soon after the death of Marie-Therese she was secretly married to him (1684). As her correspondence makes clear, she had not the genius to intrigue for this post; on the contrary, it came to her by force of circumstance; among all those close to Louis she alone had the power to heal and reform, at least to attenuate, the ills of Louis' declining years. Thus she made it her calling to bring him back to the chvu-ch.

It is possible to exaggerate this influence. At the same time, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), following so quickly upon her marriage, had her approval, just as it was due to her that Louis henceforth surrounded himself with fol- lowers and not with leaders. In one respect Mme de Maintenon showed genius ; namely, in the foundation of Saint-Cyr, a school for the daughters of poor but well-born people. Here she, a Romanist, carried into execution the principles of the Jansenists of Port-Royal. It was for Saint-Cyr that Racine wrote his last two plays: Esther, with which he justly triumphed, and Atkalie, with which he unjustly failed.

As for literature, Mme de Maintenon is known by various Lettres, Avis, Conversations and Proverbes. Of all these it is the Lettres that reflect her character best. They are not, like Mme de Sevigne's, the creation of genius. But they reveal a knowl- edge of human nature, a sense of justice and balance, and a passion for Reason — a name by which Mme de Maintenon was currently known. Again the masculine note is dominant; ac- cordingly, Mme de Maintenon is just to others, direct and natural, and her business letters in particular are products of a practical and efficient mind.

• In 1676 Loviis XIV gave her the title of Marquise de Mamtenoc

CHAPTER III MOLIERE AND LA FONTAINE

By giving rise to the writing of Memoirs and Letters the, Fronde had distilled the pungency of realism. Li the two geniuses before us realism is a gift of the gods; hence it is creative rather than merely critical and ironic. Moliere and La Fontaine are linked with the tradition of Rabelais: both belong to the libertin or epicurean current of the century ; both affirm life on a rational, common-sense basis; in both dwells the spirit of comedy. "What great writer has most honored my reign? " Louis XIV once asked of Boileau. " Moliere, Sire," replied the great critic. La Fontaine, being more lyrical, is less universal; but he is a great French poet, possessed of a sensitive and highly artistic temperament.

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, who took the stage-name of Moliere, was born in the Rue Saint-Honore (Paris) about the middle of Moliere's January, 1622. His mother, Marie Cresse, who was ^'*® well-to-do in her own right, died when her eldest

was tqn. Jean Poquelin, his father, bought in 1631 the post of tapissier ordinaire de la maison du roi, to which was later added the title of valet de chambre. There were but eight such " royal upholsterers," and it is clear that the Poquelin family enjoyed some distinction among the bourgeoisie. In 1637 the reversion of the father's office was settled on the poet, who was, however, to have an excellent education. The College de Clermont, today the College Louis-le-Grand, had been founded in Paris by the Jesuits and was attracting the scions of the better-class citizens. Thither Moliere was sent. He there followed the regular courses in science and grammar, which included a careful study of Plautus and Terence, and he became attached ^o his schoolmate, Chapelle, who was already somewhat of a wit and society dan4y. When young Chapelle and Cyrano de Bergerac were placed under the tutelage of the philosopher Gassendi, Moliere

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292 MOLIERE AND LA FONTAINE

probably joined them. Certain it is that Mohere tried his hand at a translation of Lucretius' De rerum natura, the influence of which is reflected in Le Misanthrope (Act II, Sc. IV) . The result of such an education was two-fold: it grounded the poet in a knowledge of Roman Comedy, and it initiated him into the philosophy of epicureanism.

It is also said — this time by an enemy of the poet — that Moliere studied law at Orleans. But this is doubtful, as is also the claim that the poet accompanied Louis XIII as an apprentice " upholsterer " to Narbonne in 1642. Whatever may have been his previous intention, at the age of twenty-one he renoimced his father's succession and became an actor — and an impresario.

His associates in this career were a family of vagabond players, the Bejarts, one of whom, Madeleine Bejart, figures cruelly in his private and professionaf life. With them Moliere founded the so-called Illustre Theatre. But the difficulty of finding a stage for their performances and the choice of heavy tragedy parts, for which Moliire in particular was unsuited, spelled disaster, and by 1645 the elder Poquelin was obliged to rescue his son from a debtors' prison.

For a period of thirteen years, the company then toured the provinces as " barn-stormers." The ox-cart of Madeleine be- came the chariot of Thespis ; Scarron in his Roman comique has described the vicissitudes of a strolling troupe which cannot be unlike those that proved Molifere's metal. Hard as these years were, they had their compensation. The company won the ser- vices of Mile Du Pare, then in her prime ; it displayed its wares before princely patrons; and finally, it discovered Moliere's genius as a writer of comedy — L'Etourdi (" The Blunderer ") , the first of his undoubted plays, being performed at Lyons in 1655. We learn this from La Grange, who joined the troupe in 1658, and whose Registre is the most authentic account of the poet's subsequent activity. In the interval Moliere had pro- duced his Depit amoureux (" Lovers' Quarrel ") , like his first play, composed in the manner of the Italian Comedy of Masks.

But real success awaited him in Paris. His troupe had re- turned to the capital in 1658 and on the invitation of Monsieur (the Duke of Anjou) had given a performance before the court.

THE EARLY COMEDIES 293

A week later the company was given permission to use the stage of the Petit Bourbon, a theater adjoining the Louvre. Here it was, on November eighteenth, 1659, that all Paris laughed at Les Precieuses ridicules. Apt and timely, this trim little satire was a page from real life. And it was in Moliere's true vein, bubbling over with hilarious humor. But if it pleased the multi- tude, it angered the blue-stockings and the petty marquises who resented the fidelity of Mascarille's impersonation. Ob- viously, Moliere had sown dragon's teeth. On the other hand, he had won the support of the Grand Monarque, who rejoiced when Moliere returned to the charge with Les Fdcheux (" The Bores "), a dramatic skit which was composed overnight for the royal visit to Vaux-le-Vicomte, and which elicited the following praise from La Fontaine:

jamais il ne fit si bon Se trouver a la comedie . . . Nous avons change de methode; Jodelet n'est plus a la mode, Et maintenant il ne faut pas Quitter la nature d'lm pas.

Meanwhile, our dramatist was busy with more serious ques- tions. L'Ecole des maris (1661) broaches the eternal question of the education and marriage of women. The theme was a favorite one during the Renaissance: Terence's Adelphi had shown how futile harsh methods are with the young male; the Spanish Mendoza had shifted the interest to the treatment of wives in his Marido hace mujer (" The Husband makes the Wife ") . On this double basis Moliere constructed his play. Sganarelle, who treats his charge severely, is outwitted by her; whereas Ariste, who consents to Leonor's " young wishes", cap- tures her affection. As pure comedy, based on an obvious but easily ignored truth, the Ecole des maris is admirable; Voltaire thought it " the best that Moliere ever contrived," but Voltaire was writing in the eighteenth century. A goodly portion of Moliere's spectators might well be nettled at his liberalism. They manifestly were when in December, 1662, the dramatist brought out his far more emphatic Ecole des femmes, with its immortal contrast of old age and youth as revealed in the characters of Amolphe and Agnes.

294. MOLIERE AND LA FONTAINE

One need not see in an author's work mainly the revelation of his own life in order to realize that L'Ecole des femmes treats the incompatibility problem unsparingly. On Shrove Monday, 1662, Moliere had married Armande Bejart, the daughter of Madeleine and many years his junior. Frenchman that he was, he could have had no illusions on such a relationship. Be that as it may, his play vindicates the right of youth and woman to choose a mate. Agnes is no Miranda, but it is nature that guides her and no evil instinct of her own; whereas Arnolphe, the comic character of the plot, is a victim of his personal machinations. Here, then, we see Moliere's genius for treating a serious situation comically. Herein lies the germ of his great- ness: his passion for truth -telling, his sense of contrasts, his clear-sighted vision of inevitable fact — and also his heroism, which compels him to speak when speaking is contrary to his interest, to rail when the subject of his raillery is his personal misery and suffering. Quite aside from his plays, the character of Moliere has endeared him to the world.

Among his contemporaries, however, there were those whom his frankness scandalized. And these, together with his former victims, now gathered for an attack. De Vise said he lacked literary principles; the Prince de Conti, a former friend, ac- cused him of indecency; the Jansenists quoted against him Nicole's Traite de la comedie, a vehement piece of polemic literature. To this uproar Moliere replied with the charming Critique de I'Ecole des jemmes and the clever Improinptu de Versailles. The first, in the form of a salon conversation, con- tains excellent dramatic criticism, and the second, portraying the rehearsal of a play to be given before the King, exploits Moliere's ideas on acting, and burlesques the rival players of the Hotel de Bourgogne. The result was that all the reactionary forces of the capital launched a cabal that was to pursue the poet to his grave.

For the nonce the King encouraged the poet with a pension of one thousand francs; and others who sided with him were Colbert and especially Boileau, henceforth a reliable friend. The next six years were to see the masterpieces Tartufje, Don Juan, Le Misanthrope and L'Avare. Undoubtedly Moliere had the material ready to hand, but would he have written these works without the stimulus of opposition?

THE MASTERPIECES 295

In May, 1664, Louis XIV gave at Versailles the festival known as " The Pleasures of the Enchanted Isle," in honor of Mile de la Valliere. Here seemed a chance to strike a blow at the upholders of cant and reaction. Accordingly, Moliere came forward with the first three acts of Tartuffe., To his astonishment, the play was immediately forbidden after its first performance. Evidently Moliere had imdervalued the power of his opponents. It might do for a Bossuet to excoriate hypocrites in his sermon on Le Jugement dernier; for the stage to attempt it was an imheard-of insult. Besides, excepting the momentary defection of Louis, the stakes were set in France for a religious revival on a large scale. To distinguish hypocrisy from religious zeal is always a delicate task; in 1664 it was an impossible one. But Moliere was not to be suppressed. Unable to play Tartuffe, he produced Don Juan ou le Festin de Pierre (1665), in which hypocrisy becomes the crowning vice of the " grand seigneur m^chant homme." A vast improvement on its Spanish and Italian sources, the French Don Juan is a character study on a Shakespearean scale — doubtless, one of the greatest of Moliere's creations. But again the censor interfered, though not until the play had been performed some fifteen times to crowded houses. In fact, the very year of its appearance Moliere's company received the title of " Troupe royale " and an allowance of six thousand livres. Then came U Amour medecin (" Love as a Doctor ") , ultimately derived from the Old French fabliau of the Vilain mire, and, after a consider- able interval, Le Misanthrope and Le Medecin malgre lui. Two of these plays are again militant: this time the poet lashes the medical Tartuffes; whereas Le Misanthrope, often called "the French Hamlet," states the problem of the Individual versus Society — two forces irreconcilable, unless, like Philinte in the play, men can be made to compromise:

La parfaite raison fuit toute extremite, Et veut que Ton soit sage avec sobriete.

Thus, in a nutshell, Moliere sums up the Classical doctrine in all its implications.

He himself now Sittempted a compromise. Tartuffe is tried on the stage in the guise of L'Imposteur (1667), the hero being

296 MOLIERE AND LA FONTAINE

no longer a cleric but a man of the world, and the action being lengthened so that he may scheme to marry his victim's daughter. This ruse of Moliere's did not succeed. But it did benefit his play, for when Pope Clement proclaimed a Paix de I'Eglise and the ban against Moliere was finally lifted, the drama ap- peared as Tartujfe (1669), in its expanded five-act form.

The rest of Moliere's story is quickly told. In the four or five years that remained to him of life he was content to please his King and go his own way, heedless of what his enemies might contrive. His health was now impaired by a serious illness; his father, whose solvency he had twice rescued by a loan, died in 1669; but his success as a producer was reasonably secure. U Amphitryon and L'Avare had appeared in 1668 — the one in a lighter, the other in a heavier vein, though both are modeled on comedies of Plautus. In the first, Moliere toys delightfully with the amorous proclivities of Jupiter (Louis XIV) " emprisonne dans sa grandeur," while in L'Avare he improves on Plautus by representing the miser as rich, and avarice as a fixed trait of character. Georges Dandin, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas are four social portraits drawn largely from real life; all on the general theme that man must not aspire in the wrong direction, or Nature (this time, " society ") takes vengeance. The social or intellectual climber is foredoomed. This philosophy shines forth most clearly in Les Femmes savantes, the next to the last play from Moliere's pen. Here, in inimitable verse, the poet gives us a picture of a typical "woman's club" of the seventeenth century. Trissotin (a caricature of the Abbe Cotin) is the ex- ploiter of these ambitious women; Vadius (possibly Menage) is a self-centered pedant. One may sympathize with the in- tellectual aims of the strong-minded Philaminte; but shall her daughters' happiness be sacrificed to these ideals? There can be but one answer, and the charming Henriette gives it:

Et qu'est-ce qu'a mon age on a de mieux a faire

Que d'attacher a soi, par le titre d'epoux,

Un homme qui vous aime et soit aime de vous?

And, finally, we come to the heroic Malade imaginaire, Moliere's last gibe at physicians and their victims. Argan, the " imaginary

MOLIERE'S ART 297

invalid," would sacrifice his family to his paranoia. Thus the poet never tired of puncturing the egoisms of life. What justifies the epithet of heroic, applied to this play, is that Moliere, a real not an imaginary invalid, acted the part of Argan in it and during the third performance, on February 17, 1673, had a hemorrhage from which he died. Three days later, at nine in the evening, his fellow-actors biuried him in the cemetery of Saint-Joseph.

" C'est une etrange entreprise que celle de faire rire les hon- netes gens," says Moliere. True comedy requires experience Moliere's on the part of poet and audience; both must be ^^ cultured, sophisticated, and to a certain extent dis-

illusioned. To laugh at our ills demands a fortitude of spirit, greater than that necessary for tragedy. Further, it implies a ready passage of wit from actor to spectator; the apperceptions must be quick, discriminating, and, above all, sincere. It is no exaggeration to say that in Moliere comedy achieves all this; and he is therefore the greatest comic genius among the moderns.

In the first place, Moliere is profound. His friend Boileau called him " le grand contemplateur," which is another way of saying that he looked human nature through and through. Consequently the sources of his laughter are genuine. With a flash, he penetrates the absurdity and presents it to us in a phrase, an attitude, a gesture. " Nous avons change tout cela," is the reply of the physician whose ignorance is so abysmal that he places the heart on the right side of the body; Orgon, convinced of Tartuffe's humility, lulls his own mind to sleep with the phrase, " Le pauvre homme " ; " Tant de choses en deux mots," says the simple-minded M. Jourdain, — " Oui," replies his betrayer, " la langue turque est comme cela." Moliere rarely strikes a false note — which is the more remarkable when we consider how rapidly he wrote. The reason is that his comedy is a comedy of character rather than one of situation. To be sure, his point of departure is the farce and the romantic Spanish comedia, to say nothing of the Italian Comedy of Masks, from which he borrowed not only situations and plots but also comic types, such as Mascarille and Sganarelle. In many respects, he remained essentially a farceur, as M. Lanson contends. At the

298 MOLIERE AND LA FONTAINE

same time, given the time and opportunity, his imagination al- ways transcended the type and reached the individual. Thus in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme we forget " the farce " and remem- ber the innocent, kindly but beguiled figure of M. Jourdain; and in L'Avare the screamingly amusing incidents of the plot sink into oblivion beside the hard, old and cringing form of Harpagon, the miser. In all this Moliere's touchstone was natm:e. Realist that he was, he knew that for the most part human character cannot be changed. Reason and ridicule are good weapons, but only for protection — they do not win souls. The Alceste of Le Misanthrope remains atrabilious to the end. Don Juan is "an alarming image of intellectual power and pride"; we rejoice at his doom but we cannot hope for his salvation. Even Tartuffe, the seducer and swindler, has a sinister grandeur that came to him with birth.

The second great trait t)f Moliere is his unalterable common sense. On occasion Moliere could be gay: Les Pre- cieuses ridicules and Le Medecin malgre lui are continuous ripples of laughter. More often, however, his comedies verge on tragedy — a notable example being Le Misanthrope which varies with one's point of view: Rousseau regarded its action as tragic. But Moliere never fails us in common sense. Thus his point of vjew has balance, measure, universality of application. Unlike BeiBarTShaw^ liTK^'~c6nMeirce^'^he"wi"s3^^^ of the world at large. To Shaw, illusion is part of the universe'? structure; not so with Moliere. The self-deceptions of his characters are individualistic; they can be dealt with competently by society, taken generally. This, as we have noted, is the Classical creed. Hence the comic in Moliere is what flies in the face of the sense of mankind: Alceste is„ ridiculous because he wants to have things his own way. So, too, we may allow that Philaminte — in Les Femmes savantes — is admirable in her devotion to gram- mar and astronomy; she becomes comic when this trait destroys her commion sense.

Finally, there is Moliere the artist. " Encore ime fois, je le trouve grand," said Fenelon, "mais ne puis-je parler en toute liberte sur ses defauts?" To the " decorous " seventeenth century Moliere's faults were obvious. His style seemed careless, in- qrganicj slf^dash. It was as a matter of fact the style of every-

MOLIERE'S STYLE 299

•day Parigiao. speech, conversational, yet fitting his personages "IiEeagarb.

Et fort devotement il mangea deux perdrix Avec une moitie de gigot en hachis

is the verbal nutshell in which Dorine encases Tartuffe. Tartuffe, notably, is an artistic masterpiece. The first two acts, with their description ot a French bourgeois household, the exposition they contain of the hypocrite's character as revealed by its effect on others, the coup de theatre produced by Tartuffe's opening words in Act III:

Laurent, serrez ma haire avec ma discipline Et priez que tou jours le Ciel vous illumine

— aroused the admiration not only of Goethe but also of dra- matic critics the world over. Or take Le Misanthrope — nowhere is there a more harmonious blending of social wit and psycho- logical observation. The scene is a salon of the age of Louis XIV: Celimene, who presides over it, will not give up her role in order to marry Alceste; the latter, whose sensitiveness embroils him with others, will marry her on this condition only. The situation is an impasse — yet it is Moliere who makes us realize the fact, once for all. Amphitryon, one of the most charmingly written of the plays, is a poetic treatment of a distinctly shady affair. The comedy of Plautus adhered to the tenets of a myth ; these Moliire had to discard. Never did a dramatist set him- self a more delicate task. Yet how excellent is the treatment and how modern in its psychology! If Jupiter would win Alcmene he of course could; but Moliere stresses the fact that he wins her only as Amphitryon and never as Jupiter — is this a lover's triumph?

To conclude — we may admit that being a playwright and an actor Moliere worked against odds, hastily. Many a scene in his works is pure farce, thrown in as a filler, in order to produce a laugh or relieve a tenuous situation. His denouements, in particular, are weak, though Moliere's emphasis on character necessarily made a happy ending difficult. In any case, he was not a strenuous Aristotelian. But French comedy — with the notable exception of Corneille's Menteur — was in low estate in

300 MOLIERE AND LA FONTAINE

his day. It was Moliere who raised it to the highest plane, as a criticism of life. To compare his contemporaries, Quinault, Baron, Montfleury, shows how true this is. What a gallery of portraits he has left usl How vivid is his presentation, how brilliant his wit! Above all, how well he knew the human race!

Contrasted with Moliere, La Fontaine is not at first impressive. A writer of fables and short-stories (the latter of a dubious char- . acter), his preeminence in these lighter genres is due to lightness and delicacy of touch, to an instinct for the nuance, to a desire for finish and perfection — all of which qualities endear him to the French but render him less accessible than Moliere to foreigners.

By nature a vagabond and a dreamer, Jean de La Fontaine was born at Chateau-Thierry in 1621. The profligacy of this son of Champagne showed itself early. Lacking in self-control, he was sent to the religious seminary of the Oratoire ; then like Moliere he studied law. Returning to his native heath, he planned to succeed his father as maitre des eaux et forets and allowed himself to be married at twenty-six, to Marie Hericart, a romantic child of fifteen; with the inevitable result of a dis- agreement, which sent La Fontaine back to Paris to try his fortune in literature.

In his reading, La Fontaine had adored the Astree and delved into the mimic world of Ovid, " in which every plant and flower has a story, and nearly always a love story." His own writing began with an adaptation of the Eunuchus of Terence (1654) — notable, if at all, because it is his longest work. Al- ready, however, his ep'icurean attitude declares itself and' his gift of phrase is apparent. In 1657 he became a hanger-on of Fouquet, still the wealthy and powerful minister of Louis XIV; in this capacity he wrote various short poems, the best of which is Adonis, showing a remarkable feeling for bucolic nature; and in 1661 he became acquainted with Moliere. Parasite that he was, he yet had the courage to stand by Fouquet, after the latter's fall from grace, in the Elegie aux nymphes de Vaux, one of the most eloquent of his compositions. Henceforth his protectors were women.

From 1667 to 1672 his patroness was the gay and pleasure- loving Duchesse de Bouillon, niece of Mazarin. In his para-

LA FONTAINE 301

phrase of Psyche, belonging to this period, he records his con- verse with Boileau, Racine and probably Moliire, in the gardens of Versailles, and in the role of Polyphile celebrates his joy in all creation, natural and artificial:

Volupte, volupte, qui fut jadis maitresse Du plus bel esprit de la Grece,

J'aime le jeu, Tamour, les livres, la musique, La vUle et la campagne, enfin tout .

Jusqu' au sombre plaisir d'un coeur melancholique.

Could a soul born for pleasure speak more plainly? It was probably Boileau who induced him to publish a first volume of Nouvelles en vers (1665), containing a translation of Ariosto's La Gioconda and a tale from Boccaccio. This was soon followed by a collection of Contes et Nouvelles, to which other collec- tions were added in the course of La Fontaine's life. The spontaneity, grace and vivacity of the verse were admired, but the defenders of morality protested rightly against the success of a book which made licentiousness attractive. La Fontaine replied in the name of art ; and among the notables on his side was not only his patroness but also Mme de Sevigne. When the Duchesse de Bouillon became involved in the " affaire des poisons," La Fontaine transferred his allegiance to the Marquise de la Sabliere. Her hospitable and cultured spirit consoled him for the loss of other friends; just as it is said that on her retirement from the world she took three things with her: her cat, her dog and La Fontaine. Never was a spiritual relationship described better than in the famous Discours (see Bk. Ill, Ch. V) which La Fontaine addressed to her — hers is a world of

Propos, agreables commerces, Oil le hasard foumit cent matieres diverses;

Jusque-la qu'en votre entretien La bagatelle a part: le monde n'en croit rien.

Laissons le monde et sa croyance.

Mme de la Sabliere also inspired La Fontaine's inaugural speech before the French Academy. He had been elected in 1683, but Louis XIV withheld his confirmation until that body

302 MOLIERE AND LA FONTAINE

had installed Boileau — to whom our poet had been preferred — and La Fontaine had given some assurance of reform. The last years of his life were passed under the roof of Hervart, maitre de requites; here he died in 1695. Three days before his end he wrote in perfect candor to his friend Maucroix:

Mourir n'est rien, mais songes-tu que je vais comparaitre devant Dieu? Tu sais comme j'ai vecu.

One can view such a character only sympathetically. La Fon- taine was what the French call un bonhomme; unfit for the sterner duties of life, he was childhke, outspoken and likeable. He treated life, as he treated himself, " without a disguise." The only discipline he admitted was his art, and to it he paid unremitting homage.

It was Mme de Bouillon who first called her favorite a fablier. By this epithet she recognized the born story-teller. La » Fontaine's canvases are not large; his imagination worked best in a small compass. In an earlier age he might have been a jongleur, regaling his Gallic listeners by the fireside of a tavern, during some wintry night. As it is, he polishes the esprit gaulois for the devotees of a salon. His Contes, as we have said, are strikingly indecent. But they were not written for prudes, and the skill with which the tales are handled is their most conspicuous element. On the other hand, they have neither the range nor the poetry of the Fables, in which genre La Fontaine is the greatest master since Aesop.

The first six books of Fables appeared when La Fontaine was forty-seven (1668), and succeeding books, to the nmnber of twelve, followed at intervals imtil 1680. As the poet says in his dedication to the Dauphin:

Je chants les heros dent Esope est le pere.

But to Nevelet's Mythohgica Aesopica (1610 and 1660), on which he drew, he added Sanskrit apologues from Bidpai and Latin fables by Phaedrus and others. Besides, as we have seen in previous chapters, the " beast-epic " was no novelty to the French; although it is improbable that La Fontaine's memory of his French predecessors went back beyond Marot. Marot uses the Fable of the Lion and the Rat admirably in

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order to make a special plea ; La Fontaine draws a more general i- lesson and, in this particular case, contents himself with aTew bold strokes of the brush. Otherwise, the method of the two poets is similar: a remarkable observation of detail, the ability to convey swiftly the himior of the situation, aTvivid merging of the human and the animalistic.

But it remained for La Fontaine to ejctract from the genre its full poetic value. His first step is to establish a balance 1 between the subjective and the objective worlds, that of men and that of the animals. La Fontaine is careful to anthropo- morphize Nature only to the extent of maintaining his particular fiction.

Tout parle dans men ouvrage, et meme les poissons,

he remarks, with a twinkle in his eye. Again, in Le Chine et le Roseau the Reed answers the condescending Oak with the as- surance of one who is humanly conscious of his position:

Votre compassion . . . Part d'un bon natural; mais quittez ce souci;

then La Fontaine resumes the objective attitude; a storm sweeps in from the north ; the Reed bends before it, but the Oak is up- rooted; and this final scene assumes epic proportions:

si bien qu'il deracine Celui de qui la tete au ciel etait voisine, Et dont les pieds touchaient a Teinpire des morts.

In this way, the individual fables are miniature dramas of which • one would not change a particle. La Cigale et la Fourmi tells the fate of the improvident; they need expect no pity: "Eh bien! dansez maintenant" is the Ant's merciless reply to the Grasshopper who chirred all summer. The Wolf, being stronger than the Lamb (Le Loup et I'Agneau) , needs no further justification than just this for his rapacity, since "la raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure." On occasion La Fontaine could strike off as good maxims as La Rochefoucauld, to whom he more than once pays tribute. " The Frogs desiring a King " represent the stupidity of the masses; they ultimately get what they deserve: an oppressor. But La Fontaine is not al-

304 MOLIERE AND LA FONTAINE

ways in this cynical mood; he can be playful, joyous, reflective and even tender. The Cat teased by the Mice is judiciously taken as a " sage et discrete personne "; the Mice themselves are playfully termed "la gent trotte-menu"; the Wood-Cutter weighed down by life's cares evokes sympathy:

Quel plaisir a-t-il eu depuis qu'il est au monde?

Thus the method is to shift the interest from one point of the situation to another; to give us glimpses rather than full-tone pictures; to vary the metre with the mood; to strike off in a phrase or even a word the essence of the matter. All this shows Classical balance and control.

Another featiu-e of the Fables is " style." La Fontaine had at his command immense technical resources. He knew French as few of his contemporaries did; his language is the French of the soil, rich and colorful, like that of the sixteenth century. Much of his vocabulary doubtless came to him from his ex- tensive reading: thus he calls the Cat, Raminogrobis, Grippe- minaud or Rodilard; the Stomach is Messer Caster; the Lion — a certain one, at least — is a "parent de Caligula." Yet concision is La Fontaine's watchword, and the mot propre his goal. Why should the Crow eat a " cheese " and the Fox covet it? Did La Fontaine know nothing about natural history? Manifestly, he was no literalist but a poet, and to the poet the symbol is everything and the word only what it suggests according to the context. Thus his verse is a con- tinuous creation, not only in rich and suggestive detail but also in rhythmical variety and beauty. It is vers libre in the sense merely that each Fable has its particular verse, each idea or mood its particular line — adapted, in all cases, to the thought to be expressed. But La Fontaine does not violate traditional metres, he invents no new ones, and his very freedom is the product of painstaking art and care. The fact is that he makes verse do what he intends — now it is gay and swift, now solemn and grave, but it is always poetic.

Lastly, the philosophy of the Fables is that of Classicism in general, and of the libertins in particular. An epicurean by instinct. La Fontaine became a " realist " through experience. The " morals " of his Fables count for little. Far be it from

LA FONTAINE'S PHILOSOPHY 305

La Fontaine, with his bent for pleasure, to dogmatize on life. Much more important are the pictures he etches, the love of truth he reveals. Least of all were his books intended for little children. Again, Taine's idea that the Fables consciously satirize the monarchy of Louis XIV goes too far and would be one-sided, if it were true. Such a Fable as Les Animaux malades de la peste is a typical picture of the miscarriage of justice;' the blame falls on the Ass because he is an " ass," and the concluding moral:

Selon que vous serez puissant ou miserable, Les jugements de cour vous rendront blanc ou noir,

applies as well to the police-courts as to the tribunal presided over by a king. Thus La Fontaine is an observer. He has few illusions; but he glorifies common sense. Happy are they who have tolerance and measure, who know that a " rat is no elephant," and who have learned that:

Patience et longueur de temps Font plus que force ni que rage.

As for himself, he wrote in the Discows a Mme de la Sabliere:

La bagatelle, la science,

Les chimeres, le rien, tout est bon; je soutiens

Qu'il faut de tout aux entretiens.

He extracted from life, as its essence, the joy and the humor of a spectacle, and these he incorporated in his perfect verse. Few poets, even among the French, have been better craftsmen.

CHAPTER IV PASCAL AND RACINE

Up to this point Classicism has offered us a finite universe in which " common sense " operates as the measure of all things. What cannot be reconciled with " common sense " is discarded. This is but an application of the Aristotelian Golden Rule, worked out in a rational, social milieu. With Pascal and Racine we enter a field of enlarged vision and perception. Thci torturing claims of " conscience " now make themselves heard; and humanity is turned aside from its worldliness to be con- fronted, in the case of Pascal, with the problem of the Infinite, and, in the case of Racine, with the problem of Evil. Such deepening of the spirit is due primarily to Jansenism, which we shall now consider briefly in its bearing on the century.

Cornelius Jansen, bishop of Ypres, had died in 1638. Three years after his death appeared his treatise, entitled Augustinus,

which advocated a return to the Christianity of Jansenism „, . ^. x ,,,,,.„ .

St. Augustme, presented under the foUowmg cap- tions: (1) that "free-will" ceased with the fall of Adam; (2) that human nature is thus thoroughly depraved and can be re- deemed through no effort of its own; and (3) that redemption can come only through " grace." The position of Jansen is essentially that of Calvin, with the important difference that the authority of Rome is never questioned and that the mystery of the sacraments is reaflBrmed. Thus Jansenism is not op- posed to Catholicism but only to those Catholics who had made salvation a path of roses, a chemin de velours. Such were, above all, the Jesuits. Following in the footsteps of Molina (1588), they had taken the stand that God renounces his omnipotence in so far as he allows humanity the power and privilege of saving itself. In short, the Jesuits maintained that man has the " free-will " necessary for salvation. The person who gave the ideas of Jansen the impetus of hie

306

JANSENISM 307

personality was his friend, Jean de Hauranne, Abbe de Saint- Cyran. In 1636 he became directeur spirituel of Port-Royal- de-Paris, an institution with which the fortunes of Jansenism are intimately bound up. The older foundation was Port-Royal- des-Champs in the valley of the Chevreuse. Through the efforts of a member of the Arnauld family — called Mere Angelique — early in the century this convent underwent a religious reform, which not only affected the Arnaulds as ,a group but also at- tracted other people of station and influence. In 1626 the transfer was made to Paris, the original convent becoming a retreat to which men of distinction, known as solitaires, retired in order to lead a life of study and meditation. The intellectual activity of Port-Royal was considerable. It busied itself with the ques- tion of education, was receptive to the ideas of Descartes (at least, as regards " method " ) , and particularly fostered the study of Latin andt Greek classics with the view of enriching " human nature " and redeeming it from itself. Thus Jan- senism gave its followers a cultural and scientific training which, aside from the moral discipline involved, is its greatest contribution to the age. If Descartes still inveighs against the " medieval " instruction he received at La Fleche, a Jesuit school, Racine can have only words of gratitude for his Jan- senist teachers. Among the educators of Port-Royal, three are especially noteworthy — Claude Lancelot, the main author of the well-known Grammaire generale et raisonnee (1660) ; Pierre Nicole, to whom more than to anyone else is due the Port-Royal Logique ou I'art de penser (1662); and, most im- portant of all, Antoine Arnauld, the author in 1643 of La frequente communion.

This treatise fanned the controversy between Jesuits and Jan- senists into a bright flame. A great lady, the Princesse de Guemenee, had been invited by Mme de Sable to a ball; she refused on the ground that having " communed " it behooved her, according to Saint-Cyran, to abstain from worldly pleasures. Mme de Sable consulted the Jesuits, who replied that the Com- munion is not an extraordinary event in our life but an aid or succor for the sinful ; the more freely it is taken, the better. The matter was not settled by Arnauld's treatise; nor were things improved when Innocent X condemned the Augustinus of

308 PASCAL AND RACINE

Jansen, and Arnauld took up its defence. Finally, in 1656, the quarrel reached a climax. Unable to uphold the Jansenist cause alone, and being rebuked also by the Sorbonne, Arnauld looked about him for a champion. So it happened that Pascal came to his rescue with the first Lettre a, un provincial, on January 23 of that year.

Nature gave Blaise Pascal a frail body and a singularly active and brilliant mind. He was bom in Clermont-Ferrand (1623)^ as the yotmgest son of a distinguished famille de robe. In 1631 the family moved to Paris, where Pascal's father continued to instruct his son in languages and mathematics. For the latter science Blaise showed great apti- tude and while still a child wrote a book on Conic Sections. This was followed by experiments in atmospheric weight, con- ducted with much skill, and a treatise containing Nouvelles experiences touchant le vide (published in 1647). But over- study had the inevitable result of undermining his already weak physique; and becoming acquainted with the works of Jansen, Saint-Cyran and Arnauld, he ha3 what is generally called his " first conversion," in which his entire family shared.

In the case of Blaise, however, there was a brief respite in which he tasted the pleasures of the world. This occurred in 1649, when the rest of the family went on a visit to Auvergne and Blaise remained in Paris. At that time the master of his thoughts was Montaigne, the skeptic — and his actual compan- ions were such worldlings as the Due de Roaimez, the Chevalier de Mere and the libertin Miton. From them it is assumed that Pascal derived his sense of literary style, besides various of his philosophical ideas and the attitude which underlies the short essay Sur les Passions de I'amour, if the work is really by Pascal's pen. Meanwhile, he appears to have kept alive his interest in science. He invented a counting-machine, worked out a hydraulic press, studied the question of probability in games of chance (a contact with Descartes), and anticipated to a certain extent the higher mathematics of calculus. Then came his final " conversion."

Such events are always open to speculation. But whether we explain it by the accident in which his life was saved as by a miracle or account for it on a Freudian basis, the fact is that on

THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 309

November 23, 1654, Pascal suffered the change of heart which made him definitely renounce the world and drove him into the arms of Port-Royal. Thus it was that he came to place his great talent at the service of Arnauld in 1656. Besides the Provinciales, published at first anonymously and then under the pseudonym of Montalte, Pascal planned an Apology of the Chris- tian Religion, of which Pensees are presumably the stray fragments. They were found after his death, among his papers; but for various reasons, among which was the fear that they might be unorthodox, a complete edition of them did not appear until 1844. In addition to their many excellences, the Pensees confirm the view as to their author's intense but keenly intel- lectual .nature. His character was tried but not shaken by the experiences through which he had passed. We shall never know, of course, the part that physical illness played in his renuncia- tion of science. But that Pascal considered it as complete is apparent from the written words discovered on his dead body: " renonciation totale et douce" — " joie, joie, joie, pleurs de joie." He was only thirty-nine when he died in 1662.

" Silence," said Pascal, " is the worst of persecutions ; the saints never held their peace." The Lettres Provinciales show how " Les Lettres knowingly he made this assertion. They are eight- Provinciales " ggjj jq number. The first three and the last three treat of Arnauld's affair with the Sorbonne; the intervening twelve openly assail the moral philosophy of the Jesuits. Taken as a whole, they show us Pascal the ironist at his best; logic, subtlety and a sense of comedy are here placed at the service of a cause which, in spite of its emotional appeal, Pascal was com- pelled to defend with purely intellectual arms. In doing so, he created, so togspeak, French controversial style. The subject of ihe LeU/^maj have lost its interest today. But their reasoning il^Ple the play of sunlight on a mountain brook; the effect is scintillating, vibrating and enchanting. Never was a theological question presented with greater charm. Having in the First Letter subtly confounded those who, with- out examination of the text, assert that the Augustinus con- tains the propositions which the Pope and the Sorbonne con- sidered heretical, Montalte (Pascal) — in his role of an amiably inquisitive layman — probes in the Second Letter into the

310 PASCAL AND RACINE

question of grace. The Jesuits affirm that divine grace is sufficient but they deny that it is efficacious.

"To come to business, Father," says Montalte to his inter- locutor, "this grace given to all men is sufficient?" "Certainly," said he. "And yet it has no effect without efficacious grace?" " None whatever," he rephed. " Then," returned I, " all have enough grace, and all do not have enough — the grace is sufficient in name, and insufficient in reaUty. On my word. Father, that is a very subtle doctrine."

This shows the temper of Pascal's method. Obviously he is not fair. The one hope of safety for the Jansenists lay in rousing public indignation against the persecutors. Pascal was too astute to misquote his enemies, in fact, he is scrupulous in giving chapter and line of his victim's text. But he is sensational, and he does keep his reader's eye fixed on the most noto- rious casuist that the Jesuits possessed, the Spaniard Escobar. Many a biographer of Pascal has been disturbed by his hero's flat denial of any close connection with Port-Royal. Again, Pascal is technically correct inasmuch as he was not himself a solitaire. Yet Qiost of these objections vanish when we con- sider the nobility of the Jansenist creed, the necessity of defend- ing that creed against an overwhelming group of powerful en- emies, and lastly Pascal's zealous nature. He was not only a thinker but also a stylist and a lyricist. Once started on a subject, he could not refrain from penetrating to its marrow. Several of his Letters cost him weeks of continuous labor; all were rewritten at least six times. When pressed for his Six- teenth Letter owing to the fact that the police were on the heels of his printer, he remarked: " This letter is long because I did not have time to make it shorter."

Thus it was the Provinciales (named thus because ostensibly addressed to a reader in the provinces) that gavef Pascal liter- "Les ary renown during his lifetime. Here was a work

Pensees" combining the logic of Descartes with the insight and charm of a man of the world. Most men, Pascal thought, could be classified according to whether they had the one or the other quality — the esprit de geometric or the esprit de finesse. It was characteristic of his own genius that he had both traits; and therefore the Letters won immediate recognition as a land-

THE PENSEES 811

mark in French prose. But while their subject is ephemeral, that of the Pensees has never-ending interest.

Here again the approach to the problem — the defence of Christianity — is through the gateway of skepticism. Pascal the Pyrrhonist is little more than a seventeenth-century Montaigne, made perfect as to style. Man is irretrievably caught between the two Infinities — the macrocosm and the microcosm, the infinitely large and the infinitely small.

Qu'est-ee que rhomme dans la nature? Un neaiit a I'egard de rinfinj, un tout a I'egard du neant, un milieu entre rien et tout.

Que fera-t-il done, sinon d'apercevoir quelque apparenee du milieu des choses, dans un desespoir etemel de connaitre ni leur prineipe ni leur fin?

Furthermore, man is vain, hopelessly vain:

Le nez de Cleopatre: s'il e<it ete plus court, toute la face de la terre aurait ete changee.''

Notre propre interet est encore im merveiUeux instrument pour nous crever les yeux agreablement.

If these reflections betray the ideas of others, Pascal reassures us: " Do not say that I have said nothing new: the disposition of the matter is new. In playing tennis both use the same ball, but the one places it better." Certainly the metaphysical at- titude, the torture and pathos of speculation — le frisson meta- physique — is new, at all events in French; and so is the in- ference that despite all his weakness man is yet a superior being:

LTioDome n'est qu'un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais c'est un roseau pensant.

Moreover, there is intuition, the highest of our qualities:

Nous connaissons la verite, non seulement par la raison, mais encore par le coeur.

C'est le coeur qui sent Dieu, et non la raison.

How then is truth to be attained? Only in one way — through union with God. The dissonance of human nature, our moral

• This is more obviously a reflection on the r61e of Chance in history.

312 PASCAL AND RACINE

depravity, the inability to see beyond the circuit of our own experience — all this is overcome in Jesus Christ. In Him we are made whole and perfect.

Like most seekers of finality, Pascal can solve the problem of truth only by self-immolation. But he annihilates the ego — le moi hdissable, as he called it — in so far merely as it is egocentric, as its foibles and sophisms block the road to truth. He never gave up his confidence in man as a thinker nor in our superiority to the brute world of Nature. The acquisitions of culture he would not svu-render — far from it. Saint-Evremond said that Jansenism is the preciosity of religion; an opinion to which we can in the main subscribe.

Thus Pascal's Pensees are the expression of a great intelligence. Many of them have the austerity of a Hebrew prophecy; most of them have also a bewitching beauty of thought and expres- sion. They seem most modern when they are most abrupt and simple, as in flashes like:

Condition de rhomme: inconstance, ennui, inquietude.

No style could be more direct, no feeling more intense than Pascal's. The agony of his soul often gives to his phrase the force of an interjection. Yet the longer passages in the Pensees have a placid depth, a scientific objectivity, a rigor of logical structure, which show that the poet in Pascal was always sub- ordinate to the scientist. It is probable that Pascal saw deeper into the recesses of the human soul than any other French- man. It is certain that no Frenchman ever imited feeling and intelligence into a greater expression of beauty.

There is in Pascal a quality that reminds us of Milton; but Racine, the greatest dramatist in France after Moliere. has jj . been difficult for Anglo-Saxons to understand. Bred

in the Shakespearean tradition, they find him stilted and artificial, " with an incapacity for the finest original strokes of poetry," and " an almost unlimited capacity for writing from models " (Saintsbury) . It is needless to point out that such a view is thoroughly superficial. To be sure, Racine was em- inently a court poet; without the background of Versailles and Louis XIV his tragedies are unthinkable; his characters move across the stage in full-bottomed wigs and with peerless external manners; of his own Andromache, Racine remarked:

RACINE'S LIFE 313

J'ai cm me conformer . . . d I'idee que nous avons main- tenant de cette princesse.

He was not interested in " local color," nor in that more modern fetish, " archeological detail." His was the task of interesting a court to which decorum was a necessity. But let the reader penetrate the shell of Racine's dramas, and he will behold an unmasking of characters, a penetration of hidden motives — in short, a truth to human nature, that is startling in its psy- chology. Thus, at the outset, it becomes clear why Racine realized the Classical ideal of art and nature united. Racine is in prac- tice what Boileau is in theory. To him truth and beauty are one ; and as a consequence his dramas are swift, concentrated in action, taking life at a " crisis " — as Napoleon said — discard- ing whatever seems unessential, and thus achieving as complete a realization of a literary genre as seems possible. Shakespeare's plays, superior as they are in scope, are to(|ay difficult to per- form. On the other hand, Racine's conception of tragedy is still the model of what an acting-play should be.

Jean Racine was a child of the Ile-de-France. He was born at La Ferte-Milon about the twenty-first of December, 1639. Racine's Losing both parents in childhood, he was placed ^'-** at ten in the Jansenist college at Beauvais and at

fifteen in the maison des Granges at Port-Royal, where Pierre Nicole taught him Latin and Lancelot taught him Greek. His early reading included the romance of Theagenes and Chariclea by Heliodorus, in which occurs the theme of adulterous love, and he delighted also in the " nature poetry " of the lovelorn Theophile de Viau anJl Tristan I'Ermite. If he was introspec- tive by nature, such contacts fostered his introspection.

In 1658 he attended the College d'Harcourt in Paris and dwelt for a while with his cousin Nicolas Vitart at the house of the Due de Luynes. Vitart, who was both a Jansenist and an hormete homme, had an interest in literature and was liberal with his purse. Here Racine met La Fontaine and the Abbe Le Vasseur, the latter of whom introduced him to two of the popular ac- tresses of the day. Then his relatives became concerned and sent him to Uzes, in the south of France, to study theology under an uncle's supervision. The hope was that he would' thus ob- tain a church benefice. From Uzes, Racine wrote letters full

314 PASCAL AND RACINE

of charm and grace to his friends in Paris. Already his style is singularly pure and precise, and as appears from other evi- dence, his reflections on Pindar, Homer, the Bible (especially the Book of Job) are interesting and original. The result, therefore, of Racine's education was three-fold: it developed his sensitive, artistic nature; it gave him a knowledge of Greek classics, including Euripides and Sophocles; and it led him to identify the Greek sense of fate with the Jansenist doctrine of original sin.

In the autumn of 1662 Racine reappeared in Paris, having given up hope of an ecclesiastical preferment and determined to succeed as a writer. He began with a display of official verse, Sur la convalescence du Roi and La Renommee aux Muses, the latter of which, admirably expressed, won him the esteem of Boileau and, finally, the entree to the court. In 1664 Moliere played La Thebdide, Racine's first tragedy, at the Palais-Royal. The circle of the poet's friends was now complete; besides La Fontaine, Boileau, Moliere, it included Chapelle and Furetiere, their meetings occurring at such cabarets as the Mouton blanc, where the repasts served were not merely literary.

The Thebdide is not a great play, though it had a momentary success. For its sources Racine drew on Euripides {The Phoe- nician Women) , Seneca and the Antigone of Rotrou. But where these were involved, Racine was simple, and his tendency to- wards unity of plot is quite apparent. Necessarily, at twenty- three, he showed the influence of the elder Comeille, which was again a factor in Racine's second play in 1665. But although the Alexandre is a heroic-comedy and contains such Cornelian rhetoric as:

Je suis venu chercher la gloire et le danger,

an evident reference to Louis XIV, it is clear that Racine is addressing a different public from that of his great predecessor. In the serious drama of the time heroics had been supplanted by love. This was due partly to the influence of the novel; more so, however, to the success of Thomas Corneille's Timocrate (1656), the most popular stage play of the century, and of the works of Philippe Quinault. Mediocre as Timocrate was artis- tically, it dramatized La Calpren^de's CUop&tre, and its languor-

ANDROMAQUE 31d

ous hero soothed an audience grown weary of Cornelian grandeur. Similarly, Quinault's Stratonice (1660) approached opera in harmonious lyrism and in mere elegance of expression. From such works as these Racine was now to take his cue. Mean- while he had broken with Moliere, in a rather discreditable manner, by taking away from Moliere's troupe the Alexandre and giving it to the rival company of the Hotel de Bourgogne. The triumph of Andromaque (1667) is a parallel to that of the Cid. Love is the theme, but unlike his contemporaries Racine treats this subject dramatically and with romaque ^j^^ utmost simplicity. The plot turns on the maternal love of Andromache for her son: as Andromache causes Pyrrhus, jailor of her son and victim of her charms, to hope or despair, so Pyrrhus approaches or leaves Hermione, who in turn calls or repels Orestes. Orestes kills Pyrrhus, and Hennione, unable to live without him, hurls at his slayer the reproach:

Ah! fallait-il en oroire une amante insensee?

whereupon Orestes goes mad on learning of her, death. Racine took his material from the poets of antiquity (Homer, Euripides, Vergil) ; in the balancing of characters there is some similarity with the Cid; otherwise the 3rama is a stroke of genius — swift, powerful and beautifully expressed. " Pas im vers," says Lemaltre, "qui n'exprime, en mots rapides et forts comme des coups d'epee, les illusions, les souffrances, I'egoisme, la folie et la mechancete de I'amour."

Contemporary critics, however, were not all on Racine's side. Many of them still preferred the great Corneille and were not so indulgent even as Mme de Sevigne, who yielded " six reluc- tant tears " when she saw the play. Racine, always irritable, replied with sarcasm and invective. Then he turned aside to produce his one comedy, Les Plaideurs (1668). In part an imitation of The Wasps of Aristophanes but especially a rol- licking satire of the antiquated Paris law-courts, this comedy was coldly received until Louis XIV saw it and laughed, when suddenly all Paris discovered its wit and charm. Racine's next tragedy, Britannicus (1669), was a direct challenge to the admirers of Corneille.

316 PASCAL AND RACINE

As he himself has said (see the prefaces to the play) , Racine here offers us a historical play, bereft of unnecessary inci- aents, conforming absolutely to the unities, and "Britanmcus concentrated into one powerful action: the un- chaining of the brute in the character of Nero. The situation, drawn from the Annals of Tacitus, is political, and it is domestic; Versailles might well take heed. Nero, still young enough to fear his mother Agrippina (who has committed every crime for his sake) and his "tutor" Burrhus, is tempted by the innocence of Junia, betrothed to Britannicus. He knows the evil of such a passion and confesses it to himself:

Et c'est cette vertu, si nouvelle a la cour, Dont la perseverance irrite mon amour.

During three acts he hesitates. In the foiu'th, Agrippina makes a last attempt to bend him to her maternal will. Narcissus, Nero's depraved counselor, shatters all opposition: Britannicus is poisoned, Narcissus is slain and Junia becomes a vestal vir- gin, while Agrippina foretells the burning of Rome.

It is quite clear that the success of Britannicus fell below Racine's expectations. Louis XIV might be charmed and thus again show his insight and magnanimity; Saint- Evremond reports that the public considered the idea of the play noire et horrible. In any case, the poet's next production, Berenice (1670), is so devoid of physical action or violence as to be a tragedy only by implication. It is, indeed, the extreme of what Racine thought a tragedy might be; namely, a dramatic elegy.

It is said that Heru-ietta of England, Duchess of Orleans, suggested the subject of Berenice independently to Comeille and to Racine (see above, Bk. Ill, Ch. IV). She may even, as Voltaire aflBrms, have hinted to Racine that Louis XIV would be pleased with a situation which would recall his youthful affection for Marie Mancini. However that may be, this time Racine turned six words of the historian Suetonius — Titus reginam Berenicen dimisit invitiis mvitam — into a fiv«-act drama. As regards form it was Racine's greatest triumph; the Abbe d'Aubignac's rules were amply vindicated. Yet beneath the surface of its external beauty, Berenice contains a tremendous

PHEDRE 317

struggle: the renunciation of each other by two royal lovers for reasons of state. Titus gives up 'Berenice because the inexorable laws of Rome forbid an emperor to marry a foreigner. Thus in the Jittle room of the palace, where the scene is laid, the destinies of empires are decided and the tragedy of royalty — the greatest tragedy, that of the spirit — is laid bare. Can there be any doubt of the realism of this drama in such an age as Racine's?

If Berenice is Roman, Bajazet (1672) is Oriental not only in subject but also in its display of violence. This drama has been called the French Othello; and it may be that its heroine, Roxane, was as inscrutable to the French seventeenth century as the Moor of Venice was to the age of Shakespeare (Wright) . At all events, a drama of the seraglio had its interest after Moliere's Bourgeois gentilhomme (where the Grand Turc was burlesqued), while Racine's treatment of the Vizier Acomat shows that he could depict a thoroughly virile character. Then followed Mithridate (1673) and Iphigenie, the latter of which was presented at Ver- sailles in 1674.

Mithridate is again characterized by the submergence of the political side of the drama — the purely external part — to the love affair of the hero with Monime, the incorporation of feminine chastity, fidelity and courage. With Iphigenie Racine returns to the Greeks. No play of Racine's is more regal. Yet the French Iphigenia is a pale reflex of Euripides' national heroine: shte loves Achilles, and death means to her the sacrifice of that love; just as Eriphile, Racine's own creation, is the voice of sensual passion, leaving ruin in her path, destined to be Iphigenia's substitute in death and uttering phrases of haunting beauty:

Je sentis le reproche expirer dans ma bouche.

J'oubliai ma colere et ne sus que pleurer.

This brings us to a culmination in Racine's career. PhMre (1677), his masterpiece, led to his retirement as a writer for the , » stage at the age of thirty-nine. Could anything

^ " be more 3ramatic? Unless it be the conflict of the tragic motives that form the basis of the play itself. Phedre is a complete recast of the Euripidean Hippolytos.

318 PASCAL AND RACINE

Racine's first and most significant change is the emphasis he places upon the heroine. The chaste Hippolytos becomes, so to speak, a, sighing marquis of Louis' court, whereas Phaedra, the most powerful woman's role in all French drama — and destined by Racine for the actress La Champmesle — is a female Nero; but with one important difference: she has a searching, Jansenist conscience. In other words, Phedre is not only a tragedy of jealousy but also one of remorse; it is a picture of sinning and suffering humanity driven by fate to its doom. And yet this Christian Phaedra, the victim of

Venus toute entiere a sa proie attachee,

remains intrinsically Greek. Never does Racine allow us to forget her origin. She is the daughter of Minos and Pasiphae and the granddaughter of the Sun. Driven to bay, she cries out:

Miserable! et je vis! et je soutiens la vue De ce sacr6 soleil dont je suis descendue! J'ai pour aieul le pere et le maitre des dieux; Le ciel, tout runivers est plain de mes aieux.

This harmonizing of civilizations, Greek, Christian and French, is the pinnacle of Classicism. As a play, Phedre may lack the fine proportion of Andromaque, but as an expression of passion on a grand scale it is probably unsurpassed in literature.

Whatever may have been the actual cause, the poet's retire- ment was opportune. His sensitive nature, together with his vanity as a successful playwright, had made him scores of en- emies. The Duchess of Bourbon, learning that he was busy on Phedre, had induced Pradon — a second-rater — to oppose Racine with a play on the same subject. Determined to have her favorite succeed and Racine fail, she bought up the seats in two theaters (see Boileau's Sevtenth Epistle), and during six successive eve- nings packed the one with applauding spectators and left the other empty except for a handful of hissers. Such an intrigue had its undoubted effect. In addition, Racine's own play might make him consider. Was he not, in the theme of Phedre, lending a hand to acts of violence? Mme de Brin- villiers had recently been executed for poisoning; other crimes no less sinister were gossiped about; Racine's own name was

ATHALIE 319

unfavorably associated with the sudden death of the actress Mile Du Pare.

Yet the Jansenists saw in Phedre signs of contrition on Racine's part. At least the play did not mince Phaedra's guilt; she could be considered only as a pagan woman lacking in God's grace. Thus the Jansenists welcomed Racine's return to their fold. On their advice he married a woman who knew nothing of the stage, and devoted himself to bringing up a family. He had long since become a member of the Academy. This relationship led him to maintain an external interest in literature. Moreover, he did not break with the court, and we find him, as historio- grapher to the King, journeying in the trail of Louis' armies.

Finally, after twelve years of dramatic silence, he composed at the behest of Mme de Maintenon his Biblical tragedy of "Esther" and ^siAer (1688-1689). Intended for the schoolgirls " Athalie " of Saint-Cyr, it was there performed by the daugh- ters of the nobility themselves before the brilliant and ad- miring guests of Louis. The beauty of Esther lies in the melody of its verse and its power as a spectacle. Mme de Maintenon doubtless saw in the portrayal of the Jewish queen a reference to her own fortunes. Then came Athalie (1691) — the last of Racine's plays and as regards form (choruses, recits, and the like) one of his masterpieces. Here the protagonist is God; the plot relates how the child Joash triumphs over his enemies — the enemies of church and state — including the frenzied and heretical Athaliah. But Mme de Maintenon feared the excitement such a play might cause at Saint-Cyr, and she had the performance given privately, without scenery and without costumes; so that few except Boileau recognized its greatness during Racine's lifetime. The first presentation of Athalie to a Parisian public was in 1716.

The dramatic situation is not so intense in Athalie as in Racine's secular tragedies. The action is lyrical, much as in the Old French mystere. Yet nowhere in Racine's works is his power as an artist more apparent. His choruses, modeled on the Greek drama, heighten and relieve the action. His verse was never so expressive, so well suited to the solemnity of his theme, so freely and exquisitely managed. Moreover, the setting, laid in the temple at Jerusalem, enters into the verse and gives to

320 PASCAL AND RACINE

the drama an impressive grandeur which it would be hard to match. If Phedre is Racine's greatest tragedy, Athalie is his most perfect dramatic poem.

With the " failure " of Athalie Racine's poetic career ends. A slight rebuff from the King may have hastened his death. His Jansenism was not eyed with favor, and when he appealed to Louis to relieve France of the burden of war (we remember that Corneille had made a similar request) the King was visibly displeased. Before Mme de Maintenon could dispel the mis- understanding, Racine had died in April, 1699, in his sixtieth year.

As we have observed, Racine's works are important in two respects: as drama and as poetry. As a writer of stage-plays Racine's Art Racine aims primarily at one thing; namely, at and Style dramatic effect. What is not essential to the dra- matic conflict he discards, and what is lacking to it he adds. Thus he is not historical in the Cornelian sense; for he alters history in behalf of simplicity, and he will a9d a non-historical character in order to strengthen the plot. Peu d'inddents et peu de matiere is his own statement of his aim. Thus his plays have verisi- militude: they are true to life even when they are not true to fact. It is extraordinary, as in the case of Berenice, how he discerns the drama that lurks in a few words of some ancient poet or historian. The power to visualize this into an acting play of universal application is the greatest element in his genius. Lemaitre, who has written the best book on Racine, calls this quality invention, and it is safe to say that no poet ever had more of it.

Consequently, striving as he does for concentration, it is not difficult for Racine to observe the unities. Having chosen the " crisis " which he wishes to present, Racine leads up to it in his first two and solves it in his last two acts, thus determining his plot. This settled, the unity of place is of no great importance: either the place is an apartment in a palace (which might just as well be in Versailles as in Greece) , or it may be shifted about somewhat, as Racine suggests in the preface to Esther, for the amusement of the spectators. As for the unity of time, this is coincident with the " crisis " and the events which immediately precede and follow it. In all respects, Racine's plays had the

RACINE'S STYLE 321

added advantage of obeying the Classical rules as outlined by d'Aubignac and Boileau.

As a poet Racine has two preeminent qualities: a strongly lyrical vein and an imaginative and harmonious style. Racine is a great psychologist. But his idea of character is of something dark and subtle. He turns our gaze on the mysteries of the heart, not like Comeille on the triumphs of the reason and the will. The result is that the larger part in his dramas is played by women. In Andromaque, Berenice, Bajazet, Iphigenie and Phedre it is always a woman who dominates the action. The protagonist of Britannicus is Nero, but he is swayed by love and not primarily by the desire of power, like the more masculine Shakespearean heroes. While, therefore, Racine's field is re- stricted, he treats love in all of its varieties, from passion to devotion, including jealousy, coquetry, tenderness and rapture. It is Racine's knowledge of Greek, in which respect he is unique among les grands classiques, that accounts for the creative quality of his style. Paraphrasing Sainte-Beuve, Lemaitre says: "il rase la prose, mais avec des ailes." Racine's similes and metaphors are simple, direct, inevitable; he does not seek the out-of-the-way or the unexpected. Orestes, hoimded by fate, sums up his misery in the phrase:

J'ai mendie la mort chez des peuples cruels;

Berenice expresses her scorn of flatterers in the words:

Je fuis de leurs respects I'inutUe longueur.

To suggest the silence of the night by the sea-shore, there is the line:

Mais tout dort, et I'armee, et les vents, et Neptune;

and the omnipotence of God crashes upon the ear in the al- literation of:

Et du haut de son trone interroge les rois.

In spite of a rather small vocabulary, Racine understood the range of French verse to perfection. He can pass from sustained utterance to pure familiarity; he can be ironic and sublime. In short, his style matches his thought and gives to French verse a precise beauty and an undying splendor.

322 PASCAL AND RACINE

Compared to his contemporaries Eacine is like an oasis in a desert. Pradon imitated Racine but is remembered only by his opposition to Racine in the matter of Phedre. Quinault and Thomas Corneille had of com-se been entirely outdistanced. Thus on Racine's retirement the theater was left without a great leader. Minor dramatists there were: Chancel, LongpierrC; La Fosse. Campistron, in particular, singled out Racine's weaker qualities for imitation. The Comedie frangaise had been foimded in 1680, but its repertory consisted mainly of the plays of Corneille, Rotrou and Racine. The curtain falls on the theater of the century without producing another great name.

CHAPTER V BOILEAU AND BOSSUET

BoiLEAXJ IS the Nestor of French Classicism. His sterling character reveals itself in two respects: first, as a judicial rather than an imaginative critic, and, secondly, as a sympathetic friend of the great writers of the age.

Common sense is again the guiding principle of all his work. It lies at the root of the Art poetique (1674), of the doctrine that grounded his criticism in " la haine d'un sot livre " and caused him to make literature consist in " true thoughts and just expressions." Common sense, in its most intellectual aspects, inspired the attacks of his Satires and all his protests against extravagances. It divides his minor works into so many ex- coriations of the varieties of human folly. It made Boileau, in the eyes of extremists, " reason incarnate." Common sense is the distinctive mark of the man in his private life and his relations with other men.

Nicolas Boileau, known to his contemporaries as Despreaux, was born at Paris in 1636 — the year of the Cid — and lived Boileau's there, until his death in 1711, the prudent career of ^*^* a confirmed bachelor. He was " bourgeois " by

descent, breeding and disposition. His two brothers, like him- self, had strongly marked leanings toward satire. Nicolas had a rather narrow youth and his views of country life amounted to no more than glimpses: two facts which help to explain the lack of feeling in his poetry. His education must have given him a knowledge of Latin and Greek and an esteem for polite literature; he shows early some taste for theology and consider- able distaste for the law, the profession from which so many French writers have reacted into letters.

When Boileau reacted, at the age of twenty-one, he displayed his balance in refusing to alter forthwith his moderate manner

323

324s BOILEAU AND BOSSUET

of life. It was the death of his father that had left him free for poetry, and we shortly find him cultivating the muses with an illustrious body of friends.

Chief among these was the celebrated trio — Racine, Moliere, La Fontaine — whose early work Boileau did so much to form, and whose fame he greatly helped to establish. If he represents the " defense " of Classicism, they are its " illustration." But this early association was marked less by dogma than by en- thusiasm. We have previously mentioned (Ch. IV) their meet- ings at the Mouton blanc and similar cabarets. To Racine especially Boileau's friendship was helpful. He acted as a damper to the dramatist's temperamental outbursts, and he recognized the merit of Phedre in the striking appraisal:

la douleur vertueuse De Phedre malgre soi perfide, incestueuse.

On the whole, Boileau's tastes ran more to the society of men than to that of women, though we see him consorting with La Champmesle, Racine's actress-friend, and with the beautiful and brilliant Ninon de Lenclos.

He began publication with Les Satires in 1666. Already the way to success had been paved by their circulation in manu- script and by readings before distinguished auditors. But he was not an assiduous frequenter of " salons "; as a courtier, when his fame had spread, he paid the usual compliments to Louis XIV, without losing his self-respect and independence. Boileau and Racine were both historiographers to the King, and in this ca- pacity they went campaigning — as we have seen — doubtless to the amusement of the military men. Neither was at home on horseback or in the field; yet Louis XIV was satisfied with Boileau's efforts and insisted on his being made an Academician (Ch. III). The Art poetique had preceded Boileau's election, but the enlightened authority of Louis was of more immediate effect on the Academy than was the celebrated poem.

About 1677 Boileau was taken up by a "grand seigneur," De Lamoignon, who appears in the mock-epic called Le Lutrin, and who gathered at his mansion the more thoughtful society of that time. In this setting the critic felt at ease, though he was never a brilliant conversationalist. Ttie latter part of his life

BOILEAU'S WORKS 325

was spent more and more in retirement, clouded by two serious quaxrels: the one with the Jesuits in behalf of Arnauld, Pascal's friend ; the other with Charles Perrault in behalf of the ancients (see Part III, Bk. I, Ch. I) . As an old man, Boileau lost the use of his voice, and this together with other infirmities soured his disposition. He lived well into the new century, but his work is indissolubly connected with the Age of Louis XIV.

Thus Boileau was a French bourgeois to the core. His idea of human nature —

Etudiez la cour at connaissez la ville —

is that of his period in general; it looks neither back of Ver- sailles and Paris nor beyond them. He was a Parisian as Dickers was a Cockney, each the product and the expression of his universe. But Boileau was a prudent and sensible citizen. He had plain habits, lived in a simple and straightforward way, and was constant to his friends and principles. His respect for letters prevented him from being a hack or accepting any gall- ing patronage. " Reason " even made him speak the truth to Louis about the latter's verses and tastes. He was not expansive or emotional. But he warms to the attack, and his best work is that in which his common-sense aesthetics are at stake. If literature is a criticism of life, Boileau's life was a criticism of literature.

We may follow Sainte-Beuve in dividing Boileau's work into three periods: that of the early Satires, during the sixties, a Boileau's vigorous and youthful phase; the next decade, Works when the critic assumes the part of a " legislator

of Parnassus," writing the Art poetique, the mellower Satires and most of the Lutrin; and, finally, the period of his weakest efforts in satire and epistle, when his inspiration is disturbed by the defense of Jansenism and the quarrel with Perrault.

Of the two elements, satire and criticism, it is hard to say which predominates in Boileau's work. Frequently they are coordinated. But certainly much of his writing, besides that labelled " satire," is satiric in idea and execution. Several of the Epitres — modeled on those of Horace — contain impatient indictments of human folly. The best of these are the Seventh Epistle (to Racine) and the Ninth, which mirrors Boileau's view

326 BOILEAU AND BOSSUET

of his own calling. The mock-heroic called Le Lutrin, in the style of Tassoni's Secchia rapita and Pope's Rape of the Lock^ narrates a theological dispute about a reading desk in the Sainte- Chapelle, Here the satire rallies the clergy for their sloth and ease, while mimicking in burlesque the artifices of various ancient and modern epics. The poem is notable for its grace and wit, qualities which find an even more amusing expression in Boileau's Les Heros de roman. This is a prose dialogue, in the manner of Lucian, where the personages in the romances of La Calprenede and Mile de Scudery file before the judges of Hades, to give themselves away by their stilted and ridiculous conversation- Ridicule, then, is the acid test which Boileau constantly applies. This quality appears to the best advantage in the Satires proper. Here Boileau, imitating Horace and Juvenal, transmutes into Parisian terms the perennial violations of le bon sens. To quote his own words:

Des sottises du temps je compose men fiel.

The Satires are of two classes, general and literary. Boileau expresses the folly of gluttony in the Third Satire; of certain types (the pedant, the miser, the gallant, and so on) in the Fourth; of false nobility in the Fifth; of unreasonable desires and ambitions in the Eighth; of women in the Tenth. In the Seventh and the famous Ninth he states his views concerning the social value of satire; and the Second, addressed to Moliere, discusses the discord between " la rime et la raison " which it was Boileau's endeavor to solve.

But the Satires also constitute a polemic. Many of their shafts are aimed at the extreme fashions then in repute, which Boileau did much to mitigate if not banish. Thus he excoriates the epic- writing school of Chapelain; the feminizing romancers and the preciemes; the writers of " conceits " and pointes, and, finally, those who burlesque great works of art, like Scarron and his Virgile travesti. All these faults and foibles of the time are scored by Boileau in dozens of passages. Thereupon, having accomplished the work of destruction, the theorist in Boileau turns to erect the working code of Classicism.

The manner in which Boileau crystallizes the Classical dogma (see Ch. I) will best appear from an analysis of the Art poetique.

THE ART POETIQUE 327

The first canto deals with the poet's vocation and the quaUties of literary composition. The vocation must be founded in The " Art nature, since the poet is born rather than made, poetique " ^nd nature also disposes him to the kind of poetry that he should undertake. This conventional tribute to Pegasus having been paid, reason steps in and directs the remainder of the canto:

Aimez done la raison: que tou jours vos ecrits Empruntent d'elle seule et leur lustre et leur prix.

Let there be no "mad inspiration," because to the Classicist, imagination is inferior to reason. The latter principle is now made to control, in detail, such necessary poetic qualities as inevitability in expression, variety, noble rather than burlesque language, clearness and purity, polish and order, the rules of versification and harmony.

Thus good sense becomes the arbiter of art, and it is primarily with the art of versification that Boileau is concerned. He interposes a biased sketch of French poetry that emphasizes this attitude. There was nothing of significance before Malherbe:

Enfin Malherbe vint, et, le premier en France, Fit sentir dans les vers una juste cadence, D'un mot mis en sa place enseigna le pouvoir, Et reduisit la muse aux regies du devoir.

The last line states the chief defect, not only of Malherbe, but of Boileau himself and of the whole trend of the Classical theory. Malherbe is praised, not as the first poet, but as the first harmonious versifier.

The second canto takes up the minor Classic genres: the idyll or eclogue, the elegy, the ode, the sonnet and the epigram. These are considered, principally on the authority of the ancients, as the most acceptable forms, and each is treated with reference to its special style and aptitudes. The Old French forms are condemned in the name of " good sense and art," while satire, both ancient and modem, is recommended as a weapon of truth. The third canto, in its treatment of tragedy, epic and comedy, instances Boileau's general indebtedness to the theories springing from Horace and Aristotle. The tragic writer must strive for a

328 BOILEAU AND BOSSUET

" gentle terror " and a " charming pity," by force of passion rather than of reasoning. But the external rules of reason must nevertheless be observed; especially —

Qu'en un lieu, qu'en un jour, un seul fait accompli Tienne jusqu'a la fin le theatre rempli.

Boileau admits that

Le vrai peut quelquefois n'etre pas vraisemblable;

in which case, however, the probable rather than the actual truth must be told. As we have seen, the Renaissance had placed a momentous stress on verisimilitude, of which the theater is the stronghold — and this idea Boileau repeats. He then gives due importance to other elements of tragedy, such as the recital of events, the climactic rise and the sudden catastrophe — in short, " crisis action." Love, he says, is now the main interest, but it must be truly depicted and should seem an amiable weak- ness ; above all — and here we hear the voice of decorum — each age and each person must keep the " proper character " in action and in language; for

La scene demande une exacte raison.

The section on the epic is interesting mainly as showing that the hope for a great modern French epic poem was not yet dead. Boileau holds by the Iliad and the Aeneid as standards. In ruling out the use of Christian mythology he condemns Tasso and, quite unawares, Milton, as well as his more usual butts, the small fry of epic-writers of the time.

Comedy, for the Classical generalizer, again tends to portraits and types. In order to paint them.

Que la nature done soit votre ^tude unique.

She is the great portrait-painter. Study of nature — in town and court — is what makes the excellence of Moliere, whenever he does not dip, unworthily, into farce. There should be no mixture of tragedy and comedy: the Classicist abhors any me- lange des genres. Let reason guide the comic action and re- frain from jests at the expense of le bon sens. ,

The fourth canto consists mainly of thrusts at Claude Perrault and of general advice to poets as representative men.

BOILEAU AS CRITIC 329

The Art poetique is, in its very limitations, a most important document. It sums up, for the seventeenth century, the literary ideals which it helps to promulgate throughout the eighteenth. Its narrowness of range was broad for that time, and what it lacks in range it has in thoroughness and polish. If we add a few points from the Ninth Epistle and mention one general underlying inspiration, we have practically the whole of Boileau's doctrine.

The Epistle in question lays down categorically that

Rien n'est beau que le vrai . . .

This is intended to rule out disordered fancy, but it operates also as an argument against sovereign imagination. It tends to make logical truth the sole foundation of art. The Epistle continues:

Mais la nature est vraie . • .

The material for imitation then is nature, and properly human nature, according to types. But nature should be followed in a broad way, not specialized or localized, adapted rather for universal appeal. The guide in this matter of just imitation is again reason.

Such are the outlines of Boileau's " civilized " program. In it he again and again pays homage to the ancients, not because they are the ancients but rather as the models in the imitation of universal nature. Thus he unfurls the Classical banner, under which, championing the geniuses of his age, he fought against the lesser writers — who were mostly hostile to his applications of truth, nature and reason. As a critic, he is the successor of Malherbe, whose precepts he elevates and broadens. He is the first great author to insist upon the importance of " taste " {le gout), which in the eighteenth century becomes a point of frequent discussion. Underlying his thought is the conviction that the great work of art is always simple, truthful and intelli- gible. Thus he has an understan'ding of the eternal human values, lifted above time and place. Accordingly, his main critical judgments have been strikingly in agreement with those of posterity.

At the same time, Boileau is not a creative critic. In his

330 BOILEAU AND BOSSUET

Satires aione does he sound an individual note — that of the concrete and picturesque detail:

J'appelle un chat un chat et Relet un fripon.

He is not a profound psychological observer, a moraliste, like Pascal or La Rochefoucauld; he lacked the temperament for such profundity. Save in the Art poetique, he shuns the abstract style, which he frequently satirizes. He cannot depict the inner world of sentiment, or of subjective ideas and impressions.

At his best, then, he is the lawgiver of Classicism. He knew and formulated its technique. The balanced Alexandrines of the Art poetique, its fixed divisions, its terse epigrammatic lines, recalling those of Pope — who was Boileau's greatest imitator — its clear and smooth finish, are evidence of his sense of Classical harmony. But again like Malherbe, he achieved these results only through effort. His early Satires, in particular, show want of ease and suggest the difBculties with rime of which he com- plains in addressing Moliere. But he overcame this handicap, and his middle period proves that he was as thoroughly Classical in his style as in his doctrine. Thus the Parisian bourgeois vindicated his position as the guardian of Classical culture.

If Boileau was the defender of authority in literatiu-e, Bossuet was its evangelist in religion. No one has ever preached a re- actionary program more eloquently than he, nor, be it said in his honor, with greater sincerity. A devout Catholic, he was not what we should call an original thinker; he defined a heretic as " celui qui a une opinion." For this reason alone it is diflScult to agree with Nisard and Brunetiere, who regard Bossuet as entirely representative of Louis XIV's time. But he had a seductive personality, a great intelligence — placed in the service of a high moral idea — and he treated vital ques- tions with the simple seriousness of a really great soul.

Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, born at Dijon (Burgundy) in 1627, came of a family of sturdy magistrates. Educated by the Jesuits in the two antiquities, Hebrew and Graeco-Roman, he was sent to Paris to complete his studies at the College de Navarre, his subjects being philosophy and theology. At twenty-four he be- came a Doctor of the Sorbonne and was soon made archdeacon of Metz, having previously declined the social allurements which

BOSSUET'S LIFE 331

Paris offered to his talents. He remained at Metz until 1659, combatting Protestants and Jews and fortifying himself generally in his vocation. But the influence of Saint Vincent de Paul, whose natiu-al Christian charity Bossuet admired, brought him back to the capital, where during ten years his fame as an orator grew until it reached the purlieus of the court. A funeral oration, now lost, on Anne of Austria is of this period in his career.

In 1669 he was appointed bishop of Condom, a small town of southern France. But his nomination as tutor to the Dauphin made him resign his bishopric and devote himself, with character- istic zeal, to forming the mind of a pupil which, however dull and unappreciative, might some day rule the world. To this endeavor we owe several of Bossuet's greatest works, such as: the Traite de la connaissance de Dieu, the Politique tiree de I'Ecriture sainte and the famous Discours sur I'histoire univer- selle (begun in 1678). While these works failed of their im- mediate purpose — the Dauphin having no brain to instruct — they are the basis of Bossuet's philosophy and they serve as an index to both the epoch and the man. Absolute monarchy could have no other historian than a theologian: one who would see in the established order a foreordainment of God. At the same time, Bossuet is no flatterer — he lauded the monarchy, but he lauded it as an obligation and a trust, and he spared no pains to make clear the terrific duties that weigh down a king. Bossuet's appeal is neither overbearing nor servile; it is psychologically true and to the point; it shows his good sense and his justesse d'esprit. Finally, it reveals his courage.

He was then elected to the Academy and, in 1681, to the bishopric of Meaux. Meantime he had preached funeral sermons on the deaths of Henrietta of France and Henrietta of England — to be followed later by orations on Marie-Therese, the Grand Conde and Mile de la Valliere. When the clergy of France met in 1682 it was Bossuet who opened the assembly with an ex- portation on the unity of the cWch, and who by force of argu- TSj.ei^ won for the Gallican Church the liberty to manage its own jfft^i^s and to pronounce itself on the question of infallibility. 'i^iA last years were crowded by disputes with the Protestants ,-^)i^ifftsfoire des variations des eglises protestantes appearing

332 BOILEAU AND BOSSUET

in 1688 — by a controversy with Fenelon over the heresy of Quietism, by a famous pronouncement against the subjects treated on the stage, and by a crushing indictment of the views of Richard Simon, a higher critic of the Bible. He died in 1704 after a hfe of continuous toil and combat.

The major qualities of Bossuet are his probity and his sense of reality. He had little vanity and almost no personal ambition. He did not seek literary glory, and if he has splendor and per- fection of form he used them as instruments to win to his cause a world that no other method could reach. But if poets are bom, so are orators; and the youthful Bossuet addressing the Hotel de Rambouillet close to midnight elicited from Voiture the remark: " I have never heard anyone preach so early or so late." He had a mind that was serene and self-possessed, which in the course of time he stored with information on philosophy, physi- ology, history, archeology and even drama; but again his mind was intense rather than far-seeing, fixed on one point — the gran- deur and glory of God as reflected by the grandeur and glory of Louis XIV.

Bossuet 's works fall into three groups: the Sermons, especially the funeral orations; the works intended for the instruction Bossuet's of the Dauphin; and the controversial writings. It Works mug^ ^q^ ]^g forgotten that preaching was in low

estate when Bossuet began. The pulpit style of the Jesuits was traditionally florid and stilted. Saint Frangois de Sales had socialized the " sermon " and given it charm. But his imitators exaggerated these qualities; their effects were sugary and soft, and preaching lost its dignity. This trait Bossuet restored. He did not write out his sermons, he was too much of an orator to forego the advantages of improvision — thus the text of many of his sermons on,ly approximates his actual words, and it is known that his editor, Deforis, took liberties with that text. Nevertheless, Bossuet preached from a sketch that was carefully and logically organized, with all the devices of Classical rhetoric. In the Sermon sur la mart, delivered at the Louvre in 166^ the exordium states that man ' j ,

est infimment meprisable en tant qu'il passe, et infiniment Jegti* mable en tant qu'il aboutit h, reterniti, . . ]

BOSSUET'S WORKS 333

This is followed by the premier point, stating that earthly life is brief, and by the second point, which stresses our control over Nature, our sense of duty, our idea of God — so many proofs of immortality. Death, the great leveler, is the central figure of Bossuet's thought. It alone gives significance to life. In praising the illustrious dead he strives to instruct the living, pointing out to them obvious truths, giving them portraits — for their emulation or avoidance, such as that of Cromwell in the Oraison de Henriette de France — and rising at times to great eloquence, as in the famous passage on the death of Henrietta of England:

0 nuit desastreuse! 6 nuit eflfroyable, ou retentit tout a coup comme un eclat de tonnerre cette etoiuiante nouvelle : Madame se meurt ! Madame est morte !

Contrast the simple majesty of this with the more worldly panegyrics of the epoch, and the genius of Bossuet is at once apparent.

As for the instructional works, the Discours sur I'histoire universelle remains the outstanding one. Its importance as a serious philosophy of history may be questioned. Yet there is no doubt that it served as such for Classicism. Bossuet aims at nothing less than a "theology of human progress," from Adam to Charlemagne. The Discours is divided into three parts : (1) On Epochs, which gives a chronological outline; (2) On Religions, which establishes the idea of Providence ruling the world through his chosen peoples; and (3) On Empires, which confirms the succession of Rome. Thus historical unity is found in religion: Judea, Christianity and Rome. Having determined

this fact de parti pris — Bossuet is free to deal with secondary

causes, and here he is at his best. He would make*his royal pupil see the true character of kings and peoples; why they succeed, why they fail. Events mean little to him; it is the man behind the event whom he would make the Dauphin under- stand. Lacking modem erudition, Bossuet is yet a master of his material ; he seeks to be impartial and is led — as far as his thesis permits — by psychological and rational considerations. Above all, he has the ability to survey a movement, and he points the way to, even if he does not attain, the position of

334 BOILEAU AND BOSSUET

Montesquieu. On the other hand, the effect of his theory is static. He reinforces the old absolutes of une loi, un roi, une foi; and he does so with the optimism of his vigorous personality.

Bossuet's works of controversy have the same unified purpose as the Discours. The Histoire des variations des eglises protes- tantes, in fifteen volumes, is a clever piece of argumentation. Moreover, it is thoroughgoing. On the side of the Protestants he finds discord, on the side of the Catholics, unity ; thus Bossuet would confound those who had deserted Rome. Why they deserted, Bossuet does not explain. But he has no doubt as to their eventual repentance; he feels sure that the enlightened policy of Rome will reintegrate the Protestants in the Universal Church. For the moment Bossuet wished to strike them in their most vulnerable spot; and so he sets them against one another, Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans and the rest, in ruinous opposition.

His controversy with Fenelon we must leave for a later chapter (Pt. Ill, Bk. I, Ch. II). Sufiice it to remark here that the Rela- tion sur le quietisme is inspired by the general attitude found in Bossuet's other works. Quietism, encouraged by Mme Guyon, was a form of mysticism which seemed to leave religion to the impulse of personal emotion, and any such type of individualism was abhorrent to the rationally minded bishop.

As for Bossuet's style, it places him in the front rank of seventeenth-century prose writers. Its great quality is cadence. Bossuet's His periods roll forth like great waves of emotion. ®*yie He not only cites the Scripture, he incorporates

it into himself, so that its imagery, its sententiousness, its gravity appear to spring from the speaker's own mind. But in his periodic style he commands many variations. " Tout lui sert," says Joubert, " le langage des rois, des politiques et des guerriers; celui du peuple et du savant, du village et de I'ecole, du sanctu- aire et du barreau." Picturesque and poetic as his images are, and taken for the most part from Latin writers and the Church Fathers, he can also wield the plainer style coupe: rapid, logical and always to the point. He says in a discours:

On me blame, on me meprise, on m'oublie: quel est le plus rude ^ la nature, ou plutot a ramour-propre? Je ne sais.

BOSSUET'S CONTEMPORARIES 335

Could language be more direct and forcible? It was this mastery over French, coupled with Bossuet's soaring vision of mankind and of history, which more than any other quality gave him the epithet of the " Eagle of Meaux."

A contemporary of Bossuet's in the pulpit was Bourdaloue (1632-1704), whose Sermons, commonplace as they often were. His Con- pleased the court. In the words of his biographer temporaries Vinet: " II preclia, il confessa, il consola." Although a Jesuit, Bomrdaloue had the moral intensity of a Jansenist; and the pictures he gives of corruption in high places elicited the admiration of Boileau. His style has none of the lyrical splendor of Bossuet; it is clear and telling, but it tends toward logical precision and abstraction. Bourdaloue is the Descartes of oratory, and in the controversy about Tartuffe he ably discerned the difficulty of distinguishing religious observance from hypocrisy.

But a spirit of decadence pervaded the close of Louis XIV's rfiign. Massillon (1663-1742), another churchman-, comments on the " enervating atmosphere " as one enters Versailles. A charitable Christian, Massillon strove against it valiantly and then succimibed. His Sermons have grace and elegance of form and a certain philosophic breadth which made them appeal, later on, to Voltaire. But they lack the force of a strong personality and readily go off into hyperbole and the worst type of Ciceronian imitation.

Lastly, Flechier (1632-1710), a writer of charming Latin verse and a frequenter of ruelles, is more of a society wit than a cleric. He preached conventionally on the sins of the world — ■ the little sins, those of pride, impaid debts, money-marriages, and so on. At the same time, his words seem to have been spoken with an exquisite ironic smile, and his funeral Orations, in par- ticular, swayed his hearers by the musical rhythm of their rhetoric.

Thus the Age of the Grand Monarque closes on a note of plaintive eloquence. It was eloquent as to the glory and grandeur of its achievements — in politics, literature and religion. It was plaintive — and ironic — at the thought that no form of human culture, however well planned, can last, and that the forces which were imdermining the body politic were too

336 BOILEAU AND BOSSUET

powerful to be stopped. Moreover, a new movement in ideas was claiming recognition, and this brings us to the Quarrel of the Ancients and Modems, with which Classicism definitely ends. As a final word on this great period, let us note that the humanism of the Renaissance finds an enduring expression in Bossuet's formulation of the "objective" judgment:

La vraie perfection de I'entendement est de bien juger. Juger, c'est prononcer au-dedans de soi sur le vrai et sur le faux; et bien juger, c'est y prononcer avec raison et connaissance.

PART m MODERN TIMES

BOOK I THE TRANSITION FROM CLASSICISM

CHAPTER I

THE QUARREL OF ANCIENTS AND MODERNS:

RESULTS

The drive against absolute Classicism dates its success from the " Quarrel " between Boileau and Charles Perrault. This dispute, as to whether the ancients or the mod- mpo ance ej-j^gaj-g ^jj^ beg(; writers, is, in its larger aspects, neither academic nor futile. The quarrel as to mere pre- eminence may have been vain, but its importance in literary- history is due less to the ostensible matter of debate than to the new criticism which it awakened and to certain significant forces which it released. These center, it will appear, around the idea of Progress.

It has been shown that the ancients themselves were not without

glimmerings of this idea. It is implicit in the Renaissance, if

not an " organic phenomenon " of French Classicism.

Antecedents p^^. ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ Pl^iade, especially Du Bellay,

maintain, if not that the ancients may be equalled in many ways? Pride of progress is visible in Rabelais and in Etienne Dolet; and the early liberalism of Corneille tends in the same direction. Yet none of these believe that the moderns are superior en bloc and none wish to overthrow the authority of antiquity. That is rather the intention of Descartes, who is the direct ancestor of modernism. Descartes' impatience with scholasticism ejctended to ancient literature and in making reason the guide in all worldly matters, he threw out many suggestions for later philosophers. For instance, it is Descartes who, building apparently on St. Augustine's notion that humanity may be viewed as developing like a single man, upholds that we are truly the ancients, since we represent the maturity of the world. This thought is more or less repeated by Pascal, Bacon and Fontenelle, and it under-

339

340 QUARREL OF ANCIENTS AND MODERNS

lies certain phases of the Quarrel. Descartes' general principle of rationalism (see Pt. II, Bk. Ill, Ch. V) results, through the widening skepticism of the Modems and of the libertins, in eighteenth-century philosophy.

But in seventeenth-century literature, ancient authority was not so easily overcome. A return to scholasticism, the establish- ment of the Academy, the pedantry of the Univer- Eeactions ^j^^.^ ^^^ chiefly the triumphant example of the great Classicists submerged for a time the worldly and revolutionary currents. There were irregular independents; there was always a majority in favor of the light salon taste; the " honnete homme " usually considered ancient culture pedantic and inelegant. But the great triumvirate, Boileau, Racine, Moliere, succeeded for a generation in subduing the precievx, in linking hands with an- cient tradition, in combining that tradition harmoniously with a wise modernity, reason and a fine taste, and especially in securing royal and influential favor. It was part of their nemesis that in succeeding as Ancients,^ they also succeeded as moderns^ and left their own productions as the best argu- ments for the clever propaganda of Perrault.

The actual story of the Quarrel still has its human interest. It is divided into two epochs, that of the Boileau-Perrault con- troversy (1687-1700), and that in which Lamotte maintains against Madame Dacier the small worth of poetry in general and of Homer in particular (1714-16). The former epoch is decidedly the more important and alone need concern us.

The first resounding note was struck, about 1670, by Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, in his defense of the Christian merveiUeux in Saint-Sorlin ^^^ ^P^'^- Naturally, as poet and as Christian, he on the Epic is disposed, to quote Brunetiere, to "mingle his pleasures and beliefs," and doubly to slur the ancients: their mythology on the one hand, and their literature on the other, are represented, in spite of Boileau, as inferior to the modem

' These words, when written with a capital, will indicate the partisans of the ancients and moderns respectively. The Ancients included: Boileau, Racine, La Fontaine, the learned bishop Huet, La Bruyfere, Mteage, Rapin (the model for the President in the ParallUes) — and Mme Dacier. More cautious and moderate Ancients were F6nelon and Bouhours. The Modems included: Saint-Sorlin, P. Perrault, Ch. Perrault, Fontenelle, Th. Comeille, Pradon, Bussy-Rabutin — and Lamotte and the Abb6 de Pons. Moderate Modems were Segrais and Saint-Evre- mond, "le plus olassique des modernes."

THE PERRAULT BROTHERS 341

possibilities. Before Chateaubriand, Saint-Sorlin pleads for the " genius of Christianity " and especially for the religious epic. He views poetry as consisting in the truth of its ideas — hence Christian subjects are preferable — added to the processes of mere mechanical composition; he praises the moderns indiscrim- inately, and finally he appeals to Charles Perrault to carry on the war.

The four Perrault brothers demand some personal attention. They were all clever, versatile, advanced and rather original. Claude, the doctor-architect, who erected the fagade Claude, ^q ^j^g Louvre, is credited by Sainte-Beuve with a

" genius for comparative anatomy and . . . noble artistic concep- tions." But he was satirized by Boileau in the fourth canto of the Art poetique and was later stigmatized as a " very great enemy of health and good sense." Pierre Perrault translated the Secchia rapita of Tassoni (who was one of the first Italian

. Moderns), attacked Boileau and the Ancients in Pieire and Charles a preface thereto (1678), and had previously been

Perrault convicted of ignorance (in re Euripides) by Racine, in the smiling and stinging preface to Iphigenie. Charles, the Baron Haussmann of his day, was in general control of the royal architectural projects. He is better known to fame as the popularizer of the Mother Goose rimes — Contes de ma mere I'oye (1697) . And he was well suited by his restless enterprising nature to stand out as the head and front of the Quarrel. He was fertile, ingenious, forward-looking ; he respected the ancients little and knew them even less; but he could argue with a dan- gerous amiability and, as regards science and religion, with a sincere faith. As a self-taught man of action, he had a wide if superficial curiosity, considerable energy and a talent for organization.

He began hostilities, on January 27, 1687, at a meeting of the Academy held to celebrate the convalescence of Louis XIV. Perrault read aloud his poem entitled Le Steele de Louis le Orand. This poem deftly flatters the King, his " century," and certain Ch. Perrault's "^ ^*^ luminaries, to the detriment of the ancients. "Siecle." These are men like ourselves, the author declares, and deserve no greater reverence —

I view the ancients with unbending knee.

342 QUARREL OF ANCIENTS AND MODERNS

The age of Louis may be favorably compared with the age of Augustus, which it surpasses in scientific knowledge and in vari- ous inventions. As to literature, ancient eloquence may yet be equalled, Aristotle should no longer dominate, and the Iliad, tiresome and brutal poem, would be much better done today. This part of the attack disgusted Huet, who was wont to groan, " Les dieux s'en vont," and it particularly offended Boileau, who, seated by the learned bishop, could scarcely control himself and soon left the seance, declaring that such a reading was a disgrace to the Academy.

Perrault gave an incomplete and biased list of moderns, excluding on that occasion Boileau and Racine, mentioning Mal- j^ herbe, Voiture, Moliere, on a par with a dozen

Argument names forgotten today. But he clearly sets forth two main ideas, which are henceforth part of the world's patri- mony. First, there is a stability and perpetuity in the forces of nature, on which man may safely build. The roses, the stars and the birds are as fine as they ever were. Therefore, as regards Nature,

The ceaseless might of that abiding hand, Produces Genius for each age and land.

The companion thought is that with this support in nature — and with the further support of a great king — the materials of knowledge are always piling up and are now honored by " many inventions." It speaks significantly for the increasing attention paid to science that Perrault is among the first to particularize, in periphrastic verse, the telescope, the microscope, and the study of physiology. The defect of his reasoning, and that of his coterie, is that he considers art also mainly a matter of increasing knowledge, the evolution of rules, and precepts. But the " Ancients " themselves, from the Italian Renaissance through Boileau, had done much to encourage that attitude.

Some very bad verses together with very advanced ideas are contained in this poem. Racine answered it by a bitter-sweet Counter- compliment which sought to destroy its importance, attacks La Fontaine wrote a temperate Epistle to Huet, in

which he insists upon the need of a choice among moderns as well as ancients, and stoutly upholds the latter as the only safe

FONTENELLE 343

guides for worthy imitation and lasting excellence. But already La Fontaine hints that the Modern cause is the more popular. Boileau launches various epigrams, as much against the Academy as against Perrault. To think that this disgraceful thing should occur in Paris instead of among the Hurons and the Topinam- boux!

Supporters now rally to the side of Perrault. Chief among these is the earlier Fontenelle, the wit and the ladies' man, FonteneUe's ^^^^^ Digression sur les anciens et les modernes "Digrea- (1688) supplements Perrault in several directions. sion" -poT instance, if trees formerly grew larger than

today, then Homer and others cannot be equalled. But if not, there is hope. Our fibers and vital spirits have not changed, and the laws of physics protest against the assertion that after producing the ancients. Nature broke her mould. FonteneUe's interest in science is already dawning. He continues to the effect that much of the advantage attributed to the ancients hes in their mere priority; to which it might be answered that several of the arguments of the Moderns rest on their mere posteriority. Antiquity, says Fontenelle, carried eloquence and poetry to a " point of perfection " (a favorite phrase in both camps), because the slight nxmiber of truths demanded by these subjects could soon be amassed and the necessary vivacity of imagination needs no amassing. But the sciences, composed of an infinite number of " views," have no end, and the latest scientists are always the best. Fontenelle also perceives that the moderns have the superiority in (Cartesian) reasoning. Humanity — again considered as one man — had its unsur- passed youth of poetry and eloquence ; it has now its virility of science and reasoning; but it will have no decrepit old age; it will be ever capable of repeating the achievements of its youth and its prime. Fontenelle, somewhat inconsistently, declares that even poetry may be indefinitely perfected. Anticipating Lamotte and the other radicals, FonteneUe's appreciations of poetry as a sort of versified gallantry are significant. So is his gjg development of Perrault's suggestion concerning the

Strength and perpetuity of natural forces and his emphasis on the Weakness sciences. But he does not thoroughly distinguish these from the arts, ultimately viewing both as capable of

344 QUARREL OF ANCIENTS AND MODERNS

accumulations. He thinks the ancients should be surpassed by virtue of the great modern dramatists, the novel and the im- proved technique of poetry. He concludes that "nothing so hampers the progress of things, nothing so limits intelligence as an excessive admiration for the ancients."

Fontenelle's reception into the Academy (1691) and La Bru- yere's admission (1693) were both made occasions for literary battles, in which the sturdy moralist tries to hold the traditional ground against the dexterous undermining of " Cydias " (see next chapter).

The main document in the Quarrel is Perrault's Paralleles des anciens et des modemes (1688-97). These sprightly -fjjg dialogues — they are appropriately staged at Ver-

" Paralleles " sailles — present a Chevalier and an Abbe who up- hold the moderns against a President, to whom is assigned the bad end of the argument. The first interlocutors seem in the right more frequently than they really are, because the President has little to plead save respect for authority. Perrault's taste and judgment are superficial, with little appreciation of the magnifi- cent or the delicate. He tries to make a universal survey through all the ages and arts, but practically his knowledge limits him to modern France. His arguments, though often tricky and partial, are varied and plausible, and they proved effective enough. He adopts an agreeable degage tone, and he allows for differences of opinion, which Boileau does not. Among the reasons which Perrault advocates for the superiority of the moderns are: the fact that they are the last-comers and can best carry forward the " mind of the race " ; an improvement in psychological handling — of love affairs, for example — and in the method of reasoning; the perfecting of inventions, es- pecially the invention of printing; the fact that we may now get all the meat of the ancients in translation (this was also Lamotte's contention) ; the protection of the King; the ad- vantages of Christianity, particularly in eloquence and epic. All these superiorities are applicable as much to the arts as to the sciences. There is an insistence everywhere on a measurable and calculable progress. And Perrault, like Fontenelle, uses the creative productions of the Ancients to vitiate their own cause ; by his praise he forces them into the paradoxical position

THE MODERN CAUSE 345

of attacking themselves and their friends. Much of this brings to mind the familiar ajid perennial debate between humanists and scientists, in the matter of education. Building on Descartes, Perrault, in fact, attacks pedantic education, under which head- ing he would include — like others — a good deal of true culture and knowledge. It has been pointed out that most of the Moderns were ignorant alike of the ancients and of the essential principles of poetry. They propose translations as giving the root of the matter and they have little art-sense; they confuse genius with the mechanics of the metier and they do not savor the historical aroma of masterpieces; they reduce art to the intelligible element, expressing a pure Cartesian reason, em- bracing scientific rather than sensible symbols. The chief con- tentions of the Moderns are thus summed up by M. Gillot, the latest historian of the Quarrel: Summaiy

La poesie modeme est superieure a la poesie antique parce qu' inspiree d'une religion plus pure et plus vraie. Art ou poesie, les productions modernes remportent sur les modeles antiques parce que plus achevees de forme et plus conformes aux exigences d'un gout delicat. Science ou philosophie, les modernes savent mieux et plus que les anciens. Arme d'une methode nouvelle et forme par la discipline cartesienne, le genie modeme laisse bien loin derriere lui la science rudimentaire des savants anciens. . . . Industrie ou arts appliques, U n'est aucune des inventions, qui facilitent et embelUssent la vie, dont ne se soit avise un siecle de decouvertes et de merveilles ingenieuses.

It is mainly with regard to the supposed advance in beauty and taste that we need to question this claim. Perrault him- self is breaking down the barriers of taste in his lightness of treatment, in his constant appeal to the standpoint of society women and the world; he is willing to do without imaginative style and metre, the specific marks of poetry; he has a poor sense of beauty, which he considers a very mobile and fashion- able thing, since all that concerns style, proportion, elegance, is relative; he insists on the perpetual relativity of taste, whose

„ ,,, boundaries he widens by cross-references to archi-

Perraiilt 8 .

Doctrine of tecture, statuary and pamtmg. Nor does he stop

Taste there. He is constantly dealing with and drawing

analogies from natural history, medicine, music and the Indus-

346 QUARREL OF ANCIENTS AND MODERNS

trial arts. Small wonder, then, that with these fresh interests, aided by the social revolt against the severe regime of the Ancients, Perrault's novelty and urbanity won the day.

For his cause triimiphed, as a matter of general opinion and results. Neither the surly indirect retorts of Boileau and his

Reflexions sur Longin, nor his intelligent concessions Results jjj ^j^g Lettre a M. Perrault, after Arnauld had

patched up a reconciliation between the leaders, could gainsay or withstand the strength of the current. The wise and judicial compromises of Fenelon and of Saint-Evremond were alike un- availing. Emancipation was in the air, the respect for authority was seriously shaken, and the Quarrel spread with reverberations to England and other Northern shores. In France, the force of the Renaissance was spent. The neo-classicism of the following century, reacting and striving to return to Boileau and a modi- fied ancestor-worship, proved only that the real power of the modern world lay in developing those relations and widening those spheres of knowledge which Perrault and Fontenelle had first indicated. Classicism, poetry and taste deteriorated as science, philosophy and the industrial arts advanced.

In fact, two main tendencies may be seen as helping to dif- ferentiate the thought and literature of the eighteenth century

from those of the seventeenth: the tendency toward ea vity relativity and the tendency toward expansionism. Relativity, or Relativism, may be defined as a philosophic atti- tude which views creeds and standards as not absolutely true but as dependent on certain conditions of time and place. For instance, the nineteenth century has made a great deal of his- torical relativity in matters of climate and race, political insti- tutions and religious truth. But the way had already been pointed out by Bayle and Voltaire, by Montesquieu and Diderot. The modern mind — beginning in the eighteenth century — is then relative in that it is frequently skeptical concerning abso- lutes and also in that (see Perrault above) it seeks to relate or associate the various fields of knowledge and art. Likewise the modern mind, beginning with the eighteenth a^g century, seems more expansive as regards literary Expansionism forms; it has enlarged their number and broken down the barriers between them ; it has made more and more domains

ITS IMPORTANCE 347

of knowledge susceptible of literary treatment. So the term Expansionism may be used to indicate the inclusion in literary history of subjects hitherto considered outside of that field. For instance, Fontenelle brings popular astronomy into litera- ture and Montesquieu adds the study of laws. In each case it is the excellence of the treatment that admits and promotes the new subject; and there are, as we shall see, many such cases in the eighteenth century.

Now French Classicism, dealing more with permanent and universal human values, had striven everywhere after unity and yg concentration. Largely owing to the influence of

Classicism the ancients. Expansionism is much limited in the Classic production viewed as a whole. With the addition of certain polemical and moralistic writings, the genres are much the same in the age of Boileau as in the age of Horace. In fact, to adopt De Quincey's distinction, the seventeenth century represents the more imaginative literature of power, while the eighteenth puts the emphasis on the literature of knowledge and lets down the bars to admit its many varieties. The former concentrates, as already said, on art and the inner nature of man; the latter stresses society and science, which ever " grows from more to more."

The wide divergence between Classical and modern aims is still more conspicuous on philosophic grounds. The attitude of the seventeenth century towards its Absolutes, the great tradi- tional beliefs in king, church and literary law may be summed up in the phrase, " une loi, un roi, une foi " (See Pt. II, Bk. IV) . Belief in this triad is orthodox and almost universal. The dog- matism of Boileau was thus paralleled by the dogmatism of Bossuet and by the despotism of Louis XIV. In every field the absolute was supreme and there was allowed little discussion of fundamentals. " Les grands sujets sont defendus," complained La Bruyere in 1688, and it is from La Bruyere that issue the first mutterings of social revolt (see next chapter).

The significance of the Quarrel is that it helped make way for the new forces. The literary skepticism of the Moderns Significance of ^^b^^^^^s ^^^ conception of possible progress, or evo- the Quarrel lution, which in one form or another has dominated thought ever since. And the idea of progress may itself contain

348 QUARREL OF ANCIENTS AND MODERNS

the corollaries of a skeptical relativity — hence tolerance — a thickening solidarity of knowledge, a growing expansionism, a tendency to welcome new notions, new forms, new relations. Progressivism thus amplified is a characteristic mark of the eighteenth century, to which the nineteenth is so much indebted. Modern thought dates from the twilight of Louis XIV (see p. 274), and it starts invading literature with Perrault's revolt against the ancients. The Quarrel then is extremely important on both philosophic and literary grounds.

CHAPTER II

WRITERS OF THE TRANSITION: LA BRUYERE, SAINT-SIMON, FENELON

Politically, the most conservative of these three men is Saint- Simon, but the most Classical in taste is La Bruyere (1645-1696) . Coming at the end of the great century, recognizing a ruyere ^j^^^^ ^j^^ ^^^ ^^^ reached its "point of perfection," this writer rounds off the Classical doctrine and completes the courtly pictiure. Clinging to the past, he disliked the present and distrusted the future.

Little is known of Jean de la Bruyere's life, until, in his fortieth year, he entered the household of the great Conde, to publish, shortly afterwards, his one masterpiece — Les Caracteres (1688). These are the two main events in an existence which remains for the most part silent and mys- terious. Without knowing why, we know only that he had accepted various offices merely to give them up, that he lived unmarried, in an obscure tutorial position. The most plausible explanation seems to be that La Bruyere was emphatically the man of one book, which became his fixed idea. To serve Les Caracteres, he renounced a good deal of living, while subordinat- ing himself to the study of society.

His later years were packed with enough events and publicity to atone for his early obscurity. There were many outbreaks of feeling and opinion in connection with the thinly disguised portraits in Les Caracteres and with the consequent rejection of La Bruyere by the Academy. He was finally elected (1693) in the face of stormy opposition, and his uncompromising discours on that occasion was a notable expression of dogged independence. That is the chief mark of his character throughout. Independ- ence and originality are the qualities that he constantly recom- mends and practices in his writings, and it must have *' been a bitter pill for him to subdue his individuality in the service of the grandees. The results are visible in a some-

349

350 WRITERS OF THE TRANSITION

what soured disposition. La Bruyere, like Boileau, is a crusty bourgeois bachelor, sardonic and downright. He was also sensi- tive and not at ease in company; he preferred quiet, a few good friends and a library. Withdrawing into himself, he devoted his studious leisure, as a contemporary put it, to the task of " dis- tilling " his immortal book.

The author's material is indicated by the subtitle; les McBurs de ce siecle.'^ His declared intention is psychological, general- izing, instructive. He portrays society's divisions The Book ^^^ occupations, of which his chapter-headings give a fairly complete survey. As regards composition, the volume was first issued as a collection of " remarks "; it presents in fact a series of observations, covering a number of years and sug- gesting an expanded and polished diary. Neither chapters nor portraits are composed all of one piece; we have rather a mosaic of maxims, a gallery of paintings. This comparative freedom of composition adds to the effect of naturalness and life.

In another direction of form, the author shows the most con- stant care. Style was his main delight and preoccupation. Here he is really a creative artist. His diction is pictur-

^ ^ esque and incisive. He has his own strong phrasings

and metaphors, his " mots aventuriers," as he termed them, to- gether with a considerable play of fancy. All this tends towards a vividness of expression, conspicuous in his portraits. His sentences are often long and analytical, his figiires realistic and precise, but he remains Classical in his addiction to epigram and balance. On the whole it is an elaborate chiselled style, hard and bold rather than smooth or flowing. A lapidary is at work, an assorter and refiner, whose main desire is to be distinct and individual.

The chief literary types used are maxims and portraits, which correspond, it has been well said, like text and illustra- Maxims and ^ons. The maxims suggest at once La Rochefou- PoTtraits cauld and Pascal, though they lack the concise per- fection of these masters. They are more freely expressed and more like Montaigne in style, in the personal truth, and in the view of human mobility. Many fine and subtle thoughts are given

> His model was the Greek work of Theophrastus, also called Characters, which Iia Bruy^ himself translated.

LA BRUYERE 361

adequate wording, but the great achievement of La Bruyere is rather in the portrait. To this genre he gives final consummate form. He gives it indeed many forms, since all varieties of portraits are to be found: moral or psychological, physical, full- length, sketches, pendants, pastels. The characters may bear predeux or ancient names, but their physiognomies are living and moving likenesses, usually drawn from celebrities of the time. Thus Cydias, the wit, represents Fontenelle; Emile, the great general, is Conde or Turenne; Roscius is Baron, the comedian; Menalque amusingly depicts a certain absent-minded Comte de Brancas. Other striking portraits are those of Arrias, the conceited dogmatist; Emire, the heartless woman; Giton and Phedon, respectively the rich and the poor man. The effect of vividness is attained not only through the lively style, but also through the use of physical and characteristic details. The author poses his subject in many ways, walks all around him, ! exhausts him, and will not leave the main trait of the victim alone; he twists and wrings it to the last drop; or, sometimes, ' there is a dramatic reservation of the real point imtil the very , close. In certain directions La Bruyere appears as fuller and more subtle than Moliere, but he is less universal; his portraits, for all their variety, bear more the mark of his own age.

His thought is Classical and conservative, in that he insists

on the old qualities of reason and truth, measvire and sobriety.

He holds by the rules and stands firmly on the side

*^ of the Ancients in the Quarrel. As regards the

monarchy. La Bruyere praises Louis for his real qualities — the rest are " forbidden subjects." But he slips in theories concern- ing an ideal government that makes for the happiness of the people. In religion, he favors the extinction of heresy ; the idea of tolerance has scarcely reached the Parisians. He has no doubts concerning dogma and is pronounced in his condemnation and ridicule of freethinkers.

Yet throughout the work, one is conscious, as La Bruyere him- self was conscious, that he comes during the twilight of the Clas- Spcial ^ical gods. A certain weariness in their support, a

Criticism feeling of surfeit and decadence, is noticeable. That critical spirit which he would not direct against the major powers, he turns against the lesser orders. There are savage cuts at nearly

352 WRITERS OF THE TRANSITION

every kind of wealth and aristocracy. The fortune-hunters, the nouveaux riches, the farmers-general, patrons, misers and gamblers, are all cursed with the money taint. Especially does La Bruyere excoriate the court. It is ruled by self-interest, it displays only vanity and waste, it leads only to unhappiness. Some of the best portraits, of great satiric strength, are those depicting the courtiers. The grandees themselves find little favor in La Bruyere's eyes. They have left their opportunities to do good unimproved. They are ignorant and neglectful and are already being ousted from government by the rise of more intelli- gent classes. We do not need to wait for the eighteenth century to find out what was the matter with the seventeenth, and there is no heavier indictment of the age of Louis XIV than this pre- pared by his humble servant.

With the people La Bruylre is more preoccupied than any other writer of his time. There is a famous and dreadful passage in which he describes the peasants, those " beasts A Pessimist i^q^jj^j ^q ^jjg ground," who are yet articulate and human and who deserve a share in the bread they have so mourn- fully sown. La Bruyere, hating the aristocrats, declares, "je veux etre peuple." But he has no conviction of a new order and little sense of progress. He enforces neither the rights of man nor the wrongs of woman — whom he considers a poor creature. The fact is that La Bruyere, like La Rochefoucauld, is mainly pessimistic and destructive in spirit. All his wit and art cannot disguise his misanthropy. He is not a cynic, for he has stand- ards. He is a sensitive critic, disappointed of perfection, an idealist gone morose. He shows a touch of heart in several passages, but almost no gaiety nor cheer.

Thus he lacks the broadness of the profounder moralists, whose level he also misses by having no deep and original system. Comparative -^^ rarely penetrates to the obscure reason which is Position at the core of human sentiments, as La Roche- foucauld, rightly or wrongly, seeks to penetrate. La Bruyere is more occupied with modes of thought and passion; he is not universal nor philosophic. Yet in his thorough description of his own day and time, he is without a peer and shows a relative pro- fundity. He is not greatly constructive; but he follows faith- fully the receding tide of a remarkable era.

SAINT-SIMON 353

The French have long been unequalled in the writing of Memoirs, and those of Saint-Simon are the greatest in the lan- guage. What the Cardinal de Retz did for Louis Saint-Simon xin, Saint-Sunon accomplished for the age of Louis XIV and the Regency, with still more remarkable merits of extent, interest and literary power. He gives full accounts of the inner workings of the most brilliant period in French history. He makes the picture galleries of Versailles and the Louvre step down from their frames and live and move before our eyes.

Louis de Saint-Simon (1675-1755) was bom of a noble house. He was a " duke and peer " like his father. Both men believed in the divine right of nobles as well as in their responsibilities {noblesse oblige), and both showed a conservative tendency to prefer the " good old days." With these feudal ideas and with a fondness for reading history, Saint-Simon left home a rebel against the actual order. In person he was rather small and ill-made, but he had much vital force. He married a worthy lady for whom he had due affection and respect. Entering the army, he went through a campaign or two without distinction, and displeased Louis XIV by resigning his commission.

The greater part of Saint-Simon's active life was passed at Versailles, where he was an assiduous observer and critic. He Court Life ^^^ ^'^ punctilious about small matters, too little of 1702-1724 a courtier and statesman to please the powers; and the Great Monarch once told the free-spoken nobleman that he must learn to " hold his tongue." Twice he approached a position of influence, with the Dauphin and under the regency of the Due d'Orleans, of whom Saint-Simon was a staimch friend. But though instrumental in forming the Regent's " councils " (see next chapter) and in forcing the degradation of the illegitimate sons of Louis XIV, he avoided positions of trust and wavered in large matters. He withdrew to his estates on the death of the Regent.

His role at court was in accordance with his character, which

was that of a very fussy person. He was always occupied with

questions of etiquette, precedence and trappings;

when the Great Monarch died, Saint-Simon was

above all concerned about what sort of a " bonnet " a certain

President should wear. He considered these things as symbols

364 WRITERS OF THE TRANSITION

of the waning aristocratic power which it was his chief desire to restore. He had a fiery disposition, with much capacity both for hating and loving — their " nerve and principle is the same," he significantly says. His friends were few but well chosen, and his abundant curiosity kept him many chaimels of information among high and low. Ministers, valets and women of the court unconsciously supplied the materials for his Memoirs.

These were written during his retirement, a period of thirty years which he spent partly on his country estate, partly in his jjjg Paris library. Without occupation, disheartened by

" Memoires " family afflictions, Saint-Simon once chanced to read Dangeau's Journal de la Regence. The old courtier amused himself by jotting down " additions " which vivified Dangeau's facts and personages. Gradually he was possessed with the idea of completing his own Memoirs, which he had started as a youth. From this beginning and from a mass of notes accimaulated dur- ing his court life, the actual Memoires had their birth. For fifteen years Saint-Simon spent many feverish midnights remem- bering and recording the great days which he knew so well. He had time to recopy the whole text before his death (1755), and for two generations the dangerous manuscript lay in the Foreign Ofiice. A fairly complete edition was published only in the days of Romanticism.

As a writer of history proper, of which he had rather a personal and imaginative conception, Saint-Simon is far from perfect. He ffjjg makes numerous errors of date, of fact and of judg-

Historian ment. Furthermore, his prejudices stood tremend- ously in the way. He could see no good in any class but the hereditary nobility, and he particularly disdained the crowd of court " lackeys," i. e. the parasites, as well as the royal favorites and ministers. This makes him unjust to the Cardinal Dubois and to Mme de Maintenon. Differing from Montesquieu, he had no esteem for the noblesse de robe or the parliamentary and judicial families. He was impatient if not ignorant of financial matters, as appears in his accounts of the famous banking system introduced by John Law. He was no soldier and so he cannot understand the professional merits of such marshals as Villeroy and Villars, whom he condemns simply as courtiers and indi- viduals. Even the higher ranges of diplomacy and international

SAINT-SIMON 35S

politics are seen mainly from the angle of precedence and ceremony. Finally, his frank opinion of Louis XIV, though well warranted in some respects, is unjust as a whole and diminishes too greatly that princely figure. Saint-Simon admits that he is " lacking in charity." Another disappointed courtier, like La Rochefoucaxild, he finds fault with the life which found no great place for him. His pessunistic picture is thus the reverse and the complement of Voltaire's Siecle de Louis XIV.

On that very account the Memoirs have their historical value.

They are thoroughly sincere. Despite some errors of fact, they

are crammed with a wide general knowledge and

* ^^^ with keen observation. They are realistic and personal above all. They excel in two things: in vivid portraiture and in striking accounts of impressive scenes. Saint-Simon is a psychological and picturesque historian, and the Memoirs are greater than many histories because they are closer both to life and to literature.

Unlike La Bruyere, he rarely deals with abstract types. He depicts an actual pageant crowded with innmnerable distinct figures. These are often characterized in powerful and disdainful language. " Monseigneur," the son of the king, is " sunk in fat and apathy," the Due de Maine is "like a demon in malignity and perversity of soul," another man is called a " court rat," and Voltaire is haughtily dismissed as a scalawag son of a notary, influential " in a certain set." For the ladies, Saint-Simon wields a more graceful brush and gives usually a living physical portrait. So the Duchess of Bur- gundy is described in her habitual gestures and manners. For her and for her husband, the lamented Dauphin, the writer shows much admiration and tenderness. But toward his enemies he is implacable and excessive. The Due de Noailles, who had shown himself a perfidious friend, is the " serpent who tempted Eve and ruined the human race." Apparently Saint-Simon could shrivel the Duke with a glance, and his whole account of their relation- ship gives a deep impression of thoroughly savored vengeance. In all these portraits the effect is gained by accimiulation of details, by vivid depiction and a biting force of language.

The same is true of the famous scenes, in which the narrator

356 WRITERS OF THE TRANSITION

shows also his dramatic ability. Of these, the most celebrated is the long description, from council-chamber to Bed " Tableaux " ^^ justice, of how the Duke of Maine and the Count of Toulouse were degraded from their ranks. This was the chief event of Saint-Simon's life, for he was the senior among the peers from whose number the King's natural sons were expelled. The historian frankly makes himself the center of all eyes, depicts his exuberant physical joy, and carefully notes the successive steps in the proceedings. As the " spy of his century," he made it a point to be present on all memorable occasions ; he is supreme in reporting them and in reading the faces of the participants. Death-beds, royal levees, hunting and gaming, fetes and meetings of the councils, are described over and over again, with an effect of absorbing interest. Throughout, people conduct themselves most naturally. Doors open and shu^B, real faces flash forth, grandees blow noses and box ears, there is much particularity about all doings, great and small, anecdotes and incidents, ceremonies and usages, — a sort of court gazette palpitating with life, and displaying the imposing figure of the monarch behind all. Saint-Simon's language is very individual. Incoherent in syntax, sometimes obscure and faulty, it rises in high moments to a torrent of vehement eloquence. Lacking Clas- ^® sical measure and repose, it is a style peculiarly

adapted to his " tableaux vivants " and to passionate invective. It is the natural reflection of the man himself, careless of aca- demic perfection, hurried, lordly, involved. Saint-Simon uses the strongest adjectives, vivid figures and expressions; his diction is chosen with startling accuracy or imaginative appeal and he reproduces dialogue to the life. His violent sensibility, says Taine, was too acute for sober action, but constituted the very marrow of an ardent and eager literary genius.

In his thought and position, Saint-Simon was a lonely Moses without a Promised Land. He faces backwards, not forwards. Both his high-seriousness and his conservatism are of the seventeenth century ; he was scarcely aware of the eighteenth. Though he discerned many of the faults in Louis XIV and his age, Saint-Simon clings to the royal and aristocratic prerogatives, disdaining the philosophes, a devout churchman, little concerned with the people. And bis indi-

FENELON 357

vidualism repelled his own order, which he served better in literature than in politics. He holds his unique place through the majestic sweep and the finished detail of his great historical frescoes.

" Une magnifique creature et infiniment seduisante " — this is Saint-Simon's tribute to Francois de Salignac de la Mothe- Fenelon (1651-1715), archbishop of Cambrai and ™®'"' author of TeHmaque. A writer distinctly of the

second order, Fenelon lives chiefly through the charm of his per- sonality and the weight of his influence. The whole purpose of his life and work was to give sound moral instruction: this is seen in his tutoring of the Dauphin, in the tone and content of his various M'ritings, and in his power as spiritual " director " of many congregations and people. As a studious and well-nur- tured youth, he was early marked for the church, sent through Saint-Sulpioe, and designated, in two communities, to lead Prot- estants back to the fold; a delicate task, in which he showed both tolerance and tact. His complex nature was able to combine worldly knowledge and ambition with a sincere piety, tending towards mysticism. Appointed preceptor to the Duke of Bur- gundy, favored by Mme de Maintenon and a choice circle at court, he was at the height of his career when made archbishop in 1695. But already certain clouds were forming; Fenelon had become the friend of Mme Guyon, a semi-hysterical mystic ; according to Saint-Simon, " leur sublime s'amalgama." The two friends were partial to the doctrine called Quietism, which included absorption in the divine spirit through prayer and the " pure love " of God, independently of future reward. This doctrine was condemned as unorthodox and a long con- troversy raged between Fenelon and Bossuet. The former was finally disapproved by the Pope, exiled from court and re- stricted for the rest of his life to his diocese of Cambrai, which he administered admirably.

Fenelon's best writings are associated with his brief court career or with the controversy about Quietism. As for the Miscellaneous IS'tter we need notice only the plaintive and seduc- Writings tive eloquence which Fenelon opposes to Bossuet's dogmatism. A similar winning tone characterizes the Lettres spirituelles, containing a liberal and persuasive theology. For

358 WRITERS OF THE TRANSITION

the young prince Fenelon wrote some Fables, the Dialogues des jlf oris — anticipating Fontenelle, though not so good — and particularly the Telemaque. This and two other important works may be considered more at length.

At first reading, the famous Telemaque (1699) is likely to prove a disappointment. It seems too juvenile and shows too /pjjg plainly its purpose of moral and Christian instruc- " Telemaque " tion, insinuated through antique disguises. But as in other works of this period, the Classicism of Telemaque needs to be pondered and assimilated. It is throughout an imitation, mainly of the Odyssey, partly of the Aeneid and other ancient masterpieces. The adventures of Telemachus are like those of Ulysses, the nymph Calypso corresponds to Circe, there are many voyages, even to the lower regions, and the style, in de- scriptions, episodes and long Homeric similes, is a medley of classical phrases and allusions. To one nourished on antiquity, as Fenelon himself was nourished, the book should have an agreeable reminiscential flavor. Written with much charm and grace, it is now a standard volume for youth and for foreigners learning French; but its initial success was due to its political criticism. Everybody saw that Louis XIV was indirectly reprimanded, and Fenelon's central thought was to form the Dauphin on a very different model. He was taught the dangers of " les conquetes, le faste et le luxe . . . et le pouvoir absolu," and he was warned against flattering ministers and women. Fenelon preaches gospel morality as opposed to the politics then current. He is capable of fine psychological portrayal and, with all his clericalism, he depicts love as one who knows. His imagination is not grandiose, but lively and colorful. His simplified style is harmonious and flowing. At his best, he has a rapid narrative gift, and his dialogue is superior to his rather conventional descriptions. Of its kind, as a neo-classical imi- tative work, Telemaque contains a good deal of placid beauty. The little treatise, De I'Education des Filles (1687) has been called the point of departure for modern French pedagogy. Fenelon points out how feminine education (in the widest sense) has not been commensurate with the importance of woman in family and social life. Her dignity must be maintained, her faults, such as vanity and ignorance,

FENELON 859

must be corrected in girlhood, and especially must she be strengthened by reason and self-government, rather than by imposed authority. Then there are sensible precepts, suggesting Rousseau, as to the education of very young children, whose brain is " always wavering, as a lighted candle in a windy place." Returning to young girls, Fenelon seems to restrict their cultural education, in that music, art and poetry are considered danger- ous. The great object is to gain the heart of Mademoiselle for Christian virtue. None of these principles seem very start- ling now, but they represented some distinct novelties for that time.

Fenelon as literary critic is seen to considerable advantage in his Lettre a V Academic (1714) . Here as in the correspond- ence with Lamotte (a radical Modem) , the Quarrel . ^" ' reappears. The polite Fenelon refuses to commit himself and shows an evident desire to please everybody, but on the whole he is a liberal Ancient. His taste, his heart and his education place him on the side of antiquity, but he is not blind to certain modern excellences. In criticizing genres, he deplores the reforms of Malherbe, as limiting the French vocabulary and regulating poetry too narrowly. Ancient eloquence is certainly superior to the modern. In tragedy, Racine's merits are recog- nized, but Corneille is considered bombastic and there is too much love-making in French plays. A great poet will always tend toward virtue and religion, and Moliere's greatness is im- paired by his easy morals. Fenelon is sound on history and fore- sees such modern developments as the history of institutions and careful revivifications of past epochs. Such points may ex- emplify his approach to many questions agitated during the eighteenth century, and Fenelon clearly possesses a critical and appreciative mind. His preference for simplicity above every- thing appears in his own prose, which is easy and natural, like that of "Voltaire.

Of the three writers dealt with in this chapter, Fenelon, the least remarkable for individual literary talent, is the most liberal His and forward-reaching in his ideas. His " tolerance "

Liberalism is almost a legend and was respected by the earlier generation of philosophes. In politics, all three men were dis- satisfied with the court regime. Fenelon alone dares point out

360 WRITERS OF THE TRANSITION

how a monarch should govern in connection with the people. His essential aristocracy of temper, his delicate nature and his almost feminine charm interfered neither with his courage nor with his clear-sightedness.

CHAPTER III

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: HISTORY AND SOCIETY

Some knowledge of the historical and social features of the

anden regime is essential to an understanding of its literature.

Louis XIV had ended in unpopularity and gloom,

e egency ^^^ ^ period of formality was followed by a period of license. The regency of Philip, Duke of Orleans, lasted only eight years (1715-1723) and except for a small war with Spain contains little external history. But it is a significant epoch on account of the experiments in administration, the restlessness of thought and especially the degree of license that has im- parted a peculiar flavor to the word Begence. Philip himself seems a replica of Charles II of England: immoral, indolent, good-natured, a connoisseur rather than a statesman. It was the Due de Noailles who wrestled with the finances and repressed certain expenditures. The financial salvation of the country was entrusted to John Law, who established the modern system of paper credit, founded the Banque de France and the Mississippi Company. But France was deluged with paper and a crash was inevitable. In the meantime an attempt to govern by six administrative coimcils had yielded to a ministry along the old lines ; the Abbe Dubois, as premier, seemed another Mazarin m craft and shrewdness. Dubois' main title to respect is that he negotiated the Triple Alliance of England, France and Holland.

The ministry of the Duke of Bourbon, who succeeded Orleans as Regent, lasted only three years. It is distinguished by a Heign of bitter persecution of the Protestants in the Cevennes LoBis XV and by the marriage of the yoimg King to Maria Leczinska of Poland. The reign of Louis XV was a period of general and cumulative disaster. At home, there was political stagnation and growing discontent. Abroad, little of distinction

361

362 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

marked the deeds of France and she gradually lost her place in the estimation of Europe. Louis XV was a useless and un- worthy king; the temper of the nation sank towards his level; the influence of favorites, mistresses and incompetents became pronounced; and the national finances went from bad to worse.

This general decadence was not so conspicuous until after the middle of the century. Cardinal Fleury took charge of affairs in 1,726. His policy was cautious and dull. He First Half enforced the bull Urdgenitus, imprisoned and re- moved' Jansenists, did something for commerce, and won Lorraine for France by a treaty of 1738. In the war of the Austrian Succession (1741^8) the French did not play a creditable part save in the matter of isolated victories. France had recognized the right of Maria Theresa to the Austrian throne and yet joined Frederick the Great in attacking her. The battle of Fontenoy was won from the English by the genius of Marshal Saxe. The war, carried into India and America, assumed world- wide proportions. But France, left in the lurch by Frederick, signed the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle without gaining any sub- stantial advantages. " Bete comme la paix " became a Parisian byword. The governors of the country had proved themselves a weak lot. The national prestige was tarnished, and the result was a torrent of popular criticism. Louis was no longer " le Bien-Aime." Immorality and even oppression the French could stand, but not the loss of glory.

Frederick's bad faith started the famous Seven Years War, but the deeper cause was that opposition of English and French Second Half "iterests which now extended from the Mississippi (1750-74) to the Ganges. This war meant for France the loss of America and India. Montcalm and Dupleix were not steadily supported in their brilliant efforts abroad; in Europe incapable generals and ministers, " tumbling one after the other like magic lantern pictures " (Voltaire) , were responsible for signal defeats in diplomacy and in the field. The Due de Choiseul was appointed too late to save the situation. Another most unsatis- factory peace for France was concluded, and Choiseul could turn his attentions homewards, where there was much to call for healing measures. But this minister, like his greater successors under Louis XVI, could not wrestle with the enormous national

SOCIAL ASPECTS 363

debt nor with the whole rotten system of taxation. The Jesuits were expelled from France, the Parisian Parliament was curbed once more, and the well-meaning sluggish Dauphin was married to Marie Antoinette of Austria. The Beaumarchais incident (see Book III, Ch. II) discredited the law-courts. In the mean- time, the corrupt far niente of the dying monarchy was revealed once again by the French inactivity before the first shameless partition of Poland. Louis XV ended his reign in 1774 amid the ignominies of smallpox, a fleeing court, a jesting populace, and an extreme unction indefinitely postponed to accommodate an unworthy favorite.

Taine's analysis of the old regime shows that the feudal domination of the upper orders was no longer warranted. The Social privileged classes included the king, the nobles and

Structure the higher clergy; they still retained their great privileges; but they had lost all ability to rule and all desire to serve the nation. The nobles, laity and clergy, mmibered over two hundred thousand. They were powerful and rich, owning two-fifths of the land in France and to a considerable extent exempt from the taxes which oppressed the people so heavily.

The nobles were supposed to represent the public at the

capital and to serve as magistrates in the country. But they

were largely absentee-landlords. Those who re-

^ " y mained on their estates were generally too poor and inadequate to help the peasantry, who frequently surrendered four-fifths of their income to their various overlords. The tithes, the poll-tax, the salt-tax, other impositions and burdens, particularly in connection with the lordly diversion of hunting, crushed the hearts of the people. Some of the resident nobles were mildly inclined, but their debts placed them simply in the position of creditors and oppressors of their tenantry. The absentees were still worse, having no knowledge of the people, and enforcing their demands through heartless overseers. The funds required for the extravagance of court life made them pitiless. Not only did they abandon their home responsibilities, but they served no useful function at court. A thousand of the oldest and highest aristocracy set the pace and drew everything towards Paris and Versailles. France has never recovered from

364 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

the excessive centralization of the old regime. Much of the country-side was then deserted, exhausted agriculturally, stag- and the ^^°* politically, without good roads, and in the

Provinces direst poverty. But between Paris and Versailles a double row of carriages thronged the highway all day long. The provinces were actually ruled by thirty " intendants " responsible only to the king; the taxes were fanned out to the traitants (farmers-general) , who paid a limip sum for the privi- lege of grinding the poor; such offices, as well as the sinecures about court, were bought and sold with no thought save for the loot involved. The great nobles, like the lesser courtiers (con- temptuously called laquais by Saint-Simon and Montesquieu), were for. the most part selfish and rapacious. Gambling and extravagance gave rise to colossal debts; the Duke of Bourbon owed six millions at the time of his death, and the first Regent paid two millions for the celebrated diamond which bears his name. The higher clergy were equally extravagant, as the pomp of the Rohans demonstrates, and ecclesiastical sinecures were also preempted by the nobility. The whole class had little feudal leadership, little taste for farming or politics. They were interested mainly in gambling, gallantry and court life. The nobles did not rule; they took. They were no longer instruments, but merely ornaments.

Many of these abuses began under Louis XIV, and it has been seen (Pt. II, Book IV, Ch. I) how in his time the court was the King and center of pomp and magnificence. But it was also Court then the center of real power in every field. Now

the personal centralization of the Great Monarch is no longer possible. " The nation has no longer a head, history no longer a focus ; together with a master of the higher order, great servants also fail the French monarchy " (Guizot) . Yet the king's authority in important matters remains absolute and despotic. The " intermediary bodies " (see Montesquieu) , such as the judicial Parliament of Paris or the provincial States-General, have only a limited and occasional interference in affairs. The king is a pasha attended by lesser pashas. He is considered the commander, the owner of France, the perpetual representative of the people, the delegate of God. The nobles flocked to Paris, hailing the youth of Louis XV with affection and veneration, as

SOCIAL ASPECTS 365

aid the entire body of the people. They clung pathetically to a trust in the monarchy, their barrier and hope, even when the person of the king had palled, as it did towards the middle of the century. Beginning with the freedom of the Regency, the petits soupers of the Regent, and the scandalous vices of his daughters, France enters on an era of gambling, debauchery, extravagance, wit and license. Louis XV participated, some- what coldly, in all this, but for one Louis as for another, the life of parade and " representation " is of the first importance. This life has a splendid setting, especially at Versailles, where everything is arranged for the pleasure of the eyes. The park is an open-air salon and everywhere the panorama of court life unfolds in gorgeous extravagance. Louis XV plays the actor all day long; his dressing is a drama in five acts, and Frederick the Great said that he would have appointed a dummy monarch for these fxmctions. Neither king nor courtier has any time for business; everybody is careless or stupid about politics and expenditures. The grandees also " represent " and entertain enormously, in the capital and in the country. Their main duty is hospitality, as their chateaux still witness. " Leur grand talent est le savoir-vivre," and their real business is society.

For those fortunately placed, the social life of the epoch must have been delightful. " Qui n'a pas vecu avant 1789," said Talleyrand, " ne connait pas la douceur de vivre." Never was life conducted with more* amenity, never were its details and processes managed with such attention to the agreeable and the artistic. From childhood on, the convent- bred women were educated chiefly to be attractive and beautiful, the men to be gallant and pleasing. Private life was nothing, public pleasure and display were everything. " We are," sighed Voltaire, " the whipped cream of Europe " ; and the whole age was marked by a careless levity. Pastimes and pageants, fetes galantes and theatricals, prodigality and gaiety rang the chimes of a universal and continuous carnival. From a faded pastel, a page of Marivaux, a picture by Watteau, comes a delicious perfume, as of lingering violets. Many gossiping records, hun- dreds of engravings, and particularly the stately or voluptuous paintings of the period show us lords and ladies perpetually em- barking for the Cytherean Islands or enacting the set comedies

866 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

of their lives. That is why private theatricals were the rage; the aristocracy performed and posed in life itself, and at least they carried the pose through to the very scaffold.

In all this the role of woman is supreme. In politics, the succession of royal mistresses forms almost a dynasty, just as in Power of literature the dynasty of salon-leaders is all-impor- Women tant. In this age of art and artifice, woman is con-

sidered the chief artistic product, the embodiment of the pleasure- ideal. As an ingenue, she is handed over to her husband and the world, and the latter quickly supplants the former in her interest. Every day a dozen pleasures solicit the senses, refine the taste, agitate the mind. The day of a Marquise, from her reception on rising to her masked ball in the evening, reads like some impossible " romance of high life." Yet her power is real enough and often her capacity. She rules the fashions, the king, the court, writers and artists. Devoid of moral sense as these women mostly were, the more intelligent among them (Mme de Tencin, Mme du Pompadour) had a real knowledge of men and affairs, and the others had at least charming tongues and faces. Some show a fundamental common sense, a critical sense that goes to the core of questions ; and always they possess the prime social art, the art of conversation, free, gay, delightful, in- fluential, whose charm still reverberates in their letters and memoirs.

It was an age of great talk, and nowhere does this appear more conspicuously than in the salons which dominated the minds and habits of many writers. " All this literatiire," says Taine, " was spoken before it was written." The socialization of French thought and art was never more evident. Even in non-literary circles, there are traditions of witty culti- vated conversation, imder the " laws " of good taste and good company. The dynasty of literary salons began with the Marquise de Lambert (c. 1710-33), who yielded her scepter and subjects to Mme de Tencin (c. 1730-49), who in turn was suc- ceeded by Mme Geoffrin (1749-77). A rival dynasty was that of the Marquise du Deffand (c. 1740-80), part of whose power was usurped by Mile de Lespinasse in 1763. The dates are those of the actual social sway of each lady. The great feature of the eighteenth-century salon, as distinguished from

THE SALONS 367

that of the previous period, is that it actually amalgamates, often on an equal footing, the writers and the cultured public. From now on, the salon really helps writers, financially and socially, launches them, gives them desirable contacts, initiates the success of the play or poem, influences the distribution of prizes and makes academicians.

This tendency started with Mme de Lambert. Her house was called the " antechamber of the Academy," half of whose mem-

Mme de ^^'"^ ^^^ ^^® ^* °^^ *™® credited with creating.

Lambert She is described as an " honnete femme, moraliste sans pedantisme," highly considered in every way. She was a woman of sense, cultivated without affectation, who checked gallantry and promoted some fusion between good society and writers. It is to be noted, however, that she had two dis- tinct days, one for the elite and one for the rank and file of literary men.

The four chief figures whom one was likely to find in any or all of the salons were Fontenelle and Voltaire, whose long lives Mme de covered both dynasties; Montesquieu, whose corres- Tencin pondence shows that he had to do some delicate

balancing between the rival reception-days of the great ladies; and the President Henault, a scholar and wit, who occupied an intermediate ground between society and the young Republic of Letters. Fontenelle and Montesquieu were welcome at the house of Mme de Tencin, whose chief pet, however, was Marivaux. This indicates that she was more interested in the sparkle of wit than in social guarantees, and in fact Mme de Tencin holds a much freer salon than that of Mme de Lambert. She had been the mistress of the Regent and of others; then, reforming, she decided to found a bureau d'esprit, which was the main resource of unreligious elderly women at the time. In character, she was an audacious and ambitious woman, adroit, fond of in- trigue, strongly intelligent and imaginative. Intelligence and wit were what she demanded of her guests, and her salon was the first where the writer counted for his own merits, on a par with the aristocrats. His hostess gave him full liberty and encourage- ment. She was a good listener, looked out for the comfort and entertainment of her " menagerie," enjoyed their social comedies and sallies, and helped them fill the salon with intellectual fire.

368 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Fontenelle's "poetized astronomy," the subtlety of Marivaux, Montesquieu's thoughtful arguments were applauded and fostered here. Already there were cosmopolitan visitors, like Chester- field and Grimm, while Mme de Tencin, with little dignity and much eagerness, gave and took freely from all. The other salons of the century carry on the tradition of these brilliant gatherings.

Quite different in character was Mme Geoffrin, who stands witness to the growing force of the bourgeoisie. Without birth jjj^g or conspicuous charm, she held her circle together

Geoffrin through her steady sense. She helped to bring plain truth and sincerity, of sentiment and language, back into repute. She was a severe woman, something of a prude, putting the damper on any show of license as well as any political free- thinking. Her home was the great resort of the philosophes; their discussions and personalities she really liked and en- couraged. The positive and practical tendencies of this group chimed in well with her own personality, intellectual, forthright, somewhat cynical. Horace Walpole speaks of her excellent powers of observation, her common sense, her cleverness in securing desirable guests and in making them play up. She took over the survivors of Mme de Tencin, added such fiLgufes as Marmontel and Galiani, the witty Neapolitan, and she brought forward artists, like Greuze and Van Loo, who were hardly received elsewhere. But it was the philosophes who gave the tone at the house of Mme Geoffrin.

Her rival, Mme du Deffand, was extremely aristocratic, not fond of the philosophers (save Voltaire), preferring the stately Mme du Classic tradition. She was haughty, despotic, and Deffand for twenty-five years quite blind. She sought refuge

from the darkness of her mind and life in the company of dis- tinguished writers and visitors from abroad. Hers was essentially the aristocratic and cosmopolitan salon. Her suppers brought together the cream of the court and church, as well as writers and intermediate people like the President Henault and Lord Chesterfield. If writers were in the minority, her salon was at least given over to theatrical and literary novelties. One day the actress Clairon would recite Phedre, another day the latest philosophical pamphlet would be discussed. It is strange to see

THE SALONS 369

this rather arid and bitter nature turn to an impulsive ro- manticism in her old age. She became devoted to Horace Walpole and sustained with him a correspondence, which, together with her letters to Voltaire and others, constitutes one of the most interesting monuments of the time. She had a strong vital personality, much insight into character and a brilliant wounding wit; these qualities appear fully in her correspondence.

In 1763, the Marquise du Deffand's companion and helper, a certain Julie de Lespinasse, found that she could no longer jflUe de ^^^^ ^^^^ *^^ °^^ lady's caprices and withdrew to

Lespinasse set up housekeeping for herself. This she did in a modest way, but the imf orgivable thing was that she carried with her many of Mme du Deffand's brightest parlor ornaments. The elite of intellectual Paris climbed the humble stairs of Mile de Lespinasse, for she had probably the most winning personal charm and the most responsive mind of any of these ladies. An intense passionate soul, imaginative and romantic, she be- came the great friend of Dalembert and threw herself with zeal into everything that concerned the Encyclopedie, for which she provided an " intimate boudoir and laboratory." Courtiers and soldiers also came to her, distinguished churchmen and foreigners. She exhibited no trace of Mme Geoffrin's prudery or timidity; she and her set were afraid of no powers in earth or heaven. Diderot's writings give the tone, absolutely emancipated in every field. Julie de Lespinasse was wonderfully endowed, she had more real knowledge than the other women, she was an om- nivorous reader and a genuine inspirer of literature, an authentic genius herself, keen at reflection and rejoinder, clever in assorting people. She lives in literature as the writer of the most remark- able personal letters of the century, letters to an unworthy lover, which " still burn the paper on which they are written," so tense they are, so passionate, so simply and powerfully appealing, in their frank exaltation and tenderness, their delicate perception and understanding. It is evident that her great charm consisted in her ability to appreciate and listen to others. Small wonder that a woman like this received the homage of the extraordinary men who surrounded her.

Enough has been said to indicate the overweening influence

370 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

of the salons upon literature. Most of the works of the period are written under this influence and many writers, from Fonte- nelle and Voltaire through the minor poets, are " pro- Influence on tected " or inspired by ladies of fashion. The re- Literature guitg ^epe not always fortunate. The salon taste required writers to be " popular," witty and above all agreeable. That is why natural directness, concrete imagination and per- sonal feeling are long excluded from literature, and with their exclusion belles lettres became infected with a " colorless ele- gance." But Rousseau and Diderot largely escaped the con- tagion; and for another kind of literature, the earlier bureau d'esprit or the later salon philosophiqv^ was no bad foster- mother. It is the literature of exposition and discussion that the salon refines and clarifies. It encouraged the play of intel- ligence and wit, the polished expression of ideas in clear attrac- tive untechnical speech. The habit of genteel conversation and gossip permeates not only the numerous Discours, Lettres, En- tretiens, but the various fields of knowledge. " Spirituelle, liuni- neuse, instructive, mais seche et impersonnelle, telle est notre litterature du XVIIIe sifecle, et c'est ce que signifie litterature des salons." The salons helped, at any rate, to give a being and a hearing to the New Liberalism.

Two other important influences of the period were the vogue of the sciences and that of English authors. The incentive toward the first issued in part from England, since the methods of Locke and Newton became popular during the first half of the century. Montesquieu indulges in physical experiments, the Regent has a chemical laboratory, Voltaire espec- ially promotes Locke's sensationalism and Newton's physics. In this he was encouraged by Mme du Chatelet, who herself was more addicted to mathematics. The latter science tends to become supreme, as Dalembert warns us, about 1750. Great ladies take up the various sciences, study physics, chemistry, natural history, even anatomy, follow pet courses at the Sor- bonne and have their portraits painted in laboratories. The Academies of Science become important not only at Paris, but in the provinces and even at Berlin, where Maupertuis, the discoverer of biological evolution, is perpetual secretary. The name of Buffon and the main interests of the Encyclopedia bear

THE INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND 371

witness to the inspiration and value of the natural sciences throughout the century.

The vogue of English literature and philosophy is almost unlimited. It may be summarized by saying that nearly every The English English author of note, from Shakespeare down, at- Influence tracted attention in France during this period, and that almost every French author is indebted to some EnglishmaiL In fact, just as France had previously gone to Italy and Spain for method and material, she now goes to England. The men- tion of certain salient facts and personages will make this clear.

Voltaire successfully launches the English vogue in the four main directions of philosophy, science, politics and belles lettres. The general literary impulsion was three-fold: Manifesta- towards an interest in Shakespeare ; towards English tions rationalism and Deism (Locke, Bolingbroke, Col-

lins, Toland, and others) ; and later towards a sentimental re- action. Thus the two main French movements, skeptical phiP\ osophy and Rousseauistic Romanticism, were in considerable part based on an English backgroimd. Of the four great names of the century — Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Diderot — the first two visited England with significant results, and all four were considerably affected by English influences: Voltaire, by Locke and the Deists, by Pope, Shakespeare and others ; Montes- quieu, by the liberal English constitution, whose fame he spread throughout Europe; Rousseau, especially by Richardson; and Diderot, by Richardson, Sterne and Shaftesbviry. The Grande Encyclopedie was modelled) on the original of Chambers (see Bk. IV, Ch. I). Translations of English authors are numerous and popular; a mere list of them covers twenty pages in Lanson's Bib- liography. Every author of consequence is translated, some of them several times, by such men as Prevost and Letoumeiir. " Bibliotheques anglaises " or " Bibliotheques britanniques " ap- pear as anthologies or compendiums. The Queen Anne writers, as was natural, are the most favored before 1750, and after that date the contemporary sentimental school. The latter would include, as dominant names: James Thomson, for the return to outdoor nature; Young's Night Thoughts for melancholy com- bined with religiosity ; Sterne, who brought in " I'humour " to- gether with a rather sickly sentiment; Richardson, for bourgeois

372 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

sentiment and morality; and the misty, melancholy or pseudo- epic features of Macpherson's Ossian. All these authors were eagerly read, and even today a whole scholarly literature circles around the reputation and influences of such English writers in France. The cosmopolitanism of the age inclines towards the lit- erature of the " North," thus preparing the way for Mme de Stael and for many currents of Romanticism proper.

The eighteenth century exercises a wide fascination, because it offers enough to attract the most varied types of mind. The aristocrat, the epicurean and the artist find there a certain ideal of elegance, wit and beauty. The liberal skeptic and the democrat observe how from the ruins of the old order emerge most of the principles of modern pro- gressivism and humanitarianism. These opposing tendencies are reflected in the literature of the period. The traditional genres, especially poetry and drama, still partly preserve the courtly ideal; the New Philosophy urges other ideals, chiefly of the liberal kind. It will be our task, in the next two Books, to trace these conflicts and developments, first in philosophy, then in belles lettres.

BOOK II THE NEW PHILOSOPHY

CHAPTER I

THE POPULARIZERS: BAYLE AND FONTENELLE

In a preceding chaj)ter we discussed those writers of the transition who on the whole belong to the age of Louis XIV. In that age there appeared two men who really belong to the eighteenth century. By their views, methods and knowledge, Bayle and Fontenelle are true precursors of Voltaire and the Encyclopedists.

Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) was primarily a Protestant, in the full sense of the word, both as regards religious upbringing and the inquiring tendency of his mind. Born near the *^^ Pyrenees, of a persecuted Huguenot family, he was

banished from France and taught successively at Coppet and Rotterdam. In Holland, he settled among the refugees, of whom Jurieu was chief. Bayle's liberal and skeptical spirit caused him to protest against the excesses of Protestantism itself, and, driven out of his professorship, he spent the remainder of his life in theological disputes and a varied literary activity. Yet he was a mild passionless scholar, caring little for practical affairs or for pleasxire. As one biographer says: "All the life of Bayle was absorbed in his thought, in the search for human truth and the devotion to reason."

Besides his great Dictionary, Bayle published anonymously several pamphlets, of which two have real importance. His Pensees sur la comete (1682) were ostensibly written to relieve superstitious minds of the fear that comets presaged disaster. But in attacking superstition, Bayle also launches several ideas that assail the current orthodoxy: it is unlikely that Providence interferes, by prodigies or miracles,

373

374. THE POPULARIZERS

with the course of nature; there is a wide difference between the principles and the practice of believers; the atheist may be a well-behaved person; and tolerance is always to be recom- mended. The last tenet is also the key-note of another pamphlet, the Commentaire philosophique sur le " Compelle Intrare " (1686), a protest against the Papal bull "compelling" every- body into the church.

Bayle's fame and influence, however, derive mainly from the Dictionnaire historiqw et criiique (1697), which has been para- doxically styled the " Bible of the eighteenth cen- " Diction- tury." This work was ostensibly compiled to correct naire" \^q mistakes of a dictionary already issued by a

certain Moreri. As a matter of fact, it is ^n encyclopedia, almost the first of its kind, containing in its great folios all the learning, thought and critical power of the chief savant of his time. The extended footnotes, where Bayle feels at his ease to gossip and digress, are the most interesting part of the work. Its salient features are, first, the use of modern scientific and critical meth- ods ; a very great erudition, including much Latin and far-fetched knowledge; the insertion of allusions and anecdotes of doubtful taste; and a peculiar confusion of subjects and arguments, used to insinuate skepticism and to throw the reader, particularly the censor, off the track. Faguet calls the work less a dictionary of knowledge than of what Bayle knew. The extent of his knowl- edge is thus stated by the same critic:

Ce qu'il savait c'etait la mythologie, ITiistoire et la geographie ancienne, I'histoire des religions ... la theologie proprement dite, la philosophic, rhistoire europeenne du XVIme et du XVIIme siecle.

Add to this list such subjects as jurisprudence, philology, and far- ranging biographies, and it will be seen that, as regards Expan- sionism, the author outstrips his own age and announces the eighteenth century.

Bayle's general method shows a " veritable esprit scientifique."

He is not at home in the natural sciences, but in other fields he

evinces the spirit of objective research, curiosity,

impartiality and exactness. His two main ideas

are relativity and tolerance. Since in every direction he finds

BAYLE 375

only " des Veritas particulieres," it behooves us to tolerate and not to persecute the views of our neighbors. So Bayle, in an indirect and insinuating way, is a tranquil skeptic of the most thorough sort. In the thick of the old regime, he gave intellec- tual credence to no authority, no tradition and no dogma. The significance of his philosophy, far more destructive than system- atic, is best realized by following the workings of his skep- ticism in the domains of metaphysics, morality, religion and history.

Except where he uses it as a weapon against theology, Bayle is skeptical about metaphysics. He warns us of the dangers General ^^ *^® ^^^ philosophic spirit with its sterile dialectics.

Philosophy and he thinks metaphysical speculation vain, because there are no absolutes. His own philosophy, like his religion, underwent vicissitudes. He leans to Descartes and to la raison as the criterion of truth, but he recognizes that reason is often obscured and prejudiced. All philosophers are " inventors of conjectures," who entertain us sometimes, but cannot prove anything. Truth, that " belle inconnue," is forever to be sought but never to be reached by speculation. Such a negative creed is neither high nor deep, but it is a good instrument for ana- lysing other creeds. Starting with a thorough knowledge of ancient philosophy, the skeptic passes in review many modern theories, especially those of Descartes and of Leibnitz. Bayle records various controversies concerning the notions of sub- stance, soul and movement. His own tendency is to hold to the world of sensible fact and reject metaphysical explana- tions.

Bayle is more interested in problems of practical morality, though here we are confronted with some contradictions in his thought. On the one hand he suggests a relative "^ standpoint: morals and manners vary with latitude,

and Sparta and China have rightfully their own conceptions of behavior; this view is considerably developed by the eight- eenth century. But on the other hand there is a universal law, applicable everywhere, and making its appeal directly to the conscience and the reason of man. Reason, however, is gen- erally conquered by the passions, which rule men and manners and found societies. Hence average morals are likely to be based

376 THE POPULARIZERS

on the essential passions. But the true guide is an innate and individual moral conscience, together with the light of rea- son; for while " la puissance de la raison s'est perdue, sa lumiSre s'est neanmoins conservee"; and Bayle supports the Protes- tant doctrine of the " errant " or free individual conscience, which is the voice of God speaking in man. The majority are, nevertheless, always making mistakes, for only a few sages suffi- ciently control their passions to submit to reason and to " nat- ural " morality. The latter is based on the usages of civilization, and Bayle has little regard either for primitivism or for perfecti- bility. He believes only in a limited progress, chiefly in the spheres of knowledge. His is a morality of experience.

Bayle's early misadventures, his establishment among the

refugees and his cast of mind, all contributed to make theology

his main preoccupation. But here again he investi-

eo ogy gates only to attack. The orthodox outworks, as built up by church-fathers, rabbis or commentators, he demolishes to his own satisfaction. As regards central dogmas, he suggests certain contradictions in Biblical texts and a certain laxness in Old Testament morals (" Les plus grands saints ont besoin qu'on leur pardonne quelque chose ") , and again he holds that miracles are contrary to natural laws. Otherwise he leaves matters of faith and revelation almost intact. Into that domain he throws in- soluble mysteries, such as the problem of free-will and the exist- ence of evil, and his chief contention is that faith and reason should be absolutely divorced — the dogmatists are to be shorn of rational support. The best argument for the existence of God is to be found in the Credo quia abswrdum attitude — "I believe because it is beyond belief." The attributes of Divinity are very doubtful, and in this connection Bayle revives the startling theory of Manicheism. According to reason merely, the universe is best explained as ruled by the rival deities of good and evil — God and Satan. This hypothesis was suggested by Bayle with his customary doublings and reserves. If we then add an atomic theory, according to which each particle of matter is bound up with and animated by spirit (modern monism) , we have the two most positive doctrines of Bayle.

Historical researches constitute the greater part of the Dic- tionary. Bayle anticipates modern carefulness about sources

BAYLE 377

and gives the spirit of contradiction free play. Finding errors everywhere, he really respects and desires the truth. Historical

truth for him consists in a series of small verified Hw ory facts, dissociated from legend and the partisan pas-

sions of man. He shows a lack of hero-worship, an effort to ra- tionalize and lower the great figures and patriarchs of the past. He indulges in pleasantries, uses comparative treatment and suggests the " higher criticism." All this Voltairianism is best illustrated by the famous article on David, which created a furor, was suppressed, reintroduced, and circulated in thousands of pamphlets. In general history, the method is the same, though employed with a freer hand. By depreciating the value, as evidence. Of such ancient writers as Plutarch and Livy, Bayle lines up with the Moderns in the Quarrel. By contemptuously dismissing the legends of heroic Greece and of early Rome, he rejects the artistic view and helps inaugiu-ate historical posi- tivism. In dealing with French history, he is a genuine road- breaker, doubtful of accepted authorities. Trying to keep his neutrality in all quarrels, he disliked but made fair statements about the Turks, the Papacy, and even the Jesuits. He makes, then, a general crusade against tradition, whether historical, theological or philosophical.

The tone of the Dictionary is sprightly, especially in the foot- notes. Like the later philosophes, Bayle was careful to serve

his heavy diet with the sauce required. Yet his ™"*' style, in spite of verbal felicity, is without grace

or suppleness — "diffus, lache, incorrect," as Voltaire calls it. Bayle was less of a stylist than a supreme dialectician and a laborious man of letters; he helps to found literary journalism by his Nouvelles de la Rejnihlique des lettres (1684r-87), the first important clearing-house for new publications and ideas. Sainte- Beuve calls him the genius of criticism, in the widest sense, on account of his versatility, curiosity, equilibrium and independ- ence. But he had small appreciation of literary beauties.

Bayle is the chief skeptic between Montaigne and Voltaire, with each of whom he has much in common. Yet he is not wholly

a 'phUosophe, because he is moderate and systemless. oncusion -g-j^ ^j^^^l legacy was his method: he thought it pos- sible to reach sure facts in all positive fields of knowledge, in his-

378 THE POPULARIZERS

tory and ethics, as well as in physics ; the negative application of this is seen in his attack on revelation and philo- *°* sophic dogma. Doubting the watchwords of the com-

ing century — humanity, progress and nature — he would have found the propagandists too violent, as they found Influence j^j^^ ^^^ mM. But the phUosophes, often without giving Bayle the credit, use the Dictionary as their " arsenal," whether for information or for arguments. Eleven editions were published within forty years. Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, private citizens and memoir writers, public figures like Frederick the Great, all bear witness to the extraordinary influence of Bayle. It was largely exercised in negative direc- tions ; he cleared the ground for the steam-roller of the Encyclo- pedists.

The life of Bernard de Fontenelle (1657-1757) is richer and more varied than that of Bayle. It lasted exactly a century, less one month. Fontenelle could speak of the con- on ene e temporaries of Richelieu to the contemporaries of Rousseau, and the annals of literature record few lives of fuller extent and interest. Born at Rouen, he was educated mainly by the Jesuits, and he always kept some friends among that body. Visiting Paris, Fontenelle came early under the influence of his uncles, Pierre and Thomas Corneille. The great Corneille was then in l^is gloomy last days; the more alert and sociable Thomas was really the companion of Fontenelle. He introduced his nephew to the editors of the Mercure galant, and this journal published the youth's early poetic endeavors.

The scientific studies of Fontenelle were of more con- sequence than any of the dramas and operas by which he hoped Chief *o ^^° fame. It was after the failure of one of these

Writings that he decided to retreat to his province and make more sure of his ground in physics and geometry. From Nor- mandy he brought out the Dialogues des morts (1683). These dialogues, deriving from Lucian and cast in the same mold as Landor's Imaginary Conversations, had a considerable success. The Parisians enjoyed hearing historical celebrities talk down to their level in the matter of philosophy and up to their level in the matter of wit. Next came the Entretiens sur la pluraliU des mondes (1686), which were the first fruits of Fontenelle's popu-

FONTENELLE 379

larizing genius. He could now talk science to the " belles mar- quises " and remain interesting. That same year saw the publi- cation of the Histoire des oracles, the last of the trio of master- pieces that made Fontenelle's fame. His mind was now set on winning a place in the Academy, which he obtained, after four attempts, more on his reputation as a wit than as a scientist. His reception there was an event; his uncle Thomas delivered the address of welcome, and Fontenelle, in his reply, praised the other Corneille to the detriment of Racine and the Ancients generally.

Having, as he thought, attained in literature, he could hence- forth turn his attention wholly to science. The earlier youthful Fontenelle is mainly esprii; the latter is mainly scien-

e cien s ^jg^ popularizing. His universal curiosity sought satisfaction alike in laboratories and in personal relations with men of science. He was no specialist, but he knew enough of geometry, astronomy or physics to associate with specialists and learn from them. He had a born aptitude for acquiring and dis- seminating knowledge; and the members of the Academy of Sciences recognized this when in 1697 they crowned his ambition by making him perpetual secretary of that body. This office Fontenelle filled with genuine ability. His labors here hardly belong to the province of literature, but tended much to the dif- fusion of knowledge. He wrote a large readable History of the Academy, which appeared with aimual regularity, and he insti- tuted the composition of Eloges on his fellow-academicians, which were admirable specimens of eloquent propaganda.

Another way in which Fontenelle represented pcience was through the role that he played in society. During nearly sixty The Social years he was the king of such gatherings as the salons Lion of Mme de Lambert and of Mme Geoffrin. He

was a " dehcious " talker, an excellent listener, a promoter of amiable conversation, in which he displayed the prime qualities of subtlety and skill. The recollections of his youth came to enhance the trimnphs of his age. At ninety-five he was almost venerated — a monument to be visited, an oracle to be consulted. He was able to prolong his life, because he cared for his health and eluded material responsibilities. The decline of vitality in him was almost imperceptible and he died in the odor of serenity.

380 THE POPULARIZERS

Poetic and other tributes were showered upon his memory to a fantastic extent. Yet the character of the man is not sympathetic. La Bruyere's " portrait " of him, imder the name of Character Cydias, has been mentioned:

Prose, vers, que voulez-vous? il reussit egalement en Tun et en I'autre. ... II a im ami qui n'a point d'autre fonction que de le presenter dans les maisons comme homme rare et d'une exquise conversation. . . . Cydias evite uniquement d'etre de I'avis de quelqu'un. . . . C'est un compose du pedant et du precieux, en qui neamnoins on n'apergoit rien de grand que I'opinion qu'il a de lui-memoi

Another satirical portrait is to be found in Voltaire's Micro- megas — where the scientist appears as the Perpetual Secretary of the Academy of Saturn. Fontenelle's best friends, particu- larly the women, admitted that he had very little heart or soul. His social mildness and amiability adequately veiled his fundamental egotism. The most important work of his life was not the History of Oracles or of the Academy — it was the happiness of M. de Fontenelle. He made no sacrifices either for his friends or for his ideas. He was gallant with women, but as Mme de Lambert complained, he never loved them. An intellectual epicurean, he remained always moderate and cool.

His three chief books have already been mentioned and will shortly be discussed. Besides these, there are such critical

.„ . essays as the Reflexions sur la voetique, also his Minor Worka • iu i i xi /v , , -rx

views on the eclogue and on the Quarrel.^ He was

too much of a bel esprit to have the true feeling for antiquity. His notions about the pastoral are that Vergil is too coarse and that country life must be vaguely indicated and conventional- ized. The Reflections on Poetry are decidedly prosaic; and Fontenelle's whole attitude towards literature is neo-classical.

The Dialogues des morts were composed when Fontenelle was only twenty-six. They are partly "philosophic," with strains "Dialogues of preciousness and gallantry. Sappho and Petrarch's des morts" Laura argue about the tender passion in a discur- sive manner which would have pleased Mile de Scudery more

' See above, Bk. I, Ch. I.

FONTENELLE 381

than Petrarch. In fact, few of these historical personages really speak for themselves or their age; they are modernized mouthpieces and they are much too witty. Subtle always and occasionally profound, the book swarms with ideas thrown out with youthful abandon. The dialogue is often quite engaging, and Fontenelle cleverly pairs off striking contrasts: Anacreon converses with Aristotle, Scarron with Seneca, Phryne with Alexander. They all argue indefinitely because — and here is the philosophical importance of the book — the method em- ployed is still the Cartesian analysis as regards intellectual matters.

The Histoire des oracles went through five editions by 1707. After Bayle, this book is the first indirect attack of the new " Histoire des ^P""^^ °° Catholic orthodoxy. Its arrangement and oracles" composition are done with skill. It is mainly a (1686) translation and digest of a learned Latin work by

a certain Van Dale. Fontenelle accepts the latter's view that the common opinions about pagan oracles, first that they were inspired by demons and second that they ceased with the coming of Christ, are false. But the bulky arguments of the original are condensed, illustrated, linked together and written up with clear- ness and charm. Nowhere did Fontenelle's intelligence find a happier field. He formally recognizes the truth of Christianity and even the probable existence of demons, but such statements of conviction could barely deceive his contemporaries. He be- gins very soon to bring forward arguments against the behavior of the early Christians and the authority of the church fathers. The authority of the ancients, of course, is exposed to frequent sarcasms. What does hold for Fontenelle is the scientific method, and that is a question of facts and deductions. The ancients were blind enough to believe in the oracles, though fraud was written on the face of them; and the moderns still believe the pseudo-historical things about the oracles that he, Fontenelle, set out to overthrow. In overthrowing them he suggests what he would like to overthrow next; and the hidden moral of the book is, If oracles are contrary to fact, why not miracles?

The Plwralite des mondes is still more scientific in content. Its high importance is that it practically begins the popular-

382 THE POPULARIZERS

ization of science, which has gone on uninterrtiptedjy ever since. It is the most celebrated and well-timed of Fontenelle's "Pluralite works, and it shows his usual ingenuity in recon- des mondes " ciling learned matters with the requirements of a polite audience, particularly women. The combination is made with an apparent ease and joyousness of execution. His masterly hand smoothes out for the " Marquise " the difficulties of the Copernican universe, passes lightly over details, and dexterously spins into her view the elaborate solar systems. The language is always easily clear and shows at times an amplitude rising to the heights of the subject. Its vigor of vision at the close makes the Marquise implore mercy: "La terre est si effroyable- ment petite." But Fontenelle's constant point is that man is smaller still.

Some of his scientific ideas may be indicated. He believed, as did Bayle, in the fixity of the laws of nature, their necessary Fontenelle's continuity. He was one of the first to promulgate, Ideas before the Academy, that conception of the soU-

darity of the sciences, the interdependence of knowledge, which has helped the cause so much. He believed in the progress of this knowledge. Yet there were serious gaps in Fontenelle's literary equipment. He had neither much imagination nor wide observation. His fondness for wit and " ornaments " frequently operated against the best taste and against enthusiasm. His intellectual keenness was sometimes attained at the expense of sentiment and conviction. Finally, he was hampered by pru- dential considerations in the search for and the defense of truth. But he adds to the domain of literature the popularization of scientific facts, and he insists upon their rapports. His influence is not easy to estimate, for it is largely diffused; Voltaire, for one, profited by the lessons of Fontenelle. In his line he ranks among the pathfinders of the new century.

CHAPTER II VOLTAIRE: LITERATURE AND LIFE

The life ofVoltaire (1694-1778) is an epitome of the eighteenth century. Versatility, longevity, great activity — these are the salient characteristics of his career. His incessant ^*** energy displays itself no less in literature than in

living; in his case the two things are inseparable. No more in- teresting and representative life was ever lived by a man of letters. To narrate only the chief events and contacts, five periods, of differing length, may be considered. First, his fash- ionable and tumultuous youth.

He was born in Paris of respectable bourgeois stock on both

sides. His father, Francois Arouet, was an intelligent notary.

Arouet le jeune, known to the world as Voltaire, was

"" put to school with the Jesuits and then entered a

law office. He was also introduced into the brilliant " Societe du Temple," a group of free-thinkers founded by Saint-Evremond. The young Arouet began boldly as a poet. He competed for Academy rewards, satirized that body, and won thi^ attention of the Cafe Procope and the liberal wits. But soon the Regent quietly imprisoned him, in May, 1717. It is with this date that Voltaire's public career really conomences. (Edipe was already on the boards, and after many intrigues the author was freed from prison in order to get this tragedy acted. Its success was com- plete and widespread.

Voltaire took naturally to " la bonne compagnie," which he con- sidered the source of literary reputation. Therefore he usually Worldly conciliated this inner circle, and it is to his credit Success that, by a mixture of cleverness and perseverance, he

improved the rank of the litterateur during his century. For himself, he saw clearly that social independence needed to be guaranteed practically, and he set about making a large fortune by adroit speculation. We may pass over the details of his

384 VOLTAIRE: LITERATURE AND LIFE

courtly and theatrical intrigues. Other plays had not duplicated the success of (Edipe, but the Henriade was soon to appear and attain a vogue astonishing for an epic. So far, Voltaire stood almost entirely for belles lettres, being rated at the time of his flight to England as an excellent dramatist and an amusing poet. That flight was caused by a break in the social edifice which he had so carefully built up. He ventured to gibe at a stupid noble, the Chevalier de Rohan. Voltaire was seized and beaten by the lackeys of this lord, who then refused the writer's challenge to a duel and had him shut up in the Bastille. Raging at this second imprisonment and its cause, Voltaire was shortly released. But in order to spare the Chevalier de Rohan, the authorities decided to exile the poet. He embarked for England, with mingled feel- ings of bitterness and eagerness, ready for the strongest intel- lectual influence of his life. This was probably in May, 1726, when Voltaire was in his thirty-second year.

The sojourn in England constitutes the second important phase in his life, and its significance is out of proportion to its brevity. The dates are still subject to dispute, but it is prob- "^ ,able that he remained in the country rather more

than two years. His contacts were various and fruitful. He had already known Bolingbroke, who counted for so much in his philosophy, and with whom he now spent some time. Among other writers who entertained and influenced him were Pope and Swift. His interest in Locke and Newton shaped his practical philosophy, the leaders among the Deists made him a partisan of natural religion, association with men of affairs gave him his exaggerated conception of English liberty — free government, free thought and free writing — and his attendance at the theaters resulted in his introduction of Shakespeare into France. He learned the English language and literature fairly well.

His new experiences and ideas were embodied in the Lettres philosophiques (1734), which inaugurated the English vogue. He also published, with the aid of clever advertising, the widely popular Henriade (1728-30). On the whole, his stay in England sobered his thought and directed more definitely his purpose in the domains of skeptical philosophy, cosmopolitan criticism and dramatic enterprise.

There was an interlude in Paris before fresh exile. We now

HIS SOJOURN AT CIREY 385

find Voltaire producing semi-Shakespearean plays. Zatre, in 1732, swept its author's name, as he said, into the " smoke of vain- glory." He had not waited for this tribute to spur him on to the unceasing labor which was the chief merit of his next decade. The Histoire de Charles XII appeared. The Temple du Oout, a satire in the vein of Pope's Dundad, raised a storm among the critics of the capital. r

This opposition may have helped to banish him, but the efiS- cient cause was the publication of the Lettres philosophiques. . „. In 1734, Voltaire, anticipating arrest, had fled to

take up his residence at Cirey, a chateau on the edge of Lorraine. The hostess, Mme du Chatelet, was among the first women of her time in intellect. The connection lasted fourteen years, until her death. It was characterized from the first by comradeship in hard mental labor. The Marquise stood for mathematics and a Leibnizian universe; she also shared Voltaire's interests in Newton and history. Together, they in- dulged in the fashionable physics, and they had time left over for practical cares and for entertaining. Amateur theatricals were frequently in order, also brilliant suppers and conversation, after the day's work. In spite of his ailing body, Voltaire seems to have had th'e energy for everything. He called himself " I'eternel malade," but he was also an external traveler and busybody. Flying visits to Paris and to provincial courts were slight distractions to his ceaseless productive activity. History, physics and metaphysics do not destroy his abiding interest in the drama. Several more plays, together with the scandalous Pucelle, belong to the early part of this period. Cantos of this mock-epic circulated through Europe long before actual pub- lication.

In 1736 he began the correspondence with Frederick the Great, who took at first the attitude of a humble young Tele- machus towards his Mentor. The publication of the flippant Mondain sent Voltaire flying from the police into Holland. From his cordial reception there he stole the leisure to print his Elements de la Philospphie de Newton (1738) — and soon he was back at Cirey, entertaining visitors and attacking his enemies. He had a succession of literary quarrels that lasted half a century. The journalist Freron, later ridiculed as Frelon,

386 VOLTAIRE: LITERATURE AND LIFE

the hornet, was soon to ply his sting, and the two Rousseaus occupied in turn the post of enemy extraordinary. The skir- mishing with J.-B. Rousseau belongs to these days, as also the bout with the despicable Desfontaines. The latter's Voltairo- manie was an outbreak of scurrility against more deadly epi- gram. Shortly afterward, in 1739, the " divine Emilie " (Mme du Chatelet) dragged her friend from the Siecle de Louis XIV to a round of festivities in Brussels and then in Paris.

The correspondence with Frederick had gone on, with extrav- agant compliment and mutual adoration. The Monarch had written a refutation of Machiavelli and then refuted himself and disappointed Voltaire by invading Silesia. But before this the two most remarkable men of their age had arranged a meet- ing which passed delightfully. Mahomet was produced in Paris (1741) and met with great applause, until its attacks on fanaticism were twisted by enemies into the semblance of " in- famous blasphemy." The authorities once more intervened, and Voltaire left the city in disgust. But he soon tried again with Merope, which gave him one of the most dazzling pre- mieres on record.

It is about this time that Voltaire's fourth phase, combin- ing his Parisian with his Prussian celebrity, may be considered as inaugurated. With his dramatic success and with deft religious prostrations and protestations, he made a second bid for the Academy and again failed. He fell back on diplomatic missions to Frederick, sanctioned by the French court, but at that game the King proved himself far cleverer than Voltaire. In 1745, he was again in Paris with a playlet, won some court favor, superintended festivities and was appointed Historiographer Royal. This wedge once driven in, it was not so hard to win the smiles of the Pompadour and even the benedictions of the Pope, who actually accepted the dedication to Mahomet. Finally, Voltaire was elected to the Academy (1746). But falling into disgrace at coxirt, he and the Marquise had to flee overnight. They went into hiding, first at Sceaux, and were later welcomed in Lorraine by Stanislaus, King of Poland and protector of a handsome guards- man and minor poet called Saint-Lambert. We need not dwell on Mme du Chatelet's infatuation for this lover, her abandon-

VOLTAIRE: LITERATURE AND LIFE 387

ment of Voltaire, his rage and grief, and her death, which was the greatest affliction of his life. He found himself back in Paris, where he set up an establishment with his niece, Mme Denis. He sought distraction in a theater of his own, playing tragedies in opposition to the gloomy Crebillon, discovering the great actor Le Kain. Voltaire's tales were also running through delighted Paris at this period. But Frederick the Great had renewed his invitation, and this time the guest was ready. He obtained an imgracious leave of absence from Louis XV and arrived at Potsdam in July, 1750.

The first months in Prussia were a genuine delight to the two men in Europe who were wholly capable of appreciating each other. Not only was Voltaire lavishly provided ni38ia £^j.. j^g ^^g publicly honored and feted in a way

certain to stimulate his vanity and pride. Whole theaters rose at his entrance; royal apartments were given him to work in; royal consorts smilingly excused him from their heavy dinners; and he was the chief light of the royal suppers in that little octagonal room which contained night after night the con- centrated wit of Europe. Officially he was Court Chamberlain and the arbiter and polisher of the King's literary endeavors. These varied joys the exile paraded in letters to his niece, but he already doubted if the glory could last.

The rift came when the visitor began illegally speculating through the medium of a usurer, whom Voltaire dragged through a rather disgraceful lawsuit. Frederick stood coldly aloof. The quarrel with Maupertuis followed. This eminent if socially stupid mathematician could not get along with Voltaire. He was President of the Berlin Academy and could bear no rival near the throne. Voltaire found his opportunity, satirized Mauper- tuis in the Diatribe du docteur Akakia, and convulsed the court with laughter. Frederick, however, was estranged, and it be- came necessary for Voltaire to leave. The two parted with the semblance of amity. But at Frankfort Voltaire was arrested by the royal orders and detained several weeks. Possibly through Frederick's influence the return of the native was balked by the French government on the frontier; also a pirated edition of the Essai sur les moeurs rendered official opinion in France intractable.

388 VOLTAIRE: LITERATURE AND LIFE

Where was Voltaire to turn? He was now sixty years old. Neither king nor priest in any of the Catholic countries would tolerate him. During the three years that he had Switzeran gpgjj^ with Frederick, his literary accomplishment had been slight. The same may be said of his previous cour- tier-life in Paris. He now wanted leisure, peace and health. He sought them first just outside of Protestant Geneva on the property he called Les Delices; and then at his famous estate of Ferney, which was really in Burgundy, but next to the Swiss frontier. Thither Madame Denis came as his housekeeper, and he rolled up his sleeves for the literary fray.

The Siecle de Louis XIV came out in 1751. The pirated ver- sion of the Essai sur les mceurs called for his own definitive edition, which he delivered in 1756. The same year saw his most earnest philosophical poem — that on the disaster of Lisbon. Two years later the masterpiece of Candide appeared. In the meantime, Voltaire's first home had become a rendezvous for the gayer life of Geneva, and he had, as usual, eslfeblished a private theater. The stricter Calvinists objected, notably J. -J. Rous- seau, and Voltaire, after several skirmishes with the Gene- vans, thought himself happier out of Switzerland. Just across the border, at Ferney, he was henceforth absolutely his own master.

At this point we may pause to consider his strictly belle- tristic activities, including, where necessary, some few produc- tions of the Ferney period. In the first place, it is evident that such a life will leave its mark on composition, whether in the direction of facility and haste, or of actuality and vitality. The divisions to be dealt with here are poetry, fiction and history. Voltaire's theater, as well as his pamphleteering and philoso- phie, will be treated separately (see Bk. Ill, Ch. I and Bk. IV, Ch. II).

His poetic, as well as his dramatic performance, follows in the main his theories and corresponds to his nature. In the more serious forms of verse — the epic and the ode — a constant sense of the rules, combined with a natural lack of elevation, makes for dulness and an absence of warmth. In the lighter genres — epistles, tales or impromptus — Voltaire's gaiety, grace and talent appear unrestrained. Even his corres-

HIS VERSE 389

pondence is interlarded with verses. He wrote a great many and of almost every kind: dramatic, epic, mock-epic, narrative, di- dactic; odes, satires, epistles, critiques, and especially vers d' oc- casion. Some idea of the content and character of his chief works may be given.

La Henriade or La Ligue, as it was first called, portrays the period of the religious wars and glorifies the name of Henry IV. Voltaire evidently hoped in this poem to write the great national epic that had been vainly awaited since the time of Ronsard. But it was too late for the indigenous kind of epic, and despite many admirable verses and descriptions. La Henriade remains decidedly artificial. Voltaire's odes, for the most part, are cold and restrained; they evince rhetorical preoccupations and that fondness for capitalized abstractions so characteristic of the century. His did^tic poems are more important for philosophy than for art. This is seen in Le Pour et le Contre {Epitre a Uranie), the Discdurs en vers sur I'homme, the P^eme sur la loi naturelle, and the famous Poeme sur le desastre de Lisbonne. Of these, the first and the last show the most fire and finish; the other two, longer, stiffer in style, and perhaps more profound, consist mainly of moralizings in the vein of Pope. The latter's Dunciad may also have furnished the idea for Voltaire's Temple du Gout, a critique and satire on contemporary letters, written in mingled prose and verse. Addison's Campaign probably in- spired Voltaire's retort in the Poeme de Fontenoy, where his muse for once is clearly patriotic. Among his satires may be mentioned Le Mondain, or " Apology for Luxury," a subject ger- mane to the spirit of the times.

But it is rather in the hundreds of light verses, loose leaves from his portfolio, that Voltaire's deft hand and ready wit appear. The stanzas and epistles, arising from all sorts of occasions, are addressed to most of the celebrities of the time. Frederick is apostrophized as the " Solomon of the North " and Mme du Chatelet is thus adjured:

Si vous voulez que j'aime encore, Rendez-moi I'age des amours.

On the bewildered head of Lefranc de Pompignan is heaped a succession of stanzas, beginning respectively with Pour, Qui,

390 VOLTAIRE: LITERATURE AND LIFE

Qiioi, etc. — a rapid fire of impudent and stinging wit. The manner is usually the genre badin, the light verse of rather free stanzaic form, often epigrammatic and always of a graceful easy flow. The stories in verse are scarcely to be distinguished from the stories in prose, save that in the former the Voltairian qualities are likely to appear with more emphasis on decoration and a frequent suggestion of La Fontaine. Among the most amusing are Ce qui plait aux dames and La Begueule.

The philosophic contes in prose are probably, in modem eyes, the best known and best liked portion of Voltaire's work. Ten or twelve of these would constitute the most artistic Stones volume of all his contributions to literature. They

are novelized pamphlets — but they are also delightful apologues* The rapidity of action, the brilliancy and potency of style, the shrewd doses of milder philosophy, and the constant play of a laughing intelligence rank these tales among the world's little masterpieces. Objection has been made to the intrusive person- ality of the author — but his personality is worth intruding. An- other reproach is the lack of character-drawing, and it is true that the people are silhouettes, though sharply defined. Judging from several standards of today, particularly that of dramatic concentration, we can see how the tales might have been bettered; but the Oriental apologue of the eighteenth century was a special genre, with rules and practices of its own.

The usual form, briefly, is this: personages of queer and some- times symbolic names (Candide, Micromegas) are set to travel- ing in strange countries; the East is the favorite field, though we may have a Huron in Paris {L'Ingenu) or terrestrials in other worlds. Either their experiences are designed to illustrate some one principle dear to the philosophes (Candide), or there is a suc- cession of skirmishes along philosophic, economic or sociological lines. The eighteenth-century " veil " is thus applied, not only to the (alien) setting, but also to the personages, often disguised acquaintances of Voltaire's, and to the ideas, which are both stated and symbolized. The idea of relativity is constantly pres- ent, because of the comparisons involved.

For instance, in the first of the series, Le Monde comme it va — Vision de Babouc, Persepolis represents Paris, and the question of destroying the city is posited through a series of

HIS PROSE 391

tableaux. Zadig, drawn from many sources, intimates many morals. Episodes and adventures of the wandering prince, cosmopolitan conversations, a hermit, and detective methods that anticipate Sherlock Holmes — such are the elements that div^sify a rambling narrative, whose chief message seems to be that there is much uncertainty in human affairs. Micro- megas (" The Little-Great One ") deals with interstellar visita- tions and satirizes Fontenelle as the secretary of the Academy of Saturn. It preaches relativity in insisting that size and other apparent advantages are matters of comparison (cf. Gulliver's Travels). Candide (1758), the most famous exemplar of the corde philosophique, is also the most artistically told and unified. (.The burning earnestness that animated the Poeme sur le desastre de Lisbonne is still present in Candide as a deep, partly hidden . ground-tone. The surface of the story reveals the familiar Vol- taire — the controlled mockery of an optimism blind in the face of senseless and endless misfortunes, the dazzling wit evidenced in sustained caricature, the spontaneity of handling and the rapidity of movement. The chain of adventures simply shows the travelers as constantly falling from the frying-pan into the fire. The characters stand on their feet here better than else- where, particularly Pangloss the Leibnizian, who gives the ironic key to the story by declaring that all is for the best in the best of possible worlds.

The merits of Voltaire's style are conspicuous in these and other contes. He mixes the conversational with the dignified Oriental manner, but he stamps all with his own image. The main features of this style are its swiftness, its smoothness and graceful wit. The sentences fly to the mark like poisoned arrows. Voltaire is the ablest manipulator of that style coupe which has succeeded to the long sentences and elaborate rhetoric of the previous age.

As historian also, Voltaire still has his interest and value. He added much to historical conception and he relativized much in historical treatment. Before him history had History lyeejx largely a matter of dry compilations or of

rhetorical generalities. Voltaire and Montesquieu show critical care and some modern sense of values. To these qualities they add literary talent and a general appeal, turning history into

392 VOLTAIRE: LITERATURE AND LIFE

a notable example of the better side of the salon influence. Voltaire's special achievement was to rationalize the subject and to consider as its chief content the march of himian civil- ization.

With his usual universality, he wrote every kind of history: the annalistic, the biographical, the political and the philosophi- cal. The biographical is brilliantly exhibited in the Histoire de Charles XII of Sweden (1731), where Voltaire's mind undergoes and communicates the fascination of the individual leader — a capital illustration of Carlyle's " great man " theory. The narrative and dramatic interest of this kind continues to a considerable extent in Voltaire's masterpiece — the Steele de Louis XIV (1751), where the writer still sees the "enlightened despot " as the main figure of his age. Louis and the able men around him are viewed, however, less as conquerors than as civilizers. It is above all " I'esprit humain," as de- veloped in a great period, that interests Voltaire. Hence his treatment of the epoch, while allowing for biographical data and even court gossip, presents first a large tableau of the political history of the reign, then includes chapters on com- merce, sciences, arts, letters and religion. This treatment has been criticized as too analytical and too piecemeal; but it is still largely the procedure of scientific historians today. Voltaire was particularly qualified to undertake such a survey, and the result is that the Siecle de Louis XIV, though in certain ways too panegyrical, is the best work of its peculiar kind in the century. The author here shows tendencies to regard any great age as primarily marked by its successes in literature and the arts; to make reason rather than religion the light of civilization; to view periods not so distinguished as benighted and worthless; and, curiously enough, to exalt the empire of chance, of the small apparently unrelated fact, in human affairs. Such tendencies appear still more conspicuously in the wider scope of the Essai sur les mceurs et I'esprit des nations (first ed., 1745-46; more fully, 1756).

This work is a universal history and practically the first his- tory of civilization. Purporting to begin where Bossuet left off, Voltaire yet has much to say, by way of introduction, concern- ing the ancients and the nations of the Orient. In many respects

HIS PROSE 393

this book shows its modernity, not only in such ideas as humani- tarianism and its estimates of social service, but also in the novelty of its method. For instance, the chance-theory seems here a part of Voltaire's "pyrrhonism" (compare Le Pyrrhonisme de I'histoire, 1768), or of the skepticism that makes him doubt the facile explanations of priests and populace, as well as the unsupported testimony of such writers as Tacitus, Bossuet and of course Herodotus. The skeptic is opposed to the inclusion in serious history of various legends and stories, particularly such as seem to debase human nature. Voltaire everywhere recom- mends the test of natural probability and of sound, suflBcient evi- dence, without party prejudice.

In the Essai, the " spirit that denied " sometimes dimmed the author's philosophic view of causes and led him into various forms of injustice toward certain influences. Modern progress for him starts definitely with the Renaissance. He can appreci- ate the role neither of the early Christians, nor of the perennial Jews, nor of the Middle Ages, with their feudalism, their " horrors and miracles," their greedy Popes, their religious wars and schisms, their crusades, ill-conducted and ill-starred. He simply removes the romance from the Middle Ages and considers them as almost wholly " barbarous." Voltaire is often occu- pied with wilfully smashing windows. Otherwise, the treatise gives a fairly spaced view of the past; it has been called a monument to the spirit of humanity, which Voltaire deems " greater than the Pjrramids " ; and its influence and utility are alike indisputable. It subordinates, of course, Bossuet's Provi- dence as a manipulator of history, it shows the preponderant importance of les mcewrs, of industrial and cultural manifesta- tions, it often gives a panorama rather than a j)rofound expla- nation of the course of empire, and it offers interesting pictures of the world outside of Europe. Voltaire's hatred of war is pronounced; usefulness to the race is considered the final test for movements and for men.

Voltaire's rationalizing of the Middle Ages, of the miracles and crusades, is akin to the method of modern research, which, however, rises above his prejudices. For in spite of all his cautions about judging each age relatively, by its own purpose rather than by that of another period, he frequently falls into

394. VOLTAIRE: LITERATURE AND LIFE

the latter blunder. In virtues and vices he remains intensely dix-huitieme; and he is too often inaccurate in detail. Yet he gave his century its record of civilization; he thereby stands at the threshold of modern history, and his two main works are still highly considered, though correctejl, by the historians of today.

CHAPTER III

MONTESQUIEU

Into the restless world of the Regency came the old Roman profile and allegiance, the aristocratic temper, the inquiring om- nivorous mind of Charles-Louis de Secondat, who His Career ^^^-^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ Montesquieu (1689-1755). Born

near Bordeaux, of a family belonging to the noblesse de robe, he underwent the influences of this Gascon heredity and habitat throughout his well-ordered life. He was educated, with em- phasis on the Latin classics, by the Jesuits; he was trained in legal procedure, though his interest was rather in the " spirit " of legislation; he entered Parisian circles equipped with those powers of observation and irony which produced the brilliant and iconoclastic Lettres persanes (1721). His preoccupation with wit and social satire was further strengthened by his association with the leaders of the salons. All four of these were at various periods of his career among his helpful friends: the Marquise de Lambert pushed him for the Academy, Mme de Tencin addressed him in a tone of intimate raillery, the others placed him among their pet lions. Already at Bordeaux, Montesquieu had indulged in that cultivation of the physical sciences which is at once a sign of the times and of his own positive bent. Now in Paris he attends the Club de I'Entresol (see below, p. 409) , an organization for political discus- sion. These two interests, especially the political, were newly and vitally stirred by Montesquieu's travels, which began in 1728, after his election to the Academy, and ended three years later in England.

This sojourn in England represents a turning-point in his thought. As in the case of Voltaire, what had been held in solution was now precipitated, and the result in each case is a fresh and significant conception of liberty. Returning to France, Montesquieu divides his time between Paris and his

395

396 MONTESQUIEU

estate of La Brede, shows his practical sense in the administra- tion of the latter, disposes of his " charge " as President of the Bordeaux Parliament, and concentrates more and more on his masterpieces. The Grandeur et decadence des Romains (1734) was probably largely conceived before his trip to England. The Esprit des lois (1748) was the result of two laborious dec- ades, varied only by occasional journeys or visits and the usual cares of life.

The Latin characteristics of Montesquieu are amply evidenced by contemporary testimony and his own aptitudes. But he is jjig an " old Roman " crossed with a Gascon magis-

Personality trate. The first appears in the stoicism which makes him reserved in emotion, which leads him to justify suicide, and stamps his correspondence as less expansive than that of his friends. The Gascon appears in a more natural, though frequently checked, disposition toward liveliness and exaggeration in expression. The magistrate appears in his domestic masterfulness and sense of leadership; the aristocrat, in his emphasis on heredity and the Parliaments. In fact, he goes back to the Classic ideal of I'honnete homme, ripened by many contacts and tastes, holding to standards of moderation and virtue, not without his point of pride. More in the spirit of his own time are his humanitarian qualities and his tendency to view things from a sociological and philosophic standpoint.

His mind is primarily legal, in that he is accustomed to the weighing, sifting, and coordinating of evidence. But he is also a philosophe and a relativist in his concern with the "* new interests, his distrust of the old absolutes of metaphysics, church and state. More than this — he is the fore- most generalizer of his century. No such grasp of principles, no such display of synthetic ability had yet been known, and Montes- quieu is only surpassed by Bayle for wealth and catholicity of knowledge. Hibtory, law, ancient lore, contemporary travels, physical sciences — the President learned and linked them all into his system. The search for moral and physical causes impels all his work. He is an investigator and a spectator first; and then he is a philosophe. Like the leaders of the Renaissance he is infinitely curious — " that noble curiosity " for more and more knowledge — and the Esprit des lois is once interrupted by a

THE LETTRES PERSANES 397

startling yet characteristic invocation to the Pierian Muses. He has no other sentiment for art than that. He names as " great poets " four philosophic thinkers — Plato, Malebranche, Shaftes- Imry and Montaigne; his taste is of the colorless neo-classic variety; and positivistic science has now replaced the sweep of the imagination. Yet he is not distracted from " the proper study of mankind." His impressive dominance in half-a-dozen fields of thought will appear from a survey of his works.

The Lettres persanes came out anonymously, and as a con- temporary prophesied, the book " sold like bread." Better than « Lettres ^^^ °^^^^ product of the time, this satire holds the Persanes" mirror up to the Regency, faithfully reflecting its (1721) mocking spirit, its license and its ferment. Nothing

so daring, so amusing and brilliant, had yet been allowed in print, though many such ideas must have floated among the free-thinkers and the coffee-houses. To such an extent do the Lettres persanes crystallize this frondeur criticism and revolt that Montesquieu never formally acknowledged the work and in later life seemed ashamed of it.

The sources, in form, are negligible; much of the matter comes from Chardm's Voyage en Perse. Montesquieu's plan is that two Persians, Rica and Usbek, visiting Paris, shall write home their apparently na'ive and unprejudiced account of French customs. The frame-work is then a veil, similar to that used by Swift and Voltaire, behind which a great many indirect blows can be delivered. Dealing with actualities, the book is partly journal- istic; it is partly fiction, in that we have the story of the women whom the Persian travelers left behind them. The harem at- mosphere thus introduced is heavy and imwholesome. The illusion of the Oriental viewpoint is, however, skilfully maintained through most of the book. There are also " portraits," in the man- ner of La Bruyere, of such public figures as the busy inventor, the reporter, the speculators and the dandies. There are certain other Classical and conservative features, seen in the balanced style, the frequent appeal to " reason " and " good sense," the aristocratic contempt for writers, pedants and sycophants, some- what indiscriminately mingled.

The Lettres persanes has its serious as well as its frivolous side. Towards the end, the tone changes and the real importance of the

398 MONTESQUIEU

pamphlet appears: it announces not only the Esprit des lais but the esprit of the century. The book is nearly always for- ward-looking and often revolutionary.

As regards government, Montesquieu adopts categorically the

standpoint of the relativist. "The best government is that which

attains its end with the least expenditiu:e of energy."

eas rpjjg kinds of governments and their principles are

sketched very much as we shall see them in the Esprit des lois. Only here it is significant that Montesquieu can imagine all these principles as obtaining in a Republic, which on the whole is the sort of government that he now prefers. He satirizes, not with- out regret, the failure of the monarchical and aristocratic regime. He sees the French monarchy as degenerate and pleasure-seeking, criticizes Louis XIV, and admits the decline of the aristocracy with impatience and shame.

As regards philosophy, Montesquieu states the ideas of the relativist and the semi-materialist in connection with the vary- ing testimony of the senses and with the persistent intrusion of the ego. The divine order of the universe appears less as a matter of sublime mysteries than as a manifestation of a few immutable — and simple — physical laws. In moral precepts, there is again no absolute. Materialism also shows its head in the emphasis on the bodily '' machine " and in several passages concerning the influences of climate and soil, which foreshadow the famous doc- trines of the Esprit des lois.

Believing apparently in natural religion, Montesquieu, in the Lettres persanes, openly assails the foundations of Catholicism, declaring that it can scarcely last five hundred years, that the Pope is an idol worshipped only from habit, that he and the king are simply " two magicians." The writer gibes at nearly all the standard doctrines, berates the theologians, those super-subtle " dervishes," laughs at the Capucin missionaries, takes a fling at the temporal power of the church and anticipates Voltaire's indictment of the terrible religious wars. We have a defense of free-will, as not really discordant with God's power — it is better to follow his precepts than to analyze his cloudy attributes. We have a distinct approach to the method of comparative religion in the passage where a Mohammedan believer condones the Christians. Irony still appears in the treatment of these ques-

THE LETTRES PERSANES 399

tions, but there is no flaw in/tSfe-gincerity with which the"authot here and elsewhere stands up for the principles of tolerance. In fact, he finds nothing more offensive to the gods than the absence of humanity and equity. Justice tempered with mercy is both divine and human. So a diatribe against the Inquisition is paralleled by one against the cruelty of the Spaniards in the Indies, and Usbek, the author's mouthpiece, regrets the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The Protestants are defended as useful merchants and artisans, and it is also on grounds of utility that Montesquieu suggests what he later partially retracts — the estab- lishment of several religions in a state.

His whole approach to the religious question is, indeed, not only from the standpoint of the rationalist, but also from that of the tolerant humanitarian and statesman. It is noticeable that he allows the Troglodytes their own religion, in order to soften manners and to aid virtue. This idea of the creed as service- able to the state is in accordance with his conception of social solidarity, which lies at the base of the Troglodyte republic. Here all labor for the common interest. It is emphasized that the general aim is not separable, in a " virtuous " state, from the individual good, and such solidarity even reaches the point of communism in Montesquieu's doctrine. However, in answer- ing objections as to the pernicious effect of the " arts " (indus- tries) and inventions, Usbek associates them with the advance of civilization, and maintains that they are desirable chiefly as creating a state of " luxury," needed for the general welfare. This is one of Montesquieu's most idiosyncratic theories.

Such are the main ideas of this remarkably fertile book. Its form has doubtless interfered with a full appreciation of it, es- pecially in our own times. Its fragmentary character, its hop- skip-and-jump manner, its apparently haphazard construction are disconcerting; but it was always Montesquieu's ideal to " provoke thought rather than (mere) reading," to stimulate by alternate piquancy and depth. His lax construction matters less in letters than elsewhere. When the Persian veil is nearly dropped towards the end, we are certainly reading the direct utterances of a very competent thinker. Contemporaries, we are told, pardoned the book's temerities for the sake of its gaieties; today one is disposed to do exactly the contrary.

400 MONTESQUIEU

In 1734 appeared the Considerations sur les causes de la

grandeur des Remains et de leur decadence — to give the volume

..^, ^ its full and exactly appropriate title. Like all of

" Grandeur et ,, ^ . , i 1 • j

decadence des Montesquieu s works, it was issued anonymously,

Eomains " jj^^ j^gre, as with the Esprit des lois, the authorship was soon apparent and was not denied. The book is a classical masterpiece: classical not only because it is saturated with the spirit of Latin antiquity, but French Classical in that it mirrors the abiding qualities of harmony, proportion, universal truth and dignified style ; it is a masterpiece because of these qualities and the correspondingly elevated thought, because for once Montesquieu reaches artistic unity and balance of parts. The history unfolds, indeed, like a Classical tragedy, rising through " grandeur " to fall through " decadence," with Pompey as the climax of the plot. The dramatic value is enhanced by the spectacular, by those visions of men and races which Mon- tesquieu draws with so large a sweep. The Roman side of him is now thoroughly at home, and you feel the spirit that has long known comradeship with Tacitus and Livy, with the imposing austere virtues of the Republic, as well as with the graces of the later orators. In these respects the book looks backward; but it is emphatically of its own century by its method of " con- sidering " history.

Montesquieu is primarily philosophic. He seeks historic truth in the " esprit general," in the movement of profound moral and physical causes. " The general march drags with it all particular incidents." Before him Bossuet almost alone in France had represented a concept of philosophic history. The two men have similar interpretations of many facts, a like ad- miration for antiquity, a like instinct for historical observation and induction. But they soar as rival eagles. The idea of Providence, the operation of the First Cause dominates the panorama of Bossuet, as God the protagonist dominates the Biblical dramas of Racine. Montesquieu deals only with directly human and natural causes. The power even of the Roman religion is scanted in his survey, which analyses mainly politics, war, the moral status. The reasons for Roman great- ness are founded on the wisdom of the citizens and their " vir- tuous " institutions. The decay of these principles spelled the

THE ESPRIT DES LOIS 401

decay of Rome, which also suffered from the unwieldy extension of the Empire.

The treatment is suitably elevated, somewhat aphoristic, reminiscential of Latin masters, adapting strikingly their figures and vocabulary, eloquent, yet not merely rhetorical. This famous passage will show us Montesquieu on the heights:

C'est ici qu'il faut se doniier le spectacle des choses humaines. Qu'on vole dans I'histoire de Rome, tant de guerres entreprises, tant de sang repandu, tant de peuples detruits, tant de grandes actions, tant de triomphes, tant de politique, de sagesse, de prudence, de Constance, de courage; ce projet d'envahir tout, si bien forme, si bien soutenu, si bien fini, a quoi aboutit-U, qu'a assouvir le bonheur de cinq ou six monstres? Quoi! ce senat n'avait fait evanouir tant de rois que pour tomber lui-meme dans le plus bas esclavage de quelques-ims de ses plus indignes citoyens, et s'exterminer par ses propres arrets! On n'eleve done sa puissance, que pour la voir mieux renversee! Les hommes ne travaillent a augmenter leur pouvoir, que pour le voir tomber centre eux- memes, dans de plus heureuses mains!

In handling his sources, Montesquieu is usually careful, stating nothing without authority; he sometimes exaggerates dramatically, but he never simply perverts ; yet he is not wholly critical, in the modern sense; he is too respectful of the ancients to question their credibility. Also, he naturally knows little or nothing of epigraphy and archeology. These deficiencies, while rendering the book old-fashioned, do not deprive it of its prin- cipal values. Its philosophic method, as concerned with eternal verities, and its consimimate literary form remain. The method inspired Gibbon and Buckle, and that modern study of the ancient city by Fustel de Coulanges (see Bk. VIII, Ch. III). Stylistic merits have given this history its place as part of the regular education of French youth.

The Esprit des lois, often considered the greatest work of the century, is a book of many facets. Purporting to reveal " L'Espiit des *''^^ relations of laws to natural and social institu- lois" (i748Hions, it really touches upon nearly every depart- ment of civilization, nearly every land and time. It originated from a nexus of contemporary discussion and therefore is not " created without a mother," as its author proudly declares. But he gives here the fullest expression of his own mind and doctrine,

402 MONTESQUIEU

though much of the latter has been anticipated in the Lettres persanes. It is a pity that the Esprit des lais is the least well- written among Montesquieu's works, the most poorly composed and directed.

The main intention and divisions are none the less manifest. It expresses essentially the conception of a relativist. Laws may represent a struggle towards the type of "eternal justice," but more apparently they are and should be the reflection of special conditions; or, as Montesquieu's subtitle expresses it, the " spirit " of laws consists in " the rapport which they ought to have with the constitution of each government, with its customs, climate, religion, commerce, etc." To these relations he shortly adds other physiographical points, the kind of life led in each coimtry, the degree of liberty allowed, and the interaction of laws among themselves. They are even hazardously defined as rapports — " the necessary connections deriving from the nature of things." This idea of a " consensus," of a complex which hangs together in a given civilization, constitutes the chief merit of the book in modern eyes. Rejecting the theory of caprice and relegating that of Providence, Montesquieu, still historical in approach, perceives that behind the code of each country stand its mceurs and behind them, " certain moral and physical causes." That is his first great generalization. His second is that the laws appropriate to each country reflect its morale particularly as crystallized in its form of government. The third, especially associated with his name, concerns the theory of climate and other physical forces as variously dominating races and their legislations. All of these are relative considerations.

For years, as he tells us, Montesquieu struggled towards these " principles." When the light came, his material fell readily — perhaps too readily — into place; first, along the lines of the divi- sion and nature of governments. These he divides into despotic, monarchical and republican, animated respectively by the prin- dpes of fear, honor and civic virtue. He then proceeds, in the first ten books, to analyze his definitions, in the Cartesian manner, by recording their applications in the fields of education, of civil, formal and penal legislation, sumptuary laws and luxury. A book on the corruption of the principles is followed by a dis- cussion of the connection of laws with militarism.

THE ESPRIT DES LOIS 403

Two criticisms may at once be made. The fields in which operates the spirit of laws succeed one another, as is evident from the last two sentences, in a disjointed and scrappy manner, without satisfactory exhaustion and coordination. When Mon- tesquieu thought of a fresh rapport, he added a new book. This was the method of the works on jurisprudence preceding and partly influencing him. The other objection concerns his division of governments. The traditional and logical division of Aristotle, into governments ruled by one, several or many, is displaced by associating the aristocratic with the democratic kind and by enlarging the one-man government into the two types of monarchy and despotism. The latter is of course a derogation from the former, but Montesquieu here proceeds on historical and spatial rather than on logical grounds. Broadly, by despotic government he always means the Orient, by democratic he means ancient republics, by monarchical he means modern western Europe. The specific modern applications are usually left to the reader. As regards the three prindpes — fear, honor and vertu, — they seem in part acceptable, though with limitations which Montes- quieu did not seek to impose. In fact, his insistence throughout a good part of the work on returning inappositely to the kinds of government and their principles, results in some distortion and an excess of simplification.

With the eleventh book we have a change of basis, and the influence of Montesquieu's visit to England is readily seen. He is now preaching the English conception of liberty, as em- bodied in the English constitution, with particular stress on the balance and division of powers. This part of the work is probably the most famous and the most far-reaching in effect. Following Locke with some modifications, Montesquieu urges the conservation of the monarchy by balancing and separating the powers in the three forms with which we are acquainted — legislative, executive and judicial. Two lesser books intervene before we reach his next great contribution. The potency of physical causes appears at its height in the treatment accorded to climate and the nature of the land, as they affect the bodily machine, character, institutions, and hence laws. Certain generalizations here are too hasty, but the main division by zones of climate is notable as influencing Mme de Stael, Buckle

404 MONTESQUIEU

and much of modern thought. Yet it is significant that just as Montesquieu sets manners and customs above laws, so he sets moral above physical causes and conceives it to be the legislator's duty frequently to contravene the latter. Polygamy and slavery may have their raison d'etre in despotism and climate, but they are not therefore desirable.

With Book XIX on the " general spirit " of the nations, the truly vital part of the Esprit des lois closes. The rest is more and more rambling, though there are interesting considerations as to evolution, cautious safeguards as to religion, and learned disquisitions on Roman and feudal laws. But the chief points have been made, a sociological method has been inaugurated, and we may group together some of its more forward-looking elements.

First, an attempt has been made to study the psychology of races. Without accepting all of Montesquieu's gleanings from books of travel, discounting such flights as those to China or Paraguay, allowing for his ignorance of natural history and the great modern democracies, one may yet see the impulsion, in method and in fact, toward a main nineteenth-century preoccupation. Secondly, ideals of tolerance and humanitarianism are conspicuous. Along with despotism, torture and slavery, religious persecution and imnatural usages are accounted for, but ultimately reproved. A faith in progress and a belief in some ordering of the universe are occasionally expressed. Thirdly, jm-isprudence is lifted from its dry and dusty tomes to the rank of a human force of the first order. A control of legal forms and influences, making for amelioration, is suggested. If Montesquieu's growing conservatism, manifest also in his attitude towards the monarchy and religion, makes him in the large more static than evolutionary, he yet recog- nizes development in each legal field or what he calls revolution. Finally, a theory of government is combined which will have far-reaching results. Holding to the ideal liberty of a consti- tutional monarchy, he devises for that a system which has been partially conveyed into the American Constitution. In France, theorists and legislators have made abundant use of this system, which rests essentially on the checking, balancing and separating of the three main powers. Montesquieu thus ex-

SUMMARY 405

panded French literature to include jurisprudence, the science of government and something of political economy. Add to these the treatment of philosophical history initiated by the Grandeur et decadence des Romains. Voltaire, in spite of the fact that he and Montesquieu were antipathetic, declared that the latter had " restored to humanity its lost titles." This should mean that the President gave to a skeptical age a rational and logical account of itself, as well as of other periods and their laws.

The handling of these matters is, however, not uniformly suc- cessful. The salon taste demanded a certain lightness, wit and spice. Hence the inappropriate insertions, the false starts and the literary caviar which made the Esprit des lois more palatable for its contemporaries than for us. Moreover, the work seems rather a collection of notes, shot through with fine speculations, than an organic whole. Montesquieu's style generally is coupe, moving by short jerks, dispensing with connectives and transi- tions, lacking Voltaire's grace. But it is often forceful and brilliant, and in the Grandeur et decadence des Romains it can rise to heights of noble declamation.

CHAPTER IV MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS

Under this heading will be treated certain moralists, theorists and memoir-writers, whose work, for the most part, falls within the first half of the century. Few of them are professionally philosophes,, though the majority are tinctured with the new spirit. They are secondary figures who yet have their impor- tance historically, as well as through their contacts with better- known men. Two moralistes who have won an assured place in the records, rather as a matter of personal character than by strictly literary excellence, are Luc de Vauvenargues (1715- 47) and the Chancellor d'Aguesseau (1668-1751).

The career of Vauvenargues was almost constantly imfortu- nate. As a lad he had poor health and received no regular _ , education. He entered the army, and after a brief

Career of brilliant campaign in Italy he was relegated to the dul- Vauvenargues Qggg ^f provincial garrisons. He was sent on the ill-fated expedition to Prague (1742), from which he returned with frozen limbs and ruined health. The old Marquis de Mira- beau (Carlyle's "Friend of Man") and Voltaire were among his protectors and admirers, and the latter tried, unsuccessfully, to launch him in diplomacy. It was through Voltaire's advice that Vauvenargues settled in Paris, but he lived there as a re- tiring invalid barely two years. He had time to publish a single rather imperfect volume before his death.

Much less than this would have broken a man of average caliber; but it is Vauvenargues' strong mark that he remains always captain of his soul. Serious and religiously minded, his personal force and charm could yet attract a Voltaire and a Marmontel. Successive disillusions, in military life, in diplo- matic hopes and in literary output — which he considered as a last resort — only served to temper the well-forged steel of this character. In poverty and agony, his Spartan endurance im-

406

VAUVENARGUES 407

pressed a lighter age, and he gained from his trials that spirit of elevation, of integrity and serenity, which shines through his writings. These are few in number and mostly unfinished. The Introduction a la connaissance de I'esprit hu- ms Writings ^^-^ ^74gj jg ^^^ ^jjg ^^^^ ^^ ^ thoroughly formed

philosopher, and though it shows individual penetration and fineness of feeling, it is not a masterpiece. Its chief interest is that it reveals the humanity of Vauvenargues' nature. Coming midway between Pascal and Rousseau, he reacts from the Jan- senism of the former in that he maintains the worth of man's endowment in mind, sentiment and passions; he anticipates Rousseau in the predominant role given to the feelings and pas- sions, if virtuously directed. " On ne peut etre dupe de la vertu " — and the virtue that Vauvenargues most esteemed was magna- nimity. His personal ideal was for a career of glory attained through action: " d'employer toutes les activites de son ame dans une carriere sans bornes." This desire is visible in all his work and gives a personal note of endeavor and of disappointment nobly borne to his Reflexions et Maximes, where the best of Vauvenargues appears. These contain many excellent judgments both on deeds and books. The writer is more concerned with moral self-perfection than with general perfectibilite or prog- ress. Thereby he belongs to the previous century, whose Classic qualities he exemplifies both in spirit and in form. Believing in the harmony of man and nature, his eclectic philosophy tends towards simplicity, moderation and the golden mean. His best pages (and he should be read in selections) are orderly, harmo- nious, and psychologically penetrating. But too often his max- ims are either obscure or obvious and his thought is not wholly reconciled — defects due perhaps to the shortness of his life. As a whole, the work of Vauvenargues presemts rather a fine promise than a thorough finish. His philosophical system may be illustrated by his central much-quoted maxim: " Les grandes pensees viennent du cceur." To this a recent writer (Morley) has added the proviso: "Yes, but they must go around by the head."

The Chancellor d'Aguesseau was also a man of excellent vir- tue, though without Vauvenargues' personal power. Unlike the latter, a'Aguesseau was extremely well educated, long-lived and

408 MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS

favored by every advantage of position and circumstance. He came of a good legal stock and was much dominated by the stronger character of his father. His originality was further overlaid by considerable erudition; the Jansenists were his moral masters. He had essentially the judicial mind, excellent on the bench or in directing assemblies, but inapt for closer action. As procureur-general, as Chancellor and finally as min- ister under the Regent, he instituted various wise laws and showed at first a capacity for mediating between D'Aguesseau ^.j^^ throne and the Parliament. But later he vacil- lated and lost his power. He was a " good man and magistrate," but not supreme as a writer. His Mercuriales^ or addresses before the Parlement (courts of justice), exhibit a respect for tradition, a mild persuasiveness and a dignified moral tone and style. The style, in fact, is often heavy and slow, an eloquence that resembles a diluted Bossuet or Bourdaloue in its elaborate solemnity. Like Montesquieu, d'Aguesseau had a thorough be- lief in and respect for Justice, which was his ruling idea both in theory and administration. His Meditations sur les vraies et les famses idees de la Justice are praised by good critics. He shows circumspection rather than vehemence in his manner of writing as in his career. A " chretien philosophe," he was con- servative and Classical both in taste and in morality. As Chancellor, he applied the power of censorship rather severely. Saint-Simon comments on his studious intelligence, his piety and amiability, together with a certain " paresse " ; all of these qual- ities are evidenced in the writings of d'Aguesseau, who was a worthy but not highly interesting figure.

As regards the theory of literature, the final charge of the Moderns was led by Lamotte, whose idea was to rationalize The Abbe poetry into prose (see below, Bk. Ill, Ch. IV). A Du Bos weightier name is that of the Abbe Du Bos, the friend

of Bayle, whom he resembles in the boldness of his criticism and the diversity of his interests. Du Bos touches upon almost every field; history, archeology, political economy, theology, literature and art. His two important works are; Reflexions critiques sur la poesie et la peinture (1719) and UHistoire de I'Establissement de la Monarchic frangaise dans les Gaules (1734). As a historian, he is careful in controlling and indi-

THE ABBE DU BOS 409

eating his sources, and though he was taken to task by Mon- tesquieu for his theories concerning the origin of the French mon- archy, the author of L'Esprit des lois owes much to his pred- ecessor. As an aesthetic critic, Du Bos follows the Modems in basing genius on a favorable material environment; but he is opposed to the rationalistic and mathematical conception of beauty which Lamotte and others were propagating; he considers that the aesthetic sense has less to do with the mind than with the body and that it is almost a sixth sense in itself. It is an " inamediate and direct perception of the beautiful," which is viewed as a physical emotion. Hence the relativity of aesthetic judgments, dependent (1) on the individual eyes, nerves, etc., of the observer and (2) on variations in climate and atmosphere. The emphasis on climate has long been considered Du Bos' chief contribution, because of its in- fluence on Montesquieu and others. Almost equally valuable is his division of the fields of art and their functions, which leads up to Lessing. And finally, one should stress a sort of experimental attitude towards artistic appreciation. Instead of dogmatizing, Du Bos watches himself and other people " react " in a picture-gallery or at the theater. He amasses significant data from all sources, ancient and modern. He was ahead of his time in his sense of the concrete, and the immediate influence of his Rejlexions was further limited on account of its badly mixed composition and its poor style. Today he seems a very advanced and realistic thinker.

Equally advanced was the Abbe de Saint-Pierre (not to be confused with the later Bernardin), who had the honor of try- ing to establish a League to Enforce Peace two hundred years ago. His was the chief voice uplifted in behalf of peace between Fenelon and Kant. His own age considered him a kindly harm- less Utopian. He was, however, banished from the Academy because of his attacks on the inonarchy of Louis XIV. Later he became one of the founders of the Club de I'Entresol (1724), The Club de which has been mentioned in connection with Mon- I'Entresol tesquieu. This was an informal club for the presen- tation of papers and for liberal discussion. As a sort of " acad- emy of political and moral sciences," it anticipated, in a milder way, the Jacobin clubs of the Revolution. It met in the house

410 MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS

of the President Renault, in the apartment {entresol) of the Abbe Alary, and among its most important adherents were d'Argenson, who describes it in his memoirs, and for a time Montesquieu and Bolingbroke — about twenty members in all. The reunions lasted seven years and then attracted the atten- tion of the pradent Fleury, who caused the club to be dissolved.

The writings of the " philanthropic Abbe " antedate that period. Among his chief "projects" were the Discours sur la Writings of polysynodie (1718) and the Projet de Paix wniver- Saint-Pierre selle (1713). There was also a much-needed Projet de rendre les diics et pairs utiles. Whatever the Utopianism of these theories, the first and the last were actually tried out under the Regency (see above, Bk. I, Ch. Ill) . The " polysynodie " was simply the government by coimcils, in which Saint-Simon participated from a similar desire to make the dukes " useful." Saint-Pierre's various ideas on reform mostly sprang from his tolerance and his humanity. He is credited with creating the word bienfaisance, and his whole tendency was toward practical morality and the improvement of society. As regards universal peace, his schemes have a striking similarity with the plans cur- rent at present. He pleads for a League of Nations which shall be primarily juridical, extending to gov- ernments the civil status and morality of individuals. It should be a permanent association and tribunal, in which the sovereigns figure as perpetual allies, making proportionate contributions to the expenses of maintenance, submitting themselves to the arbitrament of their peers. Where this fails, the force of the League is to be called in for purposes of repression. Armaments should be greatly reduced, and Saint-Pierre tried to make the rulers understand the calamities of war as opposed to the pros- perities of peace. The sovereigns are still the leaders and spokesmen, because scarcely any writer could then conceive of popular representation. Esteemed a visionary by his contempo- raries, Saint-Pierre should come into his own when his views are realized.

Passing to the memoir-writers, the one who most worthily The Memoirs succeeds Saint-Simon, in individual talent and gen- of d'Argenson eral interest, is another member of the Entresol group — the Marquis Rene-Louis Voyer d'Argenson (1694-

D'ARGENSON 411

1757). He is to be distinguished from his father of the same name, a minister of police under the Regency. This d'Argenson, nicknamed " la bete " because of his heavy integrity and lack of suppleness around court, flourished during the best years of Louis XV and was Foreign Secretary about the time of the battle of Fontenoy. His Memoires begin with the death of the Regent and come down to Rousseau. They give a thorough picture of the period, its political and social intrigues, its chief figures, its manners and literature. DArgenson is not really " bete " at all. He had a bold rich intelligence, if occasionally heavy in manner and style, and he does not lack for wit. His mind goes deep enough to penetrate the people and circumstances around him and it also reaches out to an elevation and an idealism beyond his time. The double value of his memoirs, then, is that they give both political narratives and political views; the worth of his own mind is added to that of his observa- tions on his age. In ideas, he represents the liberals and the philosophes, but he had the power and position of a great noble. His program is often prophetic of future reforms, gathering around the idea of philanthropy which he shared with Saint- Pierre. Among the changes that he urged, the substitution of departments for provinces, of prefects for royal intendants, the tmiformity of weights and measures, the wider establishment of provincial courts of justice, have all been realized. His main political scheme was to unite the monarchy with popular liberty, especially as represented by the municipalities. He really, cared for le peuple; he portrays excellently the change in popular sentnnent about 1750, and he suggests how the growing inade- quacy and despotism of Louis finally turned the people against him. "L'opinion republicaine," according to d'Argenson, was bom at that time. He comments on the increase of luxury and license, the advance of materialistic philosophy, the significant hatred of priests. And he foresees and foretells the Revolution. D'Argenson, like Saint-Pierre, was a man of vision. His style is too often cumbersome and incorrect, but it is personal, full of provincial and proverbial expressions, and it is acute in thought if not in form. It shows a blunt honesty like the man himself, without the characteristics that enliven the pages of de Retz or of Saint-Simon.

412 MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS

As a whole, the collected memoirs of the century are impos- ing in their mass, their interest and their variety. They occupy Memoirs in altogether several hundred volmnes and no pre- General ceding age was so prolific. The greater part of our

knowledge concerning history, society and literature derives from this source, to which one should add the familiar letters of the period. The memoirs themselves are divisible into three interlocking groups: (1) the formal, or impersonal correspond- ences, such as the Correspondance litteraire (1753-90) of Grimm, Diderot and others, which usually circulated in manu- script long before publication; (2) the diary or journal form, illustrated by that of the lawyer Marais (1715-37) ; and (3) memioirs proper, sometimes based on the preceding form. Few of these productions show real literary excellence, but their value as furnishing an intimate picture of the times is unrivaled. The more one studies the eighteenth century, the more one is im- pressed by the saliency of a few score of names, which recur, like the reappearing characters of Balzac, in every variety of writing; in the memoirs, these historic figures are displayed in undress. Another characteristic is the amount of gossip about court and capital, which is in evidence everywhere, but particu- larly in the correspondances. This is due to the dearth of newspapers, which made readers clamor for news from other sources. Certain illustrations may be given of the three types of memoirs.

The literary gazette flourished from the time of Bayle to that of Grimm and Diderot. A lesser but perhaps a more representative g , name is that of Bachaimiont, whose Memoires secrets

Marais and ' de la Repuhlique des lettres cover the period 1762-71. Marmontel They were rewritten from the " register " or recorded conversation (which circulated as Nouvelles a la main) of Mme Doublet's salon, and they are most interesting concerning the in- fluence and apotheosis of Voltaire, the beginnings of Rousseau and the importance of the Encyclopedia. Their tone is very free: anecdotes, witticisms and irreverent chansons, on the most seri- ous occasions, make us realize the brutality which \mderlay the veneer of the century. In his criticism, literary and general, Bachaumont allies good sense with a taste for progress; he gives a swift actual view of a literature and a society in tlie making.

DUCLOS AND MARMONTEL 413

He uses the chronicle form, but for our purpose that class is best represented hy the Journal of Marais,the " avocatdes dames." This is the best reflection of enlightened public opinion under the Regency. A disciple of Bayle, an admirer of Voltaire, Marais had a wide knowledge, frequented the best company, and was strongly Classical in taste. He shows the limited beginnings of liberalism, and, in a style marked by simplicity and irony, he indulges in the usual court gossip, which he informs with the color and movement of life. The third class (memoirs proper) may be illustrated by two names: Duclos and Marmontel. The former, who became royal historiographer, plans to set forth the " history of men and manners " in the first part of the century. He is especially at home in discussing the Regency, the early literary cafes and the later salons. Duclos was a penetrating observer and a rude writer, caustic, piquant, " droit et adroit." Marmontel, as we shall see later (Bk. IV, Ch. I) , was a milder person, who thought more of his own writings than posterity has been able to do; but in his time he was a very considerable literary figure and his Memoires d'un pere pour servir a I'instruc- tion de ses enjants are important as depicting the life of a typical man of letters, his early struggles, his necessary prostrations, especially before the shrine of Mme Geoffrin, and the final savor of success. He gives an agreeable and apparently a faithful picture of the middle years of the century, and a certain com- placency in narrating his love-adventures — even to his children — is perhaps as typical as anything else.

Finally, no account of miscellaneous writings would be complete without mentioning the beginnings of journalism (see p. 289). If the work of the nouvellistes or news-mongers ante- dates the modern newspaper, the modern review was initiated by Bayle and was continued, as a summary and criti- cism of fresh publications, by various periodicals. The Pour et centre of the Abbe Prevost, the Journal Stranger and the Gazette litteraire de I'Europe were cosmopolitan reviews. More of a magazine was the (old) Mercure de France. Two of the most important journals were the Journal des Savants and the Journal de Trevowc. But the former was scientific in its interests and the latter strongly clerical in its tendencies. Probably the most representative if not the best of all the literary reviews was

414 MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS

L'Annee litteraire, which flourished from 1754 to 1790, largely under the direction of Voltaire's enemy Freron. It presents a unity of subject-matter, doctrine and tone, and has been called the most interesting and equitable journal of its time. But Freron is scarcely more than a fifth-rate critic and his impar- tiality is injured by his insistence on praising whatever Voltaire dislikes and vice versa. However, he follows the march of ideas to a certain extent, admitting the English influence, showing the pre-romanticism of the public, though ill-disposed toward the philosophes and preferring still the absolutism of Classical taste and rules. The many volumes of this review are interesting chiefly as reflecting contemporary tastes, opinions and quarrels.

BOOK III THE OLD AND THE NEW GENRES

CHAPTER I TRAGEDY: VOLTAIRE, CREBILLON, DUCIS

The most important art form of the eighteenth century, the greatest in contemporary opinion, was still tragedy. But in Voltaire as original excellence tragedy was on the decline a^id Critic was becoming more a matter of critical discussion.

In dramatic practice as in theory, Voltaire was the leader, and it will be well to state here his general position as a critic. First it is to be remarked that Voltaire was certainly a devotee of good literature. Among his few passions, this was the most last- ing; among his few ideals, this was the most conservative. His taste, his belief in Boileau, his worship of Racine, all served to keep him in the beaten track as regards poetic and dramatic principles. Yet his restless curiosity, his devotion to the stage, and particularly his interest in English literature, made him the advocate of certain novelties pronounced for their time.

The Lettres philosophiques remains the document which most significantly combines these opposing tendencies. Voltaire's admiration for the English principle of liberty extends in part to English literature. But he prefers the dramatists of the Res- toration and the classicists of the Age of Queen Anne — the two currents which were conspicuously French. His attitude toward Shakespeare is characteristic. This author, " barbarous " and " Gothic " as he is, typifies the irregular poetry of the English, by flashes of genius no less than by deserts of darkness. His " monstrous farces called tragedies " have yet their forceful effect. But Voltaire's opinion of Shakespeare became more bitter in his later years. Then he complained regretfully to the

415

416 TRAGEDY: VOLTAIRE, CREBILLON, DUCIS

Academy that this " clown " whom he had introduced to the

French stage was likely to degrade and denationalize tragedy.

As regards poetry, Voltaire defends that cause against

Lamotte, Fontenelle and Montesquieu; and reacting against

their Philistinism, he actually swings the penduliun

"^ ^ back towards a respect for the Classical tradition

of form. The Age of Louis XIV was already endowed for him with that immutable and crystallized excellence which it pos- sesses in the eyes of every " Classical " critic down to our own times. Therefore Voltaire can see little or nothing before that period; the Middle Ages are indeed the Dark Ages, and the word " Gothic," until Chateaubriand, was held a term of re- proach. The Voltairian defense of poetry, then, is virtually a defense of Racine. Poetry is compact music. It requires rime and rules, and in the constraint of these the true artist reveals his force. Necessary elements of poetry are harmony, propor- tion and especially simplicity, which in the great genres should dispense with ornaments and wit. This self-denial Voltaire practices usually in his dramatic work.

Tragedy is the chief subject of his criticism, as it was the

most serious field of his imaginative efforts. To consider first

his Classical precepts, he urges Racinian technique

^^^^ ^ as regards the principal dramatic rules, the use of language and versification, the supremacy of the heart-interest. Love, fully depicted and not incidental to the subject, is the tragic passion -par excellence. Yet love should still be pre- sented as a weakness; and other natural affections — witness Andromaque and Merope — can also cause strong emotions. A distinction is made between the rules and the bienseances, the mere dramatic proprieties. The latter may vary, but the former are according to " good sense " and are fundamental. Voltaire is neo-classical in the narrow logic with which he upholds and intensifies the unities, as also in his theory of the " difficulte vaincue " — a sort of acrobatic idea that the harder the rime, the better the poet — and in his recommendation of a mannered artistry of language. This last he considers the principal method of outdoing, while elaborating, Racine and Corneille. It is " style " that leads to posterity, and verse, necessary for tragedy, constitutes its chief artistic beauty.

VOLTAIRE'S DRAMAS 417

As an innovator, Voltaire derives his ideas mainly from his observation of the English stage and from his personal liking for action. So he discusses and experiments with the use of crowds, with drawing blood on the stage, with ghosts, and generally with more apparatus and " business." The scene should be vast and even picturesque — though only in order better to display the beauty of sentiments and passions. A certain amount of terror may be admitted, the range of subjects should be extended — which he amply did — tragedy should still inspire the love of virtue and public good, to which he char- acteristically adds, " and the horror of fanaticism."

This body of literary theory scarcely shows Voltaire as an original or systematic critic. His doctrine is puristic and piecemeal, concerned more with details than with the total structure of creative ideas. And it is frequently vitiated by temporary conditions, by journalism or by jealousy of great names. These handicaps appear in the Commentaire sur Comeille, which " comments " almost to the exclusion of any broad criticism of that author. Yet Voltaire's judgments, often penetrating in detail and correct in taste, operated through his admirers to make him what he desired to be: the chief literary authority of the century. His criticism remains histor- ically important as typical of that century, as forcing the re- action towards traditional poetry, as establishing a curiosity about English literature, and particularly as prefacing the new elements in his own tragedies.

When it comes to the actual writing of plays, Voltaire is divided between his Classical allegiance and his desire to pre- sent stirring novelties. Through Shakespeare he ramaa g^pg forward towards Romanticism, but he is ever looking over his shoulder at Racine. He is essentially a dramatist of neo-classicism, more interesting historically than absolutely. Barring Zaire and one or two others, his plays have little intrinsic appeal today. But they remain the chief tragedies of the eighteenth century. The theater was certainly Voltaire's main ambition, as well as his great pride and passion. He was always ready for amateur theatricals, he discovered and promoted professional talent and he wrote inordinately. He is credited with fifty-three plays, over half of which are trage-

418 TRAGEDY: VOLTAIRE, CREBILLON, DUCIS

dies, offering much variety of subjects and scenery. He uses nearly twenty different coimtries and periods — Greece and her dependencies, Biblical lands, Rome of course, Africa and America, several phases of the Orient and of France. In this respect and in the details of his subjects rather than in their general themes, he broadened the limits of tragedy, which he also romanticized in the directions of intrigue and action. These features will appear from a consideration of his chief plays.

(Edipe (1718) made Voltaire's reputation. The subject is that of the Greek tragedians — the son who has unwittingly slain his father and wedded his mother. The play *^* is neo-classical in two respects: the taste for horrors, for parricide and fratricide particularly, was just being fostered anew by Crebillon; and the heart-interest, overdone by the sentimental Campistron, demanded the introduction, in (Edipe, of some love-affair. So Voltaire provided the middle-aged Jocaste with a middle-aged lover and spoiled what is otherwise a well-written and moving drama. A few other, inferior trage- dies preceded the visit to England. Returning, Voltaire soon shows the effects of this new interest, possibly in his Brutus (1730), and certainly in his imitations of Shakespeare (La Mart de Cesar and Zaire, 1732). It is a question of transposing Eng- lish heroics according to French taste. The first two plays are political tragedies, in which an effort is made to deal greatly with the interests of state. But Voltaire never quite succeeded in this effort and his two dramas, as usual, are important mainly for their minor novelties: shifts of scene, senators in their robes of state, Caesar's blood-besprinkle'd corpse, many- voiced conspiracies and crowds.

The one unquestionable masterpiece, the happiest combina- tion of old and new tendencies, is ZaJire. It is the only play by ,, 2ajje >i Voltaire still acted, and it shows an unusual depth and tenderness. For once the author has really steeped himself in his story and characters. The latter are living and sympathetic figures; the former, romantic intrigue though it be, still stirs and seizes with permanent appeal. In fact, the imiversal qualities of Classic tragedy here make their final sincere appearance, while the depiction of the chivalry and Christianity of the crusaders is a distinct innovation. The sub-

VOLTAIRE'S DRAMAS 419

ject of the play is sacred and profane love. Zaire must choose between the claims of patriotic religion, as personified in her father, and her love for the sultan Orosmane, in whose palace she has long been held captive. Becoming jealous of Zaire's fondness for her brother (a typical meprise) , Orosmane imitates Othello by slaying his lady-love and himself. But our interest is less in mistakes and recognition-scenes than in the humanity of the emotions and the characters. Zaire is a charming heroine, and her father, the aged Lusignan, though episodic in his appearance, makes an extraordinary effect of virility and idealism.

Alzire (1736) carries the scene to Peru and depicts the struggle between the cruel Spaniards and the unfortimate chil- dren of the Incas. The author exhibits his usual bril-

II Alwire "

liancy in the treatment of this attractive novelty, but the action is more clever than probable. Also the Peruvians talk too much like the philosophes. In his maneuvres concern- and ing Mahomet ou le Fanatisme (1742), Voltaire

"Mahomet" flattered the Pope into accepting the dedication of a work which contains several veiled attacks on Christianity. Le Fanatisme is the truer title, for the personage of Mahomet is traduced historically, whereas his fanaticism and that of his proselytes is much to the fore. This is Voltaire's first big mani- festo against intolerance. He seeks to demonstrate that the vice is horrible and that it takes a kind of Tartuffe to be a religious leader.

Mon triomphe en tout temps est fonde sur I'erreur.

Among Mahomet's own errors may be counted his improbable self -revelation to an enemy; it is also unlikely that all the vir- tuous people should, without knowing it, be members of one family, for their ultimate disaster. Mahomet is not a perfect play, but it is interesting because of its philosophe leanings.

Merope (produced 1743) closes the series of Voltaire's rela- tively first-class tragedies. He now returns to the classics, ,, , ^^ mingling the Greek influence with that of the erope Italian Maffei, to whom he owes his best strokes. A mother, trying to avenge her son, almost slays him by mis- take; and then, to rescue him, she almost marries his would-be

420 TRAGEDY: VOLTAIRE, CREBILLON, DUCIS

assassin. Voltaire portrays maternal love with fair success, but not with the power and penetration shown in Andromaque. In comparison, Merope seems cold and not sufl&ciently stirring, whereas, since maternal love is the only passion depicted, it should be all the more vehement. But simplicity and con- centration are for once attained, the language is more carefully chosen, and the construction more satisfactory than usual. Oi all Voltaire's tragedies this play suggests best the feeling of an- cient doom. Semiramis is significant chiefly as reviving the ghost of Hamlet. Of later tragedies, we need mention only the poig- nant sacrifice of L'Orphelin de la Chine (patriotism versus parental love) ; and the resuscitation of chivalry again in Tan- crede, Voltaire's last success. All his principal tragedies belong to the period before the visit to Frederick. After his establish- ment at Ferney, Voltaire shows less regard for straight drama and more for philosophic propaganda. This element widely affects and usually damages his theater; for the tragedie philosophique generalizes its thought, even to the degree of be- coming cold and lifeless.

Voltaire's dramatic deficiencies are due partly to the spirit of the age — neo-classicism and " philosophic livery " — partly to the nature of the man and the way he wrote. The majority of the tragedies are hastily and feverishly composed. External events hindered concentra- tion and meditation. The failure to attain unified force and excellence is revealed in plot, characterization and style. The first is often a matter of ingenious invention, rather than true creation. Voltaire is fond of painful family situations. He deals with such themes as parricides and dreadful loves, equally dread- ful hates, unhappy wives and unfortunate daughters. Voltaire reminds us of Crebillon in the incessant use made of recog- nition— unlikely incognitos, followed by family reunions, "la voix du sang" suddenly calling out; and of "meprise," the suspension of events through somebody's improbable blindness. These devices are not according to Racine, yet otherwise the form adheres closely to the old Classical lines, and the plots are much hampered by the conventional rules. Voltaire's per- sonal limitations are seen especially in his depiction of characters, who are seldom strongly conceived and individualized. They are

CREBILLON 421

remembered, if at all, rather as generalizations than as people. A few of the women escape this censure, but the majority of the characters lack depth and psychological truth, as their actions lack inevitability. They are not objective enough; they are all more or less Voltaire, talking as he talks, thinking as he thinks. They have distinction, but they lack life. The same tendency exists in his style. He aimed at the style noble under all circiunstances. The care for expression was, in theory, the main thing with Voltaire. He is apt to build a play around its purple passages, and he lacks sustained force. Also, in copying his predecessors, Voltaire tries to weave the embroidery that he recommends, and the product is patchwork. A hemistich of Racine is completed by a banality, a metaphor from Corneille jars with a neo-classic abstraction. At best, Voltaire sought to fuse these elements into a monotonous elegance, a pale poetry that is seldom natural, falling into rhetoric and vagueness.

His more positive merits are that generally he keeps up the dignity, as he strove to keep up the artistry of tragedy; that his language can sometimes charm our tastes by its reminiscent and suggestive brilliance; that he has written certain fine scenes of tenderness and passion ; that he can impart a vivacious color to exotic subjects; above all, that he is rich in dramatic constructions, surprises, sudden coups de theatre and reversals, imbroglios, trenchant solutions of the Gordian knot. He provided more for the eye, more movement and " spectacle," than any one before him. He lacked not so much tragic skill as the tragic soul, the quality of high serious- ness.

Much of the romantic side of Voltaire is akin to the work of his predecessor, Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon, whose lurid and unsubstantial melodramas were in great favor during the first part of the century. He represents, however, but a special point in the development of which Voltaire has exhibited the final leisurely curve. The work of Crebillon includes eleven titles, the most significant being Atree et Thyeste (1707) and Rhadamiste et Zenobie (1711). He keeps thoroughly to the conventional form of tragedy, but within that form his talent displays itself in several directions. Mistaken identity, recogni- tions, and tangled family relations constitute nearly the whole of

422 TRAGEDY: VOLTAIRE, CREBILLON, DUCIS

Crebillon's dramatic system. He was credited, above all things, with stimulating terror, as in his strongest, most " atrocious " play, Atree et Thyeste. This tragedy treats the old subject of the inimical brothers. Thyeste has carried off the wife of Atree, and Atree henceforth lives only for vengeance, endeavoring to use for that purpose the (unknown) son of Thyeste. When Crebillon adds the element of Thyeste's daughter, who is un- wittingly in love with the son, he furnishes all the data for a typical drama of his school. An extra horror was the cup of filial blood which was too much for neo-classical taste. But the play is written with power and concentration. Rhadamiste et Zenobie is even more illustrative. The subject has close analogies with Racine's Mithridate. The heroine (disguised, of course) is loved by a whole family, who have been chiefly occupied with murdering her own. There are swelling speeches and occasional inspiration, but the drama is merely melodrama, with practically no truth or life. Crebillon has little depth; he appeals mainly to our ciu"iosity or our shocked sensibilities.

The effort to combine new thrills with old traditions was con- tinued by Jean-Frangois Duels, who worshiped Shakespeare by the side of Voltaire. An excellent family man and a """* man of feeling, Ducis thought of himself as a " wild

bird " and a rugged oak. His true character and the compulsions of his period appear strikingly in his adaptations of Shakespeare — the first, after Voltaire, that were offered on the French stage, which they held successfully for two generations. Proceeding from partial translations of Shakespeare, Ducis binds and com- presses him into the Classical strait-jacket. The results are ludicrous for English readers, but they give a most informing idea of eighteenth-century requirements. In general, since the unity of time is for the most part preserved, the action is much foreshortened, the list of characters is reduced by half, neo- classic verbiage replaces Shakespeare's lines, and his great per- sonages become shadowy and abstract. As novelties, Ducis freely shifts the scene, shows early gropings after setting and stage-directions, and reflects two tendencies peculiar to the prog- ress of the century: long " philosophic " moralizings and a mild- mannered sensibUite which prefers happy endings. Of his half- dozen versions, we may mention Hamlet (1769), Le Roi Lear

DRAMA UNDER THE REVOLUTION 423

(1783), and Othello (1792). In this Othello there is talk about liberty and equality, a tendency conspicuous in the plays — also contemporary with the Revolution — of M.-J. Chenier, the brother of the poet. Ducis and Chenier represent the last stage of declamatory tragedy. But the Revolution, which changed so much, hardly affected dramatic form. The old Classic tragedy was still played before the red-capped Terrorists and even before the grenadiers of the Empire. That is why the vogue of the three men treated in this chapter lasted well into the nineteenth century and was superseded only by the full advent of Romanticism.

CHAPTER II COMEDY AND DRAME

The importance of the theater in eighteenth-century life can scarcely be exaggerated.^ Amateur theatricals were the rage among the upper bourgeois and aristocratic classes. Significance The " Theatre de la Foire " was the folk-theater for of Comedy popular entertainments. The two regular establish- ments, the Theatre-Frangais and the Theatre-Italien (as re- vived by the Regent) rivaled each other in exhibiting the works of the chief playwrights. Comedy is a living form, echoing the manners, ideas and conflicts of the time. It is usually satiric, whether in the lighter vein of Regnard and Piron or in the deeper, more universal satire of Lesage and Beaumarchais. The last two writers are the greatest of their age in this field. The plays of other men, bounded by the conventionalities of the form and of the epoch, yet depict that epoch with more super- ficial variety than can be found in any other genre. The socio-historical value of comedy is then to be added to its fluctuating literary merit.

On the threshold of the century are found several transition writers who continue Moliere as regards the comedy of manners, of characters, or simply of plot. Regnard (1656- Regnard j^^g^ stands for gay intrigue, partly derivable from

the old gaulois comedy in its free farcical wit. Regnard carries the comedie-farce to a high degree of classical finish. He is essentially a fun-maker, and his two main qualities are verve and gaiety. His Folies amoureuses and his Joueur show that he took neither love nor gambling very seriously. His master- piece is Le Ligataire universel (1708), which resembles Le Malade imaginaire. A hypochondriac seems to be dead and his would-be heirs combine to seize his property, when he astonishes them by coming out of his lethargy. As in so many plays of

• See above, Bk. I, Ch. III. 424

DANCOURT AND LESAGE 425

the period, the impudent rapacity of master and valet seemed natural enough to author and audience. Regnard is merely amusing, not original, and not a master either of the comedie de mceurs or the comedie de caracteres.

These two chief kinds of Molieresque comedy were con- tinued by others. There had been some suggestions of them in the work of Dancourt (1661-1725). His titles — Danco j^^^ Agioteurs, Les Bourgeoises de qualite, as well

as those which deal with mills and fairs and harvests — show his concern with the middle and lower classes, which he describes in good realistic prose. His sketches have little variety or invention in plot, but they exhibit well the decadence of manners toward the end of Louis XIV's reign; actual figures and events of the time lend some interest to Dancourt's second- rate art. His best play is the Chevalier a la mode (1687) ; it deals with the scrapes of an unprincipled gallant who mingles audaciously two kinds of " affairs " — financial and amorous.

The greatest writer of this transition period is Lesage,^ whose Turcaret really equals Moliere's creations. It was pre- ceded (1707) by Crispin rival de son maitre, which ^^^^^ combines a good plot with a new presentation of the

perennial valet of comedy. Crispin, instead of supporting his master, rivals him in courtship, less for the sake of the girl than for her dowry and his consequent prestige. Lesage also wrote a great deal for the Theatre de la Foire, an unliterary exercise which at least taught him easy manipulation of intrigue.

Turcaret (1709) is not, however, primarily a plot-comedy,

but a serious satire on manners and an original treatment of

a new and lasting type. This is the traitant, the " Tuicaret " ^ j i- >

unscrupulous financier of the period, who lives by

extortion and tries to shine as a spender and a lover. Like

Tartuffe, this hypocrite is in the end humiliated by various

revelations. His character and environment are built up by a

series of firm sure touches, from the excellent exposition through

the rounded denouement. Turcaret appears as self-important,

grasping, short-sighted and foolish in his love-making, shrewd

and cruel in business and family matters. Lesage was offered

a large bribe to suppress this portrait of a very actual type,

' For biographies of Lesage and Marivaux, see following chapter.

426 COMEDY AND DRAME

the kind of financier, who, like the Jew of the Middle Ages, seems to have been used and scorned in abnost equal pro- portions.

The picture of society which Lesage presents is not flattering. There is a mixture of classes and ambitions, a feverish desire Social ^°^ luxury and money, and a callous lack of any

Depiction ideahsm, particularly in affairs of the heart. There is not a single attractive character in the play, because the women who fool Turcaret are little better than himself, and the servants, as usual, cynically pull the strings. But this masterpiece pro- duces no such impression of conventionality as we find in Regnard and even in Marivaux. It is a genuine expression of life in the domain of high comedy, sustained by a bold realism of colorful language, an authentic crisp wit and a definite air of modernity. The last quality is probably due to the fact that Turcaret is the first of the famous money-plays which later figure so notably in dramatic history. Balzac, Augier and Dumas fils are the true successors of Lesage in this respect.

Nericault Destouches (1680-1754), the last of the transi- tional group, brought from England a certain gift for portray- ing eccentric characters. He stands, indeed, for an es cue es attempt to resuscitate the comedy of character in a serious style; but he also possesses traits which foreshadow the sentimental comedie larmoyante and the moralistic drame? His characters thus tend to become lay-figures, and his plots, though not badly conducted, contain a good deal of false romanticism, depending on recognition, virtue in danger, virtue rewarded, and so on. The play which marks the advent of the drame is Le Philosopke marie (1727) ; but the best comedy of Destouches is rather Le Glorieitx (1732), where the haughty nobleman is brought low through a series of blows to his pride. " Mon fils est glorieux," says the forgiving father, " mais il a le coeur bon." Intermarriages between classes are again fea- tured here, with much moralizing thereupon.

As the century wears on, the forms of comedy become more Kinds of diverse and numerous. To the staple kinds — the Comedy comedy of character, of manners and of intrigue —

are added not only the hybrid comedie larmoyante, but such

* See end of the chapter.

VARIOUS COMEDIES 427

forms as the satirical comedy of personalities (Voltaire's L'Ecossaise) , the philosophe comedy of propaganda (Marivaux' L'lle des Esclaves) , finally the political comedy of social revolt (Beaumarchais' Manage de Figaro). On the fringe of the reg- ular drama are to be found marionette plays, coarse burlesques and especially light opera, which in the works of Favart grew as to importance and influence. As to content, esprit held the first place in drama, then came philosophic and social discussion, with the note of pathos as a poor third. Several single comedies, of individual merit and of illustrative value, may now be mentioned.

The satirical and personal kind is well illustrated by Palissot's Les Philosophes (1760), a group which is directly attacked and Various Plays ^^^° misrepresented in the play. Sedaine's Philo- and Playlets sophe sans le savoir (1765), which some consider a drame, seeks to combine the two ideals of " philosophy " and good sense in a pleasant and moderate fashion. The sage here is M. Vanderk, a modest and mercantile nobleman who can make his points — for instance, that personal worth is superior to rank — without sermonizing. The thought is embodied in the action, the scenes are climactic, and the characters are true to them- selves and to their respective conditions in life. The play is indeed a new and true creation, a model of artistic simplicity and measure, though on a small scale. Piron's sophomoric La Metromanie (1738) appeals to young writers rather than to the general public. It is a question of a poet's mania for verse and of the misfortunes which befall his sjonpathetic personality. But the play has a fine natural style and the wit which was always Piron's gift. Cresset's Le Mechant (1745) is equally well written and with a more vigorous touch; it is a genuinely Classical comedie de caracteres in art and traditioUi The " mechant," a type who cannot bear to see other people happy, is duly punished in the end. Moliere is Cresset's master, but his playlet, like Le Glorieux and Le Joueur, is a delicate rather than a deep portrait.

The comedy of eighteenth-century society, together with the century's conception of art, is represented in a new way by Mari- vaux, who definitely leaves the tradition of Moliere Manvaux ^^^ -^ ^ga^j-er Racine in his treatment of love. The fig- ures of Marivaux are well matched with the landscapes of Wat-

428 COMEDY AND DRAME

teau. Delicate ladies and submissive gallants promenade through a " Carte de Tendre," occupying themselves with a subtle form of love-making often expressed in predeux language. The servants echo the demeanor and the style of their masters. There is some- thing thin and unsubstantial about these " spiderweb " comedies, as Voltaire called them, in which ghosts of the old regime seem to be treading an eternal minuet. Marivaux gives the illusion of movement without much moving. His plots are slight, consisting of a sort of hurdle race, an accmnulation of ob- stacles to the comse of true love. The chief plays all repeat the same theme — " Teternelle surprise de I'amour " — and it is their weakness that the difficulties would dis- appear at any moment, if the right word were spoken by the right person. This comedy of cross-piu-poses is exemplified by Le Jeu de I'amour et du hasard (1730), where servants are disguised as masters and vice versa ; but each person falls in love according to his or her proper rank, and the deferred revelation of the true status of each constitutes the only suspense in the plot. Le Legs (1736) shows a more plausible strife between the pocket- book and the heart; but its action is maintained simply because the timid marquis can scarcely believe that the countess loves him. A similar situation api>ears in Les fausses Confidences (1737). These three are the best-known plays of Marivaux and are still kept in the repertory. They incorporate the tradi- tion of the new Theatre-Italien, where most of Marivaux was gracefully represented. They are all, in form, conventional prose comedies, with Classical balance of characters and interests. But they have certain conspicuous merits of their own.

" Quand I'amour parle," says one character, " il est le maitre; et il parlera." He speaks at length, with a good deal of refined " marivaudage," containing both singularity and sen- sibility, which the author partly distilled from his associations with Fontenelle, Lamotte and the salon of Mme de Tencin. It is nearly always a nascent timid love that Mari- vaux portrays. Its language is respectful and gallant, and without passion, and with considerable delicacy.

Distinction The women, like Racine's heroines, are well ana- lyzed and differentiated. These Sylvias and Aramintes, as well as the lesser coquettes, are possessed of undeniable charm,

BEAUMARCHAIS 429

and charm in the long run is the master quality of Marivaux. He thereby rises superior to his failings and seems to reflect the fragile graces of his century with a peculiar manner and distinction. And he is a capable artist within his formal range. He really founds the modern drawing-room comedy, as it is later carried on in the work of Musset and of Pailleron.

Pierre Caron de Beauinarchais (1732-1799) was not only the most talented dramatist of his age, but he led a life closely Life of associated with his brilliant comedies. Like his

Beaumarchais own Figaro, Beaimiarchais was a veritable jack-of- all-trades. Of humble birth, he appears in turn as a watch- maker, a harpist, a successful candidate for court favor, the hus- band of wealthy widows, and always a master of intrigue. He was^sent on a private mission to Spain. He aided the French Government by adventurous plotting in Holland and Austria. He furnished arms to the American colonists and found difficulty in getting pajnment. He established a society of dramatic authors and published the first complete edition of Voltaire. He was famous for his law-suits, which he turned, in his eagerly devoured Memoires, to the confusion of the new courts of justice. Always in hot water as regards the authorities and his own finances, he was about to find a secure position when the Revolution over- threw everything. Unscrupulous, ambitious, energetic, gay and kind-hearted, Beaumarchais is one of the most fascinating and representative of eighteenth-century celebrities.

Literature with him, as with his counterpart Sheridan, is quite incidental to the adventure of life. But he had a natural gift for the drama of action, and his two great plays are alive with the personality of their author. These are the Barbier de Seville (1775) and the Mariage de Figaro (1784). The Barbier, which originated from the comic-opera plots of its own time, finds today its natural complement in the music " Le Barbier °^ Rossini. Its plot and most of its characters are de Seville" conventional in outline but are vivified by the dex- terity, wit and style of Beaumarchais. It is simply a question of conspiracies and disguises, of a jealous guardian, a pretty ward, a romantic lover and a helpful barber. The characters, however, are cleverly matched, and the scenes — for instance, the famous lesson scene — are conducted with dash and daring.

430 COMEDY AND DRAME

Beaumarchais' style is original, diversified and witty in the extreme. Above all, he created a new and immortal character in Figaro, who has been called the " legataire universel of all the valets of comedy " — Mascarille, Crispin and the rest. He is also, in his unabashed gaiety and his quick resourcefulness, the incarnation of Beaumarchais himself. A self-reliant indi- vidual, he is already heard murmuring against various social abuses.

This last feature is much more pronounced in the Manage de Figaro, which though written (1778) shortly after the Barbier, "Le Manage was long withheld from the stage. It is here that de Figaro " Beaumarchais turns comedy into " universal satire," into diatribes and insinuations against the lawyers, the courtiers and the privileged classes generally, who, says Figaro, are often inferior to their servants. The characters in the former play reappear, after the passage of time, and the reason for the bar- ber's bitter spirit is that the Count, already weary of his wife, now wishes to seduce Figaro's fiancee. The main plot concerns the outwitting of the libertine by Figaro and the women; they use " double-crossing," double disguises and hiding-places, since Beaumarchais could not be content with simplicity. This play is highly elaborated and constructed on a very large scale as regards the number both of personages and of incidents. For example, there is the figure of Cherubin, another new type on the stage, a precocious youth who is in love with every woman and embroils everything. There is the plaintive Marceline, a lady really belonging to the comidie larmoyante. There is the act which takes off the courts of justice, as in Rabelais. There is the final garden scene, containing various incognitos and coups de theatre, a bewildering accumulation of incidents and people. All this is far from the reduced size of the regular Classical comedy. In action, the play lives up to its subtitle of " la folle joumee." In characterization, the rather cynical de- velopment of the persons whom we already know is well marked, and the new figures are equally living. The language is swift and brilliant, even more elliptical, \ taking more for granted than in the Barbier. The Mariage " sounds the tocsin of the Revolution," and when one reads Figaro's great monologue in the last act, the wonder is that the play could have been repre-

LA CHAUSSEE 431

aented at all. For the old order here seems dissolving in im- morality, and the new order has insolently announced itself in this comedy, which is on the whole the most remarkable dra- matic production of the centmy. It stands at the confluence of all genres, great and small, and is a resume of the period, on both the dramatic and the political sides.

The two remaining dramatic forms, of little artistic worth, but of considerable historical importance, are the comedie larmoyante and its successor the drame bourgeois. The former is thus defined by M. Lanson:

La comedie larmoyante est un genre intermediaire entre la comedie et la tragedie, qui introduit les personnages de condition privee, vertueux ou tout pres de I'etre, dans une action serieuse, grave, parfois pathetique, et qui nous excite a la vertu en nous attendrissant sur ses infortunes et en nous faisant applaudir a son triomphe. La Chaussee en fut I'inventeur.

Two plays of La Chaussee may be taken as typical of this

kind. In La fausse Antipathie (1733), two married people

who barely knew and heartily disliked each other

a aussee ^^ g^.^^^ ^^^^g^ again after a long separation. They

do not recognize each other until the " voice of nature " speaks. They are finally reunited after various obstacles and much weeping. The romantic sentimentality of this play pleased the women, and the same quality won a much greater success for the Prejuge a la mode of 1735. The aristocratic " prejudice " is that a husband must not admit any fondness for his wife. La Chaussee's husband is not really indifferent; he simply does not wish to seem ridiculous about his wife until jealousy conquers his pose. The wife is " vertueuse et sensible " and naturally loves her htisband. The interest of the play is that it reflects a social condition which it helped ameliorate. La Chaussee " ttu'ned the woman of the world into a mere woman," capable of serious love. Among his other plays, of less conse- quence, are Melanide and L'Ecole des meres. His chief imitator, curiously enough, was Voltaire, who though he "^ officially scorned the genre, admitted the mixture of tragic and comic, and tried to affect the public in L'Enfant jyrodigue and Nanine — the latter a sort of Pamela. These works are scarcely successful, and what is more extraordinary is

432 COMEDY AND DRAME

that Voltaire, in pure comedy, is not successful at all. Too much propaganda and egotism impede his portrayal of char- acter, and his natural wit seems to benefit him little as a dramatist.

Other characteristics of the comedie larmoyante may be men- tioned. Even with private domestic life is mingled a shoddy romanticism of mistakes, disguises, recognitions and misfortunes. There are practically no villains, since everybody must be vir- tuous— hence the need for the above devices. The action is slowly and awkwardly conducted. The characters are seldom set on their feet, since moral maxims replace analyses of real people. The depiction of manners is slight and secondary. The real importance of these plays is in their subjects; they show the vogue of discussions about morality and virtue; the pleasures of sensibility ; the power, in love and life, attributed to sentimental goodness ; much talk about " nature " and the famous " voix du sang " which causes recognition between long-lost relatives. In the drama as a form of art, La Chaussee has scarcely a place; but he partly expresses contemporary ideas and he paves the way for Diderot's bolder theories.

Diderot stands for realism on the stage, as in most of his other work.* His various Entretiens on the drama (1757 f.) make an Theories of i^iportant addition to criticism. His chief prin- Diderot ciples are: (1) that Classical tragedy is dead and

should be replaced by an intermediate form, serious in tone ; (2) that subjects should be drawn from everyday bourgeois life; (3) that this life is best represented as a matter of social status or " condition " ; (4) that prose is better than poetry for domestic drama; (5) that pantomime, tableaux and other aids to action should be freely used. The last three points represent some advance on La Chaussee. The result will be the drame bourgeois in its various gradations and with its various nomenclature (comedie serieuse, etc.). The importance of this theory is that it came fully into its own through the work of nineteenth-century Realists.

But the drame bourgeois itself, whether handled by Diderot or Beaumarchais, whether due to the English influence (transla- tions of Edward Moore and of Lillo) or changing under the in-

' See Bk. IV, Ch. III.

THE SOCIAL DRAMA 433

fluence of Revolutionary propaganda, is of little artistic signifi- cance. As a social and historical fact, however, since sevferal The Drame hundred of these drames were produced, the' form Bourgeois has its importance: it shows the growth of bourgeois class-consciousness and it becomes a vehicle for philosophes and reformers. Fresh feelings and ideas are there, but they are poorly expressed. Sensibility, morality, and pseudo-romantic intrigue still dominate and thwart artistic composition. Per- sistent twaddle, feeble action, deficient observation and charac- terization deprive the drame bourgeois of the necessary dramatic elements.

CHAPTER III FICTION: LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PREVOST^

It has been said ^ that the whole history of fiction shows the evolution from the impossible, through the improbable and the Pro ress in probable, to the ' lSevitaT)le. If this be true, the this Period transition in France from the improbable to the probable is nearly connected with the transition from the seyen-^ teenth to th^ eighteenth century. The former age barely laid the foundation for the modern " psychological " novel and the novel of manners; the latter saw a very considerable develop- ment in these and other kinds. The seventeenth century had rather frowned upon fiction as a light feminine genre not prac- ticed by the ancients; in the eighteenth, we first find professional novelists of repute, and most of the important writers produced fiction of one sort or another.

The first great writer of the realistic roman de mceurs was Alain-Rene Lesage (1668-1747), the author of Gil Bias. Lesage bridges the two epochs, passing his formative years Lesage ^^^ producing his early masterpieces under Louis

XIV. His Breton birth and rearing have been held responsible for the vein of sturdy independence which marks his character. He stands on his own as a man of letters, seeking no patronage from the aristocracy, whom he freely criticizes. Educated in a Jesuit college at Vannes, he acquired there a wide knowledge of the ancients, whose cause he espoused in the Quarrel. Like so many others he came to Paris to study law, a profession which he soon abandoned for literature. It is worth noting that he married a girl of Spanish descent. He led a modest bourgeois life, not mingling in society nor seeking admission to the Acad- emy ; but he came in contact with actors, authors and apparently

> On seventeenth-oentury fiction, see Part II, Bk. Ill, Ch. I and Bk. IV, Chi; on other eighteenth-century novels, see Part III, Bk. II, Ch. II (Voltaire), Bk.IV, Ch. Ill and Bk. V, Ch. I (Diderot, Rousseau); for the plays o{ Lesage and Marivaux, see preceding chapter.

' By Professor Brander Matthews.

434

LESAGE'S NOVELS 435

financiers, and his most pungent satire is directed against these classes. He cut something of a figure in the cajes, where free discussion was allowed. In his old age he retired to Boulogne, where he died.

The best works of Lesage are surrounded by a mass of hack- writing. He translated Spanish novels before writing his own, and even after Gil Bias he wrote three inferior romances, largely imitated from the Spanish. Thus it is no wonder that Spanish originals have been found for Le Diable Boiteux (1707) and for a part of Gil Bias. The former story uses the framework of Guevara's El Diablo cojuelo: in each book the devil obliges the hero by unroofing houses and by displaying the lives of the in- mates. But the roofs removed by Lesage are Mansard roofs, his , « Le Diable revelations are essentially Parisian, and this consti- ' Boiteux" tutes the main interest of the story. People were aheady getting a taste for actuality through the drama, through Dufresny (who anticipates the Lettres persanes) and particu- larly through the increasing editions of La Bruyere's Caracteres. So the contemporary portraits and events, the scarcely veiled scandals and anecdotes of Le Diable Boiteux, as well as its crisp style and wit, immediately ranked Lesage as a successful author.

The same characteristics, as well as a similar looseness of

composition, appear in Gil Bias, which is a far greater book.

It is in fact a world-book, through the weight of Gil Bias " ; D o

its influence and the variety of its readers, and

it has found even more favor abroad than in France. To illus- trate, the history of the English novel, from Fielding to Dickens, could hardly be written without some reference to Gil Bias. Its own origins are clear: it is in the tradition of the Spanish picaresque romance or rogue-novel; it is also a road-novel, in that it often narrates perambulations and adventures in the open; and it underlies the modern novel of manners, using a Spanish veil to describe and satirize French people and con- ditions. The work was issued in three sections at widely separated dates (Parts I and II, in 1715; III, in 1724; IV, in 1735), and thus covers the social history of a whole epoch — the decay of Louis XIV, the Regency, and the ministry of Fleury. The first two parts deal more with private life, the last two with political matters and the world at large.

4.36 FICTION: LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PREVOST

The " question de Gil Bias " concerns the extent of its in- debtedness to Spanish sources. Briefly, one-fi.fth of the book, Sources and especially in its first part, is freely imitated from Composition the Vida del Escudero Marcos de Obregon, by Vicente Espinel. There are also borrowings from other picaresque novels and still other sources. These partial plagiarisms do not seriously impair the original force and attractiveness of Lesage's treatment. A more serious blot is his lax method of composition. Using the autobiographical form, then almost universal, he narrates the life and adven- tures of his hero, and since this is a road-novel he permits a " good deal of wandering about " in the plot. The author is little concerned with dramatic sequence: events are but loosely strung together by characters who happen to stroll in again, and too much use is made of chance and coincidence. There are two conclusions, very similar in circiunstances and effect, at the ends of Parts III and IV respectively. Moreover, Lesage insists on introducing unrelated episodes and inset stories to an extent which reminds one of the Arabian Nights, recently (1708 f.) translated into French. Let us relate, suggests the captain in the robbers' cave, " par quel enchainement d'aventures nous avons embrasse notre profession." Thus the reader is off on the trail of Sinbad and easily loses the thread of the main story.

But it may be urged that the story is not the thing with Lesage. He announces his intention to give a succession of Portraits anaP°'^^^^*®> ^ picture of true manners, and to Characters moralize therefrom. These three things he faith- fully carries out. The picture is vast and varied. French so- ciety, bearing Spanish names, appears in all degrees. Many pro- fessions and " humours " are displayed in the portraits of great ladies and ministers of state, of rogues and adventuresses, of doctors, financiers, comedians and authors. Against the last four types the satire of Lesage is particularly directed. The ^J " keys " indicate that Voltaire and Crebillon fils, Mme de Lam- bert and the actor Baron appear in suitable disguises. As a rule the author portrays low and middle-class life rather than the aristocracy; and rather than ideal or elevated characters he sets forth the " average sensual man." Such is the char-

LESAGE'S REALISM 437

acter of the unheroic hero himself. For Gil Bias is essentially an adaptable person, a chameleon who changes with his setting. Like the hero of Manon Lescaut, he begins his exploits at the age of seventeen, when moral instability is most excusable. He falls in with and reflects many milieux — from that of robbers and lackeys, bohemians and comedians, up to church and court circles. He adopts the vices and devices peculiar to each set, but it has been observed that he is gradually formed by the world and ends as a cautious steward of property. Among the other salient personages are such rascals as Don Rafael; the vain Archbishop of Granada; Laure, the pretty and piquante adventuress; and the immortal Doctor Sangrado, who bleeds and purges people to death.

If the adventures are imusual — and adventures mostly are —

the chief characters are probable and life-like, and the same is

true of their environment. Lesage's realism anti-

eaiism cipates the modern kind in that he makes much of

external things. " II voit et il fait voir." Local color appears picturesquely in the use of Spanish words and customs, and Lesage's descriptions generally are picturesque. Furthermore, he seeks the characteristic detail of each person, gives his appropriate physiognomy, gestures and costume. Gil Bias com- placently dons and describes his fine clothes. Money is fre- quently handled and in specific sums. People are seen walking, dressing, traveling and eating; they eat almost as much and as circumstantially as in Dickens; the motto of Lesage, says one critic, might be: " Je mange, done je suis." There is little description of nature, but interiors, such as the robbers' cave or employers' houses, are given with moderate detail. Cata- logues of concrete things are sometimes used, as well as other realistic devices.

Lesage's style is realistic in its simplicity and naturalness. He expresses himself easily, sometimes negligently, in every- ,day language. Though he was an "Ancient" and strews his book with classical allusions, as well as with abstract moral maxims, he is more like Voltaire in his short sentences, his light ironic touch and his general vivacity, especially in dia- logue. Wit he has at command, not in excess, and he condemns the precieux. His survey of human weaknesses is abundantly

438 FICTION: LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PREVOST

satirical, but seldom bitter and always clean. Like Moli^re, he has only the average and practical morality of experience. He lacks sentiment, elevation, enthusiasm, which qualities hardly belong to the realistic manner. Lesage is one of the most French of French authors, and Gil Bias, thoroughly es- tablished as a world classic, remains a most attractive and read- able book.

Pierre de Marivaux (1688-1763), as may be judged from his graceful plays, shone as one of the chief lights of the salons. His scintillating wit and preciosity were welcomed Marivaux ^^ -^^^ ^^ Lambert and Mme de Tencin. His character was amiable, and in spite of serious financial reverses, he had a reputation for charity. He was successful first through his comedies, particularly at the Theatre-Italien, less so at the Frangais, where cabals were formed against him. He also had difi&culties with Voltaire and the philosophic party. He be- longed to the school of the Moderns, while Fontenelle was among his best friends.

His two important novels are the Vie de Marianne (1731-41)

and Le Paysan parvenu (1735-36). They are both unfinished,

autobiographical in form, and, like Gil Bias, they

IS ic ion pgj^^g ^jjg j.jgg jjj fortune of the main character.

Marivaux also represents the novel of manners, but he sticks more closely than Lesage to average folk and to every-day happenings rather than adventures. He uses episodes freely and cares little for the action, which he impedes by abundant analyses, moralizings and subtleties. Thus to the roman de mceurs he adds features of the modern " psychological " novel. His picture of life is intensive rather than extensive. He lacks the broad grasp of Lesage.

Marianne, at fifty, chatters freely to a friend about her early life — how she was left an orphan in Paris, pursued by an old hypocrite and loved by a young lord, whom she manages finally to marry. This thin substance is filled out by inter- esting feminine revelations. Marianne frankly confesses and ,.„ . .. stages her wiles, coquetries and vanities. Retro- spectively, she appears as an " honest " girl, though candidly reckoning on her beauty and vivacity to improve her fortunee. She displays her charms, hand and foot, and her lover,

MARIVAUX'S NOVELS 439

hand and foot, is bound to her chariot. She is a creature of ad- dress and finesse, but her conversational style is allowed to in- clude certain subtleties of which Marivaux was more capable than Marianne. The author's main purpose is to study characters and passions, which heanalyses bothin theirmotives and consequences.

The counterpart to this work is Le Paysan parvenu. Here the arriviste is a handsome footman, who rises through the good "Le Paysan graces of ladies. Marriage is only one stage in his parvenu" ^career, which is attended by some very shady trans- actions; these are supposed to be offset by courage and generosity, as well as by an occasional scrupulousness. But this Jacob, as a person, is less acceptable than Marianne ; and the novel, in spite of showing more action and alertness, is an inferior composition. Marivaux, like Richardson, was at his best when sympathetically penetrating feminine psychology. There he could distinguish and differentiate ; accordingly, the two bourgeoises who fall in. < love with Jacob are among his cleverest successes. It has been said that Marianne herself personifies an epoch, typifying the reign of woman in society.

Marivaux's fiction has a good deal, though rather less than his drama, of the highly mannered style, to which the term Marivaux's " marivaudage " has been applied. This term may Qualities now be defined as a subtle preciosity of language and thought, the latter usually necessitating the former. But even where he has the choice, Marivaux prefers the deliberately elaborate to any simple expression. Wit and conceits and a " systematic refinement " of vocabulary make him the embodi- ment of the new precievx spirit for which the salons were respon- sible. Also he insists on drawing the last drop out of his analyses and putting down what everybody might have thought and said — a habit which makes him the Henry James of his day. The jyrec^ux effect is particularly visible in the IjOve-making of his plays, which was in accordance with the tradition. With an over-abundance of subtlety and wit, he must be granted a scintillating quality, an amiable irony and a gentle gaiety which help to relieve the strain. But " marivaudage " is best read in small doses. Merely as language, his style, if recherche and highly distilled, is elegant, pure and apparently facile. His prose is everywhere most characteristic of eighteenth-century

440 FICTION: LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PREVOST

refinement. As a moralist, he shows a " sensibility " which Le- sage has not, and a deeper understanding of what then passed as " virtue," as well as of the kind of gallantry that flourished in the hot-house atmosphere to which he was accustomed. But he has by no means the creative power of Lesage or of Prevost at his best.

Like Lesage, the Abbe Prevost (1697-1763) was a hardworking man of letters, honorably making his way by the varied products of his pen. His youth was stormy and irregular, revos Destined early for the church, he escaped into the

army for a time, probably experienced a deep love-affair, then for seven years sought rest and sanctuary in the order of the Benedictines. Wearying of their strictness, he again escaped, this time to England ; there he found his true vocation as a novel- ist and started his journal Le Pour et Contre (see Bk. II, Ch. IV). After more adventures in Holland, he finally (1734) settled in Paris, where he regularized his position with the church and be- came an unattached abbe. Modest, laborious, endowed with a lively sensibility, he won his place in Parisian society, being respected by Voltaire and received by Mme de Tencin.

Before coming to his fiction, a word should be said about Prevost 's miscellaneous writings. He helped the English Miscellaneous vogue not only by his journal, but by his excellent Works translations of Richardson's novels. These were

much admired by the French and started the new currents of sentiment which culminate in Rousseau. Prevost goes farther afield in the compilation called the Histoire generale des voy- ages. Here eighteenth- century exoticism is well displayed as a liking for remote scenes and primitive social conditions. Some- thing of the same trend, combined with a distinct taste for ad- ventm-e, appears in Prevost's long romances.

The romances have lived chiefly by their names: Les Memoires d'un homme de qualite, Le Doyen de Killerine, Cleveland. They jjjg seem now, in spite of some enthusiasts, hopelessly

Secondary old-fashioned, long-winded and "highly improb- omances able." It is the kind of improbability that especially hurts a novel, because it takes away from the effect of life and adds the effect of ridicule. The plots are full of wild events: murders, shipwrecks, dark deeds, sudden plunges and changes

PREVOST'S MASTERPIECE 441

of fortune. The composition is inferior and the psychology quite cloudy; but the romances have their importance as re- flecting one taste of the times and as forming the matrix in which is embedded the gem, Manon Lescaut. Many characteristics of the latter appear in Prevost's other works: the " dark coloring" of perpetual tragedy, the great place given to passion and feeling, the autobiographical method, the exotic wanderings and par- ticularly that romantic sense of fatality, of the mystery in life which the philosophes wholly lacked. " Les philosophes savaient tout sauf le je ne sais quoi " — and Prevost knew that.

Manon Lescaut is, in several respects, the masterpiece of the eighteenth century in fiction and is the first great modern novel "Manon °^ passion. It is among the most artistically com- Lescaut" posed, the most harmonized and unified of French novels, comparable in this respect to Flaubert's Madame Bovary. It first appeared (1731) as a sort of appendix to the Memoires d'un homme de qualite, but the usual elements of Prevost's fiction are here compounded according to a very dif- ferent recipe. In the ^rst place, Manon is quite short, written concisely and without episodes. In the second place, the action is not mere melodrama, but is dominated by the thoroughly conceived, the living and appealing characters of hero and heroine. Finally, the constant note of pathos is inherent in the story, and the treatment of the heart-interest is superb and inevitable. These varied excellences are probably due to the fact that Prevost himself had lived through a similar experience.

The story, though widely known, may be briefly set forth. The Chevalier des Grieux, a youth of seventeen, falls in love " at first sight " with the adorable Manon. The lovers escape to Paris and for a few weeks live together in ideal bliss. But Manon, though she is fond of the Chevalier, is still fonder of luxury. To keep their establishment going, she yields to the advances of an old nobleman, who causes Des Grieux to be re- covered and taken home by his father. The agony of the young lover presently yields to a resigned despair, whereupon he in- differently accepts a theological career. In the course of time, he appears at a public ceremony at Saint-Sulpice. Manon is among the audience and seeks an interview. " Perfide Manon ! Per- fide! " cries the young man, who is only too soon persuaded that

442 FICTION: LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PREVOST

her perfidy is skin-deep and that she really cared for him all the time. Again they elude their elders and find a cottage in the suburbs of Paris. Expenses accumulate, and under the tuition of Lescaut, Manon's rascally brother, Des Grieux becomes a card-sharper. In contrast to this character is Tiberge, the faithful friend to whom Des Grieux often has recourse. Through theft and fire, misfortunes overtake the lovers — and Manon is again ready to deceive the Chevalier with the old nobleman, her first " protector." But it seems better after all that the lovers and Lescaut should deceive and rob the old roue. He pursues them and has them shut up in different prisons, from which, employing the usual romantic devices, they presently escape. For a brief time they are again together and happy. Manon even discourages the suit of an Italian prince, but when the son of her first protector makes advances, she once more bids Des Grieux farewell. This would be the third betrayal, but now the Chevalier takes the upper hand and in a tre- mendous scene reproaches and persuades Manon to leave the yoimg nobleman. They attempt to deceive this youth, dally too long, and are once more arrested. Des Grieux is finally re- leased, but Manon is sent as a convict to America. There her lover accompanies her, both of them in great distress and poverty, and there at last he wins her whole heart for himself. But complications arise, the lovers must flee from New Orleans, and the story closes with their flight into the wilds, Manon's death, and her burial by her devoted and distracted Chevalier. It is apparent from the above that Prevost has purposely contrasted Des Grieux, who is ever faithful, with Manon, who becomes so only at the end of the story. This " rehabilitation " is due less to the inflaming power of love than to the Chevalier's long devotion and to the shared sorrows in which even Manon has lost her taste for joys. Thus the plot vmfolds a tragic accumu- lation of events, through which rides, even more tragically, the dominant master passion. The chief characters, with all their weaknesses — they are so very young — are exceedingly sym- pathetic. Manon says little and is scarcely described. But her living figure is placed among the Helens and the Guineveres of immortal legend. Absorbing as the book is in its endless pathos and strong in its delineation of love, the tone is Classically re-

DEVELOPMENT OF THE NOVEL 443

strained, and uncontrollable passion is still viewed as a frailty rather than a virtue.

Thus the novel as a gehre grew decidedly in favor and power during the eighteenth century. It assumed various forms, con- forming to changing circles and periods, rather Summary ^j^^^^ entering on a straightforward development. Realistic with Lesage, realistic and analytical with Marivaux, it becomes almost romantic in the sweet intensity of Prevost's masterpiece. Elsewhere, we shall see the latter strain continued and individualized in Rousseau's Nouvelle Heldise. In the meantime, such phUosophes as Voltaire had been using the short story for their own purposes. Finally, the scattered and form- less fiction of Diderot expresses mainly the exuberant naturalism of his temperament. Propaganda, passion and reality, the eighteenth century had known them all, aiid the nineteenth will prolong and partially straighten out the twisted skeinj

CHAPTER IV

POETRY

For the most part the eighteenth century does not shine m poetry, whether lyric or narrative. Voltaire can be credited

with art and talent, and Chenier with a genuine Two Features ^^^^i. ^ut apart from these we find throughout the century only third-rate writers. The chief interest in studying them is to observe how their artificial and graceful verse {vers de societe) reflects the manners of the time ; and how the English influence and the growth of the elegie led in the second half of the century toward some depiction of nature and emotion. But even in these attempts, mere elegance is the rule, lack of color and inspiration leaves us cold, and not until Chenier do we find any great poetry.

It is in light verse that the age is at its poetic best, and Voltaire is the main representative of this kind. We have

seen that, reacting against Lamotte and Fon- *°*° ® tenelle, Voltaire at least endeavored to put the writing of verse on an honorable and artistic plane. Lamotte's views about poetry were peculiar and bold; he simply tried to rationalize it into prose. His Dis- cours and prefaces show an ingenious and critical mind, which happens to be wrong in most of its decisions. Rationalism and a factual standpoint characterize his combative attitude during the last phase of the Quarrel (1714:-16). A modern of the Moderns, Lamotte rejects authority, despises Homer, and declares that reason alone is the judge of " truth." So the " true " language of poetry is prose: rime and rhythm are imessential, the thought- content is the real issue, though some vivacity in images and style is not out of place. Consistent with his paradoxes, Lamotte held that all verse of his contemporaries — and of Racine as well — would lose nothing by being turned into prose. He was

• For Voltaire, see above, Bk. II, Ch. 11. 444

MINOR POETRY 445

right as to the majority of his contemporaries, but wrong as to Racine. And his attempts to bear out his theories resulted in a translation of the Iliad, which is certainly prosaic enough.

Lamotte did not win his main contention, but his and Fonte- nelle's objections to the " coarseness " of Homer and Theocritus are significant of the trend of the times. None of ig erae ^j^^ minor poets to be mentioned had any vital con- tact with nature or with antiquity. " Genius was rare and affectation common." It was a highly mannered age, and artifi- cial gallantry and veneer stamp its verse as well as its fashions. The grand gout and the controlled emotion of the seventeenth century are lacking, while a dwindling neo-classicism is even more conspicuous here than in tragedy. Mythological allusions appear with a wholly conventional effect, the language is colorless and much reduced in range, enthusiasm and passion are dis- countenanced. On the other hand, there is an abundance of esprit, of irony and piquancy coming suddenly to the fore — ^trick- ling, for example, through the verse which Voltaire and Bertin mingled with their correspondence and condensed in the epigrams of Piron —

Ci-^t Piron, qui ne fut rien,

Pas meme Academicien.

The epigram was, in fact, the one form to which the century could do justice, and its hard glitter, its diamond-like brilliance, are well represented by Piron, Voltaire and Lebrun. Much clever satire is found in verse as well as in prose. But satire alone will not support lyrical flights, of which there were very few. There was too little inner life and too much social form. Conventional epistles and odes, faded graces and facile rimes for albums are found in this boudoir poetry, which amiably pretends to wander among imaginary islands and temples, and presents ancient fig- ures making modem love.

The elegy, for instance, is not a poem of grief but of gallant love, inspired mainly by Ovid and Tibullus. The note of epi- curean libertinism appears very early, with Chaulieu, who be- longed to the Societe du Temple and encouraged the young Vol- taire. The Ejntres and the Baisers of Dorat continue this sen- sualism with a sort of frivolous effervescence. These masters of

446 POETRY

gallantry — La Fare, Dorat, Gentil Bernard — show nO idealism or faithfulness in their love-affairs. They frankly declare for inconstancy, on either side, as lending an added piquancy to amorous adventures. They mingle wit with their sensuality, as the later elegists try to mingle sentiment. Leonard and Colar- deau give rimed versions of the Temple de Guide, that youthful extravagance of Montesquieu. Gresset, who had a graceful talent, writes a mock-epic on a parrot (Vert-Vert). The Examples vindictive Lebrun shows some power and boldness in his would-be Pindaric odes. There are also the pretty fables of Florian, almost the last fabulist, and the odes and hymns of Lefranc de Pompignan, that solemn bore, whom Voltaire im- mercifully derided. A swarm of poetasters compose mythologi- cal tableaux or amorous trifles and describe their excursions to the country.

This last kind of subject has its interest, because it presently becomes associated with the so-called " genre descriptif," which Thomson jmd ^.imed at depicting country life. The English influ- Nature ence largely caused this change of base.'' Thomson's

Seasons were first translated in 1759 and were later freely adap- ted by Saint-Lambert, who induced a considerable vogue in the depiction of natture. Other Saisons followed, a series of Mois by Roucher, a poem on Les Jardins by Delille, who also wrote certain " Georgics " which put him in the front rank of wits. None of these men had any real nature-sense, such as was to be found in England. Saint-Lambert writes amateurishly of the country, as regards either its beauties or its labors, and keeps his eye on Paris most of the time. Roucher shows more personal feeling, and Delille, relatively speaking, had the best descriptive power and charm. But as a rule these writers are superficial and quite neo-classical in their verbiage, since it was still indecent to call a spade a spade, and since rhetoric was still more esteemed than truth. The importance of the movement is that it did to some extent combine with Rousseauism to for- ward the later Romantic interest in external nature.

Another popular English writer was Yoimg, whose Night Thoughts (translated 1769) promoted a certain taste for the pleasures of melancholy; while Macpherson's Ossian (tr. 1776 f.)

' See above, Bk. I, Ch. III.

WRITERS OF ELEGY 447

began to awaken a sympathy for ancient laments and misty land- scapes. It is rather startling to find the old regime, in its last young and days, addicted to meditations on solitude, death and Melancholy tombs. This tendency should not be over-empha- sized, but several poets undoubtedly express a rather poignant and meditative melancholy. In this they pave the way for Lamartine, while in their imfortunate lives and early deaths they offer parallels with Chatterton. Nicolas Gilbert, who died prematurely, is the best case of the poet-martyr. He had a somber enthusiasm, a kind of genius, a strong proud troubled soul. He was a rebel, inveighing against the tastes and abuses of the age. His talent was not wholly formed, showing awk- wardness in the midst of real power. The verses written just before his death —

Au banquet de la vie, infortune convive —

have been called the finest lyric of the century before Chenier. Malfilatre, who also died young and unformed, had lyric feeling and aimed for true poetic beauties. He shows grace in the ele- giac manner and some descriptive force in his Narcisse dans Vile de Venus. Finally, the unfortunate De Borinard and Leo- nard sound at times the melancholy note in idyll and elegy.

The elegy, indeed, which ran through most of the century, found its culmination and made its greatest impression in the work of Pamy. It seems significant that the three *™^ men who figured best in poetry on the eve of the

Revolution were all of exotic birth — Pamy and Bertin being natives of the Ile-de-Boiurbon and Chenier of Constantinople. Evariste Pamy (1753-1814) brought from his Creole birth and breeding a considerable capacity for feeling and expressing pas- sion. He was of lively but sensuous character, leading with his friend Bertin a gay military and social life, studded with various intrigues. The artistic results of these appear in the Poesies erotiques of 1778, of which the best are " elegies " in form. In spite of his exotic birth, Pamy had little feeling for nature and a frankly material view of love. But though a voluptuary he showed at any rate a certain freshness and eloquence in his ama- tory verses. He is neo-classical, without Chdnier's great sense of pagan beauty ; but he has facility and an apparent sincerity,

448 POETRY

and when abandoned by his mistress he writes with an almost passionate despair. Parny is the most harmonious of poets be- tween Racine and Lamartine. He suggested certain moods and measures to the latter poet, but the Creole's Eleonore is far from foreshadowing the Elvire of Lamartine, so greatly does Roman- tic and idealistic love differ from the eighteenth-century vari- ety. Eleonore is desired simply for herself or rather for the satisfaction she can give her lover; she has no spiritual aura, she is associated neither with religion nor with nature. Parny's best verses are these, Sur la Mart d'une Jerme FiUe.\

Son age echappait a I'enfance.

Riante comme rinnocence,

Elle avait les traits de rAmour.

Quelques mois, quelques jours encore,

Dans ce coeur pur et sans detour

Le sentiment allait eclore.

Mais le ciel avait au trepas

Condamne ses jeunes appas.

Au ciel elle a rendu sa vie,

Et doucement s'est endormie,

Sans murinurer centre ses lois.

Ainsi le sourire s'efface;

Ainsi meurt sans laisser de trace,

Le chant d'lm oiseau dans les bois.

The short life of Bertin was spent mostly in the company of Parny, whom he also followed in imitating ancient elegists. His Amours are more elaborate, less natural, and more artis- tically arranged than Parny's experiences. Sainte-Beuve says with truth that Parny was original and Bertin a ^"^ ° talented imitator. But the latter surpasses his friend

in depicting both sweethearts and scenery more clearly, giving some fascinating descriptions of the Ile-de-Bourbon, which Parny had neglected. His art is rich and resourceful for his time, but now seems rather too deliberate. Bertin has been called less of a lover than Parny and less of a poet than Ch^nier.

Andre Chenier (1762-94), the only great poet of his century, was born of a Greek mother at Constantinople. His brother, Marie-Joseph,' was well-known as a dramatist (see Bk. HI,

' Author of the Chant du Depart; the other great hymn of the Revolution, La Marseillaise (1792), is usually attributed to Rouget de I'lsle.

CHENIER 449

Ch. I) and went further in his Revolutionary sympathies than did Andre. The latter knew Greek from his cradle, and his fruit- ^jjg ful studies made of him a genuine representative of

Chenier the antique. As a boy he lived in Lan'guedoc and then

tried garrison life, for which he had no taste. About 1783 we_ find him in Paris, where he knew the sculptor David and others interested in the revival of antiquity. Chenier lived in London for a time, was unhappy there, undertook various travels and finally settled in Paris in 1790. His talent was now fully ma- tured, but his career was soon to be cut short. Enthusiastic at the " dawn " of the Revolution, he later revolted against the excesses of the Jacobins, attacked Robespierre and was con- demned to the guillotine. Before losing his head, he is said to have remarked: " Pourtant j 'avals quelque chose la." The "something" was a fresh inspiration for poetry.

Chenier belongs to the stream of truly classical French poets, which extends from Ronsard through Racine, down to Leconte jjjg de Lisle. He is not, however, a neo-classicist, but

Classicism goes directly to the Greek. His early work is thoroughly saturated with the spirit of antiquity, as regards both thought and form; he forges for himself a Grecian soul and apprehends nature and humanity from the ancient stand- point. As he matures, modern thoughts and feelings take hold of him and it is chiefly the form that remains classical. This ideal is crystallized in Chenier's formula:

Sur des pensers nouveaux faisons des vers antiques.

But always the grave and sober beauty of his verses stamps them like an ancient medallion, and in his interpretation of the Grecian spirit he is of the brotherhood of Keats.

Only a few of Chenier's verses were published during his lifetime, the first collected edition not appearing until 1819. Poetry: A^'so much of his work remains in fragmentary

Four Kinds form. What we have may be divided into four sec- tions: the purely antique; the modern antique, including ele- gies; the political; and the philosophical. The first class, simple eclogues and idylls, would be represented by such poems as La Jeune Tarentine and Le Malade. The elegies, especially those to "Fanny," have a more modem passion and charm.

450 POETRY

The political poems, consisting of strong invective and satire, are found in certain lambes and in the well-known verses on the Jeu de Paume, which give the early program of the Revolution. The philosophic poetry was to represent the " pensers nouveaux," particularly modern history, science and discoveries. But death intervened, and we have only L'Invention and the incomplete Hermes. The latter, which is reminiscent of Lucretius, has been called the most promising effort toward a great philosophical poem in French. But most readers will prefer the finished pro- ductions, the idylls which exhibit best Chenier's harmonious beauty and his subdued feeling. These qualities may be illus- trated from La Jeune Tarentine:

Elle a vecu, Myrto, la jeune Tarentine! TJn vaisseau la portait aux bords de Camarine: La, I'hymen, les chansons, les flutes, lentement Devaient la reconduire au seuil de son amant. Une clef vigilante a, pour cette journee, Dans le cedre enferme sa robe d'hymenee, Et I'or dont au festin ses bras seraient pares, Et pour ses blonds Cheveux les parfums prepares. Mais, seule sur la proue, invoquant les etoiles, Le vent impetueux qui soufSait dans ses voiles L'enveloppe: etonnee et loin des matelots, Elle crie, elle tombe, eUe est au sein des flots. .

BOOK IV THE WAR OF LIBERATION

CHAPTER I

THE ENCYCLOPEDISTS AND THE LATER PHILOSOPHES

If the first half of the century collected much material for the battle of free thought, the second half actually fought the battle. " La G d T^^^^^^o^^ " philosophy " becomes more decidedly Encyclopedic "polemic after 1750. This is apparent both in the (1752-1772) changed tactics of Voltaire (see next chapter) and in the massed formation of the Encyclopedia. The latter has been called the true " center for the history of ideas " during this period. Its two chief tendencies were toward science and lib- eralism; it was an arsenal of positive knowledge and a rallying- point for skeptical criticism and reform. Appearing at the crucial moment, when all the old loyalties were decidedly shaken, it was from the beginning viewed suspiciously by those in power. To forward its insinuative propaganda, it assembled various writers of note, and it ranks as the first great modern Encyclo- pedia.

Denis Diderot (see Ch. Ill, below) was its chief editor. About 1748 a bookseller had proposed to Diderot that Chambers' Eng- lish Cyclopedia be made the basis of a much larger ^ "^ French work. The permission and cooperation of d'Aguesseau were secured. With the support of Mme de Pompa- dour and in spite of the opposition of the orthodox, seven volumes had appeared by 1757. Then there were various storms, led by the Parliament, abetted by Jansenists and Jesuits, and partly clustering around Dalembert's iconoclastic article on " Geneve." Publication was suspended, Voltaire weakened in his adherence, and Dalembert withdrew altogether. But Diderot, with the

451

452 ENCYCLOPEDISTS AND LATER PHILOSOPHES

connivance of the government, carried on the task alone and finished in 1765 the main body of the Encyclopedia, which con- sisted of seventeen volumes. Later eleven volumes of illustra- tions were published, and still later a Supplement.

The title-page of the Encyclopedie declares that it was imder- taken by "une societe de gens de lettres." The contributors Chief represented every variety of occupation and taste.

Contributors Diderot and Dalembert were, as Voltaire said, the Atlas and the Hercules who carried the weight of this world. Di- derot's efforts were immense and untiring. Not only was he main editor, but he wrote about five (octavo) volumes as a contributor. These articles are on the most diverse subjects and are not numbered among the best of his writings. Dalem- bert, the natural son of Mme de Tencin and the great friend of Mile de Lespinasse, was a geometer by profession, rather more of a precisian and less genial than Diderot. But the two agreed in their main tenets: skepticism as to theology, curiosity con- cerning knowledge, and propagation of the scientific faith. Da- lembert was more cautious than Diderot and served as a useful mediimi of communication with Voltaire and the Academicians. His main contributions were along mathematical lines, and he also wrote the celebrated Discours preliminaire^ to which we shall return. The Chevalier de Jaucourt, the " jackal of the Encyclopedia," was an indefatigable editor as regards hack- work and also wrote many articles. Voltaire added the luster of his name, wrote several literary articles — for example, " Es- prit " — but became less enthusiastic after the crisis of 1757. The chief critic was Marmontel, bel esprit and society man, who had a great reputation in his time, partly from his adroitness in pleasing all parties. His contributions, which are informative and appreciative of novelties, have been mostly collected in his Elements de litterature (1787). Rousseau was used for music; Montesquieu was much quoted on political matters, and his unre- markable Essai sur le gout appeared here; Turgot was repre- sented by five excellent articles and also tried to put into prac- tical effect some features of the Encyclopedists' social program. Incidental use was made of Buffon, Duclos and many minor specialists, such as the grammarian Du Marsais, the scientist Formey, and such abb^s as Morellet and Mallet for theological

MERITS OF THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 453

matters. The majority of the contributors, however, were of mediocre caliber.

Certain facts about the Encyclopedia are well stated by Mor- ley. Both Diderot and Dalembert proceeded from Bacon's General classification of knowledge, thus giving a positive

Features coherence to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, which was largely based on Locke's philosophy of sensation. Also the writers constituted a fraternal group, and the work made a popular impression of " universality, of collective and organic doctrine." The attack against the church is conducted cautiously ; the writers still use the theological " veil " (in the manner of Bayle and Voltaire) and speak as believers. The fact is that the Encyclopedia stood less against religion than for science, espe- cially in its applications to human life. That is why even the court could become interested in the article on " Powder," and according to the anecdote, Louis XV " could not understand why they spoke so ill of this book." The wide popularity and influ- ence of the Encyclopedia are imquestioned. Objective interests tended more and more to possess the mind of man, as mystery and theology were relegated to the background. Morley con- cludes that " energetic faith in possibilities of social progress has been first reached through the philosophy of sensation and ex- perience," of which, after Voltaire, the Encyclopedists were the widest distributors.

These featm-es can be best exhibited by considering in detail the Discours preUminaire and then by discussing the principles The " Discoura^^ ^^® Encyclopedie as operative in half-a-dozen fields Preliminaire ''of htiman effort. There are two parts to Dalembert's (1751) Discours: a logical distribution followed by an actual

history of knowledge. His first step is to examine the " genea- logy " and then the filiation of the sciences and arts. Adopting Locke's sensationalism, he gives a rather fanciful picture of the order in which (primitive) mankind arrived at its perceptions. We hear much of the physical and mathematical sciences, to which the later, more humanistic sciences are made relative or subordinate. In fact, Dalembert urges the principle of relativity, especially as regards the interdependence of knowledge (rapports) , and he believes that all knowledge, including that of the fine arts, is utilitarian at bottom. " Tout s'y rapporte a nos besoins."

454. ENCYCLOPEDISTS AND LATER PHILOSOPHES

With apologies to Bacon, he then draws up his genealogical tree on an a prion basis. There is a three-fold division of knowledge according to our faculties: memory produces history; reason, philosophy; and imagination, the fine arts. The subdivisions are according to the degree of spirit and matter in the various fields; so, for instance, history may be subdivided into spiritual (sacred and church), human (civil and literary), and natilral history. The three main divisions may also be applied to people, who will then be " erudits, philosophes and beaux esprits." Foreseeing the objections to this systematizing, Dalembert hastens to add that it will not wholly work out in practice ; and the stress in the Encyclopedia itself is less on systems than on facts and things.

Passing to the historical sketch of the growth of knowledge, Dalembert also admits that this will not follow the logical Historical * priori scheme outlined for primitive man. He Divisions gives a " gradation " showing the progress of the himian mind, as revealed in its geniuses, from the Renaissance down. His main thesis is thus asserted : " On a commence par I'erudition, continue par les belles lettres et fini par la philoso- phie." Applied chiefly to modern France, from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, this view has met with general acceptance (by Voltaire, Brunetiere, and others) . Dalembert is typically philosophe in his contempt for the " barbarous " Middle Ages and in his belief that the erudite Renaissance imitation of the ancients was so much loss for the " advancement of reason." He briefly expresses appreciation of the great writers and artists imder Louis XIV and then passes to what really interests him, the birth of modern experimental philosophy. Here Bacon, by his method of inquiry, was the immortal founder — though Bacon was scarcely known in France imtil the Encyclopedists allowed him credit. Locke and Newton gave tangible form to philos- ophy, which has since invaded literature, not wholly, as Dalem- bert sees, to the benefit of the latter. He concludes that this process towards a liberalizing philosophy has been a necessary evolution. He agrees with Locke as to the limited extent of our knowledge, and he holds that mathematics offers a higher degree of certitude than any other field.

The Discours remains an imposing vestibule to the Encyclo- pedia, and it represents extremely well the philosophic attitude

ITS FAUI.TS 455

of the century. Dalembert's geometrical nature impels him to- wards a cautious balance in thought, as well as a poor and dry appreciation of literature proper. His " arbre encyclopedique," in spite of the fact that it proceeded from Bacon and was finally

adopted by Comte, is open to objection. To classify Cnticism . ^ J- X jx J 1 ,•

of the sciences accordmg to our often confused sensation^

Discourse |s jggg satisfactory than to classify them according to their own fields and materials. The latter is real, the former is somewhat arbitrary and anthropomorphic; it was still the tendency of the century — witness Buffon — to relate everything to man. Again, in his devotion to utilitarian knowledge, Dalembert does not see man as poetizing and hence, contrary to Bacon, represents imagination, -rather improbably, as the last-born of the faculties. He steadily advocates the treatment of the thing-in-itself, the fact; and often he is able to combine this with a natural and perhaps laudable tendency towards viewing the universe as one great fact; "la nature entiere unifiee par la raison humaine " is the supreme object of all savants and thinkers.

Diderot's Prospectus stresses scientific specialism. Progress, the chain of knowledge. He declares that the articles in the En- Paults of t3ie^Jclopedia will be linked by definitions, by manner Encydopedia of treatment and cross-references. He emphasizes the industrial and mechanical arts ; he has visited the workshops and acquired much technical information as well as the planches or illustrations, which were certainly a notable feature of the Encyclopedia. It will serve, he hopes, as a true library, for con- sultation rather than reading. All this gives a fair idea, though a somewhat flattering one, of the work itself. The Encyclopedia is by no means exempt from faults. The " tree " of knowledge, which is supposed to help, often hinders the reader by the arti- ficiality of the scheme and its confusions. It serves best when not too closely followed. Also the writing is at times poor and hasty, veritable hack-work; it is often "faked" bodily, copied from various sources of information. Finally, a declamatory tone, a fondness for abstractions and a theoretical primitivism sometimes hurt the sense of the real world which was, on the whole, the chief merit df the Encyclopedists. Diderot's own material is illustrative of these diverse tendencies ; it is confused in its standpoints, rambling and without proportion. He copies

466 ENCYCLOPEDISTS AND LATER PHILOSOPHES

and plagiarizes shamelessly. The work as a whole is badly com- posed, sometimes incoherent and chaotic. There are many grave errors and contradictions. Simply as scientific matter, not much of the Encyclopedia survives today; but that very fact speaks in favor of the scientific spirit, of the actual advancement of learning for which these writers strove. They would have been quite content that their edifice should cnmable into ruins on which the masons of the future could rebuild.

The chief currents of the Encyclopedia flowed in these five directions: Science, social questions, politics, religion, literature. Science, whether pure or applied, was the main pre- occupation of the contributors. They wished to simi- marize and popularize useful knowledge. The natural sciences are more to the fore than the himianistic, which were considered derivative. Metaphysics and psychology — the latter term was not yet invented — are poorly treated. But practical subjects, physics and physiology, agriculture, industry and political econ- omy, are dwelt upon at length. Physiology, for instance, is viewed as most important; the doctrine of relativity is applied to the modifications of man through climate and travel. The physics of Newton are used as a basis for the whole work, and the English school generally, coupled with the skeptical method of Bayle and Voltaire, is responsible for the essentially scientific spirit of the Encyclopedists; this is manifest in the search for natural and secondary causes, the use of reason and experi- ment, the subjection of nature to human ends, the insistence on the solidarity of knowledge and on social progress through Enlightenment.

As regards social investigation and reform, the ideal of the Encyclopedia is practical beneficence. Hence the conception of Social " S'rt " as largely industry, the respect demanded for

Reform artisans, also Diderot's visits to the ateliers and his

zeal for the planches. Hence the attention paid to the land; the full and clear treatment of agriculture ; the exposm-e ,of old abuses and privileges, such as the corvees, the salt-tax, the hunting reservations; and Turgot's articles on "Fondations" and " Foires." The Encyclopedists demand both material and moral reforms; but they are timid in their insinuations against social and political institutions, and they have a vague and

SPECIAL TOPICS 457

" radimentary social science." But Quesnay, at least, here lays the foundation of the political economy which was later de- veloped by him and other " Physiocrats." In criminal legisla- tion, the principles of Montesquieu are followed and urged. The aim is not so much pimishment of the criminal as prevention of like crimes and the attainment of the " greatest good " socially. This latter principle really obtained in France before it took root in England and is associated with the general humaneness of the Encyclopedists, seen in their opposition to torture and war.

The Encyclopedia devotes some space to political science, and

again Montesquieu is the chief source for what concerns the

mechanism of government. But in politics proper

°' " these writers, like Voltaire, are far from revolu- tionary. The social reforms mentioned above are simply " recommended " to the powers. The Encyclopedists cleave to the monarchy, to the philosophe idea of a beneficent and " en- lightened" king. They demand certain liberties for commerce and industry, also civil liberty, that is, equality before the law. It is mainly in their attitude towards the nobility that they anticipate the Revolution. They insist that privileges should be abated and that the noblesse should either serve worthily or yield their position.

The hand of the censor, civil or religious, still weighed heavily

at the time of the Encyclopedie. Its writers were officially

orthodox and hence apparently insincere. One of

*" °^ their main purposes was to " sabrer la theologie," which could be attacked only with elaborate precautions. Their method, then, is indirect and much like that of Bayle. They apparently defend Catholic orthodoxy by granting the truth of all dogmas, of revelation, of sacred history and of miracles. These things belong to the domain of faith (compare Pascal, Bossuet, Voltaire) and not to that of reason. Hence the un- reasonableness of dogma is already insinuated. Also the Ency- clopedists indulge in violent praise of extreme dogmas, such as that of eternal damnation, thus " refuting by excess of admira- tion." These specious defenses of religion are little better than falsehoods, especially when displayed in Jesuitical articles, full of faith and imction. In the manner of Voltaire and Montes-

468 ENCYCLOPEDISTS AND LATER PHILOSOPHES

quieu, the Encyclopedists use foreign creeds to suggest compara- tive criticism; in the manner of Bayle, they thrust skeptical arguments into out-of-the-way places and renvois; they quote the feeblest of orthodox proofs, and list, through " impartiality," the various objections to Catholicism. These fall under two main heads, as regards the real purpose of these skeptics: an opposition to miracles and various dogmas as contrary to im- mutable nature; an opposition to intolerance and persecution, as contrary to the principles of himianity. The best and the sincerest writing of the Encyclopedists is found in thel latter con- nection.

Their literary criticism, though not first-class, is very sympto- matic. Here the chief names are Diderot (though his literary articles are neither numerous nor excellent), de Jaucourt, Voltaire, Mallet, Sulzer, a learned Ger- man, and especially Marmontel. The minds of these men are more open to novelties than might be expected. As regards the ancients, they are opposed to close or superstitious imitation. As regards aesthetics, they partly follow the beau ideal of the previous century, though with expansion through the use of more modern rapports and material (Diderot and Marmontel). In discussing genius and taste, they favor some emancipation from the rules and they demand a larger role for imagination and sensibility; they promote an interest in foreign languages and literatures; on the whole, however, they chiefly urge the claims of a useful and moralizing art. In criticizing contemporary poetry, they protest against its lack of sensibility and its insig- nificant subject-matter. But they accept the confusion between poetry and painting, as well as the centiuy's views concerning pastoral and didactic verse. In the drama, the Encyclopedists, led by Marmontel, are clearly modern, supporting the reforms of Voltaire and of Diderot. The drame bourgeois is accepted in its main features — the use of prose, of contemporary average characters, the rejection of neo-classical artificialities. Gener- ally, more movement is recommended, together with the reform of stage-setting and of declamation. The Encyclopedists are partly progressive, because they recognize the decline in belles lettres as due to the decay of the old genres and the rise of philosophy. They accept the literature of knowledge but wish

BUFFON 459

at the same time to stimulate the artistic side of literature by the introduction of more spirit and of fresh forms.

The " conquests " of the Encyclopedia, according to its latest historian (Ducros) , may be summed up along the three lines of Three Main " nature, reason, humanity." These principles Principles obtain in the conflict with the church, in the con- structive endeavor to forward the arts and industries, in the approach to science and in the general effort to benefit humanity and knowledge. A reasoned humanitarianism is perhaps the greatest contribution of the Encyclopedists.

The connection of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-S8), with the Encyclopedia was incidental and rather hostile; but his own monumental work is in itself " **'' a scientific encyclopedia, with literary aspects, and

it may well be considered at this point. Buffon spent much of his life on his country estate in Burgundy; he also traveled abroad and formed relations with English and other scientists; from 1739 to his death he was the director of the Jardin des Plantes (Jardin du Roi) , which he made the most valuable col- lection in Europe. In all of its phases, his life was given over to scientific observation and investigation, although his interest in natural history did not develop until his maturity. His career was laborious and highly honored, his character elevated, his mind a happy blend of the experimenter's zeal and the generalizer's ability.

His Histoire naturelle (1749-88) appeared as an oflScial pub- lication based upon the royal collection, owing something to collaborators and much to correspondents. It con- '* *" sisted of thirty-one volumes, dealing with the earth, man, animals and minerals. The vegetable kingdom was not treated, nor were certain of the smaller animals. Seven supple- mentary volxunes (from 1774) contained the famous Epoques de la nature. The Histoire naturelle established the fortune and prestige of its chief author and had a wide popularity, five edi- tions being published in Buffon's lifetime. The excellence of the treatment causes the work to rank as another great monu- ment of literary Expansionism. Buffon added to the field of letters a complete natural history of birds and quadrupeds, as well as a fascinating cosmogony in his Theorie de la terre and Les

460 ENCYCLOPEDISTS AND LATER PHILOSOPHES

Epoques. He thus provided lasting foundations for zoology and materials for comparative anatomy; and he drafted that union of paleontology and cosmogony which made the fame of Cuvier. Parts of Buffon's scientific edifice have fallen, but his successors (Cuvier, Lamarck, Geoffroy de Sainte-Hilaire) have built from the debris. The literary features of this vast under- taking consist first in the author's general ideas and then in his style.

His view of the animal kingdom is hampered by anthro- pomorphism (" Buffon ramene tout a I'homme ") and also by a certain indifference to classifications, as regards genus; he es- tablishes the species by the test of self-reproduction and he upholds, on the whole, the immutability of species, though not of " varieties." Thus he both fostered and opposed the doctrine of biological evolution. The major part of the Histoire con- sists of monographs, dealing separately with each animal or substance, to which are added descriptions of experiments and more general discours. The monographs are mainly historical and descriptive; begiiming with domestic animals, Buffon indi- vidualizes the species by the principle of generation and colors the picture by emphasizing human resemblances and moral traits (such as " nobility ") ; this kind of thing is less valuable than the more distinctive characteristics or habits which Buffon established for each bird or beast. Most valuable are the generalizing passages, and these appear at their height in the Theorie de la terre and the later Epoques de la nature. Buffon is not concerned with the origin of matter or of life. But con- tinuing the work of various predecessors, especially Leibnitz, he was the first to give a history of the successive stages of the globe. Underlying this are two main theories, scientifically based: that the earth was originally covered with water; and that its interior was composed of fire or molten material. The " Seven Epochs " are then marked by incandescence, cooling off, the deluge, drying off, the great animals, the separation of con- tinents, the appearance of man. The reconstruction of these epochs, the impressive vistas disclosed, the entrance of the great mammals and of man on the pre-historic scene, have remained a part of our cosmic vision.

It is in the broad sweep of such passages, rather than in the

THE IDEOLOGUES 461

decorative tributes to the lion and the horse, that Buffon's style (le style noble) attains its full power. He had on this subject convictions which are found in his Academic Discours sur le style (1753). The best expression, he held, proceeds from cumulative action, from the forward march of facts His Sty e ^^^ ideas ; therefore an orderly plan of one's knowl- edge (cf. Horace) is an understructure essential for good writing. One should aim at warmth rather than wit, and " truth " in style is to be found when it conforms with the subject and with the writer. Hence the celebrated dictum: " Le style c'est I'homme meme " — that is, it takes on the coloring of his mind. Finally, Buffon knew that " les ouvrages bien ecrits seront les seuls qui passeront a la posterite." His own writings have sur- vived no less for his originative thought than for their excellent presentation, which is vivid in description, pointed and clear in diction, and majestic in panoramic effect.

A few of the later thinkers, who belong rather to the history of philosophy than to that of literature, may be mentioned. T]jg Condillac is best known for his Traite des sensa-

Ideologues tions (1754), which is fathered by Locke but gives no independent place to reflection. For Condillac derives immediately from the sensations all our experience and thought. He typifies the growth of consciousness by the alle- gory of a statue endued successively with the various senses and thus awakening into life. The '^ followers of Condillac at the turn of the century — Destutt de Tracy, Volney, Garat, La- place — were known as " les Ideologues." An earlier writer, C. Helvetius (De I'esprit^ 1758), also derives all powers of the mind from the senses. The extreme phase of this movement, ending in a materialistic atheism, is found in the Systeme de la nature (1770) and other works by the Baron d'Holbach, who was a considerable figure, both intellectually and socially, in his tune. This " gray and ghost-like book," in which the Deity is viewed as an oppressor, was repulsive even to Voltaire. It was more in line with the ideas of DSderot, an intimate of d'Hol- bach's circle, and it exemplifies bne logical extreme of the philosophe movement. A more optimistic extreme, the highest loop attained by the theory of I'rogress, is represented in the theme of the " indefinite perfectibility " of man. This is best

462 ENCYCLOPEDISTS AND LATER PHILOSOPHES

expressed by the Marquis de Condorcet, in his Esqtdsse d'un Tableau historiqv^ des Progres de I'esprit humain (1794). It took both courage and conviction for a victim of the Terror, on the verge of suicide, to declare an immutable faith in the possibilities of human progress.

CHAPTER II

VOLTAIRE AT FERNEY: POLEMICS AND PHILOSOPHY

We left Voltaire established at Ferney near Geneva. It was on this estate that he passed the fifth and most important phase of his career. His activities became more and more Patriarch of varied, his fame was resomiding and his influence Ferney enormous. Ferney was practically a seigniorial

domain, and Voltaire willingly plays the seigneur. He promotes agriculture and manufactures, he exempts his subjects from oppressive taxes, he stands firmly for social justice, and he even erects a church. The domain of Ferney still shows many traces of Voltaire's occupancy, and it must have delighted him to maintain and exhibit the beautiful chateau and grounds. He entertained on a vast scale, for he had now a princely fortune. Ferney was a great resort for literary pilgrims, such as Abbots- ford became later. Private theatricals, aided brilliantly by Le Kain and Mile Clairon, are again a main resource, despite the objections of Rousseau and other Genevans. But the real im- portance of this period is that Voltaire's skeptical philosophy becomes militant, and all his entertaining, his correspondence and literary activity are directed to one end: to fight the intoler- ance and superstitions of the Church, to ecraser I'infdme. This watchword, repeated throughout his correspondence, became the war-cry of the Encyclopedic and philosophic army which King Voltaire directed from his stronghold on the border.

The leader was still in condition to order his hosts. Aging, sickly and emaciated, he complains a great deal of his ailments. Generous ^"t they hardly hamper the power of his mind. Activities while his productiveness is unabated. It is as an old man, a" patriarch "of seventy or eighty, that Voltaire becomes the intellectual leader of Europe. His acerbity of temper increases; he quarrels with Rousseau and with Haller the naturalist; he

464 VOLTAIRE AT FERNEY

cannot let Montesquieu and Crebillon rest in their graves; he is rabid against the crowd of pamphleteers, Freron and Lefranc de Pompignan, and he descends to a sort of pamphleteering almost on their level. On the other hand, he reaches far and wide as the protector of the imjustly persecuted. He clears the name and memory of the unfortunate Galas family, wrongly accused of murder, and in this connection he writes the celebrated Traite sur la tolerance (1763). He awakens civilization to the cruelty shown towards young La Barre, who was executed for free-think- ing. In the Sirven affair and in that of Lally-Tolendal, to whom the dying Voltaire wrote almost his last letter, he is still protest- ing against unjust sentences. The majority of these protests are aimed at the persecutions of the Church, and the majority are successful. More and more Voltaire wins public opinion to his side ; he manages now to keep on good terms with sovereigns and ministers, and he acquires the friendship and following of such men as Diderot, Dalembert, Morellet, Marmontel and La Harpe. Certain of these and many others of the philosophic army are frequent visitors at Ferney.

For nearly a generation Voltaire agitated Europe, while stead- ily keeping away from Paris. But there too his name had come to be honored. A few years before his death a statue ** ^* was erected to him, while, later, his bust was crowned by Mile Clairon. In 1778, the patriarch took his last journey to the city, which now rose up to welcome him. He was feted like a king at the Academy, at the theater, in public and private gatherings. He literally died of his glory, exhausted by his honors. That was his first "apotheosis"; his second occurred when his ashes were deposited in the Pantheon by the Revo- lutionists in 1791.

In reckoning with Voltaire's long labors as a phUosophe, in foreshortening his many repetitions and contradictions, it will often be necessary to distinguish between the works that preceded and those that followed his establishment on the Swiss border. One must bear in mind the concentrated and aggressive spirit that animated his last phase. The form, too, of his Ferney writ- ings indicates their militant character. He keeps up a small fire of pamphlets, of personal attacks, special pleadings and flying leaflets of all sorts. These are usually anonymous, they are

THE PHILOSOPHE 465

unintermittent, they were distributed by thousands, they are vehement and frequently scurrilous in style. Their polemic doctrine is enforced by the enormous mass of his correspondence, running to more than twelve thousand letters, addressed to hun- dreds of notables and others, and constituting a vivid private history of the times.

The chief works which may be consulted for an understanding of his general ideas are, before 1755: the Lettres philosophiques, Chief already characterized; the Traite de Metaphysique,

Documents which is the most thorough-going presentation of his earlier creed ; such poems as the Epitre a Uranie and the Dis- cours en vers sur I'homme, which imitates Pope's Deism ; and the Introduction to the Essai sur les moeurs. The transition period, more serious or pessimistic, may be placed about 1755 and is rep- resented by the Poeme sur le desastre de Lisbonne, by the Poeme sur la loi naturelle, and most brilliantly by Candide. Belonging to the Ferney period, the important Traite sur la tolerance must be emphasized and especially the Dictionnaire philosophique portatif. This work, published in numerous editions after 1764, became the handbook of revolutionary skepticism, attracting all classes by the wit and variety of its encyclopedic articles. Fur- ther confessions of faith are~tiie Sermon des cinquante and Le philosophe ignorant. Voltaire's versions of theological and Biblical matters may be illustrated by Un Chretien contre six juifs, the Examen important de Milord Bolingbroke and the Bible enfin exrpliquee.

The two fountain-heads for Voltaire's " philosophy " are the Dictionary of Bayle and the work of the English scientists and Sources of Deists. Both Bayle and Locke stimulated Voltaire MiVoso- ^° *^^ expression of his great principle of tolerance.

phie The critical method of Bayle, as we have examined

it, is transferred freely to the pages of the Dictionnaire philoso- phique. Voltaire, though bolder in polemics, borrows from this predecessor the skeptical use of the interrogation-point in Biblical and historical matters, the rationalization and derogatory treat- ment of ancient patriarchs and heroes, the art of malicious in- sinuation, the ironic prostration before faith. From English free- thinkers and Deists, such as Bolingbroke, Pope and Shaftesbury, Voltaire derives most of his "natural religion." From New-

466 VOLTAIRE AT FERNEY

ton and Locke he gets his taste for the physical sciences, thus strengthening his own tendency towards the experunental method, towards dealing only with demonstrable fact and clear explana- tions. Locke, the best and " wisest " of philosophers in Vol- taire's view, imposed upon the Frenchman his conception of the limitations of knowledge. Voltaire's general Anglomania, quite influential in the France of the earlier eighteenth century, be- came modified in the course of time, and his zeal for physical experiments dwindled together with his zeal for Shakespeare. But the profound influence of English thought remained with him to the end.

Le vrai philosophe, according to Voltaire, stands for reason, progress, industry and charity; la philosophie, in its widest sense, included for him physics and metaphysics, religion and ethics, politics and social reform. We shall consider his doc- trine according to these divisions.

His physical experiments had no great value then and can have

none today. They are simply important as indicative of the

trend of his mind and of his times — a trend well ex-

''"'^ emplified by such useful pieces of popularization as

his Elements de la philosophie de Newton (1738).

His views on metaphysics, taking form at the same epoch,

continue Voltaire's practical and positive bent. It has been

argued that his persistent dealing with metaphysical

e p ysics jjjqyirjes shows that he understood their importance; but this is contradicted in many passages, both by his directly expressed scorn of metaphysics and by the slight aptitude which he exhibited for such problems. No better example can be foimd than the Remarques sur Pascal (1734) ; here we are offered the most salient contrast between Pascal, the tormented thinker who quivers over the metaphysical " abyss," showing us his soul by lightning flashes, and the clear everyday sense — which is often lack of deeper sense — displayed by Voltaire. This is particularly true of his earlier or optimistic period.

Indeed, Voltaire's great contention is that metaphysical thought leads nowhere. He occasionally admits, though he never feels, that it may have a certain value as a mental gym- nastic and even as a means to spiritual elevation. But he scorns the great philosophers, those " romancers of the soul,"

fflS INCREDULITY 467

from Plato to Descartes, and he insists that we can never know the truth about the chief metaphysical problems. Why- is this? Because all our knowledge comes from sensation, which can inform us only about the practical world of conduct. Vol- taire's sensational philosophy, with regard to which he is very firm, is based on Locke; and he even goes farther than Locke in refusing to put reflection on a par with sensation and in allowing us no ultimate knowledge concerning the processes of the mind itself. He thoroughly rejects the Cartesian doctrine of " innate ideas," as regards any immediate appre-

ep asm tension of the Deity, the soul, duty, truth. Le Philosophe ignorant (1766) is ignorant about the powers of the body and the nature of matter, about free-will, about the at- tributes of divinity, about the real essence and destiny of man.

We can best understand Voltaire's views on these subjects by bearing in mind that his basic standpoint is practical and social. Only those things are valuable and credible which tend towards the good of society at large. He objects to any " system " of philosophy as unpractical and probably false; and opposite the great interrogations he generally writes the verdict "not proven."

Voltaire defends the existence of the Deity, and therefore he is ranked as a Deist. His arguments are both Cartesian and cosmological. Some God there must be, because my existence presupposes the existence of some intelligence beyond mine (Descartes) ; and also because the universe demands an archi- tect, as a clock demonstrates a clock-maker. These mechanical figures are frequent on Voltaire's lips. He also holds by the doctrine of final causes, if taken in a common-sense way. The only necessary attributes of Deity are omnipotence (within reason and nature) and absolute justice. This is a distant or " absentee " God, claiming our adoration but not concerned with individual human affairs. There is a general, but no private Providence, and therefore prayers for intercession are useless. The laws of nature are fixed. Morality proceeds less from the Deity than from social necessities. If a " dieu remunerateur et vengeur " is often mentioned in Voltaire's later writings, it is because he appreciates the social force rather than the ultimate truth of such sanctions. "II faut une religion

468 VOLTAIRE AT FERNEY

pour le peuple." He feels the vastness of Godhead only under the stars, and his Theism at its loftiest is a cosmic Pantheism.

This is a much attenuated Jehovah, and Voltaire's religion — for he had one — is an attenuated religion. He called it "la religion naturelle," after Pope and other Englishmen. He main- tains that though " all religions are false, la religion is true." But Voltaire had little religious sense, as that term is usually understood. His Theism is stripped bare of the elements com- monly constitutive of religions: specific creed, ceremonial, mysticism, the supernatinral, revelation, and reckoning with a future life. The soul may be immortal, but Voltaire scarcely holds this belief, admitting it mainly for retributive ends; further- more, he is disposed to associate a possible immortality with the duration of matter, and thus he also allows animals their share of "la matiere pensante." The problem of the existence of evil is, for him, an abyss. In his later writings he inclines towards determinism rather than free-will and towards a pes- simism, which, however, admits of betterment. It is also true that in such writings as Le Philosophe ignorant he shows a deeper feeling with relation to the mystery of life and the helpless plight of humanity. This feeling involves something of a religious attitude.

Apart from the existence of God, Voltaire acknowledges his waverings and uncertainties. Often he is driving less at the absolute truth than towards some practical end, to attain which he will temporarily admit first one tenet and then another. No philosophic belief can be thoroughly grounded in that man- ner. Voltaire's real religion, as a whole, is virtually the modem Positivism, the service of humanity, and as such it will presently be considered. But first we must indicate the negative and scornful side of Voltairianism — his attitude towards the Bible and the Catholic Church.

Bayle's Dictionary is the fulcrum, but Voltaire's pen is the lever that shook most mightily the rock of St. Peter's. The Attacks on Patriarch of Ferney uses any means, and often the Church ignoble means, against the church. He exhibits the naivetes of the Old Testament, the discrepancies of the New; he attacks the Christian emperors, ridicules the martyrologies, and treats church history as a contradictory and extravagant record.

ATTITUDE TOWARD RELIGION 469

One-fourth of the articles in the Dictionnaire Philosophique are directed against Catholicism, and everywhere it is Catholic dogma that Voltaire particularly reprehends. Christianity for his time meant primarily theology and the priesthood. As Morley says, neither Voltaire nor his adversaries argued holi- ness or any appeal to the heart of man, nor did either side deal with the loftiest and most general ideas of the Christian religion. For both, it was a question of ritual, details, tithes, sects. Papal bulls and the like. Voltaire's point was that on the formal side the church had fallen away from Apostolic Christianity. The dogmas were added by Church Fathers and Popes to the primitive and purer belief. Many of these dogmas, he holds, are contrary to reason ; they are absurd as well as obscure ; they are often immoral, in setting up wrong examples — for instance, the Biblical Patriarchs. Catholicism is inhuman in its asceti- cism, as in its persecutions and superstitions. Of specific dogmas, original sin is unjust to God and to humanity; the doctrines of divine grace, of penance and pardon through the church, do away with personal responsibility; transubstantiation and the Trinity are inconceivable or revolting. Any divine revelation of truth is improbable. Voltaire is then opposed to all dogmas.

The second great point of his campaign is that it was directed against the supernatural. The miracles that were frauds in his own day — visions provoked by flagellations and convulsions, and staged by " sorcerer-priests " — were, he believed, equally frauds in New Testament times. These manifestations Voltaire considers beneath divine and human dignity. Contradicting what he has said elsewhere in praise of the person and message of Jesus, Voltaire now attacks and rationalizes Christ whenever it is a question of miracles, viewing him often either as an im- postor or an tmenlightened peasant. Voltaire is always declaim- ing against what he thought impossible and absurd Biblical legends, and it is true that he declaims in a coarse, savage, and startling manner. His excuse was that men would not cease to be persecutors until they ceased to be credulous.

The third plank, then, in Voltaire's platform, was his hatred of intolerance, issuing directly from his relative point of view. As early as Zaire, he contended that our beliefs usually spring from our environment, thsCt there are many " tolerable " religions.

470 VOLTAIRE AT FERNEY

partial reflections of the truth. Almost indifferently he would take up the cause of Mahometan, Huguenot, or Quaker — but rarely of Catholic. He argues the universality of common beliefs in the best religions and he would discard the more un- common tenets of each creed. So his constant aim is to thin out the believable portion of Scripture. His religion, lacking reverence and stripped of mysticism, comes down to earth and consists largely in practical morality.

His ethics are based simply on the needs of society; goodness means the exercise of justice and of a wide charity. It is not a question of an inner individual perfection. Vol- ^^"^ taire has often been called an epicurean in morals,

and the pleasiire-seeking side of that creed is especially marked in his earlier life. He always thought that the search for happiness is " our being's end and aim," and as a youth he naturally confused happiness and pleasure. But his later morality is more nearly that of an altruist and, a social meliorist.

It is not primarily a Christian morality, it can dispense with grace and prayer, and even with divine sanctions. It is rather, thinks Voltaire, the morality which lies at the base of all re- ligions, of Confucianism, as of Mahometanism. " Les prin- cipes de morale communs au genre humain " make the kernel of natural religion; but theology, he holds, is characterized by dis- imion and quarrels. Religions may be immoral, whereas ethical principles are clear and serve to unify humanity. In spite of local and national divergences which Voltaire maliciously notes when it suits his relativism, he claims to believe in one imiversal ethic: its major premise is that all men consider as good those things which are useful to society. (But all men do not esteem this the summum bonum). Therefore, concludes Voltaire, the only necessary attribute of God is justice, which is also the first of human virtues; it comes nearer being an inherent idea than any other. Its corollary is charity, not as pauperizing alms- giving, but almost in the New Testament sense. This virtue is equivalent to the term bienveillance, of which Voltaire makes so much. He makes very little of the other theological and car- dinal virtues, of faith and hope, of force, prudence and temper- ance. These are mostly individual matters, and true morality, for him, applies only to social man. The great rule is the Golden

PROGRESSIVE IDEAS 471

Rule, whether expressed by Christ or by Confucius. A spirit of moderation in pleasure, a spirit of service in labor — this seems the gist of Voltaire's creed.

The positive side of Voltairianism, which has been too much neglected, concerns the social reforms which this creed de- Progress and iJiianded. It would be too long to list here all the Reform changes required and often enforced by the

phUosophe. He contends for lihfirty, though a limited and non- seditious liberty, ^f various kinds: frea-spee.ch and free-writing, the abolitiOB-©f-.slas£ry, civiL liberty jpf the person [habeas corpus), civiL-^marriage overbearins_the chiurch form, some separatian^-ofJ^hunih-^aind " State^ jgith_domin^fiOf the^^ So many of these reforms have been successfully carried out that we hardly realize the part of Voltaire and of the eighteenth century in inaugurating them. The same is true of more specific recommendations, such as proportional taxation and punish- ment, abolition of the octroi, of certain feudal rights and of the farming out of taxes; doing away with the venality of offices, with Star Chambers and tortxires; the fostering of the rights of property, of agriculture and commerce. Civil and criminal legislation, he held, was conducted on an antique and cruel model, which should be thoroughly reshaped and unified. In social legislation Voltaire is Progressive; but in politics proper he is rather conservative, favoring the ancien regime through natural sympathy as well as opportunism.

His political ideal is^Att^nlightenfidjftQiaarphy, which is perhaps

nearer to despotism than to liberalism. His ideal monarch is

7^ rni. .'pm.Q^njth.p. such as he hoped for in Louis XV

** '^ and Frederick the Great, a ruler so intelligent, able

and altruistic that he might be allowed almost absolute power. He would hate war and conquest as did Voltaire ; he would bend all his efforts towards improving living conditions at home and promoting culture. This monarch of a dream is a modified Louis XIV pllis philosophic enlightenment. He should rule as a " be- nevolent despot," deciding all matters referring to the establish- ment of religions, directing education — which should not be ex- tended to the lowest class — controlling priests and all other servants.

Voltaire is not enthusiastic concerning the Rights of Man or

472 VOLTAIRE AT FERNEY

republicanism. He is also less of a patriot than a cosmopolitan. On He has no communizing tendencies as regards prop-

Civilization erty, which is viewed as a sacred right, and he is no advocate of equality. His theory of luxury (Le Mondain) resembles that of Montesquieu: inequality means circulation of wealth and consequently the better condition of the poor. Wealth makes civilization, and civilization is, after all, the great object of his zeal and care. Voltaire derides Rousseau for his primitivism and wants us to conserve, improve and embellish what we have. Truly " natural law " is followed by those who civilize humanity, carry on the arts, create efficient legislation and make life wiser and easier. Rousseauism, he believes, bars progress and enlight- enment, because it is anti-human. Voltaire is strongly himiani- tarian, not socialistic, an intellectual Progressive, not a revolu- tionary. He apprehends truth relatively and sometimes evasively. His theories of reform are pragmatic, practical, terre-a-terre. His religion and morality refuse to leave the earth, they concentrate hope by denying its prolongation. In his rather desiccated soul, in his adroitness, wit, finish and everyday wisdom, he typifies the age which he adorns and which he strove on the whole to ameliorate. His influence counted upon the Revolution, while the Revolution was still Royalist, and has continued, in dispersed and varied forms, throughout the nineteenth century.

CHAPTER III DIDEROT

Denis Dideeot, known to his contemporaries as " the phi- losopher," was the leader and the most original thinker of the En- cyclopedic group. He circulated more modern ideas than any other man of his generation. A naturalist in his philosophic and literary creed, he was able to combine the boldest speculation with a close sense of fact and with a warm human sympathy.

He admitted the mobility of his temperament and styled him- self " the weathercock of Langres," at which town he had been bom (1713). He was educated partly by the His Life Jesuits, who seem to have taught him a mixture of shrewdness and Latinity. Quite early he showed his taste for science and philosophy. Thrown on his own resources, he led for ten years the typical life of the Parisian hack-writer and bohemian. An imprudent marriage was followed by some lax- ness in subsequent affairs of the heart. Diderot was imprisoned as a result of th* Lettre sur les aveugles (1749), and then settled down for nearly twenty years to his great labor of directing the Encyclopedia. *

After a visit to Catherine of Russia, who pensioned him hand- somely, he returned to Paris with broken health, but still worked industriously imtil the end (1784). His chief friends and col- laborators were Dalembert, Grimm and d'Holbach; also Rous- seau, until the unfortunate break in their relations. Diderot was never a haunter of the salons, though welcomed by Mme Geoffrin and Mile de Lespinasse.

By disposition he was expansive, exuberant and endowed with The two much " sensibility." He was a good friend and father, Diderots an ardent lover, as his correspondence with Mile Volland reveals, and a great helper of needy writers and others.

> Bee above, Bk. IV, Ch.I; and Bk. Ill, Ch. II, for his connection with the drama.

473

474 DIDEROT

He was prone to enthusiasm, and a friendly literary discussion or a new idea would excite him tremendously; his naturally fine features would then take on a noble and exalted air, and listeners to his incomparable talk would feel that they were indeed in the presence of a genius. In conduct he was often the " average sen- sual man," democratic, sanguine, with a large dispersive care- lessness, " like Nature herself," aboimding in effervescent vitality. As a lover and observer of humanity, he is constantly appealing from artificial to realistic standards. His more familiar writings strangely mingle these personal characteristics with those of the scientist and the philosopher. His formula was " faire le bien, connaitre le vrai." He divided scientific workers into " those who have instruments and those who have ideas." Diderot had both and employed the combination very originally. His mind was like a powerful lens, reflecting both light and heat. But the true light is often obscured by sophistry and declamation, his " virtue " is scarcely to be distinguished from vice, low and elevated senti- ments jostle each other, and there is a Rabelaisian mixture of flesh and spirit in his temperament. We find, indeed, a frequent opposition between his temperament and his principles : the man versus the philosopher. Furthermore, he left two main classes of writings, the oflScial and the intimate. The Encyclopedia represents the former ; of the latter, the majority were published at long intervals after his death, and they usually express the bolder and more speculative side of his genius.

It is as a philosophe that Diderot must stand or fall, His most vital writing and thinking develop from his practical Idea of " philosophy," mobile and confused as this may seem

Nature to be. But there exists a nebular center to his

thought, denoted by the frequency with which the word "Nature" is on his lips. With Diderot, philosophy could properly be termed a " system of nature." The word is often used by him in the widest cosmic sense — "the scheme of things entire " — with a considerable amount of primitivism a la Rousseau. Diderot's knowledge of natural sciences led him finally to the full acceptance of a materialistic universe, and his evolution towards this standpoint may be observed in his chief works.

His formal philosophizing begins with the Essai sur le merite

THE PENSEES PHILOSOPHIQUES 4.76

et la vertu (1745), freely translated from the English philosopher Shaftesbury. Diderot writes here as an orthodox Deist, be- lieving in God, revelation, immortality and morality, although a " reasonable " foundation for ethics already begins to allure him. From Shaftesbury, Diderot drew certain of his more last- ing principles, such as the prominence of common sense and the conception of aesthetic morals; the two men were also alike in their enthusiasm and optimism.

In the Pensees philosophiques of the following year, the. author begins his career of free thought; these Pensees are in- j.jj.g^ tended as an answer to those of Pascal, whom the

"Pensees" philosophes recognized as their greatest adversary. We have here a defense of the passions on a " natural " basis and a diatribe against priestly asceticism (cf. La Religieuse) ; also objections to miracles and to final causes. Through the light of physical experimentation Diderot still sees God as im- printed in nature ; the next step is to see nature as her own God, hence the famous formula: " Elargissez Dieu." Abandoning the temple, the divine spirit now roves through a pantheistic universe. The principle of relativity again appears as deriving from the multiplicity of religions ; ask the adherent of any creed what would be his second choice, and he will answer: " Natural religion." Thus dogma and revelation are questioned and Deism already inclines towards atheism in Diderot's widening thought.

The Lettre sur les aveugles a I'usage de ceiix qui voient (1749) is a turning-point in the writer's philosophy as well as in his Sensation- career. The two main doctrines of this letter are alism relativity and sensationalism. Knowledge is made

entirely relative to our senses; a blind man disputes the exist- ence of God, because the evidence is unseen by him. The limitation of philosophic proof to any one sense, however, is extravagant, and the Lettre is too individualistic because it tends to deny credible testimony based on the senses of others. Its interest lies rather in (1) the idea of obtaining psychological data from abnormal cases; (2) the fact that the Deity is now considered an unnecessary hypothesis; (3) the corollary that the world can be self-explanatory, granted eternal movement; (4) definite transformism or evolution, in that the world is

476 DIDEROT

supposed to evolve, from a primal welter of formless creatures, by means of variability and adaptation, towards the survival of the fittest. Diderot manifests again his zeal for investigation, radically criticizes Deism and advances far towards a completely naturalistic conception of the universe.

This idea appears more distinctly in the Pensees swr I'inter- pretation de la nature (1754), which is Diderot's chief scientific S CO d testament. Somewhat obscure and fragmentary in

"Pensees" form, the thought owes much to Bacon, whose influence was then dominating the Encyclopedists. The " in- terpretation of nature " is in a sense Diderot's life-work, and here he emphasizes the ideas of the continuity of knowledge, the distrust of metaphysics and the predominance of the nat- tural sciences, in the two directions of careful laboratory ac- cumulations and the generalizations and intuitions of the scientific genius. The world of fact is throughout opposed to metaphysics, even mathematics being now viewed as too ab- stract. But Diderot passes on through evolution to the phi- losophy of the flux, in declaring that known species and the present natural sciences are also transitory, and that both man- kind and knowledge are forever in the making. In these pas- sages and in his concluding prayer, his style rises to a height of poetic power.

The same observation applies to the Entretien with Dalem- bert, followed by the remarkable Reve de Dalembert, which p. J were too daring to be published in the author's life-

of 1769, time. " II n'est pas possible," as Diderot himself printed 1830 g^id of these brilliant dialogues, " d'etre plus pro- fond et plus fou." For instance, the author maintains to his friend that a statue may change into a man by natural grada- tions ; he hints at a Lucretian — and Nietzschean — Eternal Return of phenomena; he deliberately prefers an animalistic conception of life. Then Dalembert goes home and has a strange dream. His mutterings are recorded as partly spoken, partly reported by Mile de Lespinasse to the Doctor Bordeu. These interlocutors consider such points as the unification of cell-life, figured as a swarm of bees; a new fermentation of being, which may result in the superman; the relative nature of our passions and capacities, as due to the rapports between the nerve centers

ETHICAL THEORY 477

and their extremities; in short a definite, if partly erroneous, system of psycho-physics. A bold deterministic amoralism concludes this extraordinary document, which is not merely, as one critic warns us, " the wild dream of a poet drunk on the wine of the new sciences," but shows Diderot's usual method of combining what seems giddy speculation — so often pro- phetic— with a basis of close observation.

It will now appear that Diderot, who began as a cautious Deist, ended as a frank materialist, of atheistic and even amoral tend- encies. As regards his ethical system, indeed, he can ity hardly be said to have had one. Although constantly interested in problems of conduct, he had a distinct taste for lawless primitivism (Supplement au voyage de Bougainville), which left him with little belief in absolute vice or virtue; and he shared the besetting sin of the eighteenth-century relativists, whose concept of the relative inclined them more towards anarchy than towards making the comparatively civil- ized at least a cornerstone in progress. But Diderot's practice was better than his doctrine; his own nature disposed him to make a great virtue of charity (la bienfaisance) , and he thereby posits a " natural " penchant towards one's neighbor. For him morality is essentially social and individual ethics scarcely exist. Revolting from the Church, he believes in the natural goodness of humanity, and he shows a certain enthusiasm for " virtue " and fine fictions. But since he declares that civiliza- tions have on the whole repressed the natural kindly man, it is difficult to see how he would build humanitarian progress on any eighteenth-century basis. Personal happiness seems to him our main duty, while his various views of social morality are surely discordant. His main tendency is more and more to consider the moral world as a mere prolongation of the physical. That is why it seems paradoxical to hear Diderot as a preacher of morality. But if his ethical surrender to nature is anar- chistic, he is saved from intellectual Bolshevism by some belief in progress and a scientific adherence to the Leibnizian law of continuity. In ethics, then, Diderot is critical and destructive, whereas the constructive side of him appears rather in the scien- tific field, both as regards popularizing knowledge and in fertile original generalizations.

478 DIDEROT

His philosophy of nature is, in fact, a sort of " superior physics." Here he is a phenomenist dealing with actual forms and facts, trying to extend the domain of the knowable. In cience j^^^ uttermost speculations, he remains concrete, un-

metaphysical, scarcely leaving the earth. Final causes do not interest him; he declares that he is concerned rather with the comment than the pourquoi. He believes in the essential imity of forces and sees life largely as action and reaction, often auto- matic and molecular. But he does not scorn tentative hypotheses, nor discount the scientific imagination. This double tendency towards facts and speculation reflects his own two-fold tempera- ment. There is the Diderot who is a healthy jovial materialist, and the Diderot who leaves the temple to promenade through the cosmos.

It has been well said that for this philosopher the famous " etat de nature " was really an " etat d'ame." His evolutionary Conclusion as ideas were implicit in the Lucretian school and had to Philosophy {,ggjj openly sustained by Maupertuis; other ad- vanced philosophes, such as La Mettrie and d'Holbach, anticipated him in complete materialism. But none of them had Diderot's genius and crystallizing power, none of them finds such expressive delight in the " vertigo of thought," none of them experiences such happiness and enthusiasm, such poetic and creative fire from communion with the goddess Nature. She lends herself to per- petually fresh creations; matter invested with motion not only begot the universe, but can forever change it; so all things are relative, unstable, and the place of man in this welter is most precarious. Diderot has definitely reacted from the Classical habit of referring everything to human standards (anthropomor- phism) .

As a critic, Diderot ranks high, first because he everywhere recommends realism, and also because of his capacity for en- thusiastic appreciation. He brings life into crit- icism. If he lacks balance and judgment, he has wide views and acute senses; he frequently shows penetration and a marked preference for democratic realities. This broad underly- ing naturalism is consistent with what we know of the man, the philosopher and the dramatic theorist. He distinguishes genius from art in that the former is linked with creative enthusiasm,

HIS CRITICISM 479

the latter with taste. Poetry " demands something enormous, barbaric and savage." Diderot prefers a rude simplicity to his own artificial epoch, and it is still the " return to nature " that he advocates. But the word keeps its wide inclusiveness, as in- stanced in the declamatory Eloge de Richardson, whose characters and deeds are praised as " in nature " — that is, in the domain of fact and probability; Richardson's detailed realism is as various and convincing as that of the natural world; and his morality is of the highest. Here and in the Salons Diderot seems to recur to the idea of aesthetic morality ; but his own morality and taste are seldom above suspicion.

His Salons (1759 f.) have been variously judged. Severe censors object to their literary flavor, their insistence on the As Critic " anecdote," their subordination of technical art- of Art criticism, and the introduction of rather spicy pas-

sages. It is true that Diderot and his age emphasize the idea behind the product. He wants a painting to say something, in the way of story or history ; at the least, he wants a " speak- ing " likeness and insists on expression as opposed to coldness or monotony. He practically invented the causerie as an informal discussion of art, and this style has had a considerable influence. The form is capable of much variety. Diderot will fuse a rather vivid description of a picture with the impression, often enthusi- astic, which it produces on him, and with any digression that he chooses to make. But he introduces as much technical discus- sion as, presumably, his audience would stand; especially in the three directions of color, line, composition, for all of which he had a keen eye. His sympathies are with those painters who observe and depict naturally ; Chardin and Vernet rather than Boucher. His idol is Greuze, who combines naturalness of detail with scenes of domesticity, anecdotes and moralizings. In all this Diderot runs true to type. He boldly recommends the painter to leave the studio and go outdoors where he can get away from the " man- nered " poses and the academic taint. He admits that he views painting partly as an amateurish connoisseur, partly as a pleasure- seeker of sensuous and siunptuous values. But theoretically he contends that art must have its morals and that the corruption of the one (Boucher) brings on the corruption of the other. He defines taste as an " acquired faculty for seizing the true or

480 DIDEROT

good," circumstantially depicted. The Salons are written for the most part admirably and eloquently, if somewhat hastily.

The more significant of Diderot's miscellaneous writings can be best handled if we view them likewise as prolonged caitseries, Not a ""'" rather than under the more usual heading of fiction. Novelist It is difiicult to see how Jacques le fataliste, for instance, can be considered a novel. Here and elsewhere Dide- rot shows little interest in fictional form and he rarely creates a character; his tales are all fact or closely founded on fact. He is a raconteur, relating the " small memoirs of his century." The form in which he excels, then, is dialogue, tending towards monologue; he is primarily a conversationalist and an impro- viser. This appears in the charming Entretien d'un pere avec ses enfants, in various other dialogues, and conspicuously in his one indubitable masterpiece, Le Neveu de Rameau (c. 1762).

Goethe was the first to discover and make famous this amaz- ing dialogue, which presents as interlocutors Diderot hnnself "Le Neveu ^^^ ^ philosophe) and the cynical bohemian rela- de Rameau," tive of Rameau — who is really another side of Did- publ. 1823 grot rpjjg debate thus shows a doubly personal vigor and penetration. The philosopher appears as reasonable, cautious, charitable, accepting the established order, fond of pleasures, but preferring those of the heart, interested in his friends, his work, his family. The bohemian is an individualist, display- ing his "natural" vices and frank perversities, relishing the struggle for life, utterly materialistic, even animal in his de- sires and ideas. The two speakers are opposed as regards the value of morality, philosophy, genius and education; and each gives the best possible presentation of his case. Rameau's language is astonishingly vivid, an effect aided by his use of pantomime, the detailed account of his gestures, together with a style of breathless enumerations. All this is in the best realistic manner of Diderot and is done with brilliant precision and great speed. The dialogue has " cet air vif , ardent et fou " which Diderot claims for his own physiognomy.

Equally mad, though less interesting, is Jacques le fataliste

His Fiction ^^^^^' ^"^'' ^^^^^' ^^^'^^ is a frank and free imita- tion of Sterne in its wilful neglect of plot, its sly sensuality, and the impertinent intrusions of the author. It is a

DIDEROT 481

" Sentimental Journey " which never gets anywhere, and its humor is often labored. Diderot himself declares that he is not writing a novel and that he is simply telling the truth about various episodes. The nominal subject concerns the loves of Jacques as he relates them to his rather dull master on the king's highway and in hostelries. We have then a kind of road-novel, with echoes of Gil Bias and the like; but nothing much ever happens. Apart from the variegated pattern, the interest lies, as usual, in Diderot's talk, with its occasional wit and sprightliness, and in the several short stories interspersed. Of these the Histoire de Madame de la Pommeraye et du Mar- quis des Arcis has achieved deserved fame. It is a passionate tale concerning the vengeance of a deserted mistress who throws her quondam lover into the arms of a courtesan ; the latter then attains virtue through marriage. This romani|.ic rehabilitation, as well as the unnaturalness of the revenge, is cleverly criti- cized by Jacques and his hostess; but no one can criticize the absorbing thrill of the story, especially if read in an abbreviated text.

La Religieuse (1760, publ. 1796) is the best composed, in fact, the only novel proper that Diderot wrote. Even this story falls The English ^'^^^ towards the end and is unfinished. It is a Influence powerful and painful autobiography of a rebellious nun in several convents, a conte philosophique through moral intention; and Diderot demonstrates his theme as to the horrors of conventual life. There are certain gaps in the motivation and the characters are rudely sketched, with the exception of the heroine, who is a more innocent Diderot. Yet the work is a seri- ous social and pathological stuHy. The style is as usual vigorous, sometimes too choppy, detailed in its representation of scenes and people. The influence of Richardson probably appears in this sort of realism, as well as in the idea of a suffering heroine. Diderot's "fiction" frequently shows a sentimental morality and bourgeois preoccupations quite in the vein of Richardson. In fact, most of the Frenchman's important works, whether philosophic or imaginative, reflect some form of the English in- fluence, so pervasive at this time.

Enough has been said to indicate that in the main phases of his activity Diderot ranks among the naturalists,, and like those

482 DIDEROT

of the nineteenth century, he links literary realism with the scien- tific approach. He has the eye, the hand, the spirit of the born Realism Realist. Whether he is preaching natiiral philoso- and style phy and religion or demanding concreteness and actuality in drama and painting or depicting the real demo- cratic world in his own vivid sketches, he is the chief repre- sentative of this spirit between Rabelais and Balzac. His style and processes are also much like theirs; a manner com- pact of color and thought and freshness; a circumstantial method of narration, including enumerations and catalogue sen- tences; the emphasis on gestures, pantomine, physiognomies; the observation, the crude force, the sense of variable life, the animalism, the materialistic imagination and memory. Closer to Diderot's own age are his taste for " tableaux," the rhetorical effusions, and the peculiar habit of mixing licentiousness and sentiment. But he is above all individual, thereby repugnant to the traditionalists, and his strongest individual quality is un- doubtedly verve, the mixture of liveliness, vividness and rapidity in a suite of cascading sentences. Scherer says that Diderot pours himself out in a facile, turbid stream, sometimes muddy and all-carrying as a river at flood-tide, sometimes playfully riot- ing over clear rocks at the bottom. At his best he welds perfectly form and matter, in a burst of creative energy; but his best is contained in picked pages and in no single volume of his works; he is too unequal, too hurried. His sentiment is often rhetorical or vulgar, he has force rather than taste, but through sheer power and geniality, in spite of anarchy and confusions, he manages to lift and impose his materialistic burden.

BOOK V PRE-ROMANTICISM

CHAPTER I

ROUSSEAU. BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE

Jean -Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) , the most remarkable and unfortunate genius of the century, was by birth and preference a " citizen of Geneva." His Swiss origin helps to * * explain his independence, as well as his more per-

sistent views on politics and religion and his moralizing vein. Thus he reaches and touches France as an alien force, and his impact is all the greater. We see him first at the age of seven, devouring sentimental fiction with his unstable father. His feelings and his imagination were awakened far too early — likewise his senses. Good-hearted, but quite uncontrolled as a boy, he soon becomes a rascally apprentice and at sixteen leaves Geneva in consequence of an escapade. He is taken under the wing of Mme de Warens, a charming, free and easy lady, who sends him to Turin, where he is converted (temporarily) to Catholicism. He becomes a lackey and falls in love with the daughter of the house. Again he follows the open road, passing through various journeys and adventures. From Paris, at the age of twenty-one, he takes his last long tramp and is installed at Chambery as the companion of Mme de Warens, under de- grading conditions. His partial self-education dates from this period, as does the beginning of his misanthropy. His establish- ment at Paris (1741 f.) soon involved him in a lasting liaison with Therese Levasseur. She was a kind-hearted but illiterate servant-girl who brought down her relatives upon Rousseau's head and decidedly hampered his career. She gave him five children, whom he turned over to the foundling hospital. Pres- ently Jean-Jacques began to please writers and ladies, and in 1760, his first Discours won the prize of the Dijon Academy.

483

484 ROUSSEAU

Professing a moral transformation, he then started to pose as a " bear," refusing to dress the part of a fashionable success. Yet he was honored in Paris and acclaimed in Geneva, where he was restored to his rights as citizen and Protestant. In 1756 he was established at his " Hermitage " in the forest of Mont- morency, near Paris. There during the next six years he wrote his principal books — La Nouvelle Heloise, Emile, Le Contrat social — and became the victim of his infatuation for Mme d'Houdetot. Rousseau's suspicions of his friends, especially of Grimm, Diderot and Mme d'Epinay, center aroimd this epoch. Serious altercations followed. Rousseau left his retreat and found other protectors, while his literary reputation was grow- ing. Exiled from France on account of Emile, he lived for a time at Metiers in Switzerland, where he experienced fresh dis- sensions and " persecutions." He finally renounced Geneva and Calvinism. In 1766-67 we find him in England, where he quar- relled with Hume and again fled onward. From place to place he carried his uneasy soul, more sinned against than sinning. At last he settled in Paris (1770), and his old age, if still eccen- tric, was calnier and kinder. He died in 1778; his ashes were carried to the Pantheon in 1791.

On the face of it, this is not a normal life, and Rousseau

was evidently an unbalanced person. He has been accused of

megalomania and of the mania of persecution;

'** *' nevertheless, he was entitled to think himself a great man, and it now seems clear that there were actual plots against his happiness and reputation. He had too rare a nature to be readily understood. Where others reasoned, he felt and suffered. He was romantic, sensitive, self-centered, intoxicated alternately by passion and by " virtue." He was unstable in love and friendship, often anti-social in his independence, at war with himself and with his Parisian environment. These personal traits, as well as the new literary currents which he released, will appear best from a consideration of his Confes- sions.

This book ranks as one of the greatest of autobiographies, "Les Con- comparable to the writings of St. Augustine and publ. 1781-88 Montaigne. Lemaitre calls the work the most " can- did, singular and passionate " confessions ever written. The

LES CONFESSIONS 485

story covers Rousseau's life down to the flight to England, and it was composed during the troubled years that followed. Its purpose was to defend his character against the libels of the Grimm faction, to prove his sincerity and to show the world that no better man than Jean-Jacques could be found. Yet he frankly admits many grievous faults and stains; he also pleads guilty to lapses of memory and certain embellishments in the presentation. The first six books are heightened in color and retrospect, just as the last six are deliberately darkened. But in the main the work does bear the stamp of sincerity, faithfully rendering Rousseau's emotions and memories. The vagabond charm of the earlier portions, the " portraits " and anecdotes and pictures of domestic life, the natural vivid style of these morceaux, alternating with the impassioned eloquence of the sentimental passages — all of these qualities give the Confes- sions their double value as a personal document and as one of the first monuments of Romanticism. These values may be traced under three headings: individualism, the love of nature, and the passionate expression of sentiment.

Rousseau's own characteristics, detailed with self-complacency, often amount to an individualistic doctrine. He appears as ardent, weak, vibrating between good and evil, be- n m u "™tween exaltation and despair. He constantly speaks of his sottises, jolies, delires, engouements. For a time he would be captivated by friend or by mistress and then abandon them through indolence or, as his enemies claimed, ingratitude. Ner- vousness and poor health were responsible for various weaknesses; and at times his " case " seems pathological. He holds that virtue became his main passion about 1750; the facts show rather that passion became his main virtue a few years later. His individ- ualism develops into a peculiar type of megalomania. Jean-Jac- ques declares that there was never anything like his Confessions or anybody like him. He was a prodigy as a, child. Later he felt that "en me montrant j'allais occuper de moi I'univers." He claims that he is unique, if not superior, whether as regards his passions, his indolence, or the various circumstances of his life. His temperament is made to explain and excuse his many errors. Other forms in which the personal note appears are: a proud in- dependence, a kind of wilful impressionism, imaginative exalta-

486 ROUSSEAU

tion, vagabondage, and a taste for simple pleasures curiously mingled with romantic sensations. These feelings were much stimulated by his long tramps, during which he learned to love and celebrate the charms of Nature. Rousseau thus indicates the kind of nature that he prefers:

Jamais pays de plaine. ... II me faut des torrents, des ro- chers, des sapins, des bois noirs, des montagnes, des chemins rabo- teux a monter et a descendre, des precipices a mes pieds qui me fassent bien peur.

Such a landscape, when encountered in youth and health, brings life to a pinnacle. And through the " pathetic fallacy " one's mood then colors natiu-e ; it also associates particular ''**"'^® scenes with the image of the loved one. In the

most powerful revery that Rousseau ever experienced, he was chiefly occupied with transposing scenic elements into a future life with Mme de Warens. Any occurrence in nature is likely to arouse ethereal joys or floods of meditation. He thinks out his books while walking, and it is in the forest that he attains to the vision of primitive times. Nature is then depicted in the Confessions, though not so frequently as in the Nouvelle Heloise, yet with the same sincerity and broad sweep, and even more poignantly and personally.

The third modern note which Rousseau sounds is that of sentiment. He declares that sensibility was the main gift of his parents, that it has brought him both bliss and Sensi iity despair. Even as a child all the sentiments were known to him; he wanted to be loved by everybody. In old age he still wept over the songs of his childhood. His intelligence is slow as compared with his emotions, and he sets the value of right feeling far above the value of ideas. " La froide raison n'a jamais rien fait d'illustre." Jean- Jacques himself has essentially I'dme aimante; and such expressions, together with " expansions and ecstasies," tears and embraces and beating pulses, constantly recur. He finds the Parisians shallow in sentiment; he af- firms that love and friendship are the guiding stars of his own life. His love affairs are in fact the most extraordinary thing about Rousseau. They are of all varieties and moods, idyllic or ^ensual. Generally imagination plays the greater part, Plato-

LA NOXJVELLE HELOISE 487

nism and idealism are much dwelt upon, but lasting serviceable affection is not conspicuous. In his affair with Mme d'Houdetot he insists that the delights of I'amitie amoureuse drew him more than the senses, that women both consoled and educated him. With Rousseau love was rarely complete. The following passage, concerning the " idyll " with Mme de Warens, proba- bly represents him at his best:

S'il y a dans la vie un sentiment delicieux, c'est celui que nous eprouvames d'etre rendus I'un a I'autre. Notre attachement mutuel n'en augmenta pas, cela n'etait pas possible; mais il prit je ne sais quoi de plus intime, de plus tquchant dans sa grande sim- pUcite. . . . Nous nous accoutumames a ne plus penser a rien d'etranger a nous, a borner absolument notre bonheur et tous nos desirs a cette possession mutuelle, et peut-etre unique parmi les humains, qui n'etait point, comme je I'ai dit, celle de I'amour, mais une possession plus essentielle, qui, sans tenir aux sens, au sexe, a 1'S.ge, a la figure, tenait a tout ce par quoi I'on est soi, eft qu'on ne peut perdre qu'en cessant d'etre.

The Romantic characteristics just enumerated made their first striking appearance in French literature in the long sentimental "La Nouvelle'^°^^^ called Julie ou la Nouvelle Heloise (1761). Heloise " In this novel, the " new Heloise " loves and yields to her tutor as her namesake loved Abelard; but Julie is finally rescued by domestic guidance and marriage. After being duti- ful for six years she is again shaken by the reappearance of her lover, Saint-Preux, and the impossible triangle is resolved by her death. The sources of the book are two-fold: Richard- son's Clarissa Harlowe and the personal adventures of Rousseau. Richardson probably furnished the epistolary form, the concep- •tion of the unfortunate, heroine who is carried through ruin to death, and the tendency towards much analysis of sentiment. But Rousseau's experiences are what gave the book life in his own eyes and in those of his contemporaries. The scenes of his wanderings, especially around Lake Geneva, are portrayed with mingled precision and magnificence. Julie and Claire (her lively confidante) were originally sketched from two young ladies of Rousseau's acquaintance, while the early love passages were in memory of Mme de Warens. But the book was intended to be more edifying than passionate, when Mme d'Houdetot suddenly

4,88 ROUSSEAU

became Rousseau's main inspiration. There is thus a discrep- ancy between the various parts of the novel: passion and indi- vidualism as opposed to moralizing and didacticism; a discrep- ancy which again thoroughly reflects Rousseau. These personal origins explain the main currents of the Nouvelle Helaise, which we may consider from the three aspects already chosen for the Confessions.

Saint-Preux clearly resembles the author in that he is rash, passionate, weak, easily exalted, loving above his station. Like Rousseau, he talks much about virtue and fine sen- Individuahsm ^j^gjj^g and leaves us imcertain as to his capacity for living up to what he feels. In fact, the novelist talks through all his personages and shows little objectivity. The characters insist that they are " unique " in their situations and sentiments. Self-development is pleaded for in himdreds of passages. It ap- pears that the individual (Julie ) is sacrificed to ideals of family and duty, but the sacrifice is rather made to artificial social dis- tinctions which impede the course of true love. Thus the single person is conquered in his or her strife with artificial society — the favorite thesis of Rousseau. Society is more to blame than either Julie or her lover. So the novel in its chief tendencies remains individualistic.

The " voice of nature," in several senses, is constantly heard. First we have the picturesque landscape, for which La Nouvelle Heloise, aided by English poetry, restored the vogue ^ ^^^ in France. There was born a fresh appreciation for

the long and loving delineation of nature, often associated with man's sufferings and joys. The most invigorating passages are those which depict the scenes preferred by Rousseau. It is nearly always the lower Alps that he describes, the varying perspective- of the Valais mountains, the contrast between the cultivated fields and the rougher hillsides, the shifting of color, the serenity of the heights. Nature is combined with the individual in two principal ways. It is of course associated with the loved one. The grove which witnessed the first kiss of the lovers is forever made a shrine. Saint-Preux thinks of Julie as definitely placed on this sward or on that rock, and Julie sees him as suggested by all the objects which he has left. Again, the pathetic fallacy is frequent, and this is the second way of fusing nature with the individual :

HIS FEELING FOR NATURE 489

Je trouve partout dans les objets la meme horreur qui regne au dedans de moi. On n'apergoit plus de verdure, I'herbe est jaune et fletrie, les arbres sont depouilles, le sechard^ et la froide bise entassent la neige et les glaces; et toute la nature est morte a. mes yeux, comme I'esperance au fond de mon coeur.

Rousseau also demands the simple life, simple pleasures, and prefers the country to Paris, " ce vaste desert du monde." He Natural praises the natural emotions, such as family afEec-

Emotions tions, friendship and love — "la solitude a deux." In love, nature seeks full possession, both of heart and body. Nature also rules the choice of lovers and should rule their marriages, in an ideal society. Nature, rather than civilization, makes the moral differences between the sexes, the aggressive man, the protective woman. Ethically, " la bonte naturelle " is Rousseau's ideal.

Streams of sentimental tears abound throughout the volume.

Today we find the showers of Julie and the torrents of Saint-

Preux rather too larmoyants. But the old regime

" "*^° needed just this irrigation. It is difiScult to free oneself from a suspicion of overdone feeling and rhetorical style ; but such expression is largely a matter of varying taste, and what seems false now was true in its time. Some instances of Rous- seauistic sentiment may be given. Julie attracts her lover pri- marily by her sensibilite; she speaks of affinities, of a " secret conformity of affections " proceeding from Nature. The best love should be unique and purifying. Saint-Preux, though less of a Platonist, agrees that love must be linked with morality, must have elevation and aim at perfection. Taken rightly, love is the whole thing in life, and the absolute view of this sentiment is one of the great novelties introduced by Rousseau. In the midst of their gallantries and frivolities, he made the worldlings " feel." Again, expansive virtue for Jean-Jacques is less a matter of prac- tical ethics than an impulse from the bottom of the soul. His is a sentimental morality, and he declares significantly that sentiment is his conscience. It is also the judge of art, it makes the true power of music and the interest of fiction for him. Compared with feeling, reason is nothing, and he exalts, beyond reason and beyond sustained morality, the theory of the exquisite moment

' The north-east wind.

490 ROUSSEAU

made immortal by recollection and revery. Certainly in the moral world Rousseau confuses kinds and values; but the Nouvelle Heloise opened powerful fresh channels for literature. It still attracts readers through its appreciation of love and nature, as well as through its finely eloquent style, Romantic in its essence and influence.

To go back in time, Rousseau's first printed work was the Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts (1750). Probably under the The Two influence of Diderot and in a state of imaginative "Discours" exaltation, he decided to maintain, in the Dijon Academy debate, that the arts'' and sciences are con- nected with the corruption of humanity. Much of the essay is declamatory and parpdoxical and shows little historical knowl- edge. Yet in his praise of the old Roman vertu, the author indicates the main principle of all his subsequent work: the opposition of artificial society to a simpler life, to which, as far as practicable, man should make his civilization conform. This principle, in another aspect, also underlies the second essay, Discours sur I'origine et les fondements de I'inegalite parmi les hommes (1755). Rousseau here has a vision of primitive man as a happy amoral animal, equal in all respects to his neighbor. But he lives separated from this neighbor, and the " state of na- ture " is a state of isolation. With the organization of society, man becomes gradually less free and equal. Interdependence, strife, ambition are developed, particularly through the posses- sion of property, which Rousseau views as the root of all evil, The foundation of the political State came about in order to protect property, to uphold the rich and oppress the poor. In- equality led to slavery, and Rousseau sees no escape save through a general uprising. The power and daring of this Discours, in spite of its many mistakes, made it figure along with the Contrat social in the propaganda of the Revolution. "L c t t ^^^ ^^^^ chapters of the Contrat social (1762) social": are individualistic, but as a whole the work stands Summary Jqj. g^ constructive organization of democratic society and for the recognition of moral principles in politics. Neither

' This thesis is developed with regard to literature in the Lettre & Dalembert «ur la spectacles (1768), in which the drama and Moli^e particularly are condemned m immoral.

LE CONTRAT SOCIAL 491

the right of the strongest, nor divine right, nor the family, is the true source of human society. In the (hypothetical) primitive " contract " which should today be reinforced, it was a ques- tion of mutual consent and obligation between members of a self-governing community. The forfeiture of " inalienable rights " in favor of an oppressive monarch is a void contract ; but Rousseau then urges the alienation of many individual claims in favor of the community, the popular State. Each person is at once subject and citizen-ruler in this collective body politic. Such is the famous doctrine of popular sovereignty. The law is the expression of the " infallible " general will. Its agent is the governing or executive body, which may be of several kinds. A sort of aristo-democracy is preferred, a cabinet ministry which shall be controlled by the sovereign people through referendums and the like. The general will implies both a collective con- sciousness and a public spirit, and Rousseau holds that under modern conditions " neither reason nor the moral law is to be real- ized by man except in and through the civil state." The author now modifies these abstract ideals by considerations of circumstance and expediency. He concedes that some of the rights which have been taken from the individual subject may be guardedly handed back to him. A small State should be democratic, but a large one rather monarchical (cf . Montesquieu) . Having small democracies in mind, Rousseau held that representative gov- ernment was not truly popular. Sometimes unanimity of the popular vote is demanded, sometimes merely a plurality. But such attenuations and uncertainties do little to modify the effect of the Contrat social in its main features: equality before the law; the rights of the individual as merging in the interests of the State; hence State sovereignty and what might be called democratic despotism.

Disregarding other errors and confusions, we may emphasize the last idea as containing the germs of much subsequent evil. Fimdamental personal rights — the right of free asso- n icism elation, of choosing one's religion and of using one's property — are made subordinate to those of the sovereign State. The despotism of the Terror derived very considerably from Rousseau, and the modern German State owes something to his conception of absolute sovereignty. On the other hand,

492 ROUSSEAU

Rousseau did a great deal to forward the general democratic idea; his theory of the Contract may be stripped of its hazy primitivism and taken more justly to mean that government must depend on the " consent of the governed." The Contrat social is the one work in which Rousseau leaves individualism; he goes indeed to the other extreme of collectivism. His errors are due both to a lack of the historical sense — any sense of development or of a complex of conditions — and to unbalanced or confused thinking. His " temperament," which had its great value in his imaginative or personal works, often leads him astray in matters of sound knowledge and reasoning.

The opposition between nature and society, particularly as regards education, is again enforced in Emile (1762). This " educational romance " is partly fictional, partly autobiographical; as a treatise, it has links with the simplifying and realistic ideas of Rabelais and of Fe- nelon. The boy Emile progresses from the education of the senses to that of the intelligence and the emotions. The child should be brought up without constraint, knowing first a moth- er's care, then passing to a governor or father, whose primary object should be to " faire un homme." Between the ages of five and twelve, the boy remains in a " state of nature," re- ceiving no regular lessons, learning rather from experience and example, talking with common folk and persistently asking questions. Emphasis is laid on physical exercises and only after the age of twelve does the youth actually study ; even then he studies things (object-lessons) rather than books. During adolescence he will read a few " historians of the soul," such as Plutarch, and gradually his sentiments will be awakened. Finally, the youth will subdue his passions, travel a little, meet and marry his Sophie, who has been trained mainly to please Emile. And the author celebrates the wedding in a lyrical manner, not without absurdities.

The chief objection to this general theory is that it does not fit a man for social life. Emile is brought up in an improbable state of isolation, and his education is neither thor- oughly human nor humanistic. The study of lan- guages and literature is not encouraged, the memory is not trained, and the boy's mind and soul are long kept inactive. He

EMILE 493

is reared as a solitary Rousseauist rather than as a future citi- zen. But in many things concerning child-welfare the author's views are sound. In this respect he inaugurated an educational revolution. Mothers began to nurse their children, people began to study handicrafts, and physical exercises were made more prominent in France; in Germany, Rousseau's " Gospel of child- hood," coming down through Pestalozzi and Froebel, forms the basis of the modern kindergarten. Rousseau's influence was due to the novelty and sincerity of his revolt against artificial systems and to the persuasiveness of his appeals to sentiments and passions. The natural education which he recommends stands for simplicity versus apparatus, for real objects versv^ forms, and for first-hand experiences versus authority.

The fourth book of Emile contains the gist of Rousseau's re- ligion in the Profession de foi du Vicaire Savoyard. We have seen how in practice he changed from Protestantism * ^""^ to Catholicism and back again, usually under per- sonal influences. His religion is also a highly individual and sentimental affair. It does not need logical proofs, but only emotions, a swelling sense of virtue and contact with the infinite. It has been best defined as a " sentimental Deism," with strong Pantheistic leanings; Rousseau sees the divine spirit in all nature. This emotional religiosity finds many echoes in the nineteenth century, beginning with Chateau- briand.

Rousseau appears then as a man of unfortunate life and of very mobile character. His strivings towards virtue were in the end sincere, but his ethical message is blurred by his Conclusion egotism and by his tendency to exalt sentiment above knowledge and reason. The same objections apply to his dealings with politics and education, where the mind rather than the heart and imagination should be in control; yet in neither of these fields can his great contributions be ignored. Rousseau, more than any other writer of his century, counted powerfully upon the Revolution, through both the people and their leaders (Mme Roland, Robespierre), in both its idealistic and its excessive phases. Indeed, some hold that it is chiefly the excessive side of Rousseau that has prevailed, in matters of con-

494 ROUSSEAU

duct as well as in politics and literature. In the last domain, how- ever, in the Confessions and the Nouvelle Heloise, his very de- fects become in some sort virtues. The exaltation of the ego and the heart, the freeing of the imagination, the passionate expres- sion of man's aflBliations with Nature and with the vast unknown not only give immortality to Rousseau's own Romanticism, but make him the father of the subsequent Romantic movement.^ His eloquent prose is refashioned in the lyrics of Lamartine and of Musset. Thus he exerts an expansive influence in several fields, and with all his faults he appeals to something abiding in human nature.

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814), the immediate disciple of Rbusseau, resembled him in leading an eccentric, vagrant and Bernardin dreamy life. He was subject to melancholy, mad Pierre"*' ^^ times, but successful in both worldl^jj^ literary ways, towards the end of his career. He first mei^iWusseau in 1772, and yielded at once to the spell which led him to produce books and to preach the worship of Nature. Bernardin's Etudes de la Nature (1784) is characteristic of the author in its mingled exoticism and pseudo-science. Nature is viewed as the source of all good, of all utility and beauty; she should be observed less by savants than by sentimental believers. In the latter role, Saint-Pierre undertook to show that the whole aim of creation was the happiness of man, and he makes an excessive use of the doctrine of final causes. (For instance, cantaloupes are divided by kindly nature into sections for family eating.) Better than his logic is Bernardin's analysis of sentiment. He also forestalls Romantic melancholy in his fusion of man and nature ; when it rains the landscape seems to him " une belle femme qui pleure." The ardor of his feeling imparts a commimicative fire to his descriptions, which are full of color and movement, and he has a keen sense of the picturesque. The specific element which he adds to Rousseau is exoticism. He describes not only Europe but also tropical scenes, and this knowledge and feeling for exotic nature is continued in Paul et Virginie (1788). Here the setting is the Ile-de-France (Mauritius), which the author knew quite well. The subject of the story is the development of a young pair according to natural education and sentiment. The

« See below, Bk. V, Ch. II and Bk. VI, Chs. II and IV.

PAUL ET VIRGINIE 495

effects of landscape, as mingled with intimate human life, and the growth of adolescent love are well depicted, less so is the ship- wreck and tragic climax. Paul et Virginie is a Rousseauistic idyll; it is not a great book, but it still retains a certain charm for the sentimentally minded.

CHAPTER II MADAME DE STAEL. CONSTANT.

The reader is doubtless acquainted with the series of dyna- mic changes that took place in France from the death of Louis XV to the battle of Waterloo. The succession of >s ory events, briefly, is as follows: the reign of the

well-meaning but inadequate Louis XVI (1774-92) ; the vain endeavor of several excellent ministers, notably Turgot and Necker, to stem the rising tide; and during thj| period the participation of France in the American cause; th^-%onvocation of the States-General, the formation of the Constituent Assem- bly and the fall of the Bastille (1789) ; the defeat of the milder Revolutionaries {les Girondins) and the Reign of Terror (from 1793) ; the inauguration of European wars on a large scale; the National Convention superseded by the Directory (1795- 99) ; Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul (to 1804) and as Emperor (to 1815) ; his victories, his domination of Europe, the efforts of the Allies and the final abdication of Napoleon.

The effect of the Revolution on pure literature could hardly be immediately beneficial. As in the Great War, people's j^. thoughts were running in other channels, and pas-

and the sions were too inflamed to allow the necessary de-. Revolution tachment. The Revolution practically destroyed the old society, together with the tradition of the salons and the predominant influence of women — except that of Mme de Stael. Modern journalism took strong root in this epoch; at one time several hundred periodicals were in circulation, and Napoleon found it expedient to reduce this number materially. Usually journalism, in its virulence and prejudice, is the t3rpical expression of Revolutionary literature. Better than the other periodicals were the Decade philosophique, the organ of the " ideologues," and the liberal Journal des Debats. Camille Desmoulins is probably the most noted journalist of the age;

496

MME DE STAEL 497

his letters written from prison show a fevered sensitive soul, which the Revolution pushed almost to the verge of madness. The great orator of the time was the Marquis de Mirabeau, a man of strong passions and intellect; this double strength still vibrates in his speeches, whose eloquence now seems old- fashioned in some particulars but was based upon fact and logic as well as emotional appeal. The condition of the theater and of poetry under the Revolution has already been stated.^ In short, no great books were produced \mtil Napoleon had re- stored order. At the very beginning of the nineteenth century two great writers come to the fore: Mme de Stael and Chateau- briand.

Germaine Necker de Stael (1766-1817) was of Swiss parentage but French upbringing. The ministry of her father, the finan- cier Ne^fker, was virtually the last hope of the old

^^ * ® regime. Her mother founded the brilliant " salon Necker." Germaine's happy home, its social spirit and the influence of her father counted for much in her life and ideals. She was a precocious child, listening eagerly to such talkers as Marmontel and Buffon. Her ardent sensibility appears in her early writings on Rousseau. She was led into a foolish manage de raison with the Baron de Stael-Holstein, the Swedish ambas- sador, who gave her an eminent position, but who seemed un- congenial and unlovable. She immediately started a salon of her own and became a young queen among the most intelligent groups of the dying monarchy. Her influence was not political, and the Revolution soon submerged her power. She joined the party of victims and emigres, whom she generously helped. In 1792, she began her series of flights to Coppet, an estate near Geneva, and after that date she appeared only intermittently at Paris. The crisis of her life was her affair with Benjamin Constant, who owed much of his success to Mme de Stael, but who finally wearied of her. In 1795 she was allowed to return to France, where she consorted with the liberals and the Republi- cans. But she was soon accused of political intriguing and was persecuted by several French governments. In 1802, however, she reached the height of her power in Paris, conducting a famous salon, frequented by Mme Recamier, Constant, Fauriel

1 8ee above, Bk. Ill, Chs. I and IV.

498 MADAME DE STAEL

and others. Her early hopes of Napoleon had ended in dis- appointment, and he becanae her enemy. The lady, as usual, was too free-spoken. Police decrees closed her salon and practi- cally banished Mme de Stael. She traveled in Germany and Italy, but made her headquarters at Coppet, holding a court which rivaled that of Voltaire a generation before. The death of her husband did not lead to a marriage with Constant. Sorrow and bereavement deepened her mind, while her foreign experiences bore fruit in her masterpieces. As a middle-aged woman she married a young man named De Rocca, who seems to have really cared for her. She traveled in Russia and visited England for the second time. Soon after the triimiph of the Allies, which did not realize her political ideals, she died, ex- hausted by her stormy career.

It was a pathetic great life, largely because Mme de Stael's enthusiasm and exceptional talents were frustrated by circum- stances and therefore she never attained happiness.

arac er Impatient, frank and not very tactful, she dismayed men as different as Schiller, Scott, Byron, Napoleon and Jou- bert. Wherever she went, says Sainte-Beuve, she was " destmee a porter du mouvement et de I'imprevu." She had an eager need for fresh knowledge and fresh contacts, an almost universal intelligence and much capacity for affection. She loved her father and adored his memory, which is enshrined in Corinne. She was an excellent mother; and she said truly that friendship was the " religion of her life." When disappointed in the love of men — Narbonne, Talleyrand, Constant — she turned to the love of mankind. She had a good heart, benevolent and gen- erous. Enthusiasm and sensibility were the salient traits of her youth; later she believed in a sterner stoicism and finally in the necessity of Christian duty and morality. She represehted in her experience and work all the phases of France, from the epoch of the later philosophes, through the Revolution, down to the Empire and the Restoration.

Mme de Stael had a virile and energetic mind, but her heart was quite feminine, while her sociability was a marked char- acteristic. " La vie " is her favorite word, and she ^"^ tends to see life in terms of " society." Conse- quently she writes with clearness, swiftness and an appeal to

HER MINOR WORKS 499

general cultured interest. Again, she was the most charming and absorbing talker of her time. Her written thought would often spring from her conversation and is clothed in conversa- tional form. Even in Corinne, the most artistic of her works, much is made of formal dialogue and of society. Thus her style shows a certain improvisation, a tendency to run on carelessly, but it has the qualities of impetuosity and naturalness. She is not a professional writer ; books are simply the overflow from her very full life; literature with her is a way of keeping in touch with the world — " c'est de la conversation indirecte."

Her early works show particularly the reveries, passions and ideals of her youth. The Lettres sur les ecrits et le caractere de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1788) are a tribute to ' the writer who attracted her most. The book, De

I'lnjluence des passions (1796), constitutes at once an indict- ment and a eulogy of such " dark influences " as love and ambi- tion. The steadier lights of morality and usefulness are recom- mended, but Mme de Stael is not yet purged of the spirit of Romanticism; while declaring that one should flee from the passions, she still perceives their fascination and their absorbing power upon life. The Reflexions sur la paix (1794) show a singularly moderate tone and a political sagacity in the midst of turmoil. Sympathizing with the republican idea, she is yet opposed to fanaticism and wishes an even-handed justice. Finally, her Essai sur les fictions may be viewed as the stepping- stone to her greater productions both in fiction and criticism. She holds that the novel as a genre should be more esteemed and better done; it will be the form of the future, especially when it displays all sides of life and not merely the sentiment of love. She prefers truly psychological fiction, which turns into drama the changes and subtleties of the hiunan heart; and she still believes in the consoling effect of romances, in their power to remove us to an ideal world. She said that the carry- ing off of Clarissa Harlowe seemed an " event " in her own youth, and on her death-bed she was found reading Walter Scott. Mme de Stael's novels renovate the form of fiction and closely reflect her personality. " Corinne est I'ideal de DelpMne" j^^^^ ^^ Sta61; Delphine est la realite pendant sa jeunesse " (Sainte-Beuve) . In other words, the former novel

500 MADAME DE STAEL

shows more of the writer's intelligence and the latter more of her sensibility. Both partake of the nature of " confessions." Both dwell on the idea that a superior woman is destined to misfortime, if she opposes the fixed views of man; but while Corinne has the superiority of talent, the heroine of Delphine (1802) surpasses through her character and heart. The latter story is a story of self-sacrifice in favor of a poor sort of lover, a copy of the one who made Mile de Lespinasse so unhappy. Delphine has something of the passionate style of Mile de Les- pinasse, though it is more directly modeled on Rousseau. The form is that of the epistolary novel, and the book suffers from the artifices demanded by this method of narration. It is also a " lyrical novel," like the Nouvelle Heloise, giving the greatest place to love, its transports and problems. It is modem in that it poj.es the question of a woman^ right to struggle for her place in the sun and to keep her individual conscience. It states the ideal which permeates much of Mme de Stael's work — " the desire for happiness in marriage." The style is sometimes in- correct and hasty, whereas the plot is improbable and roman- esque. But Delphine remains a stimulating and distiirbing book, on account of its individualism, its subtlety and its fine conception of feminine character.

Corirme (1807) is a greater novel and the writer's master- piece from an artistic standpoint. Here there is a closer sense

of style and a better sustained eloquence. The " Corinne " ^

novel not only revealed the beauties of Italy to

France, but it showed the authoress at the apogee of her powers. For Europe henceforth she was known as the writer of Corinne, taken as the symbol of the independence of genius. The heroine, like her creator, is a talented improviser, who converses to a select circle on literature, love and death. She also resembles Mme de Stael in feeling the rivalry between fame and love, in experiencing much hostile criticism, and above all in her need for an understanding husband. She has apparently foimd him in Lord Nelvil, a rather stiff Englishman, but there are family vetoes against their union, and Corinne finally yields her sweet- heart to a " truly English " maiden. Much of the action is laid amid Italian scenes and there are long digressions con- cerning Italian art, literature and manners, which remind one

HER LITERARY CRITICISM 501

rather too much of a guide-book. This feature, together with certain improbabilities and conventions in the plot, lends the story an old-fashioned air. But the intermingling of sight- seeing with heart-affairs is well done, and in sentiment and thought, Corinne is absolutely a first-class novel. It has spiritual miity and it is a cultiu-al landmark. Its penetration, its melancholy, the sweet frank charm of the heroine, her nobility of character, and a deeply moving note which comes from personal experience are still most effective and give the story its high place in the finer literature of love. And, as Brunetiere observes, the psychological excellence of Mme de Stael is only equaled by her historical importance. That is, Delphine and Corinne are the first modern novels to give an inside view of French society at a crucial epoch. Mme de Stael, then, succeeded in her effort to raise fiction to a higher dignity of intrinsic worth and of general consideration. Her wide powers of sympathy and her thorough feminism make her the ancestress of George Sand and the individualistic school. But it is notable that Mme de Stael does not allow passion to triumph and that she maintains the usual moral standards.

In literary criticism, her work emphasizes a new point of de- parture. She is the first wholly to break away from the abso- "De la luteness of Classical standards ^. and to emphasize

Litterature" that cosmopolitan spirit which recognizes the relativity of taste and freely admires the beauties of foreign countries. Also she changes the direction of criticism from the study of detail (rhetorics, treatises on taste, commentaries) to the study of literature in its relation to other social currents — the modern idea of " Kulturgeschichte." In the introduction to De la Litterature (1801), she says :

Je me suis propose d'examiner quelle est rinfluence_ de^ la religion, des moeurs et des lois sur la litterature, et quelle est rinfluence de la litterature sur la religion, les moeurs et les lois. . . . On n'a pas suffisamment analyse les causes morales et politiques qui modifient I'esprit de la Utterature.

These rapports and others, such as historibal circumstances, the structure of society and especially the genius of each race, she connects with her special subject, quite in the manner of Montes-

' See above, pp. 346-47; Voltaire had not dared to go so far.

502 MADAME DE STAEL

quieu, and she uses many of the divisions that appear in the Esprit des lois. De la Litterature is, in fact, an eighteenth- century book in that it revives the question of progress, aims at human perfectibility and sets liberal philosophy above all else. Its argument along these lines is hampered by the old confusion between an advance in the arts and in the other fields of human endeavor. Mme de Stael admits, indeed, this "principe des beaux arts: I'imagination ne permet pas la per- fectibilite indefinie." But in practice she is so ardent in up- holding the cause of intellectual progress that she diminishes the role of creative genius and sets the thought of the eighteenth century above the more artistic literature of the seventeenth. Thus she is a " Modern." As regards other coun- tries, she is disposed to set Rome above Greece, since the former civilization came later in time; and she was not yet well acquainted with Italy and Germany. In these connections, the reader must allow for misconceptions and inacciiracies. But Mme de Stael becomes a critical prophet in maldng her great and lasting distinction between the " Literatures of the North " and those of the South: Great Britain and Germany as opposed to the Mediterranean countries, or the Teutonic versus the Classical and Romance languages. The qualities of the North are courage, a melancholy imagination, metaphysical brooding and mysticism. These qualities are well displayed in Ossian, who is erroneously called the " Homer of the North." More plausibly, poetic genius is associated with the misty English skies and comes to an admirable culmination in Shake- speare and Milton. For the Northern imagination loves the sea, the wind and wild heather, and thoughts of the other world are blown across these cloudy horizons. Thus Montesquieu's theory of climate is renovated. Mme de Stael 's liberal spirit also attempts to reconcile the newly born political ideals with the progress of literature. Intellectual progress must be "conse- crated by liberty, guaranteed by democratic institutions and manners, and reinvigorated by cosmopolitanism." But litera- ture, together with other things, is an " expression of society," aristocratically viewed. This book was the first of the writer's works to create a commotion. It was severely judged by the semi-oflBcial and doginatic critics of the Empire. It also in-

ON GERMANY 508

stituted the rivalry between Mme de Stael and Chateau- briand, who aptly said: "Vous n'ignorez pas que ma folie a moi est de voir Jesus-Christ partout, comme Mme de Stael la perfectibilite."

The bold distinctions between North and South are reinforced in De I'Allemagne, which was suppressed by Napoleon's orders "De I'Alle- ^^ ^^^^ ^°^ finally published in 1813. This is cer- magne " tainly the masterpiece of Mme de Stael as a thinker. It is the book which first disclosed Germany to France and which gave a worthy image of the outburst of genius associated with the age of Goethe. Apart from any theories, the basic qualities of the work are the unusual breadth, penetration and sympathy, which still make De I'Allemagne such satisfactory critical reading. It consists of four parts: (1) a general view of Germany; (2) its literature; (3) its philosophy; (4) a treatise on religion and " I'enthousiasme." Of these, the second part is of chief importance for us, since the writer's knowledge of the country itself was not very wide. Outside of court and literary circles, she had seen little of general manners or of middle-class life, which she idealizes.

She begins her critical treatment by regretting that the French will not do justice to German literature, because of linguistic barriers and inherent national prejudices. Among these are the French faith in rules, the power of tradition, of public opinion, and especially the social standpoint which French writers too constantly bear in mind. Here and elsewhere, she holds — rather against the grain, one supposes — that solitary thought and feeling constitute the strongest basis for literary creation. The Germans now are independent and indi- vidual in their books, as they long were in their political units. It is true that they often tend to obscurity, " se plaisent dans les tenfebres," and their prose is negligent as compared with the cult of style in France. In the drama, all that concerns plot and action is better handled by the French ; but a German play will go deeper' in psychology, in heart-interest and in the study of strong passions. From this point on the writer pleads for inter- national tolerance in letters and for the benefits which the French particularly would derive from admitting the best of German ideas and emotions.

604) MADAME DE STAEL

All this illustrates the candor and personality which made the charm of Mme de Stael and which she most admired in the Germans. She revolted against the Classical rules and models, she preferred subjectivity, sentiment, imagination and revery. Therefore she is plainly for the North against the South (includ- ing in the latter division the Classic age of France). She now definitely connects the North with the word " Romanticism." In Germany, she says, the term " Romantic " has recently been in- troduced and applies to the kind of poetry that mingles chivalry and Christianity. The English have surpassed in this kind. The South is more clear-sighted and pagan; so classic poetry is that of the ancients and their imitators. Either kind is ad- missible, for a natural and national diversity of tastes springs " des sources primitives de I'imagination et de la pensee." But on the whole she contends for the inspiration of indigenous Romanticism rather than the imitation of transplanted Classicism. She chiefly admires Goethe, Schiller and Lessing. She is not thorough on philosophy, which she knew mostly through Schlegel, but she sees the importance of Kantian idealism — "the starry heavens above and the sense of duty within." She stresses morality in the third as well as in the fourth part of the book, where " enthusiasm " now takes on a deeper and sterner note. Genius for her should finally serve to manifest " la bonte supreme de I'ame." As a critic, her contact with art is not immediate and spontaneous, but rather intellec- tualized and ethical.

By selection and idealizing, Mme de Stael gave a rather rose-colored picture of Germany, as Heine showed in his Deutschland. But her impulse toward Teutonic studies was felt by such men as Cousin in France, by Ticknor and Prescott in America. It was largely through her initiative that the movement towards German universities began. More widely, the critical and cosmopolitan spirit of Mme de Stael, together with her fine Romanticism of feeling, counted upon diverse groups. In poetry, her theory of enthusi- asm influenced especially Lamartine. In criticism, the cosmo- politan tone of the Ohhe, Hugo's Preface de Cromwell and the exotic gleanings of Nodier owe a good deal to her guidance.*

• For these and other names, see next Book.

CONSTANT 505

In politics and history, the liberal doctrinaires were cer- tainly affected by the latest and most mature of her books, the Considerations sur la Revolution frangaise (published post- humously, 1818). The "trio of the Sorbonne " — Villemain, Guizot, Cousin — are her disciples. The first-named more com- pletely makes literature the expression of society and also stud- ies international literary influences. Guizot figures among the group of translators and propagandists, who mainly through Mme de Stael's impulsion, promote the vogue of Shakespeare and of Schiller. In general, as Sainte-Beuve says, she helped restore the sense of the infinite, which is the spirit of the North. A ripe mind, a deep heart and a keen enthusiasm are the per- sonal qualities which she impresses upon her work. She en- larged the borders bf her country, she helped to Europeanize modern thought.

By the side of Mme de Stael, her lover cuts rather a poor figure. A native of Lausanne, Constant was early naturalized

„ . . as a French citizen and played a considerable politi- Benjamin . . .

Constant, cal role. His character forms a singular mixture of

1767-1830 intellectual strength and moral weakness. He was a liberal skeptic, an acute logical thinker and a psychological analyst of the first order. But " Constant I'inconstant " had a feeble will, an excitable, over-active temperament, an arid egotistical nature. He was a .perpetual diner-out, talker, duellist, Don Juan and sensation-seeker. On account of his two-fold nature, he has been called " un homme qui re- gardait un enfant," and like Chauteaubriand's Rene and Lord Byron, he was one of the great biases of the Romantic period. His character appears nakedly in Adolphe (1816), as a mix- ture of egotism, passion and irony. Adolphe falls out of love with his mistress and makes her suffer cruelly; he " ^^"'P''® " too suffers because of his very impotence in feeling. The successive steps in this affair are treated with rare pro- fundity and give the impression of close living truth. Indeed, the chief scenes and sentiments were actually lived, since the heroine, Ellenore, is a compound of Constant's two loves, Mme de Charrifere and Mme de Stael. The gentle devotion of the one and the impetuous and exigent temper of the other do not make a unified character. Otherwise, Constant shows much insight in

506 MADAME DE STAEL

portraying human weaknesses. The decadence of love; the in- tervention of amour-propre, that great stumbling-block of French lovers; the effect of EUenore's mature age and of her too clinging disposition; the self-torture of Adolphe and his subjection to public opinion; the painful and false side of such liaisons: all these phases are considered with penetration and restraint. The style is sober, clearly fitting the thought, not rhetorical. Constant did not have a creative imagination, and his characters are real people, somewhat changed. But he had the two gifts of clairvoyance and of precision. Consequently Adolphe, an intensely psychological novel, is the first of the ultra-modern variety and leads on to Stendhal.

CHAPTER III

CHATEAUBRIAND

Of the three great forerunners of Romanticism, Chateau- briand exercised the most immediate and imposing influence. Chief Cosmopolitan and eloquent like Mme de Stael,

Qualities he has a less disciplined brain and a colder heart. Sensitive, imaginative and self-centered like Rousseau, he is more aristocratic, less primitive, and absorbed in more exotic landscapes. Where Rousseau pleads for a generous sprinkling of nature, Chateaubriand believes in total immersion. Where Mme de Stael is humanitarian and forward-looking, Chateau- briand is pessimistic concerning man, rejects every liberal belief of the eighteenth century, and stands for the " Catholic and monarchical reaction." Naturally, then, he turns to the Gothic and medieval. Yearning for remoteness, he also chooses his subjects and scenes from the farthest Occident and Orient. He thus leads the Romantic movement in these important novelties: medievalism; the revival of aesthetic Christianity; the impassioned description of exotic nature; and the enthronement of the melancholy ego therein.

Frangois-Rene de Chateaubriand (1768-1848) was born at Saint-Malo in Brittany, within sound of the sea which always stirred his imagination and feeling. He came of an "^ ' * ancient and illustrious family. His father was a stern despot, and his mother stood somewhat apart from her children; Rene's affection was rather for his sister, Lucile, who had a temperament much like his own. These two, in the lonely Chateau de Combourg, led a strange and melancholy youth, hushed in the presence of their gloomy father, listening to tales of ghosts and to the wind which moaned around the lonely turret. For Rene, it was a life of hard exercise, followed at night by much solitude and haunted meditation. No wonder that he dates from this epoch his lifelong sadness and his vast creative in-

607

508 CHATEAUBRIAND

stinct. " Mon imagination allumee, se propageant sur tons lea objets, ne trouvait nulle part assez de nourriture et aurait devore la terre et le ciel." He was sent away to school and became a good student in late adolescence. After considering several careers, he was suddenly put into the army by his father, pre- sented at court and to certain lights of the old regime; Males- herbes, the former minister, advised the journey to America which Chateaubriand imdertook in 1791. He traveled from the seaboard cities to Niagara and probably to the Ohio, but he never saw the primeval southern forests which made his works so famous. Returning to France, he was drawn into a conventional marriage, then emigrated and played his part courageously as a soldier of the royal camp. Wounded and ill, disillusioned and desperate, he sought refuge in England, where h« lived for eight years. At London, he was at first poverty-stricken and on the verge of suicide. Becoming acquainted with English coimtry life, he had an idyllic affair with the daughter of a pastor. Fi- nally he met Fontanes, a sympathetic critic and counselor, who with Joubert later, was largely instrumental in advancing Cha- teaubriand's literary career. He returned to Paris, and the pub- lication of Atala (1801) was followed by the Genie du Chris- tianisme in the next year. This was at the time when Napoleon's " Concordat " aimed at reconciling France and the Catholic Church, a circumstance which assured to Chateaubriand and his Genie a brilliant success. From now on he is the lion of the salons, be lives but little with his wife, and he becomes distin- guished as statesman, ambassador, and the foremost literary figure of his age.

It was the perpetual desire for fresh conquests that led Cha- teaubriand into politics. For a time he had the favor of Napo- Political ^^°°> ^^^ ^°°° broke with him and became a stanch Career legitimist. He was the chief promoter of the Chris-

tian and monarchical tendency which centered around the Res- toration of 1815 and affected the earlier Romanticists, for ex- ample, Lamartine. Having made a splendid trip to the Orient, having won the devotion of duchesses and the ear of the public, it seems that at last Chateaubriand might have been happy. But his haughty spirit soon found defects in the new monarchy. Under whatever dynasty, it was Chateaubriand's nature to be

HIS CHARACTER 509

always in the opposition. Yet he was made ambassador, for short intervals, to Rome, to Berlin and to London; in England he lived in sumptuous contrast to his former poverty. As minister of foreign affairs, he threw his country into a brief war with Spain (1823). On the advent of the bourgeois monarchy of Louis-Philippe (1830), Chateaubriand withdrew from political life and henceforth reigned in the salon of Mme Recamier. Here he was viewed as a social and literary oracle, dominating and often disdaining the younger generation of writers. He pre- pared his final attitude by writing his Memoires d'outre-tombe and by arranging for his burial in a little island near Saint- Malo, where his lonely tomb still confronts the sea.

This agitated life contained features of grandeur, but was

darkened by Chateaubriand's constant melancholy, egotism and

ennui. " J'ai bailie ma vie," as he bitterly said,

'* ' because his imperious imagination always outstripped rpality. His perpetual longings for the unattainable brought into Trench literature the so-called mal de Rene. He was too intense, too self-centered and haughty. His pride devoured everything, leading to disgust with action, with affection, with glory and finally with himself. But his egotism rides above the wreck, not only permeating his Memoirs, but making him the chief hero of his other works. " II n'y a que Chateaubriand dans I'ceuvre de Chateaubriand." With the exceptions of the prin- ciple of honor and the Catholic reli^on, he affects to consider life an utter void and he enjoys a perverse satisfaction in the spectacle of human ruins and illusions. Thus it is not sur- Iprising that Chateaubriand represents primarily the literature of escape, and that his splendid gifts adorn the presentation of far-off civilizations, whether in the East or in the West.

The Western influence, dating from bis four months' stay in America, appears in Atala, Rene and Les Natchez; the Western Eastern, in which may be included much of Cha- inspiration teaubriand's treatment of Christianity, is visible in the Geme du Chnstianisme and conspicuous in the Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem and the prose epic, Les Martyrs. With the partial exception of the Genie and of his Memoirs, all of Cha- teaubriand's important works deal either with the Orient or with the Occident. In the latter field he found more novelty and

510 CHATEAUBRIAND

exhibited more strength. He had composed, by 1800, a huge manuscript volume, describing his trip to America and the Indian tribe of the Natchez; for during the years of fighting and exile, his visions of American vastness and his embellish- ment of Indian maidens had grown apace. He was ready now to extract from this manuscript such episodes as Ataa" Atala and Bene. Atala (1801) is probably the most perfect of his works in its harmonious construction, the interest and charm of its characters, the high values of its scenery and style. It has a peculiar attraction for Americans, since it is the first work of French genius in which the scene is laid wholly in this country. Chateaubriand's accounts of the savannahs and forests of the old Louisiana territory have long been famous; and the flora and fauna which he exhibits in his luxuriant images and descriptions were according to the recorded documentation of the time. The same may be said of his general use of local color and local customs. As regards character, he adds the new note of " psychological exoticism " (Chinard) , or the absorbing depiction of modem struggles against a primi- tive background. But it may be admitted that his savages are rather too " good Indians " to be probable. The heroine, Atala, has been brought up by a Christian mother. Her lover, Chactas, later becomes half-civilized. As a young warrior, he was taken prisoner by a hostile tribe of which Atala was a member; she rescues him and flees with him into the forest; but she cannot marry him because of a vow made to her dying mother. The conflict in her mind, the love-passages in the forest, crowned by the death and burial of Atala, are very impressive and recall in places Manon Lescaut. Underlying the story are deep cur- rents of emotion which break out in extreme Romantieian: as where Chactas expresses a desire to clasp his beloved and soar with her through the debris of the world and eternity; and elsewhere the author declares: " Les grandes passions sent solitaires et les transporter au desert c'est les rendre a leur empire." This is Rousseauism, with more emphasis on wider spaces and the wildest' desires. "The style, as usual with Cha- teaubriand, is majestic and melancholy. The grave cadences of his prose seem naturally allied with this tale of " old unhappy far-off things," with the sweep of great expanses and eternal

O

3 OS

o

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THE MAL DE RENE 611

passions. The descriptions of nature are both accurate and picturesque, and Atala worthily opens the nineteenth century as the first masterpiece of French eloquence after Rousseau.

Another tragic story of the West was first published as a part of the Oenie du Christianisme. Rene (1802) is but a brief , -„ episode, yet its influence upon both the form and sentiment of Romantic fiction was very great. The hero is another Chateaubriand, an ill-fated young Frenchman, who can find happiness neither in the civilization of Europe nor beyond the sea. He cannot live with his devoted Indian wife, and he relates to Chactas, now grown old, the melancholy his- tory of his sentimental experiences. These include poignant memories of childhood, the affection of an unfortunate sister, travels and adventures in the " stormy ocean of the world," attempts at suicide and finally the plunge into the American wilderness. The mal de Rene consists in the perpetual dis- appointment which confronts insatiable desires, whether con- cerning the sympathy of women, the consolation of Nature, or the venture of life as a whole. The mal is not wholly new, but the personal intensity of Chateaubriand gives it fresh poig- nancy. " Mon cceur est naturellementpetri d'ennui et de misere." He finds existence only a shifting abyss and he calls on the longed-for storms to sweep him into unknown climes. By a sort of cosmic fallacy, the greater aspects of Nature are associ- ated with man's daimonic heart, whose movements are compared with the rising and sinking of the Mississippi's floods. The following passage may well illustrate Chateaubriand's dangerous charm: ' "

Je descendais dans la vallee, je m'elevais sur la montagne, appelant de touts la force de mes desirs I'ideal objet d'une flamme future; je I'embrassais dans les vents, je croyais I'entendre dans les gemissements du fleuve; tout etait ce fantome imaginaire, et les astres dans les cieux, et le principe meme de vie dans runivers.

It is to be noted that the author is perfectly aware of his Romantic excesses; Chactas concludes with the safe moral: " II n'y a de bonheur que dans les voies communes."

From his manuscript volume of Americana, Chateaubriand drew later the long epic narrative of Les Natchez (1826). The

512 CHATEAUBRIAND

subject is the massacre of the French colony of the Natchez in 1727, with which is interwoven the story of the Indian adven- tures and loves of Rene and their tragic termination.

es a c ez pj^^ ^^^ probability are hampered by Chateau- briand's insistence on certain stock devices of the epic form (cf. Les Martyrs) : invocations, apparitions, enumerations of tribes and troops, and particularly the intervention of angels and Indian gods in battles. Apart from this absurdity, the author again follows fact as regards both the central subject and the use of local and historical color. The characters offer interesting cases of exotic sentiments and conflicts. An older and more despairing Rene, who has been adopted by the Natchez, is observed in his ebb and flow from the savage to the civilized life, and back again. He is loved by Celuta, whom he weds through gratitude, and this bronzed heroine alternates between sentiment and duty — for Rene is supposed to have betrayed her tribe. The real traitor, Ondoure, and Rene's blood-brother, Outougamiz, are conventional figures of the epic. More individual and pleasing is the maiden Mila, whose naive feeling for Rene is well portrayed. The story ends in a general catastrophe of violence, suicide and murder.

The work which marks the transition from the Western to the Eastern influence is the Genie du Christianisme (1802). "Le Genie du'^''^^^ book stands at the center of Chateaubriand's Christianiflme"system, whether as regards religion or art, forces which he here tries to amalgamate. He defends the " genius " of Christianity in maintaining that this faith has been produc- tive of greater results, in literature and the arts, than are found in the ancient pagan masterpieces. The Genie represents a revo- lution in criticism and aesthetics; it breaks with the tradition of the Renaissance ; it is rather hostile to the eighteenth century ; it prefers the medieval and the Gothic, and aims at reviving the historic past of France; it is Romantic rather than Classical or philosophic in spirit; it argues for the "beau ideal" or the principle of an artistic choice in nature; and it establishes the moi as the main source of inspiration: " On ne peint bien que son propre cceur et la meilleure partie du genie se compose de souvenirs."

Chateaubriand believes that Christianity has developed the soul of man and made literature and the arts expressive of a

ON CHRISTIANITY 513

higher spiritual truth than was possible in the pagan " chaos." This holds even for writers like Racine and Voltaire, whose best jjjg characters — Phedre and Lusignan — are Christian

Argument in spite of themselves. The chief beauties of a " bizarre " product like the Divine Comedy, thinks Chateau- briand, also spring from Christianity. Milton is better appreci- ated by this critic than by any French writer hitherto. The Bible itself is discussed and praised as a literary monument. Yet Chateaubriand shows a wise moderation in esteeming the truth and taste of the best ancients, like Vergil. Again, Christi- anity is associated with the idea of solitude in nature. The nymphs and fauns have vanished, " pour rendre aux grottes leur silence et aux bois leurs reveries." The divine immensities of the deserts and of the American forests are now capable of a vaster inspiration. So modern descriptive poetry, of which Chateau- briand gives a faulty sketch, should be superior to the ancient. Also the modem Christian epic, using its own supernatural machinery, is better than the pagan variety. This support of the merveilleux chretien, challenging Boileau's Classical prin- ciples, is exemplified by the practice of Milton as well as of Dante, and produced imfortunate results in Chateaubriand's own work. With regard to prose literature, it is not surprising that he re- jects " la philosophic," in favor of the more orthodox seventeenth century. As regards the fine arts, rather superficially treated, it is notable that be dwells on the religious side of Gothic architecture, which is linked with his passion for the past. There is a pictiu-esque chapter on ruins, the " poetique des morts," which always attracted his interest. The Madonnas of the Italians and the orations of Bossuet are also cases in point, and the general conclusion is: "Que I'incredulite est la principale cause de la decadence du gout et du genie."

But Chateaubriand's logic is not so serried as it may appear from the above presentation. He is more occupied with present- Defects and ^^S plausible sentiments or series of glittering Merits tableaux, often done in his handsomest bravura style.

The Genie has been called a religious museum. Christian truth, declares one critic, can do without art and uses a sterner apolo- getic, as with Pascal. Just as Mme de Stael had a weakness for the pleasures of melancholy, so Chateaubriand indulges in the

614 CHATEAUBRIAND

pleasures of Christianity. He inaugurates, for France, the aes- thetic view of religion, which has been so prominent since. But his book represents a strong and, at its time, a necessary re- action. Eighteenth-century skepticism had fallen into des- iccation and materialism. It was the right moment for a reli- gious revival. Chateaubriand's influence was felt on the Biblical poetry of the Romanticists and on certain writers of the historical school. His unparalleled prestige was largely based on the Genie du Christianisme.

The prose epic of Les Martyrs (1809) is, as regards its central subject, a more old-fashioned Qiw Vadis. It deals with the _, conversions, struggles and martyrdoms of the early

Subjects: Christians under Diocletian. But this frame-work "Les Martyr8"ig extended through the recit of Eudore, the hero, to cover travels and experiences in various Roman provinces, in- cluding the Orient. The imity of the story suffers through this extension. Its illusion, as a work of fiction, is weakened by the introduction of all the epic machinery of the merveillevx chretien. The best part of Les Martyrs is found in particular characters and episode^: the charm of Cynwdocee, the heathen maiden whom Eudore loves and converts; the pictm-e of Velleda, the stormy druidess; and the battle-scenes among the Franks, con- taining the war-cry of " Pharamond," which incited Thierry to write his history of the Merovingians.

Whatever his anachronisms, Chateaubriand made wide studies for Les Martyrs, the results of which appear also in L'ltine- " L'ltine- raire de Paris a Jerusalem et de Jerusalem a Paris raire" (1811). This work, like Corinne, had a great

success as a sort of glorified guide-book; it is written with more good-humor and is concerned more with everyday life than any other of Chateaubriand's productions. But it is artistically composed and well reveals his essential traits. The three high points in his travels were Sparta, Athens and Jerusalem, and the treatment of these places is climactic and impressive. ' The prevailing mood is that of saturation with the melancholy of ruins, the sadness of vanished glory, the mobility of human things amid the immobility of nature. The suavity of Greece is contrasted with the touching mystery of Calvary, and the reli- gious note is often sounded. The author admits that he is

THE MEMOIRS 515

more interested in monuments than in men. He went forth in the spirit of a crusader and he anticipated Byron by awaken- ing an enthusiasm for the Orient.

This large collection of Memoirs is Chateaubriand's last will and testament. It is a voice speaking " from beyond the tomb," "Memoires to tell the whole truth about the author and his tom]^^' epoch. Unsuccessful when first published, the

1848-50 Memoires are now recognized as one of the fore-

most documents of the Romantic era. They contain all of Chateaubriand, his beauties and defects, his power, egomania and puerilities; they recount the several chief stages in his career, parading what he calls his "triple influence, religieuse, politique et litteraire "; they deal closely with the leading figures and events of his day, giving vivid sketches of Revolutionary types like Mirabeau and a full-length portrait of Napoleon as a despot. But the most fascinating pages of the Memoires are found in the early volumes where Chateaubriand dwells upon his formative years at Combourg, the dreams and yearnings of his adolescence. He thinks that a later visitor to the sacred spot —

pourra reconnaitre le chateau; mais 11 chercherajvainement le grand bois: le berceau de mes songes a disparu comme ces songes. Demeure seul debout sur son rocher, I'antique donjon pleure les chenes, vieux compagnons qui renvironnaient et le protegeaient contre la tempete. Isole comme lui, j'ai vu corame lui tomber autour de moi la famille qui embellissait mes jours et me pretait son abri: heureusement ma vie n'est pas batie sur la terre aussi solidement que les tours ou j'ai passe ma jeunesse, et rhomme resiste morns aux orages que les monuments eleves par ses mains.

There are many such wistful passages ; for it is one characteristic of the Memoirs, composed from 1811-41, that they weave back and forth between the emotions of youth and the memories of age. The highest virtues of style are found in the reminiscent preludes to the several Parts into which the work is divided. Its tone, as a whole, is unequal ; vigor alternates with triviality, harmony and vision with bitterness and wrath; but throughout there is an effect of reality and passion recalling Saint-Simon. Perhaps this is due to the fact, of which Chateaubriand boasts, that he had actually lived what his books describe, whether as traveler, soldier, diplomat or publicist. He was almost the last to live and to write in the grand manner.

516 CHATEAUBRIAND

Chateaubriand's genius made itself felt through the double force of his morbid charm and his expansive imagination. As seen in connection with Rene, the charm has its dangers, but it also has its delights. "Son role est d'enchanter." There is a seduction in his sensibility, a lulling sweetness in his melancholy, and a high excellence in his har- monious rhythms and images. Chateaubriand's very egotism has its fascination; the reader substitutes himself for the author and goes through similar moods of yearning, pride, isolation and disillusionment. Again, Chateaubriand was " all compact " of imagination, which quality he expands East and West in the comprehensive fashion of modem art. Hence the marvelously rich pictures of many lands and climes. He pours his soul out upon all that is beautiful in Nature; but he cares little for the souls of other people, he is a poor psychologist. As oracle and leader emeritus, he exercised a great influence upon the Romantic movement. According to Faguet, " il est I'homme qiii a re- nouvele I'imagination frangaise." For two generations such writers as Lamartine and Hugo, G. Sand and even Flaubert derive much of their earlier manner from Chateaubriand. In our own time, Pierre Loti is bis most distinguished literary descendant.

BOOK VI ROMANTICISM

CHAPTER I THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT

The full flowering of the Romantic Movement took place between 1820, when Lamartine published his Premieres Medita- History of ^'"'^> ^nd 1843, when Hugo's last tragedy failed, the Period The political history of that period furnishes a sig- nificant background to its literary output: the individualism of despots, the royalist hopes and the growing sense of democracy are successively reflected in the work of the Romanticists. After Napoleon, the Restoration of the Bourbons was accomplished by a sharp monarchical reaction. Louis XVIII (1815-24) was at first obliged to grant a Constitutional Charter, with liberal provisions, and the Chamber of Deputies was established. But the returning emigres were very influential and soon a reac- tionary ministry was formed, combining aristocracy, royalism and strong Catholic sympathies. Censorship of the press and the sway of landowners were restored. These tendencies be- came more pronounced under the reign of Charles X (1824- 30) , who wanted to be a despot of the old regime. But France, having had a taste of liberty, was unwilling to submit. Pub- licists like Chateaubriand and Royer-Collard, professors, jour- nalists and the City of Paris all protested, with the result that the Bourbon monarchy was overthrown in 1830 (" Revolu- tion of July ") ; Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orleans, was made King of the French and the so-called " bourgeois monarchy " began (1830-48). This government, in turn, disgusted many writers, because of its lack of distinction and its addiction to timid compromises.

Each new ruler had brought fresh hope to the younger genera- tions of which the Romanticists were composed. It was a time

617

518 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT

of expansive feeling and wide aspirations ; but these were followed only too soon by disappointment and weariness when govem-

j^j ments and councils did not fulfil their promises.

Background The social atmosphere was full of ferment, there was heard the clash of new and old, of the individual against the many. Hundreds of brilliant youths, abandoning the political arena, turned their talents to literature and art. They were no longer hampered by academic training or the tradition of the salons; they could be fully themselves. The renaissance of poetry and painting — fraternal arts which were now closely connected — the considerable development of jomnalism, the vogue of the " vie de boheme " and of romantic love- affairs: all this gave opportunities to these restless young men. Currents of dandyism, picturesque costumes or poses, and im- portant foreign influences served to direct or to adorn the new movement.

Romanticism was primarily a revolt against the outworn principles of neo-classicism, as exemplified by the poetasters and Essential dramatists of the eighteenth century and the Features beginning of the ninteenth. Soon, however, the movement condemned the methods .of Boileau and Racine as well. Consequently it rejected the old rules of versification and of tragedy. But more positive features appear among the chief tenets of Romanticism. It stood for individual liberty, for an expansion of the field of art, for the superiority of imagina- tion and feeling over reason, for a truly poetical revival. In its earlier phase, under the influence of Chateaubriand and Lamartine, it was curiously linked with a political con- servatism and a return to the national past. It was also more idealistic before 1830, whereas after this date disillusion- ment and pessimism became more prominent in the work of various writers.

Theophile Gautier, an ardent adherent of the Romantic cause, declares that the people of a later day can hardly understand Inspiration *'^^ effervescent enthusiasm of that time. There and Energy was a new sap of life, an intoxicating atmosphere, an absolute surrender to the poetic ideal. There are many records of the advance of the Romantic army upon Paris, nearly one hundred years ago. Personages of fact and of fiction,

THE FIRST CENACLE 519

undisciplined egoists like the heroes of Stendhal and of Balzac, followed Napoleon, the " great condottiere," in the direction of lawless and materialistic ambition. But others, like the inti- mate circle of Hugo, expressed their personalities through emo- tional experience and intense imaginings, with an outburst of tumultuous revolt and wild creative energy. In their assertion of individual rights, their deification of human love and the fatality of passion, their devotion to the long wonders of im- mortal beauty, they bring back to France a feeling which had been in abeyance since the days of Ronsard.

The great writers of Romanticism were Lamartine, Hugo, Musset, Vigny, Gautier and George Sand; and, to a lesser extent. Leaders and Sainte-Beuve as critic, Dumas pere, Stendhal and ".(Jenacles" Merimee. These names together with certain others will occupy us in the following chapters. But there were many minor writers who will here be dealt with briefly in connec- tion with the progress of the movement, the formation of the different groups or cenacles. First came the group which rallied aroimd La Muse Frangaise.' This journal lasted only "La Muse two years (1823-24), but it had a significant influence Frangaise" upon nascent Romanticism. As in the case of the Pleiade, its foimders and chief contributors were seven in num- ^ ber: Alexandre Soumet, Alexandre Guiraud, Emile Deschamps; Hugo and Vigny; Saint- Valry and Desjardins. The "two Alexanders," who were then among the foremost representatives of poetry and drama, were still semi-classical and timid in revolt. They came from Toulouse and they, with others of the group, were crowned by the Acadeinie des Jeux Floraux of that city. Soumet is best known for his tragedy of Saill. He had a second- rate derivative talent^ but he was then ranked as a demi-god and his prestige considerably aided the Miise. Guiraud wrote the prospectus for the journal, a valuable feature of which was the attention paid to foreign literatures. Emile Deschamps actively launched the publication and furnished a salon for the first cenacle. As a poet, Deschamps is credited with a Lamartinian sweetness and grace. Lamartine himself remained apart from the circle. Its two minor adherents need not concern us, but let us note that several of Vigny's best poems appeared in the Mme; also five contributions from Hugo, including an interesting

520 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT

review of Scott's Quentin Durward. In 1824, the main issues of Romanticism were still confused and vague; Hugo disavowed the term; the new spirit was not yet disentangled from Classicism and royalism. But already it was sufficiently strong to call forth denimciations from academic critics, who, declaring that Romanticism "did not exist," thereby helped to crystallize its existence.

The Muse suspended publication, and Soumet passed to the ranks of the enemy. The rest of the group were kept together The Salon ^^ Charles Nodier, who received and encouraged de I'Arsenal, them in his home at the Arsenal Library. Nodier 1824-27 ^ggg ^gjj^ chapter) was an indolent good-natured

dilettante who had in him, it is said, the composition of ten men, including " poet, romancer, historian, bibliophile." He defined Romanticism as " la liberte regie par le gout," a remark which set the tone for his chatty receptions. Lesser lights of the Muse and of the Nodier cenacle were these: the wild Jules LefSvre, a Byronist; the witty Ulric Guttinguer; Baour-Lonnian, trans- lator of Ossian; ChSnedolle, a transition poet; and the beautiful Delphine Gay, known as the " Muse de la Patrie," who had the fortune to be admired by Classicists and Romanticists alike.

By 1827, Victor Hugo had attained his poetic majority. In the same year he formed a close friendship with Sainte- r Q ^ Beuve, and these two constitute the head and front CSnaele, of the greatest Romantic cenacle. This was known

1827-30 as " le cenacle de Joseph Delorme," such being the pen-name of Sainte-Beuve. In its membership were numbered such familiar names as Vigny, Nodier, Deschamps and Gut- tinguer; that weird poet, Gerard de Nerval; the enthusiastic Dumas pere; and the adolescent Musset, who came more cas- ually. The movement now takes on more significance and breadth; it includes painters (Delacroix) as well as poets; it makes the theater its chief stamping-groimd ; plays like Hugo's Marion Delorme are read to large gatherings; more important works are actually produced; and a critical direction is given to Romanticism through the efforts of Sainte-Beuve (see Bk. VIII, Ch. I) . With some justice, then, this group has been called " le cenacle de Joseph Delorme." But its creative leader

JOURNALISM 621

was, of course, Victor Hugo, whose priest-like personality was almost worshiped by his associates. Theophile Gautier, an- other enthusiastic admirer, was enlisted for the battle of Her- nani (1830), which marked the definite triumph of the move- ment. Shortly afterwards the imity of the Romantic school was broken up and the last cenacle was dissolved; partly be- cause of the Revolution of July, but more on accoimt of dra- matic rivalries and the exaggeration of ideas and egoistic tend- encies. The current of production, however, continued until well into the forties.

The severe censorship of Napoleon and some hesitation re- garding the " Charter " had much restricted the liberty of the press imtil about 1820. From then dates the foun- Infiuenees: dation of modem literary journalism, the establish- Joumalism ment of important critical reviews. They appear in considerable number between 1820 and 1830. They are mostly short-lived and reflect the confused conflicts of the time; those that are liberal in politics are often reactionary in litera- ture, and vice versa. La Muse Frangaise is the most thoroughly Romantic. But Le Globe (1824r-30) had a wider scope and a vaster influence, and it aimed at liberalism in every sphere. It was founded by Dubois and other disciples of the " trio of the Sorbonne;"^ the "doctrinaires" were among its contributors, and Sainte-Beuve was its chief critic. These men expand the treatment of literature, in an intelligent and cosmopolitan spirit, to include social and political topics; and the various fields are divided up among expert writers. Romanticism is given ample room in the Globe, though few of these intellectuals are sensi- tive to the more imaginative and artistic values of the new movement. On the other hand, they adopt the formula that "literature is the expression of society," and they show wide cosmopolitan tastes, both of which tendencies proceed from Mme de Stael. If Rousseau is the fountain-head of Romanticism, Chateaubriand is its "Sachem," Lamartine its elder brother, and Mme de Stael its intellectual godmother.''

Mme de Stael, indeed, had given currency to the term

• Villemain, Guizot, Cousin; see below, Ch. VII; and for the "doctrinaireB" or liberal bourgeois statesmen, see same chapter.

' A reference to the preceding Book will make this plain.

522 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT

" Romantic." Her interest in Italy is responsible for French contacts with the works of Sismondi and Manzoni. But it is . chiefly the increasing vogue of De I'Allemagne that

Influences: makes us realize how Romanticism was a general Germany European movement, with emphasis on the liter- atures of the North. The Northern inspiration largely replaced the imitation of antiquity. The Germans who influenced the younger French writers are mainly those of the Golden Age, especially Goethe and Schiller. Goethe was long known as " the author of Werther" a work which fostered the sentimental- ism of Nodier's nouvelles, as well as the mcd de siecle of Con- stant's Adolphe and of Senancour's Obermann (1804) — that " confession monotone et penetrante." Sainte-Beuve and Musset also wrote confessional novels, partly modeled on Werther. Gotz von Berlichingen, also by Goethe, is a predeces- sor of the Romantic drama; poems like the Erlkonig had some influence on the mysterious and fantastic side of Romanticism; while Faust, especially in its sentimental and diabolical aspects, deeply impressed the French imagination. Faust was known through many versions, the most remarkable of which is the translation by Gerard de Nerval. About 1830, there are many expressions of an exalted admiration for Goethe, who was viewed as the archetype of the man of genius. Schiller is a good second, particularly as regards the theater. His his- torical dramas, Don Carlos, Wallenstein, etc., imdoubtedly furnish examples for the Romantic school. The third conspic- uous success in France was the Tales of Hoffmann. These were admired and imitated, for their fantasy and diablerie, by such men as Nodier and Soulie. It was almost entirely the Roman- tic side of Germany that was appreciated in France. There were two general effects of this influence: German writers gave a considerable impulse to the new currents of poetic liberty; and their works served less as close models than as sources of vigorous inspiration for the French.

It would be impossible to enumerate all the phases of the English influence; four of the capital names must sufiBce. England: Shakespeare furnished much of the argument for Shakespeare the chief Romantic manifesto, Hugo's Preface de Cromwell, and his treatment of buffoons and crowds underlies

OSSIAN AND BYRON 523

Hugo's practice in this respect. The translations by Alfred de Vigny, Shylock and Le More de Venise, were the finest ever made, and the performance of the latter play marked an epoch in the Romantic drama. Dumas pere declares that Hamlet opened to him a new dramatic world and that his own historical " tableaux " owe much to Shakespeare. Musset's woodland fantasies are like delicate echoes of Twelfth Night and As You Like It. All of this implies that there had been a thorough re- volt against the Voltairian attitude towards Shakespeare. Furthermore, two visits of English actors to Paris materially assisted in promoting the Shakespearean vogue.^

With this was coupled a vogue of a very different character. The strange fascination which " Ossian " exerted on the French Macpherson's reached its climax in the Napoleonic era. Chateau- " Ossian " briand was his herald, and Mme de Stael made him the Homer of her North. The discovery that " Ossian " derived less from Homer than from Macpherson gradually chilled the French, but the legend of the Bard was not yet dispelled for the men of 1830. He is still a fixed star in the literary firmament, and his nebulous glamour appeals to many amateurs and minor poets. Authoresses like Mme de Genlis and Delphine Gay, long-haired Romanticists like Boulay-Paty and Jules Lefevre, lead the Caledonian through strange mazes and metamorphoses. The Ossianic atmosphere penetrates a good deal of Lamartine, especially the Premieres Meditations, inducing a tender feeling for landscape, mingled with the melancholy attached to earthly things. Alfred de Musset also imitates the Bard in several poems. Mistiness and sadness, together with the passion for the past, are what this generation admired in Ossian.

Byron is the most important foreign influence upon French Ro- manticism. Indeed, by many Byron was regarded as the arch-ro- manticist of Europe. His person was made the sub-

^"^ jeet of a sinister legend, according to which the poet

appeared as a murderer and criminal. For French imitators, he stood as the representative of Satanic revolt, of grandiose nature, of the Orient, of passion ending in cynicism. His works were trans- lated in twenty complete editions from 1820 to 1850. The phases of his influence begin with Childe Harold, passing through the

• More about Shakespeare will be found in Ch. V, below.

624 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT

rebellious individualism of Manfred, Lara and Cain, to end with the sensual cynicism of Don Juan. Important critical appre- ciations were written quite early by Nodier, Vigny and Hugo. Then Byronic enthusiasm was fanned to a white heat by the poet's connection with the Grecian cause and by his untimely death. The Muse Frangaise " ne pent que chanter et pleurer By- ron." Delavigne mingled Byronic and Oriental inspiration in his Odes Messeniennes; so did painters like Delacroix and Gericault. Many imitators were variously indebted to the Englishman, in- cluding the four chief poets of the era. First, Lamartine declares a warm personal admiration for him. The poem of Desespoir owes much of its power to Manfred, and in L'Homme Lamartine tries at once to glorify Byron and to refute his pes- simism. " C'est un ange qui a etudie le diable " — even to the extent of feebly continuing Childe Harold in Le Dernier peleri- nage d'Harold. Hugo feels the influence especially in Les Orientales {Mazeppa, etc.) and in some of the melancholy notes of the Feuilles d'automne. Vigny imitates Byron in a dozen early poems, and his very notion of the philosophic poem, as found in Le Delude for example, is probably Byronic in source. Similar echoes are found in the sadder poems of Musset, as well as in such of his dreams as express bitterness and revolt. Fi- nally, Gautier's Albertiis is quite Don Juanesque in character. It is plainly the more passionate, the more melancholy and ex- cessive aspects of French Romanticism that seek their prototype in Byron.

Sir Walter Scott is the father of the French historical novel as regards the picturesque reconstitution of the past. Picturesque- ness in description, characterization and dialogue, is the triple aspect of the Waverley Novels that carries over into France. Scott's diffused influence reached its apogee about 1820, when he was universally admired. He harmo- nized with the prevailing vogue of local color and of an anti- quarian interest in the past. These characteristics are found, for instance, in Vigny's Cinq-Mars, together with Scott's ability to brush in the political background. Balzac's Chouans shows picturesqueness in dialogue and costumes, as well as Scott's penetration into epochs and his skill in handling crowds. Meri- mee's Charles IX and Hugo's Notre-Dame represent the farther

ROMANTIC QUALITIES 625

reaches of the movement. The Waverley Novels likewise pro-, moted a feeling for the past and a care for characteristic detail among such historians as Thierry and Barante. Scott's anti- quarianism had a more human appeal than that of Chateau- briand.

It will now appear that there are many aspects to French Romanticism and that it is difficult to summarize the great move- ment satisfactorily. Its pervasive force may be centered around its belief in the expansive power of the individual. It emphasizes the particular, where Classicism had emphasized the universal. Individual sentiment, passion, genius, are the order of the day; hence lyric poetry is the pre- dominant form. The individual soul rises high in exaltation or it plunges into its own depths with a fresh sense of the mystery of existence; or it goes roaming far from actuality, seeking re- moteness in place or time. Associated then with the emotional development of the ego are such major Romantic qualities as idealism, melancholy, liberalism, exoticism anc^ medievalism, together with an expansive treatment of nature and li!e. Ex- amining these, we find that idealism, which begins as " en- thusiasm," is not characteristic of the whole movement and is best illustrated by Lamartine and certain phases of Vigny and Hugo. Many Romanticists are prone to melancholy, due to the failure of their too personal or conflicting ideals. Liberalism was prominent in the political current; it is also found in the literary revolt against Classical subjects, styles and rules; it is connected with the spirit of adventure and personal freedom. How natural for the Romanticist to go far afield for material, to invade the Middle Ages and many distant lands! Hence his predilection for splendid scenery, for local color and the pic- turesque. Finally, the school expands the Classical conception of the world, to include not only the beautiful but also the "grotesque" and the characteristic; not so much the abstract and universal as the concrete and diversified. The whole ap- proach to art is now through the senses and imagination rather than through the reason. As regards form, these various tend- encies appear in a considerable enlargement of the language, admitting specific and colorful terms, in a greater variety of styles, in an anti-classical belief in the " melange des genres."

526 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT

That is, comedy and tragedy may be woven together, and lyri- cism dominates even in drama and fiction. Contrary to the ei^tr eenth century, the emphasis is now less on ideas than on artistic inspiration and processes ; a change that will be reflected in our subsequent treatment.

CHAPTER II

IMMEDIATE PREDECESSORS: NODIER, BERANGER, LAMARTINE

It has been seen that Charles Nodier (1780-1844) was very- susceptible to foreign influences and that he served as a leader

and enthusiastic comrade of one Romantic group.

Sainte-Beuve considers him the type of the generally productive man of letters, who lacked concentration: " Philo- logue ici, romanesque la, bibliographe et Wertherien, academique et . . . excentrique." Nodier also reflects the stormy uncer- tainty of his political epoch. He was born at Besangon, edu- cated privately, and went up to Paris for a literary career. But the key-note oi his character was a revolutionary Romanticism, and his anti-Napoleonic manifestations soon caused the author- ities to banish him to Switzerland and the Jura, where he was " interned " for a number of years. He there developed a taste for nature-studies and philology. Travels in Italy and Illyria completed his literary baggage. He returned to France just in time for the tempests of 1814-15, wrote as journalist under the Restoration, and finally settled down as librarian at the Biblio- theque de I'Arsenal in 1824. Here his talent mellowed, his ami- ability furthered his reputation, and he was elected to the Acad- emy before his death.

Nodier wrote some charming poetry and some adequate criti- cism, but the only surviving portion of his work consists of „. „ . tales that curiously mingle sentiment and fancy.

They are laid in remote and romanesque places, they have strong touches of diablerie and superstition, they contain Wertherean melancholy, desperate deaths, anti-social sentiments, brigands, fairies, various kinds of madness, mystery and vam- pires. His earlier works (Le Peintre de Saltzbourg and Les Pros- crits) are mainly sentimental and doleful. The later stories show his adventurous imagination and emphasize the fantastic,

527

628 NODIER, BERANGER, LAMARTINE

an element which, following Hoffmann, Nodier acclimatized in France. The two Illyrian productions, Jean Sbogar (1818) and Smarra (1820), present respectively a mysterious bandit and the legend of a vampire. They belong to what Nodier himself styled the frantic school (" I'ecole frenetique ") . Trilby, which probably furnished the title for Du Manner's novel, is one of Nodier's most finished and delightful stories. It concerns a goblin or lutin who befriends and bewilders a Scotch maiden. Therese Aubert recalls the days of youthful sentiment, but in a more mature and truly moving fashion. Some of Nodier's best writing was done in his calmer matxuity; he was always a master of a certain kind of style, composed of flexible charm- ing sentences and a graceful fancy. He is not strong on char- acters or composition. He is thoroughly Romantic in sources, subjects and temperament.

Jean-Pierre de Beranger (1780-1857), of bourgeois parentage and habits, belonged to no literary group. He was a chansonnier and he remains the most notable composer of French popular songs. In 1813 the epicurean poet, De- saugiers, led Beranger to a certain caveau or " Rhjrmers' Club," where the newcomer sang and was well received. His topical and political songs soon had a wide vogue; he is considered to have " enfranchised " the chanson in 1817 with his Dieu des bonnes gens. Beranger was always close to the popular heart and from now on he aided in promoting the cult of Napoleon among the people. He was prosecuted twice for sedition. Aside from that, Beranger always modestly refused public recognition and led a retiring life. In his old age, his company was valued by such men as Chateaubriand and Lamartine. His excessive prestige in his own era was followed by a strong critical re- action. But he must be credited with having conferred upon the chanson all the literary value of which it seems capable.

Beranger wrote at least three different kinds of songs. He began with the old gaulois type, free, gay and bacchanalian. Kinds of This was the kind affected by Desaugiers, who re- Chansons mained superior to his disciple in gaiety and ease. In B&anger, the epicurean manner seems artificial, though he possesses wit and a certain gallant swing. This style may be illustrated by Le Rot d'Yvetot:

BERANGER'S MUSE 629

II 6tait un roi d'Yvetot

Peu connu dans I'histoire, Se levant tard, se couchant tot,

Dormant fort bien sans gloire, Et couronne par Jeanneton D'un simple bonnet de coton, Dit-on . . .

Beranger really finds himself in the second kind of chanson, where he indulges the liberal and patriotic vein. Barring ephem- eral and occasional pieces, the best products of this period are those where the larger popular sentiments and questions are treated — such as Napoleon or the " principles of '89 " — and no discrepancy was felt between the two ideals, since they both tended to the glory of France. The third division consists of the songs of Beranger's old age, which are often of a personal or sentimental cast, exemplified by Ma Canne or U Adieu. Some irony, more of fantasy and revery characterize these last songs, which are often wholly delightful.

Along with much that is commonplace, Beranger has the in- stinct for reflecting the hiunan currents and feelings of his Beiaagei's period. His muse is essentially patriotic or senti- Quahties mental. His form is usually simple and direct, though sometimes the exigencies of the stanza forced him into obscm-ities and awkward turns of expression. The new Roman- ticism did not affect him greatly; his verses are neo-classical, if anything. It should be remembered that they were intended primarily to be sung, and the sweep of the rhythm, mounting up to a well-chosen and memorable refrain, may thus disguise a certain literary poverty. The sentimental manner may be illustrated by

Sois-moi fidele, 6 pauvre habit que j'aime;

the clever refrain by that of Le Juif errant:

Toujours, toujours, Toume la terre ou moi je cours;

and political satire by the refrain:

Cbapeau bas! chapeau bas! Gloire au marquis de Carabas!

530 NODIER, BERANGER, LAMARTINE

The case of Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869) is quite different. His name authentically opens the succession of great Romantic poets. To his noble and channing figure is attached the triple prestige of poet, idealist and statesman. He was of a versatile, sensitive and thoroughly aristocratic nature. Born at Macon, of an excellent patriarchal family, he always cltmg with a " natural piety " to his early associations. His sensibility and Rousseauistic readings made him a prey to melancholy in his adolescence. This tendency was increased by his unfortvmate love-affair with Mme Julie Charles, who became the " Elvire " of Lamartine's inspiration. What saddened the man deepened and purified the poet. The publication of Les Premieres Meditations (1820) was an event; the work attracted the attention of Talleyrand, and Lamartine was appointed as secretary to the embassy at Naples.

Even in his troubled youth, Lamartine had strong political ambitions. After serving at Naples and at Florence, he wished to play a greater r61e at home, and stood for elec- tion as deputy. Defeated at first, he was elected in 1831, and this date is a turning-point in his career. Return- ing from the Orient, he issued a manifesto which announced a progressive and liberal policy. Then he took his seat as an independent and maintained a position of isolation for ten years, during which period he perfected himself as an orator. In 1840, distrustful of the bourgeois ministry, Lamartine came out in the Opposition, declaring frankly his belief in the Revolution of 1789. Eight years later he was the leading figure in another revolution, which he animated by many democratic speeches as well as by his glowing and inaccurate Histoire des Girondins. When another Saint-Antojne swept into the Hotel de Ville in February, 1848, it was Lamartine who time after time restrained the mob by his commanding presence, his courage and his adroit oratory. Adored by the populace, he reached his zenith as minister of foreign affairs and virtually as head of the Provisional Government. Yet in a few months he had lost all his prestige and in the presidential election the fickle people turned from him to the rising star which bore the magic name of Bonaparte. When Bonaparte perpetrated his Coup d'Etat and became Napoleon III, Lamartine was sub-

THE SOURCES OF LAMARTINE . 531

merged politically. After all his triumphs, he spent an old age of semi-poverty and literary hack-work. He was not a prac- tical politician; in politics as in other matters he remained the idealist. There, too, he sowed the seeds of fine thought and feeling, some of which have flowered in modern democratic France. Yet in spite of his statesmanship and his powers of eloquence, the real enduring contribution of Lamartine was made to French poetry.

The three forces which dominated Lamartine's early life and which constituted the chief inspiration of his poems were nature, His religion and woman ; it may be added that the three

Inspiration j^j-g closely associated in his greatest verse, he Crucifix, for instance, in which the beloved emblem passes from the dying to the living, is in memory of the ethereal Elvire, and in Le Temple the poet mingles sacred and profane love. Again, his sweethearts are linked with their background in nature. So the bright figure of Graziella, the Italian maiden, is duly por- trayed against the brilliant Neapolitan scenery; and the pale shade of Elvire haunts immortally the placid Lac du Bourget. The typical Lamartinian landscape is formed by certain elements which stand almosTlis symbols" uf^ioVe-and revery: the lake, the twili^rirbouf , the stealmglmoonbeam^the gentle slopes, the tall sad trees. Finally, nature and God, "le roi de la nature," are made one in many Pantheistic poems, especially from Les Harmonies. Lamartine's faith is not strictly orthodox. It par- takes of a vague religiosity and it concerns itself, none too deeply, with the usual philosophical problems; but it expresses a constant idealism.

Les Premieres Meditations (1820) mark the beginning of nineteenth-century poetry. As M. Lanson has demonstrated, „. ^ . these lyrics usually have bookish sources (Petrarch, Rousseau, the Bible) and in form they show a continuity with neo-classical tradition rather than a distinct break. Their tremendous vogue was due primarily to the inti- macy, the purity and plaintive sincerity of Lamartine's indi- vidual voice, which, like that of Rousseau, restored the ring of great emotion to literature. Hence the immediate effect of the Volume on the tender-hearted. In spite of the fading in- fluence of time, Lamartine's best stanzas still lie embedded, like

532 NODIER, BERANGER, LAMARTINE

perfect crystals, in the memories of many readers. Such arc the verses of L'lsolement:

Fleuves, rochers, forets, solitudes si cheres, Un seul etre vous manque et tout est depeuple.

Such is the picture of L'Automne:

Salut, bois couronne d'un rests de verdure. . . .

And such the beauty of Le Lac, which perpetuates the memory of Elvire in one of the most famous and sorrowful love-songs in the language:

Que le vent qui gemit, le roseau qui soupire, Que les parfums Jegers de ton air embaume, Que tout ce qu'on entend, ron voit ou Ton respire, Tout dise: "lis ont aime! "

Nothing that characterizes Lamartine is absent from this first volume. Les Nouvelles Meditations (1823), published after his marriage to an Englishwoman, partially substitute for the old melancholy a happy love in a sunny landscape; otherwise they prolong the moods and measures of the first collection and have suffered to some extent the common fate of a sequel. Sainte- Beuve says of the second Meditations that they constitute a less artistic whole, though several individual pieces show a more sustained breadth and inspiration. The first series has more spontaneity, the second more finish. Among the best-known lyrics here may be mentioned: Le Crucifix (to Elvire) ; the sensuous beauty of Ischia and Chant d' Amour (to his wife) ; Les Preludes and Bonaparte (reflective poems). When La- martine published Les Harmonies poetiqv£s et religietises (1830), the audience had grown accustomed to the poet's voice. Here he sings mainly of religion, through hymns and prayers, cantatas and invocations. He frequently strikes a bold and rich note — which he is tempted to hold too long. This tendency towards length leads to an increased use of varied rhythms in the same poem. The easy flow sometimes becomes too easy and the memorable effects are fewer in proportion. But there are half-a-dozen unforgotten poems, including the Hymne de I'en- fant (naive childish faith), L'Occident (solemn and superb

LAMARTINE'S POETIC TRAITS 533

Pantheism), the despairing confession of Novissima verba and above all the tribute to Graziella in Le Premier Regret:

Mais pourquoi m'entrainer vers ces scenes passees? Laissons le vent gemir et le flot murmurer; Revenez, revenez, o mes tristes pensees! Je veux rever et non pleurer.

After writing this volume, Lamartine turned to politics, and his succeeding publications (for instance, Les Becueillements and the prose romance of Graziella) are not so significant. An ex- ception must be made for Jocelyn (1836). This long narrative poem concerns the frustrated loves of a priest and his com- panion. It is remarkable for two things: a deeper philosophy than is customary with Lamartine and a splendid treatment of nature in the episode of Les Laboureurs. The conception of Jocelyn, as of La Chute d'un ange (1838), is often epic and symbolical in effect, reminding one of Alfred de Vigny (see Ch. IV, below).

The technical qualities of Lamartine's poetry are, first, a suave harmony, continuing the tradition of Racine and of the His eighteenth-century elegists; a fluidity of composi-

Quaities ^JQu^ connected with a preference for floating, soar- ing objects and images; a softness of tone and outline; and an exposed sensibility, like that of " an .lEolian harp." Moreover, his poetry is subjective to a degree unknown in French poetry since the Pleiade. In form, Lamartine stands less for elaborate workmanship than for improvisation and spontaneity. He did not despise revision, but he needed restriction. His poems tend progressively towards a full easy movement, lacking definiteness of contoiu- and containing sometimes negligences and bombast. Often too his muse has an airy insubstantiality, like that of Shelley. But it is seldom that Lamartine fails to affect the reader by the expansive grace of his emotions and the lifting power of his ideals.

CHAPTER III

THE POETS: VICTOR HUGO

As Voltaire dominated the eighteenth century, so does Hugo dominate the nineteenth, and partly for the same reasons: ver- satility, longevity (1802-85) and the power of an ever-driving pen. Not only is Hugo the most repre- sentative writer of the past century; he is the greatest lyric poet that S'rance ever had, and he possesses one of the master imaginations of the world. The French are proud of him, not so much as the author of Les Miser ables or of Hemani, but be- cause in the writing of poetry he shows amazing powers of vision and expression. But his judgment and balance fall be- low his creative abilities, and the man is inferior to the poet. The facts of his life and work must be distinguished from the " legend," which he and his admirers carefully fostered.

Victor-Marie Hugo was born at Besan^on in 1802. His father was an officer in Napoleon's army and commanded under Joseph Bonaparte when the latter was made king of Spain. General Hugo took his family with him, and Victor's boyish eyes were filled with the picturesqueness of Italy, the light and splendor of Spain. The latter country left its impress upon many of his works (for example, Hemani, La Legende des siecles). The Hugo family settled at Paris in 1812, and Victor went in for omnivorous study and much juve- nile verse-making. At the age of fourteen he declared: " Je veux etre Chateaubriand ou rien." The youthful poet failed of the prize in several Academy competitions, but was later crowned by the Jeux Floraux de Toulouse. He and his brother estab- lished a journal — Le Conservatevr litteraire, (1819-21) — for which Victor wrote voluminously. The journal was well named, for at this period Hugo was conservative in everything, pre- ferring the consecrated literary tradition and manifesting, d. la Chateaubriand, an ardent royalism and Catholicism. These

534

HIS LIFE 535

were also the principles of the Sodiete des Bonnes Lettres, which Victor joined a little later. After his mother's death, a period of discouragement and loneliness propelled Hugo into a swift marriage with the beautiful Adele Foucher. Marital responsi- bilities hastened his productivity and he brought out the first volume of Odes et Ballades (1822). This publication launched him on his career, talented young friends were grouped aroimd him, and the cenacle of the Mwse Frangaise was formed with Hugo's active collaboration. The youth already impressed these coteries by his grave and priest-like demeanor and by the promise of his genius.

The year 1827 may be regarded as marking Hugo's maturity and his conversion to Romanticism. This year saw the publi- cation of Cromwell and its preface ; the poet assumed the leadership of the chief Romantic cenacle; and his intimate friendship and literary association with Sainte-Beuve was started. In 1830, he is at the height of his young glory, with the victory of Hemard, and for ten years thereafter he wields a literary scepter. In this decade numerous plays were performed, four important volumes , of verse were published, together with the very successful Notre-Dame de Paris; and Hugo was gradually converted to a cautious republicanism. His popularity was increased through his expression of democracy (for example, in Ruy Bias), as well as through his exaltation of Napoleon, and fresh coteries surrounded him with dangerous incense. After several applications, he was elected to the Academy in 1841. He suffered a great domestic bereavement through the drowning of his daughter in 1841; he had already broken with Sainte- Beuve for private reasons. He assumed a more prominent role politically, and from 1849 he declared for republicanism against Bonaparte. His opposition to the latter led to Hugo's exile and caused an inextinguishable hatred for "Napoleon le petit." The poet was banished first to Brussels, then took up his resi- dence on the Channel Islands, Jersey and Guernsey (1852-70). His life in exile was characterized by virulent attacks on Napo- leon III {Les Chdtiments) and on other French leaders; by an acquaintance with new landscapes and seascapes, which are prominent in Les Travailleurs de la mer; and by an imceasing literary productivity, which finds its crown in La L6gende des

536 THE POETS: VICTOR HUGO

siecles. Returning to Paris in 1870, Hugo went through the siege and reconstruction, and wrote L'Annee terrible. He was now a " grand vieillard," who posed in his salon as a demi-god. His last years were filled with a great and growing popularity. France saw in him a hero and prophet who had experienced and reflected her own vicissitudes and who now shed glory on the Republic. In 1875 he was elected senator from Paris; he was feted widely on his eightieth birthday, and his death in 1885 was made the occasion of an apotheosis. His ashes were laid in the Pantheon amid much pomp and almost universal tribute.

In many respects Hugo deserved his fame. He was an authen- tic genius and an indefatigable worker. His best writings are marked by a great imaginative flame and by an un- derstanding of the heart of humanity. But in his own life his heart and his judgment likewise were often sub- merged by his ego. Friends fell away from him, women suffered from his treatment, no cause could reckon on his support, if his pride or prestige was at stake. His inordinate vanity has been made the subject of many stories; he actually thought that the city of Paris should be renamed in his honor. He loved his country and especially his children; but love, literature and politics became with Hugo occasions for self-aggrandizement, and because of his political veering, the charge has been made that he lacked sincerity both in his life and his works. This is probably too severe, but steadfastness of thought and conduct was scarcely to be expected from Hugo's whirling brain and imagination. He is an echo of ideas rather than an originator. He is not to be greatly loved or trusted, but rather to be admired when properly set on his pedestal. That pedestal consists of nearly fifty volumes, many of which arc masterpieces. We shall consider only his poetry in this chapter.^ The lyrical inspiration with which Hugo began predominated for twenty years and was also conspicuous in his drama during that period.

The volumes of Odes (1822-24) and later of Odes et ballades First Fruits (^^26) are far from indicating the true power of Hugo. The odes particularly seem second-rate to- day in their effete royalisra and neo-classicism. These occasional ' For his drama and fiction, see bei|^, Chapters V and VI.

HIS VERSE 637

pieces are full of apostrophes and banalities. The ballads are better poetry, and such a chivalric inspiration as Le Pas d'armes du roi Jean, with its skilful swing, announces the author as a vir- tuoso of rime and rhythm. These qualities and others are con- spicuous in Les Orientales (1829) , where Hugo's muse is decidedly stronger. Deference is shown to the Byronic vogue, and certain poems dealing with Greece and Turkey have a conventional flavor; but those dealing with Spain have kept all their freshness of coloring; in fact, splendid color is the hall-mark of Les Orientales. The volume includes such a tour de jorce as Les Djinns and the reworking of Byron's Mazeppa, with the fine symbol of the poet bound to his genius as Mazeppa was bound to his horse. Great suppleness of rhythm and language is to be found in Les Orientales, of which one critic has said, " On est ebloui, mais on n'est pas emu."

More emotion appears in the four volumes of the next decade. The poet now tiu-ns to subjective experience. Also, profiting by Mature *^® advice of Sainte-Beuve, Hugo seems to reveal a

Personal better taste and less tendency to excess than in any *** ^ other period. This is certainly true of Les Feuilles

d'awtomne (1831) , where the treatment is subdued and the themes are personal or concerned with hearth and home. But the poet loses in eclat what he gains in sobriety. The " twilight " note of the Chants du crepuscvle (1835) indicates more melancholy and pensive doubt than is found elsewhere; but there is too much " occasional verse " on very different subjects. Consequently the volume lacks unity. It is noticeable that here Hugo seems less captivated by kings and shows the beginnings of his htiman- itarian sentiments. His religion had died down. In fact, no great convictions inspire Les Chants du crepuscule, though the form is often powerful or graceful. Les Voix interieures (1837) set out to express " cette musique que tout homme a en soi," and the personal voices often mingle with those of Nature at large. There are echoes of her moods, whether compassionate or indifferent, the sound of the sea is heard, and nature and art are prettily compounded in such charming poems as Le Passe or Puisqu'id-bas toute dme. The volume is an admirable lyric collection. Finally, Les Rayons et les Ombres (1840), in its alternation of happiness and sorrow, also contains many notable

538 THE POETS: VICTOR HUGO

poems. There is the famous Guitare, with its refrain,

Le vent qui souffle a travers la montagne Me rendra fou!

There is the mournful splendor of Oceano Nox and another mingling of art and nature in La Statue. Above all, there is Hugo's greatest poem of sentiment, that "pathetic sonata" called Tristesse d'Olymjno. The theme of this, as in La- martine's Lac and Musset's Souvenir, is the revival of love's memory amid associated scenery, and Hugo's solution is that the memory is not preserved in external objects but lives dark- ling in the hiunan heart —

C'est toi qui dors dans I'ombre, 6 sacre souvenir.

In general, nature is viewed as linked with our emotions and as an educator of humanity- The volume sums up several of the author's previous tendencies, such as the depiction of family life or of landscape, and announces coming tendencies, such as compassionate humanitarianism and satiric indignation, Les Chatiments (1853) fulfil Hugo's declaration —

Et j'ajoute a ma lyre une corde d'airain.

Written during exile, the book is one long-sustained invective against Napoleon III. On account of its unity, vehemence and biting force, this is regarded by many as Hugo's greatest volume of verse. That distinction should rather be reserved for La Legends des siecles, but it is true that Les Chatiments "enlarge the limits of poetry "and bring into satire a new ardor and imagery. We have here less virtuosity and more direct emotion than is usual with Hugo, because his hatred of the third Napoleon was probably the master-feeling of his public life. Les Chatiments present a constant antithesis be- tween the night of the past (usurpations, crime and the degra- dation of races) and the light of the future (expiation, the restoration of justice, the triumph of human love and of the powers of nature). Much of this appears in L'Expiation, the best-known poem in the collection. Its moral is that the great and Napoleon's ruthlessness is punished less by his own

Meditations defeats than by the nullity of his successor. This poem contains some of the finest tirades in the language. Les

HIS MASTERPIECE 539

Contemplcdions (1856) are more serene and constitute a sort of long autobiography. Hugo has now assumed his role of songeur or seer. He " contemplates " nature (Pasteurs et troupeaux), meditates on death, particularly the loss of his daughter, reflects on his own past and still hates his enemies. All his lyric gifts are here in full force and certain of his lyric extravagances: an abuse of enumeration and repetition, a flux of words, or a tendency towards a mere coquettish prettiness {mignardises, cf. Rostand's Musardises). But his ^power of apocalyptic vision makes the second part of the volume resemble a darker Revelation of St. John. This soaring away from the known earth into realms of hallucination and immensity is Hugo's greatest feat in La Legende des siecles.

That collection consisted of four volumes, ranging from 1859 to 1883. The earlier volumes are superior to the later. Epic: " La '^^® *^^°^ " petites epopees " was used as a sub- legende des title, and the whole work proceeded from the epic conception of recording the destinies of mankind at various periods and as expressed by various heroes. Vigny had abeady poetized this idea, which was carried on by Hugo, by the work of Leconte de Lisle and by Heredia's Trophies. ' Apart from the conception, however, Hugo's manner is epic in only a few narratives {Eviradnus, Batbert, etc.) and includes poems of all sorts and sizes. In his survey of the ages, the author shows a preference for remote and god-like periods, and his apocalyptic genius appears riding above the chaos of pre-historic times. The beginnings of creation (Le Sacre de la femme, La Con- science) ; the warfare of Titans and gods (Le Titan, Le Oeant <mx dieiix) ; a superb Naturalistic vision of Pan and his like (Le Satyre) ; the heroics of Roland and of the Cid: these are the subjects that attracted Hugo, who felt an aflSnity for the gigantic and even the monstrous. He also well portrayed Biblical times, as in the charming idyll of Booz endormi; and the ideals of chivalry still stirred him, as in Aymerillot and Eviradnus. But more civilized aspects of culture, such as Grecian beauty or the modern refinement of France, scarcely inspired him at all. Consequently, La Legende des siecles shows great gaps from the historical point of view. Again, Hugo's treatment

» See below, Bk. VII, Ch. III.

540 THE POETS: VICTOR HUGO

of history was too simplified in that he saw a clear conflict be- tween good and evil, a perpetual antithesis of " Dieu " and "Satan." Kings are always odious and tyrannous, whereas democracy (le peuple) shall be released and justified. Hope is the vision which shines above the crumbling " wall of the cen- turies." Hugo, for poetical pm-poses, puts " legend " side by side with history and violates accuracy at will ; but the historical coloring is often superb, vivid reconstruction is attained in many places, the symbols are usually well-chosen, and, above all, the powers of expression here revealed are unrivaled and almost inhuman. The poet creates his own mythology in his dealings with Titans and giants and in the marvelous Satyre. A sinister beauty and a strange force predominate in the work {L'Aigle du Casque, Le Parricide) ; there is an alternation of the ideal with the brutal (L'Epopee du ver) ; magnificent invective shines in La Vision de Dante, and a more restrained Renaissance beauty in La Rose de I'Injante. Sometimes there are violences and absurdities, as in the notion of the Sultan who achieves re- demption through succoring a pig. Kings, monsters, children, gods, animals, criminals and the abounding personality of the author make the strangest jmnble. More and more Hugo dons the mantle of the prophet alid lays down the law to humanity (cf . La Fonction du poete) . The thought is often commonplace or empty, yet it has been said that the hollowest verses are formed so solidly that they stand upright like richly wrought armor. The composition of individual poems is excellent. Hugo can do anything with rhythm, while in language ajid in metaphor he opens new horizons. His greatest gifts of imagination and rhetoric are here revealed in their perfection and even in their over-perfection and excess.^

His imagination declares itself in many ways: in the actual number and novelty of his images; in his power of sustained Imagination P^i'sonification and vision; and particularly in his myth-making faculty, his evocation of immensity. In the first place, his images are often striking, novel or freshly adapted ; they are sometimes ugly and they are incessant. Hugo

• La lAgende is Hugo's culminating work, but for the sake of completeness there may be mentioned: Chansons des rues et des boia (1865), L'AH efitre grand' pin (1877) and Les Quaire Vents de I'esprU (1881).

fflS IMAGINATION 641

simply saw the world in terms of the imagination, and he has been called " next to Chateaubriand ... the great imagist " of French literature (Babbitt). So we find long successions of figures, the intention being to compare the object to as many other objects as possible. This sometimes leads to a welter of mixed figures, as where Dante is compared first to a mountain, then to an oak and finally to a lion. But at his best Hugo pre- sents hundreds of suitable poetic images, consisting mainly of similes and metaphors. His figures are of the greatest variety, realistic, spiritual, tragic and terrible, or simply charming. The second feature of his imaginative ability is the gift of sustained personification or amplification. This appears in his vision of the Wall (" le mur des siecles ") , or in such a poem as Mazeppa, where we find a long and appropriate succession of images within the main simile. Bold metamorphoses and many personi- fications of general ideas {le Peuple, le Vers, I'Idee) also occur. There is the recurrent personification of I'Echafaud, like the sustained vivification and symbolism of Notre-Dame. Finally, his creative myth-making has already been exemplified in con- nection with La Legende — a new angle on Olympus', a bold en- trance of titanic forces, together with the Zodiac, the Word and a comprehensive person called Tout. Hugo constructs fresh figures in " la Deroute " and " les Batailles " of Napoleon. He shows a kind of animism in treating elements as living, thinking forces: "La mer fait des maladresses." Oceans and wars, demi-gods and centuries parade before us, and Hugo's highest visioning does not fall short of sublimity.

To illustrate this power of sublime conception, we may take the poem called Le Parricide. King Canute of Denmark has killed his own father. The crime is not discovered, but Canute dies, rises again in his restlessness, wraps himself in a shroud of snow and goes roaming in search of God. Wherever he goes, throughout a strange universe, " a drop of blood falls upon his shroud." This is the recurrent motif, like the constant snow in L'Expiation. The shroud soon becomes wholly crimson, and Canute in an agony of remorse is driven from the throne of God.

A like sublimity marks Hugo's language at its best. He is the greatest master of poetic style and knows all the resources

542 THE POETS: VICTOR HUGO

of French rhetoric. His language is nearly always grannnatical and syntactical; his faults proceed rather from too much style and too much imagination. He had the widest Rhetoric ^^^^^ .^ vocabulary of any French poet, totally outsoaring the Classical restrictions. He adored words: Car le mot, e'est le Verbe et le Verba c'est Dieu.

Above all, he had a preference for the grandiose: for such words as immense, sombre, vaste, for such figures as lions, titans and the seven wonders of the world. The gigantic runs readily into the grotesque, and the grotesque into the goguenard {Le Geant aux dieux) . He also gives a large place to the purely fantastic. On the other hand, he does not always eschew mere prettiness and wit. Among his prominent rhetorical devices are the following: the double substantive (I'homme-troupeau, la reine- esclave) ; the recurrent mstif, such as the Eye that ever watches Gain in La Conscience; and long eniunerations or parallel clauses beginning with the same word. This last habit, effective at first, ■ grew upon Hugo until it became a fault of his method, leading to many repetitions and excrescences. But his inveterate trait, equally dangerous, is antithesis, the psychological results of which will be developed elsewhere. Here it may be exemplified by the title of Les Rayons et les Ombres or by the fine Alexan- drine from Booz endormi:

Car le jeune homme est beau, mais le vieillard est grand.

Harmless and even appropriate in many cases, this kind of balance became an obsession with Hugo, leading to monotony and, often, to a twisting of the truth. Another device, more typ- ically French, is the long periode, the sustained sweep of sen- tences in which the effective line or word comes last. This has analogies with the " sm-prise ending " of Maupassant and may be found in Bivar, Tristesse d'Olympio (see above) and several speeches from Hemani, ending in " I'^chafaud." In the matter of sonority and tone-color, Hugo is unsurpassed. Witness the vibrant note, the clashing of dollars and drums in Les Rdtres:

Sonnez, clairons, sonnez, cymbales! On entendra siffler les balles. . . . Sonnez, rixdales, sonnez, doublons!

HIS GENIUS 543

Or again, the sinister noise of the yew-trees crushed by the genii (Les Djinns) :

Les ifs que leur vol fracasse Craquent comme un pin brulant.

As regards structure, Hugo is a master of exact, harmonious and beautiful composition, whose regularity he knows how to vary at need. Finally, his verse-rhythms show an equal variety and freedom.*

It has been seen that Hugo runs to excess ; he has the defects of his qualities. But the qualities outweigh the defects — a _ . truth which hostile critics hardly consider — and there are dozens of masterpieces in which the artist displays an almost Classic beauty and restraint. Other of his poetic virtues might be mentioned, such as his sensibility and his power of suggestiveness. Through the imiversality of his genius he exemplifies, indeed, nearly every mode and quality of Romanticism. But rhetoric and imagination are his special forte. His thought lacks depth and coherency: his Naturalism wars with his more orthodox faith in God, in immortality and in the spirit of mankind. His expansive poetic power is the gift that remains unassailable. This gift has influenced and often transported two generations, at home and abroad. Other poets may do this or that, said Theodore de Banville, but, he added, referring to Hugo's Guernsey sojourn.

The Master's yonder in the Isle.

And in England, Swinburne was one of Hugo's greatest admirers and imitators.

* For the Romantic liberation of the Alexandrine, see below, Ch. V.

CHAPTER rV THE POETS: MUSSET, VIGNY, GAUTIER

Of these three writers, Musset is the most passionate, Vigny the most intellectual, and Gautier the most elaborate and sensu- ous. Alfred de Musset expresses the direct emotions of love and youth; Alfred de Vigny fathers the " poeme philosophique"; Theophile Gautier begins a tendency towards impersonality and incorporates in his work the doctrine of art for art's sake.

The chief event in Alfred de Musset 's life (1810-57) was his love-affair with George Sand. As a youth of eighteen he had been the enfant terrible of Hugo's group, and his early poems show a mingling of Byronic passion with adolescent gaiety and daring. The trip to Italy with George Sand (1833) effectively disposed of the gaiety, and the two writers failed in their signal attempt to carry the Romantic theo- ries into love and life. Their rupture left the stronger nature of the woman almost unharmed, but Musset sank into despair and debauchery, a night relieved only by the composition of a few great poems that immortalize his sorrow. He produced very little during the last ten years of his life. " Que de lumierel" ex- claims Sainte-Beuve, "que d'eclipse et d'ombre! "

Musset's poems are to be found today in the two collections of Premieres poesies (to 1833) and Poesies nouvelles (1836-52). Chief They range from the youthful abandon of his first

Volumes volume {Contes d'Espagne et d'ltaXie, 1829) , through the cynic gloom of Eolla, down to the supreme cry of defeated passion in the famous Nuits. The prose Confession d'un Enfant du siecle also recoimts his love and grief. His poetic dramas will be considered in the next chapter. The Contes d'Espagne et d'ltalie show Romantic exoticism and the " lure of distance," Romantic swagger and irony {Don Paez, Mardoche). Though inferior as a whole to his later work, this volmne contains vari- ous charming chansons, which were always a forte with Musset

644

MUSSET'S VERSE 545

The Contes represent the reckless sparkling dandy that was the poet's first incarnation. As for expression, this is the only volume that freely takes Romantic liberties {enjambement, etc.), and even here Musset parodies certain features of the Romantic technique. His break with the school occurred shortly after- wards; he rebelled against the rime riche and the rhetorical processes of Hugo's circle ; but the narrative poems of Namouna and Bolla (1833) none the less reflect the exaltation, Don Juan- ism and disillusionment so characteristic of the period. Rolla, or the " last night of a rake," is Musset's longest narrative poem and made his reputation among those who admired Byronic effusions. Up to this point Musset is essentially the poet of youth, and Sainte-Beuve declared him the embodiment of ado- lescent genius.

He fully became the poet of love in the series always associ- ated with his name : the Nuit de mai and the Nuit de decembre (1835), which particularly and poignantly recall his heart-affair; the Nuit d'aout and the Nuit d'octobre, which are calmer in tone. Three of these four lyrics consist of dialogues between the poet and his Muse. The latter generally urges recovery from sorrow, the healing effects of time and of work. But the poet retorts — and this is Musset's outstanding creed:

Apres avoir souffert, il faut souffrir encore, II faut aimer sans cesse, apres avoir aime.

.The Souvenir of 1841 worthily concludes the series in its vehe- ^ment and beautiful expression of the thought that, though love may be lost, its memory can never perish. Of these masterpieces, VLa Nuit de mai is the most exquisite lyrically, from the swooning beauty of the early strophes to the great figure of the pelican as compared with the poet's heart. Musset's other verse often has this lyric charm, especially audible in such songs as Adieu Suzon, Rappelle-toi and the Chanson de Barberine:

Beau chevalier qui partez pour la guerre,'*

Qu'allez-votis faire

Si loin de nous? J 'en vais pleurer, moi qui me laissais dire

Que men sourire

Etait si doux.

546 MUSSET, VIGNY, GAUTIER

The Stances a la Malibran, in their insistence on the essential unity of genius and love, constitute a fine elegy. The Other Poems ^g(^j.g ^ Lamartine pays tribute to that poet's cahner idealism, contrasted with the mal romantique of Musset himself. Sur la paresse lets the writer, with his usual frankness, tell lis a great deal about his ideas and his habits: his invincible idleness; his hatred of present-day manners, mediocrity, journalism; his preference for the gallantry of his ancestors, for living danger- ously and expansively; and his love of Regnier as the master of virile satire. The poet's spiritual longings are vaguely ex- pressed in L'Espoir en Dieu:

Malgre moi Tinfini me tourmente,

but elsewhere Musset admits his general indifference to politics and religion. His apprehension of such subjects is quick rather than profound. He is not a philosopher, not an interpreter of mankind nor of nature. He is distinguished by a charming fancy rather than by the greater creative imagination. He is at his best in " short swallow-flights of song."

The form of this poetry is not perfect. In versification and expression Musset is too often careless or obscure. Yet his style _ ... has a natural eloquence. His verse is most distin-

guished when his emotion is at white heat, and in re- belling against the cenacle he declared that feeling is far more important than form. His cult of the emotions and senses is more refined than Gautier's and more idealistic than Byron's. His great merit is that he sings incomparably of the ardors of love and the depths of love's despair. His ennui and Byronism are compatible with a passionate sincerity; his eloquence and harmony are then the direct expression of his feeling; he really did desire and strive to make romantic love the greatest thing in life. He lives as the chief exponent and victim of this tend- ency, which is so marked in his generation. He is also Romantic in his frank self-confession, his need for individual expansion and exaltation. He is the poet of personality:

Mon verre n'est pas grand, mais je bois dans mon verre.

Hence he formed no school and has had no successful imitators. Like his hero, Rolla, he displays his bruised heart amid the

VIGNY'S LIFE 547

magnificence of nature and of history; yet we feel that these trappings are not the essential thing. He reflects the exoticism and the medievalism of his epoch — but medieval faith is no longer his:

Je suis venu trop tard dans un monde trop vieux.

He is capable of witty dialogue and of telling stories in verse (Simone, Silvie) — but his best story is his own, as related in the Nuits. He appeals most deeply to those whose hearts have remained young; yet the sober critic, Taine, concludes his Litterature anglodse by an ardent appreciation of Musset. Com- paring him to Tennyson, Taine admits that in several respects, the English country gentleman was superior to the fevered Parisian roue — "mais j'aime mieux Alfred de Musset que Tennyson." There are many for whom Musset is still singing and who will agree with Taine as to the power and poignancy of his lyric cry.

The poetry of Alfred de Vigny^ (1797-1863) is more im- personal in expression than that of Musset, but it also springs, Vigny's partially at least, from the circumstances of his Outer Life inner and outer life. That life consisted of a series of disappointments. Born of a noble family and believing in noblesse oblige in every sense, Vigny realized that nobility was at a discount in France. Entering military service he found that career unsatisfactory and recorded his experiences in the collection of stories called Servitude et grandeur militaires (1835). Falling in love with the actress Dorval, he was de- ceived by her and gave vent to his bitterness in the poem on i, La^ Colere de Samson. Attached quite early to two of the Romantic~c^7zncfe, he lost faith in the movement and broke with his former comrades; in Sainte-Beuve's famous phrase:

Et Vigny, plus secret, Comme en sa tour d'ivoire, avant midi rentrait.^

He retired, that is, into an intellectual and artistic solitude, and emerged only when duty called him.

' See also Chs. V and VI, below.

• Hence the origin of "the ivory tower" in modem usage; its ancient source is the turris ebitmea of the Vulgate.

648 MUSSET, VIGNY, GAUTIER

Vigny is then the poet of the inner life. His thought re- volves around certain fixed ideas, and the idea, in each poem. Inner Life is embodied in a concrete imaginative symbol, and Symbols -pjjjg process can be illustrated by the principal titles in Vigny's single volume of poetry.* In the poem already cited, Samson represents the betrayal of man's strength —

Et plus ou moina la femme est toujours Dalila.

In Moise, the prophet typifies the loneliness of genius. In La Bouteille a la mer, the imperishable idea (" la Science ") is symbolized by the message cast overboard in a shipwreck; a similar devotion to the Idea is foimd in L'Esprit pur and La Maison du berger. The latter poem suggests, in its title and content, a retreat into the bosom of nature. Le Cor symbolizes ^ Roland's heroic death, and Ln. Mnrt. dulniiji teaches silence and energy. It is in this fashion that Vigny creates the " poeme," which may be defined as a short narrative or idyllic poem ex- pressing symbolically a philosophical thought.

The final divisions of his work correspond partly to his favorite reading (the Bible, Homer, Byron) . The " Livre mys- „. . tique " includes Mdise, Le Deluge and Eloa, that story of the angel-maiden who became enamored of Lucifer. The " Livre antique " has both a Biblical and a Homeric subdivision, and the latter class, by extension, includes Vigny's early idylls (La Dryade, etc.) . The " Livre modeme " is largely historical and more definitely symbolic: it contains Le Cor, Madame de Soubise, etc. The fourth and most im- portant division is " Les Destinees," wherein appeared most of the poems mentioned in the preceding paragraph. There is a certain historical progression in the volume and this, together with the emphasis on human deeds and " destinies," the migra- tion of the human spirit across the ages, makes Vigny antedate the Legende des siecles and Leconte de Lisle.

The nature of Vigny, proud, sincere, pessimistic and stoical,

Ideas ^^ discreetly revealed in most of his poems; but

the! direct personal confession or complaint is hardly

found. He generalizes from experience, and his tendency is

• One volume holds his entire verse to-day. But he published, in order, Pohnes, 1822; Eloa, 1824; Pohmes anHgues et modernes, 1826; there appeared post- humously Lea Destinies, 1864, and the prose Journal d'vin poHe, 1867.

VIGNY'S CREED 549

towards the abstract. His chief ideas may be now summed up. He believes primarily in the power of thought, whether as scientific knowledge or as the poet's vision. In the latter form, the outer world may serve for symbols, but the inner world contains the endvu-ing reality. Vigny's sensibility is awakened less by the usual human emotions than by the thrill of comprehending and expressing " le Dieu des idees." He can trust no other god but this; his pessimism causes him to doubt the beneficence of Providence and the effective intervention of ^^v Christ {Le Silence, Le Mont des Olivier s). Vigny belieyesthat W man's_ existence^ is unjustly ordered ^nd that evil is often triumphant. This melancholy is the essential feature of his philosophy and arises not only from the facts of his life — and his exalted demands upon life — but also from his concep- tion of the poet as necessarily an isolated martyr (cf. Chatter- ton). A stoical silence or energetic labor constitutes the only refuge. Another refuge may appear in Nature, but, closely con- sidered, Nature does not answer the appeal of man {La Maison du berger) :

On me dit una mere et je suis une tombe.

For Vigny, the pathetic fallacy is pathetic folly. Therein he differs from such Romanticists as Lamartine. Vigny is almost the first to adopt the scientific attitude that the natural law is non-human and implacable. He is uncertain with regard to love. Delilah is viewed as an "enfant malade," but more usually woman (Eva, Eloa) is idealized and made the symbol of beauty. ^Man is ^ated, whether under the ancient or the Christian dispensation {Les Destinees) Jto jndJess_striving_and ^jldless faihge. Without hope, but with resignation and in silence, he should endure his fate and show compassion towards his kind. Addressing Nature, the poet declares:

Plus que tout votre regne et que ses splendeurs vaines, J'aime la majeste des souffrances humaines.

This message is expressed in language of a singular eleva- tion and sobriety. Vigny's best manner is simple and large, stvi Classic rather than Romantic. He composed slowly,

was not naturally productive, and is at times

550 MUSSET, VIGNY, GAUTIER

halting or obscure. Like Lamartine, he had an aristocratic contempt for the writer's trade. But just as Musset's style be- comes perfected through warm emotion, so does Vigny's through the cooler but intense processes of thought. With him the idea at its best imposes the proper form. He is, then, the intellectual among the Romanticists, and he reflects the more pessimistic side of the movement with nobility and sincerity. In his tech- nique, his view of nature and his impersonal manner he stands apart from Romanticism; yet a subjective mood or sentiment underlies the majority of his poems, which show Romantic in- fluences also in their exotic, primitive or historical coloring. A grave and melancholy power, a stem idealism, a soldierly view of duty and honor — these things elevate Vigny's poetic ex- pression to a very high level.

The nature and the talent of Theophile Gautier (1811-72) were thoroughly artistic. He cared for nothing but art, he g y was a painter in his youth, and he developed to a

high degree the quality of form in poetry. His ad- miration for Victor Hugo turned him from painting to poetry and it was at the premiere of Hernani that Gautier's pink doublet (" le gilet rouge ") symbolized his' new fervor as well as his perpetual desire to scandalize the bourgeois. His early poems began to appear {Poesies, 1830; Albertus, 1832; La Comedie de la Mort, 1833). From 1836, Gautier became a galley-slave of journalism, a polygraph who wrote criticism, stories and travels. His appreciation of nature and art was enlarged by visits to various countries, especially by his trip to Spain in 1840. Poetry was still Gautier's chief attachment and in the publication of Emaiix et C amies (1852), he attained his high-water mark. In person, " le bon Theo " was a sort of sunny Hercules, calm and almost Oriental in appearance, fond of the pleasant externalities of life. He significantly said of himself: "Je suis un homme pour qui le monde exterieur existe."

Gautier's early poetry is violently Romantic. Albertm is a free and fantastic narrative poem, dealing with the trans- Early Poems ^orm^tions and orgies of a witch, containing both macabre and Don Juanesque elements. Gautier here uses strong words and metaphors and is evidently striving

GAUTIER'S ART 551

for originality; the composition of his verse is solid and his talent for close description, with analogies to painting, is already prominent. Still more sepulchral in tone is La Comedie de la Mart, presenting a hero who is seeking an ideal love through many loves that are not ideal. This is Gautier's farewell to youthful Romanticism; but he also wrote about this time (Poesies diverses) some elegies as well as delicate and colorful poems of a more impersonal cast. This tendency is fvdly re- "Emaux et yealed in Emaux et Camees, a volume which must Camees" have been slowly elaborated and which crystallizes a transition in French poetry. From now on the movement is away from the sentimental and the personal towards the im- passive and the " Parnassian." * Gautier is the man who bridges the two schools; his more morbid Romanticism is reflected by his great admirer, Baudelaire; but his sense of objective form finds its continuation not only in Baudelaire but in the whole Parnassian group.

The very title of Bmavx et Camees implies delicate workman- ship, and the volume as a whole perfectly illustrates Gautier's Theory of artistic standards and processes. His point of de-^ ^^ parture, in theory, is I'art pour I'art; in practice, the

example of other arts, especially painting and sculpture, con- trols his technique. The theory is indifferent to morality; not eager for emotions or ideas, it is concerned mainly with external beauty. The practice includes, first, the " seeing eye," whether as directed to the larger tableaux of nature or to the smaller gems of art; second, the clever hand, exercised in the manipula- tion of the brush and the chiselling of poetic cameos; and finally, as a consequence of this attitude, frequent transpositions d'art — that is, the transportation of pictorial, sculptural and jewel-like effects from art into literature. It is significant that Gautier's favorite subjects are paintings and pastels, obelisks and pans de mur; also that his brother poets speak of him in terms of painting and enamelling. Emaux et Camees give an impression of slow chiselling and a kind of airy solidity; the poems stand out in telief like massy clouds before a thunder-shower. In this volume Gautier uses octosyllabic quatrains almost entirely, and it goes without saying that his sense of composition, in short pieces, is almost perfect.

• See below. Bk. VII, Ch. III.

652 MUSSET, VIGNY, GAUTIER

" Art for Art's sake " is, then, Gautier's special contribution and his war-cry. He is not interested in politics, philosophy . . or religion, but he has enough intelligence to serve

his own plastic ends. He also subdues emotion to the piu-poses of art. Personal incidents and love-affairs are treated, but they are made impersonal and serene. The form is certainly more evident than the feeling, and the form is a close transcription of beautiful reality. Gautier is a great stylist. His poetry has the correctness, limpidity and purity of the best prose — even of his own prose. In either field he possesses a very large vocabulary from which he can draw the choice word for exactness and vividness. His words often have an exotic or artistically technical coloring. He achieves picturesque bril- liancy in landscapes and interiors. His rhythms are subtle and varied, and the same may be said of his images, which are fre- quent and sustained. In his desire to give the sharp external impression, he anticipates the Imagists of today. In his in- sistence on beauty as the important content of life and of poetry, he narrows the Romantic formula, but he leads the way for a whole generation of modern French poets, who also usually follow his impersonal and plastic bent. His creed is epitomized in the poem called L'Art, of which part has been thus translated by Austin Dobson:

All passes. Art alone

EnduriQg stays to us; The Bust outlasts the throne, The Coin, Tiberius.

Even the gods must go;

Only the lofty Rhyme Not countless years o'erthrow, —

Not long array of time.

CHAPTER V THE ROMANTIC DRAMA

The stage was the first thing affected by the Revolution, and as late as Napoleon, Classical tragedy was still supreme. Bona- Tenacity of parte reorganized the theaters and established the Tragedy f^^^ houses — the Opera, the Opera-Comique, the Comedie-Frangaise and the Odeon — that remain subventioned by the government today. He also fostered the Classical forms because of their reactionary tendency; he wished his Empire to resemble the old monarchy. Talma and other notable tragedians trod the boards in the high Roman fashion, declaiming Comeille, Racine, Voltaire, their feeble imitators and the dilutions of Ducis. Even under the Restoration little visible change appeared until Hugo, though certain popular imderciurents were making for freedom.

From 1778-84 appeared the drames of Sebastien Mercier,^ who

broke theoretically with Classicism but was too timid in practice.

„ , His name should be distinguished from that of

Fredecessors .

of Nepomucene Lemercier, who did just the opposite

Romanticism thing: the latter did not dare to theorize but at- tempted various innovations, especially in Pinto (1800). This play is really a drame, written in prose and including the mix- ture of comic elements. There is little tragic dignity about Le- mercier, who suggests Bernard Shaw in his leveling of history to the bourgeois and practical plane. The subject of Pinto is akin to that of Hugo's Ruy Bias. More directly antecedent to the Romantic drama, however, is the Boulevard melodrama of Pixe- recourt and his followers. Pixerecourt (1773-1844) was called the " roi du melodrame," and no less than thirty thousand repre- sentations were accorded to his plays, which were quite lacking in literary value (Cristophe Colomb, Robinson Crusoe, Ccelina) . But it seems likely that such productions paved the way for Hugo

1 See above, p. 423 553

554 THE ROMANTIC DRAMA

in the following respects: the attention paid to scenery and stage-devices, the mingling of comic and tragic elements, and the development of foiu- staple figures of melodrama (jeune jrremier, heroine, heavy villain and grotesque buffoon). By laying a substratum of popularity for the new form, Pixerecourt served Hugo as Hardy had served Corneille. The poets of the twenties are transitional in their sympathies. Alexandre Soumet is vaguely Romantic in aspiration and more definitely so in his use of historical " machines " (for instance, Jeanne d'Arc, 1825) ; but he clings to the Classical rules. So does Casimir Delavigne in such early plays as Les Vepres sicUiennes (1819). But Delavigne was the most fashionable poet of his decade, fol- lowing the Greek vogue in his Odes messeniennes and shifting more decidedly towards Byronism and Romanticism in his Marino Faliero (1829). The historical coloring of this play, as of Louis XI and of Les Enfants d'Edouard (Shakespearean) , bears witness to the new influences; also Delavigne, though essentially a compromiser, handles the unities with some freedom and introduces Romantic sentiments and temperaments.

Various foreign influences should also be mentioned, such as the interest in German drama, due to Mme de Stael and Schlegel; Fauriel's translations from Manzoni (1823), who was the flrst Italian to rebel against the imities ; and particularly the change in the French attitude towards Shakespeare. This was caused partly by the visits of English actors to Paris. Their second visit (1827-28) was a notable event. Such players as Kean, Kemble, and Miss Smithson took literary Paris by storm. Hamlet and Othello were especially well received, and these per- formances affected the production of Dmnas pere, Alfred de Vigny and Victor Hugo.

The last-named writer was the Romantic leader in every field, and it was on the stage that he won the victory for the Romantic Hugo's cause. It should be noted that much of this drama is

Theory polemic in intention. Hugo threw down the gauntlet

in his Preface to Cromwell (written 1827). This docximent is considered as the manifesto of the new school. Hugo divides the course of poetry into three great ages, of which the modem is primarily dramatic and culminates in Shakespeare. But the dra- matic does not exclude an admixture of the epic or the lyric. The

HUGO'S THEORIES 555

author thus declares for a melange des genres — a famous phrase, more particularly applicable to the mingling of tragic and comic effects conspicuous in the Romantic drama. This combination, together with the juxtaposition of beautiful and ugly, of bad and good, is included in Hugo's " theory of the grotesque," involving an antithesis which he would derive philosophically from the dual nature of man. The grotesque is illustrated in art by Gothic architecture and by Shakespeare's alternations of buf- foonery and high tragedy ; it is found in nature itself, and Hugo boldly asserts: " Tout ce qui est dans la nature est dans I'art." This phrase expresses the broad Romantic view of both terms, in opposition to the Classic view of la belle nature. As regards drama and verse, the revolt is fundamentally against the neo- classical system. The forcible imposition of the unities, whether suitable or not, is characterized as a fetish of mediocrity and of slavish imitators. The only essential unity is that of action, which may well exclude the other two. Hugo also attacks the banal recit and insists on the importance of the concrete spec- tacle, with some use of local color. Like Diderot, he holds that rules are an impediment to genius. He wishes for more liberty in the Alexandrine, for more " characteristic " touches. He believes that verse is still the best vehicle for the serious drame: this term, as used by the Romanticists, designates an all-inclusive "tableau of life," especially the elaborate historical drama. Cromwell itself is a huge historical hurly-burly, but an impos- sible play. The real importance of Hugo's manifesto is in the new liberty which it evokes and the new theories which it sets in action.

To make these theories count, there were the enthusiasm and talent of the royally gifted writers of that age ■ — Hugo, Dumas "Hemani," pere, Musset and Vigny shall be our chief ex- ^*3°- amples — ably seconded by admiring groups of

artists and minor poets. These groups had the interests of literature at heart, they were inspired by the passion of reform and revolt, and they had gallant leaders. Consequently there was enough to make the atmosphere electric when, on February 25, 1830, the first representation of Hernani was staged before the two rival camps. The Classicists protested against every daring enjambement, against every realistic or extravagant touch.

656 THE ROMANTIC DRAMA

But the Romanticists, rallying around the red gilet of Gautier, answered with vehement applause, cheering the fresh sweep of action and passion here displayed. For several nights the issue of the battle was in doubt, and then the opposition slowly gave way. The Romantic drama was an accomplished fact.

The innovations effected by Hernani appear, first, in violat- ing the rules of the Alexandrine. The play begins with an Inn f enjambement, or run-over line, of the kind that no Classicist could tolerate; again, many lines discard the set division of the Classical Alexandrine into two equal halves and employ an irregular division into three, frequently unequal periods. For example:

Qu'est cet homme? Jesus men Dieu! si j'appelais?

contrasted with the Classical:

Nuit et jour, en effet, pas a pas, je te suis.

These two features {enjambement and " free cesura ") are henceforth characteristic of Romantic versification in general: but it should be remembered that even the Romanticists stick to Classic regularity in about ninety per cent of their verse. The path of freedom is none the less made clear. Hernani also offended " les purs," as they called themselves, by the use of everyday language, by calling a spade a spade on occasion; and by alternating this tendency with gorgeous and even vio- lent epithets and figures. Another novelty in style is the broken movement, due to interruptions or shifts of mood. This gives rise to " moody " dialogue, as it may be termed, unlike the smooth Classic pattern. Again, Classical decorum is violated by the attention paid to objects and concrete action; this is manifest in the stage-directions, which here for the first time become elaborate. The unities, as necessary rules, are forever laid to rest. Henceforth, though many good plays are written within and the unities, no good play must be so written.

Character- Hernani changes its place and time at will, and has no compelling unity of action. Part of the time our sympathy is with Hernani, the gloomy bandit, and with his sweetheart, Doiia Sol. In another act, we are more concerned with Don Ruy Gomez, the jealous old guardian of the girl.

HERNANI 557

In Act IV (which is frequently a hors d'muvre in the Romantic drama) , we applaud the nobility of Charles V, the newly elected emperor. For a time it appears that Hernani, restored to rank and power by Charles, will win his bride, and a happy ending is indicated. But the vengeance of Ruy Gomez is still to be reckoned with ; in Act V he calls the bride and groom to account, with disastrous consequences for all concerned. A famous and typical expression of the Romantic temperament is to be found in Hernani's speech (Act III, scene IV) :

Je suis une force qui va! Agent aveugle et sourd de mysteres funebres! Une ame de maUieur faite avec des tenebres! Ou vais-je? je ne sais. Mais je me sens pousse D'un souffle impetueux, d'un destin insense. Je descends, je descends, et jamais ne m'arrete. Si parfois, haletant, j'ose toumer la tete, Une voix me dit: Marche! et I'abime est" prof end, Et de flamme ou de sang je le vols rouge au fond! Cependant, a Tentour de ma course farouche, Tout se brise, tout meurt. Malheur a qui me touche! Oh! fuis! detourne-toi de mon chemin fatal, Helas! sans le vouloir, je te ferais du mal!

The characters in the play are all Romantic types, moved by strong passions of love or revenge and repeating the typical gestiu-es of melodrama. The removal of the unity of time should allow ample space for character development, but Hugo's psy- chology, here and elsewhere, is inferior to his lyric gift and in- tensity. There are fine poetic outbursts in Hernani, attended by brilliant coups de theatre. The construction, however, is not sound throughout, and the characters are excessive, theatrical and often untrue to life.

Hugo's other plays may be more briefly considered. Marion .Delorme (written 1829, produced 1831) is the story of a 0th Pla courtesan redeemed by love and is the first play of importance to treat that favorite Romantic theme (cf . La Dame aux camelias) . It is an unpleasant but powerful tragedy, and the two main characters — Marion and her lover Didier — however exaggerated, are impressively presented. The construction of the play would be excellent, were it not marred by the introduction of a burlesque element. Le Roi

558 THE ROMANTIC DRAMA

s'amuse (1832) was removed from the boards, partly on account of its horror, but mainly because it presents the monarchy, especially Francis I, in no favorable light. The King endeavors to seduce a girl whose father, the King's jester, unwittingly has his own daughter killed instead of the libertine monarch. From this drama, Verdi took the plot of his opera, Bigoletto. Le Roi s'amuse shows the development of Hugo's democratic senti- ments. Passing over minor plays (Lucrece Borgia, Marie Tudor and Angelo) — which are in prose and thereby even more melo- dramatic— we come to Buy Bias (1838). After Hemani, this is Hugo's most important play. The two dramas antithetically treat of the rising splendor of the Spanish monarchy and of its gloomy decline. In Buy Bias, the historical presentation of a corrupted court and its usages is very well done. The plot offers a violent contrast in situation. Ruy Bias is a lackey, who through his passion for the Queen rises to high dominion in Spain. He is overthrown partly through the machinations of the villain, Don Salluste, partly because his own character is not equal to his opportunities. The moral seems to be, once a lackey always a lackey. The most interesting personage in the drama is the bohemian Don Cesar de Bazan. The passions are strongly depicted, and the plot is unusually logical and swift. With Buy Bias, Hugo's dramatic glory ended, Les Burgraves (1843) was a failure, in spite of its epic quality, and marks the finish of the Romantic drama. As Gautier signifi- cantly said: " II n'y a plus de jeunes gens "; reactionary tastes were in control of writers and public.

Not only did Hugo liberate versification but several of his plays tended also to liberate the minds of the people and to Qualities: serve democracy. Historically, these dramas are Defects and likely to take one-sided views, but they traverse a wide range of countries and periods, at least five countries being represented. A wide free scope in place, time and subject, is an essential feature of the treatment; a new complexity is given to drama, by the expression of things his- torical, picturesque, physiological, "moody" and concrete; the caracteristique offers realistic details about manners and costumes; stage-setting is for the first time fully described; the number of speaking parts is far beyond that of Classic tragedy.

A. DUMAS PERE 559

But with all these additions, the Romantic theater remains inferior to the Classical in harmonious artistic worth. The reason is that Hugo's drama is mostly melodrama. We find constant excesses and forced antitheses, whether of language, character or plot. These " fatal " heroes, forever making the same gestures, these suddenly converted kings or lackeys do not give a sense of reality. And the plots, in spite of their fevered movement, frequently lack the solid construction that makes for dramatic probability. There are too many wild flights, too many strange devices and tricks; hiding places, disguises, pon- iards, sombreros, duels and scaffolds; and grotesque buffoonery is pushed beyond all limits. At the same time, there are scenes, situations and coups de theatre (like the picture-scene in Hernani) that are extremely effective ; there are tirades that can still sweep an audience off its feet; and always Hugo remains the master of poetic expression, especially in love passages. This is the greatest merit of his drama. With Hugo, whatever is not lyrical is melodramatic.

Alexandre Dimias pere," in spite of the great vogue of his romances, figures in French literature rather as a dramatist. , He wrote mainly in prose, and his plays are of two kinds: the big historical " spectacle," and the more personal drama of Romantic character and passion. He was even more melodramatic than Hugo; he underwent similar foreign influences (Shakespeare and Byron) , and he too brought in many lands and epochs. A sort of rivalry is to be noted between Delavigne, Hugo and Dumas; in successive plays one of the trio would strive to outdo the others in strong effects. Dimias had a more consecutive dramatic sense than Hugo, but his plays, lacking all poetic virtue, are often brutal, feverish and crude. Coming after Pixerecourt, he is the first Roman- ticist to evoke the national past and to " put the memoirs into action," in ways that are picturesque, vivid and violent. Such are the characteristics of Henri III et sa cour (1829), a well- conducted play of jealousy and assassination; of Christine and her lover Monaldeschi (1830); of Napoleon Bonaparte (1831), which begins the series of vast historical tableaux. In the same year, Dumas also begins the other kind of drama (personal

» For his biography and his novels, see Ch. VI, below.

560 THE ROMANTIC DRAMA

passion) by his remarkable and famous Antony. This play carries to an extreme the presentation of the Romantic hero, who is the victim of fatality and an outcast from society. Antony pushes his passion and misanthropy to the point of slaying the woman whom he loved, because in his (and her) distorted view, this is the only way of saving her lost honor. Other historical plays are Charles VII chez ses grands vassavx, Catherine Howard and particularly La Tour de Nesle (1832). This last has been called a "fantastic evocation of. the Middle Ages." It deals with the loves of Marguerite de Bour- gogne and Buridan, who pass through all degrees of criminality and excess; murders, dungeons, sorcery, disguises, and an es- pecial emphasis on physical suffering, are characteristic of this play and of the author's melodramatic talent generally. Dumas staged also many successes from the " Babylonian edifice " of his novels — La Reine Margot, Les Trois Mousque- taires — huge productions, taking many hours to act. His preference was for historical subjects, which he recreated in the alembic of an imagination both riotous and imrestrained. - The best of his plays, well-plotted and grimly powerful, are more widely representative of the drame than is the lyrical output of Victor Hugo.

The plays of Musset also fall mainly within two divisions: the play of fancy in the manner of Shakespeare, and the drawing- j. room comedy in the manner of Marivaux. The

first kind may be illustrated by Fantasia and by A quoi revent Us jeunes filles. Such plays reflect the woodland atmosphere of As You Like It, together with a sort of irresponsi- bility as to time, place and setting; a fanciful charm in the treatment of femininity and in poetic style also suggests Shake- speare. The other type, illustrated by II faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermee, uses the salon atmosphere and shows the wit and delicacy of a more Romantic marivaudage. Musset's origi- nality shines through his imitations. The titles of his plays are frequently taken from popular proverbs, which they illus- trate in action ; hence these dramas are called comidies-proverbes (cf. II ne faut jurer de rien, La Coupe et les levres)- The pro- verbes are written mainly in prose, though of a poetic cast. Musset's best plays were composed from 1830 to 1840.

MUSSET'S DRAMA 661

Musset wrote for his own satisfaction and for the reading public rather than for the stage. Only a few of his eighteen dramas were acted during his lifetime and are regularly pre- sented to-day. The characteristics of the " closet-3rama " are seen in their somewhat archaic style, the rapid changes of scene, the wilful play of fancy rather to the neglect of solid con- struction, and a tendency to interrupt the action with lyric individualism. Fantasio depicts a hero of romantic tempera- Particular ment who rebels against the commonplace and be- Plays comes a buffoon in order to aid a pretty princess^

A quoi revent les jeunes filles is a poetic extravaganza, which derides the " romanesque." Un Caprice is also rather anti- romantic in theme ; a man has a passing fancy for a woman who sends him back to his wife. II ne faut jurer de rien again pre- sents a charming heroine who convinces a rake that domestic love is best. Other interesting plays are Barberine and Les Caprices de Marianne. Lorenzaccio is a drame, in which the chief character is a kind of Hamlet drawn against a Renaissance back- ground. This is considered one of the best historical plays of the period. The best of the comedies-proverbes is On ne badine pas avec I'amour, with its very significant title. Here we have echoes of the affair with George Sand, not only in. the famous speech which declares the elevating power of love, but also in the cold and coquettish figure of the heroine. She rejects the affection of her cousin, Perdican. He begins to console himself with a village girl, the heroine then becomes jealous and seeks to win Perdican back. The play ends with the suicide of the village gjrl and the tragic separation of the would-be lovers who have "jested."

■ It is evident that Musset's plays, like his poetry, tend to the Romantic exaltation of love. These dramas frequently have the true " lyrical cry." But the passionate expression of sentiment alternates with the reverse of the medal — a Byronic and cynical attitude (cf. La Coupe et les levres). Musset is excellent in poetic flights, his dialogue is often witty and appropriate, and he is more competent in the depiction of character — mainly the several Varieties of his own character — than any other Roman- tic dramatist. He imderstands what makes a dramatic situation. But instead of sticking to the development of the plot he often

562 THE ROMANTIC DRAMA

prefers to wander irresponsibly in charming and imaginative bypaths. His plays have a personal and unique attractiveness.

Alfred de Vigny's drama also closely reflects his indi- vidual nature. He was first inspired by the English actors to produce certain Shakespearean adaptations {Othello, 1829; Shylock, never acted), which were the best hitherto made in French. In opposition to the prudery and thinness of Ducis, they convey to a high degree the spirit, the fulness and the freedom of the orig- inal. Vigny also attempted the historical drama in La Marechale d'Ancre and wrote a graceful salon-comedy in Quitte pour la pew. But his best play, which many think the greatest play of the Romantic era, is the drame intime of Chatterton. The legend of Chatterton, the " marvellous boy," is used to develop the thesis of the poet-martyr: the possessor of such a talent is necessarily in discord with ordinary life and must live and die unhappily. Chatterton is placed in a quiet domestic setting, an old Quaker and the heroine, Kitty Bell, are kind to him ; but there is a coarse business husband, and the hard world is too much for the poet. He is mortified by lordly patronage, his manuscripts are finally rejected, and his love for Kitty cannot be honorably returned. Therefore he kills himself. The treatment is elevated and even calm in tone, the sentiment fine and poignant. In pre- senting the dilemma of the poet-martyr, Vigny gives a new sub- ject to the Romantic theater. He also crystallizes in dramatic form the main motif of his own poetry, the lonely and melancholy devotion to "I'esprit pur."

Thus the Romantic Drama has to its credit a dozen plays of considerable strength or charm. It expresses best the surge of „ feeling and of passion. Its poetry is in excess of its

strictly theatrical values. Its powers of character- ization are not great and are rather monotonously exercised: the " fatal " hero is always in revolt, the suffering heroine is always in love. As drama, the Romantic output is STurpassed both by the Classical and by the Realistic kind. Racine excels Hugo in well-balanced art, just as Augier excels him in truth to life. Yet the Romantic theater appears historically as a necessary bridge between Classicism and Realism. It for- ever destroyed Classical tragedy, by its establishment of a larger

CONCLUSION 563

framework and its abolition of set rules. It anticipates Realism in the attention paid to characteristic and concrete detail, whether in vocabulary, dialogue, description or stage- directions. But of course the spirit of Romanticism is different from that of any other school, and to those who admire the ardors and melancholies of that spirit, the Romantic drama will always appeal.

CHAPTER VI THE ROMANTIC NOVEL

Either the Romanticists were disposed to view nature and society as symbolic of their inner dreams; or else, self-absorbed, they tended to neglect the realities of the outer world. Hence they were usually disqualified as novelists of contemporary French life. They sought refuge in the ivory tower, in the picturesque past, in exotic landscapes or reahns of pure fancy, and finally in humanitarian visions. So we may classify four different types of fiction, which at least offered a considerable range of imagination and feeling.

1. The Personal Novel and Stendhal.

The novel of sentiment, issuing from Rousseau, from Mme de Stael and especially from Rene, is dominant at the beginning The Personal of the century. Senancour's Obermann (1804) goes N°'^* farther than Rene in its representation of morbid

pessimism and an impotent will. Without being a masterpiece, the book contains much sincere thought and feeling; there is almost no outer action. Senancour's single frustrated love-affair is incorporated in this novel, which presents as its main interest the sufferings of an uneasy and despairing soul. Because of this feature, Obermann, in spite of its early date, has been held to anticipate the gloomy decline of Romanticism in the thirties. Two other important autobiographical novels belong to this later period. Sainte-Beuve's Volupte (1834) is again the record of an intimate heart-affair, analyzed with great skill and pene- tration. The book lacks emotional appeal, and the hero's ego- tism and sensual mysticism are not attractive. But Sainte- Beuve frequently attains both scientific precision and a supple artistic expressiveness. Volupte thus has affinities with the work of Stendhal ; and the hero ( Amaury) , though a dreamer, believes in the power of action and will. Such attributes are not con-

564

STENDHAL-BEYLE 566

spicuous in Musset's Confession d'un enjant du siecle (1836), which is turgid with the full Romantic tide of aspiration and despair. It records the fiasco with George Sand and is, a lament for unfulfilled love. Sincerity, sensibility and sadness make this book representative of its generation, while the less pleasing " confessional " note goes back to Rousseau. More character- istic of Musset's talent are such charming and melancholy tales as Frederic et Bemerette and Le Merle blanc. As personal novels should be mentioned also the Stello of Vigny, and much later (1863) the Dominique of Fromentin (see Bk. VIII, Ch. III).

The psychological novel, whose chief representative in this period was Stendhal, may be associated with the above. Henri AF\st dhal Beyle (1783-1842), who took the pen-name of Sten- [^ ' dhal, is one of the most curious and interesting figures

of his time. He stands distinctly outside of the main Romantic current and was generally at odds with his French environment. He disliked his own family and his early surroundings at Gre- noble, was unhappy in Paris, and much preferred Italy, where he mainly lived after the Restoration. But he took a creditable part in the Napoleonic campaigns; indeed, Napoleon and Byron were his chief heroes. A " romantic hussar," a man of action, he believed in energy, liberty and the development of the passions. Outwardly, Beyle was hard, proud and egotistical ; but inwardly he had " too sensitive a heart and too clairvoyant a mind." He was a skeptic and a psychologist, deriving intel- lectually from the ideologues.^ His two great passions were war and love, and his eleven heart-affairs are boldly analyzed in his four chief books. De I'Amour (1822) consists of a series of notes, almost formless, written in the dry precise style which was habitual with Stendhal. The book divides love into four categories and deals with the effect of each variety upon the several temperaments. Eccentricity and obscurity of statement alternate with remarkable penetration. For instance, we have the famous theory of " crystallization," according to which one's sweetheart becomes the center of the world's beauty and interest; and beauty itself is defined as " la promesse du bonheur." Sten- dhal's novels amplify the themes here suggested. Armance

» Especially Destutt de Tracy. See above, Bk. IV, Ch. I.

566 THE ROMANTIC NOVEL

(1827) deals with the failure of two proud sensitive souls to come to an understanding. Far more important in the history of fiction is Le Rouge et le Noir (1831). The title indicates the strife between the Napoleonic spirit of the military and the power of the clergy, whom Stendhal thorou^ly hated. The originality of the book appears both in the manner of treatment and the character of the hero, Julien Sorel. The latter is no romantic sentimentalist, but personifies the strong-willed egotis- tical arriviste of the period (cf. Balzac). Julien makes love in order to further his ambition and slays his first mistress when she betrays him to his second. The women are modeled upon Stendhal's intimate acquaintances. Their conduct is open to the charge of improbability. But in the dissection of motive, the presentation of ambition, passion and revenge, the book shows a power which was rare at that time. La Chartreuse de Parme (1839) makes easier reading, is more eventful and pictur- esque and seems wider in its appeal. Stendhal is now in his favorite Italy; Italian passions, intrigues and society are excel- lently depicted. The author's worst fault is usually a kind of hard tension/ and aggressiveness, whose effects are less conspic- uous here. "His forte at all times is the minute observation of " soul-states." In La Chartreuse de Parme, he reveled in the portrayal and analysis of the impulsive duchess, the highwayman and the unscrupulous hero. Stendhal's heroes are really himself in various environments, and thus his fiction is linked with the personal novel. He also wrote Racine et Shakespeare (1824), a paradox on the Romantic revolt, which shows that he hardly understood the movement. His books were little read in their own period. He was evidently bom out of his due time, and it is not surprising that he waited (as he prophesied) half a century for recognition. Then occurred a curious literary re- vival. Stendhal was claimed and praised both by the Natural- ists and the psychologists. Ta,ine, Zola, Bourget, Rod and Her- vieu vied in doing him honor or in imitating his processes ; and his influence has become conspicuous on the latter-day analytical novel.

VIGNY AND MERIMEE 667

S. The Historical Novel and Hugo.

We shall see in the next chapter how Romanticism " revolu- tionized history," how the enthusiastic imaginations of Thierry Vieny ^^^ °^ Michelet put life and color into the Middle

Ages. But the historians themselves were actually inspired by the Romantic fiction of Chateaubriand and Scott, and the historical novel stands as a dominant literary form for nearly two decades after 1826. This date marks the appearance of the first important example, Alfred de Vigny's Cinq-Mars, a romance of the conspiracy under Louis XIII. Through his serious attention to the genre and his abundant docmnenta- tion — having read some three hundred works in preparation — Vigny really organizes the historical novel after the pat- tern of Sir Walter Scott: the study of manners and costumes together with character-sketches of the epoch treated. But Vi- gny's pen is too heavy to create a vivid masterpiece, his figures are obscured by their environment, and the book lacks life and verve. The milieu and the historical color are, however, well represented, and thereby Vigny makes the " first evocation of the national past " in Romantic fiction.

Merimee's Chronique de Charles IX is a more authentic and vital novel, and there are features in the author's character and ^jj, . g career which will help explain this. Prosper Meri-

mee (1803-1870) was born a Parisian, but with a strain of English blood and English phlegm in his make-up. With his intimate, Stendhal, he shared powers of objectivity and of psychological penetration rare among the Romanticists ; arch- eological researches were also prominent in his mind. He be- gan writing with the so-called Theatre de Clara Gazul (1825), containing plays in imitation of the Spanish drama. The " local color " in this is excellent, as also in another mystification called La Guzla^ a collection of spurious Illyrian ballads which quite imposed upon the public. Merimee thus shows his capacity for dealing ironically with Romantic motives. He led for some years the life of a Parisian man of fashion, winning fame not only through the Chronique but through the series of nouvelles which will be treated in the next section. In 1830 he paid a visit to Spain and formed a lasting association with the family of the

668 THE ROMANTIC NOVEL

future Empress Eugenie. His heart-affairs culminated in the correspondence known as Lettres a une inconniLe — "probably his best romance," since here alone do we find adequate feeling. A cultivated man of the world, a student and linguist, Merimee was appointed Inspector-general of historical monuments, and his archeological preoccupations overflow into his tales. He became an Academician, a promoter of such exotic interests as Russian fiction, and under the Empire he wielded- some power as senator and diplomat.

Written during Merimee's youth, the Chrordque du regne de Charles IX (1829), represents the artistic flowering of the his- The torical novel. Proceeding from Scott, as did all of

" Chronique " these writers, Merimee conserves the famous pictur- esqueness of description and dialogue which characterize the Waverley Novels ; also he uses true historical figures (kings and potentates) mainly as background and concentrates on the en- deavor to depict manners through typical invented figures and vivid scenes. Of the latter, several are imitated from D'Au- bigne's Les Aventures du Baron de Fceneste (1630). With sprightliness and ease Merimee presents successively the German mercenaries, the raffines (dandies) of the epoch, court scenes and various occupations of the sixteenth century. The author's great virtue is that he is a master of brevity, as opposed to the long descriptions of Scott, Hugo and Balzac. Another quality is his impartial objectivity. Relating the strife of Catholics and Protestants at the time of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, Merimee holds a brief for neither side; he ironi- cally shows how conversions could be involved with personal influences, as where the seductive Diane de Turgis woos Mergy partly in the hope of winning him to Catholicism. The heart- interest is prettily handled, but is left somewhat in the air at the end, with Merimee's characteristic indifference. The style is beyond praise, terse, witty and finished. Well-written, inter- esting, with excellent characterization and a large amount of historical truth, the Chrordque du regne de Charles IX remains the most artistically proportioned novel of this kind. But like most of the author's work, it lacks strong emotion.

Victor Hugo introduced, as he wished to do, an epic range and significance into the novel. He shows again his poetic

HUGO 569

p6wer of vision, his liking for large symbols and vivifications. Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), on the picturesque side marvel- "Notre-Dame ously revives the fifteenth century and makes the de Paris" Cathedral itself, in all its Gothic elaboration, the epitome of that century and the hero of the book. The very bells of the cathedral are animated, the bell-ringer, Quasimodo, is a " human gargoyle," and the descriptions of Paris at large are unusually vivid and lifelike. Unfortunately this gift does not extend to the creation of character, and Hugo's lack of psychological power was never more conspicuous. There are no grays or browns on his palette ; he silhouettes people in black '' and white; and in order to display "the continual antitheses of ^' God," a character is likely to be black within and white without, ^- or vice versa (the ugly Quasimodo versus the handsome Phoebus) . [k ^, As for plot, we find many exciu-sions, long descriptions and>* ~ V melodrama, whether of the improbable or the brutal kind. But individual scenes and the massed effects of crowds are often excellent. The style is characteristic of its author, colorful, evoc- ative, very large in vocabulary and in imaginative appeal. This power of imaginative rendering, of summoning back the swarm- ing life of the Middle Ages, is the best feature of Notre-Dame. '

A certain interest in the proletariat is discernible in the above novel and is more conspicuous in Les Travailleurs de la mer and His Social in Les Miserables. The former work is a fruit of Novels Hugo's Guernsey sojoiu^n and depicts the warfare

between human and elemental forces — an epic conception. So the lonely fisherman, Gilliat, struggles with waves and storms and is finally involved in the great combat with the octopus. Les Miserables (1862) was partly written two decades before it was published and thus properly belongs to the Romantic era. This novel, for breadth and massiveness, is Hugo's most imposing work. It is a " chaos of all genres and subjects," ranging in tone from the lyric idyll to apocalyptic prose, including human- itarian sentimentalism, pathos, bathos, discussions of argot and of sewers, the battle of Waterloo, politics, and antiquarianism. The five loosely coordinated books, the episodes, and the interventions of the author show that he is using the novel less as a form of art than as a vehicle for his social views. Of his two main ideas, the first is that embodied in the title: the proletariat (Jean Val-

570 THE ROMANTIC NOVEL

jean, Fantine) is crushed by organized society, represented by its prejudices and its police; and secondly, Hugo believes that human misery and crime may offer their own expiation, as in the case of Valjean, the ex-convict. The early parts, concerning the redemption of Valjean, are surely the best and the most moving; the great merit of the novel (as in the case of Dickens and of Tolstoy) is in its power of making the reader thrill to the simpler feelings of humanity ; for example, the desperation and devotion of Cosette's mother and the idyllic loves of Cosette and Marius. The variety of the mUieux treated also adds to the range of the social novel. On the other hand, the characters are delineated either superficially or with too much symbolism — Javert as the policeman — and the wandering story allows too many improba- bilities and coincidences. Hugo conferred upon fiction the two gifts of his imaginative style and his encyclopedic ardor. His last novel, Quatre-vingt-treize, is a return to the historical romance. It deals with the Terror, in the Vendee and in Paris, and presents excellent pictures of the Revolution. Hugo's fond- ness for children reappears, also his animism or the power of endowing external objects with life. Pou-ely as fiction, Quatre- vingt-treize ranks among his best work.

Finally, Alexandre Dumas pere (1802-70) represents the full popular success of the historical novel and also its artistic deca- Dumaspere ^^^^^- Dumas, a mixture of noble and negroid blood, drew from his father the cult of Napoleonic energy which overflows into his life, his dramas and his novels. Scott and Shakespeare were his literary masters. His dramatic successes (see preceding chapter) launched him on a tide of high living and fast writing which he kept up for forty years. In fiction he was responsible for nearly three hundred substantial volumes, a certain portion being delivered by his " factory " of collaborators. Like Balzac, Dumas carried his imagination into life itself, living fantastically, buying schooners, building a huge palace of " Monte Cristo," which had to be sold for debt. Towards the last he became a poverty-stricken wanderer. He was a strong eupeptic person and put his vigorous vitality into his ro- mances, which otherwise are often improbable, whether as history or fiction. But Dumas' robust treatment, his popularizing genius and his dramatic temperament make him the chief representa-

THE NOUVELLE 571

tive of the "cloak-and-sword" novel, which he handles with much narrative skill, especially in dialogue. He gives us the spectacle of a past which cannot have existed as a whole, though many separate traits are historical. His sources were usually the memoir-writers of the various periods; but the memoirs were hastily read and freely adapted by Dumas or his collaborators. His characters are of the simplest types and his style is poor; also he is fond of melodramatic incident and he boldly " fakes " history when he caimot find it; consequently most of his work is below par from the standpoint of literature. Exceptions must be made for the best of the Valois series, for the Trois Mous- quetaires (1844) and for one or two novels centering around Marie Antoinette. These relics of our youth still stand out alluringly and are still entertaining. It was as an " entertainer " that Dumas became a prey to the roman-feuilleton, a news- paper-serial form of publication which hindered the footsteps of Balzac and Sand, and finds its culmination in the wild creations of Eugene Sue (Les Mysteres de Paris, Le Juif errant). Both Dumas and Sue flourished in the forties, which period then marks the decline of the historical novel proper.

S. Tales and Fantasies.

The master of the nouvelle '■' is Merimee, Romantic in his de- piction of exotic scenes and primitive passions. But he is the " Classicist of Romanticism " in his objective coolness and the admirable qualities of his restrained style. Let us consider, among his best works, Colomba, Carmen and La VeniLS d'llle. The celebrated Colomba (1840) remains the most finished exam- ple of his art. Already in Mateo Falcone, Merimee had dealt with Corsican passions, but with less direct observation and vraisemhlance. Colomba is remarkable for excellent and not too excessive local color, for the skilful transition to the Corsican point of view, and for the able characterization of Colomba her- self. This independent and revengeful girl gradually leads her

2 This term will be used mainly in its modem signification of a long short-story, tending towards the "novelette" ; the term conte will mean short-story; but at times the earlier meaning of the two words will persist, the nowoelle as the more realistic type, the conte as suggesting the fantastic or marvellous (Contes cruels, Contea de* miUe et line NmU)

672 THE ROMANTIC NOVEL

more civilized brother to the point of slaying their hereditary enemy. Several of the minor characters, especially those without the law, are well sketched. The book is a masterpiece of concise and sustained narrative power. These qualities are not so visible in Carmen, which is loosely composed, especially as compared with the dramatic versions. The archeologist who tells the story is not sufficiently alive to the misfortunes of Carmen's be- sotted lover. But the heroine is amply and powerfully displayed and creates the role of the Spanish " vampire." La Venus d'llle is really a conte in its dealing with the fantastic and supernat- ural world. It springs from the myth of the statue of Venus whom a mortal has unwittingly espoused to his own great det- riment. Besides these stories of primitive passions, Merimee also sponsored the nouvelle mondaine in the dandyism and worldly-wiseness of Le Vase etrusqiie and La double Meprise. Sangfroid is Merimee's virtue as well as his fault. Emotion with him is sporadic, but his judicious constraint, together with the ease and elegance of his finished style must place him very high. Colomba has been called " un roman dont le seul defaut est d'etre aujourd'hui sans defauts."

The "fantastic " school of story-telling, fathered by Nodier's talent, finds its natural leader in Gautier. His early volimie, Les Jeunes-France (1833) combines gaiety, libertin- ism and irony. He indulges in persiflage against certain Romantic excesses and habitually chooses from the move- ment only what he needs for his own artistic purposes. In the novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835) and in Fortunio, we are frankly in a pagan wonderland, where morality is in abey- ance, and where passion, beauty and wealth are supreme. Two of Gautier 's major themes, fantasy and the macabre, are found in La Morte amoureuse, a superbly constructed story of a wild love that conquers death. The idea of " phantom love " or the dream-mistress is very insistent in this author's tales. It recurs in Arria Marcella, in Omphale, line Nuit de Cleopdtre, etc. This reveals Gautier's type of Romanticism. It is the kind that re- volts against the mediocre and the ugly aspects of modernity and seeks escape either in exotic lands or the distant past. Such heroes as Fortunio, Gyges and Tiburce (in La Toison d'Or) are mouthpieces for the expression of Gautier's dreams and

GAUTIER'S STORIES 573

longings, which are sensuous and plastic rather than idealistic. They are voiced, however, not in the more flamboyant manner of Romanticism, but moderately, artistically, with a care for diction and elegant decoration. Gautier is still writing enamels and cameos. La Jettatura (1856) might in other hands be full of wild throbs and rhetoric — it is a tale of the evil eye, of lost love and duels and suicide — but it is treated by Gautier in a mild-mannered and somewhat ironic fashion that removes much of its dramatic force. Local color and a choice style are the dominant interests. Similarly, Le Capitaine Fracasse (1861-63) belongs to the Romantic era as a historical fantasy. Following Scarron, Gautier resusci- tates a band of strolling players, interweaves their fortunes with those of some youthful nobles, and beautifully describes certain features and landmarks of the epoch (Louis XIII), especially the Chateau de la Misere. Le Capitaine Fracasse is for maiyr' the most delightful of Gautier's novels; it is akin to the pica- resque romance of adventure. His brilliant style, his fine prose rhythm, his sense of color and form, his search for imusual or exotic characters, are more conspicuous than any wealth of^ ideas or any depth of sensibility.

Gautier and Hugo kept up their Romanticism well into the second half of the centiuy. Two latter-day Romanticists, writers of fantastic tales, are Villiers de I'lsle-Adam (1838-89), author of Contes cruels, Isis, etc., and the eccentric Barbey d'Aurevilly (1808-89). The latter achieved striking effects in his best novel, Le Chevalier des Touches, and in a collection of stories well/ named Les Diaboliques.

4- George Sand.

Aurore Dupin, who married the Baron Dudevant and is best known by her pen-name of George Sand, led a productive and variegated life (1804r-76). She came of a mixed stock, which on her mother's side had been very irregular in its love-affairs; her paternal grandmother was se- vere and aristocratic: the girl's youth was divided between the two households, and it is characteristic that she kept her affection for both. Most of her childhood was passed in the

574 THE ROMANTIC NOVEL

ancient and pleasant province of Berry (central France), whither she returned in her old age and where many of her stories are located. Religious phases, a convent education in Paris and much reading of Rousseau were followed by the stultifying mar- riage of convenience with Dudevant, whom Aurore presently abandoned. But she remained devoted to her two children. She was launched on her literary career partly through the collabora- tion of Jules Sandeau and through influential friendships. The affair with Musset was preceded and followed by others. But no emotion could permanently upset the deep placidity of George Sand's character, nor interrupt the sequence of her numerous vol- umes. She traveled abroad about 1836, became interested in the doctrines of 1848, and later retired to her province, where she was known to the neighborhood as " la bonne dame de No- hant." An interesting correspondence with Flaubert belongs ■ to this period; he emphasizes the head and she prefers the heart. Instead of art for art's sake, she upholds " I'art pour le vrai, I'art pour le beau et le bon."

Hers was a big broad nature, amoral or apathetic in certain respects, but capable of much ardor and devotion. George Sand p . , was always in love with somebody or something and

the four stages of her productiveness simply vary the object of her affections. The first period (1832-40) is the epoch of I' amour-passion (Stendhal's phrase) and marks the creation of her special type, " la femme incomprise." In a series of feverish novels {Indiana, Lelia, Valentine, Mauprat) , the author- ess expresses her violent reaction from her house of bondage and proclaims the rights of free love. Her reputation was made by Indiana (1832), which is the first novel to hold forth lyri- cally on woman's sufferings, and may be taken as typical of the series. A young girl, having married an old man, is attended by two would-be lovers. The one, " Sir Ralph," is her cousin and guardian. Mute, devoted and stolid, he protects her from the selfish passion of the other lover, who is not above courting the Creole maid in lieu of her mistress. When Indiana has gone through countless sufferings and humiliations in the affair, " Sir Ralph " proposes a joint suicide which somehow results in their union instead. The story contains violent scenes and declamations against the cruelty of man. LSUa is even sttonger

GEORGE SAND 575

in the enthroning of Romantic passion. The revolt against marriage expressed in the above novels led to a wider revolt in George Sand's second or socialistic period (1840-48). Hav- ing been subjected to diverse strong influences, Lamennais in religion, Proudhon and a certain Michel (de Bourges) in radical politics, she proceeded to mingle utopianism and metaphysics in various novels (for example, Le Compagnon du Tour de France) . They are not remarkable for strong thought or consistency, but again they show emotion — which is now the love of humanity — and her usual charm of style. This series also includes the in- teresting Consuelo, which is concerned with eighteenth-century history and intrigue. More purely " social " is the communistic and leveling Meunier d' Angibavlt, in which a good deal of prop- erty is burned in order that a rich widow may marry an artisan. /■It is generally conceded that there is too much " thesis " and J declamation about George Sand's problem-novels. _After the disillusionment of 1848, she returns to her native heath and

(writes the best stories of country life that the century has pro- duced. She had already shown her ability in this direction by jibe two idylls. La Mare au diable and Frangois le Cham-pi. The third period (c. 1848-60) is then filled by her love of outdoor nature and country folk. La Petite Fadette illustrates the genre, with the fidelity of its beautiful description and its excellent psychology of simple hearts. Finally, a fourth period (1860-76) is mentioned by some critics and would include later miscella- neous novels. They are love-stories at large and show occasional signs of weariness. Of these, Nanon is a tale of the Revolution and Le Marquis de Villemer — the best of this period — deals capably with high life.

It will be apparent that George Sand did many things. As opposed to Balzac, she is supposed to represent the "roman idealiste." Individualistic and passionate at first, she also helps create the social novel in her second period, attains her apogee with her country stories, and writes always with ease and often with eloquence. A tendency to over-idealize or romanticize and a lack of good composition are her worst faults. She was an improviser and admitted that she wrote simply by " turning- on the faucet." But at her best she is widely sympathetic and interesting and conveys the sense of life in many ways.

CHAPTER VII CRITICS AND HISTORIANS

In general, Romanticism met with no formidable opposition, but there were several important writers who stand apart from The Reaction- ^^^ main currents of the period. Already under the aries: Empire, a group of critics were marked by their

Joubert conservative tendencies. Joseph Joubert (1754^

1824) , a profound and delicate thinker, has been called " the critics' critic," since he won the admiration of Sainte-Beuve, Arnold and others. He led a simple and retired life, devoted mainly to the pleasures of friendship and conversation. In his stormier youth, he was influenced by Diderot and became the lifelong friend of Fontanes; from about 1800 Fontanes and Joubert together were the chief counselors of Chateaubriand. Joubert's single volume of Pensees (not published imtil 1838) is a series of crystallized meditations in the manner of the seven- teenth-century moralistes. The eighteenth century was severely judged by this Platonic idealist, who preserved a detached and serene soul through all the national upheavals. His literary judgments show true insight, but his form suJBfers from too much subtlety or too much condensation. Joubert was not really creative, and the future will probably find that he has been over- valued by the past.

The " Catholic reaction," in which Lamartine and Chateau- briand participated, was headed, in the domain of theology Joseph de proper, by Joseph de Maistre and the Abbe de Maistre Lamennais. The former (1753-1821) was a

" grand theoricien theocratique " and the first leader, under Napoleon, to demand the restoration of Catholicism. De Maistre was a semi-foreigner, a Savoyard by birth and resi- dence. He lived the career of a magistrate and diplomat. He was strong for the principle of Papal authority, even infalli- bility (Dm Pape, 1819) , and he became a dominant figure among the Ultramontanes, the group that sought to subordinate the

576

THE CATHOLIC REACTION 577

Galilean church to the power of Rome. His finest book is the Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg (1821), dialogues dealing with high spiritual problems. They are expressed in a clear logical form which owes much to the eighteenth century, whose principles De Maistre detested. His influence was at its height during the Second Empire and affected the virulent journalist, Veuillot, and the eccentric neo-romanticist, Barbey d'Aurevilly. Of a very different character was Joseph's brother, Xavier de Maistre, who wrote the sentimental and charming Voyage autour de ma chambre (1794).

The Abbe de Lamennais (1782-1854), by his ardent and elo- quent nature and by his association with Chateaubriand and . Lamartine, is more closely linked with literature. Like Chateaubriand, he came of a Breton family and environment and was endowed with certain traits of the "Northern" romantic imagination. A great reader in his youth, he passed through a stage of skepticism and was not ordained priest until 1816. The Essai sur I'indijference (1817- 19) attracted much attention, and Lamennais was esteemed one of the Catholic leaders. His chief disciples were Lacordaire and Montalembert. The three writers founded, after the Revolution of July, a progressive journal called UAvenir, which became too liberal in the eyes of the Church. Lamennais was finally con- demned by the Pope and lost his power among the orthodox. He had previously published (1834) his Paroles d'un croyant, which remain the most individual expression of his fiery faith. Dog- matic and Ultramontane, Lamennais yet represented a fine effort to assimilate Catholic orthodoxy and democratic liberal- ism, and the effort wholly failed. His endeavor was to spirit- ualize the Church, working first from the top and then (after 1830) from the bottom. The Essai sur I'indifference develops a theory of " certainty " as regards dogma, using the fallacious basis of universal historic testimony. The Paroles d'un croyant consist of highly imaginative parables and visions, written or chanted in a Biblical style. The book resembles its author in its alternation of tenderness and violent ardor, and thereby Lamennais clearly belongs to the Romantic generation.

Under the Restoration, there were three gifted professors and lecturers who exercised a considerable influence upon French

578 CRITICS AND HISTORIANS

youth. This " trio of the Sorbonne " was composed of Villemain in criticism, Cousin in philosophy and Guizot in history. In their The Trio several fields, each of these men stood for a new Sorbonne- historical method, and all three were liberal-minded. ViUemain' Their eloquence was unsurpassed, while their best books were simply products of their courses. Abel Ville- main (1790-1870) emphasized social background and compara- tive literature. The value of his Tableau de la litterature au moyen age has faded out since specialists have made a study of medieval documents, but his Tableau de la litterature fraiv- gaise au XVIIIe siecle (1828) still keeps its usefulness and in- terest. This work helped restore the eighteenth century to its proper place in the history of thought; it offered capital ex- amples of " literature as the expression of society " ; it used the method of comparisons and cross-influences (particularly from England) ; and it was written in a style of genuine if old- fashioned eloquence. Villemain had taste, judgment and knowl- edge. Together with Mme de Stael, he may be credited with founding nineteenth-century criticism.

The talent of Victor Cousin (1792-1867) was less reliable. His life carried out his motto of " il f aut paraitre " ; he was con- - . stantly in evidence as a popular lecturer and edu-

cator. Appointed professor of philosophy when quite young, he endeavored to fill the gaps in his training by trips to Germany and an enthusiasm for Hegel. His most important volume, Du Vrai, du Beau et du Bien (1853) was composed of courses delivered in 1818 and again in 1836. He received many public honors, influenced the mechanics of the French educa- tional system, and in his old age wrote a series of admiring volumes on his " amoureuses," such heroines of the seventeenth century as Mme de Longueville and Mme de Sable. Victor Cousin stands first for a new and significant emphasis on the his- tory of philosophy and, secondly, for the doctrine of Eclecticism, or the endeavor to combine into a working creed the best and most plausible portions of past systems. Revolting against the Empiricists (sensationalists) , he manufactured an unstable com- pound of Plato, Descartes and the German idealists. His eclectic synthesis is superficial and his method faulty. In aesthetics, he again approximates a Platonic idealism, an emotion which is the

GUIZOT 579

" pure sentiment of the beautiful and the sublime." More charac- teristic of his age is the fact that he recognizes the independ- ently creative role of the artist, and he is among the first to formulate the doctrine of " art for art's sake." He also belongs to his period by his capacity for feeling and inspiring Romantic enthusiasm and by his lack of deep reflective powers.

Frangois-Pierre-Guillaume Gtiizot (1787-1874) was a more solid and serious person. A French Protestant by upbringing, Guizot: the he preserved throughout life the austerity of that sect. ^^^ As teacher, historian and statesman, he was a leader

of the " doctrinaires," the moderate liberals who stood as cham- pions of the bourgeoisie and of constitutional monarchy. Guizot was also a distinguished orator and publicist'. He entered politics early, occupied various administrative positions after Waterloo, lost and regained his professorial chair, and gave his epoch-mak- ing courses on civilization, 1828-30. Under Louis-Philippe, Guizot held several portfolios, was made ambassador to England and, joining the Opposition, ranked as minister of foreign affairs and head of the cabinet, 1841-48. In government he believed in the jitste milieu, repressed democracy pure and simple, and constantly maintained that the upper middle class was the backbone of the nation. Similar views characterize his attitude towards history, which he tended to consider as an adjunct to practical politics.

Nevertheless, Guizot is regarded by many as the greatest of French historiajis. In opposition to the Romantic school (see „. ^ , subsequent pages), he headed the political school, " whose object was rather to explain than to narrate, to teach than to paint " (Gooch) . Furthermore, Guizot's master- piece, the Histoire Genercde de la Civilisation en Europe ^ inaugu- rated a fresh philosophy of history and revealed its author as the greatest generalizer since Montesquieu. As a universal his- tory, the work is more broadly based than that of Bossuet or even that of Montesquieu; it accepts the theory of Providence, but usually explains events as arising from human and social causes or the structure of governments. Guizot's forte is the

* Published with the accompanying work (Histoire GinSrale Se la Civilisation en France) aa a Cours d'Histoire moderne, in 1828-30. Guizot also wrote a valuable Histoire de la Revolution d'Angleterre (1828) ; he was a profound admirer of Anglo- Saxon institutions.

580 CRITICS AND HISTORIANS

exposition of the underlying ideas of an epoch. For instance, he holds that the two main currents of modern civilization are the spirit of free inquiry and the struggle for liberty as warring with the slow centralization of power. Again, Guizot shows how the modern world amalgamated older elements from the Roman Empire, from the establishment of Christianity and Feudalism. The bourgeoisie incorporated the best progressive growth of the Middle Ages, and in the long rim " its existence in- volved representative government." The CivUiscUion en France was intended to develop the thought that France, through her assimilative and radiating energy, exhibits the highest type of intellectual civilization. The lectures were unfortunately sus- pended before Guizot had passed the early Middle Ages, but he had revealed his ability to study the body politic as an organism and had strongly emphasized the national " imite morale " as rising above the conflict of classes. The author's cold reasoning and his sober style prevent any display of picturesque or dramatic talent. He is not dealing primarily with personalities or with facts in themselves and his books lack color. Sainte-Beuve de- clared that Guizot made everything too symmetrical and " en- chained," and the great critic, after reading the historian, woul4 take down a volimie of De Retz's Memoirs to remind himself how history was actually made. But Guizot, by his intellectual quality, by his impartiality and sure erudition, as well as by his establishment of the Societe de I'Histoire de France, ranks as the leader of this earlier generation in philosophic history, as Thierry was the master in the narrative kind.

The imaginative qualities which Guizot lacked are to be found, even too abundantly, in the Romantic school of historians. The Michelet was profoundly influenced by the general

ScSd^"' Romanticism of his period, and Thierry found his Thierry vocation through reading Chateaubriand's Martyrs.

Scott and Chateaubriand, the one in his antiquarianism, the other in his poetizing of the Middle Ages, may be considered the godfathers of this school. Augustin Thierry (1796-1856) must be distinguished from his yoimger brother, Am^dee, who wrote about the Gauls. Thierry began his career as the secre- tary of the eccentric social philosopher, Henri de Saint-Simon, from whom the historian may have partly derived his sympathy

THIERRY 681

with the masses. An interval of journalism and a systematic study of the sources of French history were followed by the pro- duction of two masterpieces, the Histcdre de la cmquete de I'Angleterre par les Normands (1825) and the Recits des Temps Merovingiens (1840). Unlike other historical writers of the time, Thierry was neither a professor nor a politician. His health prevented any active life; from the age of thirty he was blind and partially paralytic; but these handicaps blighted neither his vital enthusiasm nor his capacity for labor. His was a fine character, courageous, simple and ardent. As a writer, he combines a genius for detail with a power to animate the whole record of a faded past. The result is a picturesque restoration of the early Middle Ages, an imaginative and colorful interpre- tation, which combines a true " intuition " of past sentiments and ideas with an ability to press out the storied life from charters and chronicles. So the Merovingian kings move vividly before our eyes, and the epic of the races takes form in their migrations. Thierry is among the first to emphasize intensive racialism (that fetish of the nineteenth century), and his Con- quete de I'Angleterre over-stresses the Norman influences on Eng- lish social life. His narrative gift is excellent, he is a master of proportion in composition and of choice and moderate ex- pression in style. Thierry is the first to put history on a high literary plane.

The Romantic qualities appear in their greatest efflorescence in the work of Jules Michelet, the " Victor Hugo of history." „. . . . He came of the people and he was right in declar- ing, " Je suis reste peuple." The poverty and pri- vations of his childhood left Michelet, as they left Dickens, with a warm sympathy for the masses and with some distrust of the world of society. As a boy, he sought relief from drudgery in visiting a certain Museum of French history, which gave him the first inspiration for his future work. He suc- ceeded in getting an education and was an avid reader. In 1827 he translated the works of Vico, the Italian philosopher, and was appointed to teach at the Ecole Normale, where his causeries were much esteemed. Ten years later he passed to the College de France. As a consequence of an attack on the Jesuits he lost his professorial chair; he also lost his post in the national

682 CRITICS AND HISTORIANS

archives, when Napoleon III came into power. Discouraged and embittered against imperialism, Michelet won happiness again through the companionship and collaboration of his de- voted second wife. This is the epoch of his travels and of his curious volumes, semi-scientific, semi-mystical, on L'Oiseau, La Femme, La Bible de I'Humanite. Michelet always kept some- thing of the feeling and enthusiasm of a child. Susceptible, kind-hearted and thoroughly good, he was rather a solitary, revealing his " winged spirit " only to his intimates or in his books.

As for the Histoire de France, the composition of this work runs through all his mature life. Three separate parts are to "Histoire de be distinguished: six voliunes on the Middle Ages, France" written from 1833-43; then Michelet's sudden leap to the Revolution, 1847-53 ; finally, the treatment of the inter- vening period (Renaissance et Temps modernes, eleven volumes, 1855-67). The first part is Michelet's most perfect and har- monious work, written before his prejudices and imagination overcame him. His ardent patriotism and his tendency to sym- bolism made him view medieval France as a living person. His object is the " resurrection of the life of the past as a whole," and he succeeds in this through his gift of sympathetic imagina- tion, applied to the complex of institutions, events and person- alities. He believed that a great writer should imderstand and welcome eagerly " the diverse manifestations of the human spirit " (Monod) . The powjer- of vision and expression thus attained is beyond anythmg in the range of French history hitherto. As Sainte-Beuve says, Michelet makes all other historians seem like compilers. Some of the outstanding fea- tures of the work are the famous survey of the French provinces (Michelet was the first to emphasize geographical history) ; the apotheosis of Joan of Arc as the soul of France; and the full-length depictions of Louis IX and Louis XL The writer's usual habit is to narrate by a succession of vivid scenes. The second part of the work was undertaken after Michelet's cam- paign against the Jesuits. It enthrones the Revolution as em- bodying, especially in its dawn, the hope of a humanity liberated from king and church. The people en masse can be viewed as the hero of the epic, and the people can do no wrong, in Miche-

MICHELET 683

let's view. At least, the mob spirit and the Terror are atten- uated, to the greater glory of Revolutionary principles and ideals. In brilliant tableaux (the Convocation of the States-General, the flight to Varennes, etc.) and in prophet-like demeanor, Michelet is rivaled only by Carlyle, whom he also resembles in various errors and faults of proportion. The third part of the Histoire shows this great talent in its decline. Bitter attacks on the old regime and the Catholic church, a tendency to credit scandalous memoirs and to over-estimate the small fact as determining history, are scarcely atoned for by the continuance of the author's wonted eloquence and power of depiction. There is too much propaganda and too little care and thought. Miche- let here exhales hatred and prejudice, and the four chief objects of his hatred, it has been well said, were priest, king, England and the bourgeoisie.

But at his best, as an interpreter of the Middle Ages, Michelet is incomparable. Page after page contains fire and feeling. His Tal nt ^^''''l^dg® and insight. Like Thierry, he breathes upon musty documents and informs them with life. He was possessed of a " flamme interieure," which he communi- cates to ancient ages and to the reader as well. One of his ad- mirers, Monod, declares that Michelet remained the chief forti- fying and consoling force in the nation; that after 1830 he was almost the only example of continued Romantic idealism and optimism. He sought the original and striking features of an epoch, and his Histoire, in its mobile and fervent style, is most original and inimitable. He was too individual to found a school, but later historians admit their debt to his inspiration and admit his supremacy in the imaginative and emotional re- vivification of the past. Michelet was primarily an artist, who chose history as his working material.

The work of Thiers and of Mignet, who belonged to the " political " rather than to the Romantic school, may be more Thiers and briefly considered. Adolphe Thiers' long and bril- *^snet lig^jj^ career (1797-1877) is closely connected with

the destinies of his country. With Mignet, he founded Le National and helped expel the Bourbons in 1830. With Guizot, he shared the direction of the doctrinaire policy and alternated with him as leader of the cabinet and of the Opposition under

684 CRITICS AND HISTORIANS

Louis-Philippe. Thiers was partly responsible for the third Napoleon, but his great opportunity was found in the days of 70-71, and his patriotic services then were rewarded by his election as the first President of the French Republic. As a his- torian he is not deep, shows political bias and neglects documen- tary sources. But his treatment is extremely clear and fresh. The Histoire de la Revolution frangaise (1823-27) was for long the most popular work on the subject. It shows a certain political opportunism and fatalism, but it is tolerably impartial and very readable, with its easy luminous style. The Histoire du Consulat et de I'Emjnre (1845-62) is a greater book and re- mains the most complete account of Napoleon, as it was a considerable factor in the restoration of the Napoleonic cult. Thiers was well equipped and experienced in matters of ad- ministration and diplomacy ; he made special studies of finance, geography and battle-fields; his chief handicap is externality, a lack of the philosophic power with which Guizot was so abundantly endowed. Thiers' close friend, Mignet (1796- 1884) has a higher place as an accurate and thoughtful historian. His Precis de la Revolution frangaise (1824) is still useful in its condensed and logical presentation of events. But Mignet is not an accomplished writer. His chief work, the Sv<:cession d'Espagne and the editing of documents relative to that subject, belongs to history as a science rather than to history as literature.

BOOK VII REALISM

CHAPTER I

THE TRANSITION: BALZAC

HoNOR^ DE Balzac (1799-1850), in spite of the de which he inserted in his name, was of comparatively humble birth. He was of peasant stock on the. side of his father, -yvho seems to have endowed Honore with his strong physique and personality. The mother left him her taste for mystical reading (cf. Louis Lambert) ; also she paid his debts and often nagged him mercilessly. More sympathetic to the lad's ambitions was a sister, Laure, who was among Balzac's first biographers. Though the family was of Southern origin, Honore was born and spent his youth in the sunny country of Touraine, which he has glowingly celebrated in his fiction (Le Lys dans la vallee, Contes drolatiques) , and this environ- ment probably added to his Rabelaisian exuberance. At the College Vendome, near Tours, Balzac passed six years of hot- house discipline and promiscuous hard reading. His health was seriously affected for a time. Then he was sent to Paris, " pour faire son droit "; his law-studies and the notary who directed them appear conspicuously in his novels (Gobseck, L'lnterdic- tion) . He was finally allowed to take a fling at literature, and we see him (1819) happily installed in the conventional garret and writing enthusiastically to his sister about his career — which he had not yet started. Some years of application re- sulted in ten melodramatic novels (CEwvres de jeunesse) ; these even Balzac would not sign. Desiring to make money rapidly, he became involved in a printing and publishing concern, which led to financial insolvency {Illusions perdues,, Cesar Birotteau) , The aristocratic Mme de Berny helped rescue him from this predicament and interested him in the epoch of the Revolution.

585

586 THE TRANSITION: BALZAC

This was depicted in Les Chouans (1829), with which novel ^alzac begins the famous series of the Comedie humaine.

^ Les Chouans is significant because it marks the transition from the historical novel to the novel of contemporary manners.

^When the transition became complete, modem Realism was born. The Realistic tendency is still more pronounced in the early Scenes de la Vie Privee, which included such important studies in actual life as Gobseck and the Cure de Tours. With the ap- pearance of such masterpieces (1833-34) as Eugenie Grandet, Le Pere Goriot and La Recherche de I'Absolu, Balzac's method of work may be considered as established. His enormous pro- ductivity has fairly begun. He is henceforth the " anchorite of labor " who toils for months together, from two in the morning all through the day, sustaining himself with black coffee and allowing an occasional holiday for Gargantuan meals and social pleasures. Balzac was well received in certain salons and deigned to pose as a social lion. But he lacked distinction and was never admitted to the Academy. He grew up in the society of the Restoration, which knew all the difficulties of " reconstruction " on a large scale. So his novels present many types of arrivistes (Rastignac, Rubempre) , who pass through various environments in their search for position and wealth. Owing to his perpetual need of money, Balzac was in changing relations with different publishers and theatrical directors ; he also found it wise to change his place of residence frequently, in order to avoid persistent creditors. He had fleeting affairs with various women, but the only true successor to Mme de Berny was a Polish lady, Mme Hanska. This affair began in 1833, was long maintained by scattered meetings and correspondence {Lettres a I'Etrangere) , caused sudden visits to Switzerland, Italy and the Ukraine, and was consummated in marriage just before the novelist's death. Though it ultimately ruined him, this passion fostered Balzac's talent and productive power. " Etre celebre et etre aime " were his two most steadfast desires. So we find him absorbing Pari- sian and provincial life, entertaining strange dreams of wealth, either through Sardinian mines or through dealings with the Great Mogul, becoming an amateur of bibelots and collections (Le Cousin Pons) , constantly binding himself over to publishers and pawning the future for the present. In this respect he re-

HIS TEMPERAMENT 587

sembled Sir Walter Scott, and the practical life of each was dam- aged by the writer's too liberal imagination. Like others, Balzac contracted to produce romans-feuilletons at top speed, and after 1836 the results appear in some instances of hasty composition and style. Yet many of his best works (for example, Cesar Birotteau, 1837) were also written rapidly. It has been estimated that he made an average of almost twenty-five thousand francs yearly, and from 1845 his financial position became easier. By then all his efforts were directed toward marrying Mme Hanska and setting up a fine establishment in Paris. Trips to Russia, a long sickness, and disillusionment after marriage, precipitated the end. He died, literally worn out by life and labor, in August, 1850.

By nature, Balzac offers a curious compound of the idealist and the materialist. His powerful imagination, his sanguine _ ret ^®^''™^ °^ ^°^® ^°^ happiness, his (Swedenborgian) mysticism tended in the one direction; but his very physical being, his coarseness, his Rabelaisian and middle-class characteristics induced in him much giisto for the real world. By intuition he is a Romantic genius ; by his extraordinary and detailed memory for the concrete, he is the founder of the Real- istic school. His two chief ideals, love and creative art, were stained by the money-makihg ambition. Exuberant and even titanic power is his special mark. No such industry and driving force had hitherto appeared in fiction. It led him into eruptions of gaiety and egotism, in which everything had to bend to his will, and in which the world of real people faded away before the huger reality of the Comedie humaine. It led him finally into that realm of hallucination and monomania in which he wrote his last imposing novels — Le Cousin Pons, La Cousine Bette. Nimierous anecdotes show how for Balzac his visions be- came facts, and it is in the ultimate fusion of the real and the romantic that the secret of his spell resides.

Besides his fiction, Balzac wrote several volumes of plays, arti- cles and miscellanea; but the Comedie humaine, the product of Plan of the twenty years' labor, slands'^ut as his great achieve- tamSM" ^^^^- This collection includes about ninety-five separate titles of novels, novelettes and short stories. Over four million words and over two thousand characters, one-fourth

688 THE TRANSITION: BALZAC

of them " reappearing," were used in this vast scheme. Its central feature jgjthe endeavor to present completely and concretdy the socialjife of contemporary France ;_" completely," because Bal- zac's idea was tolncludre every social category and most fields of knowledge ; " concretely," because Realism of detail and a close acquaintance with small boiu-geois life were employed to an un- precedented extent; " contemporary," because the historical novel of the past is incidental in Balzac's work and he studies chiefly the modern epochs with which he had personal contact. It is in these three respects that he expands the novel far beyond the range attempted by Scott and Hugo. As early as the middle thirties he had determined his plan of social studies and had fixed on the device of reappearing and interlocking characters to mortice together his growing edifice. About 1841 he chose his general title (as a counterpart to Dante's Divina Commedia). In the Avant- propos of 1842 he evinces his encyclopedic intention and his view of society as divisible into species according to profession and habitat. At least one-third of his titles {Le Medecin de Cam- pagne, La Vieille Fille, Les Employes, etc.) indicate this preoc- cupation with social types, which is further manifest from the f divisions given to the Comedie. The first and largest Part is called " Etudes, de ..Moeurs " and is subdivided into six kinds of Scenes: those pertaining respectively to the Vie privee, Vie de province, Vie Parisienne, Vie politique, Vie rmlitcdre and the vFie de campagne. The second Part is called " Etudes^ Philo- sophiques," and the third, "Etudes Analytiques." These in- clude fewer titles and have no subdivisions; the intention here was more abstract — to deal with the causes and principles underlying society (La Recherche de I'Absolu, La Peau de chagrin, La Physiologic du mariage) . To recur to the first Part, the various Scenes overlap in their content, which is not always logically subdivided; but Balzac's intention of becoming the " secretary of society," studied in its chief categories, is here fulfilled. We may mention a few samples imder each heading. The Vie privee included ultimately the early novelettes dealing with modest bourgeois life {La Bourse, La Maison du Chat- qm-pelote) , together with such fine character studies as Le Colonel Chabert and later full-length novels like Le Pere Gvriot or Beatrix. The Vie de province contains Balzac's main attempt,

HIS ROMANTICISM 689

turgid and sentimental, to depict idealistic love — Le Lys dans la vallee; it also has the incomparable Eugenie Grandet, Pier- rette, the great fresco of Illusions perdues, and others. The titles here cover four French provinces. The Vie Parisienne includes a parallel fresco of the metropolis — the Splendeurs et Miseres des courtisanes — and several novels of intrigue and business. The Vie politique has, for instance, Une Tenebreuse Affaire (mystery story) ; the Vie mUitaire has Les Chouans; and the Vie de campagne, appropriately includes Les Paysans, Le Medecin de campagne (ideal doctor) and Le Cure de village (ideal priest). The last three Scenes embrace fewer titles than the first three, and it was Balzac's intention to enlarge their content. He planited in all one hundred and fifty novels. Several unwritten masterpieces were to gather around his hero Napoleon, and others, judging from the semi-autobiographical novels already mentioned, would undoubtedly have gathered around Balzac himself.

As with his temperament, so we must consider Balzac's work in its Romantic and in its Realistic aspects. The origins of his Balzac's Romanticism are not far to seek. The English Romanticigm « School of Terror " (Maturin and Lewis), the melo- drama of Pixerecourt, certain contemporary strains in Hugo or in Sue were not without influence. Balzac's own CEuvres de jeunesse {Argow le Pirate, Jane la Pale, etc.), which are fairly voluminous, teem with melodramatic incidents, violent deeds, missing heirs and mysterious characters. Consequently, the Co- medie humaine contains a revival of Maturin's Melmoth; a grue- some villain like Vautrin ; sinister bands like that of the " Thir- teen "; piracy in La Femme de trente ans; crimes, vendettas and harrowing deaths in many novels. Apart from this bas-roman- tisme, there is also the more legitimate type, to be seen in Bal- zac's individualism: not only does he exhibit his heart and mind in many passages, but be preaches individualism in the careers of his male and female climbers (Rastignac, de Marsay, Valerie Mameffe). The exaltation of the imagination {Sera- phita, La Peau de chagrin), of passion (Veronique, Mme d* Mortsauf, Esther van Gobseck), of the artistic life {Gambara, Illusions perdues) all have their Romantic bias. The delineation of such strong passions, rising to the point of mania, is often

590 THE TRANSITION: BALZAC

fine and stirring; but pathos is not usually Balzac's forte. Again, his descriptive processes are often those of the Romantic painter. Except in Le Lys dans la vallee, he scarcely treats nature in an idealistic way; nor is he prone to use Catholicism other than as a desirable discipline. This is replaced by the somewhat mate- rial and exaggerated mysticism of Louis Lambert and Seraphita. Exaggeration and excess were, unfortunately, two Romantic

n^emptations to which Balzac fell an easy prey. The thick coloring, of his style in " purple passagesj" the millions of francs with which he suddenly endows his leading characters, the agonising death-beds, and especially the growing effect of hallucinations in his own mind, the huge mushrooms of many midnights of toil — all these are symptoms of the Romantic

Ijever.

But as a whole the Comedie humaine is the earliest and still the most con^icuous monument-of French Realism. We may Realistic define Realism as the art of representing actuality. Features viewed largely from the material standpoint, in a way to produce as closely as possible the impression of truth. What then are the chief Realistic qualities and elements in the work of Balzac? As regards truth, it would seem that his deliberate pessimism, his exaggerations in plot and incident, and his use of grandiose monomaniacs as characters, would be " romantic." But his careful verisimilitude gives nevertheless the impression of reality, and we feel that most of the Comedie humaine has actually happened. This is imdoubtedly because Balzac conceives his novels with an intense and powerful vision. He leans towards materialism, which is his second Realistic quality — the «mphasis on force, food, money and concrete objects. He especially stressed various material occupations: physical living, which depends upon eating, which depends upon money, which depends upon work in trade or profession. The space given to money and business affairs is among Balzac's most notable features, and his knowledge of this field seems comprehensive. The insistence on material things is also ap- parent, not only in the long descriptions of furniture and the like, but in the fact that a mere object (a purse, a crucifix) is often made a pivot in the plot. Again, it seems materialistic that so many of his characters have analogies with the animal

HIS REALISM 691

world. The very idea of social species came to him, as he says, from a comparison " entee rhumanite et I'animalite," and throughout he sustains the comparison and insists upon the re- semblance between men and beasts. Allied to this trait is the attention paid to science, especially the modifications of charac- ter due to environment, topography, physiology or pathology. Certain pseudo-sciences, such as mesmerism,, also figure largely. Balzac's " encyclopedic zeal " finds expression in documen- tation and in breadth of treatment. Two kinds of docimients appear: technical disquisitions by the author, with display of erudition in many fields; or the use of sueh actual documents as a military proclamation or a business prospectus. Conscien- tious researches {enquetes) often seem inorganic as regards the story proper, but add to the fullness of background and the sense of reality. The breadth of treatment (Realistic uni- versality) seems to ignore nothing in contemporary life and is conspicuous in Balzac's elaborate introductions. Some tedious- ness results from such long-winded descriptions and expositions. One finds also a tendency towards mediocrity and triviality of representation, but in this respect Balzac sins less than his successors, and many even believe that he attains his greatest effects in the depiction of mediocre and ordinary lives. He is not so successful in etching true aristocrats and people of refined breeding. He was a Royalist and something of a tuft-hunter, yet his vision of manifold democracy is perhaps the best em- bodiment of the mingled art and truth of the Comedie humaine. All in all, he attains a solidity of effect, of workmanship, of cumulative power that is simply incomparable. But among his Realistic virtues we can include neither a thoroughly sym- pathetic heart (such as the Russians have) nor the impartial and impersonal attitude of Flaubert and the later school. Balzac is perpetually intruding himself into the story. The sociological aspect already developed, the amount of delineation by classes and types, is the crowning conception of this Realist.

Other features of his method will appear from a considera- tion of such fictional elements as exposition, plot and character- Method ization. A Balzacian exposition, like the head of a comet, bulks very large and frequently tries the patience of the reader. Often fifteen or twenty per cent of the

592 THE TRANSITION: BALZAC

whole novel will be devoted to preambles, topographical, socio- historical, biographical or generally descriptive. At times (Eugenie Grandet, P.ere Goriot) this expository manner is logi- cal, progressive and valuable for an understanding of the whole. At other times (throughout the Medecin de campagne and the Cure de village) there are too many imorganized disquisitions. In about one-third of his stories, Balzac uses the method of beginning with action, in medias res, and then returns to solid exposition. He uses the first-person form of narration almost as frequently, and both of these devices are evidently intended to vitalize the heavy material.

His plots are rather complex in the conspiracy-novel {roman- complot) as well as in the large frescoes, where it is a question of depicting various social groups. The study of many milieux, both for their historical value and as influencing character, is very important in his scheme. But when the exhibition of one salient character is the main thing, then the plot tends towards simplification and a progressive accumulation of in- cidents. The roman-complot itself usually revolves aroimd the doing to death of some particular martvr: examples are Cousin Pons, Pierrette and Colonel Chabert. f In the character-novel also, the protagonist is often done to death, but rather by his or her own fault; some mischievous mania obsesses and finally destroys the person. Examples are Cesar Birotteau, led astray by his ambitions; Balthazar Claes, whose passion for research ruins his family life and ultimately his. whole morale; Baron Hulot, disintegrated by libertinism; Goriot, with his excessive paternal devotion. Such plots frequently present grandiose char- acters, analogous to Shakespeare's passion-ridden heroes, and with Balzac too we may find the " ruling passion strong in death." So the miser Grandet clutches on his death-bed at the golden crucifix, and so Claes ends his illusory search with the cry of "Eureka!" Impressive as these monomaniacs are, solidly as they are built up, they seem less humanly real than the host of more average characters, belonging to every grade, profes- sion and moral stratum, which swarm through the Comedie humaine.l Balzac often constructs his character around a defi- nite keynote or central personal trait (cf. La Bruy^re). Thus Cesar Birotteau is described as a large sanguine son of a peasant,

STYLE AND INFLUENCE 593

and this r61e he maintains throughout. His costume, his physique, his deeds must correspond to this initial diaracterization. A similar use of harmony is found in most of Balzac's descriptions, whether of person or place, and together with this is found a process of accumulation of points along the definite line sug- gested by the keynote. The " maison Vauquer " breathes an " atmosphere of wretched poverty: each room, each article of furniture, the aspect of each boarder must contribute to the total effect. At the same time, each boarder has his or her distinctive individuality, to be reinforced through the de- tails of costume, personal habit, biography and manner of speech. For example, Poiret is a machine and everything about him is mechanical. Small wonder that Balzac needed miles of descriptive matter and that his details — character- istic, causal or cumulative — appear as numerous as stars in the sky!

Most cultivated critics have held that Balzac does not write well, that his style is too cmnbersome, materialistic, sometimes Style and absxird and pedantic. Lapses of various kinds can Influence certainly be found. But granted the nature of his material — and his own nature — it is difficult to see how another medium could be employed. He marches " with huge feet fairly plowing the sand of our desert " (Henry James) , and his style labors onward with him. In the best narrative portions it can be swift, impretentious, direct; when he tries fine writing, he usually and ridiculously fails; but at certain puissant moments, the " efflorescence " of his style rises to heights of delineation and passion. In appropriate figures of speech an(Lin characteristic dialogue, he is not found want- ing. Thua hjs_stYle_ is as variable as his subject-matter, but it too frequently lacks distinction — just as his depiction of fine women often lacks delicacy. In this, as in other re- spects, he inaugurates the rule of force and displaces that of beauty. I

The influence of Balzac has no limitations or end. He simply transformed fiction and made the modem novel the most com- prehensive literary vehicle. Important novelists in many coun- tries have recognized his leadership. Henry James, primarily a psychologist, calls him " the master of us all " ; George Moore,

594 THE TRANSITION: BALZAC

though a dilettante, has written a wonderful tribute to the reality of the Comedie humaine; as for his Realistic successors, their name is legion throughout Europe and America (see Chapters IV and V, below). This predominance, together with his expansive and titanic power, goes far towards ranking Balzac as the greatest novelist of all time.

CHAPTER II AUGIER, DUMAS FILS AND HENRY BECQUE

The year which saw the failure of Hugo's Bwgraves (1843) also saw an attempted revival of Classical tragedy in Ponsard'a Ponsardand Lucrece. In this and in more modern subjects, Scribe Ponsard represents, in opposition to Romanticism,

the so-called school of " bon sens." But his drama was color- less and short-lived. More important historically was the varied productivity of Eugene Scribe (1791-1861), who occu- pied the post of chief entertainer during the first half of the century. Scribe created the modern vaudeville, or light comedy of intrigue, and his mechanical dexterity furnished many of the elements of the " well-made play," whose formula still subsists. Neo-classical comedy, under the Empire, was but a bare skele- ton which Scribe imdertook to vitalize by a system which both suspends and complicates the interest; he introduced much in the way of devices, preparations and stage-business. But Scribe scarcely belongs to literature. He was a vulgar author, depict- ing superficially a vulgar bourgeoisie. His characters are sil- houettes, his style crass and incorrect, and his ideals center around money-marriages. His vogue marks the fact that pure tragedy is dead and that comedy, light or serious, will hence- forth occupy itself with clever plots and with contemporary life. Successors to Scribe, under the Second Empire, were Eugene Labiche (Le Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon, etc., etc.), whose gay talent and fertility found a suitable outlet in the vaudeville; and Meilhac and Halevy, who wrote sparkling librettos for Offenbach's operas.

Serious Realistic comedy was undertaken by Emile Augier

(1820-89), who owes something to Scribe and to Ponsard.

Anrier Augier led an even, prosperous life as a Parisian

bourgeois of the better sort, and his career was

marked by almost unbroken successes with critics and public

595

596 AUGIER, DUMAS FILS, HENRY BECQUE

alike. For a generation his name predominated in the repertoire of the Comedie-Frangaise. He wrote, partly in collaboration, twenty-seven plays, roughly divisible into three groups. The earliest group contains dramas written for the most part in mediocre verse and including fanciful or remote subjects: La Cigue (1844) imitates the antique in the manner of Ponsard; L'Aventuriere (Padua, sixteenth century) presents already one of Augier's main theses, that the adventiu^ess is the enemy of the family. More significant is Gabrielle (1849), which de- nounces the doctrine of Romantic escape in free love. By sen- sible arguments the heroine is won back to her husband, whom she thus apostrophises:

0 pere de famille, 6 poUe, je t'aime!

The dramatist seems to conceive of poetry as a domestic virtue. ' " In his second period, Augier establishes himself as a writer of excellent comedies de moeurs, a modern though inferior Moliere. The famous Gendre de M. Poirier (1854) recalls the Bourgeois Gentilhomme in the aspirations of its hero, in the blend of sense and humor, and especially in the deft balancing of characters, scenes and forces. The Manage d'Olympe, in- tended as an answer to the Dame aux Camelias, again denounces and punishes the courtesan who has invaded an honorable

* family. In fact, the family and marriage are now the chief concerns of Augier: a marriage must be properly established (Ceinture doree) , or it must be safeguarded (Poirier) , or it must

^be broken up, if unsuitable {Mariage d'Olympe) .

Augier's third period consists mainly of " social comedy," a broader development of the comedy of manners. Either the fam- ily is viewed as part of the organism of society or widespread social defects (money-rule, luxury, clericalism and corruption of the press) are portrayed on an ample scale. Luxury and venal love are strongly depicted in Les Lionnes pauvres; Maitre Guerin presents the unscrupulous man of affairs who always remains within the law; Les Effrontes and its sequel, Le Fils de Giboyer (1862), deal with political and clerical intrigue and give us a new type in Giboyer, the indurated journalist. Like Figaro, this personage has had a variegated career; he represents the proletariat and a sort of socialism. The dramatist appropriately

AUGIER'S QUALITIES 597

concluded his career with Mme Caverlet, a play concerning di- vorce, and with Les Fourchambault (1878), a large tableau of family complications.

In Augier's drama we have something like a less elaborate and more moral Comedie humaine. He stages a history of the His bourgeoisie vmder the Second Empire. His social

Qualities purview covers the new struggle of classes, the ques- tions of patriotism and clericalism, several varieties of the money question, and marriage with all its adjuncts (love, dowry, tri- angles, children, divorce) . His Realism appears in this compre- hensiveness, as also in a certain impartiality and impersonality of treatment; in contrast to Dumas fits, Augier rarely intervenes with sermons, and events of his own life are apparently not dramatized. His careful massing of background (Mariage d'Olympe, etc.,) is again Realistic, and so is the use of small in- cidents and objects. The characters, many of whom stand on their feet as solid and salient types, are gradually and distinctly built up. Thus Augier is a psychological Realist as well. People like Poirier, Olympe and Vernouillet are not easily forgotten. The ideas of Augier are anti-romantic and sensible from the stand- point of average living. He is never mystical or passioiiate, he does not understand or employ the grander sweeps of passion, emotion, religion or speculative thought. Unoriginal, sane and healthy, he is a good representative of the best bourgeois spirit as well as of an excellent dramatic tradition. His technique is occasionally conventional in the use of stage tricks, in concessions regarding the heart-interest and happy endings; but he is rich in situations and scenes, while his gestures and single speeches {mots de situation) are often telling. Augier and Dumas jils to5 gether establish the Realistic drama in their successful endeavor " de porter au theatre une peinture exacte de I'hmnanite, et deSj cas de conscience."

More impassioned and personal than Augier, more of a preacher

and a genius was Alexandre Dumas jils (1824^1895), who as a

natural son of his Romantic father would readily

"™** * turn to dramatic paths. After a rather unhappy boyhood in a boarding-school, he was taken under the wing of the elder Dumas and shown certain varieties of gay life. But having no pronounced taste for dissipation and being considerably

598 AUGIER, DUMAS FILS, HENRY BECQUE

in debt, the son turned to literature and first to novel writing (La Dame aux Camelias, etc.) . A dramatic version of this story- started his career as a playwright, which continued until 1887 and included sixteen plays. Dumas fils was made an Academi- cian and became quite a figure in society, in spite of frail health. Among his friends he was noted for his penetrating wit and his essentially upright character. He took up several social causes, defending the rights of natural children as well as more liberal divorce laws. The Naquet divorce bill (1884) was passed largely through Dumas' influence. In many of his earlier plays, his own experiences, contemporary events and personages appear,

^ though with adequate disguise. Two opposing tendencies dom- inate his later work — good Realistic technique versus a moral-

V izing and sermonizing habit which grew on him. Thus an intense and concrete vision of " I'homme social " wars with the ftwce a these (the problem-play with a dogmatic solution), which he virtually creates. His drama is abundantly moral but it seems risque and cynical in that he usually deals with the divagations of love in high life.

It is perhaps unfortunate that Dimias fXs -is still largely known to the Anglo-Saxon public as the author of " Camille " or La Dame aux Camelias (1852). This play is Romantic in theme — a courtesan " rehabilitated " or purified by a great love — and exhibits a youthful ardor not found else- where in Dumas' work. More characteristic of his true manner is the careful rendering of Marguerite Gautier's milieu. Similarly, in Le Demi-monde (1855) all that concerns the shady setting is masterfully handled, and in this respect Dumas is an initiator. The heroine, Suzanne d'Ange, is among the first of modern vampires, and Olivier de Jalin is the author's favorite type of raisonneur hero. The trick by which the latter deceives and frustrates Suzanne has been severely criticized. First-hand knowledge of Parisian life is also found in two subsequent plays, Le Pere prodigue and Le Fils naturel — the titles of which are evidently applicable to the two Dimias. In La Question d'argent (1857), Realistic drama takes a distinct step forward in the presentation of business affairs and of the unscrupulous million- aire, Jean Giraud. Money is as conspicuous as in Balzac, and yet the author is at pains to show that it cannot conquer esteem

DUMAS' TRAITS 599

or love. His disposition to moralize begins to be notable in this play and comes to a climax in Les Idees de Mme Aubray (1867) , in which theories of Christian charity are placed in opposition to maternal affection. Other plays of this last period are: L'Ami des femmes, a complicated diatribe against irresponsible women ; La Femme de Claude, in which another vampire meets death in the author's " revolver reaction against Romanticism;" L'Etran- gere, which is good melodrama; Demise and Francillon, which* again display Parisian women in no favorable light.

The fact is that neither Dumas' men nor his women are of heroic mold; the women are usually viewed either as seductive Characters perils or as empty-headed playthings; the men are Character- ^^ak, selfish and voluptuous. The only type ad- istics mired by the author is that of the raisonneur — the

cynical and clever man of the world, who understands, explains and manipulates the other characters, not usually for his own benefit (Rene de Charzay, Olivier de Jalin and the hero of L' Ami des femmes). But all of these types — pleasure-seekers, feeble parents, hard young men and girls — are set forth with precision and logic. These two qualities are marked in all of Dumas' processes: precision and logic produce the clear-cut effect of his style and appear in his salient epigrams; they also characterize his plot-construction, which is closely knit together and de- velops like a mathematical demonstration. The plots progress not by Augier's balance of forces, but by straight logic to an inevitable conclusion. The use of " seeds " or preparations and of dove-tailing, cumulative scenes is conspicuous. A certain balance, however, is found in the fact that the sub-plots often doubly illustrate the main theme: two groups of people, respec- tively more advanced and less advanced in years than the main protagonists, are involved with the same general problem (for example. La Question Sargent, Le Demi-monde) . These several features of Dumas' method are not all Realistic; in fact his logic sometimes operates to the detriment of his Realism, ^nd the same is true of his preachments. For instance, in too many plays a character steps out of the picture to moralize its message; in others, probabilities and persons are forced in order to convey the moral. Characters become more and more mouthpieces of the author and are even allegorical symbols: one man has been

600 AUGIER, DUMAS FILS, HENRY BECQUE

dubbed Conscience, one woman is Passion, Olivier de Jalin is Friendship and Mme Aubray the Gospel. Dumas' theory of the " theatre utile " damaged his dramatic illusion and his artistic verity.

P Yet, all in all, he is a convinced and capable Realist, and his dramatic skill and power are often beyond praise. Intensity and vibrant sincerity set him above Augier, whom he also sur- passes in imaginative force and feeling. But he is inferior to Augier in breadth of treatment and in poise. Dumas is Real- istic in his penetrating and unsparing delineations of Parisian society, the deft natural touches in dialogue and in stage-busi- ness, and the slow painstaking reproduction of all that concerns background and the gradual evolution of character. In spite of some fixed ideas and habits, he remains a creative, earnest dramatist of very nearly the first order, essentially French in his subjects and viewpoints, his coruscating wit, psychological

insight and knowledge of theatrical resource.

Dumas' most noteworthy successor, after Realism had passed into Naturalism, was Henry Becque (1837-1899). Becque Becque ^°^® further than Dumas in the direction of pessi-

mism, in a sort of brutal photography and in sharp concise technique. These are his main qualities, which may have resulted in part from the disappointments of his life: he failed on the Bourse and in journalism, and his plays were not really successful until his name became identified with the Theatre Antoine (see Bk. IX, Ch. II). Michel Pauper (1870) reveals the sources of Becque's pessimistic power. "The drama concerns an inventive workman. The effect of his lonely de- spair in conflict with capitalism is very strong. Certain minor plays preceded Les Corbeaux (1882) which is Becque's mas- terpiece and probably the best play produced by the Nat- uralistic movement. The Vigneron family is suddenly left without a head and father; the four helpless women are about to be victimized by the birds of prey (lawyer, notary, creditors) who descend upon the house. The chief " corbeau " agrees to defend the women from the other rascals, if the second daughter will marry him; he tells her, " Vous etes entour^e de fripons, mon enfant." The drama gives a great impression of reality, done with contained irony. Becque expresses himself without

BECQUE'S NATURALISM 601

exaggeration or sympathy; his tone is that of cold disgust. He stands for the " slice of life " theory, according to which the absolute verity of the single scene, with carefully chosen, biting dialogue, is of more importance than the total composition. Finally, in La Parisienne (1885), we have a portrait of the light-hearted woman who vibrates from one lover to another, because her first choice behaves too much like a husband. La Parisienne, even more than Les Corbeaux, represents the perfect " slice of life " with its return at the end to the original situation. Apart from photography and pessimism, Becque's Naturalism is also seen in the exactness of his ironic " studies," especially in matters of business. Affairs are affairs for him — and he^ learned them on the Bourse. The influence of money is con- stantly shown, often in petty ways. His intense though partial vision of reality is heightened by his dramatic short cuts and concentration. He and his school strive for an " integral Realism," the core of a situation or of a character, presented in a condensed dialogue that is bare of ornament. Becque is an artist in ugliness. He has a tragic power that is found neither in Augier nor in Dumas. In technique, he is more Naturalistic than these two men, for he revolts against the devices which they had inherited from Scribe. Henry Becque has been a strong influence upon the younger generation of dramatists (seeBk. IX, Ch. II).

CHAPTER III

THE REACTION IN POETRY: BAUDELAIRE AND THE PARNASSIANS

The year 1857 was a notable date in French letters. It was

marked by the appearance of Dumas' Question d'argent, of

„ , , . Flaubert's Madame Bovary and of Baudelaire's BaudelAire

Flews du mal. Partly a successor to the Romantic

poets, partly in revolt against their doctrines, Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) crowded into his short life the elements of dissipation and of spiritual travail which find intense expression in his single volume of verse. A rebel against domestic restraint, against scholastic discipline, against any respectable career or behavior, he found himself at twenty a dandy of the Latin Quarter, in possession of a small fortune. This he quickly spent. Involved in debts and in an imfortimate liaison, he tried art-criticism and joiu'nalism, writing up two of the yearly " Salons," and pro- ducing at intervals (1856-65) his remarkable translation of Edgar Allan Poe, whose tales he made known to Europe. The publica- tion of the Fleurs du mal engaged Baudelaire in a lawsuit which caused a certain scandal. But the poet was honored by his brother artists (Gautier and Banville), and his position seemed secure. Unfortunately, his health was already undermined. He shortly made the mistake of trying to live in BelgSum, a coimtry which he found imsympathetic ; there he was stricken with paralysis, and he returned to die in Paris.

Baudelaire's strange physiognomy, like that of a shady priest or a seedy actor, was borne out by a wilful singularity in charac- ter and behavior. Desiring to astonish, over-fond of mystifica- tions, he was deliberately irregular in costume, language and opinions. Behind his cold and disturbing mask, he indulged tastes for debauchery, wine and hashish ; and he sometimes exag- gerated his perversity to the point of Satanism. Yet he had strong spiritual reactions and was influenced by an ideal love.

602

LES FLEURS DU MAL 603

These opposing forces vie with one another throughout the Flews du mal and are crystallized in the great line:

Dans la brute assoupie un ange se reveille.

A number of these poems had appeared first in the reviews. The title chosen for the volume was meant to " epater le bour- "les Fleurs geois " and is not very suitable; Spleen et Ideal (a du Mal" sub-title) is more exact. The book has no central plan, except as it depicts the successive soul-states of the author. The essential duality of his nature produces, on the one hand, many evidences of Catholic mysticism: repentance, desire for atonement, appeals to the Lord, a churchly vocabulary and rem- iniscences, a liking for ritual and hymns ; on the other hand, the poetry of revolt finds expression in tributes to Satan or to Cain and in complacent descriptions of debauchery and horrors. Ado- ration for Madonnas and a pure earthly love are at variance with Realistic impressions of " une horrible Juive," of corpses, of creepy sunsets and of Les petites Vieilles. Ennui and spleen, mulattos and cats, " artificial paradises " and other artificiali- ties, white nights, sumptuous imaginings, and fervent solenm religious prostrations, make a curious jangle in Baudelaire's " cracked soul " (La Cloche jelee) . But whatever the material, the projection of the poet's inner life is always powerful and in- tense. His form is masterly and original, while the " new shudder " upon which Hugo congratulated him applies as much to the poetic transcription as to the sinister subjects treated.

The poems are mostly short, comprised within a page or two, and the irregular sonnet form (see L'Ennemi) is a favorite. Formal This brevity was partly inspired by Poe, who

Merits ^jgg geems responsible for some use of the repe-

tend and the refrain. Baudelaire reacts against the Romantic theories of facile inspiration and effusiveness, and he takes few of the Romantic liberties; he is sparing in his use of enjambement, of rich or rare rimes. He employs mainly the Classic mold, into which he pours his unusual sub- stance. His Alexandrines are more full and sonorous than tho^ of any Romantic poet. He is the master of a certain organ-roll, aided by polysyllables, enumerations and a plenitude oieffect which has been aptly likened to a Beethoven symphony:

604 THE REACTION IN POETRY

Je sais que vous gardez une place au poete Dans les rangs bienheureux des saintes Legions, Et que vous I'invitez a Teternelle fete Dee Trones, des Vertus, des Dominations.

His images are original and readily visualized; we see the woman who sails along like a " beau navire " or the wounded man who lies under a pile of corpses,

Et qui meurt, sans bouger, dans d'immenses efforts.

Baudelaire also makes an excellent use of antithesis, and his epithets are striking, suggestive and sometimes paradoxical (" aimable pestilence ") . He chooses his words with unerring care and artistic restraint. Perhaps his most important quality is a power of concentration and condensation, visible in the total plan of the poem as well as in single verses. Therefore certain of his lines are memorable and of a lapidary perfection —

La musique souvent me prend comme une mer.

L'empire familiar des tenebres futures.

Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se repondent.

The last quotation illustrates Baudelaire's conception of sense- transference or of certain correspondences betw«en the arts, a theory which he did not push to the extreme of the later Symbol- ists (see Bk. IX, Ch. Ill) . His own senses were very keen. His thorough acquaintance with painting and with music, his love for Delacroix and his early appreciation of Tannhduser, will account for such perfect tableaux as Don Juan avx enfers and for the orchestral effect already mentioned. Such a couplet as

Je hais le mouvement qui deplace les lignes Et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris,

indicates an impassivity rebutted by such a prayer as

Ah! Seigneur, donnez-moi la force et le courage De contempler mon cceur et mon corps sans degoflt.

Baudelaire never had this " force and courage." Consequently his poetic expression is limited to a few ideas and to a tnngle deep furrow plowed in the lyric field. But his form and his virtues are Classical, and Baudelaire is already a classic. He

4

THE PARNASSIANS 605

was a sufficiently great artist to universalize his personal ex- perience, to subject his reality to a lifting and transmutmg power, and thereby to say certain sorrowful things once for all.

Baudelaire represented the decay of Romanticism in his morbidity and taste for ejctremes; he was like his "maitre im- BanviUe peccable," Gautier, in linking the two major obses- sions of death and voluptuousness. Romantic de- votion to technique reaches its climax in Theodore de Banville (1823-91), a clever and sometimes a charming manipulator of rimes and rhythms. His numerous volumes, from Les Caria- tides through the Trente-six ballades joyeuses, show facility, verve and a sense of beauty which, however, he is inclined to make an " article de Paris." He is mainly occupied with cele- brating lovely ladies in sparkling odes, triolets and other set forms. Banville has dexterity without depth.

The pressure of the new Realistic forces, particularly as re- gards science and the objective attitude towards history and "Le Pamasse" nature, impinges on poetry in the work of the Par- nassians. The activity of these poets was brought to a focus in the collection called Le Pamasse contemporain^ (1866, 1869 f.) which gave its name to the school. The group started with diverse talents and aims, but with a common desire for faultless artistic workmanship. Some of the early founders (Catulle Mendes, Glatigny, etc.,) never made a profound mark; others began as Parnassians and ended as something else. This was the case with Sully Prudhomine, Frangois Coppee and Verlaine (see Bk. IX, Ch. III). The term " Parnassiens " came to connote an Oljmapian calm, which these young writers affected; they were averse to Romantic storm, stress and sub- jectivism; for similar reasons they were also known as " les Impassibles." For a time they all submitted to the influence of a strong chieftain who gave direction and body to the move- ment.

This leader was Leconte de Lisle (1818-94) , who ranks as the foremost poet of his epoch both in thought and in expression. Leconte de He was of exotic birth, coming from the Ile-de- Lisle Bourbon, near Madagascar. Tropical scenery and

emotions appear in the few poems that conamemorate his youth,

* The name evidently proceeds from Mount Farnaasus, the home of the Muses.

.'.

606 THE REACTION IN POETRY

during which period he took a long voyage in the East. He was brought up severely, presently sent to France, and compelled to study law at Rennes. Finally he settled in Paris, where he supported himself by teaching and by translations. He was poor and proud, leading a life in which the chief events were extensive studies, volumes of poetry and intercourse with a few friends. After the publication of the first Parnasse con- temporain, Leconte de Lisle became the head of the group, but before that he had published several of his most distinctive volumes: Poemes antiques (1852), Poemes barbares (1862). He also made excellent translations from Homer, Theocritus and the Greek dramatists, an activity which helped his art rather than his financial status. OfiBcial recognition came with his appointment as assistant librarian at the Luxembourg and with his election to the Academy in 1886. He was never widely popular. His last collections were the Poemes tragiques (1884) and the Dernier s poemes (1895).

All of these volumes are written in much the same manner and are to be distinguished chiefly by the range of periods which they illustrate. Victor Hugo also was reflecting the trend of the times by subduing emotion and seeking historical sub- jects. Leconte de Lisle's conception is similar to that of the Legende des siecles (which his first volume antedates), in that he records the creeds and destinies of various races and eras, taken in their most expressive types or at their culminating point. But he emphasizes more the element of religious thought, and he often uses the Greek material and manner, which Hugo rarely employs. In his version of the epic of humanity, the Par- nassian poet shows a historical rather than an imaginative approach, and he manifests a scientific approach in the wideness and exactness of his knowledge. In fact, he is opposed to the general looseness of the Romanticists, to their exploitation of self, to their sentiment and rose-color, as well as to their interpre- tation of nature and their ignorance of the sciences. His quali- ties are the direct contrary of these; and among them we may consider first his objectivity.

His Leconte de Lisle puts the least possible of himself

Qualities ij^^Q jjjg ^^j.^^ jjg strives to minimize the expression of personal sentiment, which he regards as a changeable and

LECONTE DE LISLE 607

exaggerated thing. He is after more endiiring material. His sonnet, Les Montrewrs, is a bitter diatribe against those who complacently display their hearts to others. He tells the public:

Je ne te vendrai pas mon ivresse ou mon mal,

Je ne livrerai pas ma vie a tes huees,

Je ne danserai pas sur ton treteau banal

Avec tes histrions et tes prostituees.

Yet one may say that there is a note of passion in this very vehemence. But it is true that there are only a few allusions to the poet's own sentiments and then mainly in connection with childhood scenes. This objectivity does not make him impas- sive about everything. He feels social wrongs as well as the general pains and afflictions of men {Qdin) ; and especially he feels and answers the call of imperious beauty, whether in humanity or nature:

Et les mondes encor roulent sous ses pieds blancs.

(Hypatie)

His attitude towards science, in the large sense, is also char- acteristic and anti-romantic. He dislikes the Romanticists on account of their ignorance. He held that profound knowledge of the past is necessary in order to write about it, and he says that " art and science, too long separated, should now become closely united." But Leconte de Lisle cannot stand modem inventions — the telegraph, the railroads and industrialism. These blight the vision,

Et nous avons perdu le chemin de Paros.

He seeks only the spirit of the cosmos, as studied and revealed in the larger, more imaginative sciences: ethnography, ancient and oriental history, archeology and geography ; and the natural sciences too, which he follows in his depiction of animals. In the use of his sources, especially of Greek, Indian and Scandi- navian monuments, he shows, together with some poetic license, an admirable imderstanding and treatment of historical truth. He arranges this to emphasize types, racial traits, general or controlling ideas. Bvit in his revamping of old legends he does

608 THE REACTION IN POETRY

not often indulge in the fanciful reconstruction of the Roman- ticists. Leconte de Lisle also follows the great natural laws of science, ' which agree with his demand for exactness, order and objectivity. Yet his scientific thought is illmninated by the proper imagery, the harmony of the verse and the poet's sense of beauty.

Connected with this tendency would be his attitude towards Nature, which is also scientific, following Humboldt and Darwin. He does not view man at all as the center of the imiverse, and Nature is not really in sympathy with humanity. Thus the poet discards anthropomorphism and the pathetic fallacy. But he admires great nattiral manifestations, such as storms, jimgles and large animals. His animals, indeed, are represented on their own basis, often independently of man, a significant departure from the tradition of the fable. These wolves and elephants and condors are carved in bold relief, like the sculpture of Barye. In lonely grandeur they roam the desert or the jungle. Whether he is dealing with animals or with natural scenery, this poet has great descriptive power. His de- piction is full, vivid and accurate. Leconte de Lisle views nature as unified in essence and origin, under a diversity of forms. But sometimes the flux of forms impresses him most and gives rise to his pessimism:

La Vie antique est faite inepuisablement Du tourbillon sans fin des apparences vaines.

(La Maya)

This metaphysical pessimism is largely Indian in its expres- sion. In presenting religion as the culminating experience of each race and in giving us symbols of many religions, the poet realizes that there has been no single stable belief and he asks to be whirled away towards new gods. After making his appeal to Maya, the " mirage immortel " of Illusion, he feels so strongly the constant flux of all beliefs that finally he seeks a negative Nirvana. With this Oriental pessimism is mixed something of the Schopenhauer brand, concerning the misery of being bom; and Leconte de Lisle is also utterly out of sympathy with democracy and modern life. His thought, then, is often sad and austere.

HEREDIA 609

Equally austere, but of an austere perfection, is his style, and so his final characteristic is formal beauty. For this he goes His Form ^^^^ ^ *^® Greeks, but his ideal goddess is a severe Athene rather than a smiling Aphrodite. He is the last link in the Gallo-Greek chain: Ronsard, Racine, Chenier, Leconte de Lisle. His religion of art has produced some of the loftiest of modern poems, of which Midi may be especially cited; sculptured verses in the manner of Gautier, though with more gravity and consistency; marble as opposed to intaglio work. Leconte de Lisle's structure is clear and logical. He chooses his words and balances his rhythms to make the picture and the idea salient. The words are notable for their precision, yet they often have also an appropriate metallic sonority and even at times a romantic suggestiveness. This style combines majesty and sadness; it is a march of the dying gods. The poet is not inventive as regards meter, approving the restraint of the crys- tallized forms. His verse has a durable solidity and splendor, together with a certain coldness. All in all, with his devotion to ideals of beauty, by the new values that he gave to descriptive poetry, and through his piercing natural philosophy, this poet ranks as the leader of his generation. ^

Leconte de Lisle's most distinguished pupil was Jose-Maria de Heredia (1842-1905). He too was half a foreigner, born in Her d'a Cuba of an aristocratic family. His people were de-

scended, on one side, from the original Spanish con- querors, whom Heredia has often celebrated in his verse. He pur- sued advanced historical studies in Havana and at the Ecole de Chartes, but soon left pure scholarship and became a member of the Parnassian group. He had the manner and breeding of a conqueror, and a brother-poet said that " his neckties were as splendid as his sonnets."

Heredia's single volume, Les Trophees (1893), contains about one hundred pieces, many of which had already appeared else- where. The great majority of these poems are sonnets. The title was chosen to indicate the " trophies " or the " spoils " of

' As a contemporary phenomenon, we may note the Provencal poetry of Frfidferio Mistral (1831-1914) and that of his brother-Faibriges — a society for the en- couragement of the Provencal muse. The masterpiece of this school is Mistral's MireSle (1859), a glowing tale of the South, with an epic flow and a Doric back- ground.

610 THE REACTION IN POETRY

humanity throughout the ages. Here we have again the con- ception of Hugo or of Leconte de Lisle; Heredia shows the

"Les learning of the latter rather than the riotous imagi-

Trophees" nation of the former. The presentation, of course, is much condensed; the sonnet form calls for the essential characteristics of each type considered. The races and epochs included in Heredia's survey are Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, his favorite period of " Les Conquerants," and Old Japan; there is also a final, more personal section on Nature and Dreams. The poet's sympathies are selected rather than widespread. He gives us " historical impressions," with a good deal of externality. He is metallic, sumptuous and strenuous, and is to be viewed almost entirely from the standpoint of form.

The Trophees were dedicated to Leconte de Lisle, whom Here- dia follows precisely for the cult of form and impersonality. He aims at a high, lasting perfection, and he attains effects of mingled exactness and splendor, pressing the full value from each word or image. His muse is subtle and complicated, with unex- pected revelations. Hence he enjoys the diflBculty of the sonnet, which with him is a condensed but a developed organism, varied in its functioning, much enlarged in its scope. Each of his sonnets, it has been said, is " as large as an epic." Heredia generally employs the regular French form, both in octave and Artistic sestet, but he introduces a striking feature in his

Effects ig^g^ Ijjjg^ which frequently opens up fresh horizons.

Observe the final touch in Les Conquerants or in Antoine et Cleopdtre. New stars dawn in the visions of poet or conqueror, Antony sees the flight of galleys in Cleopatra's eyes, the Greek runner seems to fly from his pedestal into the arena, and Pegasus

Bat le ciel ebloui de ses ailes de flanune.

Heredia has many resources, both of eloquence and of erudition. He sees things across their historical, mythological or heraldic trappings, and he is especially strong and suggestive in his dic- tion. The conqueror's dream is called a " reve heroique et brutal" — heroic, because of the knightly adventure involved; brutal, because gold was the object of his search. Moreover, the poet perfectly fuses idea and form: he forwards the unity of the total effect not only through epithet, but through image and

HEREDIA 611

aientiment, through sound and syllables. Like Gautier's, his imagination was essentially plastic, he often uses the terms of the painter, the sculptor or the goldsmith. He celebrates these arts, and his own work could be reproduced by them. Thus among his chief formal characteristics are the sonorous and the pictorial values.

As regards sonority, one critic introduces an article on Heredia by exclaiming, " Fanfares, cymbals, trumpets and Roman horns!" Heredia, whom Gautier congratulated on the sonority of his very name, brings over something of the verbal sumptuousness of his native Spanish tongue. He is a master of rhythm, cadence, consonance. Witness the hard distinctness of Les Con- qidrants, which is full of tone-color and metallic luster, set off against tiie softer connotations of Le vieiX Orfevre. There is also the pictorial quality, especially vivid in Le Recif de corail or La Dogaresse, which revives a painting by Veronese. In both poems, we have an exceedingly brilliant coloring, arranged in a progression of values or planes. Many sonnets are pictorially de- scriptive of nature: for instance, those on Japan, the New World or Brittany; and Heredia might seem intoxicated with sounds and colors, were it not that he always gives us the feeling of choioe and mastery.

One may ask then, Does this poet deal mainly in sounding brass and tinkling cymbals? By no means. The idea or sen- timent is there, though preferably veiled or viewed through external adornment. But it is true that Heredia has not very many ideas. They are few but sttong, and individualized by the language in which they are expressed. Heredia speaks largely from the standpoint of a Renaissance humanist who believes in beauty plus force, in the splendor of high moments, in a " spectacular universe," and in man as a fine active animal. This standpoint may be illustrated by the superb cycle on Antovm et Gleopatre. " Impassive " and serene, Heredia is not troubled by the Romantic malady nor tortured by- metaphysics. Yet he can express discreetly, as in his Roman Epitaphs, the epicurean melancholy of passing splendors, the " lachrymae rerum " and the sense of ruin. This tenderer note might have been more frequently sounded, for Heredia omits many of our more familiar feelings and yearnings.

CHAPTER IV

REALISTIC FICTION: FLAUBERT AND MAUPASSANT

In 1848 there had occurred an event whose consequences deeply influenced fiction and the drama. The " Revolution of February " resulted in the establishment of the History ghort-lived Second Republic and finally in the Sec-

ond Empire (1852-70), with Napoleon III, nephew of the great Napoleon, as Emperor. Those who looked forward to a restora- tion of the imperial glories of France could for a time believe their hopes fulfilled. The new government, though highly cen- tralized, showed constructive tendencies in education, industry and the arts. Paris was splendidly rebuilt as a modem capital, railroads and public works were developed throughout the coun- try, and towards the end of his reign Napoleon showed a willing- ness to meet certain liberal and democratic desires. Prestige abroad and the glory of French arms were enhanced by the victo- ries in the Crimea (1854-56) and the rescue of Italy from Austria (1859). Yet the swift "debacle" of the Franco-Prussian war indicated something very wrong in the State. Within a few months, France had lost her European prestige, her armies and. Alsace-Lorraine. The disaster of Sedan (Sept. 2, 1870) in which Napoleon surrendered with eighty thousand men, was followed by the fall of Strassburg and Metz. During the siege of Paris, which lasted four months, a Provisional Government was in con- trol. In February, 1871, after Paris had capitulated, the -National Assembly appointed Thiers, the historian, as Presi- dent of the French Republic. Thiers concluded peace with Germany.

Several causes for decay, during the Second Empire, were prominent in the minds of contemporary writers. The chief cause was the presence of too much luxury, tending to material- ism in living and to personal and political corruption (treated

612

REALISM 613

by Augier, the Goncourts and especially by Zola). Another, cause was that the idealism which Lamartine and G. Sand had brought to the movement of 1848 was replaced by the cynicism and doubt which naturally accompany a political reversion (cf. Flaubert's UEducation sentimentale) . Connected with this was a deterioration in moral tone and in artistic taste, found both in biireaucratic ofi&cials and in the " little bourgeoisie," ever bent on declaring itself. The reaction of 1848 found the reading public in a transition phase, weary of Romanticism, assenting to the abolishment of the roman-feuilleton, and prepared by Balzac as well as by social conditions for the definite advent of Realism. The tendency towards objective description which declared itself (see preceding chapters) in drama, poetry and painting (for example in Courbet) would naturally find its greatest scope in fiction.

By 1855, we find the term le realisme taking hold, and critics generally begin to employ it in a depreciatory sense. The word _ ^. connoted for them the immoral, the brutal or the

trivial, and few there were who perceived the signifi- cance of the literary method. Almost alone Sainte-Beuve saw its possibilities and favored, though with due reserves, its ex- pansion. But as the movement gained force, through the efforts of Flaubert and his colleagues, conservative critics slowly yield the stronghold of " taste " and admit elements of power and truth in Realism. For a time, however, its productions were not glori- ous and were easily demolished. A certain Champfleury, an ardent admirer of Balzac, wrote some insipid stories, Chien- Caillou and Les Bourgeois de Molinchart (1855), which contain petty observations and small-town talk. More talent appears in the work of Ernest Feydeau, who caused good critics to esteem him the rival of Flaubert. Feydeau's brilliant and sen- suous Fanny (1857) presents the psychological case of a lover who is jealous of a husband; the novel evinces strength in the delineation of passion and of material background. But Fey- deau's other work is inferior, his name has not endured, and it is time to come to the true banner-leader of the movement.

Gustave Flaubert offers in his method the concentrated es- sence of Realism, and in his life (1821-80) a concentrated

614 REALISTIC FICTION

devotion to literature. He called himself a " Benedictine of let- ters," and in his elimination and scorn of everything else, he ap- pears not only as a zealot of art for art's sake, but also as a victim of that separation of author and public which is one of the more lasting and less fortunate legacies of Romanticism. He was born at Rouen, where he spent his child- hood and adolescence. His father was a surgeon of repute, and a medical environment left its effect on Flaubert's work. His mother was of Norman blood, which was apparent also in her son's physique ; Gustave had a " viking " exterior, a large frame and a certain exuberance, especially in his attractive youth. Among his friends were Louis Bouilhet, the poet; Alfred Le Poittevin, the uncle of Guy de Maupassant; and Maxime Du Camp, who was scarcely of a caliber to imderstand the novelist. Flaubert was sent to Paris to study law and already showed his indifference to everything but literature. In his twenties he wrote various Romantic effusions {(Euvres de jeunesse) , had two love-affairs not fortunate in their issue, and became subject to the intermittent attacks (neurasthenic or epileptic) which later accentuated his melancholy and pessimism. At twenty- five he gave up all thought of a large full life and settled near Rouen, on the family estate of Croisset, to become a laborious galley-slave of letters. This existence was interrupted only by a long journey to the Orient, undertaken with Maxime Du Camp (1849) ; and by later flights to Paris, where he associated with the Naturalistic group (see next chapter). The gradual loss of his family and friends, increasing ill-health and the effect of the Franco-Prussian war, further darkened his middle years; his declining days were somewhat brightened by the discipleship of Maupassant and by the generous interest of George Sand, with whom he maintained a most revealing correspondence. Otherwise, Flaubert developed a proud, solitary and suspicious nature, exasperated by ordinary contacts and obsessed by that hatred of everything " bom-geois," which finally ruled him as a mania. This was in part an acquired misanthropy, for he started with a fund of geniality and kindness, which indeed he always manifested towards his friends and relatives. He had really a simple soul, thwarted and twisted by excessive theories; his mind contained only a few ideas, but these dominated him

FLAUBERT 615

absolutely. Chief among them were the devotion to beauty in style and the cult of objective and often ugly truth. So the clash of Romanticist and Realist, with their partial fusion in his work, will explain much of Flaubert.

By temperament and taste he was undoubtedly a Romantic, of a violent and exuberant sort: a worshiper of exotic splendor, of the sumptuous past and of lovely phrases and coloring. Hence the voyage to Egypt and the East, with its profoimd effect upon his imagination; hence his early fondness for Chateaubriand and his sympathies with Gautier; hence his more morbid taste for " le mysterieux, le lugubre, le macabre " ; and hence his dislike of mediocrity and his predilec- tion for the ivory tower. But as a late-comer, Flaubert had the ■ sensation of a creed outworn, and he evolved the conscience of a Realist. He incessantly preaches and exemplifies two princi-

a „ iu :i pies: accurate observation or documentation, im- and Method •%.

personality in style and treatment. The love of ^,

truth actuated his search for the real thing, but the love of / beauty still demanded the perfect phrase. So his famous theory of le mot juste, the indefatigable hunt for the most exact and expressive word, was paralleled by a more naive conviction that there was a " pre-established harmony " between beauty and truth in style, that the truest phrase would also be most pleasing to the ear. As regards his methods, Flaubert was a fairly con- sistent Realist, offering an " arsenal " of technical devices for his followers; but in his subjects, though preferring the Ro- mantic, he alternates regularly between the two extremes. Thus, before undertaking Madame Bovary, he wrote his first extrava- gant and dithyrambic version of the Tentation de Saint-Antoine (1847). He read this manuscript to his friends, who advised him to destroy it and take a more " earthly " subject. For seven years then, he toiled patiently on the Realism of Madame Bo- vary, whose appearance, just when conditions were most favor- able (1857) , soon established Flaubert as the most accomplished and audacious artist of the movement. The publication of the novel also led to a lawsuit in which the author was acquitted of any attempt to scandalize. Severity and truth, indeed, mark the handling of the rather diflScult subject — to wit, the dangers of Romanticism for a provincial bottrgeoise. The stages of Emma

616 REALISTIC FICTION

Bovary's decline are clearly marked: her early Romantic read- ings and dreams; her torpid marriage; the longings aroused by a ball and her sharp judgment of her husband; her Platonic love for Leon, the young clerk; the more criminal affair with Rodolphe, her full flowering, his abandonment, and her long ill- ness; the second affair with Leon, her wasteful expenditures and neglect of home duties; the harrying by creditors and the de- termination to end it all by suicide. Emma is a living charac- ter, completely depicted in enduring colors; and the other per- sonages also live, within their narrow range; the " soft" stupid husband and the talkative apothecary, Homais, represent two ironic aspects of the bourgeois. There is scarcely a sympathetic character in the book; these people are prevailingly foolish or feebfe. Although Emma Bovary must incorporate many of his own dreams, the author does not abandon his attitude of severely impersonal detachment. He never shows feeling and scarcely allows himself to have an opinion. This • impassive I projection of the story and nothing but the story gives to Ma- \dame Bovary a great Realistic strength — an objectivity and a" concentration that Balzac did not usually evince. Other Realistic features are the careful study of the country-town environment; the justesse of observation, delineation and diction; the prominence of money diflBculties, of physiology and disease; the use of characteristic detail, like the nondescript cap of Charles Bovary; the presentation of the mediocre in character and circumstance. But all of this is lifted and made artistic by Flaubert's perfect' sense of style, which will be considered later. Madame Bovary is not only a technical marvel, it is also thronged with provincial life and truth. It has been called the French Middlemarch, and it remains the greatest novel of the century.

Even during the composition of this masterpiece, Flaubert was haunted by his deeper desire for remote and Romantic " Salammb" " ™9'g°ificence. He turned Eastwards, to realize his dream, and after six years of assiduous labor and documentation, including a visit to the site of Carthage, he pub- lished his gorgeous Salammbo (1862). Throughout the packed chapters of this semi-epic, description and archeology run riot, in a festival of color. The historical setting, which lacks in-

FLAUBERT 617

ter^st, is that of the war of the mercenaries against Carthage in the third century before Christ. The story is nominally that of the princess and priestess, Salammbo, the men who loved her, and her mystical consecration to the goddess Tanit. But the thread of action is submerged in archeological details and confusing envmierations ; as Flaubert, admitted, "the pedestal is too large for the statue ", and the characters seem effaced and dull. What remains is the evocation of a ruthless period, elaborately revived and described with an amount of painstaking care that shows Flaubert's Realistic conscience still dominant. The author remains hard and cold, but the reader ends by believing that this Carthage thus lived in its cruelty, horror and pomp, with all the complications of its material life — costumes and ceremonies, sieges and superstitions — made plausible and distinct. The glowing reality of the im- pression is enhanced by the bare tension of a style whose crisp energy wholly accords with the subject. Salammbo is a choice tapestry where a thousand details crush and crowd together; it is a mosaic floor paved with pebbles and precious stones; it is at once a tour de force and a unique and barbarous monument. But it is a monument of erudition rather than of humanity.

Yet once more Flaubert turned to a modern Realistic subject. Seven years were needed for the composition of L'Education sentimentale (1869). This novel is laid around the Revolution of 1848 — again requiring inordi- nate documentation — and it deals with the loves of a certain Frederic Moreau. He is supposed to be the masculine counter- part of Emma Bovary. Flaubert acknowledges that the hero is a poor creature and that the structure of the novel is lax and amorphous ; but these features are deliberate and anticipate the Naturalistic doctrines of no hero and no plot. Whatever their warrant in the stupider side of life, such characteristics do not make for interest or art. But the ironic and careful presenta- tion of the epoch considered lends weight to L'Education senti- mentale. The author's pendulum swings back to Romanticism in the Qnal' Tentation de Saint-Antaine (1874), in which the vision of the saint's more metaphysical temptations gives rise to some superb writing. The alternating currents are found side by side in the volume of Trois contes (1877), of which the best

618 REALISTIC FICTION

and most Realistic story — Un Cceur simple — shows more human sympathy than Flaubert usually allowed himself. His hatred of the bourgeois reaches to the point of monomania in the unfinished Bouvard et Pecwhet. This work treats the efforts of two retired merchants to find interest in a series of avocations for which they are not suited. Their ventures are described in an extremely technical manner, and again there is no plot.

Except in Madame Bovary, Flaubert's composition is not uni- formly successful. Elsewhere long passages could be deleted without hurting the composition and to the benefit of the interest. But at his best he illustrates two structural principles which became a part of the heritage of fiction. He condenses and concentrates his data towards a unity of tone and a totality of effect. And he scatters and interweaves the various elements in his narrative (analysis, de- scription, dialogue, story) so as to make them march all to- gether, driving foiu--in-hand where Balzac had driven tandem. Flaubert called these long complex passages his " tableaux "; striking examples are the scene of the agricultural fair in Bovary and the first chapter of Salammbo. The presentation from one . g. . standpoint, that of the heroine, again helps sustain the unity of the former novel. In both works, Flau- bert's style is masterly. Accurate observation leads to appro- priate expression. The concrete phrasing tends to a certain " materialization " of sentiment or idea (red cheeks as a sign of love) ; the figures are suitable to the setting (" ses reves tombant dans la boue comme des hirondelles blessees"). But beyond such Realistic devices, this style has usually a full richness and beauty that sweep us at once into the presence of a classic. Superb passages, like the sunrise in Salammbo or the end of the Tentation de Saint- Antoine, reveal Flaubert as the legitimate successor of Chateaubriand in rhetorical perfection. It may be that he lacked the large creative flow, succeeding rather by dint of will and patience. But we cannot forget that Flaubert furnished the best model of Realism to his generation and became the " novelists' novelist." We cannot forget the pre- eminence of Madame Bovary nor the heavy purple splendor of Salammhd.

MAUPASSANT 619

Like Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant (1850-93) was a Norman Realist. He spent his childhood at Etretat, his youth at Rouen, Maupassant ^^^^^ ^^ preferred fishing and boating to study. He served in the war of 1870, then took a small post at Paris, in the ministry of marine. In 1873, he came imder Flaubert's influence and showed himself a docile pupil in this relationship, which lasted seven years. During that period Maupassant was gay, strong, fond of practical jokes (farces); he lived an easy-going life; in vacations he returned to his beloved boating. Two things indicate his later develop- ment: he prefers savage nature to the crowded waterside resorts; and he publishes a volume of poems (Des vers) in which several pieces are strongly Naturalistic. The same tend- ency appears in Boule de suif, which began his career as a story- teller. This tale was published in the collection known as Les soirees de Medan (1880), to which Zola, Huysmans and others contributed (see next chapter). After the success of Boule de suif, Maupassant decided to devote himself wholly to author- ship. A series of stories, novels and journalistic contributions gave him fame and financial ease. Practically all of his work was done during the next decade, which period witnessed a change in the temperament of the writer. Ambition and hard work made him preoccupied, dissipation made him morose; formerly a robust sportsman, he became a " taureau triste " ; morbid analysis drove him into pessimism; he dipped into high life with doubtful results; he traveled in Corsica, Algeria and Italy; increasing ill-health sent him to the Riviera, and there, in 1892, he was stricken with madness. He died, probably by his own hand, eighteen months later.

Maupassant's theory of literature owed much to Flaubert, especially as regards the necessity of accurate individualizing observation and the search for the 7not juste. Flaubert taught him a long patience and how to choose the characteristic aspect of every object — to consider a tree or stone until it became un- like every other tree or stone. With this impersonal observation a certain individualism was bound up, for Flaubert told his pupil that he must possess originality, native or acquired. So we find Maupassant declaring for the " whole truth," but the truth as Been across an individual temperament, which introduces some

620 REALISTIC FICTION

logic and illusion into the chaos of appearances. Although his artistic attitude seems cold and impartial, Maupassant's fiction is permeated with a definite personal philosophy and de- rives from the successive phases of his own life. " C'est toujours a des anecdotes ou a des episodes personnels qu'il demande la matiere de ses recits " (Maynial) . But while aided by recollec- tion or gossip, Maupassant recorded the deeds of actual people, and while he angered certain Normans through the faithfulness of his observation, his manner is highly impersonal and detached. Let us consider the six divisions of his short-story subjects. These number nearly three hundred titles, and their external range is exactly as wide as the author's experience.

The first division and the largest, including one-fourth of the tales, deals with Normandy, the province which the author „ . knew best as a youth and to which he often returned on vacations. He knew the peasant life, with its meanness, shrewdness and occasional pathos (Le Petit Fut, Hautot pere et fils) ; the open air life of himting and boating {Les Becasses, Mouche) ; cynical aspects of small-town narrow- ness {La Ficelle) . Again, Maupassant's experience of 1870 was from the angle of the countryman who sees his province invaded by the Prussians. A smaller but excellent division of stories contains half-a-dozen masterpieces on that subject {Boule de suif, Les Prisonniers, L'Aventure de Walter Schnajfs), together with a few tales of military life in general. Next came the result of Maupassant's contacts with oflScial ministries and with the existence of petty bureaucrats and bourgeois {En Famille, L'Heritage). Then Parisian high life {L'Inidile Beaute) and fast life, particularly the nises of women {Les Epingles, Le Rendezvous, Decore!). Travel, especially on the Riviera, furnished some excellent backgrounds {Champ d'Oliviers, Jules Romain) ; Africa and Italy supplied various light loves {AUouma, Les Sceurs Rondoli). Finally, there are about forty stories connected with the author's malady; they range from the fantastic and morbid to the insane; the fear of death, Maupassant's chief obsession, becomes complicated with ideas of crime and other hallucinations {La Peur, Le Horla, Un Fou, Qui saitf, Suicides, La Morte). A similar progression may be traced in Maupassant's novels, of which the most

MAUPASSANT 621

conspicuous are Une Vie (1883), presenting the sad existence of a crushed wife in Normandy; Bel-Ami (1885), the Parisian climber in a world of journalism and corruption; Pierre et Jean (1888) and Fort comme la mort, which are less cynical than pre- vious novels but no less pessimistic in their treatment of the woes of the heart. In Maupassant's work as a whole, the point of view is generally somber or sardonic. He was not a lover of mankind and wore the dark glasses of the professed Naturalist.

It is primarily as a short-story writer that Maupassant excels, and since he is often considered the best modern representative . of this genre, his technique should be carefully

examined. In actual length, his stories vary a great deal. The nouvelle which usually heads the volume {Monsieur Parent, Yvette), may run from fifty pages to twice that length. But the more characteristic form is the conte which is extremely brief and laconic. Maupassant's point of departure is usually an episode, a " slice of life " chosen to illustrate character or manners. Many of these " facts " were related to him by his mother or his friends. Sometimes he merely tells an anecdote {Le Verrou) or outlines a situation (L'lnfirme) ; or he draws a sketch {Un Portrait) or writes a letter {La Moustache, Mots d'amour). The conte proper readily becomes improper {Les Epingles, La Patronne) . At its best, the structure of his fiction is marked by two thin^: an economy which gives only the essential elements of character, situation and development; and an onward movement which combines logic with the maximum of simplicity. Hence a dramatic swiftness which is Maupas- sant's especial gift. Naturalness and simplicity also mark his use of language, which is straightforward and not unusual in vocabulary. Even the titles of his stories are unpretentious and easily forgotten. He disliked the impressionistic over- refined style favored by the Goncourts. His sentences are clear and rapid. His language is sober, often sardonic, with an effect of dry precision. This results from his use of the mot juste ■ (noun, verb or adjective) , which because it is the characteristic or salient word lends to the style an accent of bold relief in detail or description. To characterize, he chooses the essential trait of costume or setting ; and the trait final has also its perfect precision and fitness. He is an exponent of the direct denoue-

622 REALISTIC FICTION

inent, in which the last paragraph furnishes a dramatic close to the narrative. However, the " surprise ending " is less common in Maupassant than is often believed; it can certainly be found (La Parure, Le Pain maudit, L'Ami Joseph) , but more frequent is the rounded ending which fulfils our expectations. Some of his stories (for example, Le Pere Milon) , announce the denouement at the beginning. For the sake of vividness, he leans to the first-person form of narration and often uses as a prelude a men's dinner or some casual meeting. The kernel of the story may be some small object, aroimd which the train of events is organized ; witness Le Para-plvie, La Ficelle or La Parure, which last has been voted the best short-story in ex- istence. Dealing with rudimentary types, Maupassant's psychol- ogy is limited, though not insufficient. He appreciates outdoor nature and shows considerable power in describing it. As a Realist, of course, he thoroughly places his tales in terms of material setting, exterior or interior, costumes, habits, and so on. Otherwise, in the type of stories and in the supple dexterity with which he tells them, he resembles La Fontaine and is considered, in fact, the legitimate continuator of the old conte gaulois. His Classical qualities are sobriety, balance, sureness of eye and simplicity.

Apparent naturalness, then, is the hall-mark of Maupassant's technique, just as " Naturalism " (see next chapter) stamps his outlook and philosophy. The latter undergoes a progression from a robust sensualism, in which the forces of Nature are accepted, to the pessimistic effect of this materialism on a man who develops mind and heart and who perceives that the joys of this earth are fleeting. Although he over-stresses the depiction of the distasteful and the ignoble, we recognize, towards the end, the presence of a soul in revolt. This may account for the philosophic digressions, which seem to increase in his later work, somewhat' to the detriment of narrative unity. Misanthropy, the mental fatigue of his generation, the lack of spiritual comfort or belief, warred against love and the life- force which were " apaises soudain par I'Eternel Oubli " {Fort comme la mort). Death was finally the stronger, and before death came philosophic nihilism and madness.

CHAPTER V

FICTION (CONTINUED): ZOLA, THE GONCOURTS, DAUDET

It seems best to make between " Realism " and " Naturalism,"

in their literary significance, a distinction both of time and of

„ ^ ,. degree. The best work of Balzac and of Flaubert Naturalism

stands for the earlier development of Realism;

while Zola and his school pushed that doctrine to an extreme and dubbed it le Naturcdisme. Maupassant belongs rather to this later phase of the movement. Naturalism then is an ex- cessive form of Realism and is usually considered as possessing the following characteristics. First, it allows a still largerl variety of subjects, emphasizing the lower and coarser forms of life; it presents this material in a fashion which is often revolting; it rejects ideality, it minimizes heart-interest and plot-interest in favor of " facts " and notations ; it magnifies the study of the industries and seeks to apply to fiction the processes of the natural sciences; from these, taken in their application to heredity and environment, it draws its conception of life — deterministic, fatalistic, essentially pessimistic. The laws of brute Nature are viewed as grimly controlling the destinies of helpless and hopeless man. Pessimism is, in fact, widely char- acteristic of this generation of writers (cf. Flaubert, Leeonte de Lisle, Taine) , who seem, for the-Hiost part, to have exhausted the springs of enthusiasm and sentiment. This "maladie morale," according to Bourget (see Bk. IX, Ch. IV), results especially from the general depression produced by the Franco- Prussian war. The former French gaiety seems to be much ob- scured, and certainly it is least conspicuous in the powerful but gloomy work of the Naturalists.

The head and front of the Naturalistic school, though he preferred to call it a method rather than a school, was Emile Zola (1840-1902) . His father was an Italian engineer who had

623

624 ZOLA, THE GONCOURTS, DAUDET

settled in France; his mother was French. The boy grew up at Aix-en-Provence, then moved with his mother to Paris, where his brief education was of a scientific rather ^"'^ than of a literary character. He knew poverty

and the working-classes, from which he presently chose a wife (1870) . He did not figure in the war nor in any external events until much latter. He led an imeventful, virtuous and sedentary life. For a time he was clerk in the publishing house of Hachette, then went in for journalism and (c. 1880) wrote his critical articles which contain the theory of Naturalism. He acquired a suburban property at Medan, where ori^nated

^the Soirees de Medan, of 1880. This collection contained rather grim stories of the Franco-Prussian war and is regarded as a manifesto of one Naturalistic group (Zola, Maupassant, Huysmans, Paul Alexis, Ceard, Hennique). The year 1880 is

» thus the central year of Naturalism, as 1857 is that of Realism. Zola had already become known through the early volimies of the Rougon-Macquart series. The severe labor and documen- tation demanded by this series occupied him for twenty-two years (1871-93). He emerged from his semi-obscurity to champion Dreyfus (see Bk. IX, Ch. I) in 1898. His indictment of the military powers {J'Accuse) caused Zola to be sentenced to imprisonment, and he sought temporary refuge in England. He had already (1894-97) embarked on the series of the Trois Villes, now followed by the Quatre Evangiles, which he did not live to complete. His accidental death (1902) was caused by asphyxi- ation. He was distinguished for his tenacity, his polemic spirit, his interest in the proletariat and his lack of taste.

Zola lived largely as a recluse, and he was not an artist; his

fiction suffers from these handicaps. He was formidable mainly

by his method, which he developed as early as

f Therese Raqvm (1867). Its principles are laid

down in his critical work, especially Le Roman experimental

.^1880) and Les Romanciers naturalistes (1881). He defines

art as " un coin de la nature vu a travers un temperament."

The personality of the writer admits variety and clothes

the work in individual form — for instance, the Goncourts are

allowed their more refined and aristocratic reactions. But the

substance is immutable Nature (reality) which provides " human

o

a.

C3 P3

LES ROUGON-MACQUART 625

documents." These were studied physiologically and socially by Balzac, and psychologically by Stendhal,^ who are claimed as the two pedestals of Naturalism. In either case, observation rather than imagination is the novelist's requisite. To this the Naturalist should now add the experimental method of science (derived from Claude Bernard's Introduction a la Medecine experimentale, 1865) : that is, he should expose his sensibility to life and he should work, as in a laboratory, upon the events and characters provided by experience. Zola did not perceive that the writer cannot really produce and manipulate his ma- terial, as the scientist can ; the term " experimental " is then a misnomer, while another distortion of true science is the extent to which Zola relied on the doctrine of heredity throughout the Rougon-Macqvart.

This huge cycle, consisting of twenty volumes, records the " histoire naturelle et sociale d'une f amille sous le second ero- "Les Rougon- pire." The family, originating from & fieurasthenic Macquart" and a drimkard {La Fortune des Rougon), prolongs that double taint through its many members and diverse milieux. The Comedie humaine evidently inspired this social history, which deals with reappearing names in various " conditions " or ranks in life. But Zola emphasizes the trade or profession less than the hereditary taint, and he adds a strong element of patho- logical and clinical research. He even composed a genealogical tree, with medico-legal data on each descendant. Also his chief figures are not so much characters as grandiose and symbolic types. Thus " Nana " is the Coiuliesan, Saccard is the Specu- lator, Dr. Pascal is the Savant, etc. Among the milieux repre- sented are Aix-en-Provence {La Conquete de Plassans), the fashionable society of the Empire {La Curie) , the central markets {Le Ventre de Paris), the department-store {Au Bonheur des Dames) and the railroads {La Bete humaine). L'Assommoir (1877), which made Zola's reputation, exhibits the drunkard and the saloon ; La Terre (1887) , his most scandalous production, is a degraded treatment of the peasantry. His best and mosf* powerful novels are Germinal (1885), that great study of the mines, and La Debacle (1892), a most vivid and truthful fresco , of the Franco-Prussian war.

' It is questionable whether any of the Naturalists proceeded from Stendhal. Certainly Zola was independent of him.

626 ZOLA, THE GONCOURTS, DAUDET

In all of these works, as in the later series of the Cities and the Evangels, the system is much the same. Zola admits that in- vention was his weak side. He started not from incidents or personages, but from the desire to depict a certain cross-section of life. This he would study as a specialty, partly through first-hand observation but mainly through monographs. The subjects of which he had personal knowledge, for example, the life of the working classes, are naturally much better handled than such monstrous exaggerations as La Terre or such a guide- book as Borne. Having determined his field, he would select his main characters — usually some of the Rougon-Macquart — and compose actual dossiers for them, as well as for the subsidiary personages. He would fix them in their main traits and choose for them a certain type of dialogue, preferably coarse ; and it is a featiu"e of his style that the same kind of language is usual in the indirect dialogue and even in the psychological analyses of his characters (cf. L'Assommoir) . The psychology, however, is of the most elementary kind. It has been said that Zola gave a soul to things and withdrew the soul from man. Criminals and morons abound in his pages. " La bete humaine " is his favorite phrase, and the physiological presentation of the Realists is pushed to a frequent and deliberate bestiality. This is occasionally relieved, to be sure, by the idyllic note (Le Reve, Le Docteur Pascal) . But Zola's strength is found either in the depiction of grandiose types (see above) or in the equally " epic " vivification of certain huge symbols: the Locomotive, the Mine, the Market, the wounded Forest in La Debacle. These Franken- steins live, agonize and die before our eyes. However Romantic they may be, such creations are wonderfully effective and well- sustained. Zola is strong also in the cumulative treatment " des vastes ensembles materiels et des infinis details exterieurs " (cf. Balzac) . Among these " vastes ensembles " should be empha- sized his unsurpassed handling of crowds, whether the morning procession of laborers, a riotous mob of miners, or the array and confusion of the battle-field. Certain descriptive " tableaux " are equally impressive : the parade of carriages and the conserva- tory in La Curee ; the intricacies of the vegetable market ; even homely domestic interiors (a laundry, a living-room) ; or the swarming credulity of Lourdes, which is the best of the Trois Villes.

THE NOVELS OF THE GONCOURTS 627

Zola also deserves credit for the humanitarian faith of his latest trilogy — the attack on race-suicide in FeconditS and the apotheo- sis of labor in Le Travail. But these works add nothing of note to his method, which remains the crude presentation of the " masses " as an tindigested whole. Zola's style harmonizes with his point of view, in its lack of distinction and its heavy lum- bering tread which can become, on occasions, a powerful stride. For good or for evil, the man and his method live in his works; but French life could scarcely have existed in all the darkness with which he has svurounded it. His outlook and his rigid a "priori system keep him from rendering Nature in the fullest sense.

Edmond de Goncourt (1822-96) and his brother Jules (1830- 70) offer an interesting case of literary collaboration. " United The by art and blood," they thought and felt in common;

Goncourts ^nd they lived, suffered and died for literature alone. Of a good family and well educated, they were intensely Parisian and modern. After the death of their mother (1848) , the brothers were practically inseparable. Like Gautier, they expected to become painters and therefore undertook picturesque excursions in France and Algeria. But they turned to writing instead and after several false starts, they published Charles Demailly (1860) ; this novel and Manette Salomon (1867) furnished keen studies of artistic careers thwarted by women. Most of the Goncourts' work was based on personal experiences or those of their acquaintances. They also showed a preference for a refined treatment and for subjects that offered exceptional or path- ological interest. Such was the case with ScEwr P/ii7omene (1861), a " study in ivory " of hospital scenes and of a nun's mysticism; while Renee Mauperin (1864) , the Goncourts' best book, is a sub- tle and pathetic delineation of a peculiar " jeune fille moderne." None of these novels were immediately successful; indeed, the work of the brothers was scarcely known to the public under the Empire and has never been popular. They were compensated for this general neglect by the formation of an inner circle — that of the " diners Magny," a restaurant where the Goncourts foregathered with Sainte-Beuve, Gautier, Renan, Daudet and occasionally with Flaubert or Taine. This was not a cenacle, because of the separatist and carping tendencies of the group.

628 ZOLA, THE GONCOURTS, DAUDET

as manifest in the later Journal des Goncourt (9 vols., 1887-95) .

In the meantime, the brothers had founded Naturalism, of the 'low-life kind, in Germinie Lacertevx. This book was published As in 1865, before any important work of Zola's, and

Naturalists deals with the pitiful life and loves of a servant-girl. The clinical sort of Naturalism is demonstrated in Madame Ger- vaisais (1869), which is mainly an analysis of religious hysteria. Madame Gervwisais and Manette Salomon also exhibit the ex- treme type of the plotless novel, with its deliberate lack of con- struction and a preference for detached scenes. Jules de Gon- court died of intellectual over-work in 1870, and for some time his aflSiicted brother wrote nothing. In 1877, Edmond published La Fille Elisa, a' bare and severe monograph on prostitution and the penitentiary. Of his other novels, La Faustin depicts the life of the theater and Les Freres Zemganno that of the circus. This last is probably Edmond's best novel, since it presents, with genuine sentiment, a pair of brothers who were united like the Goncourts themselves. Feeling is not absent from these novels, several of which (for example, Renee Mauperin) have very poignant endings.

The Goncourt brothers were a complicated pair, and accord- ingly their work is composed of strangely mixed materials. On the one hand, it seems clear that they were the earliest theoreti- cians (cf. Idees et Sensations, 1866) and practitioners of an ad- vanced Naturalism. This is evidenced in their blank fatalistic pessimism, in their materialistic rendering of the external world, in their low-life subjects and their predilection for pathology, and especially in their emphasis on note-taking coupled with direct observation. Germinie Lacertevx was the biography of their own servant; hospitals were studied at first-hand, Edmond de Goncourt recorded the phases of his brother's last illness and urged feminine readers to send him their intimate observations, in order to perfect the psychology of Cherie. ' On the other hand, these brothers were essentially artists, and they modified their Realistic attitude by two individual novelties: impres- sionism and the "ecriture artiste." Thus they do not represent Naturalism with Zola's force and single-mindedness. ^^ 'UmprfiRsinniga?/' oi the Goncourt variety, is the endeavor to render the sensations produced by external objects; it largely

IMPRESSIONISM 629

proceeds from and appeals to the nerves. Like their compeers Aa Artists (^^Izac, Flaubert, Daudet), the Goncourts were

" slaves of the lamp." After each protracted effort, their delicate organizations suffered a collapse and they fostered their hyperaesthetic acuteness of sensation. "II n'y a de bon que les choses exquises," said Edmond. Not only, then, were they preoccupied with nervous maladies {Charles Demailly, Soeur Philomene), but they sought to convey, impression- istically, all the vibrant sensations to which they were exposed. Their vehicle was the " ecriture artiste," a new kind of preciosity, an intensely nervous, jerky style, " qui s'applique surtout ... a la sensation realisee par la phrase, I'epithete rare, I'adjectif substantif et le verbe substantif, la repetition, le pleo- nasme et le neologisme." Their rhetoric, which too often dis- regards syntax, clearness and harmony, tends to become an " orgy of virtuosity " and aims particularly at picturesque and colorful descriptions. So their novels became a disorganized series of tableautins, while their point of view is that of the painter who is most sensitive to the visible world (cf. Gautier). The art-sense of the brothers was increased by their very Parisian modernity and their love of bibelots, of which they left a con- siderable collection; also by their revival of the eighteenth century in a series of volumes ' which display particularly the paintings, costumes and furniture of the old regime. Together with this revival, they should be credited with the introduction of Japanese art into France. In spite of aesthetic excesses, their " plastic psychology " and their pictorial style have distinct values, and the Goncourts remain the best equipped artists of the Naturalistic movement. Edmond founded the "Academie Goncourt," as a rallying point for literary rebels. This Academy has crowned some of the most notable books of recent years. Less forceful and original than the other Naturalists, but endowed with more charm and humanity, Alphonse Daudet jj . . (1840-97) owes much of his reputation to the fact

that he was a thorough "Meridional." He was born at Nimes, and even in his boyhood his ardent temperament was touched by the Provengal sun. Neither a Catholic up-

• La Femme au dix-huiUhne si^cle (1862), L'Art au dix-huitUme siMe, etc.

630 ZOLA, THE GONCOURTS, DAUDET

bringing nor a stricter education later at Lyons could restrain this turbulent youth, fond of reading, but fonder of playing truant, and reaching the depth of despair when family em- barrassments forced him to take a post as usher in a small school (Le Petit Chose). Fortunately, his devoted brother Ernest summoned him to Paris, where Alphonse was soon leading a bohemian life and publishing his early verses. He joined the staff of the Figaro and became private secretary to the Due de Morny, who acted as prime minister imder Napoleon III. A favorite with Morny, Daudet was allowed restorative excursions to the Midi and Algeria (see Tartarin). From near Aries, in the winter of 1864, he brought back the Lettres de mon Moulin (publ. 1869), his first real success. His frail health often sent him back to the South, where he was on excellent terms with Mistral and the Provengal group of poets. In 1867, Daudet married Julie Allard,'^ho made him an excellent wife and helped his literary development. The writer now bade farewell to Bohemia. His new seriousness was further confirmed by the events of 1870-71. Daudet served in the home-guard and de- clared that the war made a man of him. He wrote certain recollections of this period (C antes du lundi), then passed on to his great novels and knew " I'ivresse du travail." Like Flaubert and Balzac, he would often work fifteen hours a day, a regime that seriously impaired his health. After 1877 he suffered with violent rheumatism and had to give up the physical exercises that he formerly loved. But he still kept his country home, in the valley of Champrosay near Paris, and in the capital itself Daudet had an interior noted for its delightful family life and wide hospitality. Frequent visitors were Flaubert, E. de Goncourt and Turgenev — whom the small boy of the house called " les geants." Daudet was exemplary in family relations; he was noted for his kindliness and constant good humor. He was simple in his tastes, distrusting riches, de- voted to books (especially Montaigne) , yet sociable and well ac- quainted with many classes of people. He never separated life from literature. He defined talent as an " intensity de vie," and his own talent surely has this quality. His powers of per- ception and expression were unusually keen. His career was helped by good-fortune and by his seductive personality, but

DAUDET'S FICTION 631

his books were written " avec le sue meme de I'arbre humain."

An interlocking but useful classification of Daudet's fiction"^ would distinguish: (1) stories and characters of the Midi; ,(2) Three novels of Parisian manners; (3) partly included

Divisions in the above, the depiction of the humbler classesj ° ^ His fiction throughout is either autobiographical or

closely based on known people and events. On this account, some of his friends avoided him, and it is said that he did not dare return to Tarascon. " To invent for him was to remem- ber." Memories of his impressionable Provengal youth are em- bedded in the exquisite Lettres de mon Moulin, which contain* such gems as Le Cure de Cucugnan and La Mule du Pape^ Fancy is wedded to fact in these brilliant joyous stories, and this note is prolonged in the famous Tartarin series. Tartarin de Tarascon (1872) creates the type of the boastful and self- deluded Southerner, still the source of inextinguishable laughter. For once, a sequel was not inferior to its predecessor, and Tar- tarin sur les Alpes (1885) was for long the most popular of Daudet's novels. Finally, Port-Tarascon (1890) takes the hero to his far colony, but shows a decline of the novelist's powers. Tartarin thus remains with Daudet during his whole career. The Southern strain is continued in the main characters — though not in the setting — of Le Nabab (1877) and of Numa Roumes- tan (1881), which exhibits, more somberly than Tartarin, the clash between a meridional temperament and a Parisian environ- ment. But these two titles properly belong to Daudet's second division, the " grand roman de mceurs." In both of them, certain characters have been identified with actual personages: in the former appears a real " nabob," together with the Due de Morny, Sarah Bernhardt and others, very thinly disguised; whereas in Numa Roumestan we have an ironic depiction of the Provengal deputy who stakes his fortunes against the " homicidal North," and who wins out through native force and buoyancy. This is written in Daudet's final manner and is consequently a more intense and closely knit narrative than Le Nabab, which remains, however, one of the largest and most interesting canvases de- picting the Second Empire. No one excels Daudet in conveying the Parisian atmosphere, and his ornate " views " of the capital are memorable. Between these two novels he wrote Les Bats

632 ZOLA, THE GONCOURTS, DAUDET

en exil (again with a Parisian background), a title which needs no explanation today. Again, L'Immortel (1888) is a satire on the Academy, too bitter for Daudet's kindly nature. The great- est of this group of novels and the best known is Sapho (1884), a thorough study of the courtesan, her evil power and her en- vironment, but treated with a decent restraint not usually mani- fested by the Naturalists.

Several other novels also reflect "les moeurs parisiennes," but they seem more particularly to store the vibrations of the author's own heart attuned to the misfortimes of humble folk. His son tells us that he preferred this class to any other, though he was compassionate towards all suffering and mischance. There is much of both in Fromont jeune et Risler aine (1874), nominally the tale of an industrial partnership, but really con- cerned with the drama of the wicked Sidonie and her deceived husband; the household of the poverty-stricken Delobelles also comes in for a good share of the interest and offers a parallel with Dickens in the alternation of humor and pathos. Jack (1876) deals with other failures and presents particularly the story of an unhappy child (cf. David Copper field). L'Evan- geliste indignantly attacks the effects of religious proselytizing and mania.

Though influenced by the currents of his time, especially by

Naturalism and impressionism, Daudet is not a severe and im-

„. „ , . partial recorder of the world's woes. He is too His Talent ^ . • , , ,,

sympathetic and emotional wholly to represent

scientific Naturalism. He comes nearest it in Sapho, and even there his personality shines through the somber picture. Again, Daudet is primarily a raconteur who loves to tell a story, and his novels are more fully novels than the so-called fiction of Zola. Daudet knows how to choose and make salient " les domin- antes " of character and incident. By interweaving moral and physical qualities he makes his chief characters from the begin- ning stand out clearly ; yet he is rather too fond of the " gag," as when the lazy Delobelle perpetually asserts, " je n'ai pas le droit de renoncer a I'Art." Like Dickens, Daudet overworks pathos, and occasionally the Southern " charm " seems to wear a little thin. But behind all these traits there stand (1) the method of the Realist and (2) the style of the impressionist.

DAUDET'S METHOD 633

The method appears in his choice of specialized subjects, of ample background and sharply etched foreground; also in his habit of persistent note-taking, a habit which resulted in thousands of perfectly rendered scenes and objects; also in his knowledge of and respect for " la vie " rather than in the bookish kind of documentation; finally, in that very sympathy with the humble which, as Brunetiere claims, has been found in Russia and England to be compatible with the best Realism. Nor does this novelist slight the depiction of the more interesting and attractive aspects of life. The artistic side of Daudet and probably his friendship with E. de Goncourt inclined him towards a modified type of impressionism in writing. Just as sensitive as the Goncourts to external objects, he contrives to present them adequately without making them dominate; a favorite device is to make things symbolize a soul-state, as where Desiree Delobelle's thwarted aspirations are typified by the stuffed birds with which she decorates bonnets. Daudet 's winged style gives the thrill of an individual reaction to reality, but he was able to accomplish this without the elaborate manner and vocabulary of the Goncourts. His language, for all its variety and picturesqueness, is clear and not recherche; its movement is more easy and conversational than that of other French Realists. Of them all, Daudet is on many accounts the most acceptable to an Anglo-Saxon public.

BOOK VIII THE AGE OF SCIENCE AND DOUBT

CHAPTER I

THE CRITICS: SAINTE-BEUVE

All the movements of the nineteenth century are mirrored in criticism, a genre which greatly increases in productiveness, The Course influence and complexity during this period. A of Criticism history of French Criticism would find at least one- half of its material in the last century alone. Like other fields of thought, the genre became definitely historical in ap- proach; later it endeavored to borrow its method from the natural sciences as well. These and other varieties will emerge from a brief sketch of the form. Accepting the formula of " literature as the expression of society," modern criticism was born at the beginning of the century. As already seen, cosmo- politan comparison waxed great with Mme de Stael and was continued by Villemain. The latter placed the individual writer in his historical setting, where Sainte-Beuve more firmly fixes him. This high priest of criticism is Protean in his viewpoints; judicial because of his taste, yet biographical, historical and finally approximating a scientific method. The deterministic philosophy is appropriated by Taine, the evolutionary by Brunetiere. Personal impressionism was added by Anatole France and Jules Lemaitre. The chief defenders of the Classical standard were Nisard, Scherer and Brimetiere; we shall now consider the first of these three.^ The most characteristic work of Desire Nisard (1806-88), professor and publicist, is comprised in his Essais sur I'ecole romantique and in his monvimental His- toire de la litterature frangaise (1844-61). The former book,

• For Brunetiere, France and Lemattre, see Bk. IX, Ch. IV. Edmond Soberer (1815-89) was a Genevan divine who lost his faith in Calvinism and settled in Parii. He stood apart from the main literary movements, but his Etudes crMgues nir la literature contemporaine (1863-95) contain some excellent criticism.

634

HIS CAREER 635

in spite of Nisard's efforts towards fairness, is virtually an in- dictment of Romanticism, and the latter remained for long the best exposition and eulogy of the French Classical period. Nisard maintains that this " epoque unique " saw an amalgama- tion of the French and of the (general) human spirit that can hardly occur again. He tends to make humanity equivalent to France, and France equivalent to the Age of Louis XIV. Adopt- ing the " point of perfection " theory ,= he views everything before the seventeenth century as a preparation, everything after it as a decline. Then only did the French genius reach its full powers of clearness and precision: "I'expression des verites generales dans un langage parfait." Then only did the "two antiquities," Christian and pagan, move harmoniously together. Nisard holds by tradition, both because of its disciplinary value and because tradition alone is the guarantee of lasting literary excellence. So "for sixty years," says Dowden, "Nisard was a guardian of the dignity of French letters."

We must go back to the days of Romanticism to understand Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-69), the greatest and most Career of universal of French critics. The successive phases Sainte-Beuve of jjjg jjfg contributed to form his supple talent and to provide his manifold interests. Born at Boulogne-sur-Mer, he was carefully reared by women ; as a youth he showed a studi- ous disposition and some religious propensities. These were promptly submerged in the skeptical air of Paris, whither he went in 1818. He declared that his intellectual fond was derived from such materialists and free-thinkers as Destutt de Tracy, Lamarck and Daunou. This tendency was increased by an intermittent study of medicine, which left in him a leaning towards physiol- ogy and positivism. In 1824 he joined the editors of the Globe (see Bk. VI, Ch. I), and for this journal he wrote many of the articles subsequently collected in the Premiers lundis. After 1827 he became intimate with Hugo and identified himself with Romanticism — the only cause, he tells us, to which he fully sur- rendered himself and that " by the effect of a charm." The spell was wrought partly by Victor Hugo, partly by Hugo's wife, and thus inspired Sainte-Beuve composed his poetry and fiction. He also gave ancestors to Romanticism in the Tableau de la poesie

' See above, pp. 343 and 416.

636 THE CRITICS: SAINTE-BEUVE

frangaise au XVIe siecle (1828) , and he ranked as one of the most influential members of the school. But after 1830 he gradually detached himself, breaking with Hugo and passing on to other " conversions." None of these was whole-souled, but for a time he showed an interest in Saint-Simonism, then in the liberal Catholicism of Lamennais and his group. An opposing tendency was encouraged by Sainte-Beuve's connection with Swiss Calvin- ism; this connection was formed through his friendship with the Oliviers, a young couple whom he visited at Lausanne (1837). Throughout his youth, Sainte-Beuve was subject to moods of religious speculation and feeling, manifest particularly in his letters to the Abbe Bar be; but this influence resulted in no trans- formation of his life and thought; its most important consequence was the masterly study of the Jansenists in his Port-Royal (1840-60).

In the meantime, Sainte-Beuve had become well established as a Parisian and as a critic. He frequented the aristocratic salons of Mme Recamier and others, but he scarcely shone as a man of the world. Although epicurean in his tastes for pleasure, he lived frugally and worked hard. During the two decades of the bourgeois monarchy he was writing for the Revue de Paris and the Revue des deux mondes most of the articles later collected in the Portraits contemporains (1869-71) and the Portraits Ut- teraires (1862-64). His reputation was steadily growing, and he was made a member of the Academy in 1844. But when the Revolution of 1848 occurred, Sainte-Beuve foimd himself ill at ease in Paris and accepted an invitation from Liege, where he delivered lectures on Chateaubriand. The resulting volumes {Chateaubriand et son groupe litteraire) mark his final break with Romanticism and his inauguration of a bolder and more judicial critical standard. Returning to Paris, he was soon en- gaged in writing for periodicals his famous Causeries du lundi (1851-62), followed by the Nouveaux lundis (publ. 1863-70). These weekly articles practically filled the remainder of his life, for Sainte-Beuve too became an " anchorite of labor," scarcely leaving his task except for participation in the Magny dinners (see p. 627) and for duties connected with two lectureships. He became more political in his outlook, wrote a volume defending the socialist Proudhon, and was made a senator of the Empire

HIS VERSE AND FICTION 637

(1864). But he sat in the liberal wing and delivered towards the end of his life the boldest speeches of a rather cautious career. Sainte-Beuve was intellectually honest and never sold his pen; but in human relations he was sly and variable, not trustworthy as a friend and not notable for high qualities of heart or soul. He was a mental giant, well-nigh complete in his critical equip- ment, and his most marked trait was the mobility or curiosity which drew him from one field of inquiry to another. The crea- tive efforts of his youth were also fruitful for his critical career ; they gave him unusual insight into the processes of poetry and fiction. But they were not beneficial either to his character or to his reputation.

The fact is that these volumes, whether connected with the author's late adolescence or with the amorous experiences of Poetry and his early manhood, are noted for their morbid tone. Fiction Tjjg Yig^ Poesies et Pensees de Joseph Delorme

(1829) presents a descendant of Rene and of Adolphe, who is also the alter ego and the weaker ego of Sainte-Beuve. The poems constitute a moral autobiography, in their display of self-analysis and of epicurean desires. Certain lyrics develop another strain, an attempted rendering of common life, in the manner of Wordsworth; the volimie is the most interesting ex- ample of this influence in France. Again, a critical and intellec- tual note is prominent, especially when the author characterizes his contemporaries (for example. Promenade, Mes Uvres). So the poems have been well summarized as " individualistes et romantiques, originales par le ton democratique, I'inspiration intime, la tendance critique." Joseph Delorme, which at least widened the scope of the lyric, is Sainte-Beuve's most important volume of verse and gives the key to the others. Similar strains are foimd in the Consolations (1830) and the Pensees d'Aout (1837). His novel, Volupte (1834), is according to Sainte- Beuve's own avowal " tres peu un roman " and again reflects the experience of a self-indulgent, analytical and weak-willed person. There is much religiosity in this novel; it ends in a conversion in which the writer himself hardly participated.

Sainte-Beuve's critical work is very extensive, amounting to forty-eight volumes. Three main periods of his activity, though with some overlapping, may be indicated. The first (1824-

638 THE CRITICS: SAINTE-BEUVE

1840) is his youthful Romantic period and includes, together

with the Tableau (see above) and the Premiers lundis, many of

^ .4.. • „ the earlier articles in the Portraits titteraires. The Criticism :

Divisions and second (c. 1835-1848) represents a more neutral Campaigns ^^^j conservative type of criticism, but remains appreciative rather than judicial. This period includes the various volumes of Portraits, written for the two principal re- views and addressed largely to feminine readers. The third period (1848-69) finds Sainte-Beuve in his matiu'ity alike as jxidicial critic and as historian of literature. Its point of de- parture is the attack on Chateaubriand, and it embraces the two great series of the Lundis.

The term " Romantic critic " implies both that Sainte-Beuve was romantically disposed and that he became the best critical . , expositor of the movement. His close association with the Hugos and his own creative efforts made his expression more personal, passionate and rhetorical than was later the case. But the rupture of these ties presently caused him to break with the school, and he admits many variations in judgment due to the rise and fall of his Romantic sympathies. This then is his least impartial period. Yet his keen understanding of the movement will appear from certain examples. Of his four articles on Victor Hugo, the first (1827) established Sainte-Beuve as the critical master of the new school. He points out exactly those merits and defects that posterity has accepted in the case of Hugo. Later the critic congratulates the poet on freeing, himself from the preciosity of the early cenacle and on attaining wider effects. The novels of Hugo are not impartially considered, nor is Sainte- Beuve fair to Vigny. On the other hand, he excellently sums up Lamartine, admiring his spirituality and limpidity. As late as 1857, Sainte-Beuve wrote a finely reminiscent article on Musset, which carries critic and reader back into the old Romantic atmosphere. The poet's endearing qualities and his tragic fate are dwelt upon almost with a sense of personal loss. This note of personal friendly interest recurs in articles on Hugo, George Sand and others. It is true that Sainte-Beuve was sub- ject to feelings of envy and malice where the Romantic leaders were concerned; but when these feelings were not aroused, he

PERIODS OF CRITICISM 639

was capable of the greatest insight and sympathy. M. Michaut esteems him the panegyrist and interpreter of Romanticism, enthusiastic, but with a taste and a sense of proportion which caused him to make certain reserves. He gave currency to the lyrical ideas and theories of the group, for whom, says the same authority, he served both as a Du Bellay and a Boileau; it was his task to " introduire, legitimer et formuler le romantisme " — and he tried to moderate its excesses as well.

In 1840, Sainte-Beuve published two articles that definitely indicate his abandonment of the Romantic cause. He declares that the essay on La Rochefoucauld " marks the end of this crisis and the return of sounder views." The other article, Dix ans apres en litter ature, amounts to a journalistic suromary of what Romanticism had accomplished in the previous decade. A certain bias and impatience appear in his colder reckoning with his former admiration. These " illustrious incurables " lack stability — or else they have simply marked time. Sainte-Beuve further announces that he himself has finally turned from poetry to criticism. This resolution was taken after the failure of the Pensees d'Aout. As Sainte-Beuve profoundly said:

II se trouve, dans les trois quarts des hoimnes, un poete qui meurt jeune, tandis que rhomme survit.

The " man " and his intelligence are thus chiefly conspicuous in the second phase of Sainte-Beuve's critical productiveness. Second Here he lays a broad foundation for his biographical

Period method. Indeed, as a Romantic critic he had sought

the writer's moi in his biography and intimate psychology and was disposed to judge a work according to the individuality of its talent and expression. Now the three series of " Portraits " {Portraits litteraires, Portraits de Femmes, Portraits contempo- rains) exemplify the author's lasting interest in the individual, as well as the constant ripening of his ever-curious mind. Even the Port-Royal has been styled a Collection of portraits. Sainte- Beuve's curiosity recalls that of Bayle, who was treated in an early article (1835) as a leading representative of the critical spirit. The two men were also alike in their fondness for gossip, their insinuative tactics, their tolerant sense of relativity in human and literary affairs. Sainte-Beuve's manner during

640 THE CRITICS: SAINTE-BEUVE

this period combines ease and finish, and has an engaging " libra allure." His attitude is more disinterested. After traversing his intermediary " campaigns," in behalf of Lamennais and Saint- Simon, the critic ceases, to be a propagandist and becomes a free and impartial voice (1833-37) . His essays are concerned some- what less with aesthetic and more with moral and philosophical questions. Gradually he conceives of a " genie critique," which though remaining primarily portraiture can include philosoph- ical and psychological considerations; which through its uni- versal curiosity and its finished form can itself become " cre- ative," a work of art. The best essays of the forties show Sainte- Beuve established in his own field. At the end of this period he was ready for a new campaign.

A whole book might be written on the relations of Sainte- Beuve and Chateaubriand, and indeed Sainte-Beuve himself has The written it. CHateavbriand et son groups litteraire,

Transition composed in voluntary exile, is mainly an indictment of Romanticism and of its illustrious godfather. Sainte-Beuve now formally assumes the role of a judge. He points out why he need no longer listen to the oracle with bated breath. " II est temps que pour lui la vie critique commence." Sainte-Beuve still considers Chateaubriand an incomparable artist, possessed of an " extraordinary elevation." But the critic assails the pagan passion, the mal de Rene, and a certain insincere rhetoric which strives after glory rather than after truth or virtue. Of this glory the idol is vigorously stripped; and though Sainte-Beuve shows a bourgeois animosity in the act, yet his main desire is to arrive at the truth. Such a desire is expressed in the fol- lowing pronunciamento, which may be taken as a prelude to the mature excellence of the 1/undis:

Degage de tout role, presque de tout lien, observant de pres .depuis bientot vingt-cinq ans les choses et les persoimages lit- teraires, n'ayant aucun interet a ne pas les voir tels qu'ils sont, je puis dire que je regorge de verites.

Certain general features of the Causeries du lundi and of the Nouveaux lundis may at once be predicated. We may now per- ceive, says Mr. Brownell of Sainte-Beuve, " how thoroughly and in what classic spirit he rationalized his early Romanticism."

HIS METHOD 641

He is more thoughtful and less soulful. The eulogies of his early period, as well as the insinuations of his middle years, are Third Period ^^^ conspicuous. His interpretation deepens and be- comes more widely historical. The magisterial hand is always there and usually the judicial mind. Everything that, concerns the author and his environment is now taken up, but the man himself is still made the 'center of Sainte-Beuve's analysis. To this principle he clings throughout his career, though with increasing system and science. Both are visible in an article of 1862 (again on Chateaubriand), which is usually esteemed the most important of Sainte-Beuve's critical manifestoes. Here Method ^^ ^'°^® ^^® statement of a thorough biographical

and psychological method together with a Natm-al- istic theory regarding "les families d'esprits." These families of minds consist of groups who show the same mental heredity (for instance, Horace^Boileau, Pope). The day will come, says the critic, when these species will be determined and grouped, and the result will be a new impetus for psychology and litera- ture. But Sainte-Beuve makes only a limited use of this theory and admits that he is chiefly concerned with composing separate monographs. His method is implicit in the motto, " Tel arbre, tel fruit." As a judge, he cannot reckon with the literary product independently of the producer. Then there follows an inventory of the items that constitute the biographical approach: the in- dividual's race, his family, his early associates, the whole story of his youth; he should be studied in the first flush of success and the first symptoms of decay ; his attitude towards religion, nature, women and money, his disciples and enemies, his health and habits should be closely examined. Every writer has an "essential vice," and most of them have a keynote or faaidte maitresse which can be summed up in an illuminating phrase. Taine and the Naturalists did much to develop these last two points.

Did Sainte-Beuve himself apply the scheme thus outlined? Not scientifically, not methodically, and not with an effort to use all the above categories on every author discussed. He was always too artistic to let the skeleton show through the flesh. But it has recently been shown that Sainte-Beuve does, in the majority of his articles, select from this program according

642 THE CRITICS: SAINTE-BEUVE

to the individual case. His view of character-study requires a modified adherence to a system which must have been in his mind long before the article of 1862.

Yet Sainte-Beuve remains an artist in technique and stand- point. It is frequently according to an " acte de gout " rather Art ana than by any elaborate analysis that he makes or sug- Truth gests his judicial decisions. His standards are

taste, truth to life, tradition, and artistic logic or unity. The greatest of these are taste and truth. In matters of poetry and form he generally cleaves to aesthetic judgments. By such standards he seeks to tone down the excesses both of the Romantic and of the Naturalistic schools; from the same principle derives his gentle mockery of mere erudition. To acquire a taste, he proposes no formulas, he only prescribes a great variety of reading. He has scarcely any system of aes- thetics, but he has an infinite discernment. It is partly this side of him that Matthew Arnold considers when he calls Sainte- Beuve " a perfect critic — a critic of measure, not exuberant; of the center, not provincial; of keen industry and curiosity, with ' truth ' for his motto." Truth was at the core of him, thinks Arnold, and he points out how Sainte-Beuve frankly revised his judgments. This is borne out by many passages, notably by the apostrophe to " Reality " in connection with the Naturalistic school: "Realite, tu es le fond de la vie!" Though shorn of sentiment and idealism, " je t'accepterai encore . . . pauvre et mediocre . . . mais prise sur le fait, mais sincere." Not always impartial, Sainte-Beuve is careful about accvu-acy in matters of detail ; and he aims more and more at candor and the whole truth.

But this " myriad-minded " critic is not limited to biography, taste or scientific truth. His vision is ever widening, his insight Historical ever deepening. Neither does he remain in the Appioach judicial mood, he frequently forbears to pronounce his decision. In fact, he tends in the later Lundis to become more historical in outlook, and this is the last of his main char- acteristics. For instance, the individual writer is often placed in his historical period and setting. Villemain had started this practice, but Villemain's figures are shaky in their frame as com- pared with the dexterous workmanship of Sainte-Beuve. His seventeenth and eighteenth-century studies are particularly good

SUMMARY 643

examples of interweaving history and portraiture. His knowl- edge aiid sense of relativity make him thoroughly discriminate between the various epochs. Nor is the environment allowed to subdue the individual, as in the deterministic theoty of Taine. Also Sainte-Beuve, in his later work, leans more towards the depiction of historical personages — generals, statesmen, gre&t ladies — instead of simply criticizing authors. Finally, he is historical in his growing self-effacement and in his indifference to absolute verdicts.

Many other sides might be taken up: his thorough humanism, emphasized by most of his critical compeers (cf . Qu'est-ce qu'un Conclusion classiquef and De la tradition en litter atwre) ; his humanity which glows through his humanism and allows tradition to include everything worth while; his dualism of mind and body, his epicurean sympathies, his irony and his light touch; his devotion to literature, which he never deserted for another call; the richness, the delightful diversity and the charm of his treatment. Let us glance at his cosmopolitan range. A collection of one thousand articles will evidently deal with many things besides French literature, though that pre- dominates. Sainte-Beuve welcomed the study of Greek and Latin antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Orient, England and Italy. In any or all of these periods he is occasionally silent regarding the greatest figures, apparently because they are less representa- tive. He is not concerned with elaborate methods of compara- tive literature, but he throws an impartial light on many writers from Firdusi to Wordsworth. His versatile talent likewise takes toll from religion and science, politics and history. A manifold mind, he has also a manifold style. He held that the critic should not commit himself to any style, but should let it vafy with the subject. This subordination and suppleness he practices par- ticularly in the Lundis, eschewing the rhetoric of earlier essays, though still effectively using figures and the picturesque. He is fond of quotations, by way of illustrating the author. Occasionally he is too journalistic and diffuse. But his style is generally clear and fresh, without obvious mannerisms, and carrying conviction. Sainte-Beuve's morality and spirituality may be questioned, but rarely his intellectual probity. He was variable, not venal. He holds to the rights of reason and

644 THE CRITICS: SAINTE-BEUVE

neutrality (not indifference) and advocates for purposes of critical divination an " energetic self-surrender." It is true that he had more ideas than Voltaire, more knowledge and pene- tration than Arnold. When we add his habitual urbanity and truth-seeking, the orchestration of his coinposite method, his taste and influence, we must recognize in Sainte-Beuve the greatest of modem critics.

CHAPTER II THE PHILOSOPHERS: COMTE, TAINE, RENAN

The struggle between religious faith on the one hand and science or skepticism on the other became a leading issue in Science and the last half of the century. This struggle has Doubt been traced in the development of Sainte-Beuve

and suggested in the criticism of Scherer. The latter, like certain English agnostics, preserved a high standard of morality- after the loss of his Calvinistic beliefs. In philosophy, a deep influence upon French thought was exerted by the discoveries of Darwin (Origin of Species, French translation, 1862) and, to a lesser extent, by the speculations of Mill and Spencer. There appeared a formidable array of scientists, typified by Claude Bernard and his contacts with Realism.^ New interpretations of natural phenomena prevented, for many minds, belief in Catholicism. As in England (George Eliot, Matthew Arnold), many thinkers could find faith only in " honest doubt." Others sought for various " reconciliations " between the scientific and the religious principle; of these the most remarkable example was Auguste Comte, whose master was Saint-Simon.

Henri de Saint-Simon, a descendant of the memoir-writer and an original social theorist, had two main ideas: that of making a " science generale " or a synthesis of useful knowledge ; and that of governing industrial society by a hierarchy of savants, the priests of his new Christianity. Both of these ideas were incorporated into the system of Auguste Comte (1798-1857). Comte began as a obscure teacher of mathematics, passed through Saint-Simonism and a severe nervous illness, was given a position at the Ecole Polytechnique, from which he was removed in 1844, and published his notable Coiars de philosophie positive (6 vols., 1839-42). This earlier part of his life and thought was marked by great diligence, in-

1 See above, Bk. VII, Ch. V. 645

64.6 PHILOSOPHERS: COMTE, TAINE, RENAN

tellectual power and a predilection for " positive " facts and ideas. But about 1845 he suffered a change of heart. He had already been separated from his wife, and now he met a Mme de Vaux, whose influence, especially after her death, had a pro- nounced spiritual effect upon Comte. His mind was turned into channels of mysticism and singularity. His character be- came more and more diflBcult. Staunch supporters, such as J, S. Mill and Littre, fell away from him. Both of these men had been active in obtaining subsidies for Comte, who lived largely upon private benefactions during his last years. He published additions to his philosophic theory (" System of Poli- tics," " Catechism," etc.) and became active in the establish- ment of the College of Positivism and the Religion of Humanity, with himself as high priest. But it is in the earlier Cows de philosophie positive that we must look for his most substantial contributions to thought.

Comte participated in the reconstructive and humanitarian movement that characterized the decade before 1848. Such The Positive writers as George Sand, Fourier, P. Leroux, Philosophy Proudhon and even Michelet were then noted for their ardor in the cause of social regeneration. Comte differs from this group in that he is less Utopian and more cautious in his approach to social and political reform. Such reform de- pends, he held, upon society's beliefs, and therefore a thorough philosophic grounding is the first essential. But this in turn must reckon with all the accretions of modem science, and so the leading idea of Comte's first period was to " transformer la science en philosophie." Positivism, in the earlier sense, means the study of phenomena and their laws; as regards this philos- ophy, says Mill, Comte is the first who attempted its complete systematization and the scientific extension of it to all objects of human knowledge. But it will occur to the reader that we have already had occasion to use such terms as " positive " and " positivist," especially in connection with eighteenth-century thought. In fact, Comte is a more modern philosophe, depend- ent upon such predecessors as Voltaire and Diderot, Descartes and Leibnitz. He has the great advantage, however, of deeper and more systematic knowledge. ,The Cours de philosophie em- braces and synthesizes the exact and the natiu-al sciences as well

POSITIVISM 647

as history and sociology. Comte's most fertile generalizations are along four main lines. First, the " scale qf subordination " of the sciences not only distinguishes between the abstract and the concrete but arranges the former " in an ascending series according to the degree of complexity of their phenomena " (Mill). Secondly, he holds that Sociology tops the scale and requires the use of all the other fields of knowledge. It may be said, then, that Comte was the first to found a sociological method and to emphasize the importance of the nascent science. To this end he made a thorough survey of history, and his third contribution is a philosophy of history which is most enlight- ening in its consideration of causes and leaders. Finally, he distinguishes between the three phases of humanity's develop- ment: the first was Theological with its successive divisions of Fetichism, Polytheism and Monotheism; the second was Metaphysical, where abstract ideas (" the gradual disembodi- ment of a Fetish ") were still considered as powerful entities ; the third is the Positive stage, which, though it does not deny the supernatural, insists on attainable i&cts and the scientific interpretation thereof.) Similarly, each science has at different times gone through the three phases: for example, the passage from alchemy and astrology to their modern counterparts. Comte thus naturally believes in Progress and in the consensus of human efforts towards a bfetter civilization. In his sociology, Comte follows Saint-Simon in declaring for the rule of the Posi- tive savants curiously linked with the captains of industry; his insistence on this hierarchy is rather dogmatic. This tendency, as well as self-conceit and a hieratic attitude, becomes conspic- uous in his later writings when he turned Positivism into the Religion of Humanity. His point of departure is perfectly just — that it is the service of humanity, the "grand Etre," that chiefly counts. But when he tries to convert this rule of life into a creed, with worship of great men and inspiring women, with set observances, a calendar of saints' days, ritual for private and public prayer, excessive systematizing, and much dealing with mystical numbers, the effort fails and becomes partially ridiculous. This is probably the reason why Positivism, which still exists as a church, has only a limited number of adherents in France. Yet it deeply influenced men like Littre and Taine.

648 PHILOSOPHERS: COMTE, TAINE, RENAN

In Brazil, a iubstantial body of ComtistB eaa still be fotind. In England, where the movement took root early, its best prin- ciples were made known by Mill and G. H. Lewes. Frederic Harrison was its ardent disciple, and its highest endeavor was expressed in George Eliot's beautiful poem of the "Choir Invisible."

Comte was not a good writer and did not have the literary power and interest of Taine, who is likewise primarily a philoso- _, . pher. Hippolyte Taine (1828-93) was bom at

Vouziers in the Ardennes; the severity of this coun- try left its mark upon his spirit. His life is mainly a " bio- graphic intellectuelle," and even his correspondence contains little personal detail. He was reared in simple and industrious surroundings, then taken to Paris, where for seven years he was a day pupil at the College Bourbon. His reflective disposition de- clared itself early, together with a tendency towards delicate health. Realizing that his vocation was the study of philosophy, he entered the Ecole Normale (1845) with a brilliant group of fellow-students — Prevost-Paradol, E. About, F. Sarcey. Here Taine amassed much knowledge of metaphysics, history, litera- ture, and later of science. He was refused his diploma {agrega- tion) because of the theological leanings of his judges and was sent to teach in the provinces. As an " intellectual," he reacted against this environment, resigned his position and came back to Paris to take his doctorate and write critical articles. These and his monographs gradually gave him fame, and he was made pro- fessor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (1864). In the same year appeared his notable Histoire de la litterature anglaise. For a time he was able to turn to his favorite philosophical studies, then the war of 1870 precipitated him into another path. As a patri- otic monument, a contribution to the recovery of his country, Taine wrote Les Origines de la France contemporaine, which occupied him for twenty years. At his death he ranked as.one of the foremost critical authorities in France. In character lie was gentle and reserved, but his intellect was bold, hard and encyclopedic.

A record of Taine's mental development could be written only by establishing his relations with many thinkers of his own and the preceding period. For example, he drew from Hegel his phi-

TAINE'S POINT OF VIEW 649

losophy of history, from Comte the formula of the milieu (see HU Mind ^^°^) > ^.nd in the English positivists and utilitarians Taine foimd material to substa^atiate his scientific dogmatism and his philosophic determinism. Receptive of many elements, his mind yet remains original in its assimilative and organizing power. There are two distinct sides to his intelligence, so Lemaitre calls him a " poete-logicien." On the one hand, as Taine himself said, " ma forme d'esprit est frangaise et latine." That is, he had the Classical habit of orderly analysis and clear expression ; this was modernized by the scientific passion for note- taking and for the "petit fait vrai." On the other hand, he had a Teutonic imagination and some remains of Romantic sensibility. His " genie poetique " appears in his faculty for large creative constructions, in his metaphysical melancholy and especially in his style, which offers a succession of brilliant images and metaphors. This double gift allows Taine to ap- preciate such opposites as German idealism and English common sense, as well as a poet like Musset and a psychologist like Stendhal. But it left him with a divided mind and a troubled soul.

In fact, Taine well exemplifies the conflict between the scien- tific temper and the demands of our spiritual natvu-e. The former tendency apparently won the victory, for Taine could not rest in skepticism. His attitude towards " la science " (which he rather confuses with philosophy) is significant of his whole generation. About 1848, Taine, like Kenan, set up absolute science as an ideal and a faith. This was confirmed by his career at the Ecole Normale and later by his specialistic studies in physiology, anatomy, chemistry, so- ciology, etc. His style, in the sixties, abounds in scientific com- parisons and metaphors (cf. George Eliot and Sainte-Beuve) . Finally, he held to the Hegelian idea of the unity of all science, and thus he came to his great generalization that moral or human phenomena, like those of the physical world, obey in- variable laws. This is the doctrine of determinism. Taine even declared that "vice and virtue are products like sugar and vitriol " — and are just as susceptible of a qualitative analysis. He saw the history of literature and literature itself as fields for psychological investigation. In short, he applied a uni-

650 PHILOSOPHERS: COMTE, TAINE, RENAN

versal determinism, and his favorite book De I'lntelligence (1870) gives the doctrine of which his other books are illus- trations: he makes all knowledge proceed from the sensations, and he conceives of nature as the reign of law, which should be extended ta the operations of the mind. But as early as 1867 Taine had written De I'Ideal dans I'art (third volume of La Phitosophie de I'art, 1865-69), admitting a hierarchy in moral and artistic values; and now the effects of the Franco-Prussian war turned him towards a more moralistic conception of history. Regrets for a changed Germany, doubts and prayers for a stricken France combined with an inbred pessimism to leave him without confidence in modern historical institutions (Les Origines). Also science seemed no longer the sole panacea, and in his old age Taine reverted to the social and individual neces- sity of some form of the Christian belief.

As a whole, however, his work represents rather the deter- ministic and positive strain. In literary criticism, he applied too „ . . . rigidly a set of formulas. Chief among these are the

doctrine of the " f aculte maitresse " and the famous theory of " race, milieu et moment." As early as his Essai sur Tite-Live (1856), Taine is seeking for the master-faculty or the "trait caracteristique et dominant duquel tout peut se deduire geometriquement." In Livy, this dominant trait is found in the fact that he was an orator who became a historian. Taine thus explains many things in Livy's career — but he does not explain Livy. Still more categorical is the application of " race, r- milieu et moment " in the Histoire de la litterature anglaise (1864 f.). These three forces are viewed as precedent conditions, operating on a writer or a school. Race signifies the innate, the hereditary or racial disposition of the man ; milieu means environ- ment in the broadest sense, including climate and the atmospheric pressure of the political or religious creed; moment indicates not only the time of an author's appearance but also the momentum or " Vitesse acquise " in a given direction before he appeared. The system is evidently too rigid to be applied to English litera- ture, in which tradition counts less than the free play of indi- vidual characteristics. Taine is eternally recurring to the influ- ence of the Anglo-Saxon race, of the Norman Conquest, of the English soil. Furthermore, he is hampered by his obsession of the

TAINE AS HISTORIAN 651

Ideal Englishman, who is supposed to take on successive incarna- tions in Chaucer, Shakespeare, Shelley and others. Taine usually- preferred English to French institutions. With all its faults, this monument of criticism has justly been called the historjr-' of English literature which comes nearest to being literature itself; it is written with a massive brilliance and with a cumulative power in the descriptive and analytical passages; and it contains many interesting ideas and contributions — for example, the studies of milieu in connection with the Restoration Drama and with Dickens.^ Similar qualities are found in the various Essais de critique et d'histoire, in the second volume of which {Nouveavx essais, 1865) appeared the epoch- making article on Balzac. It would be evident from this article that Taine is by no means lacking in a sense of literary beauties. But he preferred to consider masterpieces as documents or as " signs " of the times. He made his taste and his imagina- tion subserve science. His criticism remains philosophic history, with the qualities and defects of such. The danger is that his philosophic " poise settles into immobility " (Brownell) . Therefore Taine is more dogmatic and more ridden by his theories than Sainte-Beuve, from whom many of his principles derive.

Taine's method appears at its height in the treatment of history. Conspicuous here are his constructive ability, the „. power of piling fact upon fact, and also, unfor-

tunately, the predominance of fixed ideas. The Origines de la France contemporaine (1875-94) are composed of successive Parts, on the old monarchy^ on th6 Revolution, on the Regim.e__modeme (including Napoleon), Reacting from his experiences of the Commune (1871), the writer pens a strong indictment of the French RevolutiDOr which he considers as a compound' of anarchy and Jacobinism from the very start. He writes like a " pessimist in a passion," losing his impartiality and judgment. Here, as in his treatment of Napoleon, Taine allows himself a tone of moral indignation which scarcely-agress with his deterministic theories. Too often he has a case to

• M. J.-J. Jusserand was in his youth an admirer and a disciple of Taine's. His BiiMre litUraire du peuple anglais (1894-1904) phows certain of Taine's princi- ples more cautiously applied and is more nearly the work of a specialist.

652 PHILOSOPHERS: COMTE, TAINE, RENAN

prove, he leaves the straight path of historic induction, and he simplifies toomuch in applying set formulas to men like Danton, Robespierre and Napoleon himself — that " condottiere of the Italian Renaissance." The Regime moderne is better in its ap- proximation to historical truth and its analysis of modern insti- tutions. But the Anden Regime, often cited in these pages, is Taine's masterpiece as regards both penetration of the past and philosophic insight. Even here he makes too much of the Classical spirit and its influence upon the Revolution. Yet the author's two main qualities, his faculty of generalizing thought and the sweep and power of his objective, metallic, image-laden style, are most visible in this volume. He uses history, as he had used criticism, for philosophic ends. Thus in three fields Taine is par excellence " the philosopher and historian of the realistic and scientific movement." His methods were closely associated with those of the Naturalistic novel. Taine and Renan seem to have been the paramoimt influences upon the last generation of French writers.

Ernest Renan (1823-92) was less of a logician than Taine and more of a critical historian. His imaginative feeling for the past was encouraged by his Breton upbringing; he was always sensitive to Celtic poetry and melancholy. Reared in poverty and in a clerical environment, he became a model boy and student. Attracting the attention of Monseigneur Dupanloup, Renan passed through three seminaries, ending at Saint-Sulpice. The raw youth was inducted successively into a classical education, contemporary literature "and German philos- ophy. The last subject shook his faith, which was completely overthrown by the study of Semitic philology. This became his own special field. His honesty soon compelled him to leave the priesthood, a calling to which he was temperamentally well adapted. In this crisis of his fortunes, Renan was sustained by the devotion of his sister, Henriette, who was in turn his practical guide and his spiritual adviser. He taught in small schools, worked towards his university degrees and formed a fruitful association with Berthelot, the scientist. The young scholar wrote L'Avenir de la Science (1849, publ. 1890^. This chaotic and enthusiastic book is Renan's earliest profession of the scientific faith and contains several of his pet ideas, es-

KENAN'S CAREER 6S8

pecially that the world must be regenerated from the top and that the people should be jjuided by the savants (ef. Saint- Simon and Comte) .

Kenan was made an agrege of the University and finally a doc- tor. His thesis on Averroes et I'Averrdisme (1852), dealing ffis Career ^^*^ Aristotelian doctrines among the Arabs, already reveals his interest in the origin and evolution of beliefs. He also published his Histoire generale des langues simitiques, and in the following year (1856) he married the niece of Ary Scheffer, the painter. Soon he became known as the writer of charming critical articles — on Marcus Aurelius, on Turgenev and especially the famous Essai sur la poesie des races celtiques. The most notable of these articles were collected in the Essais de morale et de critique (1859). They show Kenan not only as concerned with questions of race — one of his chief preoccupa- tions— but also as passing into his second phase, that of the aesthete, interested alike in moral and in artistic beauty.' This Second side of him was further stimulated by the voyage to

Phase Syria and Palestine undertaken in company with

his sister, who died abroad. It has been said that Henriette died in order that the Vie de Jesus might live. Much of this celebrated book (1863) was written spontaneously in Palestine, away from sources and authorities, and it is not strictly accurate in matters of exegesis and historical fact. But it is a work of genius in its poignancy, its sincerity and in the freshness of its romantic and human charm. Kenan reconstructs and rationalizes the past, but he feels " la douceur de cette idylle sans pareille." For the first time the life of Christ was written from a layman's stand- point, so that all might read — and all did. The treatment, skeptical yet sympathetic, appealed to a wide circle of former believers and cultured folk. The book popularized the " higher criticism " of the Bible and gave its author a European celebrity. He was made a Professor in the College de France, but noisy manifestations in the lecture-room and on the streets led to his removal. The Vie de Jesus was the first volume in the epic series Third Phase: called Histoire des Origines du Christianisme. The the Scholar ggj-ies also comprises Les Apotres, St. Paul, L'Ante- christ, etc. (1866-81). For each of these volumes, Kenan visited the appropriate historic site (Asia Minor or Rome) and

654 PHILOSOPHERS: COMTE, TAINE, RENAN

according to the method initiated in the Vie de Jesus, he linked with the religious story such consideration of geography, arche- ology, politics and the general milieu as would give solidity to the treatment. He carefully used original sources, with a full sense of their uncertainty, and with much historical tact or power of divination. This critical penetration is coupled with a gift for resurrecting ancient civilizations and religions. Renan " gave a voice to dead races." He and Comte made men realize that the predominance of past generations over the present is in the ratio of a hundred to one. Kenan's vast knowledge of Oriental lan- guages, races and customs allowed him to introduce many com- parisons— perhaps too many — with other religions and with modern Eastern life. Similar methods were employed in his ex- tensive Histoire du peuple d'Israel (1887 f.), which connects with the previous series in that Israel paved the way for the coming of Christ. Renan again satisfies his passion for origins by show- ing how the nomadic tribes of Judea, their warrior-kings and especially their prophets, prepared the " royaume 'de Dieu." This phrase for him meant a devotion to the ideas and ideals which Christ best represents. Rejecting the divinity of the Messiah, as well as revelation and miracles, Renan's attitude towards Christianity remains sympathetic, as opposed to the scoflSng of Voltaire, and is of course based on a much wider historical knowledge. He valued scholarship chiefly for the light that it throws on the human spirit. His career was crowned by his elec- tion to the French Academy, by his reappointment to t^ie College de France, where he was presently made administrator, and by the editing of the learned Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticamm, which he preferred to any other of his works.

But in the meantime Renan had entered on his last phase — which some have called his " dilettanteism." To understand this Fourth development, we must retrace our steps. Even be-

^^^^^ fore the war of 1870, Renan as a liberal had become

interested in politics and was induced to stand for election as deputy. He was not elected, however, since his views were too theoretical for his constituents. The war disillusioned him con- cerning German idealism, nor was he satisfied with French democracy; his opinions, expressed in the Reforme intellectueUe et morale de la France, were not well received. Henceforth he

KENAN'S REMINISCENCES 655

felt himself powerless in the realm of action, and his general dis- enchantment finds expression in the exquisite but bitter Dialogues philosopMques (1876). This form (as in the later Drames phi- losophiques) is well suited to the supple variety and shading of Renan's thought. Certain of his philosophical principles may at this point be summarized. He believes that there is no special Providence but rather an ideal principle in the imiverse, which may finally evolve into the royaume de Dieu. To this end all disinterested forms of effort should collaborate, whether in science, morality or art. Anything else is material and ephemeral. Renan still holds to the idea of an intellectual elite, which shall govern the stupid masses. Machinery, vulgarity and material luxury are among the modern deadly sins ; he prefers cloistered study and even pagan art, as is visible in L'Antechrist. More and more he takes the spectacular view of the universe. Thus his final manner is marked by a growing skepticism, an indifference to many issues, and a bewildering habit of self-con- tradiction. Also his moral tone relaxes and he becomes very indulgent to human weaknesses. All this may be considered dilettanteism, if we remember that Renan himself remained a hard and honest worker and that the dilettante habit of mind became much more pronounced in his disciples.

In his later years, Renan was something of a social oracle and entertainer. He carried into the world the priestly unction Renan in which he never lost, his " fleeting " epicureanism and Retrospect jjjg gmiiing disenchantment. Part of his moral biography is conveyed in the Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse (1883) , in which the author is once more concerned with origins — the origins of Renan. These delightful pages contain not only reminiscences but childhood tales narrated by his mother; they emphasize the Breton influences on his youth, the value of his clerical education, and the story of why he left the priesthood. The sentimental side of Renan appears in the Souvenirs, -the thoughtful side in the undramatic Drames philosopMques (1888). Of these the most significant are L'Abbesse de Jouarre and Le Pritre de Nemi; the latter concerns a priest of Diana and the evolution of a religious belief. Shakespeare's figures are also revived symbolically, and Prospero the thinker becomes recon- ciled with Caliban, who is democracy. Towards the end, Renan

656 PHILOSOPHERS: COMTE, TAINE, RENAN

shows more optimistic tendencies as regards both this world and the next. He comes to define life as a " charmante promenade a travers la realite." His style was graceful, languorous, insinuat- ing, romantic in its subjectivism and sentiment. His origi- nality has been described as a compound of " sincerity and irony, of skepticism mixed with the habit of religious speech." He was one of the leaders of his time, he profoundly affected the modem conception of religious history, and influenced, through his writings and personal magnetism, such men as Bourget and Barres, Vogiie and Anatole France.

CHAPTER III MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS

We shall consider here certain historians, moralists and poly- graphs who wrote mainly in the second half of the century.

. Edgar Quinet (1803-75) was primarily a historian.

The life-long friend of Michelet, whom he resembled in ardent imagination and idealism, Quinet was by birth-right a Romanticist; but his work extended into the Second Empire and imderwent the influences of that period. Through residence and marriage, Quinet became well acquainted with Germany and was among the earlier profound students of German thought (Herder and Niebuhr) . He was essentially a mystic, as well as a Republican and a Protestant. His mystical tendencies were first revealed in the prose poem of Ahasverxis (1833), a prolonged vision of the divine principle pervading the history of the race. Quinet's constant tendency was to confuse religious and secular history and to view the former as always dominant. His great work. La Revolution (1865), maintains that the French Revolu- tion failed because it was not animated by a religious principle and did not establish a new religion. Quinet's violent attacks on Catholicism, particularly on the Jesuits, had caused him to lose his chair at the College de France and after the Coup d'Etat of 1851, he went into exile and wrote his Revolution. He is also to be credited with smaller historical studies on Roumania and Italy, with another formidable vision of the universe called La Creation and with a final philosophical testament, L'Esprit nouveau (1874). The last two works reveal the influence of English science, particularly of Darwin, Quinet's main idea was that of a divine unity — the Absolute — in every field, whether moral, social or scientific. He confused natural law with the spiritual world. He was less of a reasoner than a seer; he fore- told the Great War and the role of Germany therein. He was endowed with an exuberant imagination; he was "God-intoxi-

657

658 MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS

cated," like Spinoza; he was eloquent, romantic and versatile, even too versatile. " L'immense M. Quinet," as Veuillot calls him, wrote " immense " prose-poems, but his intellect, though serious and lofty, was not vast enough for the task he assumed.

More rational and convincing is the work of another historian, Coimt Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59). Like Montesquieu, who greatly influenced his thought, Tocqueville came of a family connected with the magistracy and had a legal education. For a time he was judge at Versailles, then he was sent to the United States on an oflacial mission. The result of his visit was the famous Democratie en Amerique (1835-39), the first thoroughgoing and impartial study of our institutions. After this success, Tocqueville embarked on a political career; he became a deputy and, for a brief interval, minister under Louis Napoleon. But he was not a practical politician and he retired after the Coup d'Etat. Failing health did not allow him to complete L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution, of which the first part was published in 1856.

Tocqueville's two books derive from his vision of the necessity of democracies and his desire to check their less fortunate con- His Works sequences. As a liberal, an aristocrat and a his- torian of institutions, Tocqueville seems enlightened and im- partial in his approach to the democratic question. "Sa methode etait loyale et scrupuleuse comme son ame ... II avait I'intuition du monde moderne " (Faguet) . Unlike his brother-historians, he is a cautious generalizer, has no set philosophy of history, and deals even too sparsely with con- siderations of climate, civilizations and race. Behind these forces he sees Democracy as a still greater force in itself; this he studies in its characteristics, its causes and its results. La Democratie en Amerique was also valuable and novel because it displaced the French Revolution as the main preoccupation of historians and showed how the rule of the people was effected in another country. American democracy was different, was more stable, more conservative and bourgeois than the first French Republic. But Tocqueville did not fail to point out the dangers of democracy, its leveling tendencies, its mass- despotism, the lowering treatment to which it subjects intellect and superiority. His work is a useful counterbalance against " the blaze and whirlwind of Rousseau " (Acton) .

POLITICS 669

L'Ancien Regime is the suitable complement to the preceding volume; it shows, a generation before Taine, how the French passed from the monarchical to the democratic State. Again, Tocqueville's chief contention is a conservative one: that the Revolution did not overthrow everything, that on the contrary it kept and developed one of the notable features of the old regime; to wit, administrative centralization. The Revolution further standardized and regularized government and ruled by a central control which Napoleon carried on. One of Tocqueville's for- ward-looking ideas is a federation of European democracies, along American lines. He would impose certain " checks " upon Republics and maintain an aristocratic infusion through the rep- resentative corps (cf. Montesquieu), the separation of adminis- trative and legislative functions and the independence of the judiciary. Tocqueville wrote in a clear well-ordered manner, though his pages are sometimes too thickly strewn with ob- servations and digressions; his type of mind was logical, lucid and conservative.

The predominance of the historicarl genre throughout the century was forwarded by various governments and ministries. Growth of Under the bourgeois monarchy (Guizot and Thiers) , Historical historical study, considered as a " national institu-

" ^ tion," was thoroughly reorganized. This movement

was aided by the foundation of special schools and chairs, by the establishment of learned journals and of great collections. To this day, the section devoted to the " Histoire de France " looms largest in the national libraries. Knowledge of medieval France was particularly encouraged by the Ecole des Chartes (revived in 1829) ; this school also developed the study of Old French and Celtic philology. Under Napoleon III, much historical research was accomplished through the favor of the Emperor and through the influence of Duruy's ministry (1863-69). The Ecole des Hautes Etudes, founded in 1868, has developed scholarly special- ization in many fields, and specialization is the mark of latter- day history. With the exception of Taine and of Renan, great names of assured literary standing are scarcely to be found, but there are several minor historians who deserve consideration.

Fustel de Coulanges may almost be classed among the major prophets. He led the calm life (1830-89) of a scholar and

660 MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS

teacher. Influenced chiefly by Montesquieu and by Tocqueville, his works exhibit the importance of institutions and forms of Fnstel de government as well as the continuity of national tra- Coulanges ditions. La Cite antique (1864) had an unusual success as a reconstitution of Roman life under the Repubhc and as an excellent study of the ancient city in general. Artist- ically and historically considered, the book is a masterpiece. In proportion, penetration and judgment, it leaves little to be de- sired. Precise and realistic in his style, Fustel gives life and substance to his theme. Yet much of his reconstruction is con- jectural, while his criticism of texts and sources is not sufficiently severe. The writer views religion as the main principle of fam- ily life and of the State. He rivals Michelet in his " tableaux d'ensemble " and in his emphasis on the soul of a nation. Fustel's Histoire des Institutions politiques de I'ancienne France (1875- 92) gave him rank as a notable medievalist. He discounted the effect of the Frankish invasions and insisted on the continued power of Roman institutions. He studied the origins of feudal- ism, since he wished the new France to conserve the best of its past. In both books, Fustel writes in a sober scientific manner; he has a broad vision and a sure touch ; his influence on histori- cal research has been considerable.

Henri Martin's useful and monumental Histoire de France (3rd ed., 19 vols., 1837-54), belongs to an earlier generation. Minor The work long held its own as a standard national

Historians history. A good short history of France, still current in our own time, is that of Victor Duruy, whose role as Minister of Public Instruction has been mentioned. Diu-uy wrote several popular schoolbooks and was considered something of an author- ity on the Roman Empire {Histoire Romaine, 1843-74). Of another caliber is the imposing work of Albert Sorel (1842-1906) on L'Europe et la Revolution frangaise (1885-1904) . Sorel shows how the Revolutionists became heirs to the foreign policy of the old regime; he recognizes the interplay of foreign opinion and domestic events; and he traces completely the course of the ensuing wars. Judicial, learned and a master of composition, Sorel has won a unique place among the historians of diplomacy. " His book," says Gooch, " is at once the first adequate study of the Revolution as an international event and the fairest judgment

ETHICS 661

of it as an episode in French history." Finally, Ernest Lavisse (1842-1922) has written the history of Prussia, but is best known through the Histoire de France (18 vols., 1900-1911) due to him and his collaborators. Written in accordance with present special- istic tendencies, this cooperative work has superseded the single- handed histories and is now considered the standard authority. Lavisse himself wrote for this History a masterly treatment of Louis XIV} As professor and publicist, he has been active in remodeling the Sorbonne and in enforcing the ideal that the proper function of University men is to " creer la science " — that is, to increase and organize knowledge.

French Catholicism was on the defensive until the end of the century and was usually associated with extreme reactionary Moralists: principles. Among the staunchest defenders of the VeuiUot faith was Louis Veuillot (1813-83), a virulent journalist whose portrait appears in Augier's Fils de Giboyer. Veuillot's reputation as a writer has grown in recent years. He came of the people, received a scanty popular education and through a visit to Rome was converted at the age of twenty-five. He went in for Catholic journalism (L'Univers), and for many years he spent himself in this profession. Upholding the Church against her various enemies, he was k bitter fighter and a satirist of contemporary life. He had wit, originality, unequal talent and poor taste. He became known for his short articles and melanges, of which the best-known have been collected in Les Libre-penseurs (1848), Les Parjums de Rome and Les Odeurs de Paris (1866) , Veuillot's masterpiece. This volume proceeds from the thesis that while Rome is the spiritual head of the world, Paris is only its " tete charnelle " and a center of corruption. The city abounds in the morbid and mortuary odors of decom- position. Veuillot saw materialism as rampant in social life, in science and philosophy. So he attacks journalism, the drama, the salons, democracy and literature, whether Romantic or Real- istic. Though Classical in standards, he knew neither restraint nor good manners, and his style is violent, energetic and often coarse. He is by turns racy and amusing or sarcastic and in- tolerant. "He had a marvelous gift of righteous indignation

' Cf . also (preceding the above) the Histoire gSnirale du IVe si^e i not jours, ed. Lavisse and Rambaud, 1892-1899.

662 MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS

and vitriolic expression" (Guerard). He also had undoubted

sincerity and power. His function was to display his partial

view of truth and to manifest his scorn for the Second Empire

and the " persecutors " of the Church. He believed that human

nature was thoroughly corrupt and, like De Maistre, he held

sourly to the principle of dogmatic religious authority.

A more artistic and agreeable writer was Eugene Fromentin

(1820-76), painter, traveler and novelist. Fromentin lived his

_ ^. books and one may almost say he painted them. Fromentin „. . , . /• • , • , T

His pictures of Aincan countries, whether on canvas

or on the printed page, are imsurpassed for colorful and exact detail (cf. Un Ete dans le Sahara). As a novelist, he shines rather in description than in composition or action. His best- known work is Dominique (1863) , which is a " roman d'analyse " of the personal sort, in the tradition of Adolphe. It is a psycho- logical study of the artistic temperament and of self-sacrifice. The hero falls in love with an old acquaintance but has the strength to renounce his love since she is now a married woman. In its idealism, the novel is reactionary, yet many Realistic devices are used in the technique of description and in the sensory approach to nature. But Fromentin had a pure and classical taste which led hun back more and more to the " na- ture " of the ancients. This may be seen in his art-criticism, for instance, in Les Maitres d' autrefois (1876).

During the last two decades of the century, on both sides of the Atlantic, the book known as " Amiel's Journal " had a con- . . , siderable vogue. Its appearance coincided with the

prevailing mood of religious doubt and self-an- alysis.^ Henri-Frederic Amiel (1821-1881) was a disillusioned professor, an introspective thinker, a sensitive and conscientious spirit. He was a Genevan by birth and residence, but Euro- pean in his outlook. This Journal intime (1883-84) offers in many ways an epitome of the century's thought and feeling. It is a diary of the inner life, subtly explaining the writer's sterility and melancholy. It also evidences much penetra'^ion into phi- losophy and literature, and it contains many excellent critical judgments. Other moralists will be treated in connection with the reaction against Realism (see next chapter).

' Compare Matthew Arnold, Mra. Ward's Robert Bltmere, •to.

BOOK IX THE END OF THE CENTURY

CHAPTER I

IN FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY AND OTHER CURRENTS

The disaster of 1870-71 meant the dethronement of France as the first power in continental Europe. The war left a deep The Third mark upon many writers as well as upon the French Republic populace. The civil strife of the Commime aug- mented the feeling of uncertainty and depression. After making peace with Prussia, Thiers conducted his government from Ver- sailles and in the Spring of '71 sent troops against the Com- mimists. There followed a brief and bitter civil war before a stable government was restored. Thiers, as the first President of the Third Republic, was supported by Gambetta, orator and statesman ; and for some time the policy of " la revanche " against Germany was in vogue. This included the inauguration of uni- versal service and the maintenance of a large military organiza- tion. The French had promptly paid the war-indemnity of five billion francs. Under the Presidency of Marshal MacMahon (1873-79) the constitution of 1875 was promulgated. This divided the National Assembly into two governing bodies, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. MacMahon did not agree well with Jules Simon, his minister. Simon and Gambetta were the real powers in France, and the former began the dissensions with the Pope which continued for some time. Grevy was the next President (1879-87), whose chief minister, Jules Ferry, was marked for his anti-clericalism and his efforts in behalf of secular education. The colonial expansion of France in Indo- China (Tonkin) , the protectorate of Tunis and the beginnings of the advance into Northern Africa date from 1881. A little later came the popular craze for General Boulanger. The " Boulan-

663

664 FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY

giste " movement, which continued under the Presidency of Sadi Carnot (1887-1904), was finally arrested by the suicide of its leader. The movement was accompanied by much political acrimony, charges of corruption and the exaggerations of shrill partisan journalism — three of the worst features of the Third Republic. They were again manifest in the Panama scandal, which ended in the condemnation of De Lesseps, the chief engineer of the undertaking. A more peaceful attitude towards the Church having been adopted, the Republic was recognized by Leo XIII in 1892. The brief Presidency of Casimir-Perier was followed by that of Felix Faure (1895-1899), who, like his successor, M. Loubet, was a man of the people. In 1896, the Dual Alliance with Russia was officially annoimced. Under Faure and the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry occurred the famous Dreyfus affair. Captain Dreyfus was condemned to life-imprison- ment, in 1895, on charges of betraying military secrets to Ger- many. Many felt that Dreyfus, as a Jew, had been made a scapegoat, in order to avoid an army scandal. Disinterested ef- forts were made, notably by Emile Zola and Col. Picquart, to secure a new trial, and many " intellectuals," such as Anatole France, came to the defence of Dreyfus. His second trial (August, 1899) resulted in a milder condemnation, attended by a specific pardon and a general amnesty. Nothing was ever proved against Dreyfus, but the case was used to foment every kind of political and racial passion. Under Loubet (1899-1906) , the Paris Exposi- tion of 1900 took place. In matters of education, M. Combes, as minister, accomplished the separation of Church and State. The clerical orders and powers, encouraging aristocratic education and royalist sympathies, had not helped the Republic. Combes broke up and expelled many religious associations, and the law of 1905 made the separation complete. From 1904-07 dates the formation of the Entente Cordiale with England, destined to have such important consequences; by the treaty of 1904 there was achieved an amicable division of spheres of influence in Egypt and Morocco. M. Fallikes was made President in 1906, and M. Poincarfi in 1913. At the turn of the century, France, in spite of her stationary birth-rate, was fairly prosperous. The con- dition of the working-classes had improved, while the intellectual life of the country had been forwarded by the establishment

HUYSMANS 665

of compulsory free education. In 1880-90 secular education came to emphasize the importance of modern subjects, and latterly more place has been given to the proper instruction of women. Young people have taken an increasing interest in athletics. Colonial expansion, especially in Africa and the Orient, revived a taste for adventure and was associated with the literature of exoticism (cf. Loti). The Expositions of 1889 and 1900 showed that while France was participating in the results, good and evil, of modern industrialism, her products still kept a distinction of their own. This interest in articles de vertu is reflected in the fiction of Bourget. Connected with the in- dustrial situation was the growth of Socialism, which introduced another strong element into the confusion of political parties and the rapid changes of ministries in France.

Let us now see what was happening in literature, particularly in fiction.

The school of Zola, attacked by Brunetiere and others, had lost part of its dominion during the eighties. Five of the master's jj .. former adherents, including Paul Margueritte and " J.-H. Rosny," had on the appearance of La Terre (1887) signed a protest against Zolaism. The advent of the psychological novel, the passing of scientific positivism and the pressure of a more idealistic current (see below) did not favor Naturalism; about 1900 an " enquete " among a number of writers seemed to establish that the movement was dead. Yet there remains the heritage of Naturalism, particularly as regards the notation of fact and the careful descriptions of milieux. Thus the movement did not pass away with Zola but became blended with other movements, especially with the development of the symbolistic and the historical novel.

For example, the sinister figure of Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848- 1907) is regarded by some as the most advanced Naturalist, by „ others as an arch-symbolist and a decadent mystic.

Huysmans, who came of Dutch ancestry, was a government employee, a slow but careful writer and a person of unattractive character. He passed through a gradual evolution from materialism to an aesthetic Catholicism which led him to make a retreat among the Trappists and finally to profess con-

666 FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY

version. Beginning with a displeasing contribution to the Soirees de Medan and with a short grimy study of prostitution (Marthe, 1876), Huysmans then became introspective and entered on his psychic pilgrimage with A Rehours (1884). The very title of this novel indicates a perversity which the hero, Des Esseintes, exemplifies in his search for rare sensations. He finds them in jewels, perfumes, music, weird paintings and medieval Latin literature. A Rehours applies the processes of external Natural- ism to a morbid inner life. The book influenced Oscar Wilde and the hyperaesthetes. It well illustrates the restless neuras- thenia of its author, who goes a step further in La-has (1891), a " disagreeable medley of modern and medieval nastiness " (Wells). The occult and the sacrilegious, particularly in the form of Satanism, here grip the ailing souls of Durtal and of his creator, Huysmans. En route (1895) shows a straighter pro- gression in its penitential tears and its desire for holiness. Finally, La Cathedrale and L'Oblat carry the writer, if not into true religion, at least towards contemplative peace and aesthetic bliss. Like others, Huysmans seems to have sought for faith as a final sensation. His treatment of these mingled themes is repellent, but his soul-states are apparently sincere and exhaus- tively studied ; he thus offers a typical case of decadence blended with Neo-Catholicism; and his literary talent, shown in a nervous impressionistic style with forceful epithet and metaphor, is very considerable. His novels are weak in composition, he can depict only himself, his taste is contaminated, but his power of picturesque description is almost faultless.

Another student of Catholicism, though from a different stand- point, was Ferdinand Fabre (1827-98). Born and bred in the Fabre ™^® mountains of the Cevennes, trained as a youth

for the priesthood, Fabre combines these antecedents in a succession of novels by turns autobiographical, clerical and rustic. As a Realistic delineator of peasantry and clergy, he is a disciple of Balzac, and his masterpiece, L'Ahbe Tigrane (1873), offers parallels with the CurS de Tours. Les Courbezon and Mon Oncle Celestin are also notable novels. This writer studies the passions of the clergy, their benevolence, ambition and pride. But as a whole Fabre's methods are more blunt than artistic, and he never freed himself from a certain provincialism. The brutal

OTHER NOVELISTS 667

Natiiralism of Octave Mirbeau likewise depicts the priesthood (L'Abbe Jules, etc.), as well as other subjects.

There were several writers who began as imitators or comrades of Zola and who ended in quite a different manner. Paul Adam P ul Adam (1862-1920) accomplished an interesting evolution from a crude materialism {Chair molle) to a sort of symbolism which implied a new conception of the historical novel. This is called by M. Doumic the " roman collectif," since the effort is towards group-psychology, towards depicting the collective soul of an epoch, a crowd, a race. In the series called Le Temps et la Vie (1899 f.) Paul Adam vividly portrays the Napoleonic era, and less vividly that of the Restoration and Romanticism. The series consists of four novels: La Force, L'Enjant d'Avsterlitz, La Ruse and Au Soleil de Juillet. It is in moments of national danger that the soul of a people is truly unified; consequently La Force is a fine and stirring novel, show- ing France as exalted first by self-defensive patriotism and then by the intoxication of Napoleonic glory. The cult of energy and of appetites is well-rendered. L'Enjant d'Austerlitz, on the contrary, represents a period (the Restoration) of reaction and confusion, and the novel, which is too involved and compre- hensive, suffers from the defects of its subject. The Soleil de Juillet gives a massive handling of the Romantic era. The author excels in large frescoes, in descriptive sweep, rather than in psychological penetration or in artistic style. He combines features from Balzac and from Zola, and it is a curious tribute to the former master that Balzacian heroes — Rastignac or De Marsay — appear in the background of Adam's fiction as historical personages.

It was natural that Paul Margueritte (1860-1918) and his brother Victor, sons of a distinguished general in the Franco- Xhe Prussian war, should turn to that period for the

Margueritte cycle of novels called Une Epoque (1898-1904) . This ^° ^" also includes four titles: Le Desastre, Les Trongons du Glaive, Les Braves Gens, La Commune. Like Adam, the Margueritte brothers found that the national soul is stronger in wartime than in reaction: Le Desastre lent itself to a more in- tensive portrayal than did the Prussian occupation (Le4 Trongons du Glaive) or La Commune. The first novel is evidently modeled

668 FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY

on Zola's Debacle, and though Zola's gloomy depiction of war remains unrivaled, the morale of Le Desastre is of a healthier and more tonic quality. Indeed, this quality is characteristic of the best work of Paul Margueritte, who turned from the vulgar Natu- ralism of Pascal Gefosse (1887), through the psychological deli- cacy of La Tourmente (1893), to the collaborative cycle above- mentioned. Even here the influence of Zola is seen, in the impor- tance given to humble people and particularly in the treatment of crowds — the mob which is alternately childish, curious, crim- inal or heroic. The scenes of collective life in La Commune are very impressive. But as in other historical novels (cf. Flaubert and Adam) , the strictly fictional elements of incident and charac- ter are unduly minimized by the multitude of historical data. Further examples of the " roman collectif " in cycles will be treated in connection with Barres and Anatole France (see below) . Another pair of brothers, J. H. and S. J. Boex, signed with the joint pseudonym of " J.-H. Rosny." They may also be classed J.-H. among the " neo-realists," in that they approved

Rosny ^jjg protests against Zola and stood, theoretically,

for a broader and more idealistic view of humanity. Their work, however, is extremely eclectic and peculiar. It is Naturalistic in Nell Horn (1886) , a study of London low life and the Salvation Army ; it is prehistoric in such weird imaginings as Vamireh and Les Xipehuz, in which we approach, conjecturally, not only the mammoths but the manners of the antediluvians ; it deals with the artistic temperament in Le Termite, and with sociology in the two important novels, Le Bilateral (1887) and Marc Fane (1888). These two studies emphasize the faith of " J.-H. Rosny " alike in science and in humanity as well as in the evolution of both forces towards a moral ideal. In praise of goodness, the brothers also wrote a trilogy — Daniel Valgraive (1891), L'Imperieuse Bonte and L^Indomptee. Their message tends to forward an altruism which implies not self-sacrifice but true self-develop- ment. The work of " J.-H. Rosny " is better in moral and symbolistic intention than in artistic execution ; action and drama are neglected, the characters are often pedantic, and the style is full of technical and obscure terms. Poetic and dithyrambic flights of style hardly atone for these deficiencies. Yet the Rosny brothers are important representatives of the " roman social," so conspicuous in our times.

IDEALISM 669

Most of the above writers represent either the symbolistic or the historical wing of Naturalism. In accordance with modern Other complexity, the novel took on many other forms

Varieties of during the past generation. It was by turns ideal- istic, psychological, impressionistic, as regards direc- tion ; as regards material, it was fashionable or idyllic, " region- alist " or exotic, military or ecclesiastical. Idealism as a method is either a Romantic survival or a reaction against too much Realism. It is mainly a siu'vival in the work of Octave Feuillet (1821-90), who began as the inheritor of George Sand's rose- colored mantle. The too-celebrated Roman d'un Jeune homme pauvre (1858) exhibits this side of him; a more serious and Realistic vein is found in the tragic Julia de Trecoeur (1872) and in the grim passions of Monsieur de Camors. The title-hero of the latter story is Feuillet's best-drawn masculine character. Feuillet excelled in the portrayal of women's hearts and nerves. Idyllic idealism is the specialty of Andre Theuriet (1833-1907), who has written considerably of field and forest in the Eastern provinces of France. Theuriet and Frangois Coppee (see Chap- ter III, below) have a rather bourgeois inspiration and a mildly agreeable talent, which is exercised chiefly in the short-story.

Although the Realistic method, as a whole, had not yet spent its force, the last decades of the century were marked by a Idealistic partial reaction against Naturalism. The leaders Reaction jjj ^{jjg reaction were such writers as Brunetiere, Bourget, Barres — "the three B's," all of whom became Catho- lics or Conservatives. The Swiss, Edouard Rod, and the aris- tocrat, Melchior de Vogiie, may also be classed as sharing in this movement. Edouard Rod (1857-1910) passed his youth in Paris and there he attempted to write Naturalistic fiction ; but his true bent was rather towards psychological analysis and the literature of ideas. This " intuitivism " (subjective observation) was encouraged by Rod's appointment to a chair at the Uni- versity of Geneva. Among his important novels are: La Course a la mort (1885), which is introspective and pessimistic; Le Sens de la Vie (1899), which is moral and idealistic; La Vie privee de Michel Teissier and L'Ombre s'etend sur la montagne. A number of Rod's later novels are laid in Switzerland and have a thorough savor of the soil. A volume of criticism, Les I dees

670 FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY

morales du tempa present (1891), ftirnishes an excellent iurvey of the period and it« chief writers. The Vicomte Melchior de Vogiie (1850-1910), called "the Chateaubriand of the Third Republic," was a traditionalist in taste, religion and politics. The work of Zola and his group could not please such a man; and Vogiie wrote Le Roman nisse (1886) partly to forward the "bankruptcy" of French Naturalism, partly to exhibit the virtues of Russian fiction, from Pushkin to Tolstoy. Like Brunetiere (see Ch. IV, below), Vogiie held that the Russian novelists had a better morality and more hmnanity than the French. He was unusually well qualified, by long residence and intimate association, to speak for the Russian novel, and his book is at once a psychological study and a critical rev- elation. It is also exceedingly well written. Among Vogiie's own novels, the most notable is Les Morts qui parlent (1899). There is a certain kinship between the idealistic and the psychological novel, also called the roman d'analyse. This kind, from the Princesse de Cleves through Dominique, is clearly in the French tradition. It is not surpris- ing, then, that in the early eighties the public should turn from the externalities of Realism to the work of a man whose prime concern was with what he called " so\iI-states." Paul Bourget (b. 1852) has accomplished the evolution described by Descartes from a bookish education to the " grand livre du monde," thence to varied travels and finally to the world of inner contemplation. He speaks of his many volumes as " les etapes d'une conscience toujours en marche." Be^nning with poetry and criticism (see Ch. IV, below) , Bourget soon won a reputation as a society novelist: the success inaugurated by Cruelle enigme^ (1885) was continued in the next few years by Un crime d'amour and Andre Comelis, by Men^onges and Un cmur de femme. These half-dozen novels express the earlier Bourget, who combines a taste for high life — clubmen, salons, elegance, bibelots — with a delicate analytical art. Primarily a psychologist and moralist, he chooses the upper strata of society in order best to study the more leisurely developments of modern love. His charming women — Th&ese de Sauve or Suzanne Moraines — are of a

' Vlrriparahle (1883) first revived the psychological novel, but was not so cuocessful.

BOURGET 671

romantic type, sentimental or sensual, complicated descendants of Emma Bovary. The men subjected to this feminine influence are either weak youths, like Andre Cornelis, or worldly and corrupt roues. Bourget himself is not romantic in his treatment of passion, whose consequences he usually deplores; but the atmosphere of these stories is insidiously relaxing and the author's sensibility is " maladive et souffrante."

A change came over his spirit with the publication of Le Disciple, in 1889. Boiirget mentally resembles Taine, to whom 1 His Second he owed much in his conception of the multiple ego Stage and in his dissection of emotion and passion. Le [

Disciple tells the story of a youth who likewise fell under the in- fluence of a great deterministic psychologist, whose principles he applied disastrously in his emotional life. The novel created a storm among the critics and had a pronounced effect upon French youth; it displays all of Bourget's qualities, but it is written in a sterner tone and has more of a moral glow than heretofore. Tha^ai^thor. however, was nnt vet through with rlilptiapfpism f^nrl p.Q^mnpnlitnninm — two dangers against which he frequently warned others. As for cosmopolitanism, there followed the artistically fruitful journeys to Italy and England {Sensations d'ltalie, 1891). Such novels as Cosmopolis (1893) and Une Idylle tragique (1896) deal with the " floating Laputa," the super-city of world-citizens who take no stable root any- where. As for dilettanteism, Bourget, with a finger on his own pulse, thus defines the disease:

C'est une disposition de I'esprit, tres intelligente a la fois et tres voluptueuse, qui nous incline tour a tour vers les formes diverses de la vie et nous conduit a nous preter a toutes sans nous donner a aucune.

After the Dreyfus affair, Bourget swung into line with the tra- ditionalists, political and religious. In L'Etape (1902), he urges a slower social development of the family, which should not hasten through its stages in the American manner. A growing sympathy with Catholicism is found in Un Divorce (1904) and in Le Demon de Midi (1915) . Bourget has also written numerous volumes of nouvelles (Un Saint, Le Luxe des autres, etc.). In spite of a heavy style, all of this fiction shows a genuine

672 FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY

capacity for the imaginative embodiment of abstract ideas and a gift for the minute dissection of modern types. More- over, Bourget's construction is fundamentally excellent, and the average reader feels impatient when a good plot is ham- pered by long-drawn-out descriptions and analyses, often unes- sential to the story. Yet it is in these analyses that the author's peculiar power resides; he ranks as a moralistic philosopher who " adds another chapter to the science of the soul."

Bourget brought psychology into fashion and influenced the work of Edouard Rod (see above) ; of Marcel Prevost, the popular novelist (L'Automne d'une fe;mme, Les Demi-vierges, ^^"^* etc.) ; and of Mam-ice Barres, during his first period.

The last-named has by his intense patriotism doubled his fame within recent years. He was born (1862) in the Vosges mountains and brought up in Lorraine while that province was undergoing- its painful Germanization. The strife of the two races made a strong impression on the sensibility of yoimg Barres; but first he turned to another field of literary expression, namely, the " Cult of the Ego." The trilogy published under this general title includes Sous I'aeil des barbares (1888), which describes a young man's struggle for self-assertion against the Philistines; Vn homme libre (1889) also develops a theory of egotistical gym- nastics; and Le Jardin de Berenice (1891), less obscurely written, repeats a similar theme, with somewhat more regard for the outer world. At this stage Barres believed that humanity could become a " beautiful forest " only through the intensive cultiva- tion of each individual tree; therefore let us keep our egos in , a state of. ardent and extreme exaltation. Dilettanteism and affectation are conspicuous in these works, which "owe most to the influence of Renan. Against this master Barres presently turned violently, became an apostle of action and wrote another trilogy or cycle called Le Roman de I'energie nationale. The first in the series, Les Deracines (1897) , urges that it is dangerous to uproot men from their province (Lorraine) . L'Appel au soldat (1900) stands for military patriotism. As early as 1889, Barrls had been elected deputy to the Chamber, whose members he now satirizes in Lews figures (1902). Finally, such works as Au service de I'Allemagne and Colette Baudoche (1909) plead for the defense of the " Eastern bastions" (like Metz) , because

LOTI 673

France is the chief representative of modern civilization. The development of the author has thus been from egotism, through " regionalism," to nationalism and ultimately to a view of civil- ization as a whole. Whether in Lorraine or Paris, for the race or for the nation, he has become a stalwart traditionalist, a leader in the " Ligue des patriotes." From complexity and ob- scurity he has developed a passion for simplicity, whether in character, plot or ideas (cf. Colette Bavdoche). Without de- preciating the value of his service or of his message, it should be said that many people find the literary temperament of M. Barres perverse, dogmatic, imduly critical and overbearing. But his style has marked qualities of subtlety or eloquence; he has a gift for description and much ironic power.

M. Julien Viaud (b. 1850) took the pseudonym of " Pierre Loti " and has served most of his life as an ofiicer of the French Pierre Loti ^^^- Born at Rochefort on the Charente, of Hugue- not ancestry (cf. Le Roman d'un enfant, 1890), he passed an vmhappy sensitive childhood, and at the age of seven- teen embarked on the series of voyages which made his fame. Loti offers the most complete modern example of literary exoticism; his talent is essentially subjective and impressionistic; his power of describing foreign lands, their scenery and total effect, is very remarkable. We may see his gift expand from Oceania to Iceland and from China almost to Peru. First came the anonymous Aziyade (1879), followed by Barahu (1880), otherwise known as Le Manage de Loti, which started his vogue. These two novels were laid respectively in Turkey and in Tahiti, while in " I'etonnant et brulant" Roman d'un Spahi (1881), Loti passes on to Senegambia. He first treats of Brittany and the surrounding seas in Mon frere Yves (1883). These earlier novels recount mainly his personal adventures under various disguises; they are filled with sensuous glamour and with primitive sweethearts, "femmes de reve, creatures a peine ebauchees."

With Pechewr d'Islande (1886), Loti returns to Brittany and gives us his most profoundly human book as well as a compen- dium of his various gifts. Greater and more unpersonal emotions find expression in this idyll of the betrothal and parting of two Breton lovers, the fisherman Yann and " la grave et tendre Gaud."

67'4 FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY

The fisherman never returns from his voyage to Iceland, and the last part of the book describes the waiting and the mourning of the women left behind. Two of Loti's chiief obsessions, the changeable devouring sea and the all-pervasive thought of death, are rendered with power and melancholy. Madame Chrysarv- theme (1887) deals with Japan and again with exotic love. Later stories, such as Matelot and Fantome d'Orient, show a partial repetition of old themes. There is also Le Ldvre de la pitie et de la mart (1891), a significant title, imder which most of this author's works might be assembled. With few exceptions, they are not really novels; they constitute rather a succession of pictures and of moods within the experience of the writer. For example, a trip to Palestine was recorded in La Galilee (1895) and was connected with Loti's unsuccessful endeavor to revive his youthful faith; yet there is religious feeling in Bamuntcho (1897) , the story of two Basque lovers separated by their different creeds. Near this beautiful Basque coimtry, where the Pyrenees slope to the sea, Loti has established himself in his declining years. Of his later writings, Les Desenchantees (1908), con- cerning the advance of feminism in Turkey, has been the most notable.

Like Chateaubriand, Loti possesses a great and melancholy charm. Like the elder enchanter, the fin de siecle wanderer makes us participate in the sense of fleeting joys, of ruins, of inevitable death and endings, the lure and failure of exotic love. Like Rene, Loti's civilized heroes cannot long abide with the simple savage maidens. With a remnant of religious feeling, Loti also wrote an " Itinerary " from Paris to Jerusalem. He is Romantic in his acute sensibility, his absorption in nature and his absorp- tion of nature into himself. His style, with all its simplicity, has the penetrating and suggestive power of music. Heis-modern chieflyja32:..virtue of his impressionism, in description and- sensa- tion, ajid by the wi3e'range nf Wb-^1 a H.or.A ay..£XQtiicism. Emo- tional rather than thoughtful, not elaborate in characterization or plot, his fiction moves us by his capacity for sincerely realiz- ing alien landscapes and alien souls.

Jacques-Anatole Thibault (b. 1844) , known to the world as Anatole France, is the foremost living French writer. For half a century his piercing mind and fascinating style have reflected

ANATOLE FRANCE 675

the chief movements of his age. Reared in the Latin quarter, his imaginative boyhood turned naturally to books and dreams. Anatole He was educated at the ecclesiastical College

France Stanislas; later he knew Greek beauty and

became associated with the Parnassians. Strongly Pagan are the Poemes dores (1873) and the Parnassian drama of Les Noces Corinthiennes. France then passed through the usual stages of devotion to science and dabbling in Realism; but he soon re- turned to the more characteristic dreaming and beauty-loving which reappear in Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (1881) . This masterpiece recounts delightfully the self-sacrifice of an old scholar, who protects the granddaughter of his former sweet- heart. In the charming Livre de mon ami (1885), the author definitely renounces science in behalf of imagination and the pensive fancies of his youth.

Anatole France is an intellectual Epicurean, particularly so in his first period (until 1897). This tendency exists in the The works mentioned above and increases through his

Epicurean revival of fairy tales {L'Abeille), of the legendary past {Baltasar) and of the historical clash between Christianity and Paganism in Thais (1890). The beauty-lover is also a scholarly dilettante, and Renan influences him during these years. Thais, so rich in background and in philosophical reflection, likewise owes something to Flaubert's Tentation de Saint Antoine. Dilettanteism is prominent in France's literary criticism, which occupied him (see Ch. IV, below) from 1885-92. He returns to tales and legends in L'Etui de nacre (1892), where we find' one of his most striking short stories, Le Procuraieur de Judee. Half of this volimie deals with the eighteenth century, which from a double standpoint (see above, p. 372) was peculiarly fitted to attract Anatole France. Irony and skepticism are more conspicuous and Voltaire becomes permanently his master in La Rdtisserie de la Beine Pedauque with its companion-volume, Les Opinions de M. Jerome Coignard (both of 1893). The former, resembling Candida, is an agreeably rambling tale of alchemy, gallantry, anti-clericalism and a genial eighteenth-century abbe. Two studies of Italy show still another side of A. France: in Le Lys rouge (1894), he wrote almost his first modem novel; the Florentine background is beautifully described, and it is evident

676 FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY

that the author approves the stark passion of the lovers depicted therein. The sensual foundations for his dilettanteism are re- vealed again in Le Puits de Sainte-Claire, in which are related more or less churchly legends of the Italian Renaissance. In Le Jar din d'Epicure (1894), considered by many his most thoughtful book, France gives us the flower of his epicurean meditations up to date. Currents of pessimism and mordant irony are discernible, but the author stoutly maintains his thesis that wisdom lies in the search for intellectual and sensual pleasures.

Nothing very radical had yet been heard from Anatole France; he was even elected to the Academy through the efforts of con- Satirist and servatives in 1896. But a new Anatole arises from Radical ^^jje pages of the Histoire contemporadne and from his

participation in the Dreyfus affair. In the latter he came out strongly for Dreyfus; in the former he satirized the tradi- tionalists who opposed that cause ; in both, people were surprised to see the scholar and the dweller in the past descend to the strife of the market-place. The Histoire contemporaine is an- other modern cycle (see p. 668), including L'Orme du mail and Le Mannequin d'osier (both of 1897) , L'Anneau d'amethyste (1899) and M. Bergeret a Paris (1901). The last two of these works are particularly concerned with the Dreyfus affair, but they all deal with intrigue, political or amorous, provincial and Parisian; the thin plot revolves around the infidelity of Mme Bergeret or the promotion of a priest; clerics, royalists, militarists and society women are bitterly satirized; there are recurring characters among whom Professor Bergeret is the most notable; he is the mouthpiece for Anatole France, and these mouthpieces (cf. Bonnard and Coignard) are always important for the quality of their thought and style. That the " Affair " practically con- verted our author to socialism is apparent from a number of orations and special pleas (collected in Vers les temps meilleurs, 1906). But in literature proper this conversion is less visible. Apart from minor works, his remaining years have been spent in composing imaginative interpretations of history, treated either as fiction or as biography. To the latter class belongs the Vie de Jeanne d'Arc (1908, but begun twenty years before). Written in the manner of Renan, beautifully unified in tone, this is a

ANATOLE FRANCE 677

reconstruction, half-sympathetic, half-skeptical, of the heroine's environment and personality. Not thoroughly accurate histori- cally, the work explains the atmosphere and birth of a legend. L'lle des Pinffouins (1908) is a satirical allegory, a sketch of humanity's development; it is at times as coarse as Rabelais and as bitter as Swift; often obscm-e in its references, the book yet contains many flashes of genius. Les Dievx ont soif (1912), displaying the excesses of the Terror, seems a paradoxical per- formance on the part of a believer in the Revolution; several of the characters are strongly etched, and private history is well interwoven with that of the nation. La Revolte des anges (1914) is anti-Christian, and Sur la voie glorieuse (1915) is anti-German.

The message of Anatole France is too complex to be clear. We doubt whether the dilettante has wholly given way to the reformer; he is still too fond of contradiction and too readily disillusioned. Retaining his sjrmpathy for the proletariat, he *' passed the sponge of universal raillery " over Church and State. He who loved legends, historical or religious, for their romantic savor, has also mocked at them for their lack of truth. He who decorated the shrine of love has become preoccupied with its biological function. Only two things has he left standing: his own intellect and his artistic competence. These two gifts, in the form of esprit and devotion to beauty, are interwoven with his incomparable personal style.^ The esprit appears as compact wit, as delicate or bitter irony, and as the humor that arises from a paradoxical situation. When the female Penguin is seized and inducted into her first garment, she inquires: " Tombe- t-elle bien?" When M. Bergeret grows philosophical, he never addresses his wife but makes brilliant observations to his dog. Paradox is involved in the humor of Crmnquebille, in the comedy of Celui qui epousa une femme muette, and in the situation of La Revolte des anges, where the angels become men of the world and the devils become angels. Every situation is enhanced by the esprit so characteristic of this author. As for his beauty-wor- ship, that is the trait with which we began and with which we must end. It is in honor of beauty that he finds his most perfect phrases and that he cherishes the fairest images: the image of

» Which he defined as a compound of "infinite shades of thought."

678 FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY

Dido wandering in the myrtles with her immortal wound; the image of Thais, actress and courtesan —

Immobile, semblable a une statue, mais promenant autour d'elle le paisible regard de ses yeux de violette, douce et fiere, elle domiait a tous le frisson tragique de la beaute.

This ideal beauty lives again in Le Jardin d'Epicure and haunts the dreams of Bergeret. It is found in superb Pagan flights of fancy, like the vision of Nectaire (Pan) in La Revolte des anges. It quickens many exquisite descriptions of nature, whether in the French provinces, in Italy or in the Orient. It is crystallized in short perfect sentences: " Et sur son beau rire \m faune presse une grappe de raisin vermeil." It is the most sincere and the most enduring quality of Anatole France, who in matters of thought is a myriad-minded and skeptical Voltairian, but in matters of art remains a faithful Epicurean.

CHAPTER II

IN DRAMA: THE THREE MOVEMENTS

The three chief dramatic currents towards the end of the century are Naturalistic, psychological and Romantic. But first we should reckon with the destinies of la piece bien faite, which descended from Scribe to Sardou. The well-made play may be defined as a product of artifice rather than art, dependent on incident and formulas rather than on char- acter-study and truth to life. Victorien Sardou (1831-1908), essentially a theatrical expert, used formulas in the manner of Victor Hugo, stage-tricks in the manner of Mr. Belasco, and stage-setting in an original elaborate manner which has since nearly overpowered the modern theater. Sardou wrote about sixty plays, covering an extremely wide range. Some of his His Two dramas are serious, but he shines particularly in light Specialties comedy and in the big historical " machine." He began by amusing the Second Empire, whose luxury he loved, with such airy trifles as Pattes de mouche (1860) and Nos bons Yillageois (1866) . His masterpiece in vaudeville is the sparkling Divorgons (1880) , which extracts merriment from the possibili- ties of impending divorce laws (see p. 598). These comedies are marked by fertility of invention and by skill in maintaining the interest of the audience. Sardou is at any rate less super- ficial than Scribe, and a more serious kind of domestic comedy, as exemplified in Femande, is within his scope. Also, Rabagas (1872) , usually considered his greatest play, exhibits the political demagogue (probably Gambetta) with humor, power and a large background. In the seventies, the versatile writer began the series of semi-historical melodramas with which his name is most frequently associated. The outstanding ones are Patrie (1869), La Haine (1874), and the three " Doras," {Dora, Fedora, and Theodora) of which Fedora (1882) saw the triumphal advent of Sarah Bernhardt and Theodora (1884) marks the introduction

679

IN DRAMA: THE THREE MOVEMENTS

of elaborate stage-settings and costiunes. In this new departure Sir Henry Irving followed Sardou. The story of La Tosca (1887) and, in lighter vein, that of Madame Sans-Oene (1893), are well known; in the latter play, Rejane gave a great characteriza- tion of Napoleon's reckless washerwoman. Sardou continued to use historical dramas, dealing with the France of the Revolution, the Italy of Dante and the Spain of the Inquisition (La Sorciere, 1903). These plays are full of sensational and spectacular effects and show much cleverness in construction; but within they are rather hollow. The dramatist sometimes mingled his two specialties of vaudeville and melo, as in La Famille Benoiton (1865) . He is a skilled tactician of the stage, a " master-builder of attractive edifices that are not enduring."

A gentlemanly playwright, Edouard Pailleron (1834-99), also began activities under the Second Empire; but his most notable _ ., dramas were produced later. In his graceful well-

written comedies, Pailleron depicts the upper social strata with worldly knowledge and a light touch. As regards structure and devices, Pailleron's plots are " well-made," but he has more elegance than Scribe and seems rather in the literary tradition of Beaumarchais and Musset. L'Etincelle (1879) shows how the " spark " of love may be kindled in a woman's heart. La Sowris (1887) stages a ladies' battle for a lover — an amiable middle-aged Don Juan who succumbs to the charm of the ingenue. Le Monde ou Von s'ennuie (1881) delicately derides a coterie of blue-stockings and agreeably demonstrates how love may be superior to learning. This is Pailleron's most famous play and is often considered the best light comedy of the century. It recalls Moliere's Femmes Savantes.

1. Naturalism and the Social Drama.

Naturalistic drama is closely connected with the so-called theatre social, which like the roman social aims at the portrayal The of sociological problems and conditions in all their

"Theatre diversity. Balzac, Augier and Dumas ills had pointed the way ; the road was clear, in the last dec- ades of the century, for a succession of plnys which should deal with love in its social aspects (the family, adultery, divorce);

THE THEATRE-LIBRE 681

with the confusion of castes and with such groups as the magis- tracy, doctors and writers, politicians, teachers, business men; with such problems as heredity, the social evil, race-suicide and political corruption. Dozens of people wrote plays along these lines, for this is the most important type of modern drama; Eugene Brieux is its chief representative. But neither Brieux nor Becque could have obtained full recognition save for the exertions of M. Antoine, who as producer and stage- manager founded the Theatre-Libre (1887-96) and later the Theatre-Antoine (1897-1906). The effort of the Theatre-Libre was four-fold: (1) The suppression of the well- made play; (2) realistic stage-settings, natm-alness in elocution and pantomime; (3) attacks on the " commercial " theater, the emphasis on a good ensemble rather than " stars," and the endeavor to present new playwrights not favored by the sub- ventioned theaters; (4) hence the launching of novelties and of such foreign writers as Ibsen, Hauptmann and Tolstoy. In 1890-95 most of Ibsen was presented at Paris (Theatre-Libre, Theatre de I'CEuvre, etc.) and his influence, whether in the direction of Realism or of Symbolism, was considerable. Other Scandinavians, Russians and Germans counted in similar direc- tions. As a Naturalistic movement, the Theatre-Libre over-em- phasized pathology and crime, grossness and pessimism. It preferred sordidness to Sardou. It produced dramas ranging from poetic symbolism to the piece rosse or " tough " play (Becque and Oscar Metenier) . It staged a good deal of Zola's fiction and that of the Goncourts. It was illumined by various lesser lights (Ceard, Hennique, Rosny, J. Jullien). And it discovered the majority of contemporary dramatists, including Lavedan, Porto- Riche, Curel and Brieux. The regular stage presently claimed most of Antoine's neophytes.

Eugene Brieux (b. 1858) is a man of the people, acquainted with the seamy side of life and a journalist of experience. A " robust paladin," he evinces a complete sincerity, a good sense of fact, a wide and fair handling of social questions. He is the godson of Dumas fils, in his blending of reformatory intentions with dramatic technique, to which he sometimes adds the strong " sliced " scenes of Becque. Critics usually make three divisions in the work of Brieux:

682 IN DRAMA: THE THREE MOVEMENTS

I. From Menages d'artistes (1890) through L'Evasion (1896), a group containing mostly comedy and satire. La Couvee is concerned with the training of children, L'Engrenage with po- litical corruption, and Les Bienfaiteurs is unfavorable to organ- ized charity. Blanchette (1892) made Brieux' reputation (via Antoine) and is the best play of this period. It presents strong characters and well-knit scenes. The problem revolves around a heroine who has been too well educated for her destiny. The daughter of a village inn-keeper (le Pere Rousset), Blanchette has obtained her teaching diploma, but cannot find a position. She remains at home, waiting, and the conflict of the village milieu with her ambitions is excellently set forth. She quarrels with Pere Rousset, who sends her forth to her disaster; unable to find suitable work, she descends to the depths in one version of the play, but a more moderate " happy ending " installs her, after many tribulations, as th« wife of an inferior. The fault of the situation is attributed to the State, which should provide for its trained educators.

II. 'f he second division rims from Les Trois files de M. Du- pont (1897) through Materniie (1903). Brieux here waxes mili- tant and more pessimistic, while his dramas become definite studies of various environments and professions (cf. Balzac). For example, Resultat des courses is a good presentation of lower-class gambling, Les Remplagantes shows the perils of nurses, Maternite is a defence of motherhood. In several of these plays, as in the too-famous Avaries, it is evident that discussion and reform are occupying Brieux more than straight dramatics. Les Trois filles de M. Dupont is better, in its presentation of " chained " women and their limited destinies. But Brieux' masterpiece is La Robe rouge (1900), whose title is indicative of the legal profession. Many varieties of judicial rank and character are here developed. The author depicts the magis- tracy as over-crowded, poorly paid and open to political manipulations. The plot is truly dramatic: a murder has been committed, and since a culprit must be found (for the benefit of the examining magistrate) a false accusation weighs against a peasant, whose wife is put through the " third degree." These inquisitional scenes are common and extremely forceful in Brieux. The peasant's wife, Yanetta, is compelled to ac-

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knowledge a former indiscretion, and the husband, though cleared of the charge of murder, loses his domestic happiness and condemns Yanetta. She obtains poetic justice by killing Mouzon, the instigator of the charge and the villain of the plot. Around this central action, other destinies, especially those of the Vagret family, are developed within the main theme of the hard condition of the magistracy. The play, then, happily combines dramatic interest with the study of a particiilar class.

III. Beginning approximately with La Deserteuse (1904) and not yet ended, Brieux' third period is difficult to characterize. The problem too often overrides the play in this last division; yet a calmer and more optimistic note is heard and somewhat wider social questions are treated. La Frangaise (1907) sup- ports by discussion rather than by drama the thesis that the French woman is better behaved than is usually supposed by for- eigners. Simone is interesting technically, as also in its centering of family solidarity around the child ;^ the same moral is found in Suzette and La Deserteuse. La Femme seule (1913) is good drama and equally good feminism. The heroine tries to gain her own bread and is several times defeated by the rivalry or the gallantry of man (cf. Blanchette). Le Bourgeois aux champs (1914) is an amusing variation on Flaubert's Bouvard et ' Peauchet; the townsman comes to grief on his farm and the clash of classes is well portrayed.

Brieux' conscientious sincerity, his moral intentions and the comprehensiveness of his social survey are all to his credit. He is broad-minded and earnest, yet with sufficient humor and un- derstanding of human complexities. It is less certain that he makes the most of his dramatic opportunities. Too often he yields to the impulse to talk or to preach; thus the action lags, and the characters fall heavily into the roles of puppets or mouth- pieces. His language is sometimes rough or ungrammatical, but remains as democratic as his subjects and his sympathies. The atmosphere of ugliness or depression which marks certain plays is inherent in the Naturalistic drama. It is still more conspic- uous in the brutal though intense work of Octave Mirbeau (1848-

' This may be considered Brieux' chief "message," since no less than eight plays emphasize the importance of the child.

684) IN DRAMA: THE THREE MOVEMENTS

1917), novelist and dramatist, who wrote Les mauvais Bergers (presenting workmen on a strike) and notably Les Ajfaires sont les affaires (1903). This play is in the straight tradition of the money-drama from Turcaret to Becque. In Isidore Lechat, Mir- beau fully depicts that peculiarly nineteenth-century type of the predatory millionaire whom Balzac created and whom Dumas fils developed {La Question d'argent). This type has become worse morally and the presentation is more acrid in Mirbeau. The characters and the financial intrigues are life-like, so that the play is a masterpiece of grim power. With the exception of Mirbeau, undiluted Naturalism was on the decline before the end of the century; the early proteges of Antoine have mostly scattered in other directions, though the technical innovations of the Theatre-Libre are not forgotten.

2. Psychology and the " Triangle."

The second movement in the contemporary drama may be considered as including whatever emphasizes the analysis of character and the psychology of love. The most distinguished of these psychological dramatists was Paul Hervieu (1857-1915) ; he was also foremost in the domain of high tragedy. He is an artist in sentiment and expression, a rigorous logician in technique, and better than any other mod-' ern he recalls the tragic elevation of Racine. These qualities became evident in Les Tenailles (1895), which worthily opened the series of his problem-plays. The title ("The Pincers," of. Le Dedale or " The Labyrinth ") indicates a predicament, and Hervieu is fond of showing characters in the clutch of circum- stance or individuals conflicting with the law. In this tense tragedy, the " pincers " of matrimony are applied by a hard hus- band to grip his wife, when she wishes to divorce him and remarry; they are applied by the wife to grip the husband when, ten years later, she forces him to sustain the burden of herself and of her child by a former lover. In each case, the too moderate divorce laws, as Hervieu considers them, operate not for freedom but to compel the bearing of the yoke. He and Brieux differ widely in their views on divorce. The dramatic swing of the pendulum and the injustice of the

HERVIEU 685

code are again features of La Loi de I'homme (1897), in which Hervieu shows himself a convinced feminist. As a dramatist, he Chief Plays ^^^^P^^y^ *°o much esprit de geometrie, and L'Enigme (1901) has almost the rigor of a mathematical puzzle. This tendency is less apparent in La Course du flambeau (1901), probably Hervieu 's finest play; the main characters are profoundly depicted, the struggles of maternal love are universal- ized in the high Classic manner, and there is dramatic economy or exact measuring of the means to the end. The title suggests the theme: that the torch of love goes down the ages, just as the doom of sacrifice descends through the generations. Of the three women concerned, the grandmother is devoted to her daughter, Sabine Revel, who in turn gives up everything for her own daughter: an opportunity for remarriage, her honesty in a money transaction, her mother and finally the daughter herself. It is a poignant, cumulative drama. In Le Dedale (1903), Hervieu returns to the triangle and to the difiicult situation of French women in the matter of divorce. A woman, divorcee for ade- quate reasons, remarries and is then attracted back to her forroer husband (cf. Le Berceau by Brieux). The child appears again as a great influence and ultimately a^s the solution of the heroine's entanglement; as for the men, they end by killing each other and disappearing over a cliff — a denouement which has been much criticized. Of Hervieu's subsequent plays, Le Beveil (1905) and Connais-toi (1909) offer the most psychological interest; they both deal with the subconscious or with the dormant depths of character revealed under stress. Hervieu's logical rigor finally yields place to a more philosophic charity and a mellower dra- matic touch. His style becomes progressively clearer, though still at times over-literary; but his best pages maintain a Classic elegance, precision and harmony. His principal idea is that the law is often unjust to individuals, particularly to women. Hervieu is a convinced feminist and seems to commiserate the plight of his tempest-driven heroines. Like the other amorists, he is mainly concerned with the eternal "triangle" and with its possible geometrical variations. But his treatment is refined and skilful.

Georges de Porto-Riche (b. 1849) is also an analyst of love and like Hervieu is more interested in the development of individual

686 IN DRAMA: THE THREE MOVEMENTS

temperaments than in general social laws. He is essentially an

artist, who has attained an elegant and harmonious naanner.

. Beginning with poetic plays, he was soon adopted by

Antoine {La Chance de Frangoise, produced 1888) and won his reputation through his most characteristic play, Amour euse (1891). The theme of this is the clash between an over-fond wife and a too-busy husband; the latter finally al- lows a lover to profit from his wife's devotion; yet the marital bond remains too strong to be broken. As in Hervieu, the Nietzschean doctrine of the individual's " right to live " appears in this play. The treatment is in the very personal manner of Porto-Riche, combining subtle psychology, graceful style, witty and characteristic dialogue. Similar qualities appear in Le Passe (1897), in which the heroine forgives a Don Juan his infidelities for the sake of his charm. The above are drawing- room plays, whereas Le vieil Homme (1911) is more romantic and unusual. In the majority of his dramas Porto-Riche depicts men who are light-o'love, fascinating to women and deliberate liars.

Frangois de Curel (b. 1854) , an aristocrat by birth and ideas, is interested in morbid psychology, in strong and strange situa- „ J tions. He is a poet and a Symbolist and betrays

the influence of Ibsen. The majority of his plays were produced by Antoine, beginning with L'Envers d'une sainte and Les Fossiles (both of 1892). The latter play is a master- piece, though of a somber and painful kind. A father and his son have loved the same woman, who gives birth to a child, the last of the Chantemelles. The rest of this noble family, in one way or another, sacrifice their lives in order that this child may carry on the name. Aristocrats may b'fe immoral and use- less " fossils," but — noblesse oblige. The love of nature, partic- ularly of ancestral and immemorial forests, is conspicuous in this play, and the author's general message seems to be that long-rooted natural characteristics will ultimately win out. So in La Fille sauvage (1902), the barbarous heroine is civilized only to break out with a more deadly ferocity in the end. In Le Repas du lion (1897), an aristocrat who has killed a work- man tries to make expiation by a life of hmnanitarian service; but his natural ego is too strong and leads to his undoing. La

MINOR PLAYWRIGHTS 687

Nouvelle idole (produced 1899) presents a doctor whose devotion to science leads to disastrous results. In most of these plays Curel has chosen repellent subjects; he is too contemptuous of dramatic laws and technique ; but he has an " imaginative strangeness " all his own, and if he often leaves reality he thereby comes the nearer to romance.

Closer to his own period is Maurice Donnay (b. 1860), who began as a cabaret-artist at the Chat-Noir. His first impor- tant play was Amants (1895), concerning the forma- tion and the rupture of an " affair " between two typical Parisians. In the majority of his plays, light or serious, Donnay appears as an " apologist for free love " (Chandler) , an anti-feminist and a dramatist of considerable ability, ecpe- cially in the depiction of character. La Dovloureuse, L'autre Danger and L'AjJranchie are specimens in this manner. He con- siders wider social questions in Oiseaux de passage (1904), and especially in Le Retour de Jerusalem (1903), one of his strongest plays. Here it is a question of a liaison between a Jewess who has renounced her faith and an aristocratic Gentile; latent dif- ferences make the union unhappy. As a dramatist, Donnay has humor and skill, but he lacks profundity. Unlike the chief A a oth psychologists, Henri Lavedan (b. 1859) and Jules Lemaitre (1853-1914) do not sound a suffi- ciently clear individual note to make a lasting impression. Lemaitre is a critic of charm and penetration (see Ch. IV, below). In the drama, he has, to be sure, won notable successes: Le Depute Leveau (1890), on the corruption of politics; Le Pardon (1895), on reciprocal forgiveness be- tween unfaithful spouses; Le Massiere (1905), on the studio- world and middle-aged loves. But on the whole Lemaitre has been too versatile to be a great artist. The same is true of Lavedan, who ranges from the easy cynicism of Le vieux Mar- cheur (1899), through the depravity of the Marquis de Priola (1902), to the somewhat deliberate idealism of Le Duel (1905). The intense patriotism of Servir (1913), is conceived in quite a different tone from the satire of Le Prince d'Aurec. Lavedan has a tolerant breadth and has won popularity at the expense of concentration and individuality.

688 IN DRAMA: THE THREE MOVEMENTS

3. Romance.

It has been seen that there were romantic elements in the early work of Porto-Riche and throughout the peculiar dramas Neo- of Curel. The graceful fancy of Theodore de Ban-

Romanticism yjiig found expression in Gringoire (historical) and in Riquet a la Houppe {comedie-jeerique) ; both plays develop the Hugonian antithesis between an ugly body and a beautiful soul. The more heroic strain of Hugo was revived in La Fille de Roland (1875) by Henri de Bornier, a drama containing both poetic and patrioitic fire. Bornier, Sardou, Catulle Mendes and Frangois Coppee wrote numerous historical plays, many of which suggest the spirit of romance. Coppee (see next chapter) is at his best in Pour la Couronne (1895). A faithless Balkan Prince be- trays his country and is slain by his own son; the latter shoulders the blame of the treachery rather than accuse his dead father. The character of Militza, the gipsy girl who loves the hero, is very winning, and some of her speeches are in excellent verse. Romantic also are the majority of the plays of Jean Richepin (b. 1849) , whose bohemian soul finds expression in Le Flibiostier (Breton characters), in Le Chemineau (1897) where the hero is a cheerful follower of the open road, and in Les Truands (1899), which resuscitates the medieval vagabonds of Notre-Dame. Thus Neo-Romanticism has many interesting plays to its credit, and Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac is not an isolated phenom- enon.

We must turn aside for a moment to consider the work of the Belgian mystic, Maurice Maeterlinck (b. 1862). For him Maeterlinck ^^^ ^P^"* °^ romance " dwelt in a Northern land." Born and educated at Ghent he has passed most of his life on his Flemish estate; but as a youth he brought to Paris a taste for dreamy legends and fairy-tales. Then he came under the influence of the Symbolists and of Shakespeare; his early dramas are all symbolic and his first play, La Princesse Maleine (1889), caused him to be hailed as the " Belgian Shakes- peare." What we find rather in this work is a brooding sense of mystery, of fatality and of " inexorable death." The feminine villain strangles Maleine and is in turn killed by Prince Hjahnar, who then commits suicide. But the bald plot is never the thing

MAETERLINCK 689

with Maeterlinck, who makes us drink deep of symbolism, mood- mess and atmosphere. The whole somber castle gives an en- vironment of terror and suspense. The characters are " strange " obsessed, dominated by the powers of Nature, who vouchsafes only smister symbols and presentiments. Maeterlinck's pathetic puppets are usually a prey to inconsecutive movements and de- sires (hence the inconsecutive scenes) and wait passively for the Intruder, Death (cf. La Mort, 1913). A number of one- act plays emphasize this attitude. In L'Intruse (1890), a family expects the death of one of their number. They do not mention their fear, which is entirely atmospheric, expressed by monoto- nous question and answer about apparently irrelevant things. But the "frisson de invisible " mounts through the increasing uneasmess of the blind grandfather, until the fated end. Les Aveugles (1890) further stresses the terrors of the unseen, and Les Sept Princesses (1891) is equally " Maeterlinckian " in its fairy-tale background. This vein recurs in Ariane et Barbe- bleue, in the tower-scene of Aglavaine et Selysette, and of course in L'Oiseau bleu. Such allegorical and fanciful episodes are quite in line with Maeterlinck's Symbolism, which should now be definitely characterized. Let us choose Pelleas et Melisande '(1893), the best-known of the dramas which deal with misty events and people in some uncharted land. This play has quite a distinctive plot, namely the Paolo and Francesca situation. Golaud is the old husband, Pelleas the youthfvd lover and brother, Melisande the " strange " young bride. But never did a play sound less " triangular." Passion is only vaguely sug- gested, and the three love scenes emphasize symbolic values: Melisande loses her marriage ring in a fountain; she lets down her wonderful hair which envelops and delights Pelleas; apd reality takes on the spaciousness and poetry of a dream. Sim- ilarly, in Aglavaine et Selysette (1896), where it is a question of outgoing and incoming sweetheart, the mild Selysette will throw herself from a tower to make way for her rival. The symbol is found in the slow sinking of the sun indicating the approach of death; and the dialogue, as elsewhere in Maeter- linck, keeps rhythm with the action. In all these early plays, as also in Interieur, Lq, Mort de Tintagiles, and so on, the em- phasis is on subconscious intuition, on silence, terror, death and

690 IN DRAMA: THE THREE MOVEMENTS

what the author called the " static drama." It is to his credit that he has drawn, psychologically speaking, more progression and action from this method than might be anticipated. The style of his prose is indubitably poetic, but the dialogue, in its wilful simplicity and repetition, sounds too often like an Ollen- dorff grammar and has lent itself readily to parody. Also, a certain obscurity of intention and effort must be recognized. But the author always keeps our imaginations quivering.

It may be that Maeterlinck grew tired of contending with the difficulties of his peculiar fown. At any rate, in 1902, he made His Second a distinct shift. Monna Vanna marks an attempt at Phase " legitimate " and fairly plain historical drama. The

enveloping action is that of the fifteenth-century feud between Florence and Pisa. Guido Colonna commands the Pisans and the Florentine general, Prinzivalle, insists that Guido's wife shall give herself to him in order to deliver her fellow-countrymen. When Vanna comes alone to his tent, he suddenly reveals himself as an idealistic and respectful lover. Returning to her hus- band's camp, Vanna cannot convince him of her innocence, finds him too jealous and egotistical and decides to escape with Prinzivalle. Barring a certain lack of skill in " preparations," the drama is progressive and interesting. But more interesting to the author is the psychological problem, concerning the " greater love " of Prinzivalle. The total effect is somewhat bewildering. Marie Magdeleine (1910) is also more like the conventional drama and offers a similar problem. The lovely miracle-play of ScBur Beatrice, a medieval legend, is again more characteristic of the earlier Maeterlinck, and in L'Oiseau bleu, the poet- dramatist returns to the allegorical field which he has made peculiarly his own. Two children, Tyltyl and Mytyl go forth to seek the bird of happiness, which they ultimately find at home. Their adventures, the symbolic persons and scenes they meet with are beautifully rendered. It is an optimistic allegory; the author is no longer oppressed by " nightmares "; and since there are no impassable barriers to the next world, " il n'y a pas de morts." The dead live again in our memories. In the sequel, Les Fiangailles (1918), the children have grown up and are able to cope with Destiny. So the two former bugbears, Death and Fatality, are finally conquered in Maeterlinck's

ROSTAND 691

widening view. He has also given expression to his philosophy in such books as Le Tresor des humbles, La Sagesse et la Des- tinee, La Mort. But his most individual contribution to latter- day literature is in the misty Romanticism of his symbolic plays.

More in the French Romantic tradition is the work of Edmond Rostand (1868-1918). A man of delicate health and tempera- ment, his life was short and his period of produc- tivity was shorter still. After winning his great suc- cess, he was made a member of the Academy (1901) and soon retired to his charming home in the Pyrenees, where he spent practically the remainder of his life. He began with a volume of rather trivial verse (Les Musardises, 1890), in which he displays much virtuosity as a rhymester of Banville's school. Of his half-dozen plays, the first three are comparatively slight. In the manner of Musset and recalling the subject of A qiuri revent les jeunes filles, Les Romanesques (1894) has yet a pretty wit and charm of its own. It presents two yo\mg people who long for distant loves and adventures. The play is a gentle satire on romance by a Romanticist. A higher poetic note is sounded in La Princesse lointaine (1895). This dramatizes the story of Rudel the troubadour, a lover of the Princess of Tripoli, whom he has never seen. As a dying man he sails for Tripoli, where the princess will soothe his last hours. Here Rostand adds a complication to the legend; the troubadour's lady and his best friend fall in love with each other; but they are saved from treachery and the princess finally goes to Rudel. The legend is picturesquely handled, with developments that recall the Tristan story. The play has movement and sentiment. Very sentimental is La Samaritaine (1897), in its mingling of earthly and heavenly love. The episode of the Samaritan woman is retold, largely in Biblical language, but with the addition of a good second act, in which Photine proselytizes for Christ.

None of these plays foretold the power and success of Cyrano de Bergerac — comedie herdique — whose first representation „ _ „ (December 28, 1897) was the most notable premiere since that of Hernani. Again it seemed that Ro- mantic emotion was conquering Paris. Seasoned critics like Faguet declared that Cyrano portended a renaissance of the poetic drama, while others like Lemaitre saw in it rather an aftermath and

692 IN DRAMA: THE THREE MOVEMENTS

a derivative pseudo-revival, which could not set back the clock of time. Historically, the latter view seems correct; it is also true that Rostand was not greatly original and that he owed a great deal to the devices and inspiration of Hugo and even of Diunas pere. Nevertheless, Cyrano in itself is a splendid Romantic drama and one of the great plays of the century. It is also the author's masterpiece, because here he makes the best union of poetry and dramatics in a subject that was peculiarly well suited to his genius. His own leaning towards the 'precieux and towards piu-ple patches is here justified by the character of his hero and the atmosphere of the period treated. Cyrano is a high-flown lover, a swaggerer and duellist, capable of everything from biu-lesque to rare self-sacrifice. The central theme, by which Cyrano Quixotically serves the love of another man —

Je serai ton esprit, tu seras ma beaute —

is boldly and successfully handled. The high moments, such as the balcony-scene, the death of Christian and the autiunnal melancholy of the denouement, show a happy blending of sen- timent with dramatic power. The historical coloring (c. 1640) is ample and excellent. The play constitutes a harmony within itself and with its author.

L'Aiglon (1900) is not such a masterpiece; it shows a weaker and more confused inspiration; but it does not fail to gain 0th PI admiration in many respects. The story of the " eaglet," Napoleon's son who would fain be a Napoleon, offers pathetic and psychological opportunities, which Rostand has certainly seized. On the other hand, the dramatic movement, the swift spontaneous action of Cyrano, is lacking. Such a tendency would be natural, granted the hesitant nature of the hero, the cumbering atmosphere of the Austrian court, and the numerous secondary schemes and people. The play remains, none the less, too long, too elaborate, and too monoto- nous. Brilliant scenes and tirades almost redeem this lack of progression, especially the epic scene on the plain of Wagram, in which the dead battalions come to life before the vision of the young prince. His character, the opposition of dream and action in his nature, remains the best feature of the play.

ROSTAND 693

These two dramas, sponsored and personified respectively by the great Coquelin and by Sarah Bernhardt, had swept Europe and America. People waited eagerly to see what Rostand would do next. As a matter of fact, ten years of silence intervened — and then Chantecler appeared (1910).

A plaintive and hectic note had already been audible in L'Aiglon and (probably for reasons of health) is exaggerated to the point of peevishness in Chantecler. This drama lacks moral and dramatic balance. It symbolizes the pathos of an inner struggle towards beauty and nobility, but this excellent feature is partially marred by the author's failings and conspicuous mannerisms. The donnees include the idea of a cock who not only rules his barnyard but, as poet and prophet, causes the Sim to rise with his crowing. He falls in love with a hen- pheasant (the Eternal Feminine) , who leads him to the Guinea- hen's " five-o'clock " tea. A blackbird typifies worldly wit, a nightingale the power of song, owls and toads the ugly side of life. Thus the play is a symbolic allegory and has links with Aristophanes, the Roman du Benard and La Fontaine. But un- like the last-named, Rostand has not kept the balance between the animal and the human side ; his figures are too palpably and too highly human, parading under skins and feathers. Uncon- vincing on the stage, the play well bears reading and has many fine passages ; yet the esprit and the tendency to puns which the cock berates in the blackbird, are too conspicuous in the language throughout. Chantecler is a mixture of too many different things (allegory, satire, extravaganza) , and " nous sommes loin de la verve eclatante et primesautiere de Cyrano."

Rostand's influence is visible in certain drames by Catulle Mendes {Scarron, etc.) and in such graceful fairy-comedies as H" Tal t "^^ Pleur merveilleuse (1910) by Zamacois. But ^Rostand's imitators chiefly serve to show his own superiority. The more obvious elements in his power and appeal are the following: First, a clean and brilliant wit, at its best capable of satiric pungency or of delicious turns of speech; at the worst descending to puns and verbal pyrotechnics. Second, a capacity, largely Hugonian in its origin, for dramatic situations, suspensions and well-combined coups de theatre — ex- amples are the duel in Act I of Cyrano, the dramatic shifts

694 IN DRAMA: THE THREE MOVEMENTS

between loyalty and love in Act III of La Princesse lointaine. Third, Rostand's personal response to the quality of idealistic love and of chivalrous deeds; this underlies the panache or " swagger " of Cyrano and appears in the author's panegyric on Don Quixote. Finally, a poetic power compact of imagery, sentiment, admirable phrasing; a power that ranges from a winning and tender pathos, as in the finales of his best plays, to the superb vision of Wagram in L'Aiglon and the lyric sweep of his balcony scene in Cyrano. This talent has left its mark on many notable single lines as well as on the longer speeches of Cyrano and the Eaglet — passages that are likely to endure when the voices of carping critics have ceased forever.

CHAPTER III IN POETRY: SENTIMENT AND SYMBOLISM

In the last decades of the century, the most notable Parnas- sian poet was Heredia, whose work has already been treated (Bk. VII, Ch. Ill) . Nearly every writer of verse, men as various as Anatole France, Coppee and Verlaine, began by a volume in the Parnassian manner, which shows the profound influence of this school ; yet the revolt against Realism included a revolt against the cold marmoreal perfection of Leconte de Lisle. The chief dissidents among the younger generation were either sentimental poets like Sully Prudhomme and Coppee or the founders of the new school who were known as les Decadents or les Symbolistes.

Sully Prudhomme (1839-1907) was a youth of delicate health and a meditative disposition. He passed through Parnassus and Sully through an unfortunate love-affair which gave him

Prudhomme the better part of his lyrical inspiration. Both in- fluences are found in such early poems as Les Solitudes (1869). His best volume is Les vaines TendreSses (1875). His growing reputation caused him to be elected to the Academy in 1881. From now on his life was filled with conscientious thought and effort. He published two long semi-didactic poems. La Justice (1878) and Le Bonheur (1888). He received, in 1901, the Nobel prize for literary excellence.

Not greatly original, Sully Prudhomme is the most representa- tive poet of his period. He reflects the chief lyrical tendencies of the century: sentiment like that of Lamartine, philosophic poems somewhat in the manner of Vigny, statuesque Parnassian imi- tations and hard brilliant sonnets. He reflects particularly and with great conscientiousness the " age of science and doubt " ; the struggle between an ethical spirituality and the unresponsive universe deeply impregnated his thought. His primary poetic qualities are sensibility, tenderness, melancholy; and the philo- sophic " meditation " tempered with sentiment seems to be his

695

696 IN POETRY: SENTIMENT AND SYMBOLISM

forte. Sensibility is the most conspicuous element in his earliest work — Stances et poemes (1865) and Les Epaves (published posthumously in 1908). In these volumes the poet sounds the whole gamut of disappointed passion, from direct jealousy and baffled desire, through the mournfulness of memories, down to moving suggestions of the happiness that might have been. Some preciosity and infelicities of expression occur in his first voliune, which, however, already gives evidence of great skill in Le Vase brise, his most famous poem. Les vaines Tendresses would indicate by its significant title that the poet is seeking a wider and less personal expression of feeling. He philoso- phizes his emotion in such admirable lyrics as La Beaute and Sur la mart; but the philosophy remains pessimistic. Sim- ilarly the sonnets of Les Epreuves are conceived on an objec- tive plane and show a most artistic mingling' of thought and sentiment. As "for Les vaines Tendresses, that voliune well illustrates several of Sully Prudhomme's gifts; for example, his artistic use of the refrain in the poem called Ressemblance; he cares for a girl or he finds her melancholy-minded or she passes on her way, all because:

Vous ressemblez a ma jeunesse.

This orderly symmetrical construction, recalling Gautier and much admired by Gautier, is very frequent with Sully Pnid- homme. Again, his capacity for composing striking lines and couplets may be illustrated from the same volume:

Je t'aime en attendant men etemelle epouse; or witness the declaration that for the happiness of poets,

II leur faut una solitude Ou voltige un baiser.

Sully Prudhomme's delicacy of treatment is marked throughout his work. This delicacy is often like the brush of a bee's wing or the coloring of a wild flower, as where he demands:

Comment fais-tu les grands amours. Petite ligne de la bouche?

It occasionally runs into over-delicacy or preciosity, for in- stance, when he declares that he honors in the writer's pen {la plume) a recollection of the bird's soaring wing. But he

SULLY PRUDHOMME 697

naturally strengthened and sobered his vocabulary as he ma- tured, and his later sonnets show a fine taste in diction and a masterly impulsion in their movement. It is not surprising that the sonnet-form was a favorite with this poet, from Les Epreuves through La Justice (which is entirely written in sonnets). As Lemaitre early pointed out, these sonnets are usually composed upon sustained metaphors (or symbols), with the application splendidly developed.

As with the sonnet, so with Sully Prudhomme's entire work: from the sentiment, he generalizes the idea or the conflict, then finds the concrete embodiment. Thus his best work . seems to lie in those fields where his pergonal mel- ancholy is swayed to a larger expression and where his spirit comes into grave conscious strife with the ever-waiting problems. For most of us this tendency is best voiced in his lyrics. His two big philosophic poems, or allegories, La Justice and Le Bonheur deal respectively with the idea that man's moral order may be imposed upon the universe and with the ideal of service as making for the best happiness. The narrative value of these poems is not great, and they are not free from prosing and in- coherence ; but they contain thought, faith and fine lyrical inter- ludes. The poet's chief message seems to lie in his insistence on the necessity for idealism combined with reverence for natural law. His versification is simple and conservative, claiming none of the later licenses. In thought, feeling and form he can be readily apprehended by Anglo-Saxon readers.

Sentimental poetry is also the province of Frangois Coppee (1842-^908) . He was a poor boy and learned in the Latin Quar- „ , ter that s3Tnpathy with humble life which is his out-

standing trait. His lean years lasted until after 1870, when a series of dramatic successes made his fame. Coppee was an assiduous playwright and a short-story writer of some note; but his real contributions to literature are in the field of poetry. He too learned technique from the Parnassians, dedicating Le Reliqvmre (1866) to Leconte de Lisle; then he declared himself in favor of more emotion and warmth than the Parnassians possessed. This warmth is found in the three chief aspects of Coppee's work: love-poetry, stories in verse, and records of humble life. The first kind is illustrated by Les Intimites, which

698 IN POETRY: SENTIMENT AND SYMBOLISM

gives, in tableaux, a fairly complete lover's progress, and by L'Exilee, written to a Norwegian girl. The narrative poem of Olivier is a kind of Rolla brought up to date, and indeed Coppee has much of Musset's sentiment and grace. His love-lyrics show sincerity, charm and simplicity in the midst of compli- cations. Many of his well-known chansons (for example, the lines beginning " Vous aurez beau faire et beau dire ") belong in this group. His versified tales {La Tete de la Sidtane, or La Greve des forger ons) are numerous and show much skill. But most characteristic of Coppee is the collection called Les Humbles (1872), in which the " short and simple annals of the poor " are given sympathetic expression. Coppee here follows the Wordsworthian theory and the example of Sainte-Beuve; but his Parisian scenes are more effective than those of " Joseph De- lorme," and his technique is better. It is in line with the Real- istic movement that Coppee should dwell on the fortunes of the shabby-genteel, of nursemaids, keepers of kiosques, and even of grocers —

C'etait un tout petit epicier de Montrouge.

The bald simplicity of this line suggests Coppee's limitations as a poet.

Impassivity and Parnassian technique were definitely rejected by the " Symbolistes " and the " Decadents," who constitute the .J. most significant school of the fin de siede. Symbolism in the wider sense, as the concrete embodiment of an idea or emotion, is nothing new in French literature and may be found in the poetry of Vigny and Hugo as well as in the fiction of Daudet. The ultra-modern use of the word has been illustrated in connection with Maeterlinck (see preceding chapter) ; recent poets are " Symbolistic " in so far as they prefer vague suggestion to clear statement and in so far as they suggest mystery and magic by the use of haunting music and shadowy images. It is interesting to note that the Symbolists are mostly of exotic origin (Belgian, American or Greek) and that their effects seem more nearly allied to the spirit of English poetry than to the clear ethos of the French. Wilful impressionism and subjectivity often make their work obscure and artificial; but at its best Sym-

THE SYMBOLISTS 699

holism added new and rich sensations to latter-day poetry. Pro- testing against all forms of Realism, preferring the foreign influence of the English Pre-Raphaelites and of Wagner, the school began to be formed shortly after 1870 and reached its apogee about 1885. Its members were then styled Decadents by the critics, and Verlaine was willing to adopt the term ; but Jean Moreas, a Greek, suggested the nomenclature of " Symbolists," which is more widely inclusive and which has prevailed. Yet historically it seems best to consider the followers of Verlaine as les Decadents and the followers of Mallarme as more narrowly les Symbolistes. (The English terms, " Symbolism " and " Sym- bolists," may be used of the whole movement.) The most important members of the (joint) school were Paul Verlaine as their chief poet and St6phane Mallarme as their chief law-giver; men of foreign birth like Moreas, Rodenbach and Verhaeren, Stuart Merrill and Viele-Griffin ; wild men like Arthur Rimbaud, Jules Laforgue and other " poetes maudits " ; Gustave Kahn, Henri de Regnier and others still living. Not all of the above poets were consistent Symbolists, and many lesser names could be added to the list. The boundaries in which they moved were natiirally elastic. They used certain new journals for their propaganda (La Renaissance, later La Plurrie, still later the Mercure de France), they included theoreticians like Mallarme or Gustave Kahn, and they effected a considerable revolution against the laws of French versification. We can consider only a few of the most prominent poets.

Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) was not only the leader among the " Decadents " ; he was also the greatest poet of the whole school, and stands out as a distinct if erratic person- ality. He was an inspired singer of vagabond emo- tions, in character an " enfant de Boheme," a person of disorderly life who divided his time between cafes, prisons, and hospitals. He offers strange alternations of sensuality and mysticism. The naive and winning note in his religious poems would lead us to approve his conversions, except for their ephemeral character. Totally unfitted for domesticity, Verlaine deeply loved his wife, who inspired his best poems of sentiment; but when this grande passion reached its end in a separation, he turned to lesser and baser loves, frankly sensual. His head was like that of Socrates

700 IN POETRY: SENTIMENT AND SYMBOLISM

— but Socrates turned into a satyr, worshiping Venus and Bacchus. When drunk, the poet would quarrel with his friends, among whom was the grotesque and sinister figure of Arthur Rimbaud. This ultra-Symbolist had a warping influence upon Verlaine, causing the final rupture with his wife as well as the longest of his imprisonments.

Verlaine, like many others, began with a Parnassian volume, Poemes saturniens (1866). The poetry here is mostly objec- „. ^ tive and descriptive; it also echoes Baudelaire in an

ironic " saturnine " note, together with a taste for subtle and morbid {macabre) sensations. The distinct chiseling of outlines is in contrast to Verlaine's later manner, which has the deliberate vagueness of Symbolism. A delightful volimie of Fetes galantes (1869), after Watteau, incorporates eighteenth- century art and grace. In this stanza from Clair de lune, the poet resuscitates the ghosts of the old regime in terms that fit his own vagabond Muse:

Your soul is as a moonlit landscape fair, Peopled with maskers delicate and dim, That play on lutes and dance and have an air Of being sad in their fantastic trim.

La Bonne Chanson (1870) , written in honor of his wife, celebrates the intoxication of their engagement and honeymoon; it repre- sents the transition from objective poetry to personal sentiment. This was Verlaine's favorite volume and has gen;uine lyric feeling. His Romances sans paroles (1874) mark a revolutionary date in the history of Symbolism and reveal a new musical manner —

De la musique avant toute chose,

and the power of suggestion —

Car nous voulons la Nuance encor. Pas la Couleur, rien que la Nuance. (Art poetique)

The Romances are full of Symbolistic impressionism, an elusive mixture of sensations and moods. Verlaine's double conversion, religious and poetical, is of this period. He became a fervent Catholic, a believer, if not a consistent practitioner. His faith is emotional and mystical rather than intellectual or active;

VERLAINE 701

but it produced some ardent religious outbursts which figure in the "delicate and penetrating" volume called Sagesse (1881). His poetry has now become completely Symbolistic (observe the lines beginning " Vous voila, vous voila, pauvres bonnes pen- sees "), and the theory here manifest has been thus summarized: this " versified music . . . would do more than accompany the idea ; it would evoke the sensation, the memory and the true cor- respondence, as a perfume represents . . . visions and images." Baudelaire is evidently behind this doctrine of " Correspondences." But where Baudelaire and Gautier had appealed mainly to the eye, the Symbolists (in the wider sense) appeal primarily to the ear and add the element of haunting melody to French poetics. On this account and because of its religious values, Sagesse is Verlaine's finest voliune. Jadis et naguere (1884), as the title indicates, is a selection from his various phases and tendencies. It is his last important volume. Thereafter his work becomes more and more " decadent," and need not be considered here.

Lacking any sustained moral sense, Verlaine vibrates from indulgence to repentance and back again; he reacts to real emo- tion after mere sensation, and records both experiences with equal frankness. His naive sincerity ie a chief trait; also Verlaine is essentially the musical impressionist of his time. Many of his verses have a great charm, due to the personal wayward touch, which is often winning, pure and delightful, freely and appropriately expressed. His charm, his sincerity, his power of harmonious suggestion make Verlaine a true poet. Such a lyric as L'Heure exquise conveys all his best qualities:

La lune blanche Luit dans las bois, De chaque branche Part une voix Sous la ramee . . .

0 bien-aimee!

L'etang reflete, Prof end miroir, La silhouette Du saule noir Ou le vent pleura.

EevoDB, c'est I'heure.

702 IN POETRY: SENTIMENT AND SYMBOLISM

Un vaste et tendre Apaisement Semble descendre Du firmament Que I'astre irise . . .

C'est ITieure exquise!

Standing for a spontaneous and most personal expression, Verlaine derives the principle of originality from emotion rather

. p . than from a reasoned art. His Art poetique, already quoted, is averse to declamation (" Prends I'elo- quence et tords-lui son cou ") and is equally averse to abstract thought and esprit; these qualities are merely " litterature "; Verlaine prefers dreamy twilight suggestion to logical statement or composition. So any one of his Romances will have a musical rather than a logical unity. His poetics, then, are based on the belief that verse should be rendered extremely supple, in order to reflect directly the soul and the mood. But he and his circle stop short of le vers libre. The Alexandrine, however, acquires the greatest possible liberty: the medial and the final caesuras can fall on the most insignificant syllables (including mute e's) ; free enjambement and weak rimes put little emphasis on the end of a line; masculine and feminine lines need no longer alternate, and Verlaine affects I'Impair or an imeven number of syllables in his verse (cf. Swinburne) ; he allows assonances, tone-color, onomatopeia and repetends (cf. Poe and the last stanza in L'Heure exquise) ; finally, three-fold divisions {ter- naires) are frequent in his Alexandrines.

Verlaine was elected " Prince des Poetes " at the death of Leconte de Lisle (1894) ; Mallarme was Verlaine's successor in this title.* The latter's role was scarcely that of a chef d'ecole, whereas Mallarme had a really formative influence on many poets. For convenience, however, and in spite of the fact that the same men would sometimes frequent Verlaine's caf& and Mallarme's "Tuesdays," we may distinguish between the " Verlainiens " and the " Mallarmeens." The former would in- clude, according to A. Barre, both the " Melancoliques " and the

« At the death of Mallarmfe (1898), L6on Dierx was elected "prinoe," and after him Paul Fort (see Epilogue). The system was usually a voting-oontest conducted through various newspapers and magazines.

RIMBAUD 703

"Excentriques"; melancholy were Samain, Rodenbach, and Maeterlinck; eccentric or " Poetes maudits " were Corbiere, Rimbaud, Jammes and others. All of them were " Decadents," and were not ashamed of the fact.

The only important poet of Verlaine's immediate circle was Arthur Rimbaud (1854 ?-9l), the evil genius of the Verlaine Bimbaud household. A savage and singular prodigy, he wrote all his poetry in his teens, inflicted himself upon Paris for a few years, then disappeared adventurously into the wilds of Africa. He wrote only a few small volumes — Une Saison en enjer (" psychological autobiography ") and Les Illuminations (prose-poems). His two most notable poems {Poems completes, 1895) are.Le Bateau ivre, a sustained meta- phor about a wandering bark which svBered from Baudelairian nostalgia; and the famous Sonnet des voyelles, which states the doctrine of color in sounds:'" ~~

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, 0 bleu, voyelles ...

In this notion of tone-color, in his deliberate naivete and his fantastic eccentricity, Rimbaud is Decadent; but he is nearer the school of Mallarme (cf. Rene Ghil) in his partial use of vers libre, in his compressed syntax and wilful obscurity, as also in his interesting habit of coordinating closely images and suggestions around one main metaphor.

Francis Jammes (b. 1868), a Meridional and bucolic poet, is the heir of Rimbaud in his emphasis on naivete; the instinctive And other is for him the main source of poetry and truth. " Decadents " g^^ j^g belongs to a more recent and contemporary school in his use of vers libre and in his externality. He leaves his " soul " alone to write, in allegory or narrative, of objects, animals and people; of paving-stones, donkeys and humble fanners in the South (cf. De VAngelus de I'aube a V Angelas du soir, 1898). After his conversion, Jammes writes of Nature as the manifestation of God {Les Georgiques chretiennes, 1912). Much of his work is realistic, prosaic and dull. More truly poetic is the form of the " Melancoliques," Albert Samain '(1858- 1900) and Georges Rodenbach (1855-98), who import into France reminiscences of their Flemish and Belgian origins. Both of these poets are inspired by the dead past, and both strive to

704 IN POETRY: SENTIMENT AND SYMBOLISM

fuse intimately their souls with past beauty; in that respect they are Symbolistic, and they are Decadents in the mournful and anemic quality of their utterances. Samain has drawn charming eighteenth-century vignettes, of a delicate fantasy recalling Verlaine's Fetes galantes. Such vignettes are found in Au Jardin de I'Injante (1893), which also contains many scenes from the faded grandeur of Spain:

Mon ame est une infante en robe de parade . . . ^

But Samain's form is regularly Pam^sian (cf. Avx Flancs du vase, 1898), and he fills this mold with his plaintive minor strains. Georges Rodenbach lived at Brussels and wrote haunt- ingly of Bruges-la-morte, a prose-work of 1892. Among his poetic volumes are Le Foyer et les Champs and Les Tristesses. As in the case of Samain, Rodenbach's delicate health left its traces on his " art indubitablement mievre, fluide et decadent " (Yiele-Griffin).

The leadership which Verlaine rarely asserted was wielded by Stephane Mallarme (1842-98), idealist, theorist and pro- fessor. Mallarme taught French in London and Mallarme _,.,._. , ,, __ , ,

English m Pans and the provmces. He had some

contact with the Pre-Raphaelites and with the Provencal poets (see p. 609). His conversation and his personal magnetism attracted a niunber of young men to the cause of Symbolism. Otherwise he led an extremely retiring and self-centered life. Highly cultivated, an aesthete even to the point of publishing a magazine of fashion, his ingrowing talent finally turned to great obscurity and sterility. He published little, mostly in scattered form (collected Vers et prose, 1893). L'Apres-Midi d'un faune was printed in 1876, but had little fame until Debussy's music was supported by Nijinski's dancing. The well- named prose Divagations are of 1897.

For Verlaine poetry meant emotion and spontaneity; for Mallarme it was a conscious art, and its chief substance was intellectual. The Platonic Idea {la Pensee) of an emotion, not

' This is the kind of thing derided in that delightful parody on Symbolism, Let Diliguescences d'Adori Floupette (1885):

Je voudraia que mon ame fflt Ausai roide qu'un affftt, Aussi remplie qu'un vieux i(Xt.

MALLARME 705

the thing itself, was to be approached and adumbrated. The approach is infinite, the Absolute unattainable, and so Mallarme, like certain heroes of Balzac's, spoils his work by too much de- votion. Poe, whom he translated {Ulalume, Le Corbeau), and Baudelaire, whom he imitated, encouraged his hyperaesthesia. Despairing of plain words as an adequate mediimi, Mallarme, like Verlaine, took refuge in their Symbolic and musical allu- siveness. This is the chief point of agreement between the two schools. But Mallarme, with his thoroughgoing intellect, held that each line of a poem must contribute to the whole symphonic effect: a poem must be an enigma for the vulgar, chamber- music for the initiated ; further, the chief Idea or metaphor must be attended by numerous clustering minor images, which chime in with the central theme; and these analogies are, in his later work, crowded together with such compression as to break the molds of syntax and violate every principle of clearness. An example of[ this last point may be found in the first line of Le Tombeau d'Edgar Poe:

Tel qu'en Lui-meme enfin I'eternite le change, Le Poete suscite avec un glaive nu Son siecle epouvante de n'avoir pas connu Que la mort triomphait dans cette voix etrange.

(The last three lines may partly clarify the first) . L'Apres-Midi d'un ifaune illustrates the process of adimibrating the Idea. In a manner which recalls Browning's Caliban upon Setebos, a faun mutters his postmeridial longings ; it is " un reve de desir lon- guement raconte," but these are very shadowy desires, the nymphs are not real, and the faun ultimately resolves his dream in music — as Mallarme would do. Again, the clustered and condensed metaphor, the sustaining symbol of the poem may be illustrated by the following quotation:^

Un cygne d'autrefois se souvient que c'est lui Magnifique, mais qui, sans espoir, se delivre Pour n'avoir pas chante la region ouvivre

Quand du sterile hiver a resplendi I'ennui. . . .

In short, the swan, typifying the cold and sterile poet, now re- grets his sterility, but still holds high his head. The preference

• It will be observed that this poet's versification is strictly Pamaasian. He takes no liberties in that respect.

706 IN POETRY: SENTIMENT AND SYMBOLISM

for white and glacial images, displayed in this sonnet, is evident also in the dramatic fragment called Herodiade; the heroine has a chilly charm and a cold elaboration not unlike that of Salammbo.

All this abstruseness may seem out of place, but such is the soul of Mallarme. Like each of his poems, Mallarme himself offers a fascinating problem. How far will the future justify his belief that a piece of verse may be completely orchestrated? How far can suggestion replace direct speech? The writer, we know, has to struggle with a vulgarized medium, in contrast to the musician. How far is it possible to lift everyday language, Symbolically —

Donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu,

and by apposition and ellipsis, drown ordinary syntax in order that the ideal Words may emerge?

Mallarme's theory was clearer and more fertile than his prac- tice. The questions just enounced attracted a whole band of young disciples, who frequented his " Tuesdays " ; among these were such poets as Jules Laforgue, Jean Moreas, Gustave Kahn, Henri de Regnier, F. Viele-GriflSn, Paul Claudel and others. Since individualism is characteristic of the movement, it nat- urally broke up into smaller movements: an " Ecole symbolique et harmoniste " was formed with Rene Ghil and Stuart Merrill as leaders, and later we find the name of Emile Verhaeren in a " philosophico-instrumentist " group ; also Moreas broke loose and established his "Ecole Romane " (1891). More or less connected with the Symbolists were such men as the Comte Robert de Montesquiou( the original of Huysmans' Des Esseintes and, it is said, of the Peacock in Rostand's Chantecler) ; and Leon Dierx (1838-1912), third " Prince des Poetes," whose dis- tinguished and dreamy verses — Les Levres closes, Les Amants — largely antedate Symbolism and are of a Parnassian cast.

Let us consider a few of these poets. No other Parnassian Sjnnbolist is of the caliber of Mallarme. But with Gustave Kahn Free Verse ^^" ^^^^^ ' ^^ reach the theory and practice of He vers litre, as it has since so abundantly flourished. Neither the theories of a certain Delia Rocca (a Peruvian) nor the " dislocations " of Rimbaud and others can deprive Kahn of

VERS-LIBRISTES 707

his proper credit: he is the inventor of modern free verse, al- though his kind of free verse is not quite what Americans understand by the term. Kahn was an enterprising critic and fighter, who founded several reviews and pushed his theories with a will. His point of departure was that the line {le vers) consists not of measured syllables, but of metrical units — that is, single words or clauses of varying length. Hence definite line- lengths are unessential. The same principle holds good for the strophe, which should be " ondoyante et libre." Kahn does not wholly abolish mute e's, nor does he abolish rime when rime is convenient; he allows assonated endings, internal rimes and repetends. The symmetry of verse is gone, but Kahn maintains that its distinctive rhythm and cadence remain; he admits that hig free verse borders very closely on prose and that a period of anarchy has begun — because the " rhythme propre " for Kahn may be improper for any one else. His chief volumes illustrate these tendencies. Les Palais nomades (1887) is based on the charming idea of open-air dreaming, and the volume has been called " aussi idealement vagabond que La Maison du Berger " (Mendes). Original and abundant metaphors adorn the Chan- sons d'amant (1891) and La Pluie et le beau temps (1895). Fresh figures and quick-changing colors decorate Le Livre d'Images (1897) . This and subsequent volumes contain much of what is now called Imagism. The beginning of a poem entitled Provence may illustrate Kahn's Imagism and his free verse:

C'est une face fine et legere;

pourtant quelle noblesse vit dans ses traits menus,

et sa chair est claire,

non qu'elle evoque aucun aspect floral;

elle est chair, et elle est claire

comme de la lumiere astrale.

Others now followed on the blazed trail, each in his own peculiar fashion. We may pause with two poets of American The birth, but of French upbringing and culture: Francis

Americans Viele-Griffin (b. Norfolk, Va., 1864) and Stuart Merrill (1863-1915). Viele-Griffin, whose free form is clearer than that of Kahn, opposes his fluent verse to the rigidity of the Parnassians. He is a healthy poet, of abundant if facile inspi- ration and production; his emotions are variously and harmo-

708 IN POETRY: SENTIMENT AND SYMBOLISM

niously expressed. He is one of the leaders of the later Sym- bolistic or " ideo-realiste " movement (cf . Jammes, Verhaeren, Paul Fort). His idea is to celebrate " la Vie," all the way from children's dances, through the oncoming of Spring in Touraine, to the revamping of mystical legends. Such are the contents of Cueille d'avril (1886) , of Jcries and of Clarte de Vie, In La Che- vauchee d'Yeldis and La Legends ailee de Wieland le forgeron (1900) the poet's aim has been to embody the soul of ancient legends in an artful and ultra-modern Symbolism (Mendes). Viele-GrifEn has also a very personal rhythm, and his free verse is considered too free, too American, by certain French critics. The same strictures are passed on Stuart Merrill, who, however, is less addicted to vers libre than is Viele-Griffin. Both of these men usually keep rime or assonance. Merrill tends to rough rhythms and unequal lines. He began as a complicated melodist, d la Mallarme, and his earlier Les Pastes (1891) are sonorous and obscure. Les Quatre Saisons (1900) show less " instrumen- tation " and more breadth of treatment, in their mingling of Pantheism and sociology. Merrill was known both in New York and France as a socialist and a reformer. So he too left the ivory tower of Symbolism for the broader conflicts of life.

The greatest modern Symbolist, the most distinguished French poet now living, is Henri de Regnier (b. 1864) . But he is really . an eclectic, a reconciler of the several schools. He

has written both free and Parnassian verse, usually in a classical spirit, as regards both inspiration and formal beauty. The final flower of Symbolism, he is also a more gifted and virile Samain in the complexity of the influences which he has undergone, taking form in numerous measures and manners. An aristocrat by birth and persuasion, he has elaborately revived French history and traditions in La Cite des Eaux (Versailles) and more particularly in his novels.* He began as an adherent of Mallarme, whose circle he frequented for ten years. The results appear in such early volumes as Apaisement (1886), Poemes anciens et romanesques (1890), especially Tel qu'en songe (1892), where we find " une ame hautaine, infiniment me- lancolique, eprise de reve, de myst^re et d'ideal . . . ob- sedee des secrHes correspondances des choses." These are the

« The majority of these belong to the twentieth century. See Epilogue.

HENRI DE REGNIER 709

familiar hall-marks of Symbolism. Here we find such titles as Le Songe de la Foret or Motifs de Legende et de Melancolie; here we meet with certain " personnages emblematiques " and cap- italized symbols, Cavahers and Princesses, the Beast and the Sword. In those days Henri de Regnier dwelt in a golden palace " with onyx columns " ( Jean deGoumaont), but he showed already a preference for Greek nudes and semi-mythological subjects. His cadenced and restrained vers litre is among the best French examples of the style; its rhythm and its harmony are distinct throughout his career. But he uses it less in his second period, which is a return to the Parnassian standard. A " free " versifier has the freedom even to revert to the set form of rime and meter, and perhaps Regnier was the more disposed to do this after he became (1896) the son-in-law of Heredia. At any rate, Les Jeux rustiques et divins (1897) and Les Medailles .d'argile (1900) not only reveal a classical (antique) inspiration but frequently " transpose " the kind of subjects and " triumphs " that Heredia preferred. Often, too, it is not a question of trans- position but of straight Parnassian technique, particularly in sonnets. This influence continues in La Sandale ailee (1906), but here and subsequently Regnier tends towards a third develop- ment, the return to Life, the "ideo-realiste " or " naturiste " standpoint. So he bids farewell to the Forest of his olden dreams, the Forest which he apostrophizes as:

Foret, toi, Tinnombrable et pareille a la mer, 0 toi, dent le parfum est, tour a tour, amer, Delicieux, farouche et fort, comme la Vie . . . Je viens a toi, Foret, je veux vivre. J'oublie Que tu fus autrefois fabuleuse a mes yeux. Les heros de mon reve en ont re joint les dieux.

Poetry like this, with its elegance and serenity, illustrates the classical, one might almost say the conventional side of Regnier. His larger task was " d'academiser le Symbolisme " — and he was made an Academician in 1911. Thus together with Symbolism, le vers libre of the best type was oSicially recognized. Free verse offers even more dangers in French than in English, because of the slighter tonic accent and the greater peril of dispensing with rime; the results are likely to be quite prosaic, especially where the writer's sense of beauty has become im-

710 IN POETRY: SENTIMENT AND SYMBOLISM

paired; but the best French vers-libristes have kept both rime and their sense of beauty. All the more credit then to such poets as Regnier, who can pour old wine into new bottles with skill and poetic success. That great metaphor of the creative instinct called Le Vase (from Les Jeux rustiques et divins) is a perfect example of verse so free that it soars and yet remains bound to earth by the lightest of traditional fetters.

CHAPTER IV IN CRITICISM

NiNETEENTH-CENTXJBY Criticism, so supple and Protean in its forms, continues to offer a wide variety of standpoints. Among the writers may be distinguished: first, the scientific critics and the historians of literature; secondly, the critiques d'idees; thirdly, the critiques de genres and the Impressionists.

The contact of modern scientific scholarship with criticism

has served to direct the latter more and more towards the careful

„ ^ „ . historical study of literature. As examples of this Gaston Pans , , •' , , , ,, , , ^ , -,> .

tendency we cannot neglect the work of Gaston Pans

and of M. Gustave Lanson. Gaston Paris (1839-1903), the son of Paulin Paris, was the leading scholar of his generation in the domain of Romance Philology. As professor at the College de France and the Ecole des hautes Etudes, as editor, investigator and Academician, he embodied the spirit of disinterested research ; he had a thorough knowledge of Old French, a discriminating literary taste and a fine personality. These qualities appear in the Histoire poetigu^ de Charlemagne (1865), the study of Villon for the Grands Ecrivains series (1901), and especially in the Poemes et legendes du moyen age (1900), a subject which the author has done so much to clarify. Paris left no magnum opus; his incessant industry and his dispersive intellectual curi- osity resulted in many monographs and in establishing him as the authority in all that appertains to Old French. Here he preserved excellently the proportion between the linguistic and the literary side of Romance scholarship. His talent was well balanced, well rounded; in this respect he was a modern humanist, as in the courtesy and charm of his personal power. His in- fluence is still felt in the universities of France and of America. With Paris, then, literary criticism usually concerns itself with philological and historical issues rather than with fixed aesthetic judgments.

711

712 IN CRITICISM

Criticism more narrowly scientific was represented, between Taine and Bruneti^re, by the work of Emile Hennequin (1859- „ . 1888) the author of La Critique scientijique (1888)

a,nd Les Ecrivains francises (1889). Hennequin was a determinist and an evolutionist. He combated the rigidity of Taine's methods and endeavored to set up a science of " Estho- psychologie," defined as " la science des ceuvres d'art en tant que signes." This includes three kinds of analysis: aesthetic, of the work; psychological, of the author; and sociological, of the au- thor's admirers or afiinities. It is in the last division that Hennequin crosses swords with Taine, since the former prefers to study an author as a cause rather than as an effect, and since he distrusts Taine's " precedent conditions." But Hennequin is equally rigid in the application of his elaborate analysis to Victor Hugo.

Hennequin was but an episode, and the mantle of scientific criticism really fell from the shoulders of Taine to those of Bru t" e Brunetiere. Ferdinand Brunetiere (1849-1906), whose name has been so often cited in these pages, might be taken as an example of his own Law of the Drama — "the spectacle of a will, striving towards a goal and conscious of the means which it employs." Like a Cornelian hero he fought obstinately against great handicaps. A youth of delicate phy- sique, he failed as a Lycee teacher, failed to receive his diploma at the Ecole Normale — and later entered the same Ecole Nor- male and won his way successfully as professor. He wrote articles for the Revue bleue and became assistant editor of the Revue des devx mondes, then editor-in-chief (1893) , and finally a member of the Academy. Then occurred his visit to America and his conversion to Catholicism. As in the case of Matthew Arnold, " literature and dogma " henceforth shared Bruneti^re's energies. During his whole career, he wrote at least one volvime a year, in spite of poor health. He died, worn out by writing and speaking, and exhausted by the activities consequent upon his " dogmatisme successif ."

For like Sainte-Beuve, Brunetiere made many campaigns, and his battles evolved that combination of learning, conserva- tism and courage which make up his personality. He first became known for his fight against the Naturalistic school, a

BRUNETIERE 713

series of articles collected in Le Roman naturaliste (1883) ; much of his best work is contained in the Etudes critiques sur la lit- terature franQaise (1880-1907) ; his application of evolution to literature is to be found in the several works which constitute the Evolution des genres (especially as regards criticism, drama, poetry, 1890-94) ; then followed religious polemics and apologia for several years {Discours de combat, 1900) ; finally the incom- plete Histoire de la litterature frangaise classique (1904 ff.) is his last will and testament, with the exception of an interesting volume on Honore de Balzac (1906).

Brunetiere is both Classicist and modern. In the former capac- ity, he resembles his own characterization of Boileau, as being As essentially a " bourgeois de Paris," brusque, frank,

Classicist self-confident, dogmatic. The two critics have sim- ilar notions of literature as expressing a practical ideal of human life, of the race-genius and of the author's thought. Both men urge the supremacy of reason, both are good fighters and are ca- pable of strong prejudices. Brunetiere was for his generation the most influential judge of contemporary literature, just as Boileau was for the age of Louis XIV. The chief ideals of the latter age were those of Brunetiere: not only the standard of la raison, but the appeal to imiversality and the habit of judging as a moralist; his article on the essential qualities of French literature (quoted in the Introduction to this History) dwells on the Classical qualities; it is in the name of humanism that he combats the animal side of Naturalism, and his love of Classical balance makes him the opponent of all exotic or French excess — Loti, the Pre-Raphaelites, Baudelaire and most modem poetry. Brunetiere's critical field is practically limited to French literature, and in that field he seems to escape with a sense of relief from the nineteenth century and gladly returns to the simplicity, order and clearness of his favorite period. The Histoire de la litterature frangaise classiqus is the monument to this side of the man.

Yet in spite of himself he was a modernist in several respects.

, J. . (1) His style, though to some extent archaic or

pedantic, shows also modern preciosity, occasional

" dislocations " in the manner of the Goncourts, and notably a

scientific vocabulary. (2) He is acceesible to the nincteenth-cen-

714 IN CRITICISM

tury type of French patriotism, in that he dislikes Germany and doubts the English influence on French literature; he prefers to maintain the solidarity of national thought and tradition. (3) Although he combated Naturalism as unideal and unsympa- thetic, he appreciated the broader kind of Realism, when com- pounded of good sense and observation. He admires George Eliot, Daudet and the Russians. It is significant that in the voliraie on Balzac, he recants to the extent of viewing le Na- twalisme as inevitable and as sociologically sound, and that here he places Balzac at the apex of the genre. (4) He is concerned with the general questions of his time, particularly those bearing on moral restlessness and metaphysical struggles. In his early colorless pessimism as in his later conversion, his development runs parallel to that of other thinkers in the last two decades of the century. (5) He adopts evolutionary criticism — that is, the theory that a genre is hke an organism which develops. He states five problems with regard to genres: their independent existence ; their differentiation ; their stability ; the influences that modify them; and their transformation. The principle of (pro- gressive) differentiation assumes the Spencerian definition of evolution — the advance towards complexity from simplicity. The modifying influences are mainly adapted from Taine. By the transformation of genres Bnmetiere means, for example, that the lyric prose of Rousseau may develop into the poetry of the Romantic era. This transformation proceeds according to the struggle for life and natural selection. Thus, in applying the principles of Darwin to criticism, Brunetiere forges the final link between nineteenth-century science and literature. In his illustrations of the process {Evolution de la poesie lyrique, Evolution de la critique) , he is concerned mainly with the new forms in each field and omits historical transitions and con- siderations. The value of his theory has been much debated and remains debatable. The French fondness for system-making caused Brunetiere to turn literary genres into living organisms or "abstractions v6getatives, qui ont des troncs et qui poussent des branches " (Lemaltre) . It is evident that neither a sonnet nor an epic has any such organic life. Yet it is true that such a genre as Classic tragedy will seem to accomplish an evolution (cf. Bruneti^re's Epoques du Theatre Frangais, 1892), because

LANSON AND FAGUET 715

of the perpetual changes operated on the form and the desire for novelty felt alike by artists and public. On the whole, however, it appears that Brunetiere as judicial and Classical critic has left a surer record than Brunetiere the evolutionist. We can scarcely doubt the excellent contemporary influence of his high standards both of ideality and of form.

Beginning as a pupil of Brunetiere, soon appointed as head professor of French literature at the Sorbonne, M. Gustave Lanson (b. 1857) has long been the chief living au- thority in his chosen field. He has evolved towards the historical and scientific treatment of literary texts. His early volume on Bossuet (1890) revealed a taste that was conserva- tive, Classical and certainly not anti-clerical. His most im- portant work, the Histoire de ta litterature frangaise (1894, and many subsequent editions) still proposes culture and the savoring of individual authors as the chief aims of literary study. But the historical approach necessarily leads a critic into the development of chains of ideas and chains of influence; and the demonstration of these things is perhaps, for the advanced student, the main value of M. Lanson's Histoire. The book abounds in thought, psychological insight, judgment and infor- mation. M. Lanson's method becomes more and more scientific in his critical editions of Voltaire's Lettres philosbphiques and of Lamartine's Premieres Meditations, in which the object is to surround the author exhaustively with possible influences per- taining to his literary environment or background. These are technical monmnents,^ but M. Lanson can also please and in- form the general reader with his studies on Corneille and Voltaire made for the Grands Ecrivains series. This critic does abund- ant justice to the eighteenth century and shows appreciation of contemporary currents as well {Hommes et livres, 1895).

As Professeur d'Eloquence Frangaise at the Sorbonne, Emile Faguet (1847-1916) was also a critique universitaire, but his method is at once more personal and less advanced d'idees: than that of M. Lanson. He has defined criticism Faguet a,s " un don de vivre d'une infinite de vies etran-

geres " (cf . Sainte-Beuve and Lemaitre) , and he has carried into

' So is the indispensable Manuel bibliographigue de la litterature frangaise noderne, 1909-14.

716 IN CRITICISM

his portraits an inexhaustible curiosity and intellectual vigor. His productivity was very large, exceeding forty volumes; in his last years he wrote too freely and too loosely. Apart from his feuilletons {Propos de theatre, 5 vols., 1903-10) and from his volumes on Nietzsche and Flaubert, the most valuable contributions of Faguet are his four volumes of Etudes litteraires — on the four great centuries, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth — and his Politiques et moralistes du dix-neuvieme siecle (3 vols. 1891-99). His studies are rather monographs on single authors than vites d'ensemble, and he is more of a moralist than a scholar. But he is thoroughgoing, independent, and very capable in the manipulation of ideas. He prefers to deal with thinkers rather than with artists; he sees little in Gautier as compared with Vigny, and he judges Voltaire as superficial when compared with Montesquieu. His lively attack on the phUosophes (Dix-hwitieme siecle: Etudes litteraires, 1890) first made his fame, and throughout he prefers the Classical Age for its abiding qualities, the nineteenth century for its " politicians and moral- ists." Like Diderot, Faguet combines a shrewd sense of reality with his penchant for ideas, and he is thereby able to avoid excessive " isms " and theories. His style is usually vigorous, witty and lucid.

M. Paul Bourget evinces in criticism the same complex of forces that directed his fiction before 1890.^ His work is a g mosaic of influences and yet displays an individual

pattern. The heir to Taine's determinism, to Renan's dilettanteism, to Stendhal's method of analysis, Bourget's " enquete on the moral maladies of the age " marks the complete penetration of psychology into criticism. The Essais de psychologie tontemporaine (1883) and the Nouveaux essais (1885) reveal first the desire of the author, overwhelmed by his bookish upbringing, to " degager la Vie de cet amas de livres et d'esquisser un portrait moral de ma generation;" he therefore accepts Taine's principle that literature is a " living psychology " and he seeks to determine the soul-state- not only of each writer but of each writer's readers, hence of a whole epoch ; he passes in review ten modern litterateurs, all of whom suffer from some form of pessimism: Renan and the Goncourts are damaged through their dilettanteism, Stendhal and Turgenev

» See above, Ch. I.

BOURGET AND SARCEY 717

through their cosmopolitanism, Baudelaire and Dumas fils are affected (variously) by the perversities of modern love, while Flaubert, Leconte de Lisle and Taine show the corroding effects of science on the imagination. Other causes for gloom were the result of the Franco-Prussian war, the general taedium vitae and the conflict of democracy with culture.

Certain of these points may be pushed too far, but Bourget's main conclusion — that the generation of the eighties was af- flicted by a deep pessimism — is borne out by the facts (see above, especially Bk. VIII, Ch. V). Yet this conclusion is not exactly a moral indictment on the part of Bourget. It is rather his habit to analyze writers " autant qu'ils sont des signes " (cf. Taine and Hennequin) of current states of sensibility. It is on the basis of his latter-day currency, which Bourget started, that Stendhal is included among the fin-de-siecle writers. A similar practice of applied psychology is found in the more scattered but excellently written collection known as EtvAes et portraits (1888). A later collection, more polemic in tone, is the Pages de doctrine et de critique (1912) .

Bourget has pronounced gifts as a critic. His style, of which the essay on Rivarol is a capital example, still marches heavily, but seems more " direct and vibrant " than in his novels. He is both a sensitif and a thinker, able to penetrate intimately into his favorite writers. He has a great deal of solid knowledge in several fields, and he shows a corresponding profundity which associates historical and philosophical ideas with literature. He perceives, like Brunetiere, the " bankruptcy " of Science and takes refuge in Spencer's Unknowable, which later became for Bourget the domain of faith. The earlier Essais represented a sort of " critique confessionelle " (Giraud) , because Bourget ex- hibited his own psychological bias together with that of his generation.

Francisque Sarcey, (1827-99), the most popular and influential dramatic critic of his time, was the Aristotle of the piece bien faite. His Quarante ans de theatre (8 vols. 1900-02) * ^^^ consist of critical feuilletons, written mainly for Le

Temps, and cover dramatic history from the ancients to the Theatre-Libre. Beginning with a sound knowledge and apprecia- tion of the French Classics, Sarcey came to prefer the drama of

718 IN CRITICISM

Scribe, of Dumas fils and of Sardou. This change was due partly to his subservience to contemporary tastes — he always held that a play existed only in relation to its public — and partly to his overweening interest in technique. For Sarcey, technique (" du theatre ") was much more important than literary merit; there- fore he could set up the well-made play as a dramatic absolute. He insists upon the " art of preparations," the unity of impression, much action, and especially the scene a jaire or the precept that the central situation of the plot must be represented on the stage. Apart from too much emphasis on modernity, Sarcey's good sense, knowledge and insight make him an informing and often a reliable critic.

Less information but a great deal of charm and personality is to be found in the critical writings of Anatole France. The four volumes of La Vie litteraire (written for Le Temps, sionists: 1888-92) reflect th^ influences that characterize his

A. France £j.g^ period (see Ch. I, above). Previously and in- deed throughout his career, France wrote many introductions to French Classics and the like, and these Notices (now collected in Le Genie Latin, 1913) are more of the orthodox and conventional kind. But his fame is closely connected with La Vie litteraire, which represents essentially Impressionistic criticism. " The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his own soul among masterpieces." " Objective criticism has no more existence than objective art." So France talks of himself in connection with Gaston Paris or Renan ; we learn little of the Middle Ages or of the Hebrews, but we are entertained by the discursive, wilful, epi- curean charm of the irresistible Anatole. Deliberate relativity and dilettanteism are ever-present; yet this critic has underlying standards, mainly of the himianistic and classical order. A diatribe against Zola is followed by a plea for the cultural study of Latin. Maupassant is praised as a Classical Realist, and Florian is appreciated for his reminiscential values. Appreciative criticism is, indeed, chiefly in evidence, and the writer's skepti- cism is here not bitter but tolerant and kindly. Recognizing the development of the critical spirit in these latter Alexandrian times, France approves the genre of criticism as all-inclusive and as affording scope for " the rarest, the most manifold and varied of intellectual faculties." Certainly his own facul-

LEMAITRE 719

ties, enveloped in a gracious personal style and an atmosphere of

literary vagabondage, are conspicuous in La Vie litteraire.

" Certaine beaute," says Jules Lemaitre, " est un dissolvant."

The phrase is significant as denoting a difference between Lemaitre

., and his brother-impressionist, France. The former,

Lemaitre n i • -i i • . ,

with all his wit and irony, shows a sturdiness and

an intellectual consistency which the latter did not have. Jules Lemaitre (1853-1914) was trained as a scholar and began as a teacher; but he soon drifted into journalism and became known through his amusing feuUleton on Renan ; he wrote many " Im- pressions " and was made an Academician in 1895 ; then he took the conservative (Catholic and militarist) side in the Dreyfus affair and returned to the usual standards in his lauding of public morality, patriotism and Classicism. In his last years he became noted as a graceful lecturer, an activity resulting in the popular and sympathetic volumes on Rousseau, Racine and Chateaubriand.

Lemaitre's chief productions are Les Contemporains (7 vols. 1885-99) and Impressions de Theatre (10 vols., 1888 ff.). His purpose is to convey appreciative and interpretative criticism, proceeding by " elective affinities " rather than by reasoning or reference to general ideas. He takes as his motto Sainte-Beuve's sentence comparing the critical spirit to a river which winds through a varied landscape and reflects everything in turn. Fortunately, Lemaitre's taste is good, and thereby he is saved from the extreme of dilettanteism. He can accept and admire, temporarily at least, writers as different as Racine and Verlaine, the Realists and Rousseau. Like Taine, he frequently sums up a writer in an illuminating phrase: Banville represents the tight- rope in poetry; the Goncourts are the Siamese twins of literature; Heredia puts the Spanish point of honor into his sonnets. Lemaitre writes with verve, naturalness and a wit which is even more incisive than that of Anatole France. In his latter days he became less of an aesthete and more of a moralist, with " un grand desir de comprendre et le gout de regarder dans I'interieur des ames." The sincerity of this desire appears in such a volume as that on Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1907). All of Lemaitre is readable, much of him is sound, and if Impressionism is only a " refined appetite," yet in this case we may usually trust to the excellence of the palate concerned.

EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE

Much of the literature belonging to the pre-war period has been discussed in the preceding Book. There we dealt with the The elder generation of authors who attained fame be-

Field fQj,g ^jjg giogg Qf ^jig century. Here it is our aim

to treat only the talents that flowered from 1900 to 1914; and it is still too soon to place the majority of these talents. It seems best, then, to discuss fully three illustrious representatives of the age and, as regards the remainder, to merely indicate the currents and ideals with which they were associated.

The word " ideals " is used advisedly, for it seems clear that a certain animating force, variously directed, has usually upheld The this generation. To the confused abimdance of

Tendencies their production, the terms " decadence " and " fin de Steele " are no longer appropriate. Writers are, on the one hand mystic and spiritual, on the other active and patriotic. It is not easy to separate the tangled threads of these ideals, but perhaps three chief strands may be discerned. (1) The reaction against Naturalism and Positivism is apparent. An idealistic fervor finds expression in the Intuitive philosophy of M. Bergson and his followers, in the cultivation of the inner life by RoUand and others, and in the mystic or Neo-Catholic revival attempted by Claudel and Peguy. (2) There is the creed of energy and force, which inspires " the daring apostles of Life, those who cultivate movement and liberty rather than art" (Mme Duclaux). This movement is extremely diverse and often in- coherent. But its range is visible from the very names of such " petites ecoles " as Vitalism, Dynamism, Vorticism, Paroxysm, Futurism. These are all schools of force. Their tendencies are summed up in the work; of Emile Verhaeren. (3) The native exponents of energy, under the leadership of Barres (see Bk. IX, Ch. I), turned their attention to the upbuilding of France.

720

TENDENCIES 721

This patriotic zeal has several phases, whether as applied to a depiction of the provinces (Regionalism), to a renewed in- terest in colonial expansion, or to the development of a solid Nationalism. In its extreme form, Nationalism has been linked with a return to Royalist and Catholic sympathies (L'Action jrangaise). This movement is usually active and practical.

It seems, indeed, that the general tendency of " les jeunes " has been towards an obstreperous activity, towards " violence Conflicts ^^^ volume " rather than measure and taste. Never and has there been an epoch of greater individual

on usions liberty, whether in thought or form. Adventurous talents have sought a cohesion or solidarity which they scarcely found ; and in the multitude of " isms " it would appear that every individual is making a private school of his own. For instance, Marinetti (an Italian) and Verhaeren (a Fleming), with their interest in the inventions . of a mechanical age, are the only " Futurists " that matter ; Verhaeren, again, is the chief " Paroxyst " ; Jules Romains is the only luminary of " Unanimism," held important because of its application of crowd-psychology to poetry; Fernand Gregh is the apostle of " Humanism," which reacts against the Parnassians and the Symbolists ; while " Naturism " or " I'ideo-realisme " has a more numerous following, whose endeavor is to " faire tressaillir leurs strophes du grand frisson de la vie." This vehement struggle for individual vitality has rarely attained final or con- summate form. The chief organs of the new movements have been the Mercure de France and, more recently, the Nouvelle Revue Frangaise. But rather than dwell on the more eccentric manifestations, we should cope with the underlying philosophy of the age.

II

In the domain of thought, the transcendental philosophy of M. Henri Bergson (b. 1859) was very influential as it was quite characteristic of the pre-war period. The rising generation approved his interest in the forces of life (Vitalism) and his advocacy of instinct rather than intelli- gence (Intuitionism) ; especially did his doctrine of Creative

722 EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE

Evolution and the flux harmonize with certain aesthetic tend- encies of the new era. Partly deriving from Boutroux and Renouvier, offering parallels with the system of William James, the Bergsonian philosophy is contained in three works of pro- gressive importance. In his doctoral thesis, Essai sur les donnees immediates de la conscience (1889), M. Bergson is already seek- ing the depths of the inner life and the foimdations of liberty. In Matiere et memoir e (1896) the author discusses, with the latest scientific evidence, the rapports between consciousness and the outer world. The work is definitely idealistic and dualistic in its emphasis on the inertia of matter save as energized by spirit. Finally,^ L'Evolution Creatrice (1907) is the fullest and most alluring statement of M. Bergson's metaphysical attitude. It deals with evolution in general, with the meaning of life, the relations of body and spirit, the contrast of intellect and in- stinct; it furnishes a criticism of modem philosophical systems and it garbs the whole argument in a style of infinite suggestion, imagery and charm.

Although, according to his disciples, M. Bergson's work is strongly groimded on a manifold knowledge of the sciences, yet The he is throughout opposed to a wholly scientific or

Intuition " mechanistic " view of the universe. Thereby he ^^^^ continues the belief in the " bankruptcy of science " which was symptomatic of the century's end.'' The doctrine of final causes, or the teleological explanation of reality, he finds equally man-made and unsatisfactory. Again, our philosophical diflBculties arise partly from the inadequacy and confusion of terms, partly from our mental need to " juxtapose phenomena in space " even when ideas do not occupy space. (This parcelling habit is his chief objection to Spencerian evolution). So the true philosopher must go beyond science, must renounce analytic processes in favor of spontaneous perception, and " accomplish an effort of direct intuition which may put him into immediate contact with the real " (Le Roy) . The nature and fimctioning of this transcendental intuition are nowhere clearly indicated in L'Evolution Creatrice. Having disposed of space, M. Bergson proceeds to dispose of time. What we usually call facts are not

' His latest book, L'Energie spirituelle ( 1919) does not fall within our scope. » See above, pp. 665 and 717.

BERGSON 723

ultimate reality, but reality adapted to practical interests; our practical understanding (cf. Kant) tends to solidify the flux of phenomena and to represent the same in set periods of duration; whereas duration likewise flows continously; in thought and in memory, past melts imperceptibly into present and our tomorrows will soon form a compact whole with our yesterdays. M. Bergson's illustrations of this continuum are vivid and his treat- ment of true duration, as being infinitely vaster than matter, is most impressive.

By spontaneous and immediate intuition, then, the philosopher can apprehend what the scientist cannot: the real nature of the Creative soul, of the vital impulse {I'elan vital) , of movement

Evolution a^jjjj change. Neo-Darwinism is acceptable as regards variation and adaptability. The next step is to maintain that these processes are not passively undergone, but reflected in our perception and action. Hence it is a creative evolution in which we participate; we are in the midst of an " unforeseeable creation of forms." By an act of sympathy the observer installs himself in the bosom of reality, in order to " sentir sa palpitation pro- fonde et sa richesse interieure " (Le Roy) . If we must have concepts, let them be plastic, fluid and living like the living models. So only may philosophy " dilate " and go deeper in its endeavor to transcend its present intellectual status. So only may it reflect reality's double and correlative movement towards unification and plurification (cf . James) . Life proceeds largely by dissociation, and Evolution, like an exploding shell, bursts into ever-flying fragments.

The best reality to study is the ego — and there is nothing new about that statement. But his disciples hold that M. Bergson The Inner has enlarged the possibilities of " know thyself " by ^°^^^ ' showing to what extent the division-making pro- cesses of the outer world have crept into the multiple ego. These processes, as obsessions, should be discarded, and we should, as in " pure memory," reach to the inner depths of the individual. Already, in Matiere et memoire, the writer had maintained that of the several grades or layers of consciousness, the deepest is independent of mechanistic conceptions. It would seem, then, that spirit may have an independent life; cerebral convolutions and records will not explain the original activities of perception

724 EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE

and memory. In our inner life — for example, in a deep passion — it is more a question of intensity than of any quantitative analysis. Spatial and numerical measurements must go. This is the doctrine of the " immanence of thought," closely connected with the creative and poetic instinct; this is the source of moral responsibility and of life itself. And in the joy of becoming one with pure reality, we participate in its essential movement.

This movement is a fundamental principle of the new philos- ophy, for which its founder has suggested the title of the " phi- A Philo- losophy of change." Change or movement, says M. sophy of Bergson, " is original. Things are derived from move- Change ment." Life is a " continuity of genetic energy," and our part in it is to furnish a certain push or tendency. So we have a moving-picture scenario in which, however, it is not a question of adding movement to the fixed pictures, but of starting with the movement and directing it into scenes or elements of experience. Thus we end with the idea of a reality which creates and which is free. The destiny of human beings has never been foreordained :

The world was all before them where to choose . . .

We often forgot our creative role and lapsed back into mechanism and the struggle for mere maintenance. Yet man has triumphed; yet our gifts and heritage declare nature's solitary exceptional success. Such is the stirring conclusion of M. Bergson's idealistic philosophy.

It is scarcely our part to judge this doctrine, but even a layman may observe that its chief assumptions repose on nothing but our Tendencies — °^ ^- Bergson's — intuitive apprehension. The and same may be said as regards the " proof " of the

will's freedom, of the separate existence of spirit and its possible immortality. Although the author scarcely mentions religion, there is more of revelation than of reasoning in his synthesis. That is why he has been criticized by such men as J. Benda, who find Bergson's anti-intellectualism out of the French tradition, sentimental and romantic with a German tinge. Yet the majority of young French writers in this period waged war, somewhat indiscriminately, on rationalism, ma- terialism and positivism; there was, as we have stated, a reno-

BERGSON 725

vation of the " ideal " in various forms; and the popularity of Bergson was partly due to the fact that his speculations are capable of many interpretations and uses. For example, Peguy and Claudel (see below) interpreted Creative Evolution very differently, the one being nearer to Vitalism, the other to In- tuitionism. Again, " Impulsionism," the " ideo-realiste " move- ment, the divagations of the later Symbolists and vers-libristes, all have points in common with the new philosophy, which agrees with the modem emphasis on force as well as on formlessness (the flux). It seems probable that Bergsonism, as a system, reached its peak before the war and is now declining.

Whatever the fate of its message, L'Evolution Creatrice will remain a literary landmark because of the fascinating and poetic Literary power of its style. It is curious that M. Bergson Values should originally have renounced and finally

adopted the use of images as symbols of the unspeakable and invisible; for his style is vibrant with convergent metaphors, evocative of a varied reality, supple and flowing in accordance with the thought. It is a style of elaborate harmonies, but of comparative clearness, containing many repetitions; it also con- tains, like that of Pascal, the frisson metaphysique, the sense of vastness and soul-yearning. In this many-textured fabric, subtle psychological analysis alternates with technical illustrations from the positive sciences. Frequent cross-references to the creative arts are found, and although M. Bergson has formulated no system of aesthetics, his influence upon recent aesthetic cur- rents and criticism is indisputable.

Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915) is also a sort of Intuitionist with regard to aesthetic theories. Following Bergson in the Other " dissociation des idees," he is led by this analysis

Thinkers Jq^q g, corrosive and pernicious immoralism, es- pecially in his poetry and fiction. His criticism (Promenades Ktteraires, 1904^13) is likewise based on a sensual principle, but shows genuine gifts of divination and taste. E. Seilliere as a critic is anti-romantic and represents an intellectual imperial- ism in his speculative thinking. As regards religious idealism, or " le Spiritualisme," E. Schure (Les Grands Inities, etc.) and C. de Pomairols have been considered as the semi-official heads respectively of the Protestant and the Catholic wings of the

726 EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE

revival. The Modernist movement, in the Catholic Church, has mainly a theological significance. Neo-Catholicism, in its more active and patriotic affiliations, was forwarded not only by Barres and the other " B's " (see above, p. 669) , but also by the directors of L' Action frangaise,^ Leon Daudet and especially Charles Maurras. Barres and Maurras have been the two most effective publicists in connection with the maintenance of Nationalist traditions. These include, not only patriotism, but a return d la Chateaubriand, to the principles of " throne and altar." Royalism and Catholicism are considered as safeguarding the nation and as establishing " I'idee de I'ordre." Many young intellectuals and aristocrats have tried thus to reverse the wheel of time ; Rolland once inquired of such a juvenile Tory why he should cling to the skirts of his great- grandmother.

in

Romain Rolland (b. 1868) is the second great writer of this

period. A native of Clamecy in Burgundy, he has celebrated

„ „ , his province in the attempted Rabelaisianism of Colas

Rolland „ '^ ,^„^„, , , , , , , . , •

Breugnon (1919) and has told us of his upbrmg-

ing in an episode of Jean-Christophe. Rolland was, however, educated in Paris, where he formed a friendship with Paul Claudel and an early passion for music, especially that of Wagner. Passing through the Ecole Normale and a period of adolescent storm and stress, he soon demonstrated that his dom- inant interest would be an intellectual internationalism and a desire to reach a synthesis, a world-philosophy in that direction. The powerful influence of Tolstoy alternated with cosmopolitan contacts in Rome; a visit to Bayreuth was presently followed by an endeavor to reform the French theater towards the stand- ard of Shakespeare {Theatre de la Revolution, acted 1898-1902). Rolland then functioned as professor of the History of Music at the Sorbonne (1903-10) ; he wrote a Vie de Beethoven to- gether with numerous studies on other musicians, past and pres- ent. Around 1911 he spent some time in Switzerland, to which

' This journal represented the continuation of the anti-Dreyfus agitation. Sea above, pp. 664, 676.

HOLLAND 727

country he retired during the war. Mme Duclaux finds him more Swiss than Latin in his " intense individualism, his moral earnestness, his lyric love of nature and ... a scolding tenderness in his voice."

All of this earnestness, this cosmopolitanism, this interest in art and in the life of the mind, was poured into Jean-Christophe, "Jean- which was first published periodically in Peguy's

Chriatophe" Qahiers de la Quinzaine, 1904r-12. This ten-volume work is in several respects the most notable French novel of our generation. First, it uses the form as a " rag-bag " mis- cellany and is panoramic in its view of civilization. Secondly, it centers around the biography of a musician and offers the most striking recent " case " of the artistic temperament doubling upon itself. In one or the other of these respects, Jean- Christophe has had numerous sequels in the cycle-novels of the last decade* And thirdly, the book is written with a thorough- going idealism, which is not rose-colored, which faces facts and rings true by all standards of nobility and sincerity.

The three divisions in the life of Christophe Krafft are his German youth, his Parisian struggles and the epoch of final tempests and subsequent serenity (Switzerland, Italy, Paris). Rolland's biographies of Beethoven, of Michelangelo and of Tolstoy, together with certain episodes in the life of Wagner, furnish some material in the three chief phases of the hero- musician. Cosmopolitanism is then evident as regards both places and people. The work is strongly conceived and con- structed; but it could scarcely maintain an equal inspiration throughout its whole course. Among the parts that seem most valuable are the following.' The heredity of Christopher is significantly set forth, and his childhood is described with charm iL'Avbe). The awakening of young love is wonderfully por- trayed in the affairs with Sabine the somnolent and Ada the sensuous {U Adolescent) . Christopher is now becoming con- scious of his creative power and generally of " la force de I'Etre." This leads (in La Revolte)' to his battles with the German small- town atmosphere and with the sentimentalism that he calls the "mensonge allemand." He breaks with his early associations

* For example, m the works of Bennett, Mackenzie, Dreiser, Wassennann, Couperus, and Marcel Proust.

' The titles of the individual volumes are given in parentheses.

728 EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE

and suddenly flees to Paris. There, like Wagner, he meets with ill-luck and indifference — and Rolland writes what is really an indictment of the boulevards {La Foire sur la place). The novelist excoriates the market-place, the ignorant coteries, the corruptions of fast life, the hyper-feminized literature and society. He appeals from this moribund generation to the forces of Life, even of humble life: during an illness he is nursed by a servant-girl who convinces him that there are workers even in Paris. Then we go back to the family life of the Jeannin {Antoinette) , the pathetic idyll of the girl who loved Christopher at a distance and who in dying left her brother, Olivier, to be his great friend. These two friends keep house together, and grad- ually {Dans la Maison and Les Amies) Christopher comes to know a circle of quiet workers and passes through various ex- periences, amorous and political. The latter kind bring trouble, namely a riot, the death of Olivier and the forced flight of Christopher from Paris. Prositrated in a Swiss town (Bale), he recovers only to fall a victim to the most violent of his love- affairs, with the enigmatic and passionate Anna. Finally, he is restored to serenity, meets again his Grazia and loves her ideally (La Nouvelle Joumee), shows benevolence towards the younger generation and passes away. " Saint Christophe a traverse le fleuve."

His whole life-course, indeed, has been a " river," as Rolland says — not a novel but a huge stream journeying epically through p . . . a varied landscape, panoramic in its reflections of

many scenes, subjects and experiences. The work also resembles a symphony in its triple division, its recurrent motifs, its anticipations and fulfillments. So diverse is the story that different countries have shown distinct preferences for different volumes — France for La Nouvelle Joumee, America for Le Buisson ardent. So the work is uniquely European in its scope and influence. People of many races and types move across the stage, and the characterization is usually excellent. Christopher himself, with his naivete and blundering, his increasing spiritual force and his growing goodness, is wonderfully handled. He is a sort of Parsifal, a " reiner Thor " who becomes " wise through sympathy." He is a very human genius. The gentler but more subtle Olivier is a worthy foil. Olivier's wife, Jacqueline, in her

HOLLAND 729

strenuous demands upon life and love, is one kind of modern woman — and many kinds are represented. The heroines are thoroughly differentiated and analyzed. We remember the chief stages in the story by the names of the women, each representing some aspect of her country: Minne, Sabine and Ada; Antoinette at the opposite pole from Colette Stevens ; Grazia, the Beatrice, who inspires an autumnal love. Even to the minor characters, such as Christopher's mother, Rolland gives life and individuality. The arlJ of Jean-Christophe is in the total effect rather than in details. It is not written in a choice style. There are many passages of an eloquent earnestness, but the river runs muddily at times and the language becomes diffuse or slack. There are also slow-moving pages of discussion or didacticism. Part of Christopher's revolt is against too much " art," against an ever- refining dilettanteism ; he trusts more to the strong rough currents of an abiding inspiration; he trusts above all to the consoling power of work and of will:

Je ne suis pas tout ce qui est (dit la voix de Dieu). Je suis la Vie qui combat le Neant. . . . Je suis le Feu qui brule dans la Nuit. . . . Je suis le combat etemel. . . . Je suis la Volonte libre qui lutte et brule eternellement. Lutte et brule avec moi. . . ,

This greatly resembles Bergson. The book preaches a creative energy derived from several soiu'ces — first, from the natural, hereditary and intuitive genius of the artist; secondly, from his " long espoir " in spiritual realities ; thirdly, from Christopher's enduring strength, a strength of the people, Tolstoyan, embracing poverty, confronting hardship — and triumphing over the market- place.

In Holland's view an artist should feel and express the " re- ligious conscience " of a people. So a " grand souffle Pantheiste " animates this work — a religious fervor without definite religious dogma. Hence, for all its social satire, Jean-Christophe is constructive through its final faith in an emergent "true France " and in the stamina of civilization. Lofty and fine issues, simply accepted, dominate the book; nothing could be farther from the literature of the boulevards. Nor does Rolland have recourse, like Barres and Bourget, to the traditional supports of Church and State. A greater " wind of

730 EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE

the spirit " now animates humanity, and this is also the message of Aurdessits de la Melee (1915), the war-book which has been so widely misunderstood and which, for all its true patriotism, has cost Rolland his popularity in France. He will regain it, for in the long run the judgment of France is just. The name of Rolland will survive this troubled epoch, steadfastly linked with the cause of truth-telling and of international idealism. Whatever the fate of his after-work, Jean-Christophe remains a noble task, nobly accomplished.

In certain other novelists we find likewise an idealistic trend, but it has been less strongly articulate. The Regionalist move- Other ment launched by Barres is exemplified in the work Novelists Qf ]y[ Henry Bordeaux {La Neige sur les pas, Les Yeux qui s'ouvrent) , who deals mainly with the province of Le Dauphine; and by M. Rene Bazin, who in La Terre qui meurt (1899) and Le Ble qui leve (1907) presents agricultural or social problems in central France; Les Oberle (1901) especially gives M. Bazin's contribution to the literature of Alsace (cf. Barres, Lichtenberger, etc.). Bordeaux and Bazin are respectable and highly moral writers, who emphasize devotion to the family as well as to the state. More colorful is the depiction of North Africa in the work of M. Louis Bertrand: Le Sang des races, 1899; Pepete le bien-aime, 1904. The historical past of France has been resuscitated in the novels of Henri de Regnier (Le bon Plaisir, 1902; Le Passe vivant, 1905) and in those of Maurice Maindron, especially Saint-C'endre (1902). These men write with a sensual bias, but with considerable knowledge of the past and much artistic skill in the presentation. The psychological novel is continued in La Vie secrete (1908) of E. Estaunie and the roman passionel in Mme Marcelle Tinayre's Maison du peche (1902). Yellow-back fiction has also abounded, and the confusion of the epoch is manifest in the heterogeneity of this form. For example, the Prix Goncourt has been awarded yearly to a series of " striking " or eccentric novels ; yet none of those published before 1914 seem likely to survive.

POETRY 731

IV

Apart from the later manifestations of Symbolism, French poetry seems to have been at a loss during the early years of the Poetry twentieth century. The period of 1900-1905 is a

period of poetic anarchy and extravagance. After that date, it is held, the various " isms " settled down to a sort of reconciliation based on their common distrust of the intellect and their common desire for a poetic renaissance in the direc- tion of idealism, spontaneity, creative enthusiasm (cf. Berg^on). Their intentions were better than their achievement. In France proper, previous to the war, no commanding presence was felt in poetry. Among the conservatives, at the turn of the century, we find the classical and Petrarchan Muse of Auguste Angellier (A I'amie perdue, 1896; Dans la lumiere antique, 1905-11) and the emotional Vitalism of the Comtesse Mathieu de Noailles (Le Coeur innombrable, 1901; Les Eblouissements, 1907). Both of these writers are perfectly regular in form. As regards the various new " isms," their divisions and principles have been sufficiently catalogued above (section I). One might mention such mani- festoes as Marinetti's " Tuons le Clair de Lune " or J. Remains' poem, La Vie Unamme (1908). In form, the New Poetry (Paul Fort, Peguy, Claudel) has pushed vers libre to the point where it is polymorphic, closer to rhythmic prose than to verse. Like Verhaeren (see below), most of these writers are Whitmanesque Paul F rt ™ form, content or both. Paul Fort (b. 1872),

" prince des poetes " since 1912, has written many volumes of Ballades frangaises, 1897-1920. These deal partly with the writer's self, but more with historical or contemporary France, in Paris or in the provinces (Le Roman de Louis XI, Paris sentimental, Ile-de-France) . The style ranges from the familiar language of the streets to a quaint archaic French ; and Fort uses various so-called adaptations of the Old French popular verse-forms. Like Jammes, he favors a naive expres- sion— naivete has been a frequent pose since Verlaine. There is plenty of life and emotion in this diluted mixture of prose and verse, which is printed like prose, but allows occasional rime or near-rime together with repetends and refrains. Paul

732 EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE

Fort has been called " I'exemplaire le plus curieux du pofete k la fois spontane et subtil, natural et pittoresque, ingenieux et savant, opulent et neglige " (Florian-Parmentier) .

Charles Peguy (1873-1914), a self-taught mystic and man of the people, was the founder (1897) of the enterprising Cahiers de la Quinzaine, which published Rolland, A. Suares and others. This poet wrote long Mysteries or semi-epics (Eve, Le Mystere de la Charite de Jeanne d'Arc) which emphasize his orthodox faith and his belief in " the grandeur and misery of man and his need of salvation." Peguy's talent is unequal, verbose, sensitive and himiane. His rhythmical prose is full of repetitions, incoherencies and dilu- tions, alternating with passages of high imagery and natural beauty. Peguy was killed early in the Great War and is best known by his stirring and prophetic war-poem:

Heureux ceux qui sont morts pour la terra chamalla, Mais pourvu que ce fut dans une juste guerra; Heureux ceux qui sont morts pour quatre coins da terre, Heureux ceux qui sont morts d'une mort solennalla.

Heureux ceux qui sont morts dans las grandes batailles, Couches dessus le sol a la face de Dieu; Heureux ceux qui sont morts sur un dernier haut lieu Parmi tout I'appareil des grandes funerailles. . . .

-The dominating voice in poetry during this period was that of Emile Verhaeren (1855-1916). But Verhaeren's muse is Verhaeren Belgian rather than purely French. Bom and bred in Flanders, he studied at Louvain and joined a literary group at Brussels; he published his first volume, Les Flamandes, in 1883. This naturalistic collection is aflame with the colors of Rubens and the riot of the senses. A more mystic and restrained note is sounded in Les Moines, 1886. Some main- tain that it is in the Flemish character thus to alternate the animal and the spiritual. At any rate, having celebrated with a good deal of violence the attractions of his native soil, Verhaeren passed through a nervous breakdown which found expression in such records of the inner life as Les Scdrs and Les Debacles. He presently recovered contact with the outer world, married, became interested in Socialism, and began his

VERHAEREN 733

third phase with the publication of Lsi Villei tentaculair^s (1895).

This final phase contains the most characteristic poetry of Verhaeren. It is marked by objectivity, expansive power and His an interest in the manifold aspects of modern in-

Master- dustrial life. It is distinctly a new " Futuristic "

P*® ®® poetry that appeared under such well-chosen titles

as Les Forces tumultueuses (1902), La Multiple Splendeur (1906) and Les Rhythmes souvemins (1910) . In all his twenty- odd volumes, Verhaeren has not surpassed this trilogy. In the first-named, the poet sings of such " forces " as art and love, such heroes or types as the warrior, the monk, the orator and the financier. La Multiple Splendeur, more abstract in its in- tention, bears witness to the power of ideas, of hmnan speech (Le Verbe), of aspiration and even of suffering; but above all it revels in the vitality and violence of Nature, whether as triumphing in the marts of the world or as inextricably mingled, in the springtide, with one's personal life and with the beauty of women. Les Rhythmes souverains fully embodies a concep- tion of rhythm to which we shall return. Les Ailes rouges de la guerre (posthumous, 1917) contains, together with much powerful invective against the Germans, a large vision of the mighty machinery of war.

The chief point about Verhaeren, and his chief difference from nineteenth-century poets, is that he accepts modern life with The New its grime and its glory, with all its industrial and Poetry civic manifestations. His muse is intensely demo-

cratic and surrenders herself to actuality. Verhaeren too has his Five Towns, overhung with smoke and vibrating to the new music of factories and trades. He perceives that " the town is the future." He imagines Paris or Hamburg as an octopus that drains the force from a whole region {Les Villes tenta- culaires). His pages throng with a naturalistic and teeming life, whether viewed in a metropolis or in the "beautes fortes et rudes " of his native Flanders. Verhaeren was a man of much travel and experience. His talent was mainly plastic and de- scriptive in his early volumes, but his range went ever deeper and wider in the new century. He declares that

Toute la vie est dans ressor,

734 EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE

and he believes in the elan vital as creatively as Bergson. That is, he projects himself and his imagination into the heart of the riot, and through this " immanence " he attains a kind of spiritual strength in the midst of materialism. Balzac had the same gift, and like Balzac and Hugo, Verhaeren vivifies, through an animistic process, everything that he touches. He also deals with vast and huge subjects — war and desolation, the sea and great cities — in the epic manner of Hugo. A fervent admirer of " la vie intense et rouge," he believes that the pride of life cannot be conquered by penitence or religion, by Magi or Magdalens:

lis ne changeront rien a ce qui fut tou jours: L'humanite n'a soif que de son propre amour; EUe est rude, complexe, ardente; elle est retorse; La joie et la bonte sent les fleurs de sa force.

Verhaeren's verse-forms are extremely liberal, without being altogether free. Parnassian in his first volumes, he later uses Technical the Romantic Alexandrine, then he tends more and Values more to discard the Alexandrine in favor of varied

line-lengths within the strophe. This is vers libre somewhat as La Fontaine used it; its supple variety is not diminished by the continued use of rime. The rhythm, however, is exceedingly free and unconventional; here is his idea as to the expression of the " universal rhythm: "

Tel I'exprime — sait-il comment? —

Qui sent en lui si bellement

Passer les vivantes id^ies

Avec leur pas sonore, avec leur geste clair

Qu'elles reglent d'elles-memes I'elan du vers

Et les jeux

Onduleux

De la rime assouplie ou fermement dardee.

(Le Verbe)

Verhaeren is fond of very short lines, alternating with longer ones, and thereby he gives an impression of speed and a dramatic effect. He inherits from the Symbolists the use of suggestion and of onomatopeia:

VERHAEREN 736

Mes jours toujours plus lourds s'en vont roulant leur cours.

The clash of consonants and the suggestion of vowels play a considerable part in this poetry (see La Pluie and Le Vent).

As poetry, his work is uniformly violent and voracious. Like some huge machine, it devours and gives forth again indiscrimi- A Criticism °^*^^y " ^* "^^* ample et violente; " it does so with an explosive force that is often too highly charged. We grow weary of hearing the siren shriek. Verhaeren not only makes love violently; he even takes a bath with a loud emphasis. The flight of Pegasus is a headlong riotous flight, and even Christian sacrifice appears as a " fevered violence." Verhaeren laps up voraciously the mixed food-stuff of life and therein he is like Whitman, though he is a far greater artist than Whitman.* Allowing for his coarser intoxications, it must be admitted that the chief trilogy of volumes analyzed above show powers of poetic expression imrivaled in our time. A large, supple and well-adapted vocabulary ; a dramatic terseness of speech; a gift of imaginative recreation and pantheistic fervor; a resounding energy which often reaches poetic ecstasy -^ these things make Verhaeren a genuine lyrist, whatever we may think of his message and whatever doubts we may have regarding the " multiple splendor " that he finds in industrialism. Verhaeren's vogue is European in extent, and his influence has been felt on such movements as Futurism, " Paroxysm " and " Unanimism." He is thoroughly representative of the New Poetry, in whatever country that may be taking form — and even where it does not take form. The following extracts (from Un Soir) will illustrate his creed; may a future reader know, says Verhaeren —

Qu'il sache, avec quel violent elan, ma joie

S'est, a travels les oris, les revoltes, les pleurs,

Ruee au combat fier et male des douleurs,

Pour en tirer I'amour, comme on conquiert sa proie.

' The subject of Whitman in France awaits thorough investigation. It does not appear that Verhaerai was consciously influenced by the American poet. VidS-GriflSn, Merrill and Claudel probably were. In all of these writers, as in the case of PSguy, similarities to Whitman can be found, especially as regards rhythm, force, externality. Modernism, the use of enumeration and repetition. The Leaves of Grass were first fully translated in 1909, though partial transla- tions had appeared from 1886 on.

736 EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE

J'aime mes yeux fievreux, ma cervelle, mes nerfs,

Le sang dont vit mon coeur, le coeur dont vit mon torse;

J'aime I'homme et le monde et j'adore la force

Que domie et prend ma force a I'homme et Tunivers.

Une tendresse enorme emplit I'apre savoir.

Comprenez-voTis pourquoi mon vers vous interpelle? C'est qu'en vos temps quelqu'un d'ardent aura tire Du coeur de la necessite meme, le vrai, Bloc clair, pour y dresser I'entente universelle.

The drama is best represented by nineteenth-centiiry writers (Bk. IX, Ch. II) , most of whom continue into the period under Drama: discussion. Brieux, Hervieu, Curel, Maeterlinck,

Bernstein Donnay and Lavedan still dominate the theater. Secondary to these are the twentieth-century writers, who express, for the most part, the tastes of the boulevards or the " litterature du serail " (Baldensperger) . The idealistic current runs thinnest in the theater, and the too-familiar triangle was not displaced even by the war. Probably the most notable new dramatist is M. Henri Bernstein (b. 1876) , who perpetuates the tradition of the play that is ingenious, " well-made " and rather unreal. He usually presents triangular situations (Le Detour, 1902; Le Bercail, 1904) ; his characterization is faulty, since his audience prefers the effects of melodrama and of long-suspended scenes (Le Voleur, 1906) ; he occasionally runs closer to the theatre d'idees, as in Israel (1908). Samson (1907) is suitably " strong " and gives a good portrait of the financier in his corrupt milieu. More is made of spiritual issues in L'Assaut (1912) and especially in L'Elevation (1917), one of the best plays inspired by the war.

Henri Bataille (1872-1922) began with a flare of poetry which the market-place presently extinguished. He has been called a "specialist in the pathology of love " (Chandler) , and he often presents abnormal women {Maman Colibri, 1903; La Vierge

THE DRAMA 737

folle, 1910). Like Bernstein, Bataille gives a large place to action that proceeds from unbridled instincts and Rgttrea desires. A romantic inclination is visible in Ba-

taille, while Alfred Capus (1858-1922) has taken life more realistically, but easily and superficially enough, in such comedies as La Veine, Notre Jeunesse, Les Favorites, and nu- merous others. The amusing and rather scandalous vaudevilles of the collaborators, R. de Flers and G. de Caillavet, are at any rate witty and well wrought. But in none of these dramatists are we conscious of the richness, the turmoil and the profounder realities of life.

The idealistic movement is to be found elsewhere and particu- larly in the mystical dramas of M. Paul Claudel (b. 1868). CUndel ^ devout Catholic, a traveler and consul of France

in the Orient, M. Claudel has written plays as un- usual as his experiences. In his first collected volume {L'Arbre, 1901, containing five dramas), he endeavored to infuse a mystic note into modern scenes and situations (as in La Jeune Fille Violaine and in L'Echange). Conscious of this discrepancy, Claudel later transposed La Jeune Fille Violaine into medieval terms and the result is his masterpiece, L'Annonoe faite a Marie (1912, 1914). This play is like a saint's life in its record of spiritual sweetness and martyrdom. Violaine herself, like the majority of Claudel's heroines, is " living and lovable." But the symbolism of all these dramas and the language in which they are written is wilfully strange and obscure. Claudel's medium is again rhythmic prose, often beautiful in its imagery and melody. For all his depiction of violence and pain, his " ame lumineuse " casts a singular glow upon his best passages and the high moments of his rarefied characters.

Claudel is at once an intuitive mystic and a man of action.

Some hold that Intuitivism, as a philosophy of ideals, demands

a practical outlet. The younger generation now had

Conclusion ^^^^ ^^ ^^^j^ qualities: the cataclysm of 1914 was

a test alike of their faith and of their " works." We all know how France endured the test. The literature of the Great War and of the reconstruction period lies beyond our scope ; it is too soon to classify and judge the confusion of material. But as we close this long survey, we are impressed anew by three outstanding

738 EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE

and abiding features of French Literature: its high artistic standards; the continuity of its course or the fact that its line of march has been almost unbroken since the beginning; and the cumulative power of its traditions, effective even among the iconoclasts. These things have been part of the French record for eight hundred years and they promise well for the future.

THE END

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following bibliography is strictly selective. It does not give critical editions of works except where they include valuable literary treatment; such editions can usually be found in the bibliographies to which we refer. As far as possible, we have been guided in our choice by the following considerations:

(1) Preference is given to works in English and French; our aim being to include the most modern treatises and those to which our text is directly indebted; (2) in many cases we lighten the reader's task by mentioning translations of works; (3) the best all-round book or article on a subject is marked with an asterisk; (4) a dagger next to a title refers the reader for commentary to our text; (5) in general, we list books and articles in the order of discussion followed in our text; (6) where the place of publication is not mentioned, it is either London or Paris, according as the publication is in English or French; (7) we use certain obvious abbreviations (Cans, du lundi, Port, litt., etc.), and " G. E. F." indicates the Grands Ecrivains jrauQais series {Etudes biographiques et litteraires).

Bibliographies on French Literature:

For the Middle Ages: *G. Paris, La Litterature fran^aise au may en age, 5th edition, 1913; C. Voretzsch, Einfiihrung in das Studium der altfranzosischen Literatur, 2nd edition, Halle, 1913.

For the Renaissance: H. Morf, Geschichte der franzosischen Litera- tur im Zeitalter der Renaissance, 2nd edition, Strassburg, 1914; * G. Lanson, Manuel bibliographique de la litterature frangaise moderne : L Seizieme siecle, 2nd ed., 1911.

For ensuing periods: *G. Lanson, Manuel, vols. II, III, IV and V (supplement and index) 1910-1921; H. P. Thieme, Guide biblio- graphique de la litterature frangaise de 1800 a 1906, 1907; Jassy et Lens, Les Ressources du travail intellectuel en France, 1921.

Lorenz et Jordell, Catalogue de la librairie frangaise gives monthly subject-lists of new French books and an annual index.

Histories of French Literature:

* G. Lanson, f Histoire de la litterature frangaise, 16th edition, 1921 ; F. Brunetiere, Manuel de I'histoire de la litterature francaise, 2nd edition, 1899; * Suchier und Birch-Hirschf^ld, Geschichte der franzosi- schen Literatur von den altesten Zeiten bis zur Gigenwart, 2nd edition, Leipzig and Vienna, 1913; G. Saintsbury, A Short History of French

739

740 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ldterature 7th edition, 1917; C. H. C. Wright, A History of French Literature, New York, 1912; L. Petit de Julleville (editor), Histoire de la langue et de la litterature jrangaise, des origines a 1900, 8 vols., 1896-1899 (chapters by different authors) ; * Desire Nisard, t Histoire de la litterature jrangaise, 4 vols., 1844-1861 (still the standard ex- position from the Classical point of veiw).

Historic and Social Background or French Literature:

* Histoire de France, depuis les origines jusqu'a la Revolution, 18 vols. (9 Tomes), edited by t E. Lavisse, 1900-1911; F. Schrader, Atlas de geo- graphie historique, (Hachette) ; L. Hourticq, Histoire de I'art (Collec- tion Ars Una: La France), Hachette; Kr. Nyrop, Grammaire historique de la langue jrangaise, 3rd edition, vol. I, Copenhagen, 1914; F. Brunot, Histoire de la langue frangaise des origines a 1900, 5 vols., 1905-1916; L. E. Kastner, History of French Versification, Oxford, 1903; M. Grammont, * Petit traite de versification frang.aise, 1908; W. C. Brownell, French Traits, an essay in Comparative Criticism, New York, 1902.

Introductory Chapter:

* F. Brunetiere, Le Caractere essentiel d6 la litterature frangaise in his ^; Etudes critiques, 5° serie, 1893; G. Paris, Preface to Petit de Julleville, vol. I; G. Lanson, Caracteres generaux de la litterature frariQaise in the Revue des cours et conferences, XXI (1912), 5-17; M. Breal, Le Langage et les nationalites in the Revue des deux mondes, CVIII (1891), 3» per.

PART I, BOOK I Chapter I:

G. Paris, Introduction to La Litterature frangaise; Petit de Julleville, vols, I and II; Lavisse, Histoire, vol. I: Ch.-V. Langlois, La Vie en France au moyen age, 2nd edition, 1911, and De la Connaissance de la nature et du monde au moyen age, 1911; H. 0. Taylor, selected chapters from The Mediaeval Mind, 3rd edition, 2 vols.. New York, 1919.

On the chansons de geste:

*W. P. Ker, Epic and Romance, 2nd edition, 1908; Pio Rajna, Le Origini dell'epopea francese, Florence, 1884; *J. Bedier, Les Ligendes epiques, 4 vols., 1908-1913; W. P. Shepard, Chansons de geste and the Homeric Problem in the American Journal of Philology, XLII (1921).

The Chanson de Roland has been translated into English by C. S. Moncrieff, The Song of Roland done into English in the original measure, 1919; and into Modern French by L. Petit de Julleville, La Chanson de Roland, traduction nouvelle rhythmee et assonancee, 1878; for analysis of the poem see Bedier, III.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 741

On the Pelerinage de Charlemagne, see J. Coulet, Etudes sur I'ancien poeme frariQais du Voyage de Charlemagne, Montpellier, 1907.

On the Southern and Feudal Cycles, see Bedier I and II; for transla- tion of the Girart de Roussillon, P. Meyer, G. de R., chanson de geste traduite pour la premiere fois, 1884; Huon de Bordeaux can be read either in Lord Berners' English rendering {Tudor Translations) or in G. Paris, Aventures merve^euses de Huon de Bordeaux, 1899.

Chapter II:

On the lyric, in general:

*A. Jeanroy, Les Origines de la poesie lyrique en France au moyen age, 2nd edition, 1904; G. Paris in the Melanges de litt. fr. 1912, p. 539; J. Bedier in the Revu^ des deux mondes, CXXXV (1896), 4" per.; F. Diez, Die Poesie der Troubadours, 2nd edition, Leipzig, 1883; E. Faral, Les Jongleurs en France au moyen age, 1910.

On the background of the esprit courtois:

E. Lavisse, III, Part I; K. Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings, 1887; L. F. Mott, The System of Courtly Love, Boston, 1896; *A. Luchaire, Social France at the Time of Philip Augustus (Eng- lish transl.). New York, 1912.

On the romance, in general:

W. P. Ker, op. cit.; M. Wilmotte, Evolution du roman frangais aux environs de 1160 (Proceedings of the Academie royale de Belgique), Brussels, 1903; W. A. Nitze in Romania, XLIV.

On the Matter of Rome:

G. Saintsbury, The Flourishing of Romance, New York, 1897; E. Faral Recherches sur les sources latines des contes et des romans courtois, 1913; P. Meyer, Alexandre le Grand, 2 vols., 1886 (text aad discussion) ; K. Young, Origin and Development of the Story of Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer Society, 1908.

On the Matter of Britain:

H. Zimmer, The Irish Element in Mediaeval Culture, transl. by J. L. Edmands, New York and London, 1891; G. Paris, Les Romans de la Table Ronde in the Histoire Litteraire de la France, vol. XXX (1888) ; W. Foerster, Kristian von Troyes, Worterbuch zu seinen sdmtlichen Werken, Halle, 1914 (Introduction) ; H. Maynadier, The Arthur of the English Poets, Boston, 1907.

On the Tristan:

G Paris Tristan et Iseut in the Revue de Paris, 1894; J. Bedier, Le Roman de Tristan, 1900 (Modern French paraphrase of the story);

742 BIBLIOGRAPHY

•W. Golther, Tristan und Isolde, Leipzig, 1907; G. Schoepperle, Tristan and holt, 2 vols. Frankfort and New York, 1913.

On Crestien de Troyes:

Introductions to Foerster's editions of the Erec, Cliges, Lancelot and Yvain; G. Paris in the Melanges de litt. jr., p. 229; M. Borodine, La femme et I'amour au XW siecle d'apres les poemes de Chretien de Troyes, 1909. The four romances mentioned have been translated into Modern Enghsh by W. W. Comfort, Everyman's Library, and selected translations (including the Perceval) will be found in W. W. Newell, King Arthur and the Table Round, 2 vols., Boston and New York, 1898.

On the Holy Grail:

A. Nutt, Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail, 1888; W. W. Newell, The Legend of the Holy Grail, Cambridge, U. S. A., 1902; W. A. Nitze in the Publications of the Modern Language Association, XXIV; * Jessie L. Weston, The Quest of the Holy Grail, 1913.

The entire Perceval and the Perlesvaus were pubhshed by Ch. Potvin,

6 vols., Mons, 1866-1871; the Metrical Joseph by F. Michel, Le Roman du St. Graal, Bordeaux, 1841; the Prose-Perceval by J. L. Weston, Legend of Sir Perceval, vol. II, 1909, and the entire GraU-Lancelot Cycle by 0. Sommer, The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances,

7 vols., Washington, 1909-1916. On the last, see F. Lot, Etude sur le Lancelot en prose, 1918.

Sebastian Evans has translated the Perlesvaus as The High History of the Holy Graal, Temple Classics, 2 vols.

The Welsh versions of Arthurian stories have been translated into Modern French by J. Loth, Les Mabinogion, 2nd edition, 2 vols., 1913 (see Introduction) .

On the romans d'aventure:

* G. Grober, Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, vol. II : Franzosische Litteratur, Strassburg, 1902, pp. 523 ff.; Ch.-V. Langlois, La Societe frangaise au XIIP siecle, d'apres dix romans d'aventure, 3rd edition, 1911.

On the Chatelaine de Vergi, see Alice Kemp-Welch, The Chatelaine of Vergi, done into English (including an edition of the original pre- pared by L. Brandin) , 1903.

The Cycle of the Wager is treated by G. Paris in Romania XXXIV.

On Marie de France:

J. C. Fox in the English Historical Review XXV and XXVII; J. Bedier in the Revue des deux mondes, CVII (1891), 3 per.; K. Warnke, ed. Lais der Marie de France, 2nd edition, Halle, 1900 (Introduction).

r,

BIBLIOGRAPHY 743

J. L. Weston, Chief Middle English Poets, Boston, 1914, gives a Modern English rendering of Sir Orfeo. Andrew Lang's translation of Aucassin et Nicolette appeared in 1887 (Nutt).

Chapter III:

On allegory, in general:

G. Saintsbury, The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory, 1897; W. A. Neilson, Origin and Sources of the Court of Love, in the Harvard Studies and Notes, Boston, 1899; Ch. Ouhnont, Les Debats du clerc et du chevalier dans la litterature poetique du moyen age, 1911; E. Faral in Romania XLI. For Raoul de Houdenc, see M. Friedwagner, Introduction to R. von Houdenc, Sdmtliche Werke, 2 vols., Halle, 1897-1909.

On the Romance of the Rose:

Introduction to E. Langlois, ed. Roman de la Rose, vol. I, 1914, G. Lanson, Un ecrivain naturaliste du XIII^ siecle (Jean de Meun) in Revue bleue, 1894. For Modern English verse-translation of the poem, F. S. Ellis, 3 vols., 1900.

On the Roman de Renard:

L. Sudre, Les Sources du Roman de Renard, 1893, and G. Paris in the Melanges de litt. fr., p. 337; *L. Foulet, Le Roman de Renard (these), 1914, and W. A. Nitze in Modern Language Notes, 1915. For Marie de France's Fables, see Introduction of the edition of Karl Wamke, Halle, 1898, and his Qudlen des Esope der Marie de France, Halle, 1900. Also J. Jacobs, History of the Aesopic Fable, 1889.

On the medieval drama:

E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, Oxford, 1903; L. Petit de Julleville, Les Mysteres, 2 vols., 1880; G. Cohen^ Histoire de la mise en scene dansj^ theatre religieux frangais au moyen age, 1886; D. C. Stuart, The Development of Stage Decoration in the Middle Ages, (dissertation), New York, 1910; W. Creizenach, Geschichte des neueren Dramas, 2nd ed., vol. I, Halle, 1911.

On the miracle and the jew:

G. Paris et U. Robert, ed. Les Miracles de Notre Dam£, 7 vols., 1876-1883; G. R. Coffman, A New Theory concerning the Origin of the Miracle Play (dissertation), Menasha, 1914; 0. Rohnstrom, Etude sur Jean Bodel, Upsala, 1900; Henry Guy, Essai sur la vie et les ceuvres litteraires du trouvere Adam de la Hale (these), 1898.

744 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chapter IV:

On medieval historians:

* Paris et Jeanroy, Extraits des chroniqueurs fran^ais, 8th edition, 1912 (Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart, Commines); E. Estienne, La vie de St. Thomas, Etude historique, litteraire et philologique, Nancy, 1883; W. P. Ker, Froissart in Essays on Mediaeval Literature, 1905; for English translation of Froissart, see Lord Berners, The Chronicles of Froissart, ed. by W. P. Ker, 6 vols., 1901-1903; Modem English translations of Villehardouin and Joinville will be found in Everyman's Library.

On didactic literature:

Petit de Julleville, vol. II (article by A. Piaget) ; * Ch.-V. Langlois, De la Connaissance de la nature (above) ; Le Bestiaire de Philippe de ThaUn, ed. by E. Walberg, 1900; T. Sundby, Delia vita et delie opere di Brunetto Latini, Italian translation by E. Renier, Florence, 1884; L. J. Paetow, The Battle of the Seven Arts by Henri d'Andeli, edited and translated, Berkeley, 1914.

On storiology:

*J. Bedier, Les Fabliaux, 2nd edition, 1895; G. Paris, Les Contes orientaux dans la litterature franqaise du moyen age in his \Poesie du moyen age, II, 3rd edition, 1906. Killis CampbeU, A Study of the Romance of the Seven Sages (dissertation), Baltimore, 1898.

BOOK II Chapter I

General aspects:

E. Lavisse, Histoire de France, vols. Ill and IV; Helen L. Cohen, The Ballade, New York, 1895 (dissertation); Otto Ritter, Die Geschichte der franzosischen BaUadenformen von ihren Anfdngen bis zur Mitte des XV Jahrhunderts, Halle, 1914; *G. Doutrepont, La Litterature frangaise a la cour des dues de Bourgogne, 1909.

On the poets:

Introduction to E. Hoepffner, ed. (Euvres de GuiUaume de Machaut, vol. I, 1908; the same, Eustache Deschamps, 1904; F. Koch, Leben und Werke der Christine de Pisan, Goslar, 1885; A. Piaget, Christine de Pisan et le Roman de la Rose in the Etudes romanes dediees a Gaston Paris, 1891; G. Joret-Desclosieres, Alain Chartier, 1897; P. Cham- pion, La Vie de Charles d' Orleans, 1911.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 746

Chapter II :

A. O. Norton, Mediaeval Universities, Cambridge, U. S. A., 1909; G. H. Luquet, Aristote et I'Universite de Paris au XIII' siecle, in the Bibliotheque de rEcole des Hautes Etudes, 1904; D. H. Camahan, The Ad Deum Vadit of Jean Gerson, in the University of Illinois Studies, Urbana, 1917; E. Bridrey, Nicole Oresme, 1906; *L. J. Paetow, The Arts Course at Mediaevcj, Universities, Champagne, 1910.

Chapter III:

See Book I, Chapter III; L. Petit de Julleville, Les Mysteres, 2 vols., 1880; the same. La Comedie et les mceurs en France au moyen age, 1886; E. Kcot, Recueil general de sotties, 2 vols., 1902-1905; C. Oulmont, Pierre Gringoire, 1911; F. E. Schneegans, ed. Maistre Pierre Pathelin, Strassburg, 1908; for an excellent English translation, Richard Holbrook, The Farce of Master Pierre Patelin, Boston and New York, 1905.

Chapter IV:

On Antoine de La Sale:

*J. W. Soderhjelm, La Nouvelle frangaise au XV^ sihde, 1910; J. Neve, Antoine de La Sale, Brussels and Paris, 1903; P. Toldo, Contri- buto alio studio delta novella francese del XV e XVI secolo, Rome, 1895; G. Paris in the Journal des savants, 1895.

On Villon:

*G. Paris, Frangois ViUon (G. E. F.), 1901; P. Champion, Frangois Villon, sa vie et son temps, 1913; Villon has been excellently translated into English verse by John Payne, 1878.

On Commines: See the edition of the Memoires by B. de Mandrot, 1901-1903.

PART II In general:

E. Lavisse, Histoire, vol. V, Parts I and II; H. Morf, Geschichte; * F. Brunetiere, Histoire de la litterature frangaise classique, vols. I-III, 1908-1914; A. Tilley, The Literature of the French Renaissance, 2 vols., Cambridge 1904; *the same. The Dawn of the French Renaissance, Cambridge, 1918 (treats also history and art); J. Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien, revised by Geiger, 10th edition, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1908 (French and English translations of this); P. Monnier, Le Quattrocento, 2nd edition, 2 vols., 1908; * Preserved Smith,

746 BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Age of the Reformation, New York, 1920; Sainte-Beuve, Tableau historique et critique de la poesie frangaise au XVI'' siecle, 1828-1842; P. de Nolhac, Petrarque et I'humanisme, 2nd edition, 1907; E. Picot, Les Francois italianisants au XVI^ siecle, 2 vols., 1906-1907; *J. E. Spingarn, A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, 2nd edition, New York, 1908; C. H. C. Wright, French Classicism, Cam- bridge,' U. S. A., 1920; J. Vianey, Le Petrarquisme en France au XVI" siecle, 1909 (for the sonnet, as a fonn, p. 102 ff.).

BOOK I Chapter I :

H. Guy, Histoire de la poesie frangaise au XVI" siecle, vol. I, 1910; the works of Morf, Brunetiere and Tilley; L. Delaruelle, Guillaume Bude, 1907; H. Chamard, Les Origines de la poesie frangaise de la Renaissance (Boccard) ; Ph. A. Becker, Jean Lemaire, Der erste huma- nistische Dichter Frankreichs, Strassburg, 1893.

Chapter II :

Introductory volume to the CEuvres de Clemenl Marot, ed. Guiffrey, vol. I, 1911; 0. Douen, Clement Marot et le Psautier huguenot, 2 vols., 1878; A. Lefranc, essay on the poet's love-affair in the Grands ecrivains frangais de la Renaissance, 1914; C. Ruutz-Rees, Charles de Sainte- Marthe, traduit par M. Bonnet, 1914; R. L. Hawkins, Maistre Charles Fontaine, Cambridge, U. S. A., 1916; Helene Harvitt, Eustorg de Beaidieu, Lancaster, 1918 (reprinted from the Romanic Review, 1914 ff.) ; H. MoUnier, Mellin de Saint-Gelais, 1911.

Chapter III :

See the Revue des Etudes Rabelaisiennes, now the Revue du Seizieme Siecle, edited by A. Lefranc; R. Millet, Frangois Rabelais, (G. E. F.), 1892; *A. Tilley, Frangois Rabelais (in English), Philadelphia, 1907; * F. Plattard, L'CEuvre de Rabelais, 1910; Introduction to the CEuvres de Frangois Rabelais, critical edition by Lefranc and others, 1912 ff.; *W. F. Smith, Rabelais in his Writings, Cambridge, 1918; the best English translation of Rabelais is by Urquhart and Motteux, 1708 (frequently reprinted) .

W. Walker, John Calvin, New York, 1906; H. Hauser, Etudes sur la Re forme frangaise, 1910; Introduction to the Institution de la Re- ligion chrestienne, ed. by Lefranc, Chatelain and Pannier, 2 vols., 1912-1913.

Chapter IV:

W. E. H. Lecky, Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, New York, 1886; J. Owen, Ramus in The Skeptics of the

BIBLIOGRAPHY 747

French Renaissance, 1893; articles on Platonism and Marguerite de Navarre in A. Lefranc, Grands ecrivains frangais de la Renaissance, 1914; Mary Robinson, Margiierite of Angovleme, 1899; A. Chene- viere, Bonaventure des Periers, sa vie, ses poesies, 1886; W. A. R. Kerr, Antoine Heroet's Parfaite Amye in the Publications of the Modem Lang. Assoc, XX; A. Baur, Maurice Schve et la Renaissance lyonnaise, 1905; J. Arnoux, Antoine Heroet, neoplatonicien et voete Digne, 1913.

BOOK II Chapter I :

J. E. Spingarn, Literary Criticism, Part II; A. Rosenbauer, Die poetischen Theorien der Plejade nach Ronsard und Du Bellay, Leipzig, 1895; *P. Villey, Les Sources italiennes de la Defense et Illustration, 1908; G. Lanson, Comment Ronsard invents in the Revue universitaire, 1906; C. Juge, Jacques Peletier du Mans, 1907; G. Pellissier ed. of Vauquelin de la Fresnaie, L'Art poetique, 1885; F. Flamini, Du role de Pontus de Tyard dans le Petrarquisme frangais in the Revue de la Renaissance, 1901.

Chapter II :

* J.-J. Jusserand, Pierre de Ronsard (G. E. F.), 1912; Claude Binet, Discours de la vie de Ronsard, ed. P. Laumonier, 1911; H. Longnon, Pierre de Ronsard: les Ancetres, la Jeunesse, 1912; P. de Nolhac, Le dernier amour de Ronsard, 1914; P. Laumonier, Ronsard, poete lyrique, 1909 (these) ; C. H. Page, Songs and Sonnets of P. de Ronsard (verse- translation), Boston, 1903.

H. Chamard, Joachim du Bellay, 1900; Walter Pater, Du Bellay in The Renaissance, New York, 1899.

Auge-Chiquet, Jean^Antoine de Baif, 1909; A. van Bever, ed. of Belleau, 1909; J. Favre, Olivier de Magny, 1885 (these); G. Grente, Jean Bertaut, 1903; S. Rocheblave, Agrippa d'Aubigne (G. E. F.), 1910; G. Pelhssier, La vie et les oeuvres de Du Bartas, 1882 (these); H. Ashton, Du Bartas en Angleterre, 1908 (these) .

Chapter III:

*R. Sturel, Amyot traducteur des Vies Paralleles de Plutarque, 1909; *E. Dowden, Michel de Montaigne, Philadelphia, 1905; Grace Norton, The Spirit of Montaigne, Boston, 1908; Paul Stapfer Montaigne (G. E. F.), 1895; F. Strowski, De Montaigne a Pascal, 1907; *P. Villey, ^Les Sources et revolution des Essais de Montaigne, 2 vols., 1908; J. de Zangroniz, Montaigne, Amyot et Saliat, 1906; J. M. Robertson, Montaigne and Shakespeare, 1909; the Florio and the Cotton translations have been frequently reprinted; L. Lalanne, Brantome, sa vie et ses ecrits (Societe de I'Histoire de France), 1896; P. Courteault, Blaise de Monluc, historien. 1907.

748 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chapter IV:

Ch Lenient, La Satire en France, 2 vols., 2nd edition, 1866; G. Wenderoth, E. Pasquiers poetische Theorien und seine Tatigkeit als Literarhistoriker in Vollmoller's Romanische Forschungen XIX; F. Giroux La composition de la Satire Menippee, Laon, 1904; R. Radouant, GuUlaume du Vair, I'homme et Vorateur, 1907; P. Bonnefon, Pierre Chqrron in Montaigne et ses amis, vol. II, 1897; F. Strowski, Saint Frangois de Sdes, 1898; Due de Broglie, Malherbe (G. E. F.), 1897- *F. Brunot, La Doctrine de Malherbe d'apres son commentaire sur DespoHes, 1891; M. Souriau, La Versificatix)n de Malherbe, Poitiers, 1912; L. Arnould, Honorat de Bueil, seigneur de Racan, 1901; J. Vianey Mathurin Regnier, 1896; Mario Schiff, La FUle d'alliance de Montaigne, Marie de Gournay, 1910; Ch. Garrisson, TheophUe et Paid de Viau, etude historiqiie et litteraire, 1899.

BOOK in In general:

E. Lavisse, Histoire, V, Parts I and II; G. Hanotaux, Histoire du Cardinal Richelieu, 2 vols., 1893-1896; G. Boissier, L'Academie fran- (aise sous I'ancien regime, 1909; Victor Cousin, La Sodete frangaise d'apres le Grand Cyrus, 2 vols., 1858; Vial et Denise, Idees et doctrines litteraires du XVW siecle, 1906.

Chapter I :

T. F. Crane, La Societe frangaise au dix-septieme siecle, 2nd ed., 1907; E. Magne, Voiture et les annees de gloire de V Hotel de Ramhouillet, 1912; H. Vogler, Die literargeschichtlichen Kenntnisse und Urteile des J-L. Guez de Balzac, 1908; Fr. Masson, Histoire de r Academic frangaise, 1913; Brunetiere, Vaugdas et la theorie de I'usage in the Revue des deux mondes, 1901; Abbe Fabre, Jean Chapelam et nos deux premieres Academies, 1890.

Chapter II :

Gustave Reynier, Le Roman sentimental avant I'Astree, 1908; *A. Le Breton, Le Roman au XVII' siecle; *T. F. Crane, ed. of Boileau, Les Heros de roman, Boston, 1902; 0-C. Reure, La vie et les ceuvres de Honore d'Urfe, 1910; W. Kiichler, Zu den Anfangen des psycholo- gischen Romans in Frankreich in Herrig's Archiv, 1909; A. Gaste, Mile de Scudery et le Dialogue des Heros de Roman, 1902; E. Magne, Scarron et son milieu, 1905; *A. Franz, Das literarische Portrait im Zeitalter Richelieus und Mazarins, Leipzig, 1905.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 749

Chapter III:

E. Faguet, La Tragedie en France au XVI* siede, 1883; G. Lanson, L'Idee de la tragedie avant JodeUe in the Revue d'hist. litt., 1904; the same, Antoine de Montchretien et la litt. jr. au temps de Henri IV in Hommes et livres, 1895; *the same, Esquisse d'une histoire de la tragedie frangaise, New York, 1920; E. Rigal, De Joddle a Moliere, 1911; E. Rigal, Alexander Hardy et le theatre frangais a la fin du XVI^ siede, 1889 (these) ; H. C. Lancaster, The French Tragi-Comedy (1551-1628), Baltimore, 1907, (dissertation); J. Marsan, La Pastorale dramatique en France, 1905; P. Toldo, La Comedie frangaise de la Renaissance in the Revue dhis. litt., 1897 and 1899; E. Dannheisser, Studien zu Jean de Mairets Leben und Werken, Ludwigshafen, 1888; the same, Zur Geschichte der Einheiten in Frankreich in the Zeitschr. juT fram. Sprache u. Lit. 1892; Ch. Arnaud, Etude sur la vie et lea ceuvres de I'abbe d'Aubignac, 1887; Le Memoire de Mahelot, ed. H. C. Lancaster, 1921 (gives stage-settings, etc).

Chapter IV:

* G. Lanson, Pierre Corneille, (G. E. F.) 4th ed. 1913; E. Marti- nenche, La Comedia espagnole en France, 1900; E. Faguet, En lisant CorneiUe, 1913; A. Dorchain, Pierre Corneille, 1918; E. Picot, Bibliographic Comelienne, 1876 (continued by P. Verdier and E. Pelay, 1908); A. Gaste, La QuereUe du Cid, 1899; W. A. Nitze, Corneille's Conception of Character in Modern Philology, 1917-1918; A. Tilley, From Montaigne to Moliere, 1908 (contains several good chapters on Corneille); H. C. Lancaster, Pierre Du Ryer, Washington, 1912; A. L. Stiefel, various articles on Rotrou in the Zeitschr. fiir fram, Spr. u. lAt. 1894-1906; G. Wendt, Pierre ComeiUe und Jean Rotrou, Leipzig, 1910.

Chapter V:

A. Fouillee, Descartes (G. E. F.), 1893; G. Lanson, Hommes et livres, 1895; * F. Bnmetiere, Jansenistes et Cartesiens in the Etudes critiqvss, IV« serie; E. S. Haldane, Descartes, his Life and Times, 1905; G. J. Brett, The Philosophy of Gassendi, 1908; F. Perrens, Les Libertins, 2nd ed., 1899; H. Joly, Malebranche, 1910.

BOOK IV Chapter I :

Lavisse, Lc; f Voltaire, Le Siede de Louis XIV, 1740 — a con- venient modern edition is published by Gamier Freres; R. Doumic, Saint-Simon: La France de Louis XIV, 1919; * Wright, French Classicism, Chs. VII and VIII; F. Brunetiere, Qu'est-ce qu'un dassique? in his Hist, de la litt. fr. cl., vol. II.

750 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chapter II :

Sainte-Beuve, Portrait de La Rochefoucauld in the Gamier publica- tion of the latter's works; J. Bourdeau, La Rochefoucauld (G. E. F.), 1895; R. Grandsaigues d'Hauterive, Le Pessimisme de La Roche- foucauld, 1914; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. V. (on Retz); Mme Duclaux, Madame de Sevigne, 1914; E. Angot, Dames du grand Steele, 1919; Comte d'Haussonville, Madame de La Fayette (G. E. F.), 1891; Due de Noailles, Histoire de Mms de Maintenon,, 4 vols., 1848-1858; Saint-Rene Taillandier, Madame de Maintenon, 1920; *G. Lanson, Choix de Lettres du XVII' Steele, 10th ed., 1913 (introduction especially instructive).

Chapter III:

K. Mantzius, Moliere, les theatres, le •public et les comediens de son temps, 1908; *E. Rigal, Moliere, 2 vols., 1908; G. Lafenestre, Moliere (G. E. F.), 1909; B. Matthews, Moliere, New York, 1910; *M. J. Wolff, Moliere, der Dichter und sein Werk, Munich, 1910; F. Brunetiere, La philosophic de Moliere in Etudes critiques, IV" serie; L. Moland, Moliere et la comedie italienne, 1867; G. Huszar, Moliere et I'Espagne, 1907; Currier and Gay, Catalogue of the Moliere Collection in the Harvard Library, Cambridge, U. S. A., 1906; f H. Taine, La Fontaine et ses fables, 1853, 3rd edition, 1861; G. Lafenestre, La Fontaine (G. E. F.), 1895; G. Michaut, La Fontaine, 2 vols., 1913-1914; K. Vossler, La Fontaine und sein Fabelwerk, Heidelberg, 1919.

Chapter IV:

* Sainte-Beuve, Port-Roy d, 5th edition, 7 vols, (with an index), 1888-1891; E. Romanes, The Story of Port-Royal, 1907; F. Strowski, Pascal et son temps, 3 vols., 1907-1909; *E. Boutroux, Pascal (G. E. F.), 1900; * Viscount St. Cyres, Pascal, 1909 (the best account in English) ; in regard to the Pensees, see also the editions of Havet, 1861, and of Brunschvicg, 1897; *J. Lemaitre, Jean Racine, 1908 (by far the most interesting discussion of the poet); G. Larroumet, Jean Racine (G. E. F.), 1898; F. Brunetiere in his Epoques du theatre frangais, 1892; P. Robert, La poetique de Racine, 1890; Dreyfus-Brisac, Phedre et Hippolyte ou Racine moraliste, 1903.

Chapter V:

A. Bourgoin, Les Maitres de la Critique au XVII" siede, 1887; the same in Petit de Julleville, vol. V, ch. 3; G. Saintsbury, A History of Criticism, Edinburgh, 1900-1904, vol. II; *F. Brunetiere, L'Esthetique de Boileau in Et. cr. VP serie; G. Lanson, BoUeau (G. E. F.), 1892; F. Brunetiere, La PhUosophie de Bossuet in Et. cr. V" serie; A. Rebelliau, Bossuet (G. E. F.), 1900; the same, Bossuet, historien du protestantisme, 1909; *G. Lanson, Bossuet, 5th edition,

BIBLIOGRAPHY 751

1901; *E. K. Sanders, Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, 1921; F. Castets, Bourdaloue, la vie et la predication d'un religieux au XVII" siecle, 2 vols., 1901-1904.

PART III

On tbe eighteenth century in general:

Lanson, Histoire; Petit de Julleville, Vol. VI; Sainte-Beuve's essays as indexed in the two Tables alphabetiques to his works; more par- ticularly, *A. Villemain, Tableau de la litteratwe frangaise au XVIII^ siecle, 4 vols., 1828; H. Hettner, Literaturgeschichte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts. Theil 11: GescMchte der franzosischen lAteratur, 5th ed., revised, Brunswick, 1894; fE. Faguet, Dit-huitieme siecle: Etudes litteraires, 1890 (flf.) ; J. Barni, Histoire des Idees morales et politiques en France au XV 1 11^ siecle, 2 vols., 1865-67; E. Bersot, Etudes sur le XVIII^ siecle, 2 vols., 1855.

For BibUography: Lanson, Manuel, vol. Ill; Wright, History; L. P. Betz, La litterature comparee, 2nd ed., Strassburg, 1904.

BOOK I Chapter I : «^

*II. Rigault, Histoire de la Querelle des anciens et des modemes, 1856 and 1859; H. Gillot, La Querelle des anciens et des modemes en France (these) , Nancy, 1914 (exhaustive as far as Perrault's Paralleles) ; F. Vial and L. Denise, Idees et doctrines litteraires du XVII^ siecle, 1906.

On the larger question of Progress:

*J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress; An Inquiry into its Origin and Growth, 1920 (widely historical, penetrating, philosophic) ; J. Delvaille, Essai sur I'histoire de I'Idee de progres jusqu'a la fin du XVIII^ siecle, 1910 (hmited to France, erudite, detailed); F. Brunetiere, Etudes critiques, V.

Chapter II:

*P. Morillot, La Bruyere (G. E. F.), 1904; Sainte-Beuve, Nouv. lundis, I and X; L. Prevost-Paradol, Etudes sur les moralistes frangais, 6th ed., 1885.

*G. Boissier, Saint-Simon (G. E. F.), 2nd ed., 1899; A. Le Breton, La Comedie humaine de Saint-Simon, 1914; Sainte-Beuve, Caus. du lundi. III and XV, Nouv. lundis, X; Taine, Essais de critique et d'histoire, 6th ed., 1892.

J. Lemaitre, Fenelon, 1910; Paul Janet, Fenelon, (G. E. F.), 2nd ed.,

752 BIBLIOGRAPHY

1903; H. See, Les Idees politiques de Fenelon in the Revue d^histoire moderne, 1899.

Chapter III :

E. Lavisse, Histoire de France, VIII, Part II; *C. Stryienski, Le Dix- huitieme siecle, 1913 (short and readable) ; J. B. Perkins, France under Louis XV, 6th ed., 2 vols., Boston, 1897.

On social conditions:

* H. Taine, Les Origines de la France contemporaine. Tome I: L'Ancien regime, 22nd ed., 1899; V. Du Bled, La Societe jrangaise du XVI^ au XX° siecle. Vol. V: Dix-huitieme siecle, 1905; *M. Roustan, Les Philosophes et la societe jrangaise au XVIII" siecle, (these, 1906), 1911; E. and J. de Goncourt, La Femme au XVIII" siecle, new ed., 1896.

On the ladies of the salons:

Sainte-Beuve, passim, especially Caus. du lundi, I, II, IV; Petit de Julleville, VI (chapter by Brunei) ; P.-M. Masson, Madame de Tencin, 3rd ed., 1910; P. de Segur, Le Royaume de la rue Saint-Honore, Mme Geoffrin et sa fiUe, 1897; Introductions to Mme du DeflFand's Correspond dance generale (ed. Lescure, 2 vols., 1865), and her Lettres a Horace Walpole (ed. Mrs. Paget Toynbee, 3 vols., 1912); P. de Segur, Julie de Lespinasse, 6th ed., 1913.

On science and the English influence:

D. Momet, Les Sciences de la Nature en France au XVIII^ siecle, 1911; *J. Texte, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les origines du cosmo- politisme litteraire au XVIII" siecle, 1895 — English translation, 1899; R. Rosieres, Recherches sur la poesie contemporaine, 1896 (articles on the EngUsh and the German influences). Other bibliography on this subject will be foimd under Books III and IV, below.

BOOK II Chapter I :

*J. Delvolve, Essai sur Pierre Bayle, 1906 (exhaustive, abstruse, authoritative); for the general reader, *Faguet, op. cit., Sainte-Beuve, Port, litt., I, Brunetiere, Etudes critiques, V, P. Lenient, Etude sur Pierre Bayle, 1855 (still useful) ; for the speciahzing student, G. Lanson, Origines de I'esprit philosophique in the Revue des cours et conferences, 1908-10; H. E. Smith, The Literary Criticism of Pierre Bayle, (dissertation), Albany, 1912.

*L. Maigron, Fontenelle, 1906; Laborde-Milaa, Fontendle (G. E. F.), 1905.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 763

Chapter II :

Villemain, Bersot, Faguet (calls Voltaire " un chaos d'idees claires ") ; Brunetiere, Etudes critiques, I and III, also in Etudes sur le XVIW siecle, 1911 (an incomplete study, minimizes English influences); *G. Lanson, Voltaire (G. E. F.), 2nd ed., 1910 (mvltum in parvo); L. Crousle, La Vie et les ceuvres de Voltaire, 2 vols., 1899 (informative, but prejudiced against Voltaire); G. Desnoiresterres, Voltaire et la societe au dix-huitieme siecle, 8 vols., 2nd. ed., 1871-76; J. C. Collins, Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau in England, 1908; S. G. Tallentyre| (pseudonym). The Life of Voltaire, 2 vols., 1903. See also Bk. Ill, Ch. I and Bk. IV, Ch. II.

Chapter III:

L. Vian (pseudonym), Histoire de Montesquieu, 2nd ed., 1879; *A. Sorel, Montesquieu (G. E. F.), 1887; * J. Dedieu, Montesquieu (Grands Philosophes series), 1913 — also Enghsh translation; same author, Montesquieu et la tradition politique anglaise en France, 1909; Faguet, Villemain, Brunetiere {Etudes critiques, IV); Paul Janet, Introduction to school edition of the Esprit des lois, 1887; H. Barckhausen, Montesquieu, ses idees et ses oeuvres, d'apres les papiers de La Brede, 1907; E. P. Dargan, The Aesthetic Doctrine of Montesquieu, its Application in his Writings, (dissertation), Baltimore, 1909; J. C. Collins (see preceding chapter).

Chapter IV:

Petit de JuUeville, Bami, Villemain; Sainte-Beuve, Cavs. du lundi, III (on Vauvenargues and d'Aguesseau) and XV (on St. Pierre); M. Paleologue, Vauvenargues (G. E. F.), 1890; Falconnet, Notice on dAguesseau in the latter's CEuvres, 2 vols., 1865; * A. Lombard, L'Abbe Du Bos, un initiateur de la pensee moderne (these), 1913.

On St. Pierre, see Sainte-Beuve (supra), Bami, J. Fabre, Les Peres de la Revolution, and J. Drouet, L'Abbe de St. Pierre, I'homme et I'ceuvre, 1912. ^

On the Memoirs, see Ch. Aubertin, L'Esprit public au XVIII^ siecle, etude sur les Memoires, 3rd ed., 1889 (our text follows his divisions) ; the excellent condensations of Barriere et Lescure {Bibliotheque des Memoires relatifs a I'histoire de France pendant le XVIII" siecle, 37 vols., 1846-81) have been made more valuable by the pubUcation of a thorough Table alphabetique by A. Marquiset, 1913.

On the journals, see Petit de JuUeville, VI; also P. Van Tieghem, L'Annee litteraire comme intermediaire en France des litteratures etrangeres, 1917.

754 BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOK m

Chapter I :

* F. Vial and L. Denise, Idees et doctrines litteraires du XVIII^ siecle, 1909; * H. Lion, Les Tragedies et les theories dramatiques de Voltaire (these), 1895; E. Deschanel, Le Theatre de Voltaire, 1886 (emphasizes the romanesque element); F. Brunetiere, j^ Les Epoques du theatre jranQais, 1892 (on Voltaire and Crebillon) ; J.-J. Jusserand, Shakespeare en France sous Vancien regime, 1898 — also English edition, New York, 1899; T. R. Lomisbury, Shakespeare and Voltaire, New York, 1902; E. P. Dargan, Shakespeare and Ducis in Modern Philology, X, (1912).

Chapter II :

* C. Lenient, La Comedie au XVII I^ siecle, 2 vols., 1888; E. lintilhac, Histoire generale du theatre en France. Vol. IV: La Comedie au XVIII' siecle, 1909; J. Lemaitre, La Comedie apres Moliere et le theatre de Dancourt, 1882; (for Lesage, see next chapter); G. Larroumet, Marivaux, so vie et ses oeuvres, new ed., 1894; G. Deschamps, Marivaux (G. E. F.), 1897; L. de Lomenie, Beaumarchais et son temps, 2 vols., 1856; E. LintUhac, Beaumarchais et ses ceuvres, 1887.

G. Lanson, Nivelle de La Chaussee et la comedie larmoyante, 2nd ed., 1903; F. Gaiffe, Etude sur le drame en France au XVI 11^ siecle, 1910 (complete list of drames) .

Chapter III:

* A. Le Breton, Le Roman au XVIII^ siecle, 1898; G. Saintsbury, A History oj the French Novel, vol. 1, 1917; L. Claretie, Lesage, romander, 1891 (difFuse); E. LintUhac, Lesage (G. E. F.), 1893; (for Marivaux, see preceding chapter); H. Harrisse, L'Abbe Prevost, Histoire de sa vie et de ses ceuvres, 1896 (original researches) ; V. Schroeder, Vn Romander frangais au XVI W siecle. L'Abbe Prevost; sa vie, ses romans (these), 1898 (based on preceding work, but better adapted to general reader); Sainte-Beuve, Port, litt., I; G. R. Havens, The Abbe Prevost and English Literature (Elliott Monographs), Princeton, 1921.

Chapter IV:

Poitevin, ed. Petits poetes franQois depuis Malherbe jusqu'a nos jours, 2 vols., 1864 (Anthology, with Notices); B. Jullien, Les Paradoxes litteraires de La Matte, 1859; P. Dupont, Houdar de la Motte, 1898; on minor poets, such as Chaulieu and La Fare, see Sainte-Beuve and Villemain, passim; *H. Potez, L'Elegie en France avant le romantisme, 1898 (Pamy, Bertin, etc.); L. Morel, James Thomson, sa vie et ses ceuvres, 1895; F. Baldensperger, Young et ses ' Nuits' en France in

BIBLIOGRAPHY 756

Etudes d'histoire litteraire, (first series), 1907; E. Faguet, Andre Chenier (G. E. F.), 1902; L. Bertrand, La Fin du classicisme et le retour a I'antique, 1898.

BOOK IV To the general titles given for Book I, add here:

J. Fabre, Les Peres de la Revolution; de Bayle a Condorcet, 1910 P. Lanfrey, L'Eglise et les phUosophes au XVIII^ siede, 2nd ed., 1857 J. P. Belin, Le Mouvement philosophique de 1748 a 1789, 2 vols., 1913 F. Rocquain, L'Esprit revolutionnaire avant la Revolution, 1878.

BOOK IV

Chapter I:

*L. Ducros, Les Encydopedistes, 1900; J. Morley, Diderot and the Encyclopaedists, new ed., 2 vols., 1897; J. Rocafort, Les Doctrines litteraires de VEncydopedie ou le Romantisme des encydopedistes, 1890; J. Bertrand, Dalembert (G. E. F.), 1889; *L. Dimier, Bujfon, 1919; M. Flourens, Buffon. Histoire de ses travaux et de ses idees, 2nd ed., 1850; on the later sensationalists: Levy-Bruhl, History of Modem Philosophy in France, Chicago, 1899; F. Picavet, Les Ideologues, 1891.

Chapter II:

*G. PeUissier, Voltaire Philosophe, 1908; J. Morley, Voltaire, new ed., 1903; J. F. Nourrisson, Voltaire et le Voltairianisme, 1896 (clerical standpoint) ; Sainte-Beuve, passim. E. Faguet, La Politique comparee de Montesquieu, Rousseau et Voltaire, 1902. See also Bk. II, Ch. II.

Chapter III:

*L. Ducros, Diderot, I'homme et I'ecrivain, 1894; J. Morley, op. cit., Ch. I, above; R. L. Cru, Diderot as a disciple oj English Thought (dissertation), New York, 1913; E. Scherer, Diderot, 1880; J. Reinach, Diderot (G. E. F.), 1894; R. Hubert, La Morale de Diderot in Revue du XVIW Steele, 1915-16; F. Brunetiere, Etudes critiques, II (on the Salons).

BOOK V Chapter I : On Romanticism, in general:

D. Momet, Le Romantisme en France au XV III" siede, 1912; same author, Le Sentiment de la Nature en France de Romseau a Bernardin

766 BIBLIOGRAPHY

de St. Pierre, 1907; J. Texte, op, cit. (Bk. I, Ch. Ill); M. B. Finch and E. A. Peers, The Origins of French Romanticism, 1920.

*A. Chuquet, J. -J. Rousseau (G. E. F.), 5th ed., 1919; Frederika Macdonald, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a New Criticism, 2 vols., 1906 (shows d'Epinay-Grimm conspiracy); J. Lemaitre, Jean-Jacqu£s Rousseau, 1907 — also * English translation, 1907 (sympathetic and penetrating); H. Beaudouin, La Vie et les ceuvres de J. -J. Rousseau, 2 vols., 1891; G. Gran, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (English translation) N. Y., 1912.

Special phases: Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism, Boston, 1919 (views Rousseauism as a moral malady; bibhography) ; E. Faguet, La Politique comparee, etc.; *C. E. Vaughan, ed.. The Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 2 vols., Cambridge, (England), 1915 (a critical edition, with good introduction); E. Champion, J.-J. Rousseau et la Revolution frangaise, 1909; P.-M. Masson, La Religion de J.-J. Rousseau, 3 vols., 1916.

A. Barine (pseudonym), Bernardin de St. Pierre (G. E. F.), 1891.

Chapter II:

On the Revolution, see the historians discussed inBooks VI and VIII; also Carlyle; E. J. Lowell, Eve of the French Revolution, new ed., Boston, 1900; A. Rousse, Mirabeau (G. E. F.), 2nd ed., 1896.

*Lady Blennerhassett, Madame de Stael. Her Friends and her Influence in Politics and Literature (English translation), 3 vols., 1889; A. Sorel, Madame de Stael (G. E. F.), 1890; * Sainte-Beuve, Portraits de femmes (still unsurpassed as a portrait); M. Souriau, Les Idees morales de Mme de Stael, 1910; F. Brunetiere, i Evolution de la critique and Etudes critiques, IV (on the novels) ; E. Faguet, Politiques et moroMstes (see below), vol. I — also for Constant; Sainte-Beuve, Cauteries du lundi, II (on Adolphe).

Chapter III:

*M. Lescure, Chateaubriand (G. E. F.), 2nd, ed., 1901; V. Giraud, Chateaubriand, etudes litteraires, 2nd ed., 1912, and Nouvdles etudes sur Chauteaubriand, 1912; f Sainte-Beuve, Chateaubriand et son groupe litteraire sous I'Empire, 2 vols., 1860 (revised ed., 1872); E. Faguet in Dix-neuvieme siecle, etudes litteraires (very laudatory). On Chateaubriand's American travels, see J. Bedier, Etudes critiques, 1903; G. Chinard, L'Exotisme americain dans I'ceuvre de Chateau- briand, 1918.

General nineteenth-century authorities:

V. Duruy, Histoire de France, new ed., 1891 — Engl, transl., revised and continued to 1919, N. Y., 1920; W. S. Davis, A History of France, Boston, 1919 (gives much space to the 19th century) ; Ch.-V. Langlois,

BIBLIOGRAPHY 757

Manuel de bibliographie historique, 2 parts, 1901-04; G. Vapereau, Dictionnaire universel des contemporains, 6th ed., 1893.

Petit de JuUeville, vols. VII and VIII; *G. Pellissier, Le Mouve- ment litteraire au XIX« siecle, 1889 (ff.) — English translation, 1897; F. Strowski, Tableau de la litterature frangaise au XIX^ siecle, 1912; E. Gilbert, Le Roman en France pendant le XIX^ siecle, 5th ed., 1909; B. W. Wells, A Century of French Fiction, New York, 1912 (brief men- tion of many novels); fE. Faguet, Dix-neuvieme siecle; Etudes litteraires, 1887, and ^Politiques et moralistes du Z/Z" siecle, 3 vols. 1891-1900; E. Hatin, Histoire politique et litteraire de la presse en France, 8 vols., 1859-61; H. Avenel, La Presse frangaise depuis 1789 jusqu'a nos jours, 1900.

Lanson, Manuel, IV and Supplement; Thieme, Guide bibliographique ; G. Vicaire, Manuel de I'amateur des livres au XIX^ siecle, 7 vols., 1894r-1910.

BOOK VI Chapter I :

On general history, see above. — T. Gautier, Histoire du Romantisme, 1894; L. Maigron, Le Romantisme et les mwurs, 1910; P. Lasserre, Le Romantisme frangais, 2nd ed., 1908 (hostile); Lanson, Histoire; F. Vial and L. Denise, Idees et doctrines litteraires du XIX" siecle (to 1850), 1918; also (for definitions) G. Michaut, in Pages de critique et ' d' histoire litteraire, 1910; and for qualities, F. Brunetiere, Nouvelles Questions de critique, 1890 (pp. 189 ff.).

Special phases and iafluences: C. Des Granges, La Presse litteraire sous la Restauration, 1816-30, 1907; L. Seche, Le Cenacle de la Muse Frangaise, 1908; same author, Le Cenacle de Joseph Delorme, 2 vols., 1912; J. Texte, chapter on foreign relations in Petit de Julleville, VII, also L'Influence allemande dans le romantisme frangais in Etudes de litterature europeenne, 1898; F. Baldensperger, Goethe en France: etude de litterature comparee (these), 1904, also Esquisse d'une histoire de Shakespeare en France in Etudes d'histoire litteraire, second series, 1912; P. Van Tieghem, Ossian en France, 2 vols., 1917; E. Esteve, Byron et le Romantisme frangais (these), 1907; L. Maigron, Le Roman historique a Vepoque romantique: essai swr I'infhtence de Walter Scott, 2nd ed., 1912.

Chapter II:

On Nodier: *E. Montegut, Nos marts contemporains, 1, 1884; Sainte- Beuve, Port, litt., I; L. Seche, Cenacle de Joseph Delorme; J. Retinger, Le Conte fantastique dans le romantisme frangais; M. Salomon, Charles Nodier et le groupe rorrumtique, 1908.

On Beranger: Sainte-Beuve, Caus. du lundi, II and XV; E. Caro, Poetes et romanciers, 1888; E. Renan, in Questions contemporaines, 1868 (hostile).

On Lamartine: R. Doumic, Lamartine (G. E. F.), 1912; *H. R. Whitehouse, The Life of Lamartine, 2 vols., Boston, 1918; L. Seche,

758 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Etudes d'histoire romantique : Lamartine de 1816 a 1830, 1905; E. Deschanel, Lamartine, 2 vols., 1893; C. de Pomairols, Lamartine, 1889; * E. Zyromski, Lamartine, poete lyrique, 1898.

Chapter III:

First, the thorough-going, but rather unsympathetic series by *E. Eire: Victor Hugo avant 1830, 1883; Victor Hugo apres 1830, 2 vols., 1891 (2nd ed., 1899); and Victor Hugo apres 1852, 1894; L. Mabilleau, victor Hugo (G. E. F.), 3rd ed., 1902; E. Dupuy, Victor Hugo, I'homme et le poete, 1893; C. Renouvier, Victor Hugo, le poete, 4th ed., 1902; E. Rigal, Victor Hugo, poete epique, 1900; M. Souriau, Les Idees morales de Victor Hugo, 1908; and see below, Chs. V and VI, also Bk. VIII, Ch. I (Sainte-Beuve).

Chapter IV:

F. Brunetiere, Evolution de la poesie lyrique en France au XIX* si^cle, 2 vols., 1894.

On Musset: A. Barine (pseudonym), Alfred de Musset (G. E. F.), 1893; Sainte-Beuve, Caus. du lundi, I and XIII; L. Sech6, Alfred de Musset, 1907.

On Vigny: M. Paleologue, Alfred de Vigny (G. E. F.), 1891; L. Dorison, Alfred de Vigny, poete philosophe, 1892; F. Baldensperger, Alfred de Vigny, contribution a sa biographie intellectueUe, 1912.

On Gautier: E. Richet, Theophile Gautier, I'homme, la vie et I'ceuvre, 1893; M. Ducamp, Theophile Gautier (G. E. F.), 1890; Sainte-Beuve, Nouv. lundis, V and VI.

Chapter V:

* P. Nebout, Le Drame romantique, 1897; P. Ginisty, Le Melodrame, 1910; on Delavigne, Sainte-Beuve, Port, contemp., V, and J. Lemaitre, Impressions de theatre. III; M. Souriau, La Preface de CromweU de Victor Hugo (critical edition), 1897; P. and V. Glachant, Essai critique sur le theatre de Victor Hugo, 2 vols., 1902-03; H. Parigot, Le Drame d' Alexandre Dumas, 1898; L. Lafoscade, Le Theatre d' Alfred de Musset, 1901; E. Fricke, Der Einfluss Shakespeares auf Alfred de Mussets Dramen, Bale, 1901; E. Sakellarides, Alfred de Vigny, autevr dramatique, 1902.

Chapter VI:

Wells, Gilbert, Maigron, etc. (see above) ; A. Le Breton, Le Roman frang^ais au dix-neuvieme siecle avant Balzac, 1901 ; * J. Merlant, Le Roman personnel de Rousseau a Fromentin, 1905; fE. Rod, Stendhal (G. E. F.), 1892; A. Chuquet, Stmdhal-Beyle, 1902; A. Filon, Merimee (G. E. F.), 1898; F. Brunetiere et ses eleves (Cavenel, Dimoff, etc.), Victor Hugo, 2 vols., 2nd ed., 1906; *R. L. Stevenson, Victor Hugo's

BIBLIOGRAPHY 759

"Romances in Familiar Studies of Men and Books, 1882 f.; H Parigot Alexandre Dumas pere (G. E. F.), 1901, and Alexandre Dumas ei I'hwtoire m the Revue de Paris, 1902; R. Doumic, George Sand, dix conferences, 1909 (English translation, 1910); *W. Karenine, George Sand, sa vie et ses oeuvres, 3 vols., 1899-1912. On Vigny,' Gautier and Hugo, see also preceding chapters.

Chapter VII:

On the critics: *I. Babbitt, Masters of Modern French Criticism, Boston, 1912; -f-F. Brunetiere, Evolution des genres: Evolution de la critique, 5th ed., 1910; E. Faguet in Petit de Julleville, VII; G. Saintsbury, A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe, Vol. Ill: Modem Criticism, Edinburgh, 1904; Sainte-Beuve, Caus. du lundi, I (Joubert, Montalembert, Lacordaire), and Port, litt., II (Joubert, Joseph de Maistre); A. Beaunier, La Jeunesse de Joseph Joubert, 1918 (dispels legend); also M. Arnold, Essays in Criticism, I, 1889 (Joubert), and Babbitt, op. cit.; Paul Janet, Victor Cousin et son ceuvre (G. E. F.), 1885; Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, Victor Cousin, sa vie et sa correspondance, 3 vols., 1895.

On the CathoUc revival: * A. Guerard, French Prophets of Yesterday, 1913; Sainte-Beuve (see preceding paragraph); on Lamennais, Sainte- Beuve, Port. contemP; I and Faguet, Pol. et mor.. III.

On the historians: *G. P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century, 2nd ed., 1913 (excellent) ; * C. Jullian, Introduc- tion to Extraits des historiens frangats du XI X^ siecle, 1897; A. Bardoux, Guizot, 1894; also Sainte-Beuve, Cans, du lundi, I and Faguet, Pol. et mor., I; F. Valentin, Augustin Thierry, 1895; also Faguet, Pol. et mor.. Ill and E. Renan, Essais de morale et de critique, 1859; G. Monod, Jules Michdet, 1875; ¥a,^e%,Dix-neuvieme' siecle; J. Simon, Mignet, Michelet, Henri Martin, 1890; P. de Remusat, Adolphe Thiers (G. E. F.), 1889 and Sainte-Beuve, Port, contemp, IV.

BOOK VII General Authorities:

G. PeUissier, Le Mouvement litteraire contemporain, 2nd ed., 1902; tF. Brunetiere, Le Roman naturaliste, 1883; David-Sauvageot, Le Realisme et le naturalisme, 1889; L. Desprez, L' Evolution naturalist'e, 1884; fE. Zola, Les Romanciers naturalistes, 1881; -f-E. Scherer, Etudes critiques sur la litterature contemporaine, 10 vols., 1863-95; t J. Lemaitre, Les Contemporains, 7 vols., 1885-99; 8th vol. (posthu- mous), 1918.

760 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chapter I:

*A. Le Breton, Balzac, I'homme et I'aeuvre, 1905; *H. Taine, Balzac, in Nouveaux essais de critique et d'hutoire, 1865 — also Eng- lish translation of the same essay by L. O'Rourke, New York, 1906; Sainte-Beuve, Cam. du lundi, II; +F. Brunetiere, Honore de Balzac, 1906 — also English translation.

Chiefly biographical: F. Lawton, Balzac, 1910; J. H. Floyd, Women in the Life of Balzac, New York, 1921; G. Hanotaux and G. Vicaire, La Jeunesse de Balzac; Balzac Imprimeur, new ed., 1921.

Special phases: *Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, Histoire des ceuvres de Balzac, 1879 (3rd ed., 1888); same author, Autour de Honore de Balzac, 1897; M. Barriere, L'CEuvre de Balzac, 1890 (useful sum- maries of stories); Cerfbeer et Christophe, Repertoire de la Comedie humaine, 1887.

Chapter II :

* H. Parigot, Le Theatre d'hier, 1893; C. Lenient, La Comedie en France au XI X" siecle, 2 vols., 1898; fF. Sarcey, Quarante ans de theatre, 8 vols., 1900-02; fj. Lemaitre, Impressions de theatre, 10 vols., 1888-98; B. Matthews, French Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century, 4th ed., New York, 1895; J. J. Weiss, Le Theatre et les moeurs, 1889; *H. GaiUard de Champris, EmUe Augier et la comedie sodale, 1910; P. Morillot, Emile Augier, Grenoble, 1901; R. Doumic, De Scribe a Ibsen, 1893; A. Filon, De Dumas a Rostand, 1898.

Chapter III:

Brunetiere, Evolution de la poesie lyrique; T. Gautier, Ettide sur la poesie franQaise, 1830-68 (publ. in Histoire du Romantkme, 1874); C. Mendes, Le Mouvement poetique frangais de 1867 a 1900 {Rapport followed by Dictionnaire) , 1903.

On Baudelaire: *C. Mauclair, Charles Baudelaire, sa vie, son art, sa legende, 1917; T. Gautier, Preface to the Fleurs du nud, Levy ed., 1868 f.; C. Asselineau, Charles Baudelaire, sa vie et son oeuvre, 1879 (partial); J. Huneker, in Egoists, New York, 1909.

On Banville: Sainte-Beuve, Cam. du lundi, XIV, and Lemaitre, Contemporains, I.

On Leconte de Lisle: Jean Dornis (pseudonym), Essai sur Leconte de Lisle, 1909; *G. Deschamps, La Vie et les livres, II, 1895; J. Vianey, Les Sources de Leconte de Lisle, Montpellier, 1907.

On Heredia: Lemaitre, Contemporains, II; Faguet, Propos litt.. Ill, 1905; J. Richepin in the Journal de I'Universite des Annates, II (April, 1908); E. Langevin, Jose-Maria de Heredia, 1907 (source- studies) .

C. A. Downer, Frederic Mistral, New York, 1901.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 761

Chapter IV:

See above, General Authorities; Gilbert, Wells, Brunetiere; *E. Faguet, Flaubert, (G. E. P.), 1899 — Engl, transl., 1914; R. Dumesnil, Flaubert, son heredite, son milieu, sa methode, 1905; R. Descharmes, Flaubert, sa vie, son caractere et ses idees avant 1857 (these), 1909; Elliott Monographs, I-IV, Baltimore and Paris, 1914-17; L. Bertrand, Gustave Flaubert, 1912; Sainte-Beuve, Cans, du lundi, XIII, and Nouv. lundis, IV; also (on Feydeau), Caus. du lundi, XIV and XV; A. Riddell, Flaubert and Maupassant, a Literary Relationship (disser- tation), Chicago, 1920; *E. Maynial, La Vie et I'oeuvre de Guy de Maupassant, 1907; J. Lemaitre, Contemporains, I.

Chapter V:

B. Schmidt, Le Groups des romanciers naturalistes, Carlsruhe, 1903; C. Bran, Le Roman social en France au XIX^ siecle, 1910.

tE. Zola, Le Roman experimental, 1880; *E. Lepelletier, Emile Zola, sa vie, son oeuvre, 1909; Brunetiere, op. cit.; Scherer, Etudes sur la litt. contemp., VII; J. Lemaitre, Contemporains, I; -f- A. France, La Vie litteraire, 1 and III; H. James, Notes on Novelists, New York, 1916 (Balzac, Flaubert, Zola).

The Journal des Goncourt, 9 vols., 1887-96; A. Delzant, Les Gon- court, 1889; J. Lemaitre, Contemporains, III.

Leon Daudet, Alphonse Daudet, 1898; Brunetiere and Schmidt; ' G. A. Ratti, Les Idees morales et litteraires d' Alphonse Daudet d'apres ses ceuvres, 1911.

BOOK VIII Chapter I:

*I. Babbitt, op. cit. and Brunetiere, Evolution de la critique; E. Scherer, Etudes critiques, I, 1863; G. M. Harper, Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Philadelphia, 1909 (chiefly biography and portraiture) ; L. Seche, Sainte-Beuve, 2 vols., 1904; * G. Michaut, Sainte-Beuve avant les "Lundis," Paris and Fribourg, 1903 (very full up to 1850); L. MacClintock, Sainte-Beuve's Critical Theory and Practice after 1843 (dissertation), Chicago, 1920 (supplementary to the preceding); G. Saintsbury, op. cit.

Chapter II:

On St. Simon and Comte: *G. Weill, L'Ecole saint-simonienne, son histoire, son influence jusqu'a nos jours, 1896; Levy-Brahl, La Philo- sophie d'Augmte Comte, 1900; *J. S. Mill, The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, New York, 1887.

On Taine: *V. Giraud, Essai sur Taine: son ceuvre, son influence, 4th ed., 1909; same author, Maitres d'autrefois et d'aujourd'hui, 1913

762 BIBLIOGRAPHY

(Sainte-Beuve, Taine, Brunetiere, etc.) ; A. Laborde-Milaa, Hippolyte Taine, essai d'une biographic inteUectuelle, 1909; G. Monod, Renan, Taine, Michelet, 3rd ed., 1895.

On Renan: *L. F. Mott, Ernest Renan, New York, 1921 (the fullest biography); M. J. Darmesteter (Mme Duclaux), La Vie d'Ernest Renan, 1898; G. Deschamps, La Vie et les livres, II, 1895; R. Allier, La PhUosophie d'Ernest Renan, 1905; G. Paris, Penseurs et poetes, 1896.

Chapter III :

On Quinet; Faguet, PoUtiques et Moralistes, II; on the minor his- torians: Gooch, Jullien, etc. (see above, Bk. VI, Ch. VII); on Tocque- ville: Faguet, Pol. et Mor., Ill, and P. Marcel, Essai politique sur Alexis de Tocqueville, 1910. On Lavisse: R. Douinic, Portraits d'Ecrivains, U, 1909; on Quinet, the church and Veuillot: A. Guerard, op. cit. (Bk. VI, Ch. VII) ; also L. Dimier, VeuiUot, 1912.

On Amiel: Scherer, Etudes critiques, VIII, and Mrs. Humphry Ward's Introduction to her English translation, 1885; on Fromentin: Merlant, op. cit., and M. Wilmotte, Etudes critiques sur la tradition litteraire en France, I, 1909.

BOOK IX

General authorities on the fin de siede:

* G. Hanotaux, Histoire de la France contemporaine, 4 vols., 1903-08; W. S. Davis, History pf France; J. E. C. Bodley, France, 1898; G. Pellissier, L'Affaire Dreyfus et la litterature frangaise in Etudes de litt. et de morale contemporaines, 1905; Mme Juliette Adam, Memoires, 7 vols., 1902-1910.

J. Huret, Enquete sur revolution litteraire, 1891 (interviews with prominent writers); fP. Bourget, Essais de psychologic contem- poraine, 2 vols., 1883; definitive edition, 2 vols., 1901; G. Pellissier, Le Mouvement litteraire contemporain, 1901 ; * V. Giraud, Les Maitres de I'heure, 2 vols., 1912-14 (Rod, Vogiie, Bourget, Loti, etc.); Sansot- Orland, etc., editors, Les Celebrites d'aujourd'hui, numerous small volumes since 1903.

Chapter I:

G. Coquiot, Le vrai J.-K. Huysmans, 1912; Remy de Gourmont, Promenades litteraires, I and III, 1904, 1909; H. Schoffler, Die Stellung Huysmans im framosischen Roman (dissertation), Leipzig, 1911; Have- lock Ellis in Affirmations, 2nd ed., Boston, 1916 (Zola and Huysmans). R. P. Bowen, The Novels of Ferdinand Fabre, Boston, 1918. On the later Naturalists, see Wells and Gilbert; also, on the Margueritte brothers: R. Doumic, Etudes sur la litterature frangaise, III, 1895; on J.-'H. Rosny: Pellissier, Nouveaux essais de litt. contemp., 1895; on

BIBLIOGRAPHY 763

the idealists and Bourget, see Giraud, Maitres de I'heure; on Bourget and Loti: R. Doumic, Portraits d'Ecrivains, II, 1909. G. Miohaut, Anatole France, etude psychologique, 1913; L. P. Shanks, Anatole France, Chicago, 1919.

Chapter II:

*A. Benoist, Le Theatre d'aujourd'hui, 2 vols., 1911-12; *r. W. Chandler, The Contemporary Drama of France, Boston, 1920; A. E. Sorel, Essais de psychologie contemporaine; R. Doumic, Le Theatre nouveau, 1908 (mainly critiques of premieres); A. Kahn, Le Theatre social en France de 1870 a nos jours, (these), 1907; anon., Le Theatre Libre, 1900 (program and achievements of the first three years); *A. Thalasso, Le Theatre Libre, 1909 (fuller history and repertoire) ; W. H. Scheifley, Brieux and Contemporary French Society, New York, 1917; H. Burkhardt, Studien zu Paul Hervieu (dissertation), Zurich, 1917; R. Le Brun, Francois de Cur el, 1905; A. Van Bever, Maurice Maeter- linck, 1904; J. Haraszti, Edmond Rostand, 1913.

Chapter III:

*E. Zyromski, Sully Prudhomme, 1907; C. Hemon, La Philosophie de Sully Prudhomme, 1907; G. Paris, in Penseurs et poetes, 1896. M. de Lescure, Frangois Coppee, I'homme, la vie et I'ceuvre, 1889; also A. France, La Vie litteraire, I and III.

C. Mendes, Rapport (see Bk. VII, Ch. Ill); *A. Barre, Le Symbo- lisme. Essai historique . . . suivi d'une Bibliographie, 1911 (extensive and authoritative); A. Symons, The Symbolist Movement in Litera- ture, revised edition. New York, 1919; Amy Lowell, Six French Poets, 2nd ed.. New York, 1916 (Verhaeren, Samain, R. de Gourmont, Regnier, Jammes, Fort; diffuse criticism; translations); A. Rette, Le Symbo- lisme, anecdotes et souvenirs, 1903; Mme Anne Osmont, Le Mouvement symboliste, 1917; E. Raynaud, La Melee symboliste 1870-1890, 1918; T. de Visan, U Attitude du lyrisme contemporain, 1911; G. Waloh, ed., Anthologie des poetes frangais contemporains, 3 vols., 1919 (with Notices); G. Kahn, Symbolistes et decadents, 1902.

C. Morice, Paul VerMne, I'homme et I'ceuvre, 1888; *E. LepeUetier, Paul Verlaine, sa vie, son ceuvre, 1907 — English translation, 1909. On MaUarme: J. Lemaitre, Contemporains, IV, and see paragraph above. On the Americans: T. B. Rudmose-Brown, French Literary Studies, 1918. On Samain: L. Bocquet, Albert Samain, sa vie et son ceuvre, 1905. On Regnier: Jean de Gourmont, Henri de Regnier et son ceuvre, 1908.

Chapter IV:

J. Bedier, Hommage h Gaston Paris, 1904; H. Behrens, Francisque Sarceys Theaterkritik (dissertation) Greifswald, 1911; Giraud, Maitres de I'heure (on Faguet, Bourget, Brunetiere, France, Lemaitre); R.

764 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Doumic, Ecrivains d'aujourd'hui, 1894 (on Brunetiere, Bourget, Faguet, Lemaitre); E. Faguet, Ferdinand Brunetiere, 1911.

EPILOGUE:

W. L. George, France in the Twentieth Century, 1908; Le Larousse Mensuel, 1910-20 (for dates and facts) ; * M. Braunschvig, Notre littera^ ture etudiee dans les textes, Vol. II, 1921 (lists of important books, 1850-1920), G. CaseUa and E. Gaubert, La nouvelle litterature, 1895- 1905, 2nd ed., 1906; F. Baldensperger, L'Avant-guerre dans la litteror ture frangaise, 1900-1914, 1919; E. Henriot, A Quoi revent les jeunes gens, 1913 (another enquete on the various " isms ") ; Florian-Parmen- tier, Histoire de la litterature frangaise de 1815 a nos jours, no date (1914); Mme Duclaux, Twentieth-Century French Writers, New York, 1920.

On Bergson and his influence: E. Le Roy, Vne Philosophie nouvelle, M. Henri Bergson in the Revue des deux mondes, VII (1912) 6» per. — also Enghsh translation, London and New York, 1913; H. W. Carr, The Philosophy of Change; a Study . . . of the Philosophy of Bergson, 1914; G. Turquet-Milnes, Some Modem French Writers, 1921.

On Holland: Mme Duclaux (above); P. Seippel, Romain RoUand, I'homme et I'oeuvre, 1913; S. Zweig, Romain RoUand — English trans- lation, New York, 1921.

On the poets and mystics: Amy Lowell and T. de Visan (see Bk. IX, Ch. Ill); G. Duhamel, Les Poetes et la poesie, 1912-13; same author, Paul Claudel, 1919; P. M. Jones, Whitman in France in Modem Language Review, X (1915); S. Zweig, Emile Verhaeren — English translation, Boston, 1914; H. Potez (on Verhaeren) in the Revue de Paris, 1910; Remy de Gourmont, Promenades litteraires, 5 vols., 1904-14.

* A. Schinz, French Literature of the Great War, New York, 1920.

INDEX OF NAMES

INDEX OF NAMES

Italic figures indicate the chief references. Italicized titles are, as a rule, anonymous. Historical characters are usually omitted, unless they present literary interest. Credit for compiling this index is mainly due to Messrs. W. D. Trautman and Louis Allen, students in the Romance Department of the University of Chicago.

Abelard, 79, 487

About, E., 648

Acarie, Mme, 211

Acton, Lord, 658

Adam, Paul, 667, 668

Adam de la Halle, 70-71. 32, 67

Adam, Representation de, 68-69

Addison, 389

Aesop, 302

d'Aguesseau, 408, 406, 407, 451

Aiol, 29

Alain de Lille, 59

Alarcon, 256

Alary, Abbe, 410

Alciat, 155

Alexander, 381

Alexandre, 38

Alexis, Paul, 624

Alexis, Vie de Saint, 15, 19

Alice of Blois, 33

Alice of France, 51

Aliscans, S7

Almanack de Gotha, 135

Amadas et Idoine, 51

Amiel, 663

Amy, Pierre, 146

Amyot, i93-m, 195, 224, 229, 247

Anacreon, 176, 181, 187, 188, 208, 381

Andreas Capellanus, 33, 55, 60

Andrieu de la Vigne, 105, 108

Aneau, Barthelemy, 173

Angelique, Mere, 307

Angellier, Auguste, 731

Aniel, Dit dou vrai, 85

Annius of Viterbo, 135

Anselm of Laon, 79

Anselm, St., 16, 268

Antoine, Andre 681, 600, 682, 684,

686 Apolloniits of Tyre, 53 Arabian Nights, 85, 436 d'Argenson, Rene-Louis, 411> 410 Ariosto, 130, 189, 216, 237, 301 Aristophanes, 71, 315, 693 Aristotle, 16, 79, 98, 99, 102, 129,

145, 161, 162, 163, 170, 172, 174,

175, 197, 228, 248, 249, 260, 272,

327, 342, 381, 403, 653, 717 Amauld, 307, 308, 309, 325, 346 Arnold, Matthew, 576, 642, 644, 645,

712 Arouet, see Voltaire d'Aubignac, Abbe, 249, 253, 316, 321 d'Aubigne, 176, 182, 183, 190, 191,

192 568 d'Aubray, Claude, 209 Aucassin et Nicolette, 63-64, 15, 73 Augier, Emile, 696-697, 426, 562,

600, 601, 613, 661, 680 Augustine, St., 18, 68, 128, 158, 306,

339, 484 Aurelius, Marcus, 653 Ausonius, 180

Autels, Guillaume des, 175, 176 Avianus, 64

Babbitt, Irving, 541

Bachaumont, 412

Bacon, Francis, 202, 339, 453, 454,

455, 476 Bacon, Roger, 62, 103 Baif, Antoine de, 175, 176, 178, 187,

244 Baif, Lazare de, 178, 239

767

768

INDEX

Baldensperger, 736

Balzac, Honore de, 686-694, 280, 412, 426, 482, 619, 524, 566, 568, 570, 571, 575, 598, 613, 616, 618, 623, 625, 626, 629, 651, 666, 667, 680, 682, 684, 705, 714, 734

Babac, Jean-Louis Guez de, SU-e26, 198, 212, 222, 235, 258, 268

Balzac, Laure (Mme de Surville), 585

Banville, 543, 605, 688, 691, 719

Baour-Lormian, 520

Barante, 525

Barat et Hcdmet, 84

Barbey d'Aurevilly, 573, 577

Barlaam et Josaphat, 86-86

Baro, 230, 351

Baron, 351, 436

Barre, A., 702

Barres, Maurice, 672-673, 656, 668, 669, 720, 726, 729, 730

Bartas, Du, 190-191, 176

Bataille des sept arts, see Henri d'Andeli

Bataille, Henri, 736-737

Baudelaire, 602-606, 551, 700, 701, 705, 713, 717

Bayle, 37SS78, 270, 286, 381, 382, 396, 408, 412, 413, 453, 456, 457, 465, 468, 639

Bazin, Ren6, 730

Beaumarchais, 4S9-4S0, 363, 424, 427, 432, 680

Becque, Henry, 600-601, 681, 684

Beds, 80

Bedel, Jean, 84

Bedier, Joseph, 43, 84

Beethoven, 727

Belasco, 679

Bellay, Guillaume du, 149

Bellay, Joachim du, 171-173 {De- fense), 184-187 (Life and Poetry), 107, 134, 135, 163, 168, 169, 170, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 180, 183, 192, 195, 277, 339, 639

Belleau, Eemy, 175, 176, 178, 183, 187

Benda, J., 724

Bennett, Arnold, 727 (note)

Benoit de Sainte-More, 39-40, 73

Benserade, 226

Beranger, 6SS-6S9

Berguire, Pierre, 98-99, 88

Bergson, Henri, 711-726, 720, 729, 731, 734

Bernard, Claude, 625, 645

Bernard, Gentil, 446

Bernard, St., 100

Bernart de Ventadom, 33

Bernhardt, Sarah, 631, 679

Bemy, Mme de, 585, 586

Bernstein Henri, 7S6, 6, 737

Beroul, 42, 43

Bertaut, 188, 189

Berthelot, 652

Bertin, 445, 447, 448

Bertran de Bom, 33

Bertrand, Louis, 730

Beyle, 565, see Stendhal

Bible, 16, 158, 376, 468, 469, 631, 548 577, 653

Bien avise, mal avise, 111

Binet, 175

Boccaccio, 40, 85, 88, 89, 94, 118, 128, 137, 165, 167, 247, 301

Bodel, Jean, 69, 120

Bodin, Jean, 209

Boethius, 62, 79, 93

Boetie, Etienne de la, 195, 196, 199

Bpex, J.-H. and S.-J., 668 (see Rosny, J.-H.)

Boileau, SSSSSQ, 2, 171, 188, 191, 213, 215, 216, 218, 228, 234, 235, 250, 258, 276, 277, 279, 281, 291, 294, 297, 301, 302, 313, 314, 318, 319, 321, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 346, 347, 350, 415, 513, 518 639, 641, 713

Boisrobert, 226

Bolingbroke, 371, 384, 410, 465

Bonaventure, St., 100

Bonnard, 447

Bordeaux, Henry, 730

Bordeors, Les deux, 84

Borderie, de la, 143

Bornier, Henri de, 688

Borstel, Sieur de Gaubertin, 230

Bossuet, 3S0SS6, 98, 101, 159, 160. 212, 225, 258, 276, 279, 283, 295, 347, 357, 392, 393, 400, 408, 457, 513, 579

Boucher, 479

Bouhours, Abb(5, 281, 340 (note)

INDEX

769

Bouilhet, Louis, 614 Boulay-Paty, 523 Bourdaloue, 212, 335, 408 Bourdeille, Pierre de, see Brantome Bourget, Paul, 670-6711 (Fiction),

716-717 (Criticism), 566, 623, 656,

665. 669, 729 Boursault, 253 Boutroux, 722 Brantome, SO^-SOe, 193 Brer Rabbit Collections, 65 Brieux, Eugene, 681-683, 684, 736 Brownell, W. C, 4, 640, 651 Browning, Robert, 705 Brunetiere, 71S-715, 134, 135, 152,

160, 166, 168, 214, 215, 258, 278,

330, 340, 454, 501, 633, 634, 665,

669, 670, 717 Brunetto Latini, 81, 78, 94 Buchanan, 196 Buckle, 401, 403 Bude, 130, 131, 146, 153, 161 Bueil, Honorat de, see Racan Buffon, Comte de, 469-461, 8, 370,

452, 455, 497 Bunyan, John, 63 Bussy-Rabutin, 205, 286, 289, 340

(note) Byron, 6Z3-524, 498, 505, 515, 520,

537, 544, 546, 548, 559, 561, 565

Caillavet G. de, 737

Galas, 464

Calhsthenes, 38

Calvin, 164-160, 130, 132, 145, 153,

165, 193, 195, 200, 203, 204, 263,

306 Campistron, 322, 418 Capus, Alfred, 737 Carlyle, 10, 392, 406, 583 Carmen de proditione Guenonis, 20 Castelvetro, 174, 228, 248, 249 Castiglione, 129, 131 Castro, Guillen de, 255 Catherine the Great, 473 Cdard, 624, 681 Celestina, 137 Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, 86, 115,

117, 118 Cervantes, 5, 50, 229, 247 Chambers, 371, 451 Champfleuiy, 613

Chancel, 322

ChauQun de Guillelme, 27 Chandler, F. W., 687, 736 Chanson d'Antioche, 19 Chanson de Jerusalem, 19 Chanson de Roland, 20-B6, 26, 27 Chapelain, 22S, 183, 215, 222, 223,

227, 234, 247, 248, 249, 252, 288, 326 Chardin, 397, 479 Charlemagne, 13, 19, 20, 25 Charles of Anjou, 71 Charles V, 89, 99 Charles d'Orleans, 96-97, 91, 118 Charles, Mme Julie, 530 Charron, 197, 210, 271 Chartier, Alain, 93-96, 81, 91, 166 Chastiement d'un pere a son fils, 81 Chateaubriand, 607-616, 8, 341, 416,

493, 497, 503, 505, 517, 618, 521,

523, 525, 528, 534, 541, 564, 567,

576, 577, 580, 615, 618, 636, 638,

640, 641, 674, 719 Chatelain de Coucy, 35 Chdtelain de Coitcy, 51, 53 Chatelaine de Vergy, 51 Chatelet, Mme du, 370, 385, 386, 389 Chatterton, 447, 562 Chaucer, 2, 15, 40, 62, 63, 76, 85, 89,

91, 651 Chauheu, 445 Chenedolle, 520

Chenier, Andre, 448-460, 6, 444, 447 Chenier, M.-J., 423, 448 Chesterfield, Lord, 368 Chevalier as deus espees, 50 Chevalier au cygne, 19 Chinard, G., 510 Chrestien, Florent, 209 Christine de Pisan, 92-93, 63, 91, 98,

100, 101 Cicero, 55, 60, 94, 100, 102, 150, 163,

199, 200 Clairon, Mile, 368, 463, 464 Claudel, Paul, 737, 706, 720, 725, 726,

731, 735 (note) Col, Pierre, 101 Colardeau, 446

Colin d'Auxerre, 131, 144, 193 Colin Muset, 36 Colhns, Anthony, 371 Commines, PhiUippe de, lSl-124,

113, 114

770

INDEX

Comte, Auguste, 646-648, 455, 649,

653, 654 Comte de Poitiers, 51 Concilium Amoris, 54 Conde, the Grand, 220, 234, 331, 349,

351 Condillac, 461 Condorcet, Marquis de, 462 Conon de Bethune, 34 Conrart, 226 Constant, Benjamin, 605-608, 497,

498, 522 Cop, Nicolas, 155, 156 Copernicus, 382 Coppe, Francois, 679-698, 605, 669,

688, 695 Coquelin, Constant, 693 Corbiere, 703 Cordier, 154 Comeille, Pierre, S61-m$, 165, 194,

212, 222, 225, 228, 233, 235, 238,

241, 247, 248, 249, 265, 280, 286,

299, 314, 315, 316, 321, 322, 339,

359, 378, 379, 416, 421, 553, 554 Comeille, Thomas, 254, 314, 322, 340

(note), 378, 379 Cortegiano, II, see Castiglione Costanzo, Angelo di, 189 Cotton, 202 Coulanges, see Fustel Couperus, 727 (note) Courbet, 613

Couronnement de Louis, 26 Couronnement de Renard, 66 Cousin, Victor, 678-679, 235, 504,

505, 521 (note) Crebillon pere, 4S1-42S, 387, 418,

420, 464 Crestien de Troyes, 43-60, 15, 33,

42, 51, 52 Cretin, 133, 134, 137 Cry de la Basoche, 109 Curel, Francois de, 686-687, 681, 688,

736 Cuvier, 460

Dacier, Mme, 340

Dalembert, 453-466, 369, 370, 451,

452, 464, 473, 476 Damigeron, 80 Dancourt, 4^6 Dangeau, 354

Daniel, 189

Daniello, 185

Dante, 5, 34, 46, 55, 62, 78, 81, 93.

94, 128, 166. 170, 192, 513, 541,

588, 680 Danton, 652 Dares Phrygius, 37, 39 Darwin, 608, 645, 657, 714 Daudet, Alphonse, 629-633, 627, 698,

714 Daudet, Leon, 726 Daunou, 635 Daurat, 175, 178 Debat de I'hiver et de I'ete, 83 Deffand, Mme du, 366, 368, 369 Delacroix, E., 520, 524, 604 Delavigne, Casimir, 524, 554, 559 Dehlle, Abbe, 446 Delorme, Joseph, see Sainte-Beuve De Phyllide et Flora, 55 De Quincey, 347 Desaugiers, 528 Descartes, 863-272, 3, 10, 16, 79,

103, 163, 228, 307, 308, 310, 335,

339, 340, 343, 345, 375, 381, 402,

466, 467, 578, 646, 670 Deschamps, Emile, 519, 520 Deschamps, see Eustache Desfontaines, 386 Desjardins, 519 Desmarets, see Saint-Sorlin Desmasures, Louis, 241 Desmoulins, Camille, 496 Desperiers, Bonaventure, 167, 139 Desportes, PMhppe, 176, 184, 188,

189, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217 Despreaux, see Boileau Destouches, Nericault, 4S6 Destruction de Troie la grant, 108 Destutt de Tracy, see Tracy Dickens, 2, 325, 370, 435, 437, 570,

581, 632, 651 Dictys Cretensis, 37, 39' Diderot, 432 (Theories of), 47S-482

(Life and Works), 369, 370, 371,

378, 412, 434 (note), 443, 451, 452,

453, 455, 456, 458, 461, 464, 484,

490, 555, 576, 646, 716 Dierx, L^on, 702 (note), 706 Dies Irae, 58 Diodorus, 194 Dit de la Rose, 55

INDEX

771

Dit dou wax aniel, 85

Dobson, Austin, 36, 552

Doette, La belle, 31

Dolet, 132, 149, 161, 339

Donnay, Maurice, €87, 736

Dorat, 445, 446

Dorval, Mme, 547

Doumic, 667

Dowden, 196, 285, 635

Dreiser, 727 (note)

Dreyfus, 624, 664, 671, 676, 719

Dubois, Cardinal, 354

Dubois, Paul-Frangois, 521

Du Bos, Abbe, jj08~409

Du Camp, 614

Ducis, Jean-Frangois, 422, 553. 562

Duclaux, Mme, 720, 727

Duclos, Charles, 413

Ducros, L., 459

Dudevant, Baron, 573, 574

Dufresny, 435

Du gargon et de I'aveicgle, 112

Du Marsais, 452

Dumas pere, S59-560 (Plays), 670-

671 (Life and Novels), 519, 520,

523, 554, 555, 597, 692 Dumas fils, 697-600, 426, 601, 602,

680, 681, 684, 717, 718 Du Maurier, 528 Dupanloup, 652 Dupin, Aurore, see Sand Durante, 62 Duruy, Victor, 659, 660

Ecbasis captivi, 64

Eilhart von Oberge, 43

Einhard, 22

Eleanor of Poitou, 33, 39, 51

Eliot, George, 645, 648, 649, 714

Emerson, 2, 9, 202, 203

Encyclopedic, La Grande, 4^1-439,

463, 473, 474 Eneas, Roman de, 39, 38 Ennius, 63

d'Epinay, Mme, 484 Erasmus, 128, 132, 142, 148, 149,

153, 156 Espinel, 436 Estaunie, E., 730 Estienne, Henri, 131, 199, 208 d'Estissac, Geoffroy, 146 Estoire de Tristan, 42, 41

Etienne de Fougferes, 82 Eulalie, Sainte, 18 Euripides, 129, 239, 314, 315, 317 Eustache Deschamps, 90-91, 36,

131 Eustorg de Beaulieu, 143 Everyman, 109 Eyquem, Michel, see Montaigne

Fabre, Ferdinand, 666

Fabri, Pierre, 132

Faguet, Emile, 716-716, 374, 516

658, 691 Farce de Mattre Pathelin, 112 Farel, Guillaume, 157 Fauriel, 497, 554 Favart, 427 Fenelon, 367-360, 332, 334, 340

(note), 346, 409, 492 Feuillet, Octave, 669 Feydeau, Ernest, 613 Ficino, 128, 161, 164, 165 Fielding, 435 FiUeul, 245 Firdusi, 643 Flamenca, 61-6B, 86 Flaubert, 614-618, 8, 441, 516, 574,

591, 602, 613, 619, 623, 627, 629,

630, 668, 675, 716, 717 Flechier, 335 Flers, R. de, 737 Fleury, 410, 435 Floire et Blanchefleur, 53 Florian, 446, 718 Florian-Parmentier, 732 Florio, 202 \

Folengo, 147 Folic Tristan, 43 Fontaine, Charles, 143, 139 Fontanes, 508, 676 Fontenelle, 343-344 {Digression),

S78-S8B (Life and Works), 254,

270, 339, 340, 344, 346, 347, 351,

368, 367, 368, 370, 373, 391, 416,

428, 438, 444, 445 Formey, 452

Fort, Paul, 731-738, 702 (note), 708 Foucher, Adele (Mme Hugo), 535,

635 Fouquet, 235, 257, 300 Fourier, 646 France, Anatole, 674-678 (Life and

772

INDEX

Works), 718 (Criticism), 5, 8, 154,

203, 634, 656, 664, 668, 695, 719 Francis 1, HO, 136, 138, 139, 140,

156, 165, 166, 239, 558 Frederick the Great, 362, 365, 378,

385, 386, 387, 389, 471 Freron, 385, 414, 464 Froebel, 493 Froissart, 76-78 (Life and Prose),

91 (Poetry), 121, 206 Fromentin, Eugene, 662, 565 Furetiere, 227, 236, 314 Fustel de Coulanges, 669-680, 401

Gace Brul6, 35

Gaimar, Geoffrey, 73

Galiani, 368

Galileo, 264

Gambetta, 663, 679

Garat, 461

Gamier, Robert, W, 238, 243, 245,

246 Gamier de Pont-Sainte-Maxence,

73, 15 Gassendi, 268, 270, 291 Gautier d'Arras, Bl Gautier de Coincy, 85 Gautier de Metz, 81 Gautier, Theophile, B50-BBS (Life

and Poetry), 572-573 (Prose) 518,

519, 521, 524, 544, 546, 556, 558,

602, 605, 609, 611, 615, 627, 629,

696, 701, 716 Gawain (.Sir) and the Green Knight,

50 Gay, Delphine, 520, 523 Genlis, Mme de, 523 Geoffrey Gaimar, 73 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 41, 46 Geoffrin, Mme, 366, 368, 369, 379,,

413, 473 Gerbert de Montreuil, 47, 48, 51 Gerson, Jean le Charlier, 100-lOt,

63,98 Geulincx, 271 Ghil, Ren6, 703, 706 Gibbon, 401 GUbert, 447 Gillot, 209, 345 Giraldi Cinthip, 246, 247 Girard de RouBsillon, 18, 27 Giraud, V., 717

Glatigny, 605

Godeau, 226

Godejroi de Bovillon, 19

Godefroi de Leigni, 46

Goethe, 5, 66, 152, 190, 299, 480,

503, 504, 522, 527 Gombault, 226, 227 Gomberville, Marin Leroy de, 232 Goncourt, the brothers, 6S7-6S9, 613,

621, 624, 633, 681, 713, 716, 719 Goncourt, E. de, 630, 633, 730 Gongora, 222 Gooch, G. P., 579, 660 Gottfried von Strassburg, 43 Goujon, Jean, 131 Gourmont, Jean de, 709 Gounnont, Remy ' de, 725 Goumay, MUe de, 216, 217 Gracd, Conte del, 47 Graelent, 53 GraU, Holy, 47, 48 Greban, Amoul, 106 Greban, the brothers, 105 Greban, Simon, 107 Gregh, Femand, 721 Greaset, 427, 446 Greuze, 479 Grevin, 241, 244 Grimm, 368, 412, 473, 484, 485 Grignan, Mme de, 269, 288, 289 Gringoire, Pierre, 108, 109 Griseldis, Estoire de, 72 Guarini, 245 Guazzo, 284 Guerard, A., 662 Guevara, 435 Gui de Blois, 77 Gui de Mori, 63 Guido delle Colonne, 40, 108 Guillaume Alexis, 113 Guillaume d'Angleterre, 44 Guillaume de Digulleville, 63 GuUlaume de Dole, 51 Guillaume de Lorris, 66-69, 62, 63 Guillaume de Machaut, 89-90, 36,

131 Guiraud, Alexandre, 519 Guiron, 53 Guizot, 579-^80, 364, 505, 521 (note),

578, 583, 584. 659 Guttinguer, Ulrio, 520 Guyon, Mme, 334, 357

INDEX

773

Halevy, 595

Haller, 463

Hanska, Mme de, 586, 587

Hardy, Alexandire, S4S-S48, 207, 238, 259, 260, 261, 554

Harrison, Frederic, 648

Hauptmann, G., 681

Hegel, 578, 649

Heinricli der Glichez&re, 66

Hein van Aken, 62

Heine, 120, 504

Heliodorus, 313

Helvetius, C, 461

Henault, President, 367, 368, 410

Hennequin, Emile, 71S, 717

Hennique, 624, 681

Henri d'Andeli, 83, 84, 102

Henri de Valenciennes, 74-7S

Heniy IV, S18, 389

Henry of Saltrey, 52

d'Herberay des Essarts, 229

Herder, 657

Heredia, Jose-Maria de, 609-611, 539, 695, 709, 719

Herodotus, 208, 393

Heroet, 164

Herrick, 188

Hervieu, Paul, 684-685, 6, 566, 686, 736

Historia regum Britanniae, see Geoffrey of Monmouth

Hoffmann, 522, 528

d'Holbach, Baron, 461, 473, 478

Homer, 5, 94, 137, 158, 178, 181, 314, 315, 340, 343, 358, 444, 445, 523, 548, 606

Horace, 94, 129, 172, 173, 175, 179, 180, 185, 186, 240, 325, 326, 327, 347, 461, 641

Houdar, see Lamotte

d'Houdetot, Mme, 484, 487

Housse partie, La, 85

Huet, 340 (note), 342

Hugh Capet, 14, 15, 19

Hugo, Victor, 634-643 (Life and Poetiy), 654-669 (Plays), 669- 670 (Novels), 6, 7, 118, 183, 192, 276, 280, 504, 516, 517, 519, 520, 521, 522, 523, 524, 525, 544, 545, 550, 553, 560, 562, 568, 573, 581, 588, 589, 595, 603, 606, 610, 635, 636, 638, 679, 688, 692, 693, 698, 712, 734

Humboldt, 608

Hume, 484

Huon de Bordeavx, 29

Huysmans, 666-666, 619, 624, 706

Ibsen, 681, 686

Irving, Sir Henry, 680

Isabella of Navarre, 69

Jacquemard Gelee, 66

Jacques de Vitry, 85

Jacques Millet, 108

James, Henry, 8, 439, 593

James, William, 722, 723

Jammes, Francis, 703, 708, 731

Jansen, 306, 307, 308

Jaucourt, (jhevalier de, 452, 458

Jean Bodel, see Bodel

Jean de Meun, 69-62, 56, 58, 63, 92,

98, 100, 101, 143 Jean de Montreuil, 99-100, 63, 101 Jean le Charlier, see Gerson Jeanne of Champagne, 75 Jeu du Pelerin, 71 Joanna of Flanders, 47 Jodelle, 171, 174, 175, 176, 178, 183,

240, 244 John of Garland, 80 Joinville, 75-76

Joubert, Joseph, 676, 334, 498, 508 Jvujrois, 51 Jullien, J., 681 Jurieu, 373

Jusserand, J.-3., 184, 651 (note) Juvenal, 326

Kahn, Gustave, 699, 706, 707

Kant, 4, 409, 504, 723

Eean, Edmund, 554

Keats, 449

Kemble, Charles, 554

Kempis, Thomas k, 211

Kepler, 264

Ker, W. P, 53

Kiot, 49

Knox, John, 158

La Barre, 464

Labe, Louise, 169

Labiche, Eugene, 595

La Bruyere, S49-S62, 136, 219, 280,

774

INDEX

281, 340 (note), 344, 347, 380, 397,

435, 592 La Calprenede, S3S, 235, 236, 314,

326 La Chaussee, 431, 432 Lacordaire, 577 La Fare, 446 La Fayette, Mme de, S87-Z88, 222,

235, 276, 283, 284, 289 La Fontaine, SOOSOS, 84, 207, 216,

276, 279, 293, 313, 314, 324, 340

(note), 342, 343, 390, 622, 693, 734 Laforgue, Jules, 699, 706 La Fosse, 322 La Harpe, 464 Led du Cor, 53 Lalanne, 205 Lamarck, 460, 635 Lamartine, B30-B33, 184, 185, 189,

447, 448, 494, 504, 508, 516, 517,

518, 519, 521, 523, 524, 525, 528,

538, 549, 576, 577, 613, 638, 695,

715 Lambert, Mme de, 366, 367, 379, 395,

436 Lamennais, Abbe de, 577, 575, 576,

636, 640 La Mettrie, 478 La Mothe le Vayer, 270 Lamotte, Ui-UB, 340, 343, 344, 359,

408, 409, 416, 428 Lancaster, H. C, 246 Lancelot (Prose), 46 Lancelot, Claude, 307, 313 Landor, W. S., 378 Lang, Andrew, 54, 96 Langlois, 80 La Noue, de, 204, 206 Lanson, Gustave, 716, 8, 78, 165, 189,

224, 245, 264, 285, 287, 289, 297,

371, 431, 531, 711 La Peruse, 175, 176 Laplace, 461 Larivey, SJf4-£45 La Rochefoucauld, 28S-S85, 276,

279, 287, 303, 330, 350, 352, 355,

639 La Sale, Antoine de, 114 Lavedan, Henri, 681, 687, 736, Lavisse, Ernest, 273, 275, 661 (and

note) Lebrun, 445, 446

Le Cuvier, 112

Leconte de Lisle, 605-609, 449, 539.

548, 610, 623, 695, 697, 702, 717 Lefevre d'Etaples, 155 Lefevre, Jules, 520, 523 Lefranc, Abel, 138, 150 Legenda Aurea, 98 Leger, Vie de Saint, 19 Leibnitz, 375, 385, 460, 477, 646 Le Kain, 463 Lemaire de Beiges, Jean, 13S-1SS,

40, 132, 137, 173 Lemaitre, Jules, 719, 7, 315, 320, 321,

484, 634, 649, 687, 691, 697, 714,

715 Lemercier, Nepomucene, 553 Leo X, 130

Leo Hebraeus, 169, 176 Leonard, 446, 447 Leroy, Jean, 209 Le Roy, 722, 723 Leroux, 646 Lesage, 42S-426 (Plays), 43^^-438

(Life and Fiction), 424, 440, 443 Lespinasse, Julie de, S69, 366, 452,

473, 476, 500 Leasing, 85, 409, 504 Letoumeur, 371 Lewes, G. H, 648 Lewis " Monk " 589 Lillo, 432 Littre, 646, 648

Livy, 81, 94, 98, 115, 377, 400, 650 Locke, John, 370, 371, 384, 403, 453,

454, 461, 465, 466, 467 Longfellow, 97 Longpierre, 322 Longueville, Duchess of, 220, 222,

578 Lope de Vega, 247, 262 Lorenzino, 244

Loti, Pierre, 673-674, 516, 665, 713 Louis XIV, g7S-g8g, 219, 223, 253,

254, 257, 269, 290, 291, 294, 295,

299, 300, 301, 312, 315, 316, 319,

320, 324, 325, 330, 332, 335, 341,

347, 348, 351, 355, 392, 635 Louis XV, 453 Lucan, 37, 94, 115 Lucian, 326, 378 Lucretius, 200, 270, 292, 450, 476,

478

INDEX

775

Luther, 146, 154, 211 Luynes, Due de, 265 Lyly, 222

Mabinogion, 50

Machaut, Guillaume de, 89-90, 36,

131 Machiavelli, 123, 386 Mackenzie,. Compton, 727 (note) Macpherson, 372, 446, 502, 523 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 688-691, 698,

703, 736 Maffei, 419

Magny, Olivier de, 175, 188 Mahieu le Poriier, 63 Maindron, Maurice, 730 Maintenon, Mme de, 289-S90, 236,

274, 319, 320, 354, 357 Mairet, 232, 248, 252, 260 Maistre, Joseph de, S76-677, 662 Maistre, Xavier de, 577 Malebranche, Z70-S72, 397 Malesherbes, 508 Maleville, 226 Malfilatre, 447 Malherbe, SlS-Sl?, 173, 176, 188,

189, 191, 207, 208, 211, 212, 218,

222, 225, 227, 228, 235, 248, 261,

327, 329, 330, 342, 359 MaUarme, 704-706, 699, 702, 703,

708 MaUet, 452, 458 Malory, Sir Thomas, 41, 49 Manessier, 47, 48 Manteau mal taille, 53 Manzoni, 522, 554 Map, Walter, 49 Marais, 412, 413 Marbode, 81 Marguerite d'Angouleme, 165-166,

132, 137, 139, 143, 153, 160, 164, 167 Margueritte, Paul, 667-668, 665 Margueritte, Victor, 667 Marie of Champagne, 33, 43, 44, 45 Marie de France, 6S-6S, 15, 64 Marinetti, 721, 731 Marino, 220, 222 Mari qui fist sa jemme confesse,

84 Marivaux, 4S7-4S9 (Plays), 438-UO

(Novels), 255, 365, 367, 368, 426,

434 (note), 443, 560

Marmontel, 368, 406, 413, 452, 458,

464, 497 Marot, Clement, 1S6-W, 63, 94, 107,

132, 134, 143, 144, 148, 153, 172,

179, 188, 216, 302 Marot, Jean, 136 Martial, 142 Martin, Henri, 660 Marullus, 181 Massenet, 85

Matthews, Brander, 434 (note) Maturin, Charles, 589 Maupassant, Guy de, 619-62S, 6, 542,

614, 623, 624, 718 Maupertuis, 370, 387, 478 Maurras, Charles, 726 Maynard, Francois, 215, 216 Maynial, 620 Meigret, Louis, 163 Meilhac, 595 Melanchthon, 158 Menage, 223, 227, 287, 288, 296, 340

(note) Mendes, Catulle, 605, 688, 693, 707,

708 Mendoza, 293 Menippee, Satire, Zfft-ZlO Mercier, Sebastien, 423, 553 Mere, ChevaUer de, 286 Merimee, Prosper, 667-668 (His- torical Novel), 671-572 (Tales

and Fantasies), 519, 524 Merrill, Stuart, 707-708, 699, 706,

735 (note) Metenier, 681 Michaut, G., 639 Michel (de Bourges), 575 Michel, Jean, 107 Michelangelo, 727 Michelet, Jules, 581-58S, 3, 567, 580,

646, 657, 660 Mieulx que devant, 112 Mignet, 584, 583 Mill, J. S., 645, 646, 647, 648 Millet, Jacques, 108 MUton, 2, 183, 191, 192, 312, 328,

502, 513 Mintumo, 175 Mirabeau, Gabriel, Marquis de, 497,

515 Miracles de Notre Dame, Qvaranle,

70

776

INDEX

Mirbeau, Octave, 684, 667, 683

Mistral, Frederic, 609 (note), 630

Modus, Le roi Modus et la reine Racio, 88

Moliere, 291-300, 9, 84, 113, 145, 154, 216, 223, 228, 234, 235, 236, 239, 244, 245, 253, 259, 269, 270, 276, 277, 279, 280, 282, 285, 301, 312, 314, 315, 317, 324, 326, 328, 330, 340, 342, 351, 359, 424, 425, 427, 438, 490 (note), 596, 680

Molinet, Jean, 63, 134

Monde et Abuz, 112

Mondory, 251, 252

Monluc, 137, 204, 206

Monod, 582, 583

Montaigne, 19S-W3, 3, 4, 9, 128, 130, 137, 154, 163, 187, 193, 194, 204, 207, 210, 217, 224, 232, 245, 263, 270, 271, 284, 308, 311, 350, 377, 397, 484, 630

Montalembert, 577

Montausier, Marquis de, 222

Montchretien, $43

Montemayor, 229

Montespan, Mme de, 274, 290

Montesquieu, 395-405, 334, 347, 354, 364, 367, 368, 370, 371, 378, 391, 408, 409, 410, 416, 446, 452, 457, 464, 472, 491, 501, 502, 579, 658, 659, 660, 716

Montesquieu, Comte Robert de, 706

Moore, Edward, 432

Moore, George, 593

More, Sir Thomas, 153

Moreas, Jean, 699, 706

MoreUet, 452, 464

Moreri, 374

MoriUot, 191

Morley, John, Viscount, 407, 453, 469

Momy, Due de, 630, 631

Muret, Mare-Antoine de, 175, 196, 241

Musset, Alfred de, 544-547 (Poetry), 660-56S (Plays), 4, 6, 7, 429, 494, 519, 520, 522, 523, 524, 538, 550, 555, 565, 574, 638, 649, 680, 691, 698

Myst^re de Saint Crispin et Samt Crispian, 104

Mysthre de Saint Louis, 104, 110

Napoleon I, 496, 497, 498, 503, 508.

515, 517, 519, 521, 528, 529, 535,

538, 553, 565, 570, 584, 589, 651,

652 Napoleon III, 530, 535, 538, 584,

612, 659 Narbonne, 498 Navagero, 187 Necker, 496, 497 Nerval, Gerard de, 520, 522 Nevelet, 302

Newton, 370, 384, 385, 454, 456, 465 Nicole de Margival, 63 Nicole, Pierre, 294, 307, 313 Niebuhr, 657

Nietzsche, 280, 476, 686, 716 Ninon de Lenclos, 235, 270, 324 Nisard, 634-SS5, 330 Nivard, 64

Noailles, Comtesse Mathieu de, 731 Nodier, Charles, 6S7-6SS, 504, 520,

522, 524, 572 North, Lord, 194 Norton, Miss, 202

Ogier, 247

Oresme, Nicolas, 99, 88, 98, 102, 239

Orjeo, Sir, 53

Orosius, 115

Osdan, see Macpherson

Ovid, 33, 37, 39, 44, 45, 46, 52, 55,

59, 60, 61, 82, 132, 134, 142, 172,

180, 184, 216, 445

Pailleron, Edouard, 680, 429

PaUssot, 427

Paris, Gaston, 711, 1, 3, 24, 41, 43, 78, 112, 718

Pamasse Contemporain, Le, 605, 606

Pamy, 447-448

Partenopeus de Bids, 50, 51

Pascal S06-S1S, 3, 8, 153, 159, 200, 201, 203, 210, 223, 228, 263, 269, 277, 279, 280, 281, 282, 286, 325, 330, 339, 350, 407, 457, 466, 475, 513, 725

Pasquier, Etienne, 94, 175, 198, 208

Passerat, 209

Passion (Mystere de la), 105-107

Passion (poem on), 19

Patin, 270

INDEX

777

Patru, 227

Paulet, Mile, 223

Payne, John, 121

Peguy, Charles, 7S2, 720, 725, 727, 731, 735 (note)

Pelerinage de Charlemagne, id-SB

Peletier, Jacques, 163, 174, 175, 176, 178, 185

Pellisson, 253

Perceval, 47, 48

Perceval (.Prose), 49

Percyvelle, Sir, (Middle English), 49

Perefixe, 287

Perlesvaus, 49

Perrault, the brothers, S41

Perrault, Charles, S4I-342, 344-346, 325, 339, 340, 343, 348

Perrault, Claude, 328

Perrin d'Angecourt, 71

Pestalozzi, 493

Petrarch, 62, 76, 83, 88, 89, 102, 128, 138, 175, 179, 181, 184, 185, 187, 380, 381, 531 Petrus Alphonsus, 82, 85 Phaedrus, 64, 302 Philip of Flanders, 43, 47

PhUippa, Queen, 76 Philippe de Beaumanoir, 36 Philippe de Novaire, 82 Philippe de Thaon, 80, 81 Phygiologtis, 79, 80 Pierre Berguire, 98-99, 88 Pierre Col, 101 Pierre d'Ailly, 100 Pierre de Beauvais, 73 Pierre de Saint-Cloud, 66 Pindar, 179, 181, 314, 446 Piron, 424, 427, 445 Pithou, 209

Pixerecourt, 553, 554, 559, 589 Plato, 60, 102, 128, 129, 132, 153, 159, 160, 161, 163, 164, 172, 175, 176, 185, 191, 199, 397, 466, 487, 489,

576, 578, 616, 704 Plautus, 244, 246, 291, 296, 299 Plutarch, 194, 195, 198, 377, 492 Poe, Edgar Allan, 602, 603, 702, 705 Po&me Moral, 82 Poggio, 118 Politian, 153 Pomairola, C. de, 725

Pompadour, Mme de, 366, 386, 451 Pompignan, Lefranc de, 389, 446,

464 Pons, Abb6 de, 340 (note) Ponsard, 595, 596 Pope, Alexander, 278, 326, 330, 371,

384, 385, 465, 468, 641 Poquelin, see Moliere Porto-Riche, Georges de, 685-680.

681, 688 Pradon, 318, 322, 340 (note) Prescott, William, 504 Prevost, Abbe, 4^-4j^, 84, 371, 413,

443 Prevost, Marcel, 672 Prevost-Paradol, 648 Propertius, 180 Prophetes du Christ, 68 Proudhon, 575, 636, 646 Proust, Marcel, 7i27 (note) Prudentius, 55, 83 Prudhomme, Sully, see Sully Prud-

homme Pseudo-Turpin, 20, 73 Pushkin, 670

Quern quaeritis, 68

Quesnay, 456

Quinault, 314, 315, 322

Quinet, Edgar, 657-658

Quintilian, 129, 163, 172

Quinze joyes de mariage, 117, 118

Rabelais, I49-I64, 8, 62, 103, 127, 130, 132, 133, 143, 150, 158, 162, 165, 167, 195, 203, 209, 210, 291, 339, 474, 482, 492, 585, 587, 677, 726

Bacan, Honorat de Bueil, Marquis de, 215, 216, 235

Racine, Jean, S1Z-SS3, 1, 6, 7, 145, 194, 213, 218, 236, 239, 242, 249, 253, 254, 260, 262, 276, 277, 279, 280, 281, 286, 290, 301, 306, 307, 324, 326, 340, 341, 342, 359, 379, 400, 415, 416, 417, 420, 421, 422, 427, 428, 444, 445, 448, 449, 513, 518, 533, 553, 562, 609, 684, 719

Rambaud, 661 (note)

Rambouillet, Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de, 2S1, 130, 222, 224, 225, 226, 231, 248

778

INDEX

Rameau, 480

Bamee, Pierre de la, see Ramus

Ramus, 132, 161, 263

Eaoxd de Cambrai, ZI-i8

Raoul de Houdenc, 60, 55

Rapin, Nicolas, 209, 216

Rapin, le Pere, 287, 340 (note)

Recamier, Mme, 497, 509, 636

Regnard, M-i^, 426

Regnier, Hem-i de, 708-710, 7, 699,

706, 730 Regnier, Mathurin, 116, 207, 217,

546 Re jane, Mme, 680 Renan, Ernest, e6S-S66, 6, 627, 649,

659, 672, 675, 676, 716, 718, 719 Renan, Henriette, 652, 653 Benard, Roman de, see Roman de

Benard Renard le Contrejait, 66 Renaud de Beaujeu, 50 Renclus (Bartbelemy) de MoUiens,

82 Rene of Anjou, 89, 114 Renee, Duchess of Ferrara, 139, 157 Renouvier, 722 Retz, Cardinal de, ZSB-ZSe, 220, 283,

353, 411, 580 Richard de Foumival, 81 Richardson, Samuel, 233, 371, 439,

440, 479, 481, 487 Richelieu, 130, 219, 220, 222, 225,

228, 247, 248, 252, 273, 284, 285,

378 Richepin, 688 Richeut, 84

Rigaud de Barb6zieux, 33 Rimbaud, Arthur, 70S, 699, 700, 706 Rivarol, 6, 717 Robert de Blois, 82 Robert de Boron, 48, 49 Robert de Clari, 7^-75 Robespierre, 449, 493, 652 Rocca, Delia, 706 Rod, Edouard,. 566, 669, 672 Rodenbaoh, 699, 703, 704 Rohan, Chevalier de, 384 Roj as, Francisco de, 262 Roland, Chanson de, see Chanson

de Roltznd Roland, Mme, 194, 493 RoUand, Romain. 7S6-730, 720, 732

Romains, Jules, 721, 731

Roman de Renard, 63-67, 693

Roman de la Rose, 66-63, 18, 55, 76, 98, 101, 117, 131, 137

Roman des sept sages, 85

Romulvg, 52, 64

Ronsard, Pierre de, 179-183, 6, 40, 134, 135, 136, 142, 144, 171, 173, 175, 176, 177, 178, 184, 185, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 193, 203, 208, 212, 213, 215, 217, 218, 227, 247, 277, 389, 449, 519, 609

Rosny, J.-H., 665, 668, 681

Rossetti, D. G., 120

Rossini, 429

Rostand, Edmond, 691-694, 232, 237, 270, 291, 539, 688, 706

Rotrou, 261-262, 222, 248, 314, 322

Roucher, 446 -Rouget de I'lsle, 448 (note)

Rousseau, J.-B., 386

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 483-494, 194, 199, 201, 278, 298, 359, 370, 371, 378, 386, 388, 407, 411, 412, 434 (note), 440, 443, 446, 452, 463, 472, 473, 474, 495, 497, 500, 507, 510, 511, 521, 530, 531, 564, 565, 574, 658, 714, 719

Royer-CoUard, 517

Rutebeuf, 69-70, 66

Ryer, Pierre du, 261-262, 232, 248

Sable, Mme de, 223, 269, 283, 284, 307, 578

Sabli^re, Marquise de la, 301, 305

Sacchetti, 167

Sagon, FranQois de, 139

Saint-C3yran, Jean de Hauranne, Abbe de, 306, 308

Sainte-Beuve, 636-644, 66, 180, 184, 188, 191, 203, 283, 286, 321, 325, 341, 377, 448, 498, 499, 505, 519, 520, 521, 522, 527, 532, 535, 537, 544, 545, 547, 564, 576, 580, 582, 613, 627, 634, 645, 649, 651, 698, 712, 715, 719

Saint-Evremond, 286, 270, 316, 340 (note), 346, 383

Saint-Gelais, Mellin de, I44, 139, 143, 180, 185

Saint-Gelais, Octovien de, 132

Sainte-Hilaire, GeoSroy de, 460

INDEX

779

Saint-Lambert, 386, 446 Sainte-Marthe, Charles de, 143 Saint-Pierre, Abbe de, jfO9-410 Saint-Pierre, Bemardin de, 494r-49S Saint-Simon, Louis, Due de, 353-

SB6, 276, 276, 288, 349, 357, 364,

408, 410, 411, 515 Saint-Simon, Henri de, 580, 636, 640,

645, 647, 653

Saint-Sorlin, Desmarets de, 233, 248,

340, 341 Sainfc-Vahy, 619 Saintsbuiy, George, 39, 58, 117, 143,

312 Sales, Saint FranQois de, Sll, 207,

212, 230, 232, 288, 332 * Salluste, GuiUaume de, ^e Bartas Samain, 703, 704, 708 ^ Sand, George, 673-S75, 501, 616, 519,

544, 561, 565, 571, 613, 614, 638,

646, 669 Sandeau, Jules, 574 Sannazzaro, 135, 144, 172, 229, 246 Sarcey, Francisque, 717-718, 648 Sardou, Viotorien, 679-680, 681, 688,

718 Sarrasin, 226 Scaliger, 176, 249 Scarron, 235, 236, 290, 292, 326, 381,

573 Sceve, Maurice, 167-168, 176 Schelandre, 247

Scherer, 482, 634 (and note), 645 Schiller, 498, 504, 505, 522 Schlegel, A. W., 504, 554 Schopenhauer, 608 Schure, E., 725 Scott, Sir Walter, 5S4, 498, 499, 520,

525, 567, 568, 570, 580, 587, 588 Scribe, Eugene, 595, 601, 679, 680,

718 Scudery, George de, SSi-SSB, 222,

232, 248, 252, 255 Scudery, MUe de, ZSi.-S36, 221, 223,

236, 326, 380 Sebillet, 169, 171, 239 Sebond, Eaymond de, 196 Sedaine, 427 Segrais, 287, 340 (note) Seilliere, 725 Senancour, 522, 564 Seneca, 94, 95, 129, 155, 168, 171,

176, 198, 259, 314, 381 Serafino dall'Aquilla, 139, 168 \ Serments de Strasbourg, 14 \Servetus, 158

iSevigne, Mme de, S88-S89, 222, 254, \ 269, 270, 274, 283, 287, 290, 301,

316 Shaftesbury, 371, 397, 466, 475 Shakespeare, 1, 2, 5, 35, 46, 61, 71,

106, 108, 129, 194, 202, 240, 247,

317, 321, 371, 384, 385, 415, 417,

418, 422, 466, 502, 606, 522, 523,

554, 655, 559, 560, 662, 570, 692,

661, 655, 688, 726 Shaw, Bernard, 298, 553 Shelley, 3, 533, 651 Sheridan, 429 Siege d'Orleans, 108 Silvester, 191 Simon, Richard, 332 Sismondi, 622 Smithson, Miss, 654 Socrates, 163. 199, 699, 700 ISbderhj61m, 117 Solinus, 79 Somaize, 223 Songe du Vergier, 88 Sophocles, 129, 239, 262 Sorel, Albert, 660 Sorel, Charles, 236, 236 Soulie, F., 522

Soumet, Alexandre, 519, 520, 654 Spencer, Herbert, 645, 714, 717, 722 Spenser, Edmund, 164 Speroni, Sperone, 172 Spinoza, 271, 658 Sponsus, 68 Stael, Mme de, 487-S05, 372, 403,

496, 507, 513, 521, 523, 554, 564,

678, 634 Statius, 37, 94 Stendhal, 666-666, 506, 519, 564, 567,

574, 625, 649, 716, 717 Sterne, 154, 371, 480 Stevenson, R. L., 118 Sturel, 193 Suares, A., 732 Sudre, 64

Sue, Eugtee, 671, 589 Suetonius, 115, 204, 316 Sully Prudhomme, 696-697, 605 Sulzer, 458

780

INDEX

Swedenborg, 587

Swift, Jonathan, 154, 384, 397, 677

Swinburne, 543, 702

Symonds, J. A., 129

Tacitus, 316, 393, 400

Taiile, Jacques de la, 242

Taille, Jean de la, 174, 241, 244

Taillefer, 20

Taine, 648-662, 275, 305, 363, 364,

366, 547, 566, 623, 627, 634, 641,

643, 659, 671, 712, 714, 716, 717.

719 Tallemant des Reaux, 221, 234 Talleyrand, 365, 498, 530 Talma, 553 TansiUo, 189, 213 Taaso, 183, 189, 237, 245, 328 Tassoni, 326, 341 Tebaldeo, 139, 168, 189 Tencin, Mme de, S67-S68, 366, 395,

452 Tennyson, 41, 44, 49, 547 Terence, 244, 291, 293, 300 Thebes, Roman de, S8-S9, 51 Theocritus, 172, 177, 181, 445, 576,

606 Theuriet, Andre, 669 Theophrastus, 350 (note) Thibault, Jacques-Anatole,

see France, Anatole Thibaut de Blois, 51 Thibaut de Navarre, 35 Thierry, Am6d6e, 580 Thierry, Augustin, 680-581, 514, 525,

567, 583 Thiers, 68S-584, 612, 659, 663 Thomas, 43, 43 Thomas Aquinas, St., 80, 100 Thomson, James, 371, 446 TibuUus, 445 Ticknor, 504 Tinayre, Mme, 730 Tiraqueau, 127, 146 Tocqueville, Count Alexis de, 658-

659, 660 Toland, 371

Tolstoy, 570, 670, 681, 726, 727, 729 Tombeor Nostre Dame, 85 Tory, Geoffroy, 138, 153 Tracy, Destutt de, 461, 565 (note),

635

Trissino, 144, 239

Tristan I'Ermite, 313

Tristan, Estoire de, Jfi, 41

Tristan, Folie, 43

Tristan (Prose), 43

Tristrem, Sir, 43

Troie, Roman de, 39-40, 38

Turgenev, 630, 653, 716

Turgot, 452, 456, 496

Tumebe, Odet de, 244

Turoldus, 22

Turpin, Psevdo-, see Pseudo-Turpin

Tyard, Pontus de. 169, 175, 176

Tycho Brahe, 264

Tydorel, 53

Tyolet, 53

dlJrfg, Honors, SS9-g3e

Vair, Du, 207, 210, 211, 232

Valla, Lorenzo, 135

Valleran, Lecomte, 238, 245

Valliere, MUe de la, 331

Valois, Margaret of, 180, 204

Van Dale, 381

Varro, 209

Vatable, 140

Vaugelaa, 227, 228, 277

Vaumoriere, 233 (note)

Vauquelin de la Fresnaye. 174

Vauvenarguea, 406-407

Verdi, 558

Verdier, Du, 184

Vergil, 37, 40, 46, 94, 128, 134, 142,

158, 171, 172, 177, 180, 181, 183,

185, 190, 200, 201. 315, 358, 380,

513 Verhaeren, Emile, 732-735, 699, 706,

708, 720, 721, 731 Verlaine, Paul, 699-70S, 605, 695,

703, 704, 705, 719, 731 Veuillot, Louis, 661-eeS, 577, 658 Viau, Theophile de, 216, 217, 218,

313 Viaud, Julien, see Loti, Pierre Vico, 581 Vida, 172, 175

Vie de Saint Alexis, see Alexis Vie de Saint Martin, 105, 108 Viele-Griffin, Francis, 707-708, 699,

704, 706, 735 (note) Viennet, 183

INDEX

781

Vigny, Alfred de, 547-550 (Life and Poetry), 562 (Drama), 567 (Novel), 6, 7, 519, 520, 523, 524, 525, 533, 539, 544, 554, 555, 565, 638. 695, 698, 716

Vilain Mire, 84

Villehardouin, 73-74, 75, 121

Villemain, 678, 505, 521 (note), 634, 642

Villiers de I'lsle-Adam, 573

Villon, Frangois, 118-lSl, 6, 69, 89, 96, 110, 114, 137, 138, 153, 217, 711

Vincent de Beauvais, 98

Vinci, Leonardo da, 131

Vinet, 335

Vitry, Philippe de, 121

Vivonne, Catherine de, see Ram- bouillet

Vogue, Melchior de, 670, 656, 669

Voiture. Vincent. 8SS-226, 218, 222, 234, 268, 332, 3^

Volney, 461

Voltaire, S8S-S94 (Literature and Life), 4I6-42I ((I!riticism and Drama), 463-472 (Polemics and Philosophy), 3, 62, 183, 203, 251, 272, 273, 293, 316, 335, 355, 362, 365, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371, 373, 377, 378, 380, 382, 395, 398, 405, 406, 412, 414, 422, 427, 428, 429, 431, 432, 434 (note), 436, 437, 438, 440, 444, 445. 446, 451, 452, 453.

454, 456, 457, 458, 461, 498, 513, 523, 534, 553, 644, 646, 654, 675, 678, 715, 716 Vrai amiel, see Dit dou vrai ardel

Wace, 15, 20, 39, 41, 73

Wagner, Richard, 699, 726, 727

Walpole, Horace, 368, 369

Warens, Mme de, 483, 486, 487

Wauohier de Denain, 47, 48

Wassermann, 727 (note)

Watteau, 365, 427, 700

Wells, B. W., 666

Whitman, Walt, 731, 735 (and note)

Wilde, Oscar, 666

Willem (author of the Dutch

Reinaert), 66 William IX of Poitou, 33 Wolfram von EsChenbach, 49 Wordsworth, 2, 637, 643, 698 Wright, C. H. C, 281, 317 Wyatt, 144

Young, Edward, 371, 446, 447

Ysengrirmis, 64

Ysopet de Lyon, etc., 64

Zamacois, 693

Zola, Emile, 683-627, 566, 613, 619,

628, 632, 664, 665, 667, 668, 670,

681, 718