Copyrights COPYRIGHT DEPOSiT. !} — A HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE GREAT WAR BY WILLIAM A. NITZE AND E. PRESTON DARGAN PROFESSORS OP FRENCH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OP CHICAGO NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1922 Copyright, 1922, BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY First Printing, September ©CI.A6S6568 ED IN U. S. A. OCT 20 11 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 difficult 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 taken 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. Provengal 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 v 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 Mori In the field of criticism, Saintsbury's important work has again and again been laid under contribution. For Modern Times, the essays of Sainte-Beuve and Brunetiere, 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 number 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 mod- ern French thought. For additional services, willingly and care- fully rendered, we are indebted to Professors Albert Schinz of Smith College, Henri David of the University of Chicago, B. E. Young of Vanderbilt University 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 amicitia. Chicago, September, 1921. W. A. N. E. P. D. 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 Principaux chapitres et extraits de Montaigne. CONTENTS PAGE Introduction 1 PART I: THE MIDDLE AGES BOOK I. FEUDALISM AND CHIVALRY CHAPTER I. The Middle Ages and the Epic 13 II. The Lyric and the Romance 30 III. The Allegory and the Early Drama 55 IV. History, Didactic Literature and Storiology 73 BOOK II. THE BOURGEOIS INFLUENCE I. The Lyric Poets of the School op Machaut and Deschamps . 87 II. The University and the Humanism of the Fourteenth Century 98 III. The Cyclic Drama and the Farce of MaItre Pathelin. . 104 IV. Three Individuals: Antoine de La Sale, Villon, Commines. . 114 PART H: THE RENAISSANCE BOOK I. HUMANISM AND THE REFORMATION I. The Influence of Italy and the Rhetoriqueur Poets . . . 127 II. Marot and His Immediate Followers 136 III. Rabelais and Calvin: the Epicurean and the Stoic 145 IV. Platonists and Neo-Platonists 161 BOOK II. LITERARY THEORY AND THE RETURN OF THE BOURGEOIS IDEAL I. The Doctrine of Imitation and the Pleiade 170 II. The Chief Poets of the Pleiade 178 III. Amyot, Montaigne and Brantome 193 IV. The Age of Henry IV and the Common-sense of Malherbe 207 BOOK III. PRE-CLASSICISM \Si. Social Form and the Salon Writers 219 II. HONORE d'URFE AND THE ROMANESQUE 229 vii viii CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE III. The Drama Previous to Corneille 238 IV. Pierre Corneille 251 V. Descartes 263 BOOK IV. CLASSICISM I. Louis XIV and the Classical Spirit 273 II. The Writers of Memoirs and Maxims, and Woman Writers . 283 III. MOL1ERE AND La FONTAINE 291 IV. Pascal and Racine 306 V. BOILEAU AND BOSSUET 323 PART III: MODERN TIMES BOOK I. THE TRANSITION FROM CLASSICISM I. The Quarrel of Ancients and Moderns: Results 339 II. Writers of the Transition: La Bruyere, Saint-Simon, Fenelon 349 III. The Eighteenth Century: History and Society 361 BOOK II. THE NEW PHILOSOPHY ^ I. The Popularizers : Bayle and Fontenelle 373 v , II. Voltaire : Literature and Life 383 ^ III. Montesquieu 395 IV. Miscellaneous Writers 406 BOOK III. THE OLD AND THE NEW GENRES / I. Tragedy : Voltaire, Crebillon, Ducis 415 i/ II. Comedy and Drame 424 v III. Fiction : Lesage, Marivaux, Prevost 434 IV. Poetry 444 BOOK IV. THE WAR OF LIBERATION ^/Fl. The Encyclopedists and the Later Philosophes 451 V II. Voltaire at Ferney : Polemics and Philosophy 463 viii. Diderot 473 BOOK V. PRE-ROMANTICISM I. Rousseau. Saint-Pierre 483 II. Madame de Stael. Constant 496 V III. Chateaubriand , 507 CONTENTS ix CHAPTER PAGE BOOK VI. ROMANTICISM 4 I. The Romantic Movement 517 II. Immediate Predecessors: Nodier, Beranger, Lamartine. . . 527 III. The Poets : Victor Hugo 534 IV. The Poets : Musset, Vigny, Gautier 544 V. The Romantic Drama 553 VI. The Romantic Novel 564 VII. Critics and Historians 576 BOOK VII. REALISM I. The Transition: Balzac 585 II. Augier, Dumas Fils and Henry Becque 595 II. The Reaction in Poetry : Baudelaire and the Parnassians . 602 IV. Realistic Fiction: Flaubert and Maupassant 612 V. Fiction (Continued) : Zola, the Goncourts, Daudet 623 BOOK VIII. THE AGE OF SCIENCE AND DOUBT I. The Critics: Sainte-Beuve' 634 II. The Philosophers: Comte, Taine, Renan 645 III. Miscellaneous Writers 657 BOOK IX. THE END OF THE CENTURY I.* In Fiction : Naturalism, Psychology and Other Currents . . 663 II. In Drama : the Three Movements 679 III. In Poetry : Sentiment and Symbolism 695 IV. In^Criticism 711 Epilogue: Pre- War Literature 720 Bibliography 739 Index 767 ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Illustration from a Graal Lancelot (Manuscript) 12 Illustration from Froissart's Chroniques (Fifteenth Century Manuscript) 86 Raphael, "School of Athens" 126 Rigaud, "Louis XIV" 272 Watteau, "L'Embarquement pour Cythere" 364 Pils, "Rouget de l'lsle chantant la Marseillaise" 448 Girodet, "LaMise au Tombeau d'Atala" 510 Bastien-Lepage, "Les Foins" 624 XI INTRODUCTION THE SPIRIT OF FRENCH LETTERS "L'histoire de la litterature (Tun peuple, j'ai eu occasion de vous le dire souvent deja, est l'histoire de sa vie morale, et par- tieulierement de sa conscience nationale." Gaston Paris, La Poem 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 must 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,' 1 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. 1 Let us note, at the outset, that the French word moral 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 of their modern critics: " Ce qu'il nous faut, c'est le vrai dans Part 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, 2 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 literature 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 universe 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 surroundings. 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- 2 French distinguishes between the two types of truth, rational truth and truth to fact, by the two expressions le vrai and la viritL INTRODUCTION 3 vations of life but deductions or classifications we make 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 methode," 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 till 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 human 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 franchise se sont accordees a le proclamer," said « • ^.,.x Gaston Paris. The public, whose approval Mon- Sociability , . . , < . ' _ , -. A , taigne 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 role 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 application. They seem to ask not only: is this my problem? but also, is it your problem? because, in Montaigne's words, it is a fundamentally human 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 forrr^ fully as much as of content. To be sure, the sense of form has grown in France since the sixteenth century, Form ^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 5 rarely possess its roots," and sweeping as the generalization is, there is this truth in it: that to them the form is j)ften 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 FranclTest^n 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 parfaite et mesuree 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 mixture of two opposing tendencies, which manifest them- selves again and again in English writing; whereas, compara- tively speaking, FrmM(S -tusmmtt(m& eamt ttix&mg- tmt tmmi &ti8$"i)tau- feline? «• mm\ fttattt.££qiiMitmfw yew m fejfeif lanaietutiff mt a>-tt «t?'it«gm&ili team iretegtufd-uir flfttti*rt>«ttgt«&»tns{|tir«»tasit. cgfeMSif 6wttsk mor-wv fopfe-r aif it it I3SWSS& ja&sfeajfiaifisii }s«$smt«#«i»i<»oe «**«* t«oit f»tr t ■ i emtmi^mtfiim fessstr ps- * r^fciWtttWr MowW© e^ pes SdSatte «a l«ae«*t£% ( taafcff saaK . ««e ssafe aitf •'- •; ^-tuouiir Mat 3m tj#i - . ? ■ ; ~W^ K f fit T 1 /^/^ .. .. .A^ffii Illustration from a Oraal-Lancelot Manuscript 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 f eudalization 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 importance 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 teutonica 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 against their brother Lothaire. Louis' part of this covenant is the earliest document extant in the langue d'oil 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 ca ^ that tne Duchy of France, or the territory Aspects immediately surrounding 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 aggression 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: that 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 langue d'o'il 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, Wace's Brut, the Lais of Marie de France are in Norman; a masterpiece like the Aucassin et Nicolette is in Picard; 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 in the Canterbury Tales: And Frensch sche spak ml 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 the 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 interpretation. 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 under- 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 alms, 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 church 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 ") and 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 Europe. 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 fabliaux 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 the generic name of courtly or courtois. (3) The increasing current of bourgeois expression, appear- ing first in the fabliaux 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 church " 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 saint's lives of Saint Leger (tenth century) and Saint-Alexis (about 1050) The Epic are ear iy ? an( j t 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 with 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, is 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 Godefroi 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 unequal 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 varia- 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 affirming 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 I 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 Compostella in Spain, St. Peter's in Rome, or some shrine within the borders of France. In any case, French feudalism and the Christian church 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 " Rolana " century (now in the Bodleian library at Oxford) , the work itself must be nearly a century older. The poet Wace (in 1160) affirms 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- stella, and in the Carmen de proditione Guenonis, emphasizing THE SONG OF ROLAND 21 the treachery of Ganelon. In its French form, 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 horn 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 Tolifant a sa boche, Empeint lo bien, par grant vertut lo sonet. Halt sont li pui e la voiz ert molt longe, Granz xxx. liwes l'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'anme del conte portent en paredis. God sent to him 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 hundred years, lives wearily on. Historically the poem rests on the slightest of foundations — 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 Hraodlandus, Britannici limitis prae- jectus; 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 Tere major-. Paien ont tort e Chrestien ont dreit Wrong the pagans, right the Christians are — this idea, in one form or another, runs 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 Roland' 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 him 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 : " Por quei me portez ire ? " E cil respont : " Com proz vos lo fei'stes, Kar vasselages par sens nen est folie: Mielz valt mesure que ne fait estoltie. Franceis sont mort par vostre 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 folly 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 unit. 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 trumpet-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 ki dolce France tient; Blanche at la barbe e tot florit le chief, Gent at le cors e lo contenant fier: S'est quil demandet nel 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 sont 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 passe§. 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 cil 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 epics Q ueen w h e ther there can be a more impos- ing monarch than himself. Rashly she names Hugo of Constan- tinople. At once Charles and 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, nostre ne seit li 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. indictum) 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 Couronnement 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 barnage fu Loois entrez; 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, until 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 Changun de Guillelme — 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 anc ^ is rich in the 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 Bernier, 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 Bernier, " dull, expostulatory, help- less," is an excellent example of the hero marked by fate. The church and the pilgrimage routes again play a role in Girard de Roussillon. 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 of 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 Girarcl's wrath (his desmesum) 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 or 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 sung, 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. MartiaPs 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 and the P a stourelle. As a rule, these are indepen- 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 expressed distinction of caste. Their form is narrative, the love experience being told as a story. Thus the chanson a toile is virtually a ballad, a spinning or weaving song adapted to w T omen 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 Ten tient; De son ami Doon li ressovient Qu'en autres terres est alez tornoier, E or en ai dol. Fair Doette at the casement sat, Read in a book, but in her heart is sad; 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 mat 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 pastor eta. The name refers to the " shepherdess " whose graces the poem celebrates. But again the popular origin is remote, since the extant pastourelles all have an aristocratic tinge. The poet, generally a knight, while riding through the country 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 following, though most pastourelles have a more involved stanza form: L'autrier me chevalchoie Toute ma senturelle, Trovai en mei ma voie 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 glowing 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 rise Types of chivalry, noted above (Ch. I), and the develop- ment of a cour-tois state of society, attended by the growth of great school centers like Le Bee, Chartres and Paris, and en- couraged, 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 Provengal 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 Provencal form for trouvere, 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 Ventadorn and Bertran de Born, and in that of Marie, Rigaud de 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 Amove. In this way the subjective lyric was a poetry of " art " in our modern sense of the word. Its point of departure is the identi- fication of love and religion: Omnia vincit amor. Only in place of the purely 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- ground in aristocratic circles, for the Provencal lyric is not of the people. But the greatest triumph of the new genre was in artistic form, and the best known varieties of Provencal 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. tornado) , 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! Deus! qu'ai-je dit? ja ne m'en part je mie: Se li cors va servir Nostre Signor, 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 (cors) 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 child 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 sources, just as the people are will- ing to adopt courtly forms and modify them. Thus the aube (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 hollow 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 his 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 modern triolet and rondeau descend; and especially the ballete, 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 puys (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, Guillaume 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 of narrative. The courtois ladies who were enamored of the The Rise of art 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- tic 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 sensus 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 Heroides 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 roman 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 matter e, according to its derivation. There was the Types 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 Alex- 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 ^ioned. 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 Provencal 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 Thebes (after 1150), is the medieval interpretation of the legend of Oedipus, as its derivation from Statius 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 chansons 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 courtois 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 century it was the medieval concept of Troy that inspired Jean Lemaire de Beiges, from whose version Ronsard drew material for the Franciade. 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- toria 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, known 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 of love 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 Cambrie, de Cornouailles ou d'Armorique, concevoir ce theatre multiple et y derouler 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 uncle, 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 Beroul, 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. Beroul 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 43 "Iseut ma drue, Iseut m'amie, En vus 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 Beroul 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 Tristan (between 1294 and 1300). From all these sources, and from the so-called Folie Tristan — wherein Tristan appears disguised as a " fool " — Professor Bedier has reconstructed the tale in Modern French. With such models as a guide, the Romance enters upon a fruit- ful career. To " read " romances now became the fashion, and Crestien ^ n * s inevitably led to an improvement, in technique de Troyes 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 romans 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 I vain 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 more or less about the court of Arthur and, with the exception of 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 femmef So Crestien 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 role 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 " ; Arthur 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 rusee, the an- cestor of the Anges 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, Mes il l'apele amie et dame, Ne por ce ne pert ele mie, Que il ne Taint come s'amie 1 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 Provencal 1 Compare the words of Chaucer in the Franklin's Tale: Sith he hathe bothe his lady and his love, His lady, certes, and his wyf 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- chivalric 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 courtois 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 giorno piu non vi leggemmo avante. In the Ivain or Chevalier an 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 fountain'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 graal 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 la violet te. Wauchier, who like Manessier wrote for Joanna of Flanders, varies from Crestien by giving a Gawain-quest in which the Grail is described as riche, 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 human 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 certain Robert de Boron (probably from Bur- sions of the gundy) wrote the so-called Metrical Joseph, a Grail Legend muc h-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 Boron's Joseph, to- gether with a fragmentary Merlin — also by Robert — had been remodeled in prose; and thereto was joined a new Prose Perce- va l — 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- thurian 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 treue 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 the 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 undying 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 Portlesguez accords the prize of beauty to Idoine, a superior Enid, and lets the hero accomplish impossible tasks in the pur- suit of prowess, while RaouPs Vengeance de Raguidel 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 espees 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 Gawain 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. Th Chivalry having become a thing apart, the courtly Romans " love adventure/' treated with more and more d'aventure rea lism as time passed, was allowed to pursue its own path. Thus love is considered for its own 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 Eracle (about 1160), where historical and Eastern features are blended in a love intrigue, and then his better known Me 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 Joufroi (Geoffrey), the Camte de Poitiers, the Chdtelain 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 Provencals called this story a novas. Except for its metrical form, the Flamenca differs but little from a modern novel. But narrative fiction also had a " short-story " form in the twelfth century. This went under the name of lai. And the The Narra- 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 (Lanval) ; 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 53 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 Manteau 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 pnd 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). Th In matter it resembles the Floire et Blanche fieur, " Aucassin one of the earlier types of romans d'aventure. But et Nicolette " s i nce it i s 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 Beaucaire. 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. Aucassin 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 III 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 sensus, 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 Amove 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 The Raoul de Houdenc's Songe d'Enfer (see above, Ch. " Roman II) consistent allegory in the form of a dream ex- la e 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 (Papelardie) 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 58 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 (Honte) 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 l'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, allowing 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 59 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 Guillaume 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, Carrying coal to the public 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 arguments 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 (Trop Donner), 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 summarizes 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, 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 Meun 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 Codicille — 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 by Hein van Aken. An adaptation in sonnet form, of the called II Fiore, and an imitation in rimed couplets, "Rose" n j) e tt 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 Cour oV Amour by Mahieu Poriier, works of the end of the fourteenth 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 humaine by Guillaume de Digulleville, 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 (luxure). 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 document 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 against 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 mt . . the animal world. While parts of the Renard doubt- Fable and less go back to the twelfth century, the body of the the" Renard " W ork (arranged in "branches") was composed after 1200 — a time when courtly idealism was disintegrating and bourgeois 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 best-epic is born. To this Latin work the French Renard is indebted for much, if not most, of its material. THE ROMANCE OF THE FOX 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 (II), 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 found 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 Her sent. 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 C ouronnement 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 Bestourne, ® 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 stimulated the French love of ridicule — as the original Eenard had stated: tel chose dire Dont 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 lic wnicn came witn tne 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 jarce and the sottie, these have no connection 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 trope on the Resur- rection — the Quern quaeritis in sepulcro, 6 Christicolae? (Whom seek ye in the tomb, 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 Sponsiis was composed in Angoumois, near the Provengal border. The next stages in the growth of drama include 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 w T as pre- sumably written in England. The Miracle-play {miracle) , which The is the 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 puy 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. 1 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 (ieuillee) beneath which the May-festivals took place. 1 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 Helkkin (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 farce. 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 Artistic 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 s^ys, because "rime re- quires the addition of words not found in the Latin/' About the same time, as we have seen, many of the Arthurian romances appear in prose, and the Aucasmn et Nicolette employs prose in most of its narrative portions. But it is chiefly in the domain of history that prose-writing Was to flourish. The vernacular histories of the twelfth century were exclusively rimed chronicles. Like Wace's Brut, the Es- toire des Engleis by Geoffrey Gaimer 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 Benoit 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 Thomas 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. Geoffrey de Villehardouin (1160 to about 1212) was a knight of Champagne and planned his work primarily as an apologia of Ville- ^ ne 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 captured 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- quete 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 menue 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 strung 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 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 ou il a assamblee et fuison de grans signeurs, et se remoustre dessus tous les autres. Thus prowess is his theme — 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 jaire 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 Chroniques, 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 owm 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 w r ork 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 but confound the reason. If this be chivalry, then chivalry has come to a sad pass: a tinkling cymbal 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 of tne 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 79 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, doctrinaux 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 human life. The great prob- lem of scholastic philosophy — the relation of ideas (universalia) to facts (res) , 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 Provengal 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 x (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 °^ the cour ^ of Henry I (early twelfth century). History In six- and then eight-syllable verse Philip wrote a Comput, a Bestiaire and a Lapidaire. His style, says M. Lan- glois, " est d'une indigence, d'une nullite et d'une gaucherie sans pareilles." Yet Philip aims to instruct the clergy, whose ig- norance moves him to compassion. In the Comput he treats after 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 tfair- 1 Thomas Aquinas (d' Aquino) was an Italian, but he studied and taught in Paris. BRUNETTO LATINI 81 teenth century, Richard de Fournival, Cliancellor 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 century). 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 Lime 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 commune 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- °f a Father to his Son," are embodied in the chastie- tiements merit. This genre began with the Chastiement d'un plre a son fils, which is a twelfth-century verse translation of 82 HISTORY AND STORIOLOGY the Disciplina clericalis 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 d'aage d'home (about 1270), by Philippe de Novaire (Novara). Here the moralizing tone yields to the mellow re- flections 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 dames (about 1250) , by Robert de Blois, is filled with a didacticism of a purely worldly type. Written in verse, this work is a veritable manual on courtesy for the noble ladies of Robert's time. Many of the instructions given are of course commonplace; 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 courtoisie, 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 animus against certain classes grows more and more violent until in the so-called Roman de charite, by Bar- thelemy de Molliens (thirteenth century), the somberness 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 Bataille des sept arts (after 1235) by the cele- brated trouvere, Henri d'Andeli. In form this work The Ba- taiiie des belongs to the genre of verse-dispute or debat de- sept arts " r } vec | f rom i a ^ e Latin literature. A typical example is the Debat de Vhiver et de Fete, 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 century, 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 arciens 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 document 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. 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. The Fabliau B * dieT &S * " C ° nte * lire en Vers> " The shor test DitandConte has ei § hteen 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 Bodel set to verse in the thirteenth century, has also been recorded in Armenia and Albania. Thus, universal and perennial as stories, the fabliaux 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 un- 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 Moliere's comedy, Le Medecin malgre lui; or Le Man qui fist sa femme confesse, whence La Fontaine ex- FABLIAUX AND EXEMPLA 85 traoted his Chevalier confesseur, 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 devote, similar in spirit to the pious Miracles (in this case, legends) de la sainte vierge by Gautier de 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 m ons. 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 (originally the Buddha) converts Josaphat 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 Flamenca (Ch. II), the Provencals had used the word novas for narrative fiction, but without any distinction between its longer and its shorter forms. tutfctmti foimt mfoBteMunt |fejj^ ; ftiaflfe cmrrt nicttixai mw fm&ctaitailktntfi i fcmictw 9 ccCitwcquc tayawwvwtac Jeywffewitinimrctpctfaiaxr mttle'ituMtiax-qfici»u$ catty they are a revival of Th " c t ^ e 1 a bli au m the Italian garb of the novella. Nouvelles The influence here of the Decameron is obvious, nouvelles" although the themes are taken from Poggio's Facetiae. Again, unlike 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 ar y- -^ or one 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 born (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 bonnes meurs dedie, J'eusse maison et couche molle. Mais quoi! je fuioie Tescolle, Comme 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 creatures 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? une grant bourse de soie 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 Lais, 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 [Grand] Testament, which contains the best part of himself. In 1462 he was again locked up, this time in the Chatelet, and, upon 120 ANTOINE DE LA SALE, VILLON, COMMINES 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 Heine, 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 rondeaux. 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 sont 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 from 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 mil 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 nostre 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 1 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 in eternal verity. 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. 1 From the Poems of Master Francis Villon, London, 1878 — a masterful translation of the poet's works. 122 ANTOINE DE LA SALE, VILLON, COMMINES 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 mmes 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 du Charolais — later 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 XL 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 Memoir es. 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 1484- 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, "Ceux qui gaignent ont toujours raison." But 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 in 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 and 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 sont ouverts a l'insigne flambeau du soleil. And light and sunshine 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- sufficient 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 (mondairi) and not theological. To this attitude, based on antiquity, we give the generic name of " humanism." The true humanist, then, was many-sided. The unity 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 opoosing ideals. This was their " universality." Petrarch's position between St. Augustine and Vera;il 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 provide the education and 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 co mm anding 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 recreation did the men of the Renaissance pro- duce 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). This is the age of scholarly inquiry, of humanism Th R . . in general as a counter- current to the " medievalism " in France. of the church and the university (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 II 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 begin, 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 reactions did not occur. The Precellence du langage jrangais (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 were those °f 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 1 defeated and captured at Pa via 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 dAuxerre, 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 to Italian scholars and to the influx of the new culture. The chief figures, Rabelais, Calvin, Dolet, Marguerite dAngouleme, 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 £l*? as . 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 Heroides, 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 faiseur 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 rhetoriqueurs, 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 Pseud o-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: 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. Rhetoriqueur that he is, , he has both personality and distinction. He was Lemaire born (about 1473) in the Low Countries at Bavai, de Beiges $ie 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 uncle 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-dAin 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'honneur et de vertu, the Couronne margueritique, the Epistre de VAmant vert and the musical Plainte du desire. Titles as well as concept of these are thoroughly vhetoviqueuv. Yet with considerable variety and firmness of expression Lemaire unites occasional humor and a vivid sense of color. Brunetiere justly lauds the verses beginning: Un grave accent, musique larmoyable Est bien seant a ce jour pitoyable Pour parfournir 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, reminiscent in substance and style of Vergil and particularly Ovid (the Amoves 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 Gaule et singulavites 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 Frantiade. 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 mythical ancestors of the human race; thus Priam is related to Noah (le 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 ■ sofutenu with its precieux coloring. Thus the author speaks of the " detroits d'insatiable avarice," the " rochers de cupidite effrenees/' the "plage d'outrage sanguinolent " ; and he makes Athena say: " Sejourne 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 both literature and art (he was also a musician), and we understand why Du Bellay acclaimed him as having " illustre 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 charm. He characterized himself in the following lines : Sur le printemps de ma jeunesse folle, Je ressemblois Farondelle qui vole Puis Qa, puis la: l'aage me conduisoit Sans paour ne soing, ou 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 Provence. Here Clement was born in 1496 or 1497. When the Marot's D °y was ten > tne e ^ er Marot, anxious to have him Life succeed in the " rhetorical art," took him north to France proper. Que j'oubliay ma langue maternelle Et grossement apprins la paternelle Langue frangoyse, 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 Vdme 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 rhetoriquenr 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 dAlengon, 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 et 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 Geoffroy 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, the 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 an Roy soubs 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- cms de Sagon — whom Marot had offended personally — launched against the absentee a truculent Coup d'essai, in which amid much other abuse occur the lines: Maro 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- queurs 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 one 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 contre Sagon, in which the poet hides under the name 140 MAROT AND HIS IMMEDIATE FOLLOWERS of his servant Frippelippes. Finally, 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? Abandonne jamais ne m'a la Muse Et tant qu'ouy et nenny se dira Par l'univers le monde me lira. 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 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 terre 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 luy rendroit; and contrast it with the distinguished grace of the three-sylla- bled Epistle A une Damoysette malade: Ma mignonne, Je vous 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 C oqs-a-V 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 sceurs, 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 haultement 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 Lubin, is also well known. As for the sonnet, he did little more than introduce the genre into French and lay the foundation 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: Resveillez- 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 grounds 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 L a 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 " court 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 " universal 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. 144 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 Sophonisba 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 FRANgois 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 Frangois vitality — and we are apt to overlook his wisdom. Rabelais j) oes j^ no ^. gay - m y s 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 Phomme? 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 moulders 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 underlying rhythm, an indication of the truly masterful nature of the man. It is not known exactly when he was born. 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 born 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 Francisican convent of La Baumette, near Angers. In 1519 he qualified as jrere mineur at Fontenay-le-Comte in Poitou, and here it was that he underwent the humanistic influences that were to shape his career. In general, these were Greek studies, pursued 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 Geoffroy 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 humanists 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 „ G that he soon began the study of medicine at Paris et ' and of law at Bourges. In 1530, we know, he re- Pantagruel " ce ived his baccalaureate in medicine at Montpellier, and he then gave lectures to large audiences on the Aphorisms RABELAIS 147 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 7 s sojourn in Orleans and Paris [Chs. II-XXXIII], which doubtless reflects Rabelais' own ex- perience. Rabelais' sources were practically everything 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 background 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 hornet que oncques cei won to a life of P eace and franklv 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 2 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 despair 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 Vhonneste amitie or gallantry. Thus, Ademas explains to Celadon the genesis of love in Neo-Platonic terms: Toute beaute procede 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 comique — may well have taken hints from d'Urfe'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 modern 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 Francois 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 denned 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 Roman Romances name of 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, Lcs 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- l a 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 Cleopdtre and Faramond ou I'Histoire de France, each in twelve volumes. 3 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 in medias 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. 1 The last five volumes of Faramond are by a continuator, Vaumoriere. 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 Scuderys 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 Vlllustre 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 affirms 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 own samedis, where precieux 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, Porsenna, 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 common 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 Corneille (Ch. IV). As for the sentimental novel, Moliere derided it in his Precieuses ridicules, 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 corrdque de Francion, Types a t a ] e f 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 precieux style. But the weak 236 HONORE 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 Furetiere '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: Francoise d'Aubigne, 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 troup of comedians, thought by some critics to be Moliere's. Here we have not 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 Scudery s. It must be apparent from the foregoing survey that the French novel of the seventeenth century does not stand for that The observance of rule and order toward which French Romanesque, literature as a whole was moving. The reasons for in enera ^. g ^ Q dear. 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 the 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 modern sense, at least, intellectual^ 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, c'est moralement que j'ai mes elegances," says Cyrano in the play. This is not yet the grandeur d'ame 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 of La Princesse 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 delV 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 Mondory 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 grammarians. A tragedy was any plot, whether The Renais- drama or not, that ended in bloodshed and horror: sance Type " Injustices que Ton raconte es tragedies," said o rage y ]sjj co i as 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 Bai'f from Euripides and Sophocles, and with the same insistence on the tragic ending, for Bai'f defines as follows: Tragedie est une moralite composee des grandes calamitez, meur- tres et adversitez survenus aux nobles et excellents personnages com me . . . (Edipus qui se creva les yeux apres qu'il 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 denouement ; 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, Cleopdtre 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! l'orgueil 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 Saiil 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 vaillamment 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 Daire and an Alexandre. But the most prolific, and in general the most original, dramatist of the age was Robert Gamier (1535-1601). Of Gamier 's six classical tragedies, the Hippolyte (1573) is the most interesting because it continues the tradition of Seneca. Robert Far from anticipating Racine, Garnier 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 Garnier, 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 les montagnes Et les rochers secrets De nos regrets! MONTCHRETIEN 243 In Gamier, lyrical tragedy had reached its apogee; with An- toine 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 sen- 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, UEcossaise, 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 UEcossaise 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 voit 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 UEcossaise 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 sense 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," and a 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 1539 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 farce 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- ligion 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 Ruffin, the importunate creditor — develops 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 ^ e 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 TnS and ^ut a 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 oV 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, 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 unities of place and time. Thus Hardy's tendency was toward a form of the drame litre, 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 (1850) was the best model to follow. Borrowed from the Orlando Furioso — 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 Gesippe ou les deux amis and his Elmire ou I'heureuse bigamie. Both plays are novelistic in origin, Gesippe 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 belle 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 comic and tragic elements in the same play is to ignore the condition of men's fives, of whom the days and hours are often intermingled with laughter and tears, with contentment and affliction, according as they are moved by good or evil fortune. 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 Irregulars . the unities. In this struggle the court and the public were on one side; on the other were the theorists led by Chapelain 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 1 that Scudery tried to silence the Cid; whereas Rotrou's Occasions per dues (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- Regulars cial world on their side, and when the Theatre du Mairais 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 1635 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 f or « regularity " was Castelvetro's version of Aris- totle's Poetics (1570) , a copy of which was in Chapelain's library. 1 L' Amour tirannigue, praised highly by Balzac. Scudery was constantly passing from one dramatic camp to the other. THE DRAMATIC UNITIES 249 Castelvetro 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 fundamental 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 sun," 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 unities gave. But the drama suffered thereby in picturesqueness ; and despite Chapelain many authors refused to sacrifice le beau sujet to the rules. How Corneille found a solution of this difficulty by mak- ing the 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 found 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 jait accompli Tienne jusqu'a la fin le theatre rempli. CHAPTER IV PIERRE CORNEILLE Pierre Corneille, surnamed the Great, " non-seulement," said Voltaire, " pour le distinguer de son frere mais du reste des hommes," 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 offices 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 affirms 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 Marads, 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. From now on, Corneille was a constant visitor to the capital and 251 252 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 Corneille 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 cet 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 Lamperiere, 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, mais les peuples gemissent; Leurs membres decharnes 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 254 PIERRE CORNEILLE the subject of Berenice, which Fontenelle — Corneille's biog- rapher — avers was given them independently by Henrietta of England, the sister-in-law of Louis XIV. However that may be, Corneille's Tite et Berenice, performed exactly eight days after Racine's great tragedy, was a distinct failure. Corneille 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 foundations of the society which Corneille 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 retirement. 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 documents of that august body. Corneille's career as a dramatist thus falls into three distinct periods. The first, the period of preparation, begins with M elite. 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 Corneille'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, Ulllusion 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 Corneille's play is in- debted 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. Formally the Cid may be a tragi-comedy with a romanesque subject and a happy ending, yet intrinsically it is the first French tragedy. 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, Corneille'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), Corneille chose subjects better suited to illustrate his theme. Both plays deal with Roman history, both are termed " tragedies " and observe the unities. 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 main 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 l'univers, Je le suis, je veux l'etre. In Polyeucte (1642 or 1643) 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. (Edipe, brought out in 1659 at the request of Fouquet, Louis XIVs 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 gave the play great popularity during the second part of the 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 Tame des rois, leurs vivantes images, De qui Tindependente et sainte 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 Corneille, but evoking the opprobrium 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 haughtily 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. Corneille, therefore, belongs definitely to the Pre-Classical Period: the age of the romanesque. His dramas, which Point of bristle with the word vertu, are like a long- view and drawn-out page of Balzac's Discours sur le summary ^^ II estime [says Balzac] plus un jour employe a la Vertu, qu'une longue vie delicieuse; un moment de gloire qu'un siecle de Volupte . . . Rome etait la boutique, ou les dons du ciel etaient mis en ceuvre. . . . Elle a su meler, comme il faut, Fart avec Paventure; la conduite avec la fureur; la qualite divine de Fintel- ligence dans les actions brutales de la partie irascible. Three propositions that fit Corneille 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 sought the exceptional. His was an age of action, of strength, of rapid and simple decisions; when men were struggling to realize an ideal, and intelligence and will-power were in the ascendency. Of such a view of humanity the dramas of Corneille are the quintessence: in their constant appeal to the reason, ir their LITERARY QUALITIES 259 over-emphasis on the will, in their complex yet swift-moving plots, and in the crashing rhetoric of their style ; nay even in the vanities, the preciosity and the pettifogging 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 content 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 " socialized reason " which was the peculiarly French contribution to the Renaissance. Imaginative as he was, 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 burns and blazes." Of all this the four great dramas, the Cid, Horace, Cinna and Polyeucte, are a continuous illustration. Each has a great subject, timely and yet universal — honor, patriotism, absolutism and martyrdom — and each problem Corneille solves by a victory of the deliberative will, before which all other considerations, no matter how human they may 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 Characters 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 les 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 unfavorable to the portrayal of women types; and, but for such notable exceptions as Camille (Horace) and Emilie (Cinna) , Corneille's heroines are not womanly in the usual sense of the 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 otructur© ... 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 invraisemblahle. 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 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 sound 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 often 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 and Rotrou CO mrade. 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 l'avoir, and Qui vante ses ai'eux ne vante rien de soi — another proof that rhetoric was what people liked. After the Cid, 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 M elite, 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 Laure persecutee, where we find the vigorous line: Je veux ce 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. 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 as 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. In temperament Descartes 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 DESCARTES ence of life. Here he wrote his first treatise, a Compendium musicae, which applies to music the principles of 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 265 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 Fame — 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: (1) the truth with regard to our existence; and (2) the truth with regard to our conduct. Learn to see things rationally, says Descartes, and you will realize that two plus two makes four not only in theory but in fact; act on 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 Corneille's conception of character. Not that the .rrlSSlOTlS 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 Petendu 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 ce que, joignant a nous de vrais biens, elle 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, with 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- a ^ ar 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. That 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 already been used by Saint Anselm of Canterbury. Wherein Descartes' argument differs from Anselm's is the fact that actuality 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 difficult 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 tourbillons 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? e'est autre chose. Voici de la fagon que Descartes l'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 CL Iy) They nQw combatted the dogmatism f Descartes with the skepticism of Montaigne; while not denying the " reason/' they questioned its unerring validity. Specifically 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. 1 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 M second part 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 1 Other libertins were Cyrano de Bergerac, La Mothe le Vayer, Saint-Evre- mond, and the notorious Ninon de Lenclos of whom Mme de SeVigne said: 'Qu'elle est dangereuse, cette Ninon!" MALEBRANCHE 271 Congregation de l'Oratoire, and, being won over to the phil- osophy of Descartes, he enlarged its scope in the Recherche de la verite 2 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 Him 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 3 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. 3 On reason as bons sens — 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-sufficient 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 Tegoisme 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: " l'Etat devint un tout regulier, dont 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 Moderns in 1686 a new period of French history begins. Personally, Louis blended admirably the qualities of mind and body required for such a difficult role. He was twenty-two when Personal Mazarin died, and besides the charm and grace Traits of of youth he had a majesty of bearing which 0U1S reflected a self-possessed but generous attitude of mind. " Le metier de Roi," he tells us in his Memoirs, " est grand, noble, delicieux." If fortune 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 " affairs " 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 ^nd m indful 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 Auguste, le protecteur des lettres, comme Con- stantin et Theodose, les protecteurs de l'Eglise, comme Justinien, 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 Notre, 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 File 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 Fage ou Ton est aimable Rien n'est si beau que d'aimer. 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, Moliere and La Fontaine. Only La Rochefoucauld, Madame de La Fayette and Saint-Simon 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, 1 Moliere as chief entertainer and comedien du rot To ignore such a king was practically to forego worldly success. " Saehez," says one of Moliere's characters, " que les courtisans ont d'aussi bons yeux que d'autres; qu'on peut 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 to draw from> B ^ tne seventeentn century Paris Urban Aspect had become what it has remained since : the metrop- of Culture Q j ig with a c h arac t er and temper of its own; "the torch-bearer of France," as Victor Hugo has called it, but not 1 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 qui marque le bon 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 unity 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, then art, then social form, and finally nature. With all of these The Classical except the last we have dealt in preceding chapters. Traits a s we hayg seeri) 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 critical 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 precieux, the bizarre, the grotesque and the invraisemblable — like the 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 ou le sont 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 affirms, we reason abstractly, and by the other we apprehend immediately and concretely. Other terms are: la raison (the pure reason) and le bons sens (the practical reason). 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. 2 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 2 Measure" as characteristic of the honnite homme — a reflection of the Italian sprezzatura — is seen in La Rochefoucauld's maxim that "l'honn^te homme est celui 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. 3 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 foundation 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 j 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- 3 "Celui qui le sent et qui l'aime a le gout parfait: celui qui le sent et qui l'aime en deca ou au dela a le gout defectueux." — Des duvrages de V esprit. * Compare Pascal, Pensees, 378: "C'est sortir de l'humanite que de sortir 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. 5 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- j ment. The amiable and sensible Bouhours defines le bel esprit i as le bon sens qui brille. 6 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 j 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 8 Racine's vocabulary is much less 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 commun ne trouvent pas de difference entre les ' homines." 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-Beuve 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 medaille, 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 born at Paris in 1613. He had an adventurous and noisy youth, taking a very active part in the Fronde. "II y eut," said 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 triumph 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 Maximes 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 human experience in a phrase. In itself, the maxim was a product 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, 1 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 Roche- foucauld has an instinct, improved by practice, for the mot propre. " Quand les vices nous quittent," he says, " nous nous flattons de la creance 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- 1 See especially Guazzo, La civil Conversazione, 1574. RETZ 285 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 remorseless critic 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 hence wearisome in the long run. La Rochefoucauld is not a great 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'ame 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 m g S h e 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 Moderns (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 (Euvres 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 was 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 unhappy 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 2 published under the name of Segrais, the most interesting of which is Zayde, histoire espagnole, in which Mme de La Fayette attempts to reduce to reasonable proportions the complicated intrigue of the heroic romances (see Bk. Ill, Ch. II). 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, 3 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 romun d'aventure] and although * She began with a short -story, Mile de Montpensier, 1662. 1 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 aristocratic 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 luminous 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 f or soc j a i 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 Francois 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 Franchise, and a son Charles. She married her daughter (1668) to the Comte de Grignan, a lieutenant-general of Provence, and supported her son in the army. Meanwhile, she consoled herself for her solitude by leading an active social life. In 1677 she bought the Hotel Carna valet, 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 Sevigne 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 Bussy-Rabutin, Mme de La Fayette, and a few friends — in short, a rather intimate circle. But in a day when the means of communication were slow and journalism was in its infancy, 4 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, aintenon £ 00) j s ^ p arac j ox between her common-sense mind and the startling romance of her career. " C'est une fortune d'aventuriere, avec Fesprit le moins aventurier du monde," says M. Lanson. * La Gazette de France published four pages weekly, from 1631 on, and Le Met' cure Qalant began as a quarterly in 1672. 290 THE WRITERS OF MEMOIRS AND MAXIMS Granddaughter of the great Protestant poet, Frangoise d'Aubigne (1635-1719) 5 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 church. 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 Athalie, 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. e In 1675 Louis XIV gave her the title of Marquise de Maintenon. CHAPTER III MOLIERE AND LA FONTAINE By giving rise to the writing of Memoirs and Letters the Fronde had distilled the pungency of realism. In 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 Life well-to-do in her own right, died when her eldest was ten. 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 to his schoolmate, Chapelle, who was already somewhat of a wit and society dandy. When young Chapelle and Cyrano de Bergerac were placed under the tutelage of the philosopher Gassendi, Moliere 291 292 MOLIERE AND LA FONTAINE probably joined them. Certain it is that Moliere tried his hand at a translation of Lucretius' Be natura rerum, the influence of which is reflected in Le Misanthrope (Act II, Sc. V). 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 renounced 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 professional 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 Moliere 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 Moliere'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 — UEtourdi (" 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 Bepit 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'un 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 Arnolphe 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 UEcole des jemmes 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 VEcole des jemmes and the clever Impromptu 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 Tartuffe, Don Juan, he Misanthrope and UAvare. 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 undervalued 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 unheard-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 mauvais 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 L' 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 attempted a compromise. Tartuffe is tried on the stage in the guise of Ulmposteur (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 Tartuffe (1669), but 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. L' 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 buried 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 Art 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 TartufiVs 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 gentilhonime 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 nature. 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 stately grandeur that came to him with birth. The second great trait of 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 view has balance, measure, universality of application. Unlike Bernard Shaw, he has confidence in the wisdom of the world at large. To Shaw, illusion is part of the universe's 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 common sense. Finally, there is Moliere the artist. " Encore une 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- organic, slapdash. It was as a matter of fact the style of every- MOLIERE'S STYLE 299 day Parisian speech, conversational, yet fitting his personages like a garb. Et fort denotement 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 of 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 Moliere 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 us! 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- La Fontaine 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 epicurean 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 nymphs 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 Moliere, 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, Fa-mow, les livres, la musique, La ville 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, Ou le hasard fournit 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 requetes; 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 childlike, 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 His Fables 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 number of twelve, followed at intervals until 1680. As the poet says in his dedication to the Dauphin: Je chante les heros dont Esope est le pere. But to Nevelet's Mythologica 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 THE FABLES 303 order to make a special plea ; La Fontaine draws a more general lesson and, in this particular case, contents himself with a few 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 humor of the situation, a vivid merging of the human and the animalistic. But it remained for La Fontaine to extract from the genre its full poetic value. His first step is to establish a balance 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 mon ouvrage, et meme les poissons, he remarks, with a twinkle in his eye. Again, in Le Chene 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 naturel; 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 l'empire 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 feature 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 Gaster; 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 Wore 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. Rut 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; 1 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 Discours d 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. Thei 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 St. Augustine, presented under the following 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 reaffirmed. 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 his 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 and 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 generate et raisonnee (1660) ; Pierre Nicole, to whom more than to anyone else is due the Port-Royal Logique ou Vart 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 Guemene, 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 born in Clermont-Ferrand (1623) as the youngest 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 had 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 Roannez, 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 V 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 Provinciates, 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 w T as 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 Provinciates show how " Les Lettres knowingly he made this assertion. They are eight - Provinciales " een j n numD er. The first three and the last three treat of Arnauld y 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 to speak, French controversial style. The subject of the Letters may have lost its interest today. But their reasoning is like 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 replied. " Then," returned I, " all have enough grace, and all do not have enough — the grace is sufficient in name, and insufficient in reality. 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 most 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 Provinciates (named thus because ostensibly addressed to a reader in the provinces) that gave 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 geometrie 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 311 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-ce que l'homme dans la nature? Un neant a Fegard de Tinfini, un tout a l'egard du neant, un milieu entre rien et tout. Que fera-t-il done, sinon d'apercevoir quelque apparence du milieu des choses, dans un desespoir eternel de connaitre ni leur principe ni leur fin? Furthermore, man is vain, hopelessly vain: Le nez de Cleopatre: s'il eut ete plus court, toute la face de la terre aurait ete changee. 1 Notre propre interet est encore un merveilleux 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 : L'homme n'est qu'un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais e'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 cceur. C'est le cceur 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 1 This is more obviously a reflection on the role 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 surrender — 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 Thomme: 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 united 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 „ . been difficult for Anglo-Saxons to understand. Bred R3.CIH6 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 . . . a 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 today 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 Life 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 and Tristan l'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 honnete 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 Thebaide, 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 Thebaide 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 Corneille, 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 Calprenede's Cleopdtre, and its languor- ANDROMAQUE 315 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 "Andromaque" the utmost s i mp ii c it y . 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 Hermione, unable to live without him, hurls at his slayer the reproach: Ah! fallait-il en croire 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 drama is a stroke of genius — swift, powerful and beautifully expressed. " Pas un vers," says Lemaitre, " qui n'exprime, en mots rapides et forts comme des coups d'epee, les illusions, les souffrances, Pegoisme, la folie et la mechancete de ramour." 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 turneH 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 as said (see the prefaces to the play), Racine here offers us a historical play, bereft of unnecessary inci- dents, conforming absolutely to the unities, and n anmcus concen ^ ra t e d 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 cette vertu, si nouvelle a la cour, Dont la perseverance irrite mon amour. During three acts he hesitates. In the fourth, 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 by Junia, who dies by her own hand, 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 Henrietta of England, Duchess of Orleans, suggested the subject of Berenice independently to Corneille and to Racine (see above, Bk. Ill, Ch. IV) . She may even, as Voltaire affirms, 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 invitus invitam — into a five-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 .little 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: shie 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. Phedre I (1677), his masterpiece, led to his retirement as a writer for the \ stage at the age of thirty-nine. Could anything be more Hramatic? 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 destin/ed 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 sacre soleil dont je suis descendue! J'ai pour aieul le pere et le maitre des dieux; Le ciel, tout Tunivers est plein de mes aieux. This harmonizing of civilizations, Greek, Christian and French, is the pinnacle of Classicism, j 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 Sevfenth 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 historiog- rapher 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 Esther (1688-1689). Intended for the schoolgirls " Atnalie " 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 no one 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 add a non-historical character in order to strengthen the plot. Peu $ incidents 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 Corneille on the triumphs of the reason and the wHIT 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 Britarmicus 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, hounded 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 V inutile longueur. To suggest the silence of the night by the sea-shore, there is the line: Mais tout dort, et Tarmee, 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 Racine 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 course been entirely outdistanced. Thus on Racine's retirement the theater was left without a great leader. Minor dramatists there were: Chancel, Longpierre, La Fosse. Campistron, in particular, singled out Racine's weaker qualities for imitation. The Comedie frangaise had been founded in 1680, but its repertory consisted mainly of the plays of Corneille, Rotrou and Racine. Thus the curtain falls on the theater of the century without producing another great name. CHAPTER V BOILEAU AND BOSSUET Boileau 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.' 7 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 his 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 C id — and lived Boileau's there, until his death in 1711, the prudent career of Llfe 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 323 324 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. The latter part of his life BOILEAU'S WORKS 325 was spent more and more in retirement, clouded by two serious quarrels: 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 et 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 Dickens 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 Hews 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 mon 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 precieuses; 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 qualities of literary composition. The vocation must be founded in The "Art nature, since the poet is born rather than made, poetique " an( } na ture also disposes him to the kind of poetry that he should undertake. This conventional tribute to Pegasus having been paid, reason steps iiTand 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 une 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 modern, 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 etude 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 understanding 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 Rolet 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 difficulties with rime of which he com- plains in addressing Moliere. But he overcame this handicap, and his middle period proves that Jie 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 literature, 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 difficult 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 natural 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 VEcriture 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- hortation on the unity of the church, and who by force of argu- ment won for the Gallican Church the liberty to manage its own affairs and to pronounce itself on the question of infallibility. His last years were crowded by disputes with the Protestants — the Histoire 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 life 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 born, 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 must not be 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 only 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 mort, delivered at the Louvre in 1662, the exordium states that man est infiniment meprisable en tant qu'il passe, et infiniment esti- mable en tant qu'il aboutit a l'eternite, 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: nuit desastreuse! 6 nuit effroyable, ou retentit tout a, coup com me un eclat de tonnerre cette etonnante 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 modern 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 reenforces 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). Suffice 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. Style jj e no t on iy c jtes 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 l'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 a la nature, ou plutot a Famour-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 yi ne t : " H precha, il confessa, il consola." Although a Jesuit, Bourdaloue 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 reign. Massillon (1663-1742), another churchman, comments on the " enervating atmosphere " as one enters Versailles. A charitable Christian, Massillon strove against it valiantly and then succumbed. 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, unpaid 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 undermining 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 Moderns, 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 rentendement 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 in 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- Importance erng are ^ begt wr jt ers? j Sj m 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 For what doeg the pl g iade> esp ecially 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 extended 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 I 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 Moderns and of the libertins, in eighteenth-century philosophy. But in seventeenth- century literature, ancient authority was H not so easily overcome. A return to scholasticism, the establish- ment of the Academy, the pedantry of the Univer- sity, and 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 I the great triumvirate, Boileau, Racine, Moliere, succeeded for a \ generation in subduing the precieux, 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, 1 they also succeeded as moderns 1 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 merveilleux in Saint-Sorlin tne e P^ c - 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 modern 1 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 Bruyere, Menage, Rapin (the model for the President in the ParalUles) — and Mme Dacier. More cautious and moderate Ancients were Fenelon and Bouhours. The Moderns included: Saint-Sorlin, P. Perrault, Ch. Perrault, Fontenelle, Th. Corneille, Pradon, Bussy-Rabutin — and Lamotte and the Abbe de Pons. Moderate Moderns were Segrais and Saint-Evre- mond, " le plus classique 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, to t he 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 Plf^TTP 3.11(1 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 Siecle de Louis le Grand. This poem deftly flatters the King, his " century," and certain Ch. Perrault's °f ^ 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- I ts 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, „ „ , whose Digression sur les anciens et les modernes Fontenelle's . _, * . . _, lM . ,-,.,. "Digres- follows and develops Perrault m several directions. sion" p or 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. Fontenelle's interest in science is already dawning. He continues to the effect that much of the advantage attributed to the ancients lies 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 number 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, Fontenelle's appreciations of poetry as a sort of versified gallantry are significant. So is his Hig 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 modernes (1688-97). These sprightly The 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 and 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 j 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: Summary La poesie moderne est superieure a la poesie antique parce qu' inspiree d'une religion plus pure et plus vraie. Art ou poesie, les productions modernes l'emportent sur les modeles antiques parce que plus achevees de forme et plus conformes aux exigences d'un gout delicat. Science ou philosophic, les modernes savent mieux et plus que les anciens. Arme d'une methode nouvelle et forme par la discipline cartesienne, le genie moderne laisse bien loin derriere lui la science rudimentaire des savants anciens. . . . Industrie ou arts appliques, il n'est aucune des inventions, qui facilitent et embellissent 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 p .,, boundaries he widens by cross-references to archi- Doctrine of tecture, statuary and painting. 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 triumphed, as a matter of general opinion and results. Neither the surly indirect retorts of Boileau and his Reflexions sur Longin, nor his intelligent concessions in the 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- I 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 Relativity relativity and the tendency toward expansionism. Relativity, or Relativism, may be defined as a philosophic atti- jftude which views creeds and standards as not absolutely true Abut 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 and 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 Vs 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 liberates the 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 XVI (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 La Bruyere ^^ ^ e a g e had reached its "point of perfection," this writer rounds off the Classical doctrine and completes the courtly picture. 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 Moeurs de ce siecle.* His declared intention is psychological, general- izing, instructive. He portrays society's divisions and 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- y e 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 figures realistic and precise, but he remains Classical in his addiction to epigram and balance. On the whole it is an elaborate laborious 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 tions. The maxims suggest at once La Rochefou- Portraits 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 1 His model was the Greek work of Theophrastus, also called Characters, which La Bruyere himself translated. LA BRUYERE 351 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 precieux 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 until 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, measure 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- Social s ^ ca l §°ds. 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 fanners- 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 Bruyere 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 essimis b ounc [ £ ^h e 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 -^ e rare ly 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 xill, Saint-Simon 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 born 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 was ^ 00 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 staunch 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 354 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 channels 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 The 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 accumulated 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 Office. 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 The 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 355 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 Rochefoucauld, he finds fault with the life which found no great place for him. His pessimistic picture is thus the reverse and the complement of Voltaire's Steele 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 Chief Values with keen b serva ti n. 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 innumerable 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 accumulation 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 ' x of 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 shut, 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 Conclusion of thg 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 his 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 Telemaque. 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 writings, 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-Sulpice, 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, u 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 l^ter we nee d 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 Morts — 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 The 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 VEducation des Filles (1687) has been called the point of departure for modern French pedagogy. Fenelon points out how feminine education (in the s ucator w ^ es t sense ) h as 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 359 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 I'Academie (1714). Here as in the correspond- ence with Lamotte (a radical Modern), the Quarrel As Critic 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 an d 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 ancien regime is essential to an understanding of its literature. Louis XIV had ended in unpopularity and gloom, e egency aQ( ^ a p er j 0( j f 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 Regence. 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 councils had yielded to a ministry along the old lines ; the Abbe Dubois, as premier, seemed another Mazarin in 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 Reign of bitter persecution of the Protestants in the Cevennes Louis XV and by the marriage of the young 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 - - t 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 1726. His policy was cautious and dull. He First Ha enforced the bull Unigenitus, 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 (1741-48) 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 interests 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, numbered 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- 1 1 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- ana the nant 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 farmed out to the traitants (farmers-general) , who paid a lump 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 did 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 functions. 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 doceur 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 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 literature," says The Salons Taine ^ u wag gpoken before y. wag wr i t ten." The socialization of French thought and art was never more evident. Even in non-literary circles, there are traditions of witty culti- vated conversation, under 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 de Geoff rin (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 ^ers s ^ e was a ^ one ^ me 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 de Geoffrin, who stands witness to the growing force of the bourgeoisie. Without birth Mme de 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 figures 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 Mme de Geoff rin's. 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 Mile de Dear w ^ n the old lady's caprices and withdrew to Lespinasse set up housekeeping for herself. This she did in a modest way, but the unforgivable 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 de Geoff rin'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- Salon nelle and Voltaire through the minor poets, are " pro- Influence on tected" or inspired by ladies of fashion. The re- Literature S ults were 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 philosophique 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, lumi- neuse, instructive, mais seche et impersonnelle, telle est notre litterature du XVIIIe siecle, 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 Englishman. 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 phil- osophy and Rousseauistic Romanticism, were in considerable part based on an English background. Of the four great names of the century — Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Diderot — the first three 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 Shaftesbury. 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 Letourneur. " Bibliotheques anglaises " or " Bibliotheques brittaniques " 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 " Phumour " 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 oncusion & 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 chapter 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 pleasure. 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 historique et critique (1697), which has been para- doxically styled the " Bible of the eighteenth cen- " Diction- tury." This work was ostensibly compiled to correct naire" the mistakes of a dictionary already issued by a certain Moreri. As a matter of fact, it is an 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, l'histoire et la geographie ancienne, l'histoire des religions ... la theologie proprement dite, la philosophie, l'histoire 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 strong on 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 verites 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 °^ ^he °^ 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 lumiere 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- 60 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 absurdum 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 History factg ^ 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 inaugurate 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 — " diffuse, 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 Repwblique des lettres (1684-87), 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 yhilosophe, because he is moderate and systemless. oncusion -g-^ g ^.^ j e g aC y 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 him too mild. But the philosophes, often without giving Bayle the credit, use the Dictionary as their " arsenal,' 7 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 fewer 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 his 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 *° wm f ame - It was a ^ er 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 pluralite 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 esprit; the latter is mainly scien- e cien is ^.^ 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 rilled 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 tire Academy, which appeared with annual 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 science 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 de GeorTrin. He was a " delicious " 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 triumphs of his age. At ninety-five he was almost venerated — a monument to be visited, an oracle to be consulted. He washable 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, under the name of arac er Cydias, has been mentioned: Prose, vers, que voulez-vous? il reussit egalement en Tun et en l'autre. ... II a un 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 Tavis de quelqu'un. . . . C'est un compose du pedant et du precieux, en qui neanmoins on n'apercoit rien de grand que Fopinion qu'il a de lui-meme. 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 poetique, also his or s v j ewg on ^ e ec i ogue an( j on th e Quarrel. 1 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 1 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 s P^ r ^ on 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 Pluralite 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 uninterruptedly 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 efTroyable- 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 soli- 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 His aue d e f ense f 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 of Voltaire (1694-1778) is an epitome of the eighteenth century. Versatility, longevity, great activity — these are the salient characteristics of his career. His incessant Life 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 VoltaireT'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 the attention of the Cafe Procope and the liberal wits. But soon the Regent quietly imprisoned him, in May, 1717. It is with this Hate that Voltaire's public career really commences. GEdipe 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 CEdipe, but the Henriade was soon to appear and attain a vogue astonishing for an epic. So far, Voltaire stood almost entirely for belles lettr.es, 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. Zaire, 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 Gout, a satire in the vein of Pope's Dunciad, raised a storm among the critics of the capital. This opposition may have helped to banish him, but the effi- 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 " Peternel malade," but he was also an eternal 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 Philosophie 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 Pans 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 court, he and the Marquise had to flee overnight. They went into hiding, first at Sceaux, and were later received by the good-natured Stanislaus, King of Lorraine 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 ungracious 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 Prussia £ or . k e wag 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 mceurs 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 wi zer an S p en ^ w fth 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, established 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 Verse 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 didactic poems are more important for philosophy than for art. This is seen in Le Pour et le Contre (Epitre a Uranie), the Discours en vers sur Vhomme, the Poeme 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 Tage 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 Quand, 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 modern eyes, the best known and best liked portion of Voltaire's work. Ten or twelve of these would constitute the most artistic 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 (Ulngenu) 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 il 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 diversify 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 conte 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 18 ory been 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 human 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 " l'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 Steele 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 swr les mceurs et l'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, sufficient 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 Pyramids "; 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 mceurs, of industrial and cultural manifesta- tions, it often gives a panorama rather than a profound 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 corrected, 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 took the name of 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 l'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 lots (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 His 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 His Mind new m t eres t S) 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. History, 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- bury 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 any other 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 jrondeur 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 Chardin's Voyages en Perse. Montesquieu's plan is that two Persians, Rica and Usbek, visiting Paris, shall write home their apparently naive 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 w T e have the story of the women whom the Persian travelers left behind them. The harem at- mosphere thus introduced is heavy and unwholesome. 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 lots 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 expenditure of energy." The 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 kind 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 the sincerity with which the author 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 " Grandeur et its ful1 and exact] y appropriate title. Like all of decadence des Montesquieu's works, it was issued anonymously, Remains " but h ere? 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 donner le spectacle des choses humaines. Qu'on voie dans l'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-il, 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-uns 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 contre 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 consummate 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 lots, often considered the greatest work of the century, is a book of many facets. Purporting to reveal " L'Esprit des ^ e relations of laws to natural and social institu- lois" 0748^/tions, 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 lois 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 country, 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 stands 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- cipes 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 principes — 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 unnatural usages are accounted for, but ultimately reproved. A faith in progress and a belief in some ordering of the universe are occasionally expressed. Thirdly, jurisprudence 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 Uomains. 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 casual 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 unfortu- nate. As a lad he had poor health and received no regular Th t d education. He entered the army, and after a brief Career of brilliant campaign in Italy he was relegated to the dul- Vauvenargues negs f p rov incial 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 eonnaissance de Vesyrit hu- ms Writings main ( 1746 ) j s not t h e wor k f a 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 presents 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, (TAguesseau 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 guesseau ^ e 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, t 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 fausses 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 dAguesseau, 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 L'Histoire de VEstablissement 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 Moderns 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 " immediate 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 Reflexions 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 lifted 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 monarchy of Louis XIV. Later he became one of the founders of the Club de l'Entresol (1724), The Club de which nas Deen mentioned in connection with Mon- l'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 Henault, in the apartment (entresol) of the Abbe Alary, and among its most important adherents were dArgenson, 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 prudent 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 Pro jet de Paix univer- Saint-Pierre selle (1713). There was also a much-needed Projet de rendre les dues 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. III). The "polysynodie" was simply the government by councils, 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 n eace 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'Argensoneral 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 Memoir es 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 uniformity 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 sentiment 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 born 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 volumes 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) memoirs 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 „ . name is that of Bachaumont, whose Memoires secrets Bachaumont, . Marais and de la Repubhque des lettres cover the period 1762-71 Marmontel They were rewritten from the " register " or recorded conversation (which circulated as Nouvelles d 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 underlay 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 the making. DUCLOS AND MARMONTEL 413 He uses the chronicle form, but for our purpose that class is best represented bjihe 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 n 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. u droit et adroit."' Marmontel, as we shall see later iBk. 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 Vinstruc- tion de ses enfa.us 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 nouveUistes 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 contre of the Abbe Prevost, the Journal Etranger and the Gazette litteraire de V 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 Trevoux. 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 literarv reviews was 414 MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS L'Annee litter aire, 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 and 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 pendulum 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 Voltarian 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 rage y 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 C ommentaire sur Corneille, 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 ch*ef literary authority of the century. His criticism remains history 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 steps 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 countries 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 v 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 Mort 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-besprinkled corpse, many- voiced conspiracies and crowds. The one unquestionable masterpiece, the happiest combina- tion of old and new tendencies, is Zaire. It is the only play by M .. „ 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 universal 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 unfortunate chil- dren of the Incas. The author exhibits his usual bril- " Alzire' ii anC y i n the treatment of this attractive novelty, but the action is more clever than probable. Also the Peruvians talk too much like the philosopher. 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 l'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, u n mingling the Greek influence with that of the 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 sufficiently 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. Of 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. Defects 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 circumstances. 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 had 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 curiosity or our shocked sensibilities. The effort to combine new thrills with old traditions was con- tinued by Jean-Francois Ducis, 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 sensibilite which prefers happy endings. Of his half- dozen versions, we may mention Hamlet (1769), he 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 and of Sebastien Mercier. These two writers 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. 1 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-Franc, ais 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 170Q ^ gtands f or 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 Legataire 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 i 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 moeurs 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 — Dancourt -^ es 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, 2 whose Turcaret really equals Moliere's creations. It was pre- ceded (1707) by Crispin rival de son maitre, which esage 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 " Turcaret " 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, 2 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 almost 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 f° r l uxur y an d money, and a callous lack of any Depiction idealism, 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 fits 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 attempt to resuscitate the comedy of character in a serious style; but he also possesses traits which foreshadow T the sentimental comedie larmoyante and the moralistic drame. 3 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 Philosophe marie (1727) ; but the best comedy of Destouches is rather Le Glorieux (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 cceur 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 3 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 even misrepresented in the play. Sedaine's Philo- and Playlets sophe sans le savoir (1765), which some consider a drame, seeks rather to combine 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 climatic, 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 sympathetic personality. But the play has a fine natural style and the wit which was always Piron's gift. Gresset'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 tradition. The " mechant," a type who cannot bear to see other people happy, is duly punished in the end. Moliere is Gresset'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 and is nearer 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 du Tendre," occupying themselves with a subtle form of love-making often expressed in precieux 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 accumulation of ob- stacles to the course of true love. The chief plays all repeat the same theme — " l'eternelle surprise de l'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-purposes is exemplified by Le Jeu da Vgmcmr at 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 appears 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 l'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- Sentiment sibility> which the au thor 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 Beaumarchais (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, Beaumarchais 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 payment. 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 Memoir es, 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 Manage de Figaro (1784). The Barbier, which originated from the comic-opera plots of its own time, finds today its natural complement in the music m 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 Mariage de Figaro, which though written (1778) shortly after the Barbier, Le Mariage was l° n S 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 comedie larmoyante. t 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 journee." 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 sented 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 century. 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 l'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 l'inventeur. Two plays of La Chaussee may be taken as typical of this kind. In La jausse Antipathie (1733), two married people who barely knew and heartily disliked each other a C aussee ^ £ rg ^ mee t a g am a ft e r 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 d la mode of 1735. The aristocratic {l 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 husband. The interest of the play is that it reflects a social condition which it helped ameliorate. La Chaussee " turned the woman of the world into a mere woman," capable of serious love. Among his other plays, of less conse- quence, are Melanide and UEcole 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 prodigue 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. 4 His various Entretiens on the drama (1757 f.) make an Theories of important 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 several 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 , x It has been said 2 that the whole history of fiction shows the evolution from the impossible, through the improbable and the Progress in probable, to the inevitable. If this be true, the this Period transition in France from the improbable to the probable is nearly connected with the transition from the seven- teenth to the 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 , esage and 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 1 On seventeenth-century fiction, see Part II, Bk. Ill, Ch. I and Bk. IV, Ch I; 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 of Lesage and Marivaux, see preceding chapter. 2 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 cafes, 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 , t Le Di a bi e revelations are essentially Parisian, and this consti- Boiteux" tutes the main interest of the story. People were already 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 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. 436 FICTION: LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PREVOST The " question de Gil Bias" concerns the extent of its in- debtedness to Spanish sources. Briefly, one-fifth 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 circumstances 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 and portraits, a 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 " 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 unusual — and adventures mostly are — the chief characters are probable and life-like, and the same is true of their environment. Lesage's realism anti- Realism 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 w T ords 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 precieia. His survey of human weaknesses is abundantly 438 FICTION: LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PREVOST satirical, but seldom bitter and always clean. Like Moliere, 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 foy Mme de 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 difficulties 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 he Paysan parvenu (1735-36). They are both unfinished, autobiographical in form, and, like Gil Bias, they is ic ion re j a ^ e foe rise in 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 moeurs 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- " Mananne " spectively, she appears as an " honest " girl, though candidly reckoning on her beauty and vivacity to improve her fortunes. 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 he analyses both in their motives 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 © races 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 " niarivaudage " 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 precieux 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 precieux effect is particularly visible in the love-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 MO 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. 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 V0 S ue n °t 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 generate 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- venture, appears in Prevost 's long romances. The romances have lived chiefly by their names: Les Memoires oVun homme de qualite, Le Doyen de Killerine, Cleveland. They jr. seem now, in spite of some enthusiasts, hopelessly Secondary old-fashioned, long-winded and " highly improb- Romances 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, Marion 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 gualite, but the usual elements of Prevost's fiction are here compounded according to a very dif- ferent recipe. In the first 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 11 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 young 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 unfolds 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 genre grew decidedly in favor and power during the eighteenth century. It assumed various forms, con- forming to changing circles and periods, rather than 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 Heloise. In the meantime, such philosophes 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, and the nineteenth will prolong and partially straighten out the twisted skein. 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 Muge i. but apait from thege 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 unessential, 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 1 For Voltaire, see above, Bk. II, Ch. II. 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 erse ^ m j nor p 0e t s ^ \y e 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-git 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 modern 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 Epitres 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 xamp es 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 un- 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 and a i me ^ at depicting country life. The English influ- Nature ence largely caused this change of base. 2 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 nature. 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 Young, whose Night Thoughts (translated 1769) promoted a certain taste for the pleasures of melancholy; while Macpherson's Ossian (tr. 1776 f.) 2 See above, Bk. I, Ch. III. WRITERS OF ELEGY U7 began to awaken a sympathy for ancient laments and misty land- scapes. It is rather startling to find the old regime, in its last Yo 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 unfortunate lives and early deaths they offer parallels with Chatterton. Gilbert, who killed himself at thirty-two, 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 awkward- ness in the midst of real power. The verses written just before his suicide — 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 Bonnard 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 Parny. It seems significant that the three men who figured best in poetry on the eve of the Revolution were all of exotic birth — Parny and Bertin being natives of the Ile-de-Bourbon and Chenier of Constantinople. Evariste Parny (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, Parny 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 Chenier'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 Mort d'une Jeune Fills: Son age echappait a l'enfance. Riante comme rinnocence, Elle avait les traits de 1' Amour. Quelques mois, quelques jours encore, Dans ce cceur 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 murmurer contre ses lois. Ainsi le sourire s'efface; Ainsi meurt sans laisser de trace, Le chant d'un 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 beon called less of a lover than Parny and less of a poet than Chenier. Andre Chenier (1762-94), the only great poet of his century, was born of a Greek mother at Constantinople. His brother, Marie-Joseph, 3 was well-known as a dramatist (see Bk. Ill, 3 Author of the Chant du Depart; the other great hymn of the Revolution, La Marseillaise (1792), is usually attributed to Rouget de l'lsle. ■ '.,,,;'■:., " t: ' cfi i— i CD T3 ,; Jf |y © bfl 3 adSsfc ;,:| ■ O 'dslmm CHENIER 449 Ch. I) and went further in his Revolutionary sympathies than did Andre. The latter knew Greek from his cradle, and his fruit- Andre ful studies made of him a S enuine representative of Chenier the antique. As a boy he lived in Languedoc 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'avais 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 His 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 stamp 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: Also 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 modern passion and charm. 450 POETRY The political poems, consisting of strong invective and satire, are found in certain Iambes 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! Un vaisseau la portait aux bords de Camarine: La, l'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 Tor dont au festin ses bras seraient pares, JLt pour ses blonds cheveux les parfums prepares. Mais, seule sur la proue, invoquant les etoiles, Le vent impetueux qui soufflait dans ses voiles L'enveloppe: etonnee et loin des matelots, Elle crie, elle tombe, elle 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. Therefore " philosophy " becomes more decidedly Encyclopedie "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 1 ory French work. The permission and cooperation of dAguesseau 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 Encyclopedic declares that it was under- 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 medium of communication with Voltaire and the Academicians. His main contributions were along mathematical lines, and he also wrote the celebrated Discours preliminaries 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 litter ature (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 abbes 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 unquestioned. 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 features can be best exhibited by considering in detail the Discours preliminaire and then by discussing the principles The " Discours ^ * ne Encyclopedie as operative in half-a-dozen fields Preliminaire "of human 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 priori 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 natural 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 a priori scheme outlined for primitive man. He Divisions gives a " gradation " showing the progress of the human mind, mainly revealed in its geniuses, from the Renais- sance down. His main thesis is thus asserted: " On a commence par l'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 under 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 until 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 FAULTS 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 of the sciences according to our often confused sensations Discourse j s i ess 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- Faults of the c } TC l°P ec ^ a wn, l k e linked by definitions, by manner Encyclopedia 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 of the Encyclopedists. Diderot's own material is illustrative of these diverse tendencies ; it is confused in its standpoints, rambling and without proportion. He copies 456 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 crumble 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 sum- marize and popularize useful knowledge. The natural sciences are more to the fore than the humanistic, 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 " art " as l ar § e ly 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 exposure 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 " rudimentary 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 punishment 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 w T ith 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 unction. In the manner of Voltaire and Montes- 458 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 humanity. The best and the sincerest writing of the Encyclopedists is found in the! 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 iterature j auc0 urt, 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 century'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 " na ture, 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 (1707-88), 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 generalized ability. His Histoire naturelle (1749-88) appeared as an official pub- lication based upon the royal collection, owing something to collaborators and much to correspondents. It con- 18 or s 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 volumes (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 l'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; beginning with domestic animals, Buff on 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 Style an( j ^eas; 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 l'homme meme " — that is, it takes on the coloring of his mind. Finally, Buffon knew that " Ies 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. The Condillac is best known for his Traite des sensa- ideoiogues 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 V esprit h 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 time. 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 Diderot, an intimate of d'Hol- bach 's circle, and it exemplifies one logical extreme of the philosophe movement. A more optimistic extreme, the highest loop attained by the theory of Progress, 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 Esquisse d'un Tableau historique des Progres de V 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 Th his career. His activities became more and more Patriarch of varied, his fame was resounding 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 Vinjame. 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 But ^ ne y 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 463 464 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 unjustly persecuted. He clears the name and memory of the unfortunate Calas 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 1S ea 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 philosophe, 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- covers en vers sur Vhomme, which imitates Pope's Deism ; and the Introduction to the Essai svr 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 the 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 en fin expliquee. 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 p/liZoso- * n ^ ne ex P ress ion 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 experimental 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- Physics 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 Metaphysics j n q U } r j es s hows 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 found 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," HIS 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- Skepticism hension of the Deity? the soulj dutyj trut h. 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 supernatural, 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 modern 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, detaik, 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 unenlightened 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, that 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 pleasure-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- union 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 universal 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 ma]Q ded. It would be too long to list here all the Reform changes required and often enforced by the philosophe. He contends for liberty, though a limited and non- seditious liberty, of various kinds: free-speech and free-writing, the abolition of slavery, civil liberty of the person (habeas corpus), civil marriage overbearing the church form, some separation of Church and State, with dominance of the latter. 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 tortures; 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 an enlightened monarchy, which is perhaps nearer to despotism than to liberalism. His ideal monarch is le roi philosophe, 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 plus 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. 0n 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 humani- 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 HI DIDEROT Denis Diderot, 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 born (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 the 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 w r orked industriously until 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 de Geoffrin and Mile de Lespinasse. By disposition he was expansive, exuberant and endowed with The two mucn " 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. 1 See 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," abounding 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 official 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 PHILOSOrHIQUES 475 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- First 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 Vusage de ceux 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 sur Inter- pretation de la nature (1754), which is Diderot's chief scientific Second 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 ~. . were too daring to be published in the author's life- Dialogues of 1769, time. " II n'est pas possible," as Diderot himself printed 1830 g^ f 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 Morality 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 his 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 unity 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 been open i y sus t a ined 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 brought 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 sumptuous 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 causeries, Not a '""' rather than under the more usual heading of fiction. Novelist It is difficult 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 enjants, in various other dialogues, and conspicuously in his one indubitable masterpiece, Le Neveu de Rameau (c. 1726). Goethe was the first to discover and make famous this amaz- ing dialogue, which presents as interlocutors Diderot himself „, N (as a philosophe) and the cynical bohemian rela- de Rameau," tive of Rameau — who is really another side of Did- publ. 1823 ero £ rpj ie debate fchus 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 (1773, publ. 1796), which is a frank and free imita- His Fiction t . on of gteme in itg wilfd neglect of plot> its sty 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 romantic 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 awa Y 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 stu'dy. 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 natural 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 1750, 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 around 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 Motiers 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 calmer 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; Character 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 publTys'i-ss 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 ivi ua lsm t ween exaltation and despair. He constantly speaks of his sottises, folies, 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 l'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 nature; 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 ensi 1 1 y ^ eS p a j r< 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'ame 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 sensual. Generally imagination plays the greater part, Plato- LA NOUVELLE 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 Tun a l'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 touchant dans sa grande sim- plicite. . . . 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 l'ai dit, celle de l'amour, mais une possession plus essentielle, qui, sans tenir aux sens, au sexe, a l'age, a la figure, tenait a tout ce par quoi Ton est soi, et 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 nove l cau See 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 became 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 triumph 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. Character 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 " destinee a porter du mouvement et de Timprevu." 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 represented 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 Salon Spirit tendg to gee 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 Early Works the writer who attracted her most. The book, De I' Influence 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 human 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 StaeTs novels renovate the form of fiction and closely reflect her personality. " Corinne est l'ideal de Mme de Stael; Delphine est la realite pendant sa " Delphine " 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 misfortune, 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 modern in that it poses the question of a woman's 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 StaeTs 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 disturbing book, on account of its individualism, its subtlety and its fine conception of feminine character. Corinne (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 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 found 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, give 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 unity and it is a cultural 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 2 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 1'influence de la litterature sur la religion, les moeurs et les lois. . . . On n'a pas suffisamment analyse les causes morales et politiques qui modifient l'esprit de la litterature. These rapports and others, such as historical circumstances, the structure of society and especially the genius of each race, she connects with her special subject, quite in the manner of Montes- 2 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 lots. 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: l'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 inaccuracies. But Mme de Stael becomes a critical prophet in making 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 StaeTs 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-official and dogmatic critics of the Empire. It also in- ON GERMANY 503 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 Mine 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»Aii e - in 1810 and 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 " l'enth ousiasme." 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 idyllizes. 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 tenebres," 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. 504 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 l'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 chiejiy 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 Fame." 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 Her n uence an( j p re scott in America. It was largely through her initiation 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 Globe, Hugo's Preface de Cromwell and the exotic gleanings of Nodier owe a good deal to her guidance. 3 8 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 StaeTs 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 of 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- Benjamm " , . 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 l'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 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 Charriere 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 Ellenore'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- 507 508 CHATEAUBRIAND stinct. " Mon imagination allumee, se propageant sur tous les 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 undertook 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 he lived for eight years. At London, he was at first poverty-stricken and on the verge of suicide. Becoming acquainted with English country 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, he 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 leon ' but soon broke with k im 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 (1824). 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 oV outre-tomb e 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 reality. His perpetual longings for the unattainable brought into French 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 l'ceuvre de Chateaubriand." With the exceptions of the prin- ciple of honor and the Catholic religion, 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- prising 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 his 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 Genie du Christianisme and conspicuous in the Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem and the prose epic, Les Martyrs. W T ith 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 righting 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 Atala and Rene. 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 modern 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 Marion Lescaut. Underlying the story are deep cur- rents of emotion which break out in extreme Romanticism: 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 sont 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 v THE MAL DE RENE 511 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 Genie 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 mat 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 naturellement petri 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 asso- ciated with man's demonic 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 toute la force de mes desirs l'ideal objet d'une flamme future; je l'embrassais dans les vents, je croyais l'entendre dans les gemissements du fleuve; tout etait ce fantome imaginaire, et les astres dans les cieux, et le principe meme de vie dans Tunivers. 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 p^ an( ^ p r0 k a kjiity 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^ ms D0 °k stands at the center of Chateaubriand's Christianisme"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 The 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 w r ise 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 boix 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 modern 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 unfortunate 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 tine arts, rather superficially treated, it is notable that he dwells on the religious side of Gothic architecture, which is linked with his passion for the past. There is a picturesque 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 1'mcredulite 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 m § 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 514 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 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 Quo Vadis. It deals with the Eastern conversions, struggles and martyrdoms of the early Subjects: Christians under Diocletian. But this frame-work "Les Martyrs"^ extended through the recit of Eudore, the hero, to cover travels and experiences in various Roman provinces, in- cluding the Orient. The unity of the story sutlers through this extension. Its illusion, as a work of fiction, is weakened by the introduction of all the epic machinery of the merveilleux chretien. The best part of Les Martyrs is found in particular characters and episodes: the charm of Cymodocee, the heathen maiden whom Eudore loves and converts; the picture 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 ?' 0U v re » 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 il cherchera vainement 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 l'environnaient et le protegeaient contre la tempete. Isole comme lui, j'ai vu comme 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 l'homme resiste moins 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 modern 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 l'homme qui a re- nouvele Timagination franchise." 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 his 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 Me&ita- History of tions, and 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 517 518 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT of expansive feeling and wide aspirations; but these were followed only too soon by disappointment and weariness when govern- Social 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 journalism, 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 ^ ne 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 11 Cenacies " 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 cenacies. First came the group which rallied around 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 founders 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 Academie des Jeux Floraux of that city. Soumet is best known for his tragedy of Saul. He had a second- rate derivative talent, but he was then ranked as a demi-god and his prestige considerably aided the Muse. Guiraud wrote the prospectus for the journal, a valuable feature of which was the attention it 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 Muse; 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 denunciations 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 by Charles Nodier, who received and encouraged de r Arsenal, them in his home at the Arsenal Library. Nodier 1 894—97 (see next 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 denned 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 Lefevre, a Byronist; the witty Ulric Guttinguer; Baour-Lormian, trans- lator of Ossian; Chenedolle, 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- T „ , Beuve, and these two constitute the head and front Le Grand ' . Cenacle, of the greatest Romantic cenacle. This was known 1827-30 as a j e ce n ac l e 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-ground; 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 521 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 unity of the Romantic school was broken up and the last cenacle was dissolved; partly be- cause of the Revolution of July, but more on account 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 until about 1820. From then dates the foun- Influences: dation of modern literary journalism, the establish - Journahsm m ent 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 (1824-30) 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 ; " x 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. 2 Mme de Stael, indeed, had given currency to the term 1 Villemain, Guizot, Cousin; see below, Ch. VII; and for the "doctrinaires" or liberal bourgeois statesmen, see same chapter. 2 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 r . 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 mat 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. Gbtz 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., undoubtedly 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 suffice. 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. 3 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- ject 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 3 More about Shakespeare will be found in Ch. V, below. 524 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 peut 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 Orientates (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 Deluge 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 Albertus 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 525 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- « ,. A . ment satisfactorily. Its pervasive force may be Qualities J ; T ,, . J 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 and medievalism, together with an expansive treatment of nature and life. 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 eight- 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 of 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 l'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 His Stories ta ^ es *^ a * cur iously 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, 527 528 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 (" l'ecole frenetique ") . Trilby, which probably furnished the title for Du Maurier'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 maturity; 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 Beranger . popular songs. In 1813 the epicurean poet, De- saugiers, led Beranger to a certain caveau or " Rhymers' 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 Beranger, the epicurean manner seems artificial, though he possesses wit and a certain gallant swing. This style may be illustrated by he Roi d'Yvetot: BERANGER'S MUSE 529 II etait un roi d'Yvetot Peu connu dans l'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 L' 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 human currents and feelings of his Beranger'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 obscurities 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, Tourne la terre ou moi je cours; and political satire by the refrain: Chapeau 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 L m rtin g rea ^ Romantic poets. To his noble and charming 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 clung 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 unfortunate 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 role 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-Antoine 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 constitute the chief inspiration of his poems were nature, His religion and woman ; it may be added that the three Inspiration are c i sely associated in his greatest verse. Le 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 almost as symbols of love and revery: the lake, the twilight hour, the stealing moonbeam, 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, His Works ^ nese 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 x)f 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 are the verses of L'Isolement: Fleuves, rochers, forets, solitudes si cheres, Un seul etre vous manque et tout est depeuple. Such is the picture of UAutomne: Salut, bois couronne d'un reste 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, Ton 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 poetiques et religieuses (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 l' en- fant (naive childish faith), U 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, 6 mes tristes pensees! Je veux rever et non pleurer. i After writing this volume, Lamartine turned to politics, and his succeeding publications (for instance, Les Recueillements 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- Qualities ^ on? 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 iEolian 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 contour 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- His Rank 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 France 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 Hernani, 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 Besangon in 1802. His father was an officer in Napoleon's army and commanded under v Joseph Bonaparte when the latter was made king of Spain. General Hugo took his family with him, and Victor's boyish eyes were rilled with the picturesqueness of Italy, the light and splendor of Spain. The latter country left its impress upon many of his works (for example, Hernani, 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 Conservateur 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, a la Chateaubriand, an ardent royalism and Catholicism. These 534 HIS LIFE 535 were also the principles of the Societe 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 around him, and the cenacle of the Muse 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 Hernani, 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 in 1848 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 unceasing literary productivity, which finds its crown in La Legende des 536 THE POETS: VICTOR HUGO siecles. Returning to Paris in 1870, Hugo went through the siege and reconstruction, and wrote UAnnee 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 are 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 are masterpieces. We shall consider only his poetry in this chapter. 1 The lyrical inspiration with which Hugo began predominated for twenty years and is also conspicuous in his drama during that period. The volumes of Odes (1822-24) and later of Odes et ballades _,. _ . (1826) are far from indicating the true power of Hugo. The odes particularly seem second-rate to- day in their effete royalism and neo-classicism. These occasional 1 For his drama and fiction, see below, Chapters V and VI. HIS VERSE 537 pieces are full of apostrophies 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) , w r here 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 force 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 are 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 turns to subjective experience. Also, profiting by Mature the 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'automne (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 crepuscule (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 human- 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'ici-bas toute ame. 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'Olympio. 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 human heart — C'est toi qui dors dans l'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 Chdtiments (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 Legende des siecles, but it is true that Les Chdtiments " 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 Chdtiments 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 Contemplations (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 The ^ erm " petites epopees" was used as a sub- Legende des title, and the whole work proceeded from the epic siecles » conception of recording the destinies of mankind at various periods and as expressed by various heroes. Vigny had already poetized this idea, which was carried on by Hugo, by the work of Leconte de Lisle and by Heredia's Trophies. 2 Apart from the conception, however, Hugo's manner is epic in only a few narratives (Eviradnus, Ratbert, 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 Geant qux dieux) ; a superb Naturalistic vision of Pan and his like {Le Satyr e) ; the heroics of Roland and of the Cid: these are the subjects that attracted Hugo, who felt an affinity 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 8 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 purposes, 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 Satyr e. 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 (UEpopee du ver) ; magnificent invective shines in La Vision de Dante, and a more restrained Renaissance beauty in La Rose de VInjante. 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 jumble. More and more Hugo dons the mantle of the prophet and 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 and 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. 3 His imagination declares itself in many ways: in the actual number and novelty of his images; in his power of sustained , . .. personification 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 3 La Ligende is Hugo's culminating work, but for the sake of completeness there may be mentioned: Chansons des rues et des bois (1865), V Art d'etre grand' 'pere (1877) and Les Quatre Vents de V 'esprit (1881). HIS IMAGINATION 541 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, VIdee) 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 of 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 grammatical and syntactical; his faults proceed rather from too much style and too much imagination. He had the widest range in vocabulary of any French poet, totally outsoaring the Classical restrictions. He adored words: Car le mot, c'est le Verbe et le Verbe 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 [Vhomme-troupeau, la reine- esclave) ; the recurrent motif, such as the Eye that ever watches Cain in La Conscience; and long enumerations 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 " surprise ending " of Maupassant and may be found in Bivar, Tristesse d'Olympio (see above) and several speeches from Hernani, ending in " l'echafaud." In the matter of sonority and tone-color, Hugo is unsurpassed. Witness the vibrant note, the clashing of dollars and drums in Les Reitres: 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. 4 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 universality 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. 4 For the Romantic liberation of the Alexandrine, see below, Ch. V. CHAPTER IV 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 lumiere!" 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'ltalie, 1829) , through the cynic gloom of Rolla, down to the supreme cry of defeated passion in the famous Nuits. The prose Confession aVun Enfant du siecle also recounts 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 volume contains vari- ous charming chansons, which were always a forte with Musset. 544 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 Rolla (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, La 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-vous faire Si loin de nous? J'en vaia pleurer, moi qui me laissais dire Que mon sourire Etait si doux. 546 MUSSET, VIGNY, GAUTIER The Stances d la Malibran, in their insistence on the essential unity of genius and love, constitute a fine elegy. The er oems j^ e ^ re ^ Lamartine pays tribute to that poet's calmer idealism, contrasted with the mal romantique of Musset himself. Sur la paresse lets the writer, with his usual frankness, tell us 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 Pinfini 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 ~ 1>A . has a natural eloquence. His verse is most distin- Quahties . ... 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 anglaise 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 1 (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 i nne r 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 La Colere de Samson. Attached quite early to two of the Romantic cenacles, 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. 2 He retired, that is, into an intellectual and artistic solitude, and emerged only when duty called him. 1 See also Chs. V and VI, below. 2 Hence the origin of "the ivory tower" in modern usage; its ancient source is the turris eburnea of the Vulgate. 548 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 j^jg p rocess can be illustrated by the principal titles in Vigny's single volume of poetry. 3 In the poem already cited, Samson represents the betrayal of man's strength — Et plus ou moins 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 found 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 La Mort du loup 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 Moise, 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 moderne " 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, is 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 3 One volume holds his entire verse to-day. But he published, in order, Poemes, 1822; Eloa, 1824; Poemes antiques et modernes, 1826; there appeared post- humously Les Destinies, 1864, and the prose Journal d'un poete, 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 enduring 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 Christ {Le Silence, Le Mont des Olivier s). Vigny believes that man's existence is unjustly ordered and 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 une 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 fated, whether under the ancient or the Christian dispensation (Les Destinees) to endless striving and endless failure. 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 souff ranees humaines. This message is expressed in language of a singular eleva- tion and sobriety. Vigny's best manner is simple and large, Stvle 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 stern 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 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 Emaux et Camees (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. Albertus is a free and fantastic narrative poem, dealing with the trans- formations and orgies of a witch, containing both Early Poems macahre and Don j uanes que elements. Gautier here uses strong words and metaphors and is evidently striving GAUTIER'S ART 551 for originality; but his composition of 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 Mort, 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 fully re- "Emaux et vealed 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." 4 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 Emaux 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- Art parture, in theory, is Vart pour Fart; 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 relief 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. 552 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 purposes 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 Enduring 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 our 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 Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, their feeble imitators and the dilutions of Ducis. Even under the Restoration little visible change appeared until Hugo, though certain popular undercurrents were making for freedom. We have mentioned the work of Sebastien Mercier, 1 who broke theoretically with Classicism but was too timid in practice. « „ His name should be distinguished from that of MrpQ£C£ssors 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, Coelina). But it seems likely that such productions paved the way for Hugo i 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 four staple figures of melodrama {jeune 'premier, 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 siciliennes (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 first Italian to rebel against the unities ; 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 Dumas 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 document is considered as the manifesto of the new school. Hugo divides the course of poetry into three great ages, of which the modern 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 l'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 "Hernani," yere, Musset and Vigny shall be our chief ex- 1830. 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. 556 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 Innovations en J ambe ^nt, 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 mon 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 lstlcs no compelling unity of action. Part of the time our sympathy is with Hernani, the gloomy bandit, and with his sweetheart, Dona 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'ceuvre 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 malheur fait'e 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 tourner la tete, Une voix me dit: Marche! et rabime est profond, Et de flamme ou de sang je le vois rouge au fond! Cependant, a l'entour 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 gestures 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 Oth r Plavs cour ^ esan 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 : r 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, Rigoletto. 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 Ruy Bias (1838). After Hernani, 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 Ruy 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 Ruy 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 Dumas pere, 2 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. Dumas 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 HI 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 vassaux, 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 unrestrained. 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- room comedy in the manner of Marivaux. The Musset first kind may be illustrated by Fantasio and by A quoi revent les 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 y une porte soit ouverte ou jermee, 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 comedies-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 561 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-drama " 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 r event 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 Hen 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 V 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 gjirl 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 understands 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 Vigny to P rocmce 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 peur. 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 "l'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 surpassed 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 drama 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 realms 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 Novel 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 of an intimate heart-affair, analyzed with great skill and pene- later period. Sainte-Beuve's Volupte (1834) is again the record 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 565 spicuous in Musset's Confession d'un enfant 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 Bernerette 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 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. 1 His two great passions were war and love, and his eleven heart-affairs are boldly analyzed in his four chief books. De l' 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 1 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 thoroughly 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 Far me (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 born 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. Taine, 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 567 2, The Historical Novel and Hugo. We shall see in the next chapter how Romanticism " revolu- tionized history," how the enthusiastic imaginations of Thierry and of 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 documenta- 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 ... . , 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 568 THE ROMANTIC NOVEL future Empress Eugenie. His heart-affairs culminated in the correspondence known as Lettres a une inconnue — " 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 Chronique 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 Fameste (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 Chronique 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 power of vision, his liking for large symbols and vivifications. Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), on the picturesque side marvel- " Notre-Dame ousl y 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) . As for plot, we find many excursions, long descriptions and 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 Miser ables. The former work is a fruit of Novels Hugo's Guernsey sojourn 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 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 Fantine 's mother and the idyllic loves of Fantine and Marius. The variety of the milieux 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. Purely 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- dence. Dumas, a mixture of noble and negroid Dumas pere 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 cannot 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-jeuilleton, 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. 3. Tales and Fantasies. The master of the nouvelle 2 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, Colombo,, Carmen and La Venus d'llle. The celebrated Colombo (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 vraisemblance. Colombo 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 modern 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 nouvelle as the more realistic type, the conte as suggesting the fantastic or marvellous (Contes cruels, Contes dee mille et une Nuits) 572 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 etrusque 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 volume, r . 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, Une 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 many 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 unusual 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 century. Two latter-day Romanticists, writers of fantastic tales, are Villiers de l'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 L variegated life (1804-76). 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 " Tart pour le vrai, Part 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 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 V 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. Lelia is even stronger 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'Angibault, 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 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 the two idylls, La Mare au diable and Frangois le Champi. 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- tne mam currents of the period. Already under the aries: Empire, a group of critics were marked by their Jo rt 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 until 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 suffers 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 had the career of a magistrate and diplomat. He was strong for the principle of Papal authority, even infalli- bility {Du Pape, 1819), and he became a dominant figure among the Ultramontanes, the group that sought to subordinate the 576 THE CATHOLIC REACTION 577 Gallican 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. Lamennais . 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 Vindifjerence (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 VAvenir, 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 Vindifjerence 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. Villemain 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 litter ature au moyen age has faded out since specialists have made a study of medieval documents, but his Tableau de la litter ature fran- gaise au XV II I e 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- c . 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 Guizot (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. Man 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-making 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 juste 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 historians. 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 Generate de la Civilisation en Europe x 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 1 Published with the accompanying work (Histoire Generate de la Civilisation en France) as a Cours oV 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 run " its existence in- volved representative government." The Civilisation 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 " unite 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, would take down a volume 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 l'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 Schoo?* 1C 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 younger brother, Amedee, 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 581 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 Histoire de la conquete de VAngleterre 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 VAngleterre 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.'' M> . . 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 582 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 VHumanite. 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 volumes 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 understand and welcome eagerly " the diverse manifestations of the human spirit " (Monod) . The power of vision and expression thus attained is beyond anything 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 583 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, knowledge 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- Mignet ^ ant 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 584 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 VEmpire (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 Succession 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 Honore 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, who 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, Ulnterdic- 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 {GEuvres 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 Balzac 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, modern Realism was born. The Realistic tendency is still more pronounced in the early Scenes de la Vie Frivee, 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 T dreams of love and 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 gusto 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-making 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. Numerous 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, stands out as his great achieve- humaine " ment. 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 588 THE TRANSITION: BALZAC of them " reappearing," were used in this vast scheme. Its central feature is the endeavor to present completely and concretely the social life of contemporary France: " completely," because Bal- zac's idea was to include every social category and most fields of knowledge ; " concretely," because Realism of detail and a close acquaintance with small bourgeois 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, had chosen his general title (as a counterpart to Dante's Divina Commedia), and had fixed on the device of reappearing and interlocking char- acters to mortice together his growing edifice. 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 divisions given to the Comedie. The first and largest Part is called " Etudes de Mceurs " and is subdivided into six kinds of Scenes: those pertaining respectively to the Vie privee, Vie de province, Vie Parisienne, Vie politique, Vie militaire and the. Vie 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 VAbsolu, La Peau de chagrin, La Physiologie du manage) . 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 under each heading. The Vie privee included ultimately the early novelettes dealing with modest bourgeois life {La Bourse, La Maison du Chat- qui'pelote), together with such fine character studies as Le Colonel Chabert and later full-length novels like Le Pere Goriot or Beatrix. The Vie de province contains Balzac's main attempt, HIS ROMANTICISM 589 turgid and sentimental, to depict idealistie love — Le Lys dans la vallee; it also has the incomparable Eugenie Grandet, Pier- rette, the huge fresco of Illusions per dues, and others. The titles here cover four French provinces. The Vie Parisienne includes a parallel fresco of the metropolis — the Splendeurs et Miser es des courtisanes — and several novels of intrigue and business. The Vie politique has, for instance, Une Tenebreuse Affaire (mystery story) ; the Vie militaire 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 planned 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 Romanticism « g chool 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 (Euvres 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 Maturing 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 he preaches individualism in the careers of his male and female climbers (Rastignac, de Marsay, Valerie Marneffe). The exaltation of the imagination {Sera- phita, La Peau de chagrin), of passion (Veronique, Mme de 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 temptations to which Balzac fell an easy prey. The thick coloring of his style in " purple passages," the millions of francs with which he suddenly endows his leading characters, the agonizing 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 fever. But as a whole the Comedie humaine is the earliest and still the most conspicuous 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 undoubtedly because Balzac conceives his novels with an intense and powerful vision. He leans towards materialism, which is his second Realistic quality — the .emphasis 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 591 world. The very idea of social species came to him, as he says, from a comparison " entre l'humamte et l'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 documents appear: technical disquisitions by the author, with display of erudition in many fields; or the use of such 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, Pere Goriot) this expository manner is logi- cal, progressive and valuable for an understanding of the whole. At other times (throughout the Medecin de cdmpagne and the Cure de village) there are too many unorganized 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 around the doing to death of some particular martyr: examples are Cousin Pons, Pierrette and Colonel Chabert. 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. Balzac often constructs his character around a defi- nite keynote or central personal trait (cf. La Bruyere). Thus Cesar Birotteau is described as a large sanguine son of a peasant, STYLE AND INFLUENCE 593 and this role he maintains throughout. His costume, his physique, his deeds must correspond to this initial characterization. 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 cumbersome, materialistic, sometimes Style and absurd 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, unpretentious, 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 and in characteristic dialogue, he is not found want- ing. Thus his 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. The influence of Balzac has no limitations or end. He simply transformed fiction and made the modern 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 Bur graves (1843) also saw an attempted revival of Classical tragedy in Ponsard's 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 undertook 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 Emile 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. Augier 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 Cornedie-Frangaise. lie 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 adventuress 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: pere de famille, 6 poete, 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 mwurs, 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 {Manage 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 Guenn presents the unscrupulous man of affairs who always remains within the law; Les Efjrontes and its sequel, Le Fils de Gib oyer (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 under 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 fils, 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 passionate, 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 fils to- gether establish the Realistic drama in their successful endeavor " de porter au theatre une peinture exacte de l'humanite, et des cas de conscience." More impassioned and personal than Augier, more of a preacher and a genius was Alexandre Dumas fils (1824-1895), who as a natural son of his Romantic father would readily umas s ^ urn 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- izing and sermonizing habit which grew on him. Thus an intense and concrete vision of " l'homme social " wars with the piece 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 Dumas fils 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 Fere prodigue and Le Fils naturel — the titles of which are evidently applicable to the two Dumas. 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 Mine 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; Denise 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- wea ^, 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 U 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 d' argent, 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, and 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. 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 B goes 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 entouree 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 (see Bk. IX, Ch. II). t 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 Baudelaire Flaubert's Madame Bovary and of Baudelaire's Fleurs du mat. 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 unfortunate liaison, he tried art-criticism and journalism, 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 Belgium, a country which he found unsympathetic; 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 Fleurs du mat 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 Mai" 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 solemn religious prostrations, make a curious jangle in Baudelaire's " cracked soul " (La Cloche felee). 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 UEnnemi) is a favorite. Formal This brevity was partly inspired by Poe, who Merits a j so seems 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 those of any Romantic poet. He is the master of a certain organ-roll, aided by polysyllables, enumerations and a plenitude of effect 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 l'invitez a l'eternelle fete Des 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 familier dee 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 between the arts, a theory which he did not push to the extreme of the later Symbol- ists (see Bk. IX, Ch. III). His own senses were very keen. His thorough acquaintance with painting and with music, his love for Delacroix and his early appreciation of Tannhauser, will account for such perfect tableaux as Don Juan aux 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 degout. Baudelaire never had this " force and courage." Consequently his poetic expression is limited to a few ideas and to a single deep furrow plowed in the lyric field. But his form and his virtues are Classical, and Baudelaire is already a classic. He THE PARNASSIANS 605 was a sufficiently great artist to universalize his personal ex- perience, to subject his reality to a lifting and transmuting power, and thereby to say certain sorrowful things once for all. Baudelaire represented the decay of Romanticism in his morbidity and taste for extremes ; he was like his " maitre im- Banville 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 "La Parnasse" 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 he Parnasse contemporain 1 (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 Prudhomme, Frangois Coppee and Verlaine (see Bk. IX, Ch. III). The term " Parnassiens " came to connote an Olympian 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 commemorate his youth, 1 The name evidently proceeds from Mount Parnassus, the home of the Mueea. 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), Poetries 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. Official 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 Derniers 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 j n ^ fc^ work. He 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 enduring material. His sonnet, Les Montreurs, 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 modern 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 understanding and treatment of historical truth. He arranges this to emphasize types, racial traits, general or controlling ideas. But 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 illuminated 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 universe, and Nature is not really in sympathy with humanity. Thus the poet discards anthropomorphism and the pathetic fallacy. But he admires great natural manifestations, such as storms, jungles 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 born; 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 back to the Greeks, but his ideal goddess is a severe His Form 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. 2 Leconte de Lisle's most distinguished pupil was Jose-Maria de Heredia (1842-1905). He too was half a foreigner, born in . 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 2 As a contemporary phenomenon, we may note the Provencal poetry of Frederic Mistral (1831-1914) and that of his brother-Felibriges — a society for the en- couragement of the Provencal muse. The masterpiece of this school is Mistral's Mireille (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 Trochees 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 difficulty 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 ] ag ^ i mGj wn ich 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 flamme. 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 sentiment, 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- querants, which is full of tone-color and metallic luster, set off against the softer connotations of Le vieil Orfevre. There is also the pictorial quality, especially vivid in Le Recif de corail or La Dogaressv, 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 choice 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 strong, 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 Antoine et Cleopdtre. " 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 short-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 modern 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 L'Education sentimentale) . Connected with this was a deterioration in moral tone and in artistic taste, found both in bureaucratic officials 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 Realism ' . trivial, and few there are who perceive 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- fi 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 understand 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 " bourgeois," 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 emperamen ^^-^ Hence the voyage to Egypt and the East, with its profound 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- pies: accurate observation or documentation, im- 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 difficult subject — to wit, the dangers of Romanticism for a provincial bourgeoise. 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 feeble. 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 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 difficulties, 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 - magnificence. 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 terest, 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 -enumerations; 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 rtlL , TT . sentimentale (1869). This novel is laid around Other Works 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 final Tentation de Saint-Antoine (1874), in which the vision of the saint's more metaphysical temptations gives rise to some superb writing. The alterating 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 Pecuchet. 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 Composition 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, history) so as to make them march all to- gether, driving four-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 a st l 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 Salammbo. MAUPASSANT 619 Like Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant (1850-93) was a Norman Realist. He spent his childhood at Etretat, his youth at Rouen, where he 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 under 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 mot 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 seen 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 Filt, Hautot pere et fils) ; the open air life of hunting 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 Schnaffs), together with a few tales of military life in general. Next came the result of Maupassant's contacts with official ministries and with the existence of petty bureaucrats and bourgeois (En Famille, L'Heritage). Then Parisian high life (Ulnutile Beaute) and fast life, particularly the ruses of women (Les Epingles, Le Rendezvous, Decorel). Travel, especially on the Riviera, furnished some excellent backgrounds (Champ d'Oliviers, Jules Romain) ; Africa and Italy supplied various light loves (Allouma, 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'Inftrme) ; 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 works is marked by two things: 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 merit, 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 of men's dinner or some casual meeting. The kernel of the story may be some small object, around which the train of events is organized; witness Le Parapluie, 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 l'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 stands for the earlier development of Realism; while Zola and his school pushed that doctrine to an extreme and dubbed it le Naturalisme. 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 larger 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, Leconte de Lisle, Taine) , who seem, for the most 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 later. He led an uneventful, 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 originated 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 volumes 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 refuge in England. There and later in Paris he embarked on the series of the Trots Villes, followed by the Quatre Evangiles, which he did not live to com- plete. His accidental death (1902) was caused by asphyxiation. 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 H" Th ky his method, which he developed as early as Therese Raquin (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 pq LES ROUGON-MACQUART 625 documents." These were studied physiologically and socially by Balzac, and psychologically by Stendhal, 1 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 experimental, 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-Macquart. This huge cycle, consisting of twenty volumes, records the " histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le second em- " Les Rougon pire." The family, originating from a neurasthenic Macquart " an( j a drunkard (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 Courtesan, 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 Curee) , the central markets {Le Ventre de Paris), the department-store (Au Bonheur- des Dames) and the railroads (La Bete humaine). UAssommoir (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 most 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. 1 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 Rome. 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 feature 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. UAssommoir). 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 Fecondite 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 undigested 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 surrounded 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 anc j ^hey 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 Soeur Philomene (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 Lacerteux. 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 Gervaisais 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 afflicted 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. I dees 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 Lacerteux 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. " Impressionism," of 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 (Balzac, 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, Sceur 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, l'epithete rare, Tadjectif 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 2 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 Daudet (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-huitieme sikcle (1862), L 'Art au dix-huiti&me sihcle, 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 Moray, who acted as prime minister under Napoleon III. A favorite with Morny, Daudet was allowed restorative excursions to the Midi and Algeria [Port Tarascon) . 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 Provencal group of poets. In 1867, Daudet married Julie Allard, who 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 {Contes du lundi) , then passed on to his great novels and knew " l'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 " intensite 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 l'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 classes. o is or jj- g £ c tj on 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 Provencal 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 again to Algeria, 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 Rois 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 mceurs parisiennes," but they seem more particularly to store the vibrations of the author's own heart attuned to the misfortunes 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 C opperfield) . 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- TT . _ . partial recorder of the world's woes. He is too His Talent r . •• 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 l'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 Brunetiere; we shall now consider the first of these three. 1 The most characteristic work of Desire Nisard (1806-88), professor and publicist, is comprised in his Essais sur I'ecole romantique and in his monumental His- toire de la litterature frangaise (1844-61). The former book, 1 For Brunetiere, France and Lemaitre, see Bk. IX, Ch. IV. Edmond Scherer (1815-89) was a Genevan divine who lost his faith in Calvinism and settled in Paris. He stood apart from the main literary movements, but his Etudes critiques sur la litterature 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, 2 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: "l'expression des verites generates 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 f fa s jjf e 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 2 See above, pp. 343 and 416. 636 THE CRITICS: SAINTE-BEUVE jrancaise au XV I e 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 lit- ter aires (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 found 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 Opposition 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 The yie, 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 volume 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 livres). So the poems have been well summarized as " individualistes et romantiques, originales par le ton democratique, l'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 found 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 Criticism: the earlier articles in the Portraits litteraires. The Divisions and second (c. 1835-1848) represents a more neutral Campaigns anQ i 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 maturity alike as judicial 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 First Period ex P os ^ or °* 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 summary 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 hommes, 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 litter aires, 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 " libre 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. Chateaubriand et son groupe 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 Lundis: Degage de tout role presque de tout lien, observant de pres depuis bientot vingt-cinq ans les choses et les personnages 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 less 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 , he links the statement of a thorough biographical and psychological method together with a Natural- 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 faculte 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 g es ^ s hjg 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 1 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 accuracy 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 Approach 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 and sense of relativity make him thoroughly discriminate between the various epochs. Nor is the environment allowed to subdue the individual, as in the deterministic theory of Taine. Also Sainte-Beuve, in his later work, leans more towards the depiction of historical personages — generals, statesmen, great 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 . . classique? and De la tradition en litter ature) : his Conclusion 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 vary 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 6U 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 composite method, his taste and influence, we must recognize in Sainte-Beuve the greatest of modern 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 b een 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. 1 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 generate " 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 c 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 Poly technique, from which he was removed in 1844, and published his notable Cours de philosophie positive (6 vols., 1839-42). This earlier part of his life and thought was marked by great diligence, in- « See above, Bk. VII, Ch. V. 645 646 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 difficult. 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 Cours 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 modern 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 natural sciences as well POSITIVISM 647 as history and sociology. Comte's most fertile generalizations are along four main lines. First, the " scale of 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 facts 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 better 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 substantial body of Comtists can still be found. 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 born at Vouziers in the Ardennes ; the severity of this coun- try left its mark upon his spirit. His life is mainly a " bio- graphie 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 he 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 below ), and in the English positivists and utilitarians Taine found material to substantiate 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. Lemaitre calls him a " poete-logician." On the one hand, as Taine himself said, " ma forme d'esprit est franchise 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 nature. 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 Renan, 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 V Intelligence (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 to the operations of the mind. But as early as 1867 Taine had written De VIdeal dans Vart (third volume of La Philosophic de Vart, 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 " faculte 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, 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 history 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. 2 Similar qualities are found in the various Essais de critique et d'histoire, in the second volume of which (Nouveaux 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 the Revolution, on the Regime moderne (including Napoleon). Reacting from his experiences of the Commune (1871), the writer pens a strong indictment of the French Revolution, 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 agrees 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 Histoire litteraire du peuple anglais (1894-1904) shows 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 too much 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 Ancien 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 paramount 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 UAvenir 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 653 pecially that the world must be regenerated from the top and that the people should be guided by the savants (cf. Saint- Simon and Comte) . Renan was made an agrege of the University and finally a doc- tor. His thesis on Averroes et V Averro'isme (1852), dealing . r with Aristotelian doctrines among the Arabs, already reveals his interest in the origin and evolution of beliefs. He also published his Histoire generate des langues semitiques, 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 Renan 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. Renan 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 ser j es a i s0 comprises Les Apotres, St. Paid, L'Ante- christ, etc. (1866-81). For each of these volumes, Renan visited the appropriate historic site (Asia Minor or Rome) and 654* PHILOSOPHERS: COMTE, TAINE, REN AN 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. Renan'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 He 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 scoffing 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 the College de France, where he was presently made administrator, and by the editing of the learned Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, 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- Phase f ore ^h e war f 1370, 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 intellectuelle et morale de la France, were not well received. Henceforth he RENAN'S REMINISCENCES 655 felt himself powerless in the realm of action, and his general dis- enchantment finds expression in the exquisite but bitter Dialogues philosophiques (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 universe, 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' Antichrist. 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 ^is sm iij n g 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 philosophiques (1888). Of these the most significant are L'Abbesse de Jouarre and Le Pretre de Nemi; the latter concerns a priest of Diana and the evolution of a religious belief. Shakespeare's figures are also reviewed 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 modern conception of religious history, and influenced, through his writings and personal magnetism, such men as Bourget and Barres, Vogue 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. Quinet The life . long f r j en( i f 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 underwent 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 Ahasverus (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, Count 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 official 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 UAncien 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 Fintuition 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 659 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 historical 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 Fustel 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 Republic 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 Vancienne 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. Duruy 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 U 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 (b. 1842) 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- ists 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. 1 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 Veuillot f ait h 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 a 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 Parfums de Rome and Les Odeurs de Paris (1866), Veuillot's masterpiece. This volume preceeds 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 1 Cf. also (preceding the above) the Histoire generate du IV e sieclea nos 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 Fromentin books and one may almost say he painted them. His pictures of African countries, whether on canvas or on the printed page, are unsurpassed 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 him 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. 2 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 penetration 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). 2 Compare Matthew Arnold, Mrs. Ward's Robert Elsmere, etc. 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 Commune 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- munists. 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- G63 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 announced. 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 forment 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. Fallieres was made President in 1906, and M. Poincare 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 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 Rebours (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 Rebours applies the process 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-bas (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 rude 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, UAbbe Tigrane (1873), offers parallels with the Cure de Tours. Les Courbezon and M on 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 Naturalism 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 (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' Enfant d'Austerlitz, La Ruse and Au Soldi 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. UEnfant 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 Soldi 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- The 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 {Les 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 ^he 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 Y amir eh 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 HIndomptee. 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- Fiction ^-^ 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 survival 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 C amors. 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 Francois 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 m ^his 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 Vogue, 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 Idees 670 FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY morales du temps present (1891), furnishes an excellent survey of the period and its chief writers. The Vicomte Melchior de Vogue (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 Vogue wrote Le Roman russe (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), Vogue held that the Russian novelists had a better morality and more humanity 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 Vogue'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 " soul-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." Beginning with poetry and criticism (see Ch. IV, below), Bourget soon won a reputation as a society novelist: the success inaugurated by Cruelle enigme 1 (1885) was continued in the next few years by Un crime oV amour and Andre Cornelis, by Mensonges and Un coeur 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 — Therese de Sauve or Suzanne Moraines — are of a 1 L'Irreparable (1883) first revived the psychological novel, but was not so successful. 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. Bourget mentally resembles Taine, to whom His Second he owed much in his conception of the multiple ego Stage anc [ m hj s 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. The author, however, was not yet through with dilettanteism and cosmopolitanism — 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 w T orld- citizens w r ho 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 l'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 UEtape (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 (UAutomne oVune jemme, Les Demi-vierges, etc.) ; and of Maurice 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 young 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'ceil des barbares (1888), which describes a young man's struggle for self-assertion against the Philistines; Un 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 affection 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 Verier gie 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, Barres had been elected deputy to the Chamber, whose members he now satirizes in Leurs figures (1902). Finally, such works as Au service de VAllemagne 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 Baudoche). 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, unduly 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 officer of the French navy. Born at Rochefort on the Charente, of Hugue- not ancestry (cf. Le Roman oVun enfant, 1890), he passed an unhappy 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 Rarahu (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 " l'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 rilled with sensuous glamour and with primitive sweethearts, " femmes de reve, creatures a peine ebauchees." With Pecheur 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 impersonal emotions find expression in this idyll of the betrothal and parting of two Breton lovers, the fisherman Yann and " la grave et tendre Gaud." 674 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 chief obsessions, the changeable devouring sea and the all-pervasive thought of death, are rendered with power and melancholy. Madame Chrysan- 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 he Livre de la pitie et de la mort (1891), a significant title, under 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 Ramuntcho (1897) , the story of two Basque lovers separated by their different creeds. Near this beautiful Basque country, 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. He is modern chiefly by virtue of his impressionism, in description and sensa- tion, and by the wide range of his latter-day exoticism. 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 UEtui de nacre (1892), where we find one of his most striking short stories, Le Procurateur de Judee. Half of this volume 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 Rotisserie de la Peine Pedauque with its companion-volume, Les Opinions de M. Jerome Coignard (both of 1893) . The former, resembling Candide, 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 modern 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'Epicwre (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 ^he p a g es f the Histoire contemporaine 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), UAnneau d'amethyste (1899) and Af. Bergeret d 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. Vile des Pingouins (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 obscure in its references, the book yet contains many flashes of genius. Les Dieux out 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 sympathy 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. 2 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 jemme 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 8 Which he defined as a compound of "infinite shades of thought." 678 FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY Dido wandering in the myrtles with her immortal wound fine 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 donnait 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 un 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 Villageois (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 Fernande, 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 679 680 IN DRAMA: THE THREE MOVEMENTS of elaborate stage-settings and costumes. In this new departure Sir Henry Irving followed Sardou. The story of La Tosca (1887) and, in lighter vein, that of Madame Sans-Gene (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. UEtincelle (1879) shows how the " spark " of love may be kindled in a woman's heart. La Souris (1887) stages a ladies' battle for a lover — an amiable middle-aged Don Juan who succumbs to the charm of the ingenue. Le Monde oil 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 fils had pointed the way ; the road was clear, in the last dec- ades of the century, for a succession of plays 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, naturalness 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 l'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 UEvasion (1896), a group containing mostly comedy and satire. La Couvee is concerned with the training of children, UEngrenage 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 the wife of an inferior. The fault of the situation is attributed to the State, which should provide for its trained educators. II. The second division runs from Les Trois filles de M. Du- pont (1897) through Maternite (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 A varies, 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- BRIEUX 683 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 particular 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; 1 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 Pecuchet; 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- 1 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 Affaires sont les affaires (1903). This play is in the straight tradition of the money-drama from Tur caret 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," cf . 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 displays too much esprit de geometrie, and UEnigme (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 difficult situation of French women in the matter of divorce. A woman, divorcee for ade- quate reasons, remarries and is then attracted back to her former husband (cf. Le Berceau by Brieux). The child appears again as a great influence and ultimately as 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 Reveil (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 yielded 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 manner. 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, Amoureuse (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. Francois de Curel (b. 1854) , an aristocrat by birth and ideas, is interested in morbid psychology, in strong and strange situa- tions. He is a poet and a Symbolist and betrays Urel 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 be 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 humanitarian 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, espe- cially in the depiction of character. La Douloureuse, L 'autre Danger and L'Affranchie 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 d 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 oVAurec. 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 v ju e f ounc i expression in Gringoire (historical) and in Riquet a la Houppe {comedie-feerique) ; 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 patriotic 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 Flibustier (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 the spirit of 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 Hjalmar, who then commits suicide. But the bald plot is never the thing MAETERLINCK 689 with Maeterlinck, who makes us drink deep of symbolism, mood- iness 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 sinister 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 Pinvisible " mounts through the increasing uneasiness 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 youthful 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; and 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, La 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 form. At any rate, in 1902, he made His Second a distinct shift. Monna Vanna marks an attempt at Phase n 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 Guide'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 Sceur Beatrice, a medieval legend, is again more characteristic of the earlier Maeterlinck, and in UOiseau 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 cles 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 quoi revent les jeunes filles, Les Romanesques (1894) has yet a pretty wit and charm of its own. It presents two young 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 hero'ique — whose first representation (( c „ (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 Dumas 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 purple 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 burlesque 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 autumnal 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. UAiglon (1900) is not such a masterpiece; it shows a weaker and more confused inspiration; but it does not fail to gain Oth 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 sun 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 Renard 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 La Fleur 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 UAiglon 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 ^ e 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 Tendr esses (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 volume, which, however, already gives evidence of great skill in he 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 mort; 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 volume 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 Prud- homme. Again, his capacity for composing striking lines and couplets may be illustrated from the same volume: Je t'aime en attendant mon eternelle epouse; or witness the declaration that for the happiness of poets, II leur faut une 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 personal 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 (1842-1908) . He was a poor boy and learned in the Latin Quar- c , ter that sympathy 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 Reliquaire (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 UExilee, 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 Sultane, or La Greve des forgerons) 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 Mosques, 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 .. '"" : most significant school of the fin de siecle. 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 bolism 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 Symbvlistes. (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 Stephane 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 naturally elastic. They used certain new journals for their propaganda (La Renaissance, later La Plume, 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- His Work ^ ve anc * descriptive \ ft a l so 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 volume 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 genuine 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 a wider sense) appeal primarily to the ear and add the element of haunting melody to French poetics. On this acount and because of its religious values, Sagesse is Verlaine 's finest volume. 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 is 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 UHeure exquise conveys all his best qualities: La lune blanche Luit dans les bois, De chaque branche Part une voix Sous la ramee . . . bien-aimee! L'etang reflete, Profond miroir, La silhouette Du saule noir Ou le vent pleure. Revons, c'est l'heure. 702 IN POETRY: SENTIMENT AND SYMBOLISM Un vaste et tendre Apaisement Semble descendre Du firmament Que Tastre irise . . . C'est l'heure exquise! Standing for a spontaneous and most personal expression, Verlaine derives the principle of originality from emotion rather His Poetics ^ an * rom a reasone( ^ art - His Art poetique, already quoted, is averse to declamation (" Prends l'elo- quence et tords-lui le 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 Wore. 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 VImpair or an uneven number of syllables in his verse (cf. Swinburne) ; he allows assonances, tone-color, onomatopeia and repetends (cf. Poe and the last stanza in UHeure 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. 1 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 cafes 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 1 At the death of Mallarme (1898), Leon Dierx was elected "prince," and after him Paul Fort (see Epilogue) . The system was usually a voting-contest 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?-91), the evil genius of the Verlaine . 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 enfer (" psychological autobiography ") and Les Illuminations (prose-poems). His two most notable poems (Poesies completes, 1895) are Le Bateau ivre, a sustained meta- phor about a wandering bark which suffered 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, 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 u ^ h e 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 farmers in the South (cf. De L'Angelus de Vaube a VAngelus 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 Jar din de V In] ante (1893), which also contains many scenes from the faded grandeur of Spain: Mon ame est une infante en robe de parade . . . 2 But Samain's form is regularly Parnassian (cf. Aux 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 " (Viele-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 in Paris and the provinces. He had some contact with the Pre-Raphaelites and with the Provengal poets (see p. 609). His conversation and his personal magnetism attracted a number 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). UApres-Midi oVun 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 2 This is the kind of thing derided in that delightful parody on Symbolism, Les Deliquescences d' Adore Floupette (1885): Je voudrais que mon ame fut Aussi roide qu'un affut, Aussi remplie qu'un vieux fut. 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 medium, 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 Veternite le change, Le Poete suscite avec un glaive nu Son siecle epouvante de n'avoir pas conmi Que la mort triomphait dans cette voix etrange. (The last three lines may partly clarify the first) . L'Apres-Midi d'un Jaune illustrates the process of adumbrating 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: 3 Un cygne d'autrefois se souvient que c'est lui Magnifique, mais qui, sans espoir, se delivre Pour n'avoir pas chante la region ou vivre Quand du sterile hiver a resplendi 1'ennui. . . . In short, the swan, typifying the cold and sterile poet, now re- grets his sterility, but still holds high his head. The preference 8 It will be observed that this poet's versification is strictly Parnassian. 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-Griffin, 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 Symbolist is of the caliber of Mallarme. But with Gustave Kahn (b. 1859), we reach the theory and practice of le vers libre, 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 assonanced endings, internal rimes and repetends. The symmetry of verse is gone, but Kahn maintains that its distinctive rhythm and cadence remain; he admits that his 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-Grimn (b. Norfolk, Va., 1864) and Stuart Merrill (1863-1915). Viele-Grifim, 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 Joies and of Clarte de Vie. In La Che- vouchee d'Yeldis and La Legende 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-Griffin 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 Wore than is Viele-Griffin. Both of these men usually keep rime or near-rime. Merrill tends to rough rhythms and unequal lines. He began as a complicated melodist, a la Mallarme, and his earlier Les Fastes (1891) are sonorous and obscure. Les Quatres 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. 4 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, inflniment me- lancolique, eprise de reve, de mystere et d'ideal . . . ob- sedee des secretes 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, Cavaliers and Princesses, the Beast and the Sword. In those days Henri de Regnier dwelt in a golden palace " with onyx columns " ( Jean deGourmont), but he showed already a preference for Greek nudes and semi-mythological subjects. His cadenced and restrained vers libre 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, l'innombrable et pareille a la mer, toi, dont 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 officially 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-century 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 tendency we cannot neglect the work of Gaston Paris 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 poetique 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 Brunetiere, by the work of Emile Hennequin (1859- „ . 1888) the author of La Critique scientifique (1888) and 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 affinities. 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 _, _„ Brunetiere. Ferdinand Brunetiere (1849-1906), Brunetiere 1 . . v ' whose name has been so often cited m 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 deux 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 Brunetiere^ energies. During his whole career, he wrote at least one volume 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 frangaise (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 litter ature frangaise classique (1904 ff.) is his last will and testament, with the exception of an interesting volume on Honor e 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- iliar 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 universality 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 modern 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 classique is the monument to this side of the man. Yet in spite of himself he was a modernist in several respects. M - (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 accessible to the nineteenth-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 volume on Balzac, he recants to the extent of viewing le Na- turalisme 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 like 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 Brunetiere 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 vegetatives, qui ont des troncs et qui poussent des branches " (Lemaitre) . 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. Brunetiere'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 la 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 philosophiques 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 monuments, 1 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'ldees: than that of M. Lanson. He has defined criticism Faguet as « un d on d e vivre d'une infinite de vies etran- geres " (cf . Sainte-Beuve and Lemaitre) , and he has carried into 1 So is the indispensable Manuel bibliographique de la litterature frangaise moderne, 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 vues 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 philosophes {Dix-huitieme 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. 2 His work is a 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 contemporaine (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 2 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 Etudes 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 jeuilletons, 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 fits 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 faire 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 Th T volumes of La Vie litteraire (written for Le Temps, sionists: 1888-92) reflect the influences that characterize his A. France £ rg ^ p er i d (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 humanistic 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, 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 feuilleton 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 w r hich 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 l'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 f ore the c i ose f the century. Here it is our aim to treat only the talents that flowered from 1900 to 1914; and it is still too soon to be certain about the majority of these talents. It seems best, then, to discuss fully three illustrious representatives of the age and, as regards the remainder, to indi- cate 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 abundance 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 Rolland 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 anc * volume " rather than measure and taste. Never and has there been an epoch of greater individual Confusions liberty> w hether 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 " l'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 foundations 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, 1 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 modern 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 grounded 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 of Reality contmues the belief in the " bankruptcy of science " which was symptomatic of the century's end. 2 The doctrine of final causes, or the teleological explanation of reality, he finds equally man-made and unsatisfactory. Again, our philosophical difficulties 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 functioning of this transcendental intuition are nowhere clearly indicated in VEvolution Creatrice. Having disposed of space, M. Bergson proceeds to dispose of time. What we usually call facts are not 1 Hi3 latest book, L'Energie spirituelle (1919) does not fall within our scope. 8 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 an( j 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 World 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- ange 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 — or M. 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 modern 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 metdphysique, 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 - m ^ a corros i ve an( j pernicious immoralism, es- pecially in his poetry and fiction. His criticism (Promenades litteraires, 1904H3) 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 U Action frangaise, 3 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 a la Chateaubriand, to the principles of " throne and altar." Royalism and Catholicism are considered as safeguarding the nation and as establishing " Tidee de l'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. Ill 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 Breugnon (1919) and has told us of his upbring- 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 3 This journal represented the continuation of the anti-Dreyfus agitation. See above, pp. 664. ROLLAND 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 Christophe " Cahiers de la Quinzaine, 1904-12. 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. 4 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. 5 The heredity of Christopher is significantly set forth, and his childhood is described with charm {L'Aube). 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 PEtre." This leads (in La Revoke) 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 4 For example, in the works of Bennett, Mackenzie, Dreiser, Wassermann, Couperus, and Marcel Proust. 5 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. Prostrated 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 Journee), 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 c . . . 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 Journee, 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 art' 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 eternel. . . . 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 sources — 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, Tolstoy an, embracing poverty, confronting hardship — and triumphing over the market- place. In Rolland'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 Au-dessus 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 f m Henri 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-Oendre (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 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 . Bergson) . 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 Uamie 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. Romains' poem, La Vie Unanime (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 p in form, content or both. Paul Fort (b. 1872), " prince des poetes " since 1912, has written many volumes of Ballades francaises, 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 nai've 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 " l'exemplaire le plus curieux du poete h la fois spontane et subtil, naturel 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 humane. 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 terre charnelle, Mais pourvu que ce fut dans une juste guerre; Heureux ceux qui sont morts pour quatre coins de terre, Heureux ceux qui sont morts d'une mort solennelle. Heureux ceux qui sont morts dans les grandes batailles, Couches dessus le sol a la face de Dieu; Heureux ceux qui sont morts sur un dernier haut lieu Parmi tout l'appareil des grandes funerailles. . . . The dominating voice in poetry during this period was that of Emile Verhaeren (1855-1916). But Verhaeren's muse is Belgian rather than purely French. Born 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 Sairs 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 Les Villes tentaculaires (1895). This final phase contains the most characteristic poetry of Verhaeren. It is marked by objectivity, expansive power and Hig an interest in the manifold aspects of modern in- Master- dustrial life. It is distinctly a new " Futuristic " pieces poetry that appeared under such well-chosen titles as Les Forces tumultueuses (1902), La Multiple Splendeur (1906) and Les Rhythmes souverains (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 human 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 c j v j c 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 l'essor, 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; Elle est rude, complexe, ardente; elle est retorse; La joie et la bonte sont 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 Texprime — sait-il comment? — Qui sent en lui si bellement Passer les vivantes idees Avec leur pas sonore, avec leur geste clair Qu'elles reglent d'elles-memes l'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 735 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- nately " la vie 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. 6 Allowing for his coarser intoxications, it must be admitted that the chief trilogy of volumes analyzed above show powers of poetic expression unrivaled 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 travers les cris, les revoltes, les pleurs, Ruee au combat tier et male des douleurs, Pour en tirer V amour, comme on conquiert sa proie. 6 The subject of Whitman in France awaits thorough investigation. It does not appear that Verhaeren was consciously influenced by the American poet. Viele-Griffin, Merrill and Claudel probably were. In all of these writers, as in the case of Peguy, 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 Thomme et le monde et j 'adore la force Que donne et prend ma force a Fhomme et l'univers. Une tendresse enorme emplit l'apre savoir. Comprenez-vous 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 l'entente universelle. V The drama is best represented by nineteenth-century 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 portrart of the financier in his corrupt milieu. More is made of spiritual issues in L'Assaut (1912) and especially in L f 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 Minor desires. A romantic inclination is visible in Ba- taille, while Alfred Capus (b. 1858) 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). A 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 {UArbre, 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, UAnnonce jaite 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. ClaudeFs 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 need of both 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 (Caus. du lundi, Port. Htt., etc.), and " G. E. F." indicates the Grands Ecrivains jrangais series {Etudes biographiques et litter air es) . Bibliographies on French Literature: For the Middle Ages: *G. Paris, La Litterature jrangaise au moyen age, 5th edition, 1913; C. Voretzsch, Einjuhrung in das Studium der altfranzosischen Literatur, 2nd edition, Halle, 1913. For the Renaissance: H. Morf, Geschichte der jranzosischen Litera- tur im Zeitalter der Renaissance, 2nd edition, Strassburg, 1914; * G. Lanson, Manuel bibliographique de la litterature jrangaise modeme: I. 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 jrancaise de 1800 a 1906, 1907; Jassy et Lens, Les Ressources du travail intellectuel en France, 1921. Lorenz et Jordell, Catalogue de la librairie jrangaise gives monthly subject-lists of new French books and an annual index. Histories of French Literature: * G. Lanson, f Histoire de la litterature jrangaise, 16th edition, 1921 ; F. Brunetiere, Manuel de Vhistoire de la litterature jrangaise, 2nd edition, 1899; * Suchier und Birch-Hirschfeld, Geschichte der jranzosi- schen Literatur von den altesten Zeiten bis zur Gegenwart, 2nd edition, Leipzig and Vienna, 1913; G. Saintsbury, A Short History oj French 739 740 BIBLIOGRAPHY Literature 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 frangaise, des origines a 1900, 8 vols., 1896-1899 (chapters by different authors); * Desire Nisard, f Histoire de la litterature frangaise, 4 vols., 1844-1861 (still the standard ex- position from the Classical point of veiw). Historic and Social Background op French Literature : * Histoire de France, depuis les origines jusqu'a la Revolution, 18 vols. (9 Tomes), edited by fE. Lavisse, 1900-1911; F. Schrader, Atlas de geo- graphic historique, (Hachette); L. Hourticq, Histoire de Vart {Collec- tion Ars Una: La France), Hachette; Kr. Nyrop, Grammaire historique de la langue frangaise, 3rd edition, vol. I, Copenhagen, 1914; F. Brunot, Histoire de la langue frangaise des origines a 1900, 5 vols., 1906-1916; L. E. Kastner, History of French Versification, Oxford, 1903; M. Grammont, * Petit traite de versification frangaise, 1908; W. C. Brownell, French Traits, an essay in Comparative Criticism, New York, 1902. Introductory Chapter: * F. Brunetiere, Le Caractcre essentiel de la litterature frangaise in his f Etudes critiques, 5 e serie, 1893; G. Paris, Preface to Petit de Julleville, vol. I; G. Lanson, Caracteres generaux de la litterature frangaise 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 e 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. O. 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 delVepopea francese, Florence, 1884; *J. Bedier, Les Legendes 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. b. 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 frangais 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 merveilleuses 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. jr. 1912, p. 539; J. Bedier in the Revue des deux mondes, CXXXV (1896), 4 e 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 1150 (Proceedings of the Academic 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 ajid 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 samtlichen 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 Isolt, 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 jemme et Vamour au XII e siecle d'apres les poemes de Chretien de Troyes, 1909. The four romances mentioned have been translated into Modern English 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 published 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 Grail-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 francaise au XIII e 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). 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. Oulmont, 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, Samtliche 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 e 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 Warnke, Halle, 1898, and his Quellen 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 dans le 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 jeu: G. Paris et U. Robert, ed. Les Miracles de Notre-Dame, 7 vols., 1876-1883; G. R. Coffman, A New Theory concerning the Origin of the Miracle Play (dissertation), Menasha, 1914; O. 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 frangais, 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; Modern 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 delle opere di Brunetto Latini, Italian translation by R. 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 frangaise du moyen age in his ^Poesie du moyen age, II, 3rd edition, 1906. Killis Campbell, 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 Balladenformen von ihren Anfangen 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 Guillaume 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 745 Chapter II : A. 0. Norton, Mediaeval Universities, Cambridge, U. S. A., 1909; G. H. Luquet, Aristote et VUniversite de Paris au XI 1 1* siecle, in the Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes, 1904; D. H. Carnahan, 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 Mediaeval 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. Picot, 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 oj Master Pierre Patelin, Boston and New York, 1905. Chapter IV: On Antoine de La Sale: *J. W. Soderhjelm, La Nouvelle frangaise au XV 6 siecle, 1910; J. Neve, Antoine de La Sale, Brussels and Paris, 1903; P. Toldo, Contri- buto alio studio della novella francese del XV e XVI secolo, Rome, 1895; G. Paris in the Journal des savants, 1895. On Villon: *G. Paris, Francois Villon (G. E. F.), 1901; P. Champion, Francois 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, Geschkhte; * F. Brunetiere, Histoire de la litter ature 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 francaise au XV I e siecle, 1828-1842; P. de Nolhac, Petrarque et Vhumanisme, 2nd edition, 1907; E. Picot, Les Frangais italianisants au XVI e 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, he Petrarquisme en France au XVI e siecle, 1909 (for the sonnet, as a form, p. 102 ff.). BOOK I Chapter I : H. Guy, Histoire de la poesie francaise au XVI e siecle, vol. I, 1910; the works of Morf, Brunetiere and Tilley; L. Deiaruelle, Guillaume Bude, 1907; H. Chamard, Les Origines de la poesie frangaise de la Renaissance (Boccard) ; Ph. A. Becker, Jean Lemaire, Der erste human- istische Dichter Frankreichs, Strassburg, 1893. Chapter II : Introductory volume to the (Euvres de Clement Marot, ed. Guiffrey, vol. I, 1911; O. 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 Beaulieu, Lancaster, 1918 (reprinted from the Romanic Review, 1914 ff.); H. Molinier, 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, UCEuvre de Rabelais, 1910; Introduction to the (Euvres 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 francais de la Renaissance, 1914; Mary Robinson, Marguerite of Angouleme, 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 Modern Lang. Assoc, XX; A. Baur, Maurice Sceve et la Renaissance lyonnaise, 1905; J. Arnoux, Antoine Heroet, neoplatonicien et poete, 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 invente in the Revue univer sit aire, 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 Ba'if, 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. Pellissier, La vie et les ceuvres 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, fLes 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 l'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, Guillaume du Vair, Vhomme et Vorateur, 1907; P. Bonnefon, Pierre Charron in Montaigne et ses amis, vol. II, 1897; F. Strowski, Saint Francois de Sales, 1898; Due de Broglie, Malherbe (G. E. F.), 1897; *F. Brunot, La Doctrine de Malherbe d'apres son commentaire sur Desportes, 1891 ; M. Souriau, La Versification de Malherbe, Poitiers, 1912; L. Arnould, Honorat de Bueil, seigneur de Racan, 1901; J. Vianey, Mathurin Regnier, 1896; Mario Schiff, La Fille d' alliance de Montaigne, Marie de Gournay, 1910; Ch. Garrisson, Theophile et Paul de Viau, etude historique et litteraire, 1899. BOOK III In general: E. Lavisse, Histoire, V, Parts I and II; G. Hanotaux, Histoire du Cardinal Richelieu, 2 vols., 1893-1896; G. Boissier, UAcademie fran- gaise sous Vancien regime, 1909; Victor Cousin, La Societe frangaise d'apres le Grand Cyrus, 2 vols., 1858; Vial et Denise, I dees et doctrines litteraires du XVH e 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 Rambouillet, 1912; H. Vogler, Die literargeschichtlichen Kenntnisse und Urteile des J-L. Guez de Balzac, 1908; Fr. Masson, Histoire de UAcademie jrangaise, 1913; Brunetiere, Vaugelas et la theorie de V usage in the Revue des deux mondes, 1901; Abbe Fabre, Jean Chapelain et nos deux premieres Academies, 1890. Chapter II : Gustave Reynier, Le Roman sentimental avant VAstree f 1908; *A. Le Breton, Le Roman au XVII* siecle; *T. F. Crane, ed. of Boileau, Les Heros de roman, Boston, 1902; O-C. Reure, La vie et les ceuvres de Honor e d'Urfe, 1910; W. Kiichler, Zu den Anjangen 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 XV I e siecle, 1883; G. Lanson, L'Idee de la tragedie avant Jodelle 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 Jodelle a Moliere, 1911; E. Rig^al, Alexander Hardy et le theatre francais a la fin du XVI* siecle, 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. fur jranz. Sprache u. Lit. 1892; Ch. Arnaud, Etude sur la vie et les ceuvres de Vabbe d'Aubignac, 1887; La Memoire de Mahelot, ed. H. C. Lancaster, 1921 (gives stage-settings, etc). Chapter IV: * G. Lanson, Pierre CorneUle, (G. E. F.) 4th ed. 1913; E. Marti- nenche, La Comedia espagnole en France, 1900; E. Faguet, En lisant CorneUle, 1913; A. Dorchain, Pierre CorneUle, 1918; E. Picot, Bibliographic Cornelienne, 1876 (continued by P. Verdier and E. Pelay, 1908); A. Gaste, La Querelle du Cid, 1899; W. A. Nitze, CorneUle 's Conception of Character in Modern PhUology, 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. fur franz, Spr. u. Lit. 1894-1906; G. Wendt, Pierre Corneille und Jean Rotrou, Leipzig, 1910. Chapter V: A. Fouillee, Descartes (G. E. F.), 1893; G. Lanson, Hommes et livres, 1895; *F. Brunetiere, Jansenistes et Cartesiens in the Etudes critiques, IV e serie; E. S. Haldane, Descartes, his Life and Times, 1905; G. J. Brett, The PhUosophy of Gassendi, 1908; F. Perrens, Les Libertins, 2nd ed., 1899; H. Joly, Malebranche, 1910. BOOK IV Chapter I : Lavisse, I.e.; f Voltaire, Le Siecle 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 classiquef 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 siecle, 1919; Comte d'Haussonville, Madame de La Fayette (G. E. F.), 1891; Due de Noailles, Histoire de Mme de Maintenon, 4 vols., 1848-1858; Saint-Rene Taillandier, Madame de Maintenon, 1920; *G. Lanson, Choix de Lettres du XVII* siecle, 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 e serie; L. Moland, Moliere et la comedie italienne, 1867; G. Huszar, Moliere et VEspagne, 1907; Currier and Gay, Catalogue of the Moliere Collection in the Harvard Library, Cambridge, U. S. A., 1906; fH. 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-Royal, 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 Ha vet, 1851, 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 e siecle, 1887; the same in Petit de Julleville, vol. V, ch. 3; G. Saintsbury, A History of Criticism, Edinburgh, 1900-1904, vol. II; *F. Brunetiere, UEsthetique de Boileau in Et. cr. VI e serie; G. Lanson, Boileau (G. E. F.), 1892; F. Brunetiere, La Philosophic de Bossuet in Et. cr. V e 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 6 siecle, 2 vols., 1901-1904. PART III On the 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 litterature francaise au XVIII 6 siecle, 4 vols., 1828; H. Hettner, Liter -aturgeschichte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts. Theil II: Geschichte der franzosischen Literatur, 5th ed., revised, Brunswick, 1894; fE. Faguet, Dix-huitieme siecle: Etudes litteraires, 1890 (ff.) ; J. Barni, Histoire des Idees morales et politiques en France au XVIII 6 siecle, 2 vols., 1865-67; E. Bersot, Etudes sur le XVIII e siecle, 2 vols., 1855. For Bibliography: Lanson, Manuel, vol. Ill; Wright, History; L. P. Betz, La litterature comparee, 2nd ed., Strassburg, 1904. BOOK I Chapter I : *H. Bigault, Histoire de la Querelle des anciens et des modernes, 1856 and 1859; H. Gillot, La Querelle des anciens et des modernes en France (these), Nancy, 1914 (exhaustive as far as Perrault's Paralleles) ; F. Vial and L. Denise, Idees et doctrines litteraires du XVII 6 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 Vhistoire de VIdee de progres jusqu'a la fin du XVIII 6 siecle, 1910 (limited 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 I dees politiques de Fenelon in the Revue d'histoire moderne, 1899. Chapter III : E. Lavisse, Histoire de France, VIII, Part II; *C. Stryienski, he 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 frangaise du XVI e au XX e siecle. Vol. V: Dix-huitieme siecle, 1905; *M. Roustan, Les Philosophes et la societe frangaise 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 Geoff rin et sa fille, 1897; Introductions to Mme du Deffand's Correspon- 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. Mornet, Les Sciences de la Nature en France au XVIII e siecle, 1911; *J. Texte, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les origines du cosmo- politisme litter aire au XVIII* siecle, 1895 — English translation, 1899; R. Rosieres, Recherches sur la poesie contemporaine, 1896 (articles on the English and the German influences). Other bibliography on this subject will be found 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 specializing student, G. Lanson, Origines de Vesprit 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, Fontenelle (G. E. F.), 1905. BIBLIOGRAPHY 753 Chapter II : Villemain, Bersot, Faguet (calls Voltaire " un chaos d'idees claires ") ; Brunetiere, Etudes critiques, I and III, also in Etudes sur le XVIII* siecle, 1911 (an incomplete study, minimizes English influences); * G. Lanson, Voltaire (G. E. F.), 2nd ed., 1910 (multum 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 o] 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 English 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 ceuvres, d'apres les papier s 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 Julleville, Barni, Villemain; Sainte-Beuve, Caus. 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 (Euvres, 2 vols., 1865; * A. Lombard, L'Abbe Du Bos, un initiateur de la pensee moderne (these), 1913. On St. Pierre, see Sainte-Beuve (supra), Barni, J. Fabre, Les Peres de la Revolution, and J. Drouet, L'Abbe de St. Pierre, Vhomme et Vceuvre, 1912. On the Memoirs, see Ch. Aubertin, UEsprit public au XVIII e 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 Vhistoire de France pendant le XVIII e siecle, 37 vols., 1846-81) have been made more valuable by the publication of a thorough Table alphabetique by A. Marquiset, 1913. On the journals, see Petit de Julleville, VI; also P. Van Tieghem, L'Annee litteraire comme intermediate en France des litteratures etrangeres, 1917, 754 BIBLIOGRAPHY BOOK III Chapter I : * F. Vial and L. Denise, Idees et doctrines litteraires du XVIII e 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, f Les Epoques du theatre frangais, 1892 (on Voltaire and Crebillon) ; J.-J. Jusserand, Shakespeare en France sous Vancien regime, 1898 — also English edition, New York, 1899; T. R. Lounsbury, Shakespeare and Voltaire, New York, 1902; E. P. Dargan, Shakespeare and Ducis in Modern Philology, X, (1912). Chapter II : * C. Lenient, La Comedie au XVIII 6 siecle, 2 vols., 1888; E. Lintilhac, Histoire generale du theatre en France. Vol. IV: La Comedie au XVIII e siecle, 1909; J. Lemaitre, La Comedie apres Moliere et le theatre de Dancourt, 1882; (for Lesage, see next chapter); G. Larroumet, Marivaux, sa vie et ses ceuvres, new ed., 1894; G. Deschamps, Marivaux (G. E. F.), 1897; L. de Lomenie, Beaumarchais et son temps, 2 vols., 1856; E. Lintilhac, 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 II e siecle, 1910 (complete list of drames). Chapter III : *A. Le Breton, Le Roman au XVIII e siecle, 1898; G. Saintsbury, A History of the French Novel, vol. I, 1917; L. Claretie, Lesage, romancier, 1891 (diffuse); E. Lintilhac, Lesage (G. E. F.), 1893; (for Marivaux, see preceding chapter); H. Harrisse, VAbbe Prevost, Histoire de sa vie et de ses ceuvres, 1896 (original researches) ; V. Schroeder, Un Romancier frangais au XVIII e siecle. UAbbe 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 frangais depuis Malherbe jusqu'a nos jours, 2 vols., 1864 (Anthology, with Notices); B. Jullien, Les Paradoxes litteraires de La Motte, 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, UElegie en France avant le romantisme, 1898 (Parny, Bertin, etc.); L. Morel, James Thomson, sa vie et ses ceuvres, 1895; F. Baldensperger, Young et ses ' Nuits' en France in BIBLIOGRAPHY 755 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 philosophes au XVIII 6 siecle, 2nd ed., 1857; J. P. Belin, Le Mouvement philosophique de 1748 a, 1749, 2 vols., 1913; F. Rocquain, L'Esprit revolutionnaire avant la Revolution, 1878. BOOK IV Chapter I : *L. Ducros, Les Encyclopedistes, 1900; J. Morley, Diderot and the Encyclopaedists, new ed., 2 vols., 1897; J. Rocafort, Les Doctrines litteraires de V Encyclopedic ou le Romantisme des encyclopedistes, 1890; J. Bertrand, Dalembert (G. E. F.), 1889; *L. Dimier, Buff on, 1919; M. Flourens, Buff on. Histoire de ses travaux et de ses idees, 2nd ed., 1850; on the later sensationalists: Levy-Bruhl, History of Modern Philosophy in France, Chicago, 1899; F. Picavet, Les Ideologues, 1891. Chapter II : * G. Pellissier, 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, Vhomme et Vecrivain, 1894; J. Morley, op. cit., Ch. I, above; R. L. Cru, Diderot as a disciple of 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 XVIII e siecle, 1915-16; F. Brunetiere, Etudes critiques, II (on the Salons). BOOK V Chapter I : On Romanticism, in general: D. Mornet, Le Romantisme en France au XVIII e siecle, 1912; same author, Le Sentiment de la Nature en France de Rousseau a Bernardin 756 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-Jacques 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; bibliography) ; 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 in Books VI and VII; 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, f Evolution de la critique and Etudes critiques, IV (on the novels); E. Faguet, Politiques et moralistes (see below), vol. I — also for Constant; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries 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 Nouvelles etudes sur Chauteaubriand, 1912; f Sainte-Beuve, Chateaubriand et son groupe litteraire sous VEmpire, 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, UExotisme americain dans I'oeuvre 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 universe! des contemporains, 6th ed., 1893. Petit de Julleville, vols. VII and VIII; *G. Pellissier, Le Mouve- ment litteraire au XIX e siecle, 1889 (ff.) —English translation, 1897; F. Strowski, Tableau de la litterature jrangaise au XIX* siecle, 1912; E. Gilbert, Le Roman en France pendant le XI X e 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 XIX e siecle, 3 vols., 1891-1900; E. Hatin, Histoire politique et litteraire de la presse en France, 8 vols., 1859-61; H. Avenel, La Presse jrangaise depuis 1789 jusqu'd nos jours, 1900. Lanson, Manuel, IV and Supplement; Thieme, Guide bibliographique ; G. Vicaire, Manuel de V amateur des livres au XIX e siecle, 7 vols., 1894-1910. BOOK VI Chapter I : On general history, see above. — T. Gautier, Histoire du Romantisme, 1894; L. Maigron, Le Romantisme et les mozurs, 1910; P. Lasserre, Le Romantisme jrangais, 2nd ed., 1908 (hostile); Lanson, Histoire; F. Vial and L. Denise, Idees et doctrines litteraires du XIX e 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 influences: C. Des Granges, La Presse litteraire sous la Restauration, 1815-30, 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 jrangais in Etudes de litterature europeenne, 1898; F. Baldensperger, Goethe en France: etude de litterature comparee (these), 1904, also Esquisse dJune 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 jrangais (these), 1907; L. Maigron, Le Roman historique a Vepoque romantique: essai sur Vinjluence de Walter Scott, 2nd ed., 1912. On Nodier: *E. Montegut, Nos morts contemporains, I, 1884; Sainte- Beuve, Port, litt., I; L. Seche, Cenacle de Joseph Delorme; J. Retinger, Le Conte jantastique dans le romantisme jrangais; M. Salomon, Charles Nodier et le groupe romantique, 1908. On Beranger: Sainte-Beuve, Cans, 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 Lije of Lamartine, 2 vols., Boston, 1918; L. Seche, 758 BIBLIOGRAPHY Etudes d'histoire romantique: Lamartine de 1816 a 1880, 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. Bire: 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, Vhomme et le poete, 1893; C. Renouvier, Victor Hugo, le poete, 4th ed., 1902; E. Rigal, Victor Hugo, poete epique, 1900; M. Souriau, Les I dees 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* siecle, 2 vols., 1894. On Musset: A. Barine (pseudonym), Alfred de Musset (G. E. F.), 1893; Sainte-Beuve, Caus. du lundi, I and XIII; L. Seche, 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 biographic intellectuelle, 1912. On Gautier: E. Richet, Theophile Gautier, Vhomme, la vie et Vceuvre, 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 Cromwell 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, auteur dramatique, 1902. Chapter VI: Wells, Gilbert, Maigron, etc. (see above) ; A. Le Breton, Le Roman jrancais 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, Stendhal-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 et Vhistoire in the Revue de Paris, 1902; R. Doumic, George Sand, dix conferences, 1909 (English translation, 1910); *W. Karenine, George Sand, sa vie et ses ceuvres, 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, oth ed., 1910; E. Faguet in Petit de Julleville, VII; G. Saintsbury, A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe, Vol. Ill: Modern 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 oeuvre (G. E. F.), 1885; Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, Victor Cousin, sa vie et sa correspondance, 3 vols., 1895. On the Catholic 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 frangais du XI X e siecle, 1897; A. Bardoux, Guizot, 1894; also Sainte-Beuve, Caus. 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 Michelet, 1875; Faguet, 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. Pellissier, Le Mouvement litter aire contemporain, 2nd ed., 1902; fF. Brunetiere, Le Roman naturaliste, 1883; David-Sauvageot, Le Realisme et le naturalisme, 1889; L. Desprez, VEvolution naturaliste, 1884; fE. Zola, Les Romanciers naturalistes, 1881; fE. Scherer, Etudes critiques sur la litterature contemporaine, 10 vols., 1863-95; f J. Lemaitre, Les Contemporains, 7 vols., 1885-99; 8th vol. (posthu- mous), 1918. 760 BIBLIOGRAPHY Chapter I : *A. Le Breton, Balzac, Vhomme et I'ceuvre, 1905; *H. Taine, Balzac, in Nouveaux essais de critique et d'histoire, 1865 — also Eng- lish translation of the same essay by L. O'Rourke, New York, 1906; Sainte-Beuve, Caus. 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., 1922. Special phases: *Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, Histoire des ceuvres de Balzac, 1879 (3rd ed., 1888); same author, Autour de Honore de Balzac, 1897; M. Barriere, UCEuvre de Balzac, 1890 (useful sum- maries of stories); Cerfberr et Christophe, Repertoire de la Comedie humaine, 1887. Chapter II : * H. Parigot, Le Theatre d'hier, 1893; C. Lenient, La Comedie en France au XIX 6 siecle, 2 vols., 1898; +F. 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 mceurs, 1889; *H. Gaillard de Champris, Emile Augier et la comedie sociale, 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, Etude sur la poesie frangaise, 1830-68 (publ. in Histoire du Romantisme, 1874); C. Mendes, Le Mouvement poetique francais 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 mal, Levy ed., 1868 f.; C. Asselineau, Charles Baudelaire, sa vie et son ceuvre, 1879 (partial); J. Huneker, in Egoists, New York, 1909. On Banville: Sainte-Beuve, Caus. 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 VUniversite des Annales, 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. F.), 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, Caus. 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'ceuvre de Guy de Maupassant, 1907; J. Lemaitre, Contemporaim, I. Chapter V: B. Schmidt, Le Groupe des romanciers naturalistes, Carlsruhe, 1903; C. Brun, Le Roman social en France au XIX e siecle, 1910. fE. 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, I 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 ta 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 18^9 (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-Bruhl, La Philo- sophic d'Auguste Comte, 1900; *J. S. Mill, The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, New York, 1887. On Taine: *V. Giraud, Essai sur Taine: son oeuvre, son influence, 4th ed., 1909; same author, Maltres d 'autrefois et d'aujourd'hui, 1913 762 BIBLIOGRAPHY (Sainte-Beuve, Taine, Brunetiere, etc.) ; A. Laborde-Milaa, Hippolyte Taine, essai d'une biographie intellectuelle, 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 Philosophie d'Ernest Renan, 1905; G. Paris, Penseurs et poetes, 1896. Chapter III : On Quinet; Faguet, Politiques 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. Doumic, Portraits d'Ecrivains, II, 1909; on Quinet, the church and Veuillot: A. Guerard, op. cit. (Bk. VI, Ch. VII); also L. Dimier, Veuillot, 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 siecle: * 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, V 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) ; f P. Bourget, Essais de psychologie contem- poraine, 2 vols., 1883; definitive edition, 2 vols., 1901; G. Pellissier, Le Mouvement litteraire contemporain, 1901 ; * V. Giraud, Les Maitres de Vheure, 2 vols., 1912-14 (Rod, Vogue, 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. Schofrler, Die Stellung Huysmans im franzosischen 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. Michaut, 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; *F. W. Chandler, The Contemporary Drama of France, Boston, 1920; A. E. Sorel, Essais de psychologic 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, Vhomme, la vie et Vceuvre, 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 Bibliographic, 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, V Attitude du lyrisme contemporain, 1911; G. Walch, ed., Anthologie des poetes jrancais contemporains, 3 vols., 1919 (with Notices)', G. Kahn, Symbolistes et decadents, 1902. C. Morice, Paul Verlaine, Vhomme et Vceuvre, 1888; *E. Lepelletier, Paul Verlaine, sa vie, son ceuvre, 1907 — English translation, 1909. On Mallarme: 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 oeuvre, 1908. Chapter IV: J. Bedier, Hommage a Gaston Paris, 1904; H. Behrens, Francisque Sarceys Theaterkritik (dissertation) Greifswald, 1911; Giraud, Maitres de Vheure (on Faguet, BouFg^t, 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 Jdensuel, 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. Casella and E. Gaubert, La nouvelle litterature, 1895- 1905, 2nd ed., 1906; F. Baldensperger, L'Avant-guerre dans la littera- 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, JJne Philosophic nouvelle, M. Henri Bergson in the Revue des deux mondes, VII (1912) 6 e per. — also English 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 Modern French Writers, 1921. On Rolland: Mme Duclaux (above); P. Seippel, Romain Rolland, Vhomme et Vceuvre, 1913; S. Zweig, Romain Rolland — 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 Modern 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 litter aires, 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, 27 Almanack de Gotha, 135 Amadas et Idoine, 51 Amiel, 662 Amy, Pierre, 146 Amyot, 193-194, 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 Apollonius 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 Arnauld, 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, 53-54, 15, 73 Augier, Emile, 595-597, 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, 685-694, 280, 412, 426, 482, 519, 524, 566, 568, 570, 571, 575, 598, 613, 616, 618, 623, 625, 626, 629, 651, 666, 667, 680, 682, 684, 705, 714, 734 Balzac, Jean-Louis Guez de, 224-225, 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 Hairnet, 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, 786-737 Baudelaire, 602-605, 551, 700, 701, 705, 713, 717 Bayle, 373-378, 270, 286, 381, 382, 396, 408, 412, 413, 453, 456, 457, 465, 468, 639 Bazin, Rene, 730 Beaumarchais, 429-430, 363, 424, 427, 432, 680 Becque, Henry, 600-601, 681, 684 Bede, 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, Remy, 175, 176, 178, 183, 187 Benda, J., 724 Bennett, Arnold, 727 (note) Benoit de Sainte-More, 89-40, 73 Benserade, 226 Beranger, 528-529 Bercuire, Pierre, 98-99, 88 Bergson, Henri, 721-725, 720, 729, 731, 734 Bernard, Claude, 625, 645 Bernard, Gentil, 446 Bernard, St., 100 Bernart de Ventadorn, 33 Bernhardt, Sarah, 631, 679 Berny, Mme de, 585, 586 Bernstein Henri, 736, 6, 737 Beroul, 42, 43 Bertaut, 188, 189 Berthelot, 652 Bertin, 445, 447, 448 Bertran de Born, 33 Bertrand, Louis, 730 Beyle, 565, see Stendhal Bible, 16, 158, 376, 468, 469, 531, 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 Boex, J.-H. and S.-J., 668 (see Rosny, J.-H.) Boileau, 323-830, 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, Henri, 730 Bordeors, Les deux, 84 Borderie, de la, 143 Bornier, Henri de, 688 Borstel, Sieur de Gaubertin, 230 Bossuet, 880-836, 98, 101, 159, 160, 212, 225, 258, 276, 279, 283, 295, 347, 357, 392, 393, 400, 408, 457, 513, 579 Boucher, 479 Bouhours, Abbe, 281, 340 (note) INDEX 769 Bouilhet, Louis, 614 Boulay-Paty, 523 Bourdaloue, 212, 335, 408 Bourdeille, Pierre de, see Brantome Bourget, Paul, 610-612 (Fiction), 716-717 (Criticism), 566, 623, 656, 665, 669, 729 Boursault, 253 Boutroux, 722 Brantome, 204-206, 193 Brer Rabbit Collections, 65 Brieux, Eugene, 681-683, 684, 736 Brownell, W. C, 4, 640, 651 Browning, Robert, 705 Brunetiere, 712-715, m, 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 Burton, Comte de, 459-461, 8, 370, 452, 455, 497 Bunyan, John, 63 Bussy-Rabutin, 205, 286, 289, 340 (note) Byron, 523-524, 498, 505, 515, 520, 537, 544, 546, 548, 559, 561, 565 Caillavet G. de, 737 Calas, 464 Callisthenes, 38 Calvin, 154-160, 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 Ceard, 624, 681 Celestina, 137 Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, 86, 115, 117, 118 Cervantes, 5, 50, 229, 247 Chambers, 371, 451 Champfleury, 613 Chancel, 322 Chancun de Guillelme, 27 Chandler, F. W., 687, 736 Chanson d'Antioche, 19 Chanson de Jerusalem, 19 Chanson de Roland, 20-25, 26, 27 Chapelain, 228, 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, 95-97, 91, 118 Charles, Mme Julie, 530 Charron, 197, 210, 271 Chartier, Alain, 93-95, 81, 91, 166 Chastiement d'un pere a son fits, 81 Chateaubriand, 507-516, 8, 341, 416, 493, 497, 503, 505, 517, 518, 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 Coucy, 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 Chaulieu, 445 ChenedoUe, 520 Chenier, Andre, 448-450, 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 Collins, Anthony, 371 Commines, Phillippe de, 121-124, 113, 114 770 INDEX Comte, Auguste, 645-648, 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, 505-506, 497, 498, 522 Cop, Nicolas, 155, 156 Copernicus, 382 Coppe, Frangois, 679-698, 605, 669, 688, 695 Coquelin, Constant, 693 Corbiere, 703 Cordier, 154 Corneille, Pierre, 251-262, 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 Corneille, Thomas, 254, 314, 322, 340 (note), 378, 379 Cortegiano, 11, see Castiglione Costanzo, Angelo di, 189 Cotton, 202 Coulanges, see Fustel Couperus, 727 (note) Courbet, 613 C ouronnement de Louis, 26 Couronnement de Renard, 66 Cousin, Victor, 578-579, 235, 504, 505, 521 (note) Crebillon pere, 421-422, 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, 453-455, 369, 370, 451, 452, 464, 473, 476 Damigeron, 80 Dancourt, 425 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 Vhiver et de Vete, 83 Deffand, Mme du, 366, 368, 369 Delacroix, E., 520, 524, 604 Delavigne, Casimir, 524, 554, 559 Delille, Abbe, 446 Delorme, Joseph, see Sainte-Beuve De Phyllide et Flora, 55 De Quincey, 347 Desaugiers, 528 Descartes, 263-272, 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, Philippe, 176, 184, 188, 189, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217 Despreaux, see Boileau Destouches, Nericault, 426 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), 473-482 (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, Leon, 702 (note), 706 Dies Irae, 58 Diodorus, 194 Dit de la Rose, 55 INDEX 771 Dit dou vrai aniel, 85 Dobson, Austin, 36, 552 Doette, La belle, 31 Dolet, 132, 149, 161, 339 Donnay, Maurice, 687, 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-Francois, 521 Du Bos, Abbe, 408-409 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 Vaveugle, 112 Du Marsais, 452 Dumas pere, 559-560 (Plays), 570- 571 (Life and Novels), 519, 520, 523, 554, 555, 597, 692 Dumas fils, 597-600, 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&1-459, 463, 473, 474 Eneas, Roman de t 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 Fougeres, 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, 715-716, 374, 516 658, 691 Farce de Maitre Pathelin, 112 Farel, Guillaume, 157 Fauriel, 497, 554 Favart, 427 Fenelon, 357-360, 332, 334, 340 (note), 346, 409, 492 Feuillet, Octave, 669 Feydeau, Ernest, 613 Ficino, 128, 161, 164, 165 Fielding, 435 Filleul, 245 Firdusi, 643 Flamenca, 51-52, 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 Blanche fleur, 53 Florian, 446, 718 , Florian-Parmentier, 732 Florio, 202 Folengo, 147 Folie Tristan, 43 Fontaine, Charles, 11$, 139 Fontanes, 508, 576 Fontenelle, 343-344 (Digression), 378-382 (Life and Works), 254, 270, 339, 340, 344, 346, 347, 351, 358, 367, 368, 370, 373, 391, 416, 428, 438, 444, 445 Formey, 452 Fort, Paul, 731-782, 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 I, 110, 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, 659-660, 401 Gace Brule, 35 Gaimer, Geoffrey, 73 Galiani, 368 Galileo, 264 Gambetta, 663, 679 Garat, 461 Gamier, Robert, 242, 238, 243, 245, 246 Gamier de Pont-Sainte-Maxence, 73, 15 Gassendi, 268, 270, 291 Gautier d'Arras, 61 Gautier de Coincy, 85 Gautier de Metz, 81 Gautier, Theophile, 550-552 (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 de, 366, 368, 369, 379, 413, 473 Gerbert de Montreuil, 47, 48, 51 Gerson, Jean le Charlier, 100-102, 63, 98 Geulincx, 271 Ghil, Rene, 703, 706 Gibbon, 401 Gilbert, 447 Gillot, 209, 345 Giraldi Cinthio, 246, 247 Girard de Roussillon, 28, 27 Giraud, V., 717 Glatigny, 605 Godeau, 226 Godefroi de Bouillon, 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, 627-629, 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 Gourmont, Remy de, 725 Gournay, Mile de, 216, 217 Graal, Conte del, 47 Graelent, 53 Grail, Holy, 47, 48 Greban, Arnoul, 106 Greban, the brothers, 105 Greban, Simon, 107 Gregh, Femand, 721 Gresset, 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 Guillaume de Dole, 51 Guillaume de Lorris, 56-59, 62, 63 Guillaume de Machaut, 89-90, 36, 131 Guiraud, Alexandre, 519 Guiron, 53 Guizot, 579-580, 364, 505, 521 (note), 578, 583, 584, 659 Guttinguer, Ulric, 520 Guyon, Mme, 334, 357 INDEX 773 Halevy, 595 Haller, 463 Hanska, Mme de, 586, 587 Hardy, Alexandre, 245-248, 207, 238, 259, 260, 261, 554 Harrison, Frederic, 648 Hauptmann, G., 681 Hegel, 578, 649 Heinrich der Glichezare, 66 Hein van Aken, 62 Heine, 120, 504 Heliodorus, 313 Helvetius, C, 461 Henault, President, 367, 368, 410 Hennequin, Emile, 712, 717 Hennique, 624, 681 Henri d'Andeli, 83, 84, 102 Henri de Valenciennes, 74-75 Henry IV, 218, 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, 534-543 (Life and Poetry), 554-559 (Plays), 569- 570 (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 Bordeaux, 29 Huysmans, 665-666, 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, Chevalier de, 452, 458 Jean Bodel, see Bodel Jean de Meun, 59-62, 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, 576, 334, 498, 508 Joufrois, 51 Jullien, J., 681 Jurieu, 373 Jusserand, J.-J., 184, 651 (note) Juvenal, 326 Kahn, Gustave, 699, 706, 707 Kant, 4, 409, 504, 723 Kean, Edmund, 554 Keats, 449 Kemble, Charles, 554 Kempis, Thomas a, 211 Kepler, 264 Ker, W. P., 53 Kiot, 49 Knox, John, 158 La Barre, 464 Labe, Louise, 169 Labiche, Emile, 595 La Bruyere, 349-352, 136, 219, 280, 774 INDEX 281, 340 (note), 344, 347, 380, 397, 435, 592 La Calprenede, 238, 235, 236, 314, 326 La Chaussee, 431, 432 Lacordaire, 577 La Fare, 446 La Fayette, Mme de, 287-288, 222, 235, 276, 283, 284, 289 La Fontaine, 300-305, 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 Lai du Cor, 53 Lalanne, 205 Lamarck, 460, 635 Lamartine, 580-533, 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, 444-445, 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, 715, 8, 78, 165, 189, 224, 245, 264, 285, 287, 289, 297, 371, 431, 531, 711 La Peruse, 175, 176 Laplace, 461 Larivey, 244-U& La Rochefoucauld, 283-285, 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, 133-135, 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, 425-426 (Plays), 434-438 (Life and Fiction), 424, 440, 443 Lespinasse, Julie de, 869, 366, 452, 473, 476, 500 Lessing, 85, 409, 504 Letourneur, 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, 678-674, 516, 665, 713 Louis XIV, 273-282, 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 Poirier, 63 Maindron, Maurice, 730 Maintenon, Mme de, 289-290, 236, 274, 319, 320, 354, 357 Mairet, 232, 248, 252, 260 Maistre, Joseph de, 576-577, 662 Maistre, Xavier de, 577 Malebranche, 270-272, 397 Malesherbes, 508 Maleville, 226 Malfilatre, 447 Malherbe, 213-217, 173, 176, 188, 189, 191, 207, 208, 211, 212, 218, 222, 225, 227, 228, 235, 248, 261, 327, 329, 330, 342, 359 Mallarme, 704-706, 699, 702, 703, 708 Mallet, 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, 52-53, 15, 64 Marinetti, 721, 731 Marino, 220, 222 Mari qui fist sa femme confesse, 84 Marivaux, l$7-!$9 (Plays), 438-440 (Novels), 255, 365, 367, 368, 426, 434 (note), 443, 560 Marmontel, 368, 406, 413, 452, 458, 464, 497 Marot, Clement, 136-142, 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, 619-622, 6, 542, 614, 623, 624, 718 Maupertuis, 370, 387, 478 Maurras, Charles, 726 Maynard, Frangois, 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, 207-210 Mercier, Sebastien, 423, 553 Mere, Chevalier de, 286 Merimee, Prosper, 567-568 (His- torical Novel), 571-572 (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, 581-583, 3, 567, 580, 646, 657, 660 Mieulx que devant, 112 Mignet, 584, 583 Mill, J. S., 645, 646, 647, 648 Millet, Jacques, 108 Milton, 2, 183, 191, 192, 312, 328, 502, 513 Minturno, 175 Mirabeau, Gabriel, Marquis de, 497, 515 Miracles de Notre Dame, Quarante, 70 776 INDEX Mirbeau, Octave, 684, 667, 683 Mistral, Frederic, 609 (note), 630 Modus, Le roi Modus et la reine Ratio, 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, 195-203, 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, 243 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 Montesquiou, Comte Robert de, 706 Moore, Edward, 432 Moore, George, 593 More, Sir Thomas, 153 Moreas, Jean, 699, 706 Morellet, 452, 464 Moreri, 374 Morillot, 191 Morley, John, Viscount, 407, 453, 469 Morny, Due de, 630, 631 Muret, Marc-Antoine de, 175, 196, 241 Musset, Alfred de, 544-547 (Poetry), 560-562 (Plays), 4, 6, 7, 429, 494, 519, 520, 522, 523, 524, 538, 550, 555, 565, 574, 638, 649, 680, 691, 698 Mystere de Saint Crispin et Saint Crispian, 104 Mystere 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, 634-635, 330 Nivard, 64 Noailles, Comtesse Mathieu de, 731 Nodier, Charles, 527-52S, 504, 520, 522, 524, 572 North, Lord, 194 Norton, Miss, 202 Ogier, 247 Oresme, Nicolas, 99, 88, 98, 102, 239 Orfeo, Sir, 53 Orosius, 115 Ossian, 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 Palissot, 427 Paris, Gaston, 711, 1, 3, 24, 41, 43, 78, 112, 718 Parnasse Contemporain, Le, 605, 606 Parny, 447-448 Partenopeus de Blois, 50, 51 Pascal 306-312, 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, 732, 720, 725, 727, 731, 735 (note) Pelerinage de Charlemagne, 25-26 Peletier, Jacques, 163, 174, 175, 176, 178, 185 Pellisson, 253 Perceval, 47, 48 Perceval (Prose), 49 Percy velle, Sir, (Middle English), 49 Perefixe, 287 Perlesvaus, 49 Perrault, the brothers, 341 Perrault, Charles, 341-342, 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 Philippa, Queen, 76 Philippe de Beaumanoir, 36 Philippe de Novaire, 82 Philippe de Thaon, 80, 81 Physiologies, 79, 80 Pierre Bercuire, 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 Poeme Moral, 82 Poggio, 118 Politian, 153 Pomairols, C. de, 725 Pompadour, Mme de, 366, 386, 451 Pompignan, Lefranc de, 389, 446, 464 Pons, Abbe de, 340 (note) Ponsard, 595, 596 Pope, Alexander, 278, 326, 330, 371, 384, 385, 465, 468, 641 Poquelin, see Moliere Porto-Riche, Georges de, 685-686, 681, 688 Pradon, 318, 322, 340 (note) Prescott, William, 504 Prevost, Abbe, 440-44®, &±, 371, 413, 443 Prevost, Marcel, 672 Prevost-Paradol, 648 Propertius, 180 Prophetes du Christ, 68 Proudhon, 575, 636, 646 Proust, Marcel, 727 (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 manage, 117, 118 Rabelais, 149-154, 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 Racan, Honorat de Bueil, Marquis de, 215, 216, 235 Racine, Jean, 312-322, 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, 221, 130, 222, 224. 225, 226, 231, 248 778 INDEX Rameau, 480 Ramee, Pierre de la, see Ramus Ramus, 132, 161, 263 Raoul de Cambrai, 27-28 Raoul de Houdenc, 50, 55 Rapin, Nicolas, 209, 216 Rapin, le Pere, 287, 340 (note) Recamier, Mme, 497, 509, 636 Regnard, 424-425, 426 Regnier, Henri de, 708-710, 7, 699, 706, 730 Regnier, Mathurin, 216, 207, 217, 546 Re jane, Mme, 680 Renan, Ernest, 652-666, 6, 627, 649, 659, 672, 675, 676, 716, 718, 719 Renan, Henriette, 652, 653 Renard, Roman de, see Roman de Renard Renard le Contrefait, 66 Renaud de Beaujeu, 50 Renclus (Barthelemy) de Moilliens, 82 Rene of Anjou, 89, 114 Renee, Duchess of Ferrara, 139, 157 Renouvier, 722 Retz, Cardinal de, 286-286, 220, 283, 353, 411, 580 Richard de Fournival, 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 Barbezieux, 33 Rimbaud, Arthur, 708, 699, 700, 706 Rivarol, 6, 717 Robert de Blois, 82 Robert de Boron, 48, 49 Robert de Clari, 74-75 Robespierre, 449, 493, 652 Rocca, Delia, 706 Rod, Edouard, 566, 669, 672 Rodenbach, 699, 703, 704 Rohan, Chevalier de, 384 Rojas, Francisco de, 262 Roland, Chanson de, see Chanson de Roland Roland, Mme, 194, 493 Rolland, Romain, 726-730, 720, 732 Romains, Jules, 721, 731 Roman de Renard, 63-67, 693 Roman de la Rose, 56-63, 18, 55, 76, 98, 101, 117, 131, 137 Roman des sept sages, 85 Romulus, 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 l'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-Collard, 517 Rutebeuf, 69-70, 66 Ryer, Pierre du, 261-262, 232, 248 Sable, Mme de, 223, 269, 283, 284, 307, 578 Sabliere, Marquise de la, 301, 305 Sacchetti, 167 Sagon, Frangois de, 139 Saint-Cyran, Jean de Hauranne, Abbe de, 306, 308 Sainte-Beuve, 635-644, 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, 144, 139, 143, 180, 185 Saint-Gelais, Octovien de, 132 Sainte-Hilaire, Geoffroy de, 460 INDEX 779 Saint-Lambert, 386, 446 Sainte-Marthe, Charles de, 143 Saint-Pierre, Abbe de, 409-410 Saint-Pierre, Bernardin de, 494~495 Saint-Simon, Louis, Due de, 353- 356, 275, 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 Saint-Valry, 519 Saintsbury, George, 39, 58, 117, 143, 312 Sales, Saint Frangois de, 211, 207, 212, 230, 232, 288, 332 Salluste, Guillaume de, see Bartas Samain, 703, 704, 708 Sand, George, 573-575, 501, 516, 519, 544, 561, 565, 571, 613, 614, 638, 646, 669 Sandeau, Jules, 574 Sannazzaro, 135, 144, 172, 229, 245 Sarcey, Francisque, 717-718, 648 Sardou, Victorien, 679-680, 681, 688, 718 Sarrasin, 226 Scaliger, 175, 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, 524, 498, 499, 520, 525, 567, 568, 570, 580, 587, 588 Scribe, Eugene, 595, 601, 679, 680, 718 Scudery, George de, 234-235, 222, 232, 248, 252, 255 Scudery, Mile de, 234-235, 221, 223, 236, 326, 380 Sebillet, 169, 171, 239 Sebond, Raymond de, 196 Sedaine, 427 Segrais, 287, 340 (note) Seilliere, 725 Senancour, 522, 564 Seneca, 94, 95, 129, 155, 158, 171, 176, 198, 259, 314, 381 Serafino dall'Aquilla, 139, 168 Servients de Strasbourg, 14 Servetus, 158 Sevigne, Mme de, 288-289, 222, 254, 269, 270, 274, 283, 287, 290, 301, 315 Shaftesbury, 371, 397, 465, 475 Shakespeare, 1, 2, 5, 35, 46, 51, 71, 106, 108, 129, 194, 202, 240, 247, 317, 321, 371, 384, 385, 415, 417, 418, 422, 466, 502, 505, 522, 523, 554, 555, 559, 560, 562, 570, 592, 651, 655, 688, 726 Shaw, Bernard, 298, 553 Shelley, 3, 533, 651 Sheridan, 429 Siege d'Orleans, 108 Silvester, 191 Simon, Richard, 332 Sismondi, 522 Smithson, Miss, 554 Socrates, 163, 199, 699, 700 Soderjelm, 117 Solinus, 79 Somaize, 223 Songe du Vergier, 88 Sophocles, 129, 239, 262 Sorel, Albert, 660 Sorel, Charles, 235, 236 Soulie, F., 522 Soumet, Alexandre, 519, 520, 554 Spencer, Herbert, 645, 714, 717, 722 Spenser, Edmund, 164 Speroni, Sperone, 172 Spinoza, 271, 658 Sponsus, 68 Stael, Mme de, 497-505, 372, 403, 496, 507, 513, 521, 523, 554, 564, 578, 634 Statius, 37, 94 Stendhal, 565-566, 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, Eugene, 571, 589 Suetonius, 115, 204, 316 Sully Prudhomme, 695-697, 605 Sulzer, 458 780 INDEX Swedenborg, 587 Swift, Jonathan, 154, 384, 397, 677 Swinburne, 543, 702 Symonds, J. A., 129 Tacitus, 316, 393, 400 Taille, Jacques de la, 242 Taille, Jean de la, 174, 241, 244 Taillefer, 20 Taine, 648-652, 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 Tansillo, 189, 213 Tasso, 183, 189, 237, 245, 328 Tassoni, 326, 341 Tebaldeo, 139, 168, 189 Tencin, Mme de, 367-368, 366, 395, 452 Tennyson, 41, 44, 49, 547 Terence, 244, 291, 293, 300 Thebes, Roman de, 38-39, 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, Amedee, 580 Thierry, Augustin, 580-581, 514, 525, 567, 583 Thiers, 583-584, 612, 659, 663 Thomas, 42, 43 Thomas Aquinas, St., 80, 100 Thomson, James, 371, 446 Tibullus, 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 l'Ermite, 313 Tristan, Estoire de, 42, 41 Tristan, Folie, 43 Tristan (Prose), 43 Tristrem, Sir, 43 Troie, Roman de, 39-40, 38 Turgenev, 630, 653, 716 Turgot, 452, 456, 496 Turnebe, Odet de, 244 Turoldus, 22 Turpin, Pseudo-, see Pseudo-Turpin Tyard, Pontus de, 169, 175, 176 Tycho Brahe, 264 Tydorel, 53 Tyolet, 53 d'Urfe, Honore, 229-232 Vair, Du, 207, 210, 211, 232 Valla, Lorenzo, 135 Valleran, Lecomte, 238, 245 Valliere, Mile de la, 331 Valois, Margaret of, 180, 204 Van Dale, 381 Varro, 209 Vatable, 140 Vaugelas, 227, 228, 277 Vaumoriere, 233 (note) Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, 174 Vauvenargues, 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, 732-736, 699, 706, 708, 720, 721, 731 Verlaine, Paul, 699-702, 605, 695, 703, 704, 705, 719, 731 Veuillot, Louis, 661-662, 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, 647-550 (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, 578, 505, 521 (note), 634, 642 Villiers de l'lsle-Adam, 573 Villon, Francois, 118-121, 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, 225-226, 218, 222, 234, 268, 332, 342 Volney, 461 Voltaire, 383-394 (Literature and Life), 415-421 (Criticism 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 aniel, see Dit dou vrai amel Wace, 15, 20, 39, 41, 73 Wagner, Richard, 699, 726, 727 Walpole, Horace, 368, 369 Warens, Mme de, 483, 486, 487 Wauchier 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 Ysengrimus, 64 Ysopet de Lyon, etc., 64 Zamacoi's, 693 Zola, Emile. 623-627, 566, 613, 619, 628, 632, 664, 665, 667, 668, 670, 681, 718 y Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: Jan. 2008 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111