LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA
 
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 A 
 
 SHORT HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 L. E. KASTNER, B.A.(CAMB.) 
 
 Formerly Scholar of Clare College, Cambridge 
 
 Late Assistant Master at Merchistou School, Edinburgh; Assistant Lecturer in 
 Modern Languages at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge 
 
 AND 
 
 H. G. ATKINS, M.A.(LoND.), B. A. (GAME.) 
 
 Formerly Exhibitioner and Vidil Prizeman of Trinity College, Cambridge 
 Instructor in German at the Koyal Naval College, Greenwich 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 1007
 
 PREFACE 
 
 In writing this volume it has been the authors' ambition to 
 fill the gap that is felt by many to exist between the numerous 
 primers of French literature, and such larger works as those of 
 Saintsbury and Dowden. 
 
 While the requirements of candidates for examination have 
 throughout been steadily kept in view, the authors have no less 
 earnestly endeavoured to make this short sketch a thoroughly 
 reliable introduction to the study of French literature, for all 
 who desire to become acquainted with the subject. No attempt 
 has been made to secure an illusory completeness by the mere 
 enumeration of names of third and fourth rate importance. 
 On the other hand, those of the first rank are dealt with at 
 considerable length, while such writers of lesser importance, as 
 the authors have for various reasons felt compelled to include, 
 are treated in a smaller type, which serves the double purpose 
 of indicating their relative position and of economizing con- 
 siderable space. Biographies of the principal authors, and 
 brief summaries of the contents of the more important works, 
 are likewise given in the smaller type. 
 
 All the leading authorities on French literature, among 
 whom may be mentioned Gaston Paris, Darmesteter, Lanson, 
 Brunetiere, Faguet, and Jules Lemaitre, have been consulted, 
 and in the case of the most conspicuous writers, the criticisms 
 expressed are based on a first-hand acquaintance with their 
 writings, supported, where possible, by the internal evidence 
 of the works themselves.
 
 iv PREFACE 
 
 Instead of closing the survey, as do some books, with the 
 decline of Eomanticism, or as others, with that of Naturalism, 
 the history of French literature has been traced down to the 
 present day. It may be objected that living writers are too 
 near to us to allow of an impartial and complete judgment 
 on their works. No attempt has been made to pass any 
 such judgment, but such an account of the French literature 
 of to-day is given as may at least serve to indicate its general 
 tendencies. 
 
 Lastly, thanks are offered to various friends, and more 
 especially to Mr. C. W. Paget Moffatt, of Clare College, 
 Cambridge, for valuable suggestions during the period of 
 
 preparation. 
 
 L. E. K. 
 
 H. G. A. 
 
 CAMBBIDGE, March, 1900.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 
 
 Origin of the French Language The Langue d'Oc The Langue d'Otl 
 and its Dialects Prevalence of the Dialect of the Ile-de-France - 
 
 Pages 1-5 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 GENERAL VIEW 
 
 Characteristics of French Medieval Literature : Uniformity and Lack 
 of Individuality Defiance of Nature Almost Total Absence of 
 Sense of Art and Form General Survey of French Medieval 
 Literature Pages 6-7 
 
 CHAPTER I. EPIC POETRY 
 
 Main Divisions: (1) The French or National Epic: First Period 
 Second Period Third Period Fourth Period Division into 
 Cycles Smaller Cycles and later Chansons de Geste Their 
 Metrical Form Their Scheme of Matter Volume and Age of 
 the Chansons Chanson de Roland Analysis. (2) The Epic of 
 Antiquity : Benoit de Sainte-More His Works Lesser Authors. 
 (3) The Breton Epic: Geoffrey of Monmouth Divisions Keltic 
 Spirit of First Group Marie de France Beroul Thomas 
 Second Group Chretien de Troie Change of Spirit His 
 Works Their Character Third Group The Holy Graal 
 Robert de Boron Later Developments Pages 7-18 
 
 CHAPTER II. LYRICAL POETRY 
 
 First Period: Chansons d'Histoire and Chansons de Toile Second 
 Period: Provenal Influence Chief Representatives Third 
 Period: Its Characteristics Guillaume de Machaut Jean de 
 Froissart Eustache Deschamps Christine de Pisan Alain 
 Chartier His Prose Pages 18-21
 
 VI CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER III.-DRAMA 
 
 (1) Tragic Drama. The Liturgical Drama The Jeu d'Adam The 
 Jeu de Saint- Nicolas Miracles The Miracle de Thdophile 
 Mysteries Divisions Arnoul Greban Performance of Mys- 
 teries Theatrical Companies Confrerie de la Passion. (2) 
 Comedy in the Middle Ages : The Jeu de la Feuillee The Jeu 
 de Robin et de Marion Clercs de la Basoche Enfants sans 
 Souci The Farce Pathdin Analysis The Morality The 
 Sottic Gringoire Pages 22-27 
 
 CHAPTER IV. SATIRICAL AND ALLEGORICAL 
 POETRY 
 
 (1) Satirical Literature: Fables The Isopet of Marie de France 
 The Roman de Renard Its Branches Characters and Character- 
 istics The Fableaux Their Bulk, Age, and Origin Authors of 
 Fableaux Rutebeuf His Works Later Developments of 
 Fableaux Other Kinds of Satirical Poetry Etats du Monde 
 Evangiles Bibles Debats Disputes Batailles Conges Chas- 
 tiements, &c. (2) Allegorical Literature: Bcstiaires Lapidaires 
 Volucraires Philippe de Thaon Richard de Fournival The 
 Roman de la Rose Two Distinct Parts Guillaume de Lorris and 
 Jean de Meung The First Part Analysis The Second Part as 
 compared to the First Importance of Jean de Meung Rise of 
 Allegory Pages 27-33 
 
 CHAPTER V. HISTORY AND MISCELLANEOUS 
 PROSE 
 
 (1) History: Rimed Chronicles Gaimar Wace Benolt de Sainte- 
 More Gamier de Pont Sainte-Maxence Histoire de OuiUaume 
 le Martchal The Great Prose Chroniclers Geoffroy de Ville- 
 hardouin Jean de Joinville Jean de Froissart : His Life His 
 Chroniques Philippe de Commines: His Life His Mtmoires. 
 (2) Miscellaneous Prose: Aucassin et Nicolette Antoine de la 
 Salle Sermons Brunetto Latini - ... Pages 33-37 
 
 CHAPTER VI. LATER MEDIEVAL POETS 
 
 Charles d'Orleans: His Life His Work and its Characteristics 
 Francois Villon : His Life The Grand Testament His Shorter 
 Poems His Position and Importance The Grands Rhetoriqueurs 
 Jean Molinet Jean Meschinot Guillaume Cretin Pages 37-40
 
 CONTENTS Vll 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 SIXTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 GENERAL VIEW 
 
 Renaissance and Reformation First Period: Development of Indi- 
 vidualismClement Marot Frangois Rabelais Goodness and 
 Divinity of Nature Second Period : The Sentiment of Art The 
 Pleiade and Ronsard The Reformation The Latinization of 
 Culture Third Period : The Foundation of Literature on Psycho- 
 logical and Moral Observation Amyot and Montaigne The 
 Philosophy of Reason The Subordination of Literature to Social 
 Life - - - Pages 41-44 
 
 FIRST PERIOD (1500-1549) 
 CHAPTER I. POETRY 
 
 Jean le Maire de Beiges: His Works Clement Marot: His Life 
 His Works Connection with the Middle Ages His Position 
 His Epigrams In how far he is Typical of the Renaissance 
 Marguerite de Navarre Her Poetic Works Melin de Saint- 
 Gelais: Character of his Verse The School of Lyons: Maurice 
 Sceve Louise Labe Pages 45-50 
 
 CHAPTER II. DRAMA 
 Nicole de la Chesnaye Jean de Pourtalis .... Page 50 
 
 CHAPTER III. PROSE 
 
 Fran9ois Rabelais: His Life His Works Short Analysis of Gar- 
 gantua and Pantayruel The Meaning of Rabelais' Buffoon Epic 
 His Philosophy of Life His Style Marguerite de Navarre: 
 The Heptanufron dcs Nouvelles Its Riskiness Bonaventure des 
 Periers: The NouveUes Recreations et Joyeux Devis Their 
 Spirit The Cymbalum Mundi Jean Calvin: His Life The 
 Institution de la Religion Chr&ienne Calvin's Doctrine Herberay 
 desEssarts: The Amadis des Gaules ... Pages 51-58 
 
 SECOND PERIOD (1549-1605) 
 
 CHAPTER I. POETRY 
 
 The Pleiadc : Its Members Their Ambition The Defense et Illus- 
 tration de la Lanyue Fran<;aise Other Theoretical Works 
 Three Principal Points in the Literary Reform of the Pleiade
 
 V1U CONTENTS 
 
 The Formation of a Poetic Diction Distinct from that of Prose 
 The Substitution of the Older Forms of French Poetry for 
 Classical Forms A Revolution of Versification Pierre de 
 Ronsard : His Life His Works Divisions and Characteristics 
 Ronsard's Genius Joachim du Bellay : His Life His Works 
 Their Originality Lesser Members of the PUiade Baif Vert 
 Mesures Belleau Importance of the Reform of the PUiade 
 The Protestant Poets Guillaume du Bartas : The Premiere and 
 Seconde Semaine Du Bartas a Caricature of Ronsard Theodore 
 Agrippa d' Aubigne : The Tragiqucs The A ventures du Baron de 
 Fceneste Degenerate Disciples of Ronsard Philippe Desportes 
 Jean Bertaut Vauquelin de la Fresnaye Jean Passerat - 
 
 Pages 59-69 
 
 CHAPTER II. DRAMA 
 
 The Programme of the PUiade Inauguration of Classical Drama 
 Medieval Drama dies hard. (1) Tragedy: Jodelle Chantelouve 
 De Beze Loys Desmasures The CUdpatre of Jodelle Charac- 
 teristics of the Classical Drama of the 16th Century Scaliger 
 Grevin Jean de la Taille Gamier : The Juives and Bradamente 
 Montchre"tien : The Ecossaise. (2) Comedy: Jodelle's Eugene 
 Grevin Jean de la Taille Odet de Turnebe Larivey: Great 
 Progress on his Predecessors General Character of 16th-Century 
 Comedy Pages 69-74 
 
 CHAPTER III. PROSE 
 
 Prose-translators Jacques Amyot: His Translations of Plutarch 
 Their Twofold Importance Memoirs Blaise de Monluc: The 
 Commentaires Brantdme: His Works Their Literary Value 
 Fran9ois de la Noue : Discours Politiques et Militaires De Thou : 
 Historia mei Temporis Political Writers Jean Bodin: The 
 SApublique His Ideas Etienne de la Boe"tie: The Contr'un 
 Franois Hotman: The Franco- Gattia His Theories Michel de 
 1'Hopital The Satire Mtnippee : Political Situation in France 
 Its Scheme and Authors Treatises on Grammar and Language 
 Louis Meigret Ramus Henri Etienne: War against Italian 
 Influence Italian Elements Traite de la Conformite du Francois 
 avec le Grec The Precellence de la Langue Francoise The 
 Nouveaux Dialogues du Langage Francois Italianise' Claude 
 Fauchet: The Antiguitez Gauloites et Francoises Recueil de 
 VOrigine de la Langue et Poesie Francoise Etienne Pasquier: 
 Recherches Short Analysis Michel de Montaigne: His Life 
 The Essays Their Composition The Apologie de Raymond 
 Sebond The Essence of Montaigne's Thought Scepticism with 
 regard to Metaphysical and Scientific Knowledge Limitations
 
 CONTENTS IX 
 
 of Montaigne's Scepticism The Art of Life His Theories on 
 Education His Style and Language Summary Pierre Char- 
 ron: The Traitt des Trois VeriUs The TraiU de la Sagesse 
 Its Meaning Guillaume Du Vair : Orator and Moralist - 
 
 Pages 75-90 
 
 BOOK III 
 SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 
 
 GENERAL VIEW 
 
 Classical Period Proper Division into Periods First Period : Struggle 
 between Two Ideals Malherbe The Prtcieuscs The Academy 
 Vaugelas Balzac Second Period: Pascal The Classical Ideal 
 L'Ecole du Naturel Third Period: Decline New Ideals 
 Bayle Fontenelle Perrault The Quarrel of the Ancients and 
 Moderns Language Pages 91-9^ 
 
 FIEST PEEIOD (1605-1659) 
 
 CHAPTER I. POETRY 
 
 Malherbe : The Reform Exemplified in his Work rather than carried 
 out by him Affects chiefly Versification His Poetry List of 
 his Works Mathurin Regnier: A Belated Representative of 
 the 16th Century His Satires His Warfare with Malherbe 
 Another Opponent of Malherbe The"ophile de Viau The Hold 
 de Rambouittet Catherine de Vivonne Her Ambition History 
 of her Salon Divisions First Period Second Period Voiture : 
 His Poems and Letters Third Period Other Salons Later 
 Prdcieuses Good and Bad Sides of Preciosity Pseudo- epics 
 Georges de Scude"ry Chapelain Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin 
 Parodies Paul Scarron Pages 96-104 
 
 CHAPTER II. DRAMA 
 
 Popular Drama Alexandra Hardy: His Tragedies His Tragi- 
 comedies His Pastorals Jean de Schelandre: Tyr et Sidon 
 Importance of its Preface Theophile de Viau Racan Charac- 
 teristics of the Popular Drama Jean de Mairet: Sylvanire 
 Rules of the Three Unities Formulated Sophonisbe Inaugura- 
 tion of the Classical Tragedy on the Popular Stage Its Main 
 Characteristics Rules of the Three Unities Data Partisans 
 Opponents Triumph Pierre Corneille : His Life His Plays 
 Threefold Division The Cid Analysis The Cabal against the 
 Cid Horace Cinna Analysis Pompee Polyeucte Analysis
 
 X CONTENTS ' 
 
 Corneille's Psychology His Dramatic System His Genius 
 His Verse Rotrou: His Chief Plays His Originality 
 
 Pages 104-117 
 
 CHAPTER III. PROSE 
 
 Franfois de Sales: His Method Honore d'Urfe : The Astree Short 
 Analysis The Heroic-gallant Novel De Gomberville De la 
 Calprenede Madeleine de Scudery: Her Originality Reaction 
 Charles Sorel The French Academy Its History Vaugelas: 
 The Remarques sur la Langue Franqaise Balzac: His Role 
 Ren6 Descartes : His Life List of Chief Works The Discours 
 de la Mtthode His Philosophical Method The Influence of his 
 Ideas Blaise Pascal: Port-Royal Arnauld (Antoine) Jan- 
 senism Life of Pascal The Provinciates The Pens&s Main 
 Outline Pascal the Creator of French Classical Prose 
 
 Pages 117-126 
 
 SECOND PERIOD (1659-1689) 
 
 CHAPTER I. POETRY 
 
 Nicolas Boileau: His Life Satires Art Pottiquc Short Analysis 
 Boileau's Literary Doctrine His Influence Jean de la Fontaine : 
 His Life List of Works The Fables Difficulty of Defining La 
 Fontaine's Literary Position Difference and Similarity with his 
 Contemporaries Pages 127-131 
 
 CHAPTER II. DRAMA 
 
 Philippe Quinault Moliere : His Life Classified List of Plays The 
 Prdcieuses Ridicules Tartuffe Opposition of the Religious Party 
 Reasons Analysis The Misanthrope The A vare Short 
 Analysis Aim of the Play The Bourgeois Gentilhomme Georges 
 Dandin The Femmes Savantes The Ecole des Femmes Moliere 's 
 Genius His Position in the World's Literature His Style 
 Jean Racine: His Life List of Plays Andromaque Advent of 
 a New Tragic Ideal The Plaideurs Britannicus Berenice 
 Bajazet Mithridate Iphigtnie Phedre Short Analysis The 
 Cabal against Phedre Athalie Analysis Racine's Dramatic 
 Genius Comparison with Corneille Local Colour Racine no 
 Precieux His Style - - , - - - - Pages 132-145 
 
 CHAPTER III. PROSE 
 
 Cardinal de Retz : His Memoircs La Rochefoucauld : His Maxims 
 Central Idea His Style Madame de Sevigne: Her Letters The 
 Comtesse de la Fayette : The Princesse de Cleves Starting-point
 
 of the Modern Psychological Novel The Realistic Novel 
 Antoine Furetiere Pulpit Oratory Bossuet: His Life Classified 
 List of Works Obituaries The Discours The Politique tiree de 
 I' Ecriture Sainte Histoire des Variations The Maximes sur la 
 Comddie Bossuet's Style Louis de Bourdaloue: Causes of his 
 Success Flechier Protestants Saurin - Pages 145-152 
 
 THIRD PERIOD (1689-1715) 
 
 CHAPTER I. POETRY 
 
 Absence of Real Poetry Development of Literature in other Direc- 
 tions Page 152 
 
 CHAPTER II. DRAMA 
 
 Antoine de la Fosse Regnard : His Merits His Style Pages 152-153 
 
 CHAPTER III. PROSE 
 
 Jean de la Bruyere: The Caracteres Their Value Style Pierre 
 Bayle: a Precursor of the Philosophes of the 18th Century 
 The Dictionnaire Historique et Critique Bayle's Doctrine The 
 Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns Charles Perrault Fon- 
 tenelle Boileau Fenelon: His Life Classified List of Works 
 The Maximes des Saints Madame Guyon and the Quietists Dis- 
 pute with Bossuet The Traite de I'^ducation des Fittes The 
 Aventures de Teltmaque The Plans de Gouvernement Lettre a, 
 V Academic Its Importance Jean Massillon The Due de Saint- 
 Simon: His Memoir es His Style - Pages 153-161 
 
 BOOK IV 
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 GENERAL VIEW 
 
 Literature Changes its Ground Two Great Names Voltaire and 
 Rousseau Poetry: Voltaire Lebrun Delille Tragedy: Vol- 
 taire Comedy; Marivaux Diderot La Chausse*e Beaumar- 
 chais The Novel: Le Sage Prevost Diderot Rousseau 
 Bernardin de St. Pierre Prose: The EncyclopeUie Pages 162-167 
 
 CHAPTER I. POETRY 
 
 Jean Baptiste Rousseau: Hollow Rhetoric Piron: His Epigrams 
 Voltaire: His Life Character of his Verse The Henriade 
 The Pucelie Houdart de la Motte: Critic and Poet Lebrun:
 
 Xll CONTENTS 
 
 His Excellence in the Epigram Delille: Typical of his Time 
 Poetry by Recipe Nicolas Gilbert Parny Andre Chenier: His 
 Life Greatest Poet of the 18th Century Classification of his 
 Works Poems of Classical Form Didactic Fragments Odes 
 aei lambes Language and Versification - - Pages 167-175 
 
 CHAPTER II. DRAMA 
 
 Crebillon Pere: His Chief Tragedies His Dramatic System Houdart 
 de la Motte Voltaire : Improvements and Innovations Weak 
 Psychology Lack of Objectivity Excellence of Workmanship 
 Chief Plays Marivaux: Chief Plays Poetic Fancy Psycho- 
 logical Analysis Marivdudage Le Sage: Crispin Rival de son 
 Maitre Tur caret Destouches Piron Gresset La Chausse'e 
 and the Comidie Larmoyante Diderot and the Drame Beau- 
 marchais: His Life The Barbicr de Seville The Mariaye de 
 Figaro Development of the same Types in the Barbier 
 Political Significance Pages 175-181 
 
 CHAPTER III. PROSE 
 
 Le Sage : The Diable Boiteux and Gil Bias Marivaux : Marianne 
 L'Abbe Provost: Manon Lescaut His other Novels Voltaire: 
 His Contes Diderot : The Religieuse and the Neveu de Rameau 
 J. J. Rousseau Bernardin de Saint - Pierre : His Life His 
 Twofold Importance His Chief Works Paul et Virginie 
 Unity of Prose outside Fiction Fontenelle A Herald of the 
 Encyclopedic His Life The Entretien sur la Plurality des 
 Mondes Its Importance Montesquieu: His Life The Lettrcs 
 Persanes The Esprit des Lois Meaning of the Word Loi 
 Rough Summary Appreciation of the Work Voltaire as a 
 Historian: The Histoire de Charles XII The Siecle de Louis XIV 
 The Essai sur les Mceurs Elimination of Providence Progress 
 of Reason Voltaire's Philosophical Writings Proper His 
 Central Idea His Correspondence Summing-up Vauvenargues 
 The Encyclopedic Its Scheme Its Watchword Diderot : His 
 Life His Philosophic Writings His Salons His Literary Im- 
 portance D' AJembert Condillac Helvetius D'Holbach 
 Grimm Turgot Condorcet Jean Jacques Rousseau : His Life 
 List of his Works His Leading Idea Unity of his Work 
 The Discours sur I'Origine et les Fondements de Vlnegaliti parmi 
 les Hommes The Emile Analysis Julie ou La Nouvelle Heloise 
 Awakening of Sentimentality The Contrat Social The Con- 
 fessions Minor Works His Great Influence on Literature 
 Buffon: His Life The Histoire NatureUe Salons Mme du 
 Deffand Mme Geoffrin Mile de Lespinasse Political Orators 
 Mirabeau Robespierre, c. .... Pages 182-214
 
 CONTENTS Xlll 
 
 BOOK V 
 
 THE TRANSITION (1789-1820) 
 
 GENERAL VIEW 
 
 Two Great Names Mrae de Stael and Chateaubriand Mme de 
 StaeTs Importance Her Definition of Romanticism Chateau- 
 briand's Work a Complement of Hers He realizes her Theories 
 
 Pages 215-216 
 
 CHAPTER I. POETRY 
 
 Beranger : His Chief Chansons His Ideas His Qualities as a 
 
 Popular Poet Pages 216-218 
 
 CHAPTER II. DRAMA 
 
 Delavigne: His Poetry His Plays Appreciation - - Page 218 
 
 CHAPTER III. PROSE 
 
 Madame de Stael : Her Life List of Principal Works The Littfra- 
 ture Delphine and Corinne De VAttemagne The Considerations 
 sur la Revolution Her Influence Chateaubriand: His Life 
 List of his Chief Works The Essai sur les Revolutions Atala 
 The Genie du Christianisme Rent The Natchez The Martyrs 
 The Itineraire The Memovres d' Outre - Tombe His Literary 
 Rdle Appreciation of his Genius Joubert Joseph de Maistre: 
 Works Ultramontanism De Bonald Benjamin Constant 
 Xavier de Maistre Courier: Life Writings The Pamphleteer 
 Lamennais: Life Works Different Phases in his Development 
 
 Pages 219-232 
 
 BOOK VI 
 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 GENERAL VIEW 
 
 Division into Periods First Period: Romanticism Definition of 
 Romanticism Victor Hugo's Manifesto Its Scope and Effects 
 Beginnings Achievements The Second Period : Realism and 
 Naturalism Definition The Parnassiens The Novel Third 
 Period : Difficulty of determining its exact Nature Poetry The 
 Decadents and Symbolistes The Novel Foreign Influences The 
 Drama Pages 233-241
 
 XIV CONTENTS 
 
 FIRST PERIOD (1820-1850) 
 CHAPTER L POETRY 
 
 Lamartine : His Life Principal Works The Meditations Romantic 
 Lyricism founded No Progress in Later Work Nouvelles M4di- 
 tations Harmonies Jocelyn Chute d'un Ange Prose Works 
 Alfred de Vigny: Chief Works Poemes Antiques et Modernes 
 The Destinies Prose Works Chatterton and Cinq-Mars De 
 Vigny 's Philosophy Victor Hugo: Life Classification of his 
 Works The Odes et Ballades The Orientates Other Lyrical 
 Collections The Chdtiments The Contemplations The Legende 
 des Siecles Later Verse Dramas Cromwell Its Preface 
 Victor Hugo's Dramatic System Exemplified in all subsequent 
 Plays Analysis of Hernani and of Ray Bias The Burgraves 
 Prose Writings Notre -Dame de Paris Lesser Fiction Les 
 Miserables Analysis Other Novels Victor Hugo's Genius De 
 Musset: Life List of Chief Works The Contes d'Espagne et 
 rf'/taZie The Spectacle dans un Fauteuil The Four Nuits The 
 Confessions His Comedies His Lyric Genius His Style 
 Gautier: Classified List of Chief Works Cult of Form and 
 Colour Art for Art's Sake The Emaux et Camees His Prose 
 Works Minor Romantic Poets Mme Desbordes-Valmore 
 Brizeux Barbier Moreau Pages 241-258 
 
 CHAPTER II. DRAMA 
 
 Victor Hugo already Discussed Dumas Pere: His Life Principal 
 Plays Appreciation as a Dramatist Scribe: Chief Plays No 
 Dramatist Great Skill in Scenic Art Ponsard: The Scale du 
 Bon Sens Passes over to Romanticism Value of his Plays 
 
 Pages 258-261 
 CHAPTER III PROSE 
 
 Victor Hugo already Considered Historical Romances Dumas Pere : 
 His Chief Novels and their Value Main Divisions of Romantic 
 Fiction George Sand: Her Life Classified List of Works 
 Novels of the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Periods Com- 
 bination of Idealism and Realism Early Realists Stendhal: 
 Founder of the Psychological Novel Me"rimee: Chief Works 
 Starts as a Romanticist Goes over to Realism in his Nouvelles 
 His Position His Remarkable Objectivity Honore de Balzac: 
 Founder of Realism His Life The Comedie Hwmaine Classi- 
 fied List of the Chief Novels His Creative Genius His System 
 and Method Phantasms of Romance Lesser Novelists and 
 Writers of Short Stories Nodier Eugene Sue Souvestre 
 Karr Murger History Thierry : Works Appreciation Gui- 
 zot : His Life His Chief Works Leading Ideas and Method
 
 CONTENTS XV 
 
 Thiers : Realism in History Mignet : The Histoire de la Evolu- 
 tion Frangaise Michelet : His Life List of Works The His- 
 toire de France The Histoire de la Revolution Evocation of the 
 Past De Tocqueville Literary Criticism Sainte-Beuve: Classi- 
 fied List of his Works Importance of his Poetry His System of 
 Literary Criticism Villemain: Historical Criticism Quinet 
 The Philosophers Victor Cousin Pulpit Oratory Lacor- 
 daire Pages 261-276 
 
 SECOND PERIOD (1850-1900) 
 
 CHAPTER I. POETRY 
 
 The Parnassiens De Banville : Classified List of his Works Art for 
 the sake of Artificiality Excessive Cult of Poetic Form, and 
 especially of Rime Baudelaire : Decadence and Satanisme The 
 Fleurs du Mai Leconte de Lisle : List of Works Leader of the 
 Parnassiens Flawless Plasticity Objectivity Philosophy 
 Sully Prudhomme : His Poems Begins with a Delicate Analysis 
 of the Inner Life Passes over to Philosophic Themes Eugene 
 Manuel : Popular Themes and Poetry of the Lower Classes His 
 Works Coppee: His Works Classified Continues Manuel De 
 Heredia : A Disciple of Leconte de Lisle Colour Originality in 
 the Sonnet Decadents and Symbolistes Verlaine : His Works 
 His Innovations in French Lyrical Poetry Importance of his Art 
 Podtique Appreciation of his Poetry Symbolism and Cymbalism 
 Mallarme: Sybilline Jargon De Regnier Moreas and the 
 Ecole Romane Verhaeren Kahn and the Vers Libre Viele- 
 Griffin Maeterlinck as a Lyric Poet Outside Symbolism 
 Labor Rollinat Richepin Pages 277-288 
 
 CHAPTER II. DRAMA 
 
 Comtdie de Mceurs Dumas Fils : Chief Plays Problem Plays Skill 
 as a Playwright Brilliant Dialogue Augier : His Chief Plays 
 His Solid Good Sense Moral Scope of his Plays Labiche 
 Sardou : List of his Principal Plays A Second Scribe His Skill 
 in the Creation and Manipulation of Intrigue His Plays rank 
 very Low as Literature Brilliance of Dialogue Pailleron: The 
 Monde oil Von s'ennuie Henri Becque De Curel Lemaitre 
 Maeterlinck : The Intruse Rostand : Cyrano de Bergeron 
 
 Pages 289-293 
 
 CHAPTER III. PROSE 
 
 Flaubert: the Initiator of Naturalism His Chief Novels Madame 
 Bovary Salammbti Partly a Romanticist Objectivity The 
 brothers De Goncourt : List of their Works Their Preference of
 
 XVI CONTENTS 
 
 the Odd to the Typical Germinic Lacerteux and its Dangerous 
 Principle Their Impressionist Style Daudet : Classified List of 
 his Novels In how far a Naturalist Character and Originality 
 of his Fiction Maupassant: List of his Works The Short-story 
 Idealism Feuillet About Cherbuliez Anatole France Loti : 
 Picturesque, Subjective, and Sentimental Novel Bourget and 
 the Psychological Novel Lesser Writers of Fiction Erckmann 
 and Chatrian Fabre Droz Theuriet Huysmans Ohnet 
 Rod Paul Margueritte Renan: His Life List of Principal 
 Works His Importance Criticism Taine : His Chief Works 
 His System of Literary Criticism Race, Conditions in General, 
 Moment Weak Side of his System Brunetiere: Theory of 
 Evolution Chief Works Lemaitre His Subjectivity Anatole 
 France Blending of Sympathy and Delicate Irony Melchior de 
 Vogue 1 : The Neo - Christian Movement History: Fustel de 
 Coulanges Characteristics of his Method - - Pagea 293-307 
 
 INDEX 809 
 
 CM643)
 
 SHORT HISTORY OF 
 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 
 
 Origin of the French Language. French, like Italian, 
 Spanish, Portuguese, Proven<jal, Roumanian, and Rheto- 
 Romance, is derived by a long succession of transformations 
 from popular Latin, which was spoken over all the provinces 
 or colonies of the Imperium Romanum or Romania. 
 
 This popular Latin speech was introduced into France, or 
 Gaul as it was then called, by the soldiers of Julius Caesar, 
 who finally reduced the country in 51 B.C. In his train 
 followed merchants and colonists, and an occupation began 
 which lasted for four and a half centuries. 
 
 Already in the 7th century popular Latin or Romance had 
 assumed distinct peculiarities, according to the countries in 
 which it was spoken. As spoken in Gaul it is known by 
 the name of Gallo-Roman or Gallo-Romance, not to be con- 
 founded with Low Latin, which is not a spoken but a written 
 language. 
 
 By Low Latin is meant literary Latin as written by the 
 uneducated, who made mistakes analogous to those of the 
 modern school-boy. All the scholars of the Middle Ages wrote 
 in this dog Latin, which only disappeared in the 16th century, 
 thanks to the great humanists, who resuscitated the language 
 of the great Roman classic writers. The first thing Gallo- 
 Romance did was to oust Keltic, the language of the Gauls, 
 the original inhabitants. This transformation was effected all 
 the more rapidly, as the Gauls had never formed a nation or 
 
 ( M r, i : ; ) A
 
 2 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 
 
 homogeneous whole capable of offering systematic resistance 
 to the invaders, and as, moreover, they were intelligent enough 
 and sufficiently civilized to recognize the moral and intellectual 
 superiority of Rome and to profit by it. Their native idiom 
 vanished as if by magic, leaving only very slight traces, more 
 particularly as regards pronunciation. 1 
 
 This state of things was disturbed by the Germanic in- 
 vasions in the 5th century, by which date Keltic had absolutely 
 vanished, while Greek, which the Romans had found estab- 
 lished at Marseille, whither it had been brought by Phocean 
 colonists, only survived till the first century of our era. 
 
 These Germanic invaders consisted of the West Goths in 
 Aquitaine, the Burgundians in Burgundy, the Salian Franks 
 in the north-east, and the Austrasian Franks in the east. In 
 the same way and for the same reasons as the Kelts had 
 abandoned their language in favour of Latin, so did these 
 Germanic tribes in turn abandon theirs in favour of Gallo- 
 Romance. The same fate befell the Normans under Rollo, 
 who followed four centuries later (912) and settled along the 
 Lower Seine. Yet the Germanic elements 2 in the French 
 language are not inconsiderable. It has been computed that 
 about 900 of these words penetrated into Gallo- Romance, 
 though a goodly number were lost in the passage to modern 
 French. 
 
 On the other hand, Gallo-Romance lost ground in Armorica 
 (the present Brittany), where certain Keltic tribes, driven from 
 
 1 Excluding a goodly number of place-names, and some words of later 
 (Breton) introduction, the following are among the commonest words of 
 Gallic origin, most of them having already been adopted by Latin: alouette, 
 arpent, bee, bouleau, claie, lieue, marne, saie, truand, vassal, &c. 
 
 2 Apart from names of places and persons, and the other German words 
 introduced in the 16th century (chiefly at the time of the Thirty Years' 
 War), and gradually ever since, the Germanic element in the French 
 language can be classed as follows : 
 
 () Two adverbs (trap and gukre). 
 
 (b) Terms of war (adouber, blesser, epier, eperon, epieu, fourreau, the 
 word guerre itself, gonfanon, yuetter, haubert, heaume, &c.). 
 
 (c) Terms pertaining to jurisdiction and administration (alien, ban, 
 f chanson, fief , gage, garantir, marechal, saiair, senechal, &c. ). 
 
 (d) Miscellaneous (blanc, bleu, frais, gris, honte, loge, orgueil, renard, 
 riche, &c.).
 
 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 3 
 
 Britain by the Saxons, settled in the 5th century and reintro- 
 duced a Keltic dialect. 
 
 The same thing happened in the 6th century, when the 
 Vascons coming from Spain reinstalled their language, Iberian 
 (now called Basque), on the territory which they still in part 
 occupy. 
 
 On Gallo-Eomance soil originally one common language was 
 spoken, which in course of time, and according to place, diversi- 
 fied itself into an infinite variety of local speeches, from south 
 to north and from east to west. 
 
 Certain more or less distinct peculiarities enable us to divide 
 these different dialects into two main groups : 
 
 (1) the Langue d'oc in the south, 
 
 (2) the Langue d'oil in the north, 
 
 both so called according to the custom existing in the Middle 
 Ages of designating a language according to the word it 
 employed to express affirmation. 
 
 A line drawn from the mouth of the Charente to the 
 Alps, and passing through Limoges, Clermont-Ferrand, and 
 Grenoble, forms, roughly speaking, the boundary-line between 
 the two groups. 
 
 (1) The Dialects of the "Langue d'Oc" have now sunk to 
 the rank of patois, i.e. of spoken dialects as distinguished from 
 written dialects. This was not the case in the early Middle 
 Ages, when the langue d'oc was not only the rival but the 
 superior in many respects of the langue d'oil. 
 
 The literature of the langue d'oc, or Provencal as it is 
 now called from one of its chief dialects, already existed in the 
 llth century, but its golden age is the 12th century, the 
 period of the famous lyric poets, the troubadours, 1 whose fame 
 spread far beyond the limits of their native land, exercising 
 great influence on the poetry of the north of France, and on 
 that of Italy and Germany. This brilliant southern literature 
 
 1 Derived from the verb trobare = to find, to invent. In the langue d'ott 
 the word became trouvere, which is an accusative form (tropatorem).
 
 4 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 
 
 disappeared, yielding before the langue d'o'il, in the middle of 
 Ihe 13th century, as a result of the crusade against the 
 Albigeois or heretics of the south. In modern times a literary 
 renaissance has been attempted; poets of rare talent, such as 
 Jasmin 1 (1798-1864), Roumanille (1818-1891), Aubanel (1829- 
 1886), and above all, Mistral (born in 1830), have written 
 remarkable poems in their native idiom, without, however, 
 really succeeding in raising Prove^al to the level of a literary 
 language. 2 
 
 (2) The Dialects of the " Langue d'Oi'l ".Before the end 
 of the 7th century general linguistic differences appeared in the 
 north, sufficient to cause the language of that region to be 
 regarded as a new language. In 659, Saint Mummolin was 
 appointed in succession to Saint Eloi, bishop of Noyon, because 
 he spoke not only German, but also Romance. 8 Other testi- 
 monies exist to the same effect in the 8th and 9th centuries, 
 and about the middle of the 9th century we have a striking 
 example of this Romance of the north in the famous Serments 
 de Strasbourg (14th Feb., 842), which have been preserved by 
 Nithard in his Latin history. In this famous document the 
 langue d'oil, though still wavering on the border-line between 
 Latin and French, appears fixed in its general traits. The 
 oldest texts in the langue d'oil, apart from the Oaths, are of the 
 same century: the Sequence de Sainte Eulalie, in twenty -five 
 lines, and a fragment of a homily on Jonas partly in Latin; 
 in the 10th century we have a poem of greater length, La Vie 
 de St. Leger, considerably altered by a southern transcriber; in 
 the llth century the Vie de St. Alexis; later, the Pelerinage de 
 Charlemagne, and the Chanson de Roland, the first great literary 
 work in French. From the 12th century texts abound. 
 
 This old French literature was not peculiar to any particular 
 province. Each dialect had its own literature, which remained 
 
 1 Jasmin's name will be familiar to readers of Longfellow, who translated 
 one of his best pieces, The Blind Girl of Castel- Cuttle. 
 
 2 The same is being attempted for Walloon by the Socitte Ltigeoi&e de 
 Literature Wattonne (founded in 1856). 
 
 3 " Quid prcevalebat non tantum in teutonica, sed etiam in romaiM lingua" 
 (Acta Sanctorum Bdyii Selecta, iv. 403).
 
 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 5 
 
 independent, or nearly so, till the 14th century. The chief 
 dialects of the langue d'ail are : 
 
 (a) Francian or French proper, in the province of the 
 Ile-de-France. 
 
 (b) Burgundian, Franc-Comtois, Lorrainian, and Champe- 
 nois, in the east. 
 
 (c) Picard and Walloon in the north-east. 
 
 (d) Norman in the north-west. 
 
 (e) Poitevin, Angevin, Saintongeais, in the west. 
 
 (/) And out of France, Anglo-Norman, or Norman as it 
 developed in England after its introduction by William the 
 Conqueror and his followers. 
 
 But already in the 12th century, the dialect of the Ile-de- 
 France, began to prevail as the standard literary language. 
 This was not due to its superiority, but to the political pre- 
 dominance of that province, and to the extension of the influence 
 of Paris, its capital. This progress continued in the 13th, and 
 may be said to have been complete at the beginning of the 
 15th century, when the other dialects only remained as spoken 
 languages, and even that only among the lower classes. 
 
 To resume, modern French may be called a development of 
 the Romance dialect of the Ile-de-France, which itself is a con- 
 tinuation and gradual transformation, under certain climatic 
 and racial influences, of the popular Latin introduced into that 
 part of Gaul during the four and a half centuries of the 
 Koman occupation. 
 
 The further development of the dialect of the Ile-de-France, 
 from this time the literary language, will be traced in the 
 course of the book.
 
 BOOK I 
 
 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 GENERAL VIEW 
 
 The three main characteristics of medieval literature are: 
 
 (a) Its uniformity and lack of individuality. Speaking 
 generally, nearly all the Chansons de Geste, Fableaux, &c., might 
 have been the work of the same author, so great is their 
 similarity. Commines in prose and Villon in poetry are ex- 
 ceptions, no doubt, but they come quite at the end of our 
 period, and instead of summarizing the peculiarities of medieval 
 literature, they may be said to announce those of the Renais- 
 sance. Neither should it be forgotten that Villon left no 
 disciples, and that those who did were his followers, the 
 grands rhtioriqueurs, Molinet, Meschinot, and Cretin. 
 
 (b) Its defiance of nature, the outcome of the teachings of 
 primitive Christianity. In this respect Jean de Meung is an 
 exception. 
 
 (c) The almost total absence of any sense of art and form, 
 and its replacement by set phrases and recurring formulas. 
 
 Although the literature of the Middle Ages already in the 
 llth century produces works of real merit, and among the 
 number the famous epic of Roland, its golden age is the 12th 
 century, the century of epic poetry. In the Chansons de Geste 
 proper, those of the National Epic, the warlike and feudal 
 ideal is expressed ; in the Breton Epic, the Epic of Antiquity, 
 and likewise in lyrical poetry, arose new chivalric ideas, the 
 new courtesy and homage to women. The drama leaves the 
 church, and prose makes its first appearance in sermons and 
 translations.
 
 EPIC POETRY 7 
 
 In the 13th century literary activity hardly diminishes, but 
 different tendencies set in. The epic vein is exhausted, and 
 the Chansons de Geste are in full decadence. Against the high 
 ideal of chivalry and its overstrained sentiment the positive 
 intellect and mocking temper of the people reacted. The 
 esprit gaulois 1 had its revenge ; a satirical and didactic litera- 
 ture arose in the Fableaux, the Romance of Reynard the Fox, and 
 the second part of the Romance of the Rose. The prevailing 
 taste is for moral allegory. The drama is still feeling its way, 
 and prose asserts itself in the works of two great chroniclers, 
 Villehardouin and Joinville. 
 
 The 14th century is an arid waste. The social and intel- 
 lectual edifice of the Middle Ages slowly falls to ruins; writers 
 only repeat those who have preceded them, and replace 
 imagination by ingenuities and technical juggleries. The 
 theatre is not yet definitely constituted, and in prose one great 
 name only is found, that of Froissart, the famous chronicler. 
 
 In the 15th century, in spite of a vigorous effort in dramatic 
 literature (mysteries, moralities, farces, and sotties), and the 
 names of two great writers like Villon and Commines in verse 
 and prose, the decadence that had manifested itself in the 
 previous century continues in other branches. The minds of 
 men were ripe to accept the new influences of the Kenaissance. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 EPIC POETRY 
 
 Epic poetry in French literature is generally divided into 
 three large groups : 2 
 
 1 To give a definition of v/hat is meant by esprit gaulois, in a concise 
 form, is an impossibility. In its most general aspect it may be described 
 as a revolt against and a parody of authority and respectability, a wish 
 to shock Mrs. Grundy, which too often results in coarseness and even 
 obscenity. 
 
 2 This division dates back to the 13th century: 
 
 " Ne sont que trois matieres a nut home antandant 
 De France et dc Bretayne et de Rome la grant ". 
 
 Jean Bodel, Cfwmson des Saisnes.
 
 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 (1) The French or National Epic.,* 
 
 (2) The Epic of Antiquity, (fa 
 
 (3) The Breton Epic or "Epopee Courtoise". 
 
 The poems of the French Epic are known as Chansons de 
 Geste, 1 or songs of the deeds and achievements (gesta) of some 
 heroic person; those of the Epic of Antiquity and of the 
 Breton Epic as Romans d'Aventure. In a few of the poems of 
 the third group Breton and Byzantine sources are mixed, 
 while in a few others the basis are events of the time, or 
 national history or legend. 
 
 By far the most important is the French Epic, which was 
 the first to develop. The two others are later and artificial. 
 
 (1) The French or National Epic. It has been conclu- 
 sively proved that the French Epic is of Germanic origin, but 
 it is necessary to specify what is exactly meant by this state- 
 ment. From the earliest times it had been the custom of the 
 Germans to sing their heroes' deeds in epic recitals. After 
 their invasion of Gaul in the 5th century and their conversion 
 to Christianity, they were rapidly assimilated by the Gallo- 
 Romans whom they had conquered; but the Germanic blood, 
 acting like a leaven, as it were, on the new amalgamated race, 
 called forth similar epic songs in the Gallo-Roman tongue 
 from the 5th to the 10th century. To quote a famous philo- 
 logist : " The French heroic epic is the product of the fusion 
 of the Germanic spirit, in a Romance form, with the new 
 Christian civilization of France ". 
 
 (a) Of this, The First Epic Period, not a single monument 
 has come down to us, but the Latin chronicles of the time are 
 full of epic legends referring to the deeds of the Merovingians. 
 All the events of which the French Epopee has preserved the 
 memory fall within this, the only period of spontaneous epical 
 production. 
 
 We must not suppose, however, that the poems which arose 
 in the space intervening between the 5th and 10th centuries 
 were like the Chansons de Geste such as we now know them. 
 
 1 Later geste also meant cycle.
 
 EPIC POETRY 9 
 
 They were historical ballads or cantilenes, songs which were 
 contemporary, or nearly so, with the events which they 
 recalled and celebrated. They were essentially lyric-epic pro- 
 ductions. Gradually as the events receded the lyrical element 
 yielded to the epic, and the Chansons de Geste were developed 
 from these songs. We may regard the 9th century as the 
 period of the transformation of the cantilenes into the Chansons 
 de Geste. 
 
 (b) The Second Period of the French Epic reaches from 
 050-1120. The three oldest epic poems which have come 
 
 down to us th&r-Qhanson de Rolajid, Le Ptterinaqe deCharle- 
 jnaane, and Le Roi Louis belong to this*~penocl. They are not 
 ongmaf, buT" iiiaiiipulil'lllOns of old themes sung in the first 
 period. The Chanson de Roland which we possess is certainly 
 not the one which Taillefer the minstrel sang at Hastings, yet 
 the original epic matter in these poems is on the whole free 
 from heterogeneous and extraneous elements. They were fixed 
 by writing #t a time when the original epic spirit could be felt, 
 though its creative power was dead. It is for that very reason 
 that they are the finest chansons of the French Epic. 
 
 From the earliest times the epic matter tended to centralize 
 about one person, Chn.r1o.ma.g-ne, the champion of Christianity 
 and chivalry against the hated Saracen; yet at the same time 
 local heroes were not neglected, as we see from the poems on 
 Girard, Raoul, and Guillaume. 
 
 (c) In the poems of The Third Period (1100-1180) additions 
 and inventions are freely made to meet the requirements of 
 the audience. Originally, and up to the end of the llth 
 century, those epic songs were sung by the minstrel or jongleur 
 as the warriors marched to battle, but in the 12th century 
 they became a mere pastime for the lords at meals and fes- 
 tivals. The trouvcre or poet, who originally was sometimes 
 a warrior, gradually tends to become a man of letters. He 
 rarely sings his own compositions, but sells them to the 
 jongleur. For the profession to be a lucrative one both for 
 poet and minstrel they must please the audience, and the 
 original epic matter being exhausted, novel themes must be
 
 10 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 found; fancy and invention, encouraged by the Epic of Anti- 
 quity and the Breton Epic, drown more and more the popular 
 element. 
 
 (d) During The Fourth Period (1150-1360) these tendencies 
 were aggravated. It was the cyclical period proper; all the 
 heroes, and consequently all the preceding chansons, were 
 arbitrarily connected by genealogical links on the assumption 
 that we are more likely to be interested in a person related 
 to others whom we already know. As early as the 13th 
 century the greatest part of the Chansons de Geste had by this 
 process been grouped into three principal cycles: 1 
 
 (i) The Geste du Hoi, dealing with the Carolingian triad 
 Pe'pin, Charles, and Louis, also called Geste de Charlemagne, 
 after the central figure. 
 
 (ii) The Geste de Garin de Monglane, known also as the 
 Geste de Guillaume, the subject of which is the defence of the 
 south of France against the infidels. 
 
 (iii) The Geste de Boon de Mayence, on the feudal wars. 
 
 A certain number of poems, however, resisted the attraction 
 of the great cycles. Such is Raoul de Cambrai, based on his- 
 torical events and representing the wars of the feudal barons 
 among themselves; but the most important of this kind are 
 the five songs which describe the struggle between the houses 
 of Metz and of Bordeaux, forming a small cycle known as the 
 Cycle de Lorraine. 
 
 The first crusade likewise called forth additional poems, 
 forming the Cycle des Croisades, the last to develop. They are 
 rather historical than epic. 
 
 Excepting the Combat des Trente (1351) and the Chronigue 
 de Du Guesdin (1384), barren attempts to revive the epopee 
 
 1 Compare the following lines from Girard de Viennc, a chanson dating 
 from 1210-1220: 
 
 " N'ot (eut) que trois gcstes en France la garnie: 
 Dou roi de France est la plus seiynoric; 
 Et I'autre apres, bien est droit que vous die, 
 st de Doon <i la barbejlorie . . . 
 La tierce geste . . . 
 Fust de Garin de Montglane au vis (visage) fier ", 

 
 EPIC POETRY 11 
 
 at the time of the wars against England, and one or two 
 others, no more Chansons de Geste were composed after the 
 fourth period, and soon after, those that existed were no longer 
 sung. They were still copied into verse up till the end of the 
 15th century, but already before the middle of that century 
 scribes began to turn into prose those that still offered some 
 interest. 
 
 In the earlier Chansons de Geste the decasyllabic verse is 
 used, generally with the caesura after the fourth syllable. The 
 poems are divided into sections or laisses of varying length, 
 the lines of each laisse being united by a single assonance or 
 vowel-rime. Towards the end of the 12th century assonance 
 was abandoned in favour of full rime, and the decasyllabic 
 line replaced by the Alexandrine or line of twelve syllables. 
 In some chansons the two are mixed. 
 
 A marked peculiarity of many of these epic songs is the 
 repetition of the same idea or incident under a different form 
 in consecutive laisses of different assonances. 
 
 The CJiansons de Geste were sung to a very simple melody 
 by the jongleurs, and accompanied by the vielle, a kind of violin. 
 
 The character of the earliest and purest of them, founded 
 on a historical basis, is warlike and religious; gradually history 
 is exaggerated, and a passion for the marvellous and fabulous 
 invades everything. Love and gallantry, absent at first, gain 
 ground apace under the influence of the Breton Epic. The 
 style is occasionally 'grand in its simplicity, but more often 
 monotonous, while the study of character is rude and elemen- 
 tary, and feeling for nature is conspicuous by its absence. 
 
 Leaving out of consideration the later refashionings both 
 in prose and verse of the 14th and 15th centuries, it has been 
 calculated that over a hundred Chansons de Geste have come 
 down to us. The three oldest have already been mentioned. 
 These were followed in the 12th century by about forty -five 
 others, of which the best are perhaps: Aliscans, Amis et A miles, 
 Le Charroi de Nimes, Le Covenant Vivien, Garin le Loherain, the 
 oldest form of Huon de Bordeaux, and Raoul de Cambrai. By 
 far the larger number of the rest are not later than the 13th
 
 12 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 century. They include : Aimeri de Narbonne, Eerie aux Grands 
 Pies in its present French form, Doon de Mayence, Garin de 
 Monglane, and Les Enfances (early exploits) Ogier. 
 
 The CJtanson de Roland, as giving the best idea of the French 
 epic in its unadulterated form, deserves special mention. 
 
 In the form in which we possess it not the original one, 
 as we have already noticed the Chanson de Roland was com- 
 posed during the last quarter of the llth century (between 
 1066 and 1095). As in the case of the bulk of these epic 
 poems, its authorship is unknown. Some have wished to 
 argue from the last line which concludes, or rather supple- 
 ments, Roland: 
 
 " Ci fait la geste que Turoldus dedinet ", 
 
 that this Turoldus or Turold was the author; but as the 
 meaning of the word dedinet is doubtful, and as we cannot 
 tell \vith any degree of certainty whether he was the poet, 
 transcriber, or jongleur, this conclusion is more than rash. 
 
 The Chanson de Roland consists of 4002 assonanced deca- 
 syllabic lines, divided into 291 laisses of an average length of 
 15 lines. It is founded on a historical event recorded by 
 Eginhart in his Libri Historiarium IV, the surprise and defeat 
 of Charlemagne's rear-guard returning from Spain, by the 
 Basques in the valley of Roncevaux (Aug. 15, 778). He tells 
 us that among those who fell was Hrodland (Roland), Count 
 of the march of Brittany. In time the singers substituted 
 the Saracens, the traditional foe, for the Basques, and from a 
 simple historical event evolved the whole epic poem, of which 
 we append a short analysis. 
 
 Charlemagne, after seven years spent in Spain, has conquered the 
 whole peninsula with the exception of Saragossa, which is still held by 
 the Saracen chief Marsile, who sends word to Charlemagne that he is 
 willing to submit and receive baptism. The emperor accepts his offer, 
 and resolves to send an ambassador to Marsile. Roland, the emperor's 
 nephew, proposes Ganelon, his father-in-law. Ganelon, thinking that 
 Roland is plotting his death, swears to take vengeance. He arrives at 
 Saragossa, and informs Marsile that the French will soon start on their 
 homeward journey, and that Roland will be in command of the rear-
 
 EPIC POETRY 13 
 
 guard. Marsile draws up his plans accordingly, and the traitor takes 
 leave of him. The retreat of the Franks begins, and suddenly when the 
 rear-guard has reached the pass of Roncevaux it is attacked by innumer- 
 able hosts of Saracens. Olivier, Roland's friend, beseeches him to sound 
 his horn in order to recall the emperor, who has already reached Gascony, 
 but Roland refuses. The Franks, although greatly outnumbered, offer 
 an heroic resistance, and after accomplishing prodigies of valour, all 
 perish, save a small band of sixty warriors, who make a last stand round 
 Roland, who at last decides to blow his horn (his olifant). Charlemagne 
 hears the trumpet-blast and returns, but too late. The last of the Franks, 
 Olivier and Archbishop Turpin, fall in their turn, but the Saracens, 
 informed of the emperor's approach, take to flight. Roland remains 
 alone, unwounded but dying, exhausted by the strife and his superhuman 
 efforts in blowing his horn. The emperor, who arrives in hot haste, 
 bewails the fallen warriors and takes vengeance on Marsile, after which 
 he returns to his capital, Aix, and brings the news to Aude, Roland's 
 betrothed, who falls down dead on hearing the terrible tidings. The 
 traitor Ganelon is tried, convicted, and quartered. 
 
 Taken as a whole, the Chanson de Roland is superior to any 
 of the other chansons, though separate passages of great beauty 
 occur in several of the earlier ones. Such scenes as Olivier's 
 advice to Roland to blow his wonderful olifant, and the latter's 
 proud refusal; Archbishop Turpin's address to the Frankish 
 warriors before the fray, or the description of Roland's last 
 moments, are worthy to take rank with the finest passages in 
 the Iliad. 
 
 (2) The Epic of Antiquity. In the 12th century the clerks 
 thought they would rival the National Epic by adapting to the 
 tastes of the public the strange and wonderful stories which 
 they encountered in their Latin readings. To them the works 
 of the Greco-Roman decadence were naturally more congenial 
 than those of the classical period, as affording more suitable 
 materials. They first hit upon the fabulous history of Alex- 
 ander the Great, as contained in Julius Valerius, the Latin 
 abbreviator of a Greek novel. The earliest of these romances 
 of antiquity is the fragment of a poem on Alexander by one 
 Alberic de Brian^on. This fragment, which was composed 
 quite at the beginning of the 12th century, together with 
 Valerius' version, gave rise in the second half of the 12th cen-
 
 14 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 tury to the Roman d'Altxandre, due to three authors, Alexandra 
 de Bernai, Lambert le Tort, and Pierre of St. Cloud, written 
 in verses of twelve syllables, since called alexandrine, although 
 they had already been used in the Pelerinage de Charlemagne & 
 Jerusalem, a Chanson de Geste of the end of the llth century. 
 In these poems Alexander personifies the Ideal knight of the 
 time, and his largesses, for which he became the model, are 
 especially exalted, and in order to make the narrative more 
 attractive, monstrous wild beasts, mermaids, amazons, rain of 
 fire, and magic fountains are introduced with a liberal hand. 
 
 All the other productions of the Epic of Antiquity, with one 
 exception, were written in the octosyllabic line. Of these the 
 Roman de Troie, dedicated to Alienor of Aquitaine, and com- 
 prising no less than 30,000 lines, is the work of Benoit de 
 Sainte-More, the best poet in this group. His source is not 
 the Iliad, but translations of two lost Greek novels, while 
 several episodes are invented, of which the most notable is 
 that of Troilus and Briseida, which, after passing through 
 Latin and Italian, gave rise to Shakespeare's play of Troilus 
 and Cressida. 
 
 The Roman d"Ene"as, 1 a kind of courtly and chivalric travesty 
 of the jfineid, is probably by the same author, as is also the 
 Roman de Thebes, based on a glossed text of Statius, to which 
 the author made considerable additions. 
 
 Benoit, by his conventional and metaphysical conception of 
 love, may be called the forerunner of the poets of the Breton 
 Epic, whose casuistic love code was also considerably furthered 
 by several renderings of Ovid's Ars Amoris. 
 
 Much in the same spirit as those already mentioned is the 
 Roman de Jules Cesar (in Alexandrine verse) by Jacot de 
 Forest, copied from the prose Cesar (1240 c.) of Jean de Tuin, 
 who himself had drawn almost exclusively from Lucan's 
 Pharsalia. 
 
 (3) The Breton Epic. The Breton Epic is the product of 
 the contact of French society with the Kelts. This contact 
 
 \Through the medium of Heinrich von Veldeke's translation the Roman 
 d'Entas introduced courtesy into German literature.
 
 EPIC POETRY 15 
 
 took place mainly in England at the time of the Norman Con- 
 quest, and to a lesser degree between Normans and Bretons 
 on the continent of France, by means of Keltic harpers, who 
 wandered about England and France singing their lais or songs 
 on Keltic traditions, the historical basis of which rests on the 
 wars against the Saxons (5th-6th centuries), but which had 
 absorbed anterior mythological elements. The popularity of 
 these lais was greatly increased by Geoffrey of Monmouth's 
 Historia Regum Britanniae (1137 c.), which purported to be a 
 history of the Britons, but which in reality is a compound of 
 Nennius, 1 Keltic popular tales, and his own imagination. 
 Geoffrey's book acted as a stimulant; at the same time it is 
 wrong to regard it as the source of the Breton Epic, although 
 it may have been used to some extent by later writers in the 
 "matter of Britain". 
 
 The Anglo-Norman and French poets, prompt at seeing 
 which way the wind blew, and always on the alert for new 
 material, lost no time in competing with the Keltic bards. 
 Some wrote lais, others extended or amalgamated them into 
 longer poems, while yet others mixed in them traditions and 
 inventions the origin of which was not Keltic at all. 
 
 The huge mass of the Breton Epic falls naturally into three 
 large divisions, each of quite a different nature: 
 
 (I) The first division includes the Lais and the poems 
 referring to Tristan. 
 
 (II) The second those that deal with Arthur and the 
 Knights of the Round Table. 
 
 (III) The third, of later date, comprises the poems on the 
 Holy Graal, and its mystic band of guardians and questers. 
 
 (a) The spirit of the poems of Group I is essentially Keltic : 
 adventures, exploits, chivalry, tourneys, and religion find little 
 place in them ; they are mainly stories of tender or deep passion, 
 enshrouded in a veil of mystic melancholy. 
 
 Most of the lais we possess are due to a poetess, Marie 2 , of 
 
 1 Towards the end of the 10th century an anonymous writer, who became 
 known later under the name of Nennius, wrote a short History of the 
 Britons, in which Arthur is mentioned for the first time. 
 
 2 Known as Marie de France.
 
 16 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 French birth, who lived at the court of Henry II of England. 
 She translated, or adapted from Keltic or Anglo-Saxon, a 
 dozen or more of these short stories in verse, of which the best 
 are that of Lanval, a knight beloved of a fairy who in the end 
 leads him away with her; of Eliduc, the twofold love of a 
 knight and the resignation of his lawful wife; of Bisdavret, the 
 story of a werwolf, and of Chewefeuille, an episode of the love 
 of Tristan and Isolt. 
 
 The story of Tristan is closely connected with lost lais of 
 mythological origin quite foreign to the Arthurian cycle with 
 which it was afterwards connected. The scattered traditions 
 relating to the adventures of Tristan were united into a single 
 poem in England by Beroul (1150c.), whose work has only 
 come down to us as a fragment. About 1170 Thomas, another 
 Anglo-Norman poet, also composed a poem on Tristan, which 
 we likewise only possess in fragmentary form. 
 
 (b) In the poems of Group II the Keltic spirit is entirely 
 absent. This change is manifest in the works of Chretien de 
 Troie, the most famous of the poets who have treated the 
 matiere de Brdagne. A new ideal of chivalry had sprung up 
 among the feudal aristocracy. Chretien determined to follow 
 the fashion, and in this he was aided by his lucid positivism, 
 which is the very counterpart of the mystical melancholy 
 Keltic mind, and also by his position as poet of the court of 
 Champagne, whose countess Marie, and her mother Alienor of 
 Aquitaine, had introduced into the north of France the refined 
 manners of the south and the love-poetry of the troubadours, 
 which at the time were looked upon as the ideal of chivalry. 
 
 Chretien's poems, which all belong to the Breton Epic, 
 include his lost Tristan, composed about 1160; followed by 
 Erec, then by Cliges; a few years later (1170 c.) by Lancelot 
 and by Ivain or Le Chevalier au Lion, and lastly (1175 c.) by 
 Perceval, or Le Conte du Graal, which he left unfinished. 
 
 Adventures, tourneys, marvellous exploits, which were 
 merely ornaments in the lais or the poems on Tristan when 
 they did occur, tend to become the end : Arthur has nothing 
 in common with the mysterious Keltic chief whom the fairies
 
 EPIC POETRY 17 
 
 have carried off to the Isle of Avallon, but becomes the embodi- 
 ment of what a perfect knight should be; a brilliant king 
 whose court is the centre of ideal politeness, gracious manners, 
 sumptuous festivals, and refined love not the passion of the 
 poems on Tristan or even of the lais of Marie de France, but 
 the metaphysical courtesy of the southern troubadours. 
 
 Form is Chretien's chief merit, and his poetry offers the 
 best example of 12th-century French. 
 
 (c) Group III. The ideal of a worldly and too facile life, 
 as represented in the romances of the court-poet of Cham- 
 pagne, seems to have shocked a few serious and austere 
 Christian minds. In these Keltic traditions themselves they 
 found a means of protesting against the frivolity of the 
 Romans de la Table Ronde. 
 
 Chretien, in his fragment of Perceval, makes mention of a 
 certain dish or graal. With his continuators this graal became 
 the vessel in which Joseph of Arimatheia gathered the Lord's 
 blood, and towards the beginning of the 13th century a poet 
 of Franche-Comte, Eobert de Boron, tried to connect the 
 history of this holy graal with the Breton Epic, in a trilogy 
 of poems: Joseph d'Arimathie, Merlin, which introduced the 
 famous enchanter into the cycle, and Perceval, lost, but early 
 turned into prose. 
 
 In Boron's productions the religious side of the Holy Graal 
 episode is developed and love plays no part. 
 
 Still more austere and rigidly ascetic is a Quete du Saint 
 Graal, composed in the 13th century; Galaad, a figure of 
 immaculate perfection, replaces Perceval, and woman is cursed 
 and shunned as the embodiment of sin. 
 
 But those Romances of the Graal were too much in contra- 
 diction with the tastes and aspirations of feudal aristocracy to 
 represent anything but the pangs of a few tormented minds. 
 For the lords and ladies of the 13th and 14th centuries the 
 ideal knight was Ivain or Lancelot, and not Perceval or Galaad. 
 
 The poems of the Breton Epic are written in the octo- 
 syllabic line with full rime, arid, unlike the Chansons de Geste, 
 were meant to be read and not sung. 
 
 (MOW) B
 
 18 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Gradually from the beginning of the 13th century the 
 prose romances seem to have superseded the poetical and 
 helped to spread the fame of the Breton Epic, which in the 
 Middle Ages was immense, as the numerous Italian, German, 
 English, Spanish, and Portuguese translations, continuations, 
 and imitations testify. 
 
 Returning to France from Spain in the 16th century in the 
 guise of the Amadis des Gaules, they became the main source 
 of inspiration for the chivalric and pastoral novels of the 
 17th century. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 LYRICAL POETRY 
 
 (a) First Period. There is little doubt that lyrical poetry 
 of a popular kind existed in the north of France already in 
 the 10th century. It consisted of dance-songs, of which only a 
 few refrains, incorporated in songs of a later epoch, have been 
 preserved. These popular dance-songs were called Chansons 
 d'Histoire on account of their semi-narrative character, or 
 Chansons de Toile, no doubt because they were sung by women 
 when weaving. They are written in verses of ten or eight 
 syllables with assonance, and consist of four or five strophes 
 with a refrain. The characters are limited to two or three 
 persons, the dramatic and epic element predominating. None 
 of these poems occurs later than the close of the 12th century. 
 
 (6) Second Period. About 1150, Provencal influence came 
 and interrupted this current of popular and spontaneous 
 poetry. Communication between the north and the south 
 had already taken place in the Holy Land at the time of the 
 Crusades, but the direct medium was Alienor of Aquitaine, 
 and her daughter Marie who had married the Count of 
 Champagne. Her court, together with Paris the capital, 
 became the centre of courtly poetry, which was in full vogue 
 during the last years of the llth and the beginning of the 
 12th century. The earliest singers were persons of noble
 
 LYRICAL POETRY 19 
 
 rank and birth, but gradually poetry was abandoned by the 
 nobility, and fell into the hands of the bourgeoisie, 
 
 The lyric poetry of the troubadours of the south was moral, 
 satirical, and political, although its main theme was love. 
 That of their northern imitators is almost exclusively amor- 
 ous. It is essentially a poetry of the intellect and of the 
 imagination, embodying the ideal of the brilliant society of 
 the south which had been imported into the north. In this 
 society great importance was attached to certain rules of 
 social etiquette which were designated under the name of 
 courtoisie, and in which an elaborate code of love represented 
 that passion as ennobling, and woman as the object most 
 worthy of worship. 
 
 The spontaneous cry of passion is rarely heard in these 
 songs, which reflect the thoughts of the poet about love and 
 not his own personal feelings. Their real merit lies in their 
 grace, elegance, and prettiness, as well as in their artistic 
 qualities. 
 
 They are generally made up of five, six, or seven strophes, 
 invariably divided into three parts (2 + 2 + 1; 2 + 2 + 2; 
 2 + 2 + 3), with varying and complicated systems of rime. In 
 most cases the poet was also a musician and composed his own 
 melody; the form of each strophe was invented anew for each 
 song, and was considered as the property of the inventor; he 
 was not supposed to repeat it himself, and no other poet could 
 use this son (melody) without acknowledgment, unless it was 
 for polemical purposes. 
 
 Different names were applied to these songs according to 
 their form and nature (pastourelle, estampie, tendon, jeu parti, &c.). 
 
 Chretien de Troie, who introduced courtoisie into the Breton 
 Epic, was one of the first to write songs in the form of the 
 troubadours, but the chief representatives of this artificial lyric 
 in the langue d'oil are: Conon or ftuesne de Bethune ( + 1224), 
 who sang at the court of Marie; Gace Brule, a knight of 
 Champagne ; Gui, the governor of the castle of Coucy ( + 1 203), 
 and Thibaut de Champagne, king of Navarre ( + 1253), the 
 best and most original of them all.
 
 20 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 In the hands of the commoners who practised this branch, 
 particularly in the puys, 1 or poetical competitions of the north 
 of France, courtly lyric became more personal and satirical. 
 Of these the most famous are Adam de la Halle, Jean Bodel, 
 and Baude Fastoul, all three belonging to Arras. 
 
 (c) The Third Period of French lyrical poetry in the Middle 
 Ages begins with the 14th century. 
 
 During this period varieties of lyrical poetry having a more 
 or less fixed form were developed, reduced to rule, and almost 
 exclusively used. The ballad especially, the rondeau, the 
 virelai, and the chant royal were the established forms. 
 
 The initiator of this new school was one Guillaume de 
 Machaut, and his principal followers were Eustache Des- 
 champs, Froissart the famous chronicler, Christine de Pisan, 
 and Alain Chartier. Their poetry was a continuation of the 
 artificial lyricism of the south, in which art and grace were 
 replaced by pedantic subtlety and scholastic dialectics. As 
 they had little to say they determined to replace poetic 
 inspiration by elaborating the technique of verse. A poet 
 was truly great if he could write poetry with annexed 2 
 rimes, still greater if he could rise to the equivocal and retro- 
 grade 3 rime or other such juggleries, although occasionally 
 Machaut's followers essay to make passing events the subject 
 of poetry, and in this way give us some idea of the men and 
 manners of their age. 
 
 Their style was as complicated as their technique, and 
 allegory, which had become almost obligatory since the 
 Romance of the Rose, holds sway. Hence such strange titles 
 as L'Horloge Amoureuse, Traite de VEpinette Amoureuse, L'Arbre 
 des Batailles, &c. 
 
 Guillaume de Machaut (1290-95 1377) wrote no less than 
 
 lr The word puys means properly peak, height. Thus was called the 
 platform on which the judges sat, and from which the competing poets 
 recited their verses. 
 
 2 A rime was known as annexed when the last syllable of one verse 
 becomes the first of the verse following. 
 
 3 A rime equivoque et retrograde was one in which the last syllable of one 
 verse becomes the first word of the verse following.
 
 LYRICAL POETRY 21 
 
 80,000 verses. Occasionally in an odd ballad or rondeau the 
 form is good, but in the whole of his production it can safely 
 be said that there is not a grain of real poetry. 
 
 Jean de Froissart (1337-1404 c.) is the author of about 
 25,000 lines of lyric and didactic poetry very little superior 
 to that of his master. 
 
 Eustache Deschamps (1340 C.-1410 c.) is a pupil of Machaut's 
 in form, but not in spirit. He it was especially who tried to 
 find subjects for poetry in the events of his life and times, his 
 best-known poem being the ballad on Du Guesclin, 
 
 " Estoc d'honneur et arbre de vaillance ". 
 
 Deschamps' works are very voluminous, and comprise no 
 less than 1450 ballads, rondeaux, and other light pieces, 
 besides a long satirical poem on women called the Miroir de 
 Mariage in 13,000 lines, and an Art de Dictier et de Faire 
 Ballades et Chants Royaux (1392) the earliest poetics in French. 
 
 Deschamps was a grumbler and a pessimist, but he had 
 a real love for his country and for the poor. 
 
 Christine de Fisan (1363-1431) was of Italian parentage 
 and birth, but came to France when quite a child. Left a 
 widow at an early age, she was obliged to turn to literature 
 to keep herself and her children. Her best verse productions 
 are in the forms established by Machaut and his school, but 
 often pedantic and marred by hurried composition. 
 
 Alain Chartier (1392c.-1440c.) was considered in his day 
 as the greatest writer of his time. As a poet he is prosaic in 
 the extreme. As a prose writer, though he did not often 
 succeed in freeing himself from allegory and abstractions, he 
 deserves to be remembered for his patriotism and for his 
 harmonious eloquence, acquired by a diligent study of the 
 ancients, especially Seneca. A few pages in Alain Chartier 
 are the best prose before the 16th century. They will be 
 found in the Quadrilogue Invectif, in which France beseeches 
 the representatives of the Three Estates to have pity on her 
 wretched state.
 
 22 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 DRAMA 
 
 (1) Tragic Drama. The tragic drama of the Middle Ages 
 is a continuation and expansion of the liturgical drama, which 
 itself had developed from the service, to which interpolations 
 were gradually added for the greater edification of the faithful. 
 Christmas and Easter especially were the seasons when those 
 representations were given. The language was at first exclu. 
 sively Latin and in prose, gradually verses were introduced, 
 and French used side by side with Latin. The earliest play 
 in which the vernacular (of Poitou) competes with Latin is 
 Sponsus (1150c.), a paraphrase of the parable of the Foolish 
 Virgins. Finally, French ousted Latin, and as the audience 
 and actors became more numerous the play passed from the 
 church into the public street or square. The actors, who at 
 first were priests supported by laymen, became later almost 
 exclusively laymen. 
 
 Secular drama played outside the church by profane actors 
 is fully established in the 12th century. The oldest play of 
 this kind in French (but with interspersed liturgical sentences 
 in Latin) is the Jeu d'Adam, written in England by an unknown 
 author in the 12th century. The verse is octosyllabic, and 
 the play is made up of three juxtaposed parts: the fall of 
 Adam and Eve, the death of Abel, and a procession of Messi- 
 anic prophets who announce the coming of the Redeemer. 
 The style is simple but vigorous, and the coaxing of Eve by 
 the devil shows considerable psychological insight. 
 
 Of the 13th century only two religious plays remain. The 
 first, the Jeu de S. Nicolas, was composed by Jean Bodel of 
 Arras, and played there, no doubt by a puy on the occasion 
 of that saint's day. It consists of a mixture of tragic and 
 comic scenes a handful of Christians in combat against the 
 Saracens, and tavern scenes teeming with life and realism. 
 
 The second is a so-called miracle play, or the recital of some 
 miraculous event attributed to the Virgin or the saints. It
 
 DRAMA 23 
 
 was written by the trouvere Rutebeuf, and styled Miracle de 
 Thfophile, an ambitious priest who sells his soul to the devil, 
 but is saved in the end by the intervention of the Virgin 
 Mary. 
 
 Of the 14th century forty -three Miracles de Notre Dame have 
 been preserved. They formed the repertoire of some literary 
 guild. Their literary value is not great, and they are only 
 interesting for their strange blending of mysticism and realism. 
 The authors of these Miracles drew on very varied sources: 
 the apocryphal gospels, legends of saints, chansons de geste, and 
 romances. 
 
 One of these, L'Histoire de Griselidis, a dramatized fableau, is 
 entirely profane, and much more like a morality than a miracle. 
 
 In the 15th century a neAv kind of religious play appears, 
 the mystery, 1 a distant offspring of the liturgical drama, which 
 marks the culminating point of the Medieval Drama. A 
 mystery can be defined as the exposition in dialogue of an 
 historical event drawn from the Scriptures or the life of the 
 saints. They were object-lessons intended to teach the masses 
 the essential truths of religion. 
 
 According to subject, they can be divided into three large 
 cycles : 
 
 (a) The Cycle of the Old Testament. 
 
 (b) The Cycle of the New Testament. 
 
 (c) The Cycle of the Saints. 
 
 The first group is a kind of biblical encyclopedia, which, 
 under the name of Mystere du Fieux Testament, includes a 
 fusion of mysteries originally distinct. In the Cycle of the 
 New Testament the most famous production is the Passion of 
 Arnold Greban, written about 1450, and embracing the entire 
 earthly life of our Lord in 34,000 lines, which required 150 
 
 1 The word mystere, in this sense, is derived from the Latin ministerium, 
 and has no connection with the Greek word mystery. Originally the term 
 mystere was applied to tableaux vivants. It was first applied to dramatic 
 performances in the royal privilege, which conferred upon the association 
 known as the Confrerie de la Passion the right of performing sacred plays 
 (1402).
 
 24 MIDDLK AGES 
 
 performers and four days for the delivery. But Greban, in 
 alliance with his brother Simon this time, was not to be 
 beaten, and composed the Actes des Apotres, comprising 61,908 
 verses, and for which 498 actors were requisitioned. It was 
 played with great success at Bourges in 1536, the perfor- 
 mance extending over forty days. 
 
 Two mysteries, the subjects of which are taken from pro- 
 fane history, form an exception: the Sttge d'Orltons and the 
 Destruction de Troie, the last of which was probably never 
 played. 
 
 In the Middle Ages the performance of a mystery set a 
 whole city in motion. The costs were defrayed by the clergy, 
 the town, or sometimes by a guild. The actors, who were 
 amateurs, were recruited from all classes of society advocates, 
 priests, artisans, burgesses, &c. by means of the cry or 
 proclamation, which announced the enterprise, and invited 
 volunteers to offer their services. On the day preceding the 
 first day of performance the personages in their different 
 costumes paraded the streets (la montre). We have already 
 mentioned the large number of actors and the extraordinary 
 length of time that some of these plays required. In them 
 time and place were treated with the utmost freedom. The 
 vast stage represented simultaneously all the places in which 
 the action was supposed to take place paradise, Nazareth, 
 Jerusalem, the sea, hell, as the case might be and none of 
 the actors quitted the stage. Nothing that could appeal to 
 the eyes or senses was neglected; devils shot in and out of 
 trap-doors, manikins were burnt or wracked, flames darted 
 from the jaws of a dragon figuring the mouth of hell, while, 
 when the case required it, an infernal din was kept up by the 
 "master of the secrets" and his myrmidons in the invisible 
 depths below the stage. 
 
 The oldest theatrical company giving regular performances 
 was the celebrated Confrdrie de la Passion, composed of bur- 
 gesses and artisans, which already existed in 1398. In 1402 
 it received state recognition and the sole right to play sacred 
 plays in Paris. This guild first gave its performances in the
 
 DRAMA 25 
 
 large hall of the Hospital of the Trinity, but in 1539 it 
 migrated to the Hotel de Flandres, and thence to the Hotel 
 de Bourgogne. On the model of this association similar ones 
 were formed in the provinces. 
 
 The repertoire of the Confrfrie de la Passion was at first 
 composed exclusively of mysteries, but farces were ultimately 
 introduced, and the Christian drama stifled under the growing 
 abundance of popular and burlesque scenes, which had been 
 introduced partly because the solemnity of the matter de- 
 manded relief, but still more because the actors found it 
 pleased the audience better. The Parliament of Paris took 
 fright; the Protestants were scandalized, as were also the 
 lovers of classical art. In consequence that assembly decreed 
 on the 17th of November, 1548, that the Confrerie de la Passion 
 should be forbidden in future to play sacred dramas, though 
 they were allowed to perform mysteries on profane subjects. 
 About 1588 the confreres ceased to play, and yielded their hall 
 to other actors; the opposition to classical tragedy became 
 weaker and weaker, and at the end of the century the medi- 
 eval tragic drama was as good as dead., 
 
 (2) Comedy in the Middle Ages. The origins of the Comic 
 Drama are uncertain. The two oldest French comedies, Le Jeu 
 de la FeuilUe (1260 c.) and Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion (1283 c.), 
 have nothing in common with later productions, a fact which 
 has led some authorities to suppose that they are the remnants 
 of an early comic drama whose history has remained unknown 
 to us. Both these plays were written by Adam de la Halle 
 of Arras. 
 
 The Jeu de la FeuilUe, so called because it was played under 
 a bower, probably by some puy, is a kind of review of the year 
 in 1096 verses. Adam himself, his father and his wife appear, 
 while his neighbours, friends, and enemies are also presented to 
 us in a series of pictures, in which obscene realism and grace- 
 ful fancy alternate. 
 
 The Jeu de RoUn et de Marion is a kind of comic opera, a 
 pastourelle in dialogue. The shepherdess Marion sings of her 
 love for Robin while watching over her sheep ; a knight appears
 
 26 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 and tries to win her love ; she escapes from him, rejoins her 
 companions, and after a series of rural diversions all join hands 
 and execute a dance. 
 
 Of comedy in the 14th century only two dialogued pieces 
 by Eustache Deschamps occur, which were not intended for 
 the stage. 
 
 It was at this period that two societies were organized which 
 were destined to play much the same part with regard to 
 comedy as the Confrdrie de la Passion did in the serious drama. 
 These were the Clercs de la Basoche or Clercs du Parlement and 
 the Enfants sans Souci. The Basoche had formed a corporation 
 since 1303, but it was not till the beginning of the 15th cen- 
 tury that they obtained the right to play farces and moralities. 
 
 About the same time some young men of the upper classes, 
 who styled themselves Les En/ants sans Souci, likewise obtained 
 the privilege to perform farces and other pieces, which received 
 the name of sotties. Thus during the 15th century farces, 
 moralities, and sotties were the kinds cultivated. 
 
 The farce, of which we have one solitary specimen belonging 
 to the 13th century, was a play the sole object of which was 
 to amuse. It has a great deal of analogy with the fableau, 
 in fact farces were often only jableaux in action. About 150 
 have come down to us. The best are Le Cuvier, a satire against 
 women; Le Franc Archer de Bagnolet, a hit at boastful swash- 
 bucklers; and above all, L'Awcat Pathelin, composed about 
 1470 by an unknown author: 
 
 Pathelin is a poor briefless barrister; his wife pesters him for some 
 cloth to make a gown ; he promises to gratify her wish, and wends his 
 steps to the draper's. After having coaxed and beguiled him to let him 
 have some cloth he, sets off, promising to pay the draper when he calls. 
 The draper turns up duly and finds Pathelin in bed with a raging fever, 
 raving in every dialect. He must be mistaken; such a man could not 
 have been lately in his shop and bought some cloth. He goes away, 
 convinced that he has been dreaming or been deceived by the devil. In 
 the meantime the draper has dismissed his shepherd, Thibaut Aignelet, 
 because he stole his wool and ate his sheep. The shepherd asks Pathelin 
 to defend him before the court ; the latter, agrees ; tells his client to 
 affect idiocy, and to reply to all questions with " bee ". The dtratagem
 
 SATIRICAL AND ALLEGORICAL POETRY 27 
 
 succeeds, and Thibaut gets off scot-free. Pathelin asks for his fee, but 
 can obtain no other answer but " bee ", thus falling into his own trap. 
 
 The moralite, as its title implies, was meant to inculcate 
 certain moral truths. Their character is very varied mostly 
 comic, sometimes quite serious, but always didactic; while the 
 personages are generally allegorical figures, such as Bien Avise", 
 liaison, Malechance, Oysance, &c. 
 
 The sottie is much like the farce, except that its satire is 
 more aggressive. It was used with a direct political purpose 
 by Louis XII: 
 
 " Le roy Loys douziesme desiroit 
 Qu'on les jouast & Paris, et disoit 
 Que par tels jeux il Sfaroit maintes faultes 
 Qu'on lui celoit par surprinses trap caultes (cunning) ". 
 
 Thus Gringoire, a member of the Enfants sans Souci, in his 
 Sottie du Prince des Sots (1512) backs up the king in his quarrel 
 against Pope Julius II, who appears accompanied by Simonie 
 and Hypocrisie, and introduces himself with the words : 
 
 " Je tie me puis de mal faire abstenir, 
 Ma promesse ne vueil (veux) entretenir; 
 Ainsi qu'un Grec suis menteur detestable, 
 Comme la mer inconstant, variable ". 
 
 The comic drama of the Middle Ages did not disappear 
 entirely on the advent of the Renaissance; it had created a 
 tradition which was continued in the 16th century and which 
 has penetrated into modern comedy. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 SATIRICAL AND ALLEGORICAL POETRY 
 
 (1) Satirical Literature. Various renderings of the ^Esopic 
 fables were made from the 12th century onwards, by way of 
 the Latin fables of Phaedrus and Avianus, with additions of 
 Eastern origin. The most interesting of these is the Isopet 
 (a generic name in the Middle Ages for any collection of fables
 
 28 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 whether vEsopic or not) of Marie de France, the author of the 
 more famous lais. These fables, mingling with the animal 
 stories which had existed in popular tradition from the earliest 
 times, called forth the world-renowned Roman de Renard, one 
 of the capital works of the Middle Ages, the different branches 
 of which, taking them altogether, cannot fall much short of 
 one hundred thousand lines. 
 
 These branches are: (a) the Ptlerinage de Renard and the 
 Juyement de Renard, which both belong to the end of the 1 2th 
 century, and of which the authors are not known; (b) le 
 Couronnement de Renard, written soon after 1250, and Renard 
 le Nouvel, the work of a poet of Lille, Jacquemart Gele"e, 
 nearly half a century later; (c) Renard le Contrefait, composed' 
 at Troyes before 1328. 
 
 In the Animal Epopee the principal characters, characters 
 which have become individualized, are: Keynard the Fox, 
 whose name became so famous that it was applied to the whole 
 class, and turned out the older word goupil. He it is who is 
 the chief actor, while around him are grouped Isengrin the 
 wolf, Noble the lion, and their wives; Bruin the bear, Bruyant 
 the bull, Brichemer the stag, Tibert the cat, Couard the hare, 
 Chantedair the cock, Pinte the hen, and many others. The 
 primitive form of the Roman de Renard, in which these scat- 
 tered animal-stories were first grouped round one central 
 hero, and which belongs to the early part of the 12th century, 
 is lost, but it can in part be reconstructed from the Latin 
 Isengrinus (1150 c.), and from the German Reinhart Fuchs, 
 a rendering from the French by an Alsatian, Heinrich von 
 Glichezare (1180c.). 
 
 In the primitive form and the earliest branches of the Ro- 
 mance of Reynard wonderful skill is exhibited in keeping the 
 characters mere beasts, while assigning to them human arts. 
 The spirit is one of frank gaiety, untroubled by a didactic or 
 satirical intention. Not so in the later branches. When it 
 was perceived how easily the doings of the fox and his com- 
 panions lent themselves to social and political satire, the beasts 
 were more and more transformed into men; the whole became
 
 SATIRICAL AND ALLEGORICAL POETRT 29 
 
 a huge and often dull bourgeois parody of the church and nobil- 
 ity, in which rascality and trickery (renardie) triumph over 
 strength. Things are still worse in Renard le Contrefait, which 
 closes the series. It is nothing more than a kind of encyclo- 
 pedia woven into the story, which itself has received distinct 
 additions. Far inferior in execution to the other branches, 
 it owed its prodigious success to allegory, at a time when 
 allegory had invaded the whole of literature. 
 
 The same bourgeois spirit is apparent in the fahleaux (the 
 form fabliau belongs to the Picard dialect), short tales in verse 
 almost invariably octosyllabic couplets dealing, for the most 
 part from the comic point of view, with incidents of ordinary 
 life. About 150 of these fableaux have come down to us. 
 Their average length is from 200-300 lines. The period of 
 their greatest popularity extends from the close of the 12th 
 to the beginning of the 13th century, though they appear as 
 early as 1159 and as late as 1340. 
 
 It may be that a few of these stories have come down to us 
 from India, but the great majority of them only call for an 
 inventive effort that does not exceed the capacity of the most 
 ordinary experience. Their chief aim is to amuse, but too 
 often amusement is sought in ribaldry and obscenity. Many 
 are satirical, but in this connection it should be noticed that 
 the authors carefully avoid attacking powerful personages, and 
 confine their attention to the peasant, the village priest, and, 
 above all, to women in general. 
 
 The fableaux are mostly by anonymous writers. Of the 
 authors whose names are recorded the best known are : Huon 
 le Hoi, who wrote one of the most charming and least offen- 
 sive of these tales, the Fair Palefroi; Courtebarbe, the author 
 of Les Trois Aveugles de Compiegne; Jehan Bedel, whose best 
 are Brunain and Gombert et les deux Clercs; Gautier le Long, 
 who composed the Valet qui d'Aise a Malaise se met (by mar- 
 riage), and La Feuve; also Bernier, to whom we owe La 
 Housse Partie, and B,utebeu the greatest poet not only of the 
 13th century, but of the whole of French literature prior to 
 Villon.
 
 30 MIDDLE AfiES 
 
 His best work are the satires against the religious orders, 
 the mendicant friars, and indeed against all clerics, students 
 alone excepted; but, besides fableaux and the Miracle de Theo- 
 phile, which is noticed under dramatic literature, he wrote the 
 Maruige Rutebeuf on his own unhappy conjugal relations; the 
 Dit des Ribands de Grhe; the Dit de I'Herberie, an amusing 
 parody of a quack; and numerous religious pieces. Little is 
 known of Rutebeuf, except that he lived a Bohemian life at 
 Paris, in constant distress and misery, the result of lavish 
 habits, a passion for gambling, and an unhappy marriage. His 
 poems, judging by the allusions which they contain, must 
 have been written between 1255 and 1280. They are in the 
 dialect of. the Ile-de-France. His most striking qualities are 
 force, spirit, and colour, and some of his best productions 
 reveal a touching personal note that reminds one of Villon, 
 although, unlike Villon, he is almost entirely lacking in pathos. 
 
 Consequent on considerable changes both in society and 
 literature, the fableau disappeared as a branch of literature in 
 the second half of the 14th century. In the 15th it is repre- 
 sented by the prose conte and by the farce. The conte in verse 
 belongs to a much later period. 
 
 Other species of satirical poetry are the so-called Mats du 
 monde, in which universal satire is expressed. The oldest and 
 most interesting of these is the Lime des Manures, by Etienne 
 de Fougeres ( + 1178). Here likewise may be classed the 
 Bible 1 of Guiot de Provins and that of Hugues de Berze, 
 satirizing the whole of contemporary society. 
 
 Other poems mocked at certain classes of society only, 
 clerks, peasants, usurers, and more especially women. Of the 
 last kind the wittiest is the fivangile des Femmes, recast and 
 interpolated several times from the beginning of the 12th 
 century onwards. It is divided into quatrains of twelve syl- 
 lables, in the last line of which the praise accorded in the first 
 three lines is sarcastically upset. 
 
 Political satire, too, was full of life in the Middle Ages; at 
 
 1 Called bibles, not because they had anything in common with the Bible, 
 but to indicate that they contained the truth, and the truth only.
 
 SATIRICAL AND ALLEGORICAL POETRY 31 
 
 the beginning of the 13th century Andre de Coutances com- 
 posed the biting Roman des Francis. Neither were our 
 neighbours across the Channel less sparing of satire in the 
 Paix aux Anglais (1264), in La Charts aux Anglais, or in the 
 Dit de la Rebellion d'Angleterre, at the beginning of the 14th 
 century. 
 
 Papal and royal vices were also attacked. 
 
 Half-way between satirical and allegorical poetry may be 
 placed certain other pieces intended mainly to amuse. Such 
 are the dits, short poems on events of daily life usually; the 
 ddbats, disputes, and batailles, generally between two allegorical 
 personages; the congds, the testaments, ihefatrasies or nonsense 
 verse, and the cliastiements, counsels on education and conduct, 
 in which the didactic element has a large share. 
 
 (2) Allegorical Literature. The earliest is found in the 
 so-called bestiaires, treatises on natural history, in which 
 descriptions of symbolic animals, full of fanciful science and 
 fabulous traditions, serve as a basis for moralizing and reli- 
 gious instruction. When precious stones or birds served as a 
 pretext to inculcate the lesson they were called lapidaires or 
 volucraires. These fairy tales of science were borrowed from 
 Latin versions, which themselves were derived from Greek 
 and Eastern sources. The earliest versified bestiaire is that of 
 Philippe de Thaon (before 1135), dedicated to Queen Ae"lis 
 of Louvain. In its symbolic zoology the lion and the pelican 
 are the emblems of Christ, the unicorn is God, the crocodile 
 is the devil, and so on. Philippe is also remembered as the 
 author of the Comput, a popular astronomy in verse, containing 
 a calendar for the use of priests. In the 13th century 
 Richard de Fournival ( + 1260), in his Bestiaire d 'Amour, made 
 use of these animal-stories for the interpretation of human 
 love. 
 
 No doubt the rise of allegory was in part furthered by such 
 productions, although it would appear to have spread in the 
 main from sermons and theological treatises, in which the 
 Seven Deadly Sins and other abstractions were treated as 
 entities.
 
 32 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 The representative poem of allegorical literature, and more- 
 over the most remarkable literary achievement of the Middle 
 Ages, is the Roman de la Rose. 
 
 The Romance of the Rose is not a homogeneous whole. It 
 consists of two distinct parts, written at different periods 
 by two different poets, the one representing the aristocratic 
 spirit and the other the democratic spirit of the fableaux and 
 of the Roman de Renard. The first part, of 4669 octosyllabic 
 lines, was written in the first quarter of the 13th century by 
 Guillaume de Lorris, an inhabitant of the little town situated 
 between Orleans and Montargis; the second part, of 18,148 
 octosyllabic lines, was composed forty years later (about 1277) 
 by Jean de Meung on the Loire. 
 
 Guillaume's poem is a scholarly allegorical code of courtly 
 love, inspired by Ovid and Chretien de Troyes. He tells us 
 as much in the opening lines: 
 
 " Ce est li rommanz de la rose 
 Ou I'art d'amorz est tote enclose". 
 
 The rose is the emblem of the beloved lady. To pluck the 
 rose in the garden of Delight is to win the maiden, but to 
 achieve this end is no easy matter: 
 
 Wandering one May morning by the river banks, the dreamer for all 
 the incidents are placed in the setting of a dream finds himself outside 
 the walls of the domain of the god of Love ; on the walls are painted 
 figures of Hatred, Envy, Sadness, Old Age, Poverty, and other evil 
 powers. Introduced by Dame Oiscuse (Idleness), he is attacked by 
 Cupid, who, taking him at vantage, empties his quiver on him ; he yields 
 himself a prisoner, and learns Cupid's commandments on the evils and 
 gains of love. Led by Bel Accueil, the lover approaches the rose, but he is 
 driven back by her guardians Shame, Fear, Danger (Resistance, Refusal), 
 Malebouche (Slander), and Jealousy, the last of which shuts up Bel 
 Accueil his friend in a tower. The poem ends with a lament of the 
 lover. 
 
 Such in brief is the outline of Guillaume's share of the Ro- 
 mance of the Rose. When Jean de Meung took up the parable 
 in his continuation he maintained, indeed, the essential thread 
 of the allegory, and finally made the lover cull the rose, but the
 
 HISTORY AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 33 
 
 story in his hands becomes a mere pretext for satirical digres- 
 sions, affording large scope for his vast erudition, dissertations 
 on pauperism, property, government, the Church, justice, 
 instinct, the nature of evil, the origin of society, witchcraft, 
 marriage, women in general, and a thousand other topics. 
 His share of the work is a vast satirical encyclopedia, which 
 supplements the pictures of medieval life offered by the later 
 branches of the Roman de Renard. 
 
 Jean de Meung was the first popularizer of rationalism, 
 of Nature as the guide of life, the true predecessor of Voltaire 
 and more especially of Rabelais. The very contrast between the 
 two parts of the Romance of the Rose contributed not a little 
 to its enormous success, which spread far beyond France. In 
 the following century it was severely censured, chiefly on 
 account of its violent attacks against women, by Gerson and 
 Christine de Pisan, but despite that, continued in favour right 
 into the 16th century, thanks to Clement Marot's edition. 
 
 The Roman de la Rose did more than any other single poem 
 to assure the final victory of allegory, which for a period of 
 two hundred years pervaded the whole of literature. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 HISTORY AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 (1) History at first was written in Latin by clerks and 
 monks, for the lay public the Chansons de Geste and narrative 
 poems taking the place of history. 
 
 The first of these rimed chronicles is due to Geffrei Gaimar, 
 whose Histoire des Anglais, in octosyllabic verse, was written 
 between 1147 and 1151. 
 
 Soon after Wace, born in Jersey about 1100, and later 
 Canon of Bayeux, composed his two large historical poems, 
 the Rmnan de Brut (1155), in 16,000 lines, and the Roman de 
 Rou of the same length. The first is a compilation of Keltic 
 traditions, drawn mostly from Godfrey of Monmouth, in which 
 
 ( M 643 ) C
 
 34 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Brut or Brutus, the grandson of JSneas, is represented as 
 the ancestor of the Britons; while the Roman de Rou sketches 
 the history of the Dukes of Normandy from Rou or Rollo to 
 Henry the First (912-1106). 
 
 Before Wace could finish his history he was replaced by the 
 more fashionable Benoit de Sainte-More, to whom we owe the 
 Chronique des Dues de Normandie. 
 
 To the 12th century also belongs the poem on Saint Thomas 
 le Martyr by Garnier de Pont Sainte-Maxence, notable for 
 the fine scene in which the murder of Becket is described. 
 
 Still more remarkable is the newly-discovered Histoire de 
 Guillaume le Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, of 20,000 lines or so, 
 by an anonymous writer. 
 
 When it was found that verse was not conducive to accuracy 
 in history, the rimed chronicles were replaced by prose nar- 
 ratives. At the beginning of the 13th century a French 
 nobleman, who had taken part in the fourth crusade, instead 
 of entrusting the recital of his exploits to some clerk, took it 
 into his head to give an account of them himself in French 
 prose. His name was Geoffroy de Villehardouin. He was 
 born in Champagne about 1160, and died in 1213 on his fief at 
 Messinopolis in Thessaly. There it was that he composed 
 during the last years of his life the Chronique de la Conquete de 
 Constantinople (1207 c.), the first great prose chronicle, than 
 which no other single poem gives a better idea of chivalry and 
 feudalism. 
 
 Jean de Joinville (1224-1317), the next of the great 
 chroniclers, wrote at the beginning of the 14th century, but 
 his work, both in style and spirit, belongs to the same century 
 as that of Villehardouin. 
 
 He was past eighty when Jeanne of Navarre, wife of Philippe 
 le Bel, invited him to write the saintes paroles et les bons faits 
 of Saint Louis, whose devoted companion he had been during 
 his six years' crusade (1248 to 1254). His book, the Vie de 
 Saint Louis, was only completed in 1305, and as the queen 
 had died in the meantime, it was dedicated to her son, after- 
 wards Louis X.
 
 HISTORY AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 35 
 
 Joinville is interesting chiefly on account of his keen obser- 
 vation and the colour of his style. 
 
 Prose takes complete possession of the historical field with 
 Jean Froissart, the last of the chroniclers proper. 
 
 Jean Froissart was born at Valenciennes in 1337. Of his early 
 years we possess no reliable information. The following are the chief 
 dates in his later life. In 1361 he journeyed to England, receiving a 
 gracious welcome from his countrywoman, Queen Philippa of Hainault, 
 wife of Edward III, who appointed him clerk of her chamber. From 
 1364 to 1368 he travelled widely, visiting Scotland, Aquitaine, and Italy, 
 where he met Chaucer and Petrarch. At the death of his benefactrice 
 he returned home; became curate of Lestines, and later canon of Chimai 
 (1385). As his canonry did not make residence obligatory, and as he 
 was in want of materials for his Chronicle, he set out once more on his 
 travels, returning to England for a three months' stay in 1395. That 
 same year he came back to France, and seems to have died soon after 
 1404. 
 
 The CJironiques of Froissart include the period 1326-1400, 
 and deal mainly with the affairs of France, England, and 
 Scotland, although they likewise supply information in regard 
 to Germany, Italy, Spain, and even occasionally touch on 
 Hungary and the Balkan peninsula. Froissart's information, 
 gathered during his wanderings in many lands, is often 
 untrustworthy or partial. His merit lies in the vivid pic- 
 turesqueness of his descriptions and in his brilliant, sympa- 
 thetic picture of chivalry. 
 
 Next in order comes Philippe de Commines, who forms a 
 link between the 15th and the 16th centuries. 
 
 Philippe de Commines was born at the castle of Commines, near 
 Courtrai, in 1445. In 1463 he entered the court of Burgundy, but in 
 1472 he passed over to the cause of Louis XI, becoming one of his most 
 trusted advisers. On the king's death he incurred the displeasure of his 
 successor, Charles VIII, and for eight months he was imprisoned in an 
 iron cage ; but in 1 493 he was restored to a measure of favour ; he accom- 
 panied Charles to Italy, and there met the famous Machiavelli. He held 
 places and pensions under Louis XII, and died in 1511. 
 
 His Mdmoires (1488-1495), which were not published till 
 1523, are the earliest French example of history as distin- 
 guished from the chronicle. For the knight-errantry of
 
 36 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Froissart he substitutes a diplomatic shrewdness and a wide 
 curiosity, applied not only to individuals but also to nations; 
 he abandons brilliant descriptions for psychological observa- 
 tions and searchings after the causes of events. In his politics 
 he is aristocratic and monarchical, but not despotic; his ideal 
 government is constitutional and parliamentary; his ideal king 
 one who knows how to listen to advice, and who leaves the 
 decision of peace or war to the nation. Hence his admiration 
 for England: "De toutes les seigneuries du monde dont j'ai con- 
 naissance oil la chose publique est mieux traiUe, oil regne moins de 
 violence sur le peiiple, oil il n'y a nul e'difice abattu ni ddmoli par 
 la guerre, c'est I'Angleterre". 
 
 Commines, together with Villon in poetry, is the first of 
 modern writers. Froissart and his predecessors ignore the 
 mass of humanity; not so Commines, whose sympathy for the 
 humble and the oppressed is quite a modern trait, as also is 
 his curiosity and undogmatic religiosity. 
 
 (2) Miscellaneous Prose. Among the miscellaneous prose 
 writings of the Middle Ages, the exquisite chantefable of 
 Aucassin and Nicolette, mainly in prose, but partly in asson- 
 anced laisses of seven-syllable verse, deserves more than passing 
 notice. It was written about 1150 in the Picard dialect by 
 an anonymous author. It is the story of the love of Count 
 Garin of Beaucaire for the beautiful Saracen maiden Nicolette. 
 But by far the best conteur of the Middle Ages is Antoine de 
 la Sallfe, who wrote in the 15th century at the court of Bur- 
 gundy. He is the author of the graceful Petit Jean de SaintrS, 
 in which he traces a mock portrait of the ideal knight; of the 
 biting Quinze Joies de Manage, a satire on women; and also 
 of the bright Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, wrongly attributed to 
 Louis XI, drawn in part from old fableaux and in part from 
 Boccaccio. 
 
 Of written sermons the first occur in the 12th century. Of these the 
 best are those of Maurice de Sully, Archbishop of Paris, which do not 
 offer sufficient literary merit to account for the extraordinary popularity 
 which they enjoyed at the time. 
 
 In the succeeding period the palm must be awarded to Gerson
 
 LATER MEDIEVAL POETS 37 
 
 (1363-1429), who has already been noticed as a bitter enemy of the 
 Romance of the Rose, although he himself underwent its influence. 
 
 In the 15th century the two preachers, Olivier Maillart ( + 1502) and 
 Michel Menot ( + 1518), courted favour by descending to the language 
 of the populace. Their style is vivid, but often coarse. 
 
 Noteworthy also among the miscellaneous prose writings 
 is the Trdsor (1265 c.), by Dante's master, Brunetto Latini, 
 chiefly on account of the author's remarkable testimony to 
 the supremacy of the French language in his time : " Et se (si) 
 aucuns demandoit por quoi cist livres est escriz en romans selonc 
 le langage des Francois, puisque nous somes Ytaliens, je diroie que 
 ce est por deus raisons: I'une, car nos somes en France, et I'autre 
 por ce que la parleure est plus delitable et plus commune a toutes 
 gens ". 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 LATER MEDIEVAL POETS 
 
 With the 15th century the literature of the Middle Ages 
 closes. Without being an epoch favourable to poetry or to 
 literature in general, it is not the same dreary waste as the 
 14th century. It was in the 15th century that the medieval 
 drama produced its masterpiece, the famous farce of Pathelin, 
 that Commines wrote his Mdmoires, and that two real poets 
 appeared, Villon, a man of the people, and Charles d' Orleans, 
 the last representative of the grace and refinements of chivalric 
 society. 
 
 Charles, Due d'Orleans (1391-1465), was the son of an Italian 
 mother, Valentine of Milan, and of Louis of Valois, who was murdered 
 by John the Fearless. In alliance with the infamous Bernard d'Arma- 
 gnac he did his best to avenge his father. He commanded at Azincourt 
 (1415), and was taken prisoner and carried to England, where he spent 
 twenty-five years in captivity, hunting, hawking, and composing light 
 verse. At the age of forty-nine he returned to France, and passed his 
 last years (1440-1465) in Epicurean ease at his little court of Blois, 
 where he had gathered around him a small circle of poets. 
 
 His works consist of 102 ballads, 400 rondels, and 131
 
 38 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 chansons. He was in no way an innovator in poetry; he 
 made use of old forms, and, like his predecessors, he remained 
 faithful to Dame Allegory, but he transformed the old material 
 by an exquisite sense of art. His range is small, and his ideas 
 lack depth, but the music and grace of his light verse, espe- 
 cially of his rondels, has rarely been surpassed. His favourite 
 subjects are the changing seasons, the songs of the birds, lovers' 
 fancies, and counsels against melancholy and care; or, in his 
 later years at Blois, when the springtide of love was past for 
 him, the deceiving arts of the fair and the folly of those that 
 place their trust in them. 
 
 His style is clearness itself, and he is almost as easy to read 
 as a modern poet. 
 
 A poet of infinitely greater genius was Francois Villon. 
 
 Villon. Frai^ois de Montcorbier, 6r Des Loges, for his patronymic is 
 not known for certain, was born at Paris, in 1431 probably. He owes 
 the name of Villon to an ecclesiast Guillaume de Villon, who took an 
 interest in him and sent him to the University of Paris, where he took 
 his M.A. degree. Till 1455 Villon had steered a straight course, 
 but having killed his adversary in a duel he was compelled to flee 
 from justice. Receiving letters of pardon six months afterwards, he 
 returned to the capital. It was on the occasion of his first departure 
 that he composed the Petit Testament, a collection of mock bequests to 
 various friends and enemies with autobiographical details and allusions. 
 The consequences of his first crime no doubt threw Villon out of the 
 straight path. Resourceless and ostracized he joined a band of thieves, 
 and was condemned to be hanged for a burglary committed by his 
 gang ; but the capital punishment was commuted to banishment. His 
 chief work, the Grand Testament, an amplification of the smaller one, 
 alludes directly to these events in the two famous ballads DCS Pcndus 
 and De I'Appel. 
 
 We next come across Villon in 1461 at Meung-sur-Loire, in the cell 
 of the local prison, where he had been confined by the Bishop of Orleans. 
 Louis XI, passing through Meung after his recent consecration, to cele- 
 brate the event set all the prisoners at liberty, and among them our 
 poet. 
 
 From that moment we lose all traces of the reckless vagabond. He 
 was dead when the Grand Testament appeared in 1489. 
 
 Villon's fame as a poet rests on the Grand Testament, which 
 was completed in 1461. He conceived the idea of it during
 
 LATER MEDIEVAL POETS 39 
 
 his incarceration at Meung, and finished it soon after his 
 liberation. It consists of 178 stanzas each containing eight 
 octosyllabic lines, in which about a score of minor pieces, 
 chiefly ballads and rondeaux, some written previously, are in- 
 serted. The poet on the point of leaving this life casts a 
 sorrowful glance over the past, confesses and laments the errors 
 of his wild youth, and asks forgiveness of God. He thanks 
 his friends and protectors, curses his enemies, and bequeaths 
 to each fanciful legacies, as in the Petit Testament. The chief 
 attractions of Villon, however, are not the satirical portions 
 of his jesting bequests, but rather those short poems inter- 
 spersed in the body of the work, such as the famous Ballade 
 des Dames du Temps jadis with its still more famous refrain 
 "mais oil sont les neiges d'antan?" (but where are last year's 
 snows?), in which the poet rises to the conception of the 
 universal and all-levelling law of death; while almost as 
 familiar is the epitaph in form of a ballad which Villon wrote 
 for himself and his companions when expecting to swing with 
 them, La Ballade des Pendus. In this ballad of death, in 
 which there is an antinomy of grim humour and of simple but 
 infinite pathos, the skeletons of Villon and of his fellows are 
 supposed to address the passer-by, who contemplates them 
 dangling on the gibbet of Montfaucon. 
 
 Most touching, too, is he in the expression of his repentance 
 for his lawless and debauched life. A proof that this repen- 
 tance was sincere is afforded by the Ballade gue Villon feit 
 a la Requeste de sa Mere. Neither was he lacking in patriotic 
 fervour and in accents of ingenuous faith. 
 
 But his merit as a poet is not only intrinsic. He is a 
 past-master in the technique of verse; handling with extra- 
 ordinary skill the most artificial forms of poetry, such as the 
 rondeau and the ballade. In fact he has never been equalled 
 in the latter. 
 
 Villon represents popular tradition. In contrast with the 
 aristocratic Charles d 'Orleans, he is exclusively a representa- 
 tive of the esprit gaulois, the father of that elite of essentially 
 French minds to which belong Marot, Rabelais, Regnier, La
 
 40 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Fontaine, Moliere, and Voltaire. But more than that, he is the 
 first modern French poet modern in his abandonment of 
 the traditional machinery of allegory and abstraction; in the 
 complexity of his feelings, passing from mirth to despair, from 
 beauty to horror modern in that his poetry reflects his own 
 personality. 
 
 Villon is the first great French poet, yet he cannot be 
 classed among the greatest, his range being too narrow and 
 limited. 
 
 After the death of Charles d'Orl^ans and of Villon the 
 poetry of Machaut and his companions blossomed forth anew 
 under the name of rhetoric. The most famous of the grands 
 rluttoriqueurs were Jean Molinet ( + 1507), Jean Meschinot 
 ( + 1509), and Guillaume Cretin ( + 1525), parodied by Rabe- 
 lais under the name of Raminagrobis. 
 
 In fantastic, puerile, and inane metrical tricks they even 
 went one better than their predecessors. The following lines 
 from Cretin's works will give an idea of what they could do : 
 
 "Pour vivre en paix et ' concorde, qu'on corde ' 
 Guerre, et le chant qu' ' accord d' 'die cordette'; 
 Qui pour chanter A ' sa corde s'accorde ', 
 Mai prcnd son chant ; ' amour telle est mortctte '. 
 Guerre a toujours, Dicu ' scait quelle scquelle '; 
 Livrcs en sont de plainctz ' et crys escripts '; 
 De guerre sourt bcaucoup 'plus pleurs' que ( ris'." 
 
 The fame of the grands rhdtoriqueurs was as great in their 
 day as it is now incomprehensible, and lasted till well into 
 the 16th century. Even a great poet like Clement Marot 
 was unable to free himself from the shackles of these facteurs 
 in poetry, as they most appropriately styled themselves.
 
 BOOK II 
 
 SIXTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 GENEEAL VIEW 
 
 Two leading influences dominate the literature of the 16th 
 century that of the Renaissance and that of the Reforma- 
 tion. The Renaissance strove to revive antiquity in its ideas 
 and in its art; the Eeformation to return to a more primitive 
 and purer form of Christianity. 
 
 In order to facilitate the study of the main currents that 
 characterize the development of French literature during the 
 16th century, it is advantageous to make two main divisions. 
 A third, extending from about 1585 to the first years of the 
 17th, is a period of transition betokening new ideals. 
 
 (a) First Period (1515-1549). The signal for the Renais- 
 sance came from Italy and was given by the Humanists, who 
 lent fresh life to the forgotten sense of antiquity. The 
 Middle Ages had not ignored the Latin classics, and had even 
 translated and imitated them, but only as a means of arriving 
 at a better understanding of Christianity and of improving 
 moral life. The chief innovation effected by the Humanists 
 of the 16th century was the desire to study and understand 
 antiquity " for its own sake ", and by thus doing, to transform 
 the very base of education and intellectual culture. More- 
 over, though the Middle Ages were fairly well acquainted 
 with Latin literature, they had almost wholly ignored Greek, 
 which was looked upon as the language of the chief heresies. 
 The Humanists were the first to give Greek an equal place 
 with Latin. Other causes which led to the Renaissance were 
 the consequences of the wars of Charles VIII, Louis XII,
 
 42 SIXTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 and Francis I. The contact with Italy acted as a kind of 
 revelation upon the Frenchmen of those days. To this must 
 be added the peculiar charm of the Italian climate and 
 manners. The Italy of the Renaissance, invaded, devastated 
 and trampled under foot by these men of the north, took 
 possession of its rude conquerors, as Greece of yore had done 
 in the case of the inhabitants of Italy. They conceived the 
 idea of a new life, freer, more ornate, more human in a word, 
 than the one they had been leading for centuries. The whole 
 of Europe became italianized, almost unawares, and in less 
 than fifty years the remnants of medieval tradition disap- 
 peared. No doubt many of the tendencies peculiar to the 
 Renaissance already existed out of Italy, but it was Italian 
 genius which gave the decisive impulse. 
 
 The primary characteristic of the new spirit is the develop- 
 ment of individualism, than which we can imagine nothing 
 more directly opposed to the Middle Ages. It is for that 
 reason that Villon and Commines may be considered as the 
 first among modern writers. They are already somebody. 
 With Clement Marot this trait becomes more accentuated, 
 his poems being filled with himself and himself alone. 
 
 From this free exercise and development of the faculties 
 another idea springs, which can be called the leading idea of 
 the Renaissance, and of which Francois Rabelais is justly 
 looked upon as the living incarnation the idea of the good- 
 ness or of the divinity of nature, the contradiction and nega- 
 tion of what the schoolmen and the theologians had taught 
 for more than a thousand years. Rabelais was the first, with 
 the exception of Jean de Meung in the 13th century, among 
 French writers, to teach that the great foes of man were 
 custom, rule, authority, and restraint; that by every means 
 in his power it is man's duty to attack and destroy these 
 enemies; and finally, that the perfection of education is the 
 liberation of the instincts. 
 
 (b) Second Period (15491585 c.). While Rabelais was pub- 
 licly and cynically setting forth the religion of nature, another 
 sentiment which he lacked was springing up and developing
 
 GENERAL VIEW 43 
 
 among a few of his contemporaries the sentiment of art, in 
 which the Middle Ages were so grievously deficient, and which 
 is also largely characteristic of the Renaissance. Having re- 
 discovered nature and freed the individual, the Renaissance 
 felt that the development of neither could be left absolutely 
 to chance, and strove to make imitation of nature and indi- 
 vidual development dependent on the realization of beauty. 
 The poets of the Pleiade, and especially Ronsard their leader, 
 were the first to perceive the full force of this new sentiment, 
 and to reveal it to their contemporaries. They aimed at pro- 
 ducing " works of art ", and this ambition accounts for and 
 explains their subsidiary efforts their scorn for old literary 
 forms, their imitation of classical rhythmical combinations, 
 and their application of pagan mythology to French poetry. 
 What they tried to steal from antiquity was not its philosophy, 
 but only its art. Thus they were the first to point to the 
 importance in literature of form and style, which are among 
 the essential factors of the French classicism. 
 
 When men found out that a glorification of nature could 
 lead to a justification of immorality, and that they were 
 paying too dearly for the benefits of the Renaissance, the 
 Reformation broke out. Nothing could be more erroneous 
 than to represent the Reformation as analogous in its principles 
 to the Renaissance. It is precisely the contrary. The only 
 point they have in common is that, for a short time, they 
 fought for the emancipation of the individual, and consequently 
 stood face to face with the same enemies the schoolmen and 
 the theologians. In preaching the Reformation Luther and 
 Calvin not only attacked Papacy and Catholicism; their 
 object was to destroy the Renaissance, which was a new birth 
 of pagan antiquity, whereas the Reformation represented a 
 return to primitive Christianity, as we have already said. 
 This explains the opposition which the Reformation encoun- 
 tered at first in France. The country had not emancipated 
 itself from the bonds of scholasticism and asceticism imme- 
 diately to relapse into the tyranny of Protestant Puritanism. 
 France, after having tasted the sweets of art and of indepen-
 
 44 SIXTEENTH CENTURT 
 
 dence, refused so early to be weaned, or to take up again one 
 of the Germanic elements which it had cast aside as being 
 too "Gothic". The race asserted itself, and each went its 
 own way. 
 
 The first effect of this transformation was what has been 
 happily called the Latinization of Culture. Towards 1560, 
 or thereabouts, in spite of the efforts of a few enthusiasts like 
 Henri Etienne, the language of Homer more and more takes 
 refuge in the seclusion of the colleges, and becomes once again 
 the object of the attention of none but scholars and erudites. 
 The dramatists of the 16th century no longer go to Sophocles 
 or to Aristophanes for lessons in their art, but rather to Seneca 
 and Plautus, and French writers in general, finding that 
 Latin had qualities more in keeping with the genius of their 
 race, returned to Latin tradition after the short poetic intoxi- 
 cation evoked by Greece. 
 
 (c) Third Period (1580-1605). During this period the 
 remaining traits of the classical period begin to appear in 
 outline. Firstly, the foundation of literature on psychological 
 and moral observation announced by Amyot's translation of 
 Plutarch, and carried out in the Essays of Michel de Montaigne. 
 Nature, while remaining our guide, must be submitted to rule 
 and discipline. Although the French people refused to accept 
 the sombre and despairing morality of Calvin, they saw the 
 necessity of reacting against the growing licentiousness of 
 morals, and gradually the philosophy of reason took the place 
 of that of nature. Finally, the subordination of literature to 
 social life, which was to prevail in French literature for a 
 period of nearly two hundred years, appears clearly in the 
 works of the last writers of the century, who felt that the 
 development of self might lead to the ultimate destruction of 
 society. This is the central idea of French classicism, and to 
 see it fully at work we shall have to wait till the 17th century.
 
 POETRY 45 
 
 FIEST PERIOD (1500-1549) 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 POETRY 
 
 Among the immediate predecessors of Clement Marot one 
 alone, Jean le Maire de Beiges, born about 1473 at Bavay 
 (Latinized into Beiges), in Hainault, deserves more than pass- 
 ing mention, chiefly on account of the real influence which he 
 exercised in his time, and also because of his prose work, Les 
 Illustrations des Gaules et Singularitez de Troie. Both Marot and 
 the school of Ronsard proclaimed him a master. Du Bellay, 
 in the literary manifesto of the PUiade, declares that he was 
 the first to illustrate the Gauls and the French language : " Luy 
 dormant beaucoup de motz et de manieres de parler poetiques, qui 
 ont lien servi mesmes aux plus excellens de nostre tens ", while the 
 English grammarian Palsgrave adduces his authority in his 
 Esdaircissement de la Langue Fran$oyse. 
 
 Although Jean le Maire's work may be said in some points 
 to foreshadow the Renaissance, he nevertheless belongs essen- 
 tially to the school of the grands rhttoriqueurs, of whom he was 
 by far the greatest. 
 
 Of his verse, the best are the two Epitres de VAmant Vert 
 a Madame Marguerite (1505). The "green lover" is Queen 
 Margaret's green parrot, who dies of grief at her departure, 
 and from the nether regions writes an account of his journey 
 to his beloved mistress. 
 
 In the Illustrations des Gaules et Singularitez de Troie he 
 attempts to prove the Trojan origin of the French people, 
 a favourite theme in the Middle Ages and 16th century. It 
 is a medley of crude erudition, in which turgidity and bom- 
 bast alternate with graceful fancy. 
 
 By far the greatest among the poets of the first half of the 
 16th century is Clement Marot. 
 
 Clement Marot was born at Cahors about 1496. He was the son of 
 Jean des Mares, surnamed Marot, one of the later rhttoriqueurs. About
 
 46 SIXTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 1515 Clement entered the service of Princess Margaret, afterwards 
 Queen of Navarre. In 1524 he followed the king, Francis I, to Italy, 
 and was wounded and taken prisoner at the battle of Pavia. Soon 
 afterwards he was imprisoned on a charge of heresy, in spite of his 
 protestations : 
 
 "point ne suis lutheriste 
 Ni zwinglien et moins anubaptiste: 
 Je suis de Dieu par sonfils Jdsus-Christ (1525)". 
 
 He was liberated in the following spring, thanks to the intervention of 
 Margaret, his patroness; but having made many enemies by his witty 
 satires, aimed especially at the Sorboune, and strongly suspected of 
 leaning to Protestantism, he first fled to the court of the Queen of 
 Navarre (1535), whose sympathies were on the side of the Reformers, 
 and later to that of the Duchess of Ferrara. He returned to France in 
 1536, but only on condition of a formal abjuration. The great success 
 of Marot's translation of the Psalms awakened the suspicions of the 
 Sorbonne ; they complained to the king, and Marot thought best once 
 more to leave France. He made his way to Geneva, but his morals 
 lacked the austerity required of a follower of Calvin, and he went on 
 to Turin, where he died in 1544. 
 
 The works of Marot are composed: (a) of translations and 
 allegories, such as the translation of the first two books of the 
 Metamorphoses, and his Temple de Cupido, or again bis Enfer; 
 (b) of chants royaux, ballades, and rondeaux; (c) of occasional 
 pieces, dtrennes, blasons, complaintes, &c.; (d) of his translation 
 of fifty of the Psalms. 
 
 Both by poetic inspiration and education Marot is closely 
 connected with the preceding century. His learning is that of 
 the Middle Ages: 
 
 " J'ai lu des saints la Ugende dorie, 
 J'ai lu Alain, le tres noble orateur 
 Et Lancelot, le tres plaisant menteur. 
 J'ai lu aussi le Roman de la Rose, 
 Maitre en amours, et Vatere et Orose 
 Contant lesfaits des antiques Romains" 
 
 As a proof of his interest in earlier literature can be quoted 
 his edition of the Roman de la Rose, and of Villon's works 
 " our Ennius ", as he calls him. He changed practically nothing 
 in the traditional medieval verse-forms and rhythmical com-
 
 POETRY 47 
 
 binations, and Boileau is wrong when he says of him in the 
 Art Poetiijue: " Et montra pour rimer des chemiiis tout nouveaux". 
 His immediate masters were the grands rhttoriqueurs, from 
 whose puerilities he could never completely free himself, 1 and 
 although he had dipped into Virgil, Ovid, and Catullus, he 
 is essentially a national and popular poet. His temperament 
 had much in common with that of Villon, whom he surpassed 
 in clearness, grave and sly humour, though he could never 
 attain to the simple pathos of the earlier poet. Charming a 
 poet as Marot is, he cannot be ranked among the greatest; he 
 was too much lacking in intensity of feeling, picturesqueness 
 of vision, and vividness of style. Except in the translation 
 of the Psalms, where the subject lent him some dignity, his 
 work is in the main pretty rather than beautiful, light rather 
 than strong, graceful rather than grand. He never could rise 
 to higher flights. This must be borne in mind in order pro- 
 perly to understand the reform attempted by Ronsard and 
 his associates in the second half of the century. Marot's great 
 service to French poetry was that he restored naturalness and 
 simplicity, and substituted native grace and delicacy for the 
 artificial excess of ornament and allegory of the grands rMtori- 
 queuers. He is one of the most famous representatives of the 
 esprit gaulois; he looks back to Villon and forward to La 
 Fontaine. 
 
 Of his verse the most characteristic are the epistles and 
 epigrams. Among them the best are the fable of the Lion and 
 the Rat ; the two famous epistles to the king, one pour avoir 
 Me derobt, and the other Du Temps de son Exil a Ferrare; the 
 epigrams on Semblan^ay, or the one to the Queen of Navarre. 
 Some of his ballads, too, are delightful, and everyone has read 
 the famous rondeau, Au Bon Vieux Temps un Train d' Amour 
 regnoit. 
 
 In the epigram Marot has never been surpassed; indeed his 
 language is so closely connected with this branch that all 
 
 1 Cp. the equivocal rimes (mortel itre : tel fare ; sous France : souffrance ; 
 arr/enticr : large et entier, &c.) which occur in his works, or the famous 
 ballade of thirty-nine lines with rimes in ac, ee, ic, oc, and c.
 
 48 SIXTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 French writers since have used the "Marotic style" when 
 writing this kind of verse. 
 
 In point of style and language he was a purist, as is proved 
 by the fact that he is almost as easy to read as a modern 
 writer. 1 It is probably for that reason that at all times he 
 has been a favourite with his countrymen. 
 
 We have seen that in more than one respect Marot continues 
 the Middle Ages, but in two points he is a real child of the 
 Renaissance, namely, in his belief in the goodness of nature, 
 and in the personal note which pervades his whole work. 
 
 Among Marot's imitators the most noticeable is Margaret 
 of Navarre (1492-1549), sister of Francis I, his patroness. 
 Her poetry presents a strange mixture of gallantry and 
 mysticism. In the Chansons Spirituelles, which betray the 
 spirit of the Reformation, she exhibits genuine feeling; the 
 verses written during her brother's illness, praying for his 
 recovery, being especially touching: 
 
 " Oh, qu'U sera le bien venu 
 Celui qui, frappant a ma porte, 
 Dira: Le roi estrevenu 
 En sa santd tres bonne ct forte/ 
 Alors sa sceur, plus mal que marte, 
 Courra baiscr le messager 
 Qui telles nouvellcs apporle 
 Que son frere est hors de danger." 
 
 She also composed humorous epistles like Marot, and dizains 
 on the model of Petrarch, but in her later years her verse is 
 almost exclusively religious: "Elle aimait fort composer des 
 chansons spirituelles," says Brantome, "car elk avail le cceur fort 
 adonnd a Dieu ". The greater part of her works were collected 
 by a publisher of Lyons in 1547, under the title of Marguerites 
 de la Marguerite des Princesses. This collection includes, besides 
 poems, four mysteries and two farces, thus showing how varied 
 was the talent of this most gifted woman, who so admirably 
 represents the genius of her time. She is also the author of a 
 series of prose tales, which will be noticed elsewhere. 
 
 'Already in the 17th century La Bruy^re had noticed this peculiarity: 
 " Marot par son tour et par son style semble avoir icrit depuis Ronsard : 
 il n'y a guere entre Marot et nous que la difference de quelques mots ".
 
 POETRY 49 
 
 The man who passed as the greatest poet after Marot's 
 death was Melin de Saint- Gelais (1487-1558), to whom 
 French verse owes the introduction of the Italian sonnet, so 
 much favoured in the second half of the century. His fame 
 was short-lived, being eclipsed by the appearance of the PUiade. 
 
 Saint-Gelais, who was a servile imitator of the Italians, 
 sought for elegance, but fell into mannered prettiness and 
 mawkishness ; Melin tout de miel being a frequent pun among 
 his contemporaries. He was the literary purveyor of court 
 amusements in his rondeaux, quatrains, and poetical mascarades. 
 Like Marot and most of his followers, he affected much the 
 blason, which celebrates an eyebrow, a lip, a jewel, a flower, or 
 a precious stone. 
 
 The transition from Marot to Ronsard is to be traced chiefly 
 through the. so-called School of Lyons, at the head of which 
 stands Maurice Sceve, and which includes also Louise Labe, 
 la belle cordiere, as she was called, besides several other lady 
 poets, and Antoine Heroet (1492-1568). 
 
 The works of Maurice Sceve ( + 1564) consist of Delie, 
 Objct de plus Haute Vertu (1544), a collection of 449 poems in 
 honour of his lady-love, which offer a strange combination of 
 mysticism and intentional obscurity, though certain passages 
 are marked by great intensity of feeling. But his great work 
 is the Microcosme (1562), a descriptive poem in alexandrine 
 verse, of three cantos each of a thousand verses, in which the 
 history of man on earth is set forth. 
 
 Maurice Sceve was the first poet in the 16th century to 
 have a real feeling for art, the first to seek inspiration in higher 
 themes and break with court and occasional poetry. 
 
 It is for that reason that the PUiade saw in him a kindred 
 spirit. In one of his sonnets Du Bellay celebrates him as 
 
 " Gentil esprit, orncmcnt de la France, 
 Qui d'Apollon saintemcnt inspire", 
 T'es le premier du pcuple retire', 
 Loin du chemin tract par V ignorance ". 
 
 And fitienne Pasquier gave proof of a correct appreciation of 
 Sceve's position when he wrote in his liecherches: " Le premier 
 
 (11643) D
 
 50 SIXTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 qui franchit le pas fut Maurice Sccve, Lyonnais", but he was also 
 right when he added that Delie was written " avec un sens si 
 teiidbreux et obscur que, le lisant, je disois estre ires-content de 
 ne I 'entendre, puisqu'il ne vouloit estre entendu". It was Marot's 
 grace and Sceve's higher aspirations that Ronsard and his 
 school tried to combine. 
 
 Louise Labe (1526-1566) wrote (a) a dialogue in prose, Le 
 Debat de Folie et de V Amour, an allegory after the old school; 
 (b) twenty-four sonnets, of which one is in Italian; and (c) 
 three elegies. 
 
 Her romantic personality, and the fact that she was idolized 
 by so many contemporary poets, has led to an over-estimation 
 of her poetic worth, yet her sonnets and elegies, though often 
 incorrect and stiff, are songs of a true passion felt, as she 
 declares, "en ses os, en son sang, en son dme". Amid much 
 antithesis and metaphor, one often meets lines of real passion 
 and ardent longing: 
 
 " D'un tel vouloir le serf point ne dtsire 
 La libert^, ou son port le navirc, 
 Comme f attends, Mas, de jour en jour, 
 De toi, ami, le gracieux retour". 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 DRAMA 
 
 The history of the Medieval Drama has been discussed in a 
 preceding chapter. We noticed there that up to tlie end of 
 the first half of the 16th century it held undisputed sway, 
 that in 1548 the Parliament of Paris had to forbid the Con- 
 fre"rie de la Passion to further represent sacred subjects, and 
 that this date marks the official end of the old drama. 
 
 Of those who wrote medieval plays in this period (1515- 
 1549), besides Gringoire, Nicole de la Chesnaye and Jean de 
 Pourtalis deserve to be noticed. The first wrote the alle- 
 gorical Condamnation du Banquet, and the latter is the supposed 
 author of the Contredits de Songe-Crew (1531), a satirical review 
 of society in prose and verse.
 
 PROSE 51 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PROSE 
 
 Among the prose writers of the first half of the 16th century 
 the greatest name is that of Francois Rabelais, whose real 
 figure has been obscured by popular tradition, which fashioned 
 a new Rabelais after the model of his book. Rabelais was not 
 a buffoon or a drunkard, but one of the most learned men that 
 ever lived, who, in his moments of leisure and for his own 
 amusement, composed one of the wittiest books in the world's 
 literature. 
 
 Francois Rabelais was born about 1490 at Chinon in Touraine, and 
 educated at the convent of La Baumette, near Angers. He became a 
 novice of the Franciscan order, and entered the monastery of Fontenoy 
 le Comte, where he had access to a large library, acquired Greek, 
 Hebrew, and Arabic, and studied all the Latin and Old French authors 
 within his reach, medicine, astronomy, botany, and mathematics. But 
 the Franciscans, growing jealous of his wide learning, took away his 
 books, and Rabelais left the convent. In 1524 he was allowed to pass 
 over to the Benedictine order. In 1530 he entered the University of 
 Montpellier, but left in 1522 for Lyons to get his first book, parts of 
 Hippocrates and Galen, published, and remained there as physician to 
 the hospital. In 1532 and the following year he was engaged on literary 
 work. In 1534 he accompanied Cardinal Du Bellay to Rome, where he 
 returned in 1536. From 1537 (when he took his doctorate) to 1539 he 
 taught at Montpellier. He then went back to Lyons, returned to Paris 
 in 1540, and once more made things right with the Church, obtaining 
 permission to enter the collegiate chapter of St. Maur des Fosses instead 
 of a convent. Francis I, who was well-disposed towards Rabelais, died 
 in 1547 ; the authorities attacked Rabelais for impiety, and he was 
 obliged to escape to Metz and thence to Rome, in the company of Car- 
 dinal Du Bellay, who himself was suspected of liberal tendencies. 
 Through the protection of his friends he was enabled to return in 1550, 
 and obtained the living of Meudon, near Paris, which he gave up in 
 1552. On the appearance of the fourth book of his great work a new 
 storm broke out ; both Catholics and Protestants demanded that it 
 should be suppressed and the author burnt, but .the influence of his patrons 
 prevailed once more. Rabelais probably died in the next year (1553) 
 at Paris. 
 
 Apart from his medical books, the fragment of an almanac,
 
 52 SIXTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 and his satirical prophecy for the year 1533, the Pantagrue'line 
 Prognostication, Rabelais' work consists of a long buffoon epic 
 on a fabulous dynasty of giants, Grandgousier, Gargantua his 
 son, and Pantagruel, son of Gargantua. This epic is made up 
 of five books, the first devoted to Gargantua and his parents, 
 and the last four to Pantagruel. 
 
 The date of the composition of the several books is as fol- 
 lows: Pantagruel, first book, 1533; Gargantua, 1535, which is 
 the refashioning of a Chap Book published by Rabelais in 1532 
 under the title of Chrortique Gargantuine; Pantagruel, second 
 book, 1546; Pantagruel, third book, 1552. 
 
 Finally, a fourth book on Pantagruel, the fifth book of the 
 whole work, appeared in 15G2. This fifth book is certainly not 
 entirely by Rabelais, but it is impossible to distinguish what 
 is not his own. Its satire is much too bitter and bold to be 
 entirely the work of one of the shrewdest and most prudent of 
 men, who was prepared to maintain his opinions "jusques au 
 feu, exclusive". It sounds more like a Huguenot pamphlet. 
 
 A short analysis of the five books follows. 
 
 First Book, Gargantua. Relates the birth, childhood, and education 
 of Gargantua; his arrival in Paris on his big mare, and his successful war 
 against King Picrochole. At the end of the war Gargantua constructs 
 the famous Abbey of Thelema to reward the zeal and gallantry of the 
 monk, brother Jean des Entommeures. In the earlier part of the book 
 the most interesting pages are those where Rabelais contrasts the medi- 
 eval education, the one which Gargantua received at first, which consists 
 mainly in drinking, eating, sleeping, and learning by heart, with the 
 more modern, which he afterwards receives from his new tutor Pono- 
 crates, and which embraces a union of bodily and mental exercise, 
 hitherto kept apart, strict observation of the laws of hygiene, daily prac- 
 tice in all kinds of athletics, outdoor lessons in astronomy, and instruction 
 derived from amusement itself. 
 
 Second Book, Pantagruel. The plan of this book is almost identical 
 with that of the first, though more fanciful and less didactic. It relates 
 the birth, education, and wars of Pantagruel. But the main point of 
 difference is that we are for the first time introduced to the incomparable 
 Panurge, the fellow of Shakespeare's Falstaff in his lack of morals, and 
 inexhaustible wit, who becomes the devoted and inseparable companion 
 of Pantagruel, 
 
 Third Book. This book, save for one short episode, is entirely occu-
 
 PROSE 53 
 
 pied with the adventures and exploits of Panurge, who for his services 
 in the late war is appointed Lord of Salmigondin, "an estate producing 
 a revenue of 6,789,106,789 royals certain, besides a varying income 
 arising from periwinkles and locusts, which might amount to 2,435,768 
 or 2,435,769 gold moutons ". After leading a dissipated life for some 
 time, Panurge is suddenly alarmed at the idea of being without anyone 
 to look after him in case of illness. He consults his master as to whether 
 it would not be wiser for him to marry, a question which, from now till 
 the end of the fifth book, determines the course of the story. Panurge 
 consults in turn the sortes Virgiliance, the sibyl of Panzoust, the old poet 
 Raminagrobis, Herr Trippa, the greatest professor of astronomy, geo- 
 mancy, chiromancy, and other sciences. None of these giving a satis- 
 factory answer, he turns from the wisdom of the ancients to that of the 
 moderns : the theologian Hippothadeus, the physician Rondibilis, the 
 judge Bridlegoose, who gives his decisions by the throw of a dice, are 
 approached for advice, but none can give a decisive reply. In despair 
 Panurge and his friends go to the fool Triboulet, who recommends them 
 to try the oracle of the Divine Bottle, la Dive Boutcille, which can only 
 be reached by a long and perilous journey in unknown seas, and among 
 islands little visited. 
 
 Fourth Book. They embark at St. Malo. The ships are laden with 
 every kind of provisions, and they start on their distant expedition, 
 which is described in detail in the last two books. The quest is long and 
 perilous; in each island at which the party touch some social or ecclesi- 
 astical abuse is held up to ridicule : the Island of Procuration, the land 
 of litigation and chicane, where the Pettifoggers and Catchpoles live 
 by being beaten; the Island of Tapinois (Sly-Land), where reigns Prince 
 Quareme-Prenant, the personification of Lent, "the standard-bearer of 
 the ichthyophagists, the father and foster-father of physicians"; the 
 He Farouche, inhabited by the fanatical Protestants; the blessed Island 
 of Papimanie, where the fanatical Papists dwell, &c. 
 
 Fifth Book. On the fourth day the pilot sights the He Sonnante, or 
 Isle of Ringing, another satire on the Catholic Church, and this time a 
 bitter and angry one. Next the lawyers and judges are again and more 
 severely handled under the name of Chats Fourres (Furred Cats), at 
 whose head stands Grippeminaud. Shortly after the travellers arrive at 
 the port of Matseotechny (Vain Art), in the kingdom of Queen Quint- 
 essence, whose officers "cut fire into streaks with a knife", or "try to 
 catch the wind with nets". Finally they arrive at their journey's end, 
 and consult the oracle, whose reply is the word " Trincq" drink, that 
 is of the pure water and wisdom of knowledge. Such a question as that 
 of Panurge is not worthy to attract the attention of a sage. 
 
 The exuberant mirth and rich epic life of Rabelais' story no 
 doubt contains a deeper meaning than appears on the surface.
 
 84 SIXTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 The writer himself in the preface declares that the reader must 
 "break the bone in order to suck the marrow", if he wishes to 
 get at the hidden truth. In the same passage, however, he 
 speaks of the "doctrine absconce" and the "mystkres horrifiques" 
 which his story contains. Those bombastic expressions show 
 plainly that Rabelais is jesting, jesting at the mania of the 
 Middle Ages of wishing to interpret all things allegorically. 
 They are obviously a warning not to give way to a systematic 
 allegorical explanation of the whole. Eabelais relates much 
 purely out of love for his subject, especially the coarse jests 
 and obscenities with which the work abounds, and those who 
 seek a deeper meaning here resemble the officers of Queen 
 Quintessence, who try to catch the wind with their nets. The 
 opinion that Rabelais' book is a complicated puzzle cannot too 
 much be guarded against; the satire of scholasticism, of law- 
 yers, of the mad adventures of chivalry, of monks, and of the 
 Romish court where it exists, is obvious enough, and not 
 very revolutionary either, if we except the fifth book, which is 
 certainly interpolated. Rabelais' main object was to amuse, 
 occasionally to instruct and moralize, but without feint or 
 disguise. 
 
 What is still plainer is Rabelais' philosophy of life, his mili- 
 tant faith in nature and instinct, the source of the 18th- 
 century ethics and of modern French realism, to which he has 
 given concrete form in the famous Abbey of Thelema, an 
 abbey whose rule has but one Single clause : " Do what thou 
 wilt, because men who are free, well born, well educated, and 
 conversant with honourable company, have naturally an in- 
 stinct which prompts them to virtuous actions and withdraws 
 them from vice. This is called honour. . . .' J1 
 
 Since nature is good, and we hold our faculties from her, 
 let us develop them to the utmost extent, unhampered by 
 ascetic restraint or by other artificial trammels in ethics or 
 philosophy; let man be as complete a man as it lies in his 
 power to be. Such is Rabelais' ideal, as it was to be that of 
 Goethe more than 250 years after. 
 
 1 Cp. also the allegory of Physics and Antiphysics (Pantagruel, iii. 32).
 
 PROSE 55 
 
 Rabelais' style is national and picturesque, full of the most 
 original and attractive imagery; but too often his power of 
 verbal invention gets the better of him, and then his language 
 becomes quite a verbal orgy metaphors, synonyms, proverbs, 
 Latinisms, neologisms, and endless enumerations being jumbled 
 together in the utmost confusion. He was a very great writer, 
 but totally devoid of any feeling for beauty. 
 
 The influence of Rabelais is seen in the numerous story- 
 writers of the time. Not to mention several authors, who 
 directly imitated or parodied Pantagruel, the two most famous 
 names are those of Bonaventure Des Periers and the poetess 
 Margaret of Navarre, whose collection of tales appeared in 
 1558 under the title of Heptame'ron des Nouvelles. The series, 
 which was designed to equal in number that of Boccaccio's 
 Decameron, is incomplete. A company of ladies and gentlemen 
 detained by floods on their return from the Pyrenean baths, 
 beguile the time by telling these tales. Margaret was directly 
 inspired by Boccaccio, except that her stories are all real; 
 "une chose diffdrente de Boccace, c'est de n'dscrire nouvelle qui 
 ne /tit veritable histoire", as she informs us in the preface. 
 Most of them are borrowed from court life. The hero of 
 No. 25 is Margaret's own brother, King Francis I; and No. 
 10 is the story of the authoress's own life. Only about 
 half a dozen farcical stories occur, the greater majority being 
 love stories nearly as offensive to us as those of the Decameron. 
 The riskiness of the Heptame'ron is a little surprising, in one 
 who was known to her contemporaries as a good and pious 
 lady; but then we must not forget that they are only shocking 
 according to the proprieties of our time, and that Margaret 
 wrote in the 16th century, at a time when it was thought 
 quite legitimate to laugh at the immoralities of monks and 
 priests. In short, the grossness of some of the stories merely 
 exemplifies the grossness of the language and manners of the 
 time. The Heptame'ron, as is proved by the Dialogues, which 
 separate the days, was written for the purpose of moral edifi- 
 cation, strange as that may seem to us. 
 
 Bonaventure Des Periers (1500c.-1544c.) is the author of
 
 f>G SIXTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 the Nouvelles lidcreations et Joyeux Devis (1558), in which 
 Rabelais' influence is evident, although Des Periers is more 
 temperate, and does not lapse into the exaggerations of 
 Rabelais' wit and the monstrosities of his style. He is more 
 in the spirit of the old French farces and fullcaux. The Ji/i/ri/./: 
 Devis are almost solely a collection of anecdotes, in which love 
 stories give way to farces. The majority of the tales have 
 their scene in France: "Je ne mis point alU chercker mes contes 
 a Constantinople, 11 Florence ni a Venise", says the author in 
 the delicious introduction, where he adds with more subdued 
 Pantagruelism, "Je vous donne de quoi rous rejouir, qui est la 
 meillcwe chose que puisse faire I'homme ". Most of them, too, 
 are taken from hearsay or from the author's own experiences. 
 The tone is occasionally free, but more often quite harmless. 
 
 Des Periers also wrote the Cymbalum Mundi, a violent attack 
 against the gospels and the theologians, both Catholic and 
 Protestant. As a poet he belonged to the school of Marot. 
 He likewise attempted vers mesures, or quantitative verse, and 
 translated Horace into vers blancs, or unrimed verse. 
 
 While Rabelais was exuberantly proclaiming his doctrine of 
 the goodness of nature, a stern and sombre counter-cry came 
 from Jean Calvin, the leader of the Reformation in France, 
 the representative of the new spirit of intransigent reform, 
 and attempted restoration of primitive Christianity. 
 
 Jean Calvin was born in 1509, at Noyon in Picardy, where his father 
 was procurcur-fiscal, and secretary of the diocese. He studied theology, 
 and then law at Orleans. From Orleans he went to Bourges, where he 
 learned Greek, and began to preach the reformed doctrines. He made 
 his literary debut with a Latin commentary on Seneca's de dementia. 
 After the famous discourse of Nicolas Cop, rector of the Sorbonne, which 
 had been inspired by Calvin, the latter was obliged to quit Paris and 
 take refuge at Angouleme. As persecution was raging so hotly against 
 the heretics, Calvin no longer felt safe in France, and proceeded to Bale. 
 In 1536 he issued his famous work the Institutio Christiance Rcliyionis. 
 The same year he went to Ferrara in Italy, revisited his native town, 
 sold his paternal estate, and set out for Strasburg by way of Geneva, 
 where the reformer Farel persuaded him to remain and assist in his work. 
 But the party of the libertins, or free-thinkers, gaining the upper hand, 
 Calvin and Farel were expelled from the town (1538). The same year
 
 PROSE 57 
 
 he settled in Strasburg, where he married. In 1541 the Genevans, 
 wearying of libertine license, invited Calvin to return, and after some 
 hesitation he accepted the invitation. During fourteen years he carried 
 on a struggle against the libertins, overcame all opposition, and finally 
 set up an autocratic theocracy in Geneva, which became the religious 
 centre of the French Reformation. He died in 1564. 
 
 Calvin was a young man of twenty-seven, living obscurely 
 in BJile, when the imprisonment and burning of the Reformers 
 by Francis I, rousing him to indignation, called forth his 
 famous letter to Francis (1535). Silence, he said, would have 
 been treason. In this letter, which the year after was pre- 
 fixed to his great theological work the Institutio Christiance 
 Reliijionis, he protests against the accusations of those who 
 had wished to persuade the king that the followers of the 
 Eeformation were nothing but rebellious and seditious sub- 
 jects. In 1540 Calvin translated the Institutio into French. 
 The Institution de la Religion Chrdtienne is the first theological 
 treatise written in the French language, and by opening up 
 a wide field of thought to those ignorant of Latin, marks an 
 epoch in the history of that language. 
 
 It is composed of four books: of God; of Jesus as a 
 Mediator; of the Effects of His Mediation; of the Exterior 
 Forms of the Church. Like Luther, Calvin founded his 
 doctrine exclusively on the word of God as contained in the 
 Bible. But while Luther accepted everything from the 
 Catholic Church which did not directly contradict the Bible, 
 Calvin rejected everything that could not be expressly referred 
 to God's law. 
 
 Calvin's central idea is the doctrine of predestination, as 
 contained in the Epistle to the Romans, ix. 10-23: Man is a 
 fallen being; his will and -his righteousness are both powerless 
 to obtain salvation; God, of his mere good pleasure, pre- 
 destines some men to eternal life without any regard to their 
 goodness or virtue, and condemns others to eternal death " in 
 order through their damnation to glorify his majesty"; the 
 Son of God came to earth to redeem the elect only. At the 
 same time, and in the midst of this sombre theology, Calvin
 
 58 SIXTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 finds room to deliver attacks against the sacraments of the 
 Church, the celibacy of priests, the authority of the Holy 
 See, &c. 
 
 In the case of Calvin the style is indeed the man stern, 
 imperious, lofty, and gloomy. 
 
 The Institution is the first great prose work of the 16th 
 century. 
 
 In contrast also to the positive spirit of Rabelais and his 
 followers stands the famous Amadis des Gaules (1540-1548), 
 translated from the Spanish of Montalvo and his successors by 
 Herberay des Essarts ( + 1550c.). It is a continuation, as it 
 were, of the Romances of the Round Table and its chivalric 
 ideals, which, coming back to France from Spain, were 
 fashioned by the author to suit the tastes of his contem- 
 poraries. The characteristics of the Amadis are knightly 
 adventures, courtly gallantry, daring deeds of arms, and a 
 love of the supernatural. The leading personages, besides 
 Amadis, the son of King Perion of Wales and of an Armorican 
 princess, are Galaor his brother, Oriane his future wife, and 
 their son Esplandion. Des Essarts only translated the first 
 eight books, but he had imitators and continuators. In the 
 same way as Montalvo's four books had multiplied to twelve, 
 so did the eight of Des Essarts extend to twenty-four (1550- 
 1613), but it was the first eight books which became especially 
 popular, being translated into English, German, and Dutch. 
 "On y pouvait cueillir toutes les belles fleurs de notre langue ", 
 says Pasquier. 
 
 The extraordinary vogue of the Amadis des Gaules lasted 
 till the advent of the 17th-century pastoral and chivalric 
 romance, which it had called into existence.
 
 POETRY 59 
 
 SECOND PEEIOD (1549-1605) 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 POETRY 
 
 The second half of the century marks the advent of a new 
 poetic school, whose ideal finds expression in a group of writers 
 who styled themselves the Pleiade, and at whose head stands 
 Pierre de Ronsard. 
 
 After deafness, consequent on a serious illness, had closed 
 for him the avenue to public life, Ronsard resolved to seek 
 fame in another path, and to throw himself ardently into the 
 study of antiquity. With that end in view he shut himself 
 up in the College Coqueret. There he met a number of 
 students animated with the same desire, and who also shared 
 the lessons of the principal, Jean Daurat, the famous Hellenist. 
 Around Ronsard gathered the "Brigade", composed of Bai'f, 
 Joachim Du Bellay, Remi Belleau, and Ronsard himself, 
 which, by and by, with the addition of Pontus de Thyard, 
 Jodelle, and their common master, Daurat, was to become the 
 PUiade, in allusion to the seven stars of the Pleiad, and also 
 to their Greek prototypes of the court of the Ptolemies. 
 
 Dissatisfied, after a careful study of antique models, with 
 the state of the French language and literature, they conceived 
 for that language an ideal of literary beauty which should 
 rival the ideal of antiquity. 
 
 In the first place, it was necessary to clear the ground, and 
 thus a great part of their doctrine is purely negative, and in 
 direct opposition to their predecessors, Clement Marot and his 
 school. In the second place, they asserted against the pedan- 
 try of humanism, the latiniseurs and grdcaniseiirs, that their 
 native tongue was capable of such rivalry, and proposed to 
 show by what means it could be made to attain to this 
 end. 
 
 At length, in 1549, they flung out their manifesto, the most
 
 60 SIXTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 important study in literary criticism of the century. The 
 work was by Du Bellay, but breathed the spirit of Ronsard. 
 It was styled Ddfense et Illustration de la Langue Franchise. 
 During the same year and the next Ronsard and Du Bellay 
 published poetical works illustrating the theories of the seven 
 associates. The excitement in the camp of Marot and his 
 followers was great, but in spite of a counter-manifesto, the 
 struggle did not last long, and already in 1550 Ronsard was 
 fully established and looked upon as the prince of poets. 
 
 To obtain a just insight into the theories of the PUiade it 
 is necessary to take into consideration, beside Du Bcllay's 
 manifesto, the Art Po6tique (1565), and the two prefaces of the 
 Frandade (1572-73 or 4), both works of Ronsard, which form 
 a complement, and generally a confirmation, of the Defense el 
 Illustration. The attempts of Ronsard and his school at 
 literary reform bear on three principal points: 
 
 (a) The formation of a poetic diction distinct from that 
 of prose. Struck by the fact that the poetic language of the 
 Greeks has a vocabulary, forms, and turns of its own, the 
 PUiade tried to create a language peculiar to poetry richer, 
 more expressive, and more sustained than prose. To that 
 end they did not borrow wholesale words from Greek or 
 Latin, as has sometimes been supposed. 
 
 The well-known lines 1 of Boileau on Ronsard have no 
 foundation in fact. The PUiade sought to innovate with dis- 
 cretion, and, apart from the Greek and Latin words which 
 were already current in the 16th century, they only borrowed 
 mythological adjectives and classical proper names. Far from 
 encouraging poets to talk a kind of latinized French, Ronsard 
 especially recommends them to write " in French ", and warns 
 them against the pedantry of those fooliers limousins who prefer 
 
 1 "Ronsard qui le suivit (Marot) par une autre me'thode, 
 R&jlant tout, brouilla tout, Jit un art a sa mode, 
 Et toutcfois longtemps cut un heureux dcstin. 
 Mais sa muse, en fran^ais parlant grec et latin, 
 Vit dans I' dye suirant, par un retour grotesque, 
 Tomber de ses grands mots le faste pedante&que. 
 Ce poete orgueilleu.c, tr&ntchA de si haut, 
 Rendit plus retcnus Desportes et Bcrtaut." Art Pottique, !.
 
 POETRY 61 
 
 collauder and contemner to loner and mtpriser. 1 What does 
 occasionally impart to the poetry of the Pttiade a foreign 
 classical look is the excessive use of mythological adjectives 
 and classical proper names. Compare, for example, the follow- 
 ing lines from Ronsard's Odes: 
 
 " Mais tout soudain, d'un haut style plus rare, 
 Je veux sonner le sang Hcctorean, 
 Changeant le son du Dircean Pindare 
 Au plus haut bruit du chantre Smyrnean "; 
 
 and also certain processes of construction inspired by the 
 study of the poetry of the ancients, to which they had recourse 
 for the attainment of their proposed select and aristocratic 
 idiom for verse. They recommend the use of adjectives for 
 nouns or adverbs (" le /rat's des eaux ", " il vole Uger "); of para- 
 phrases like " le Pere foudnyant ", instead of Jupiter, and " la 
 Vierge chasseresse" instead of Diana. The other innovations 
 which they introduced were eminently French, and consist of 
 no more than 200 new words, borrowed, acording to their 
 doctrine, from old French (greigneur, souloir, de~duit, guerdon, 
 los, &c.); from the dialects (harsoir - hi er soir, lesson =jumeau, 
 bers = berceau, &c.); from the technical vocabulary (creuset, brisdes, 
 erre, havet, maillet, &c.); or composed either by provignement or 
 derivation (enrocher, engemmer, blondoyer, vanoyer, sourcer, douce- 
 let, seulet, &c.), or by juxtaposition (chewe-pied, fier-hunble, 
 donne-vin). The first manner of juxtaposing words is alone 
 blameworthy; the two others are in the spirit of the language 
 (cp. aigre-doux and portefeuille, in modern French); but the later 
 followers of the PUiade, and especially Du Bartas, by too 
 prodigal a use of them brought them into discredit. 
 
 (b) The substitution of classical forms for the older forms 
 of French poetry. On this point the Defense et Illustration is 
 very explicit: rondeaux, ballades, virelais, chants-royaux, chansons, 
 are to be cast aside, and replaced by odes like those of Horace 
 or of Pindar, by the elegy, epigram, or sonnets in the manner 
 
 1 Compare also Ronsard'p words in the second preface to the Franciadc: 
 " (Test un crime de lezc-majesU d'ahandonner le lanyage de son pays, vivant 
 etfleurissant pour vouloir dctcrrer je ne sqay quelle ccndre des anciens ".
 
 62 SIXTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 of Petrarch. Fatrasies, too, and Cotj-a-l'diic must give way to 
 regular satire, and moralities and farces yield to tragedy and 
 comedy modelled on Seneca and Plautus. 
 
 (c) A revolution of versification. On matters of versifi- 
 cation the Defense says very little. Du Bellay is content to 
 recommend the cultivation of rich but not over-curious rimes. 
 As if conscious of the gap, Ronsard gives us fuller information. 
 In fact, the innovations in rime and rhythm are the personal 
 work of the genius of Ronsard. More liberal than Du Bellay, 
 he permits enjambement, or the carrying over of a clause begun 
 in one line into the next without any break. He also allows 
 hiatus on the ground of classical example; but, more impor- 
 tant, to Ronsard is due the reintroduction of the alexandrine, 
 especially in lyrical poetry, and the honour of having imposed 
 it on later writers as the French verse par excellence, and also 
 of having created almost all the rhythms used after him, and 
 even some which are still unutilized. 
 
 In conclusion, we cannot do better than to quote the fol- 
 lowing lines from Ronsard, which so eloquently sum up the 
 aspirations of the PUiade, and the reform attempted and 
 carried out by them and their leader: 
 
 " Je vy que des Francois le langage trap bas 
 A terre se trainoit sans ordre ny cornpas: 
 Adonques pour hausser ma lanyue maternelle, 
 Indonte du labeur, je travaillay pour die, 
 Je fis des mots nouveaux, je r'appelay les vicux, 
 Si lien que son renom je poussay jusqu'aux Cieux. 
 Je fys, d'autre fa$on que n'avoyent les antiques, 
 Vocables composcz et phrases poetiques, 
 Et mis la Poesie en tel ordre qu'apres 
 Le Francois fut egal aux Romains et aux Grecs." 
 
 By far the most important members of the FUiade are 
 Pierre de Ronsard and Joachim Du Bellay. 
 
 Ronsard was born in 1524 at Venddme, of an old family of Hungarian 
 origin. At an early age he entered the service of the son of Francis I, 
 and afterwards that of James V of Scotland. After his return to France 
 he was sent on various diplomatic missions. These journeys and the 
 fatigues of court life undermined his health, and he was struck with
 
 POETRY 63 
 
 deafness, and, as we have seen, resolved to devote his life to the study 
 of antiquity and art. Already, a year after the publication of the 
 Pleiades manifesto, Ronsard was recognized as the greatest living poet, 
 and during a period of forty years was destined to occupy this lofty 
 position. Never was man placed so high by the universal admiration 
 of his contemporaries; his works were translated into nearly all the 
 languages of Europe ; Tasso sought his advice ; the Italians placed him 
 above Petrarch ; Mary Stuart and Queen Elizabeth vied with one 
 another in sending him gifts, and his deafness made people compare him 
 to Homer. His death, at the close of 1585, was felt as a national 
 calamity, and princely honours were paid to his tomb. 
 
 Eonsard's poetic work can be divided into four periods. 
 
 (a) From 1550 to 1554, fresh from the teaching of Daurat, 
 he is an exaggerated and indiscreet humanist the devoted 
 follower of Pindar and Petrarch. The first three books of 
 the Odes are an attempt at a resuscitation of the former, and 
 though he -could not rise to the height of his original, yet the 
 study of Pindar trained him in the handling of sustained 
 periods of verse, and interested him in complex lyrical com- 
 binations. Then followed the Amours de Cassandre, closely 
 modelled on Petrarch, and partaking rather of the artificial 
 character of old French " courteous " poetry than of the pas- 
 sionate character of modern lyricism. 
 
 (6) From 1554 to 1560 he abandons Pindar, and imitates 
 the poets of the Alexandrine school, a collection of whose 
 works had just been published by Henri Etienne, under the 
 impression that they were those of Anacreon. In 1555-6 he 
 composed Les Amours de Marie, a blending of voluptuous ardour 
 and melancholy; the fourth and fifth book of Odes, Gallic in 
 tone and spirit, and recalling the chansons of Marot; and some 
 Hymnes after the pattern of Callimachus, in which description 
 and rhetoric prevail. 
 
 (c) From 1560 to 1574 Eonsard was in part a court poet. 
 In this period he also wrote the Discours sur les Miseres de ce 
 Temps, aimed at the Huguenots, and which may be said to have 
 endowed French literature with the satire, and began his epic 
 poem the Franciade, fortunately left unfinished. In this poem 
 Eonsard discourses on the travels of a fabulous son of Hector,
 
 64 SIXTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 Francus, who, after the fall of Troy, pursued by fate, finally 
 lands in Gaul and conquers that country. 
 
 (d) From 1574 to 1584 his work, though scarcer, is more 
 profound and personal. It is the period of his admirable 
 Sonnets & Hettne, in which the poet is really himself. 
 
 Ronsard's genius is mainly elegiac and lyrical. He is ex- 
 quisite whenever by chance his intentions as a scholar tally 
 with his temperament, or whenever the poet gets the bettei 
 of the humanist. He is unsurpassed in the so-called seconv 
 dary kinds of poetry, but in higher themes inspiration too 
 often fails him. Before all else he is a master of his instru- 
 ment the creator of endless rhythms and verse-combinations 
 unknown to his predecessors. 
 
 After Ronsard, the brightest light in the poetical constel- 
 lation is undoubtedly Joachim Du Bellay. 
 
 Joachim Du Bellay was born in 1525 at Lyre, near Angers, of an 
 illustrious family. After an unhappy youth, which left indelible traces 
 of melancholy in his character, he proceeded to Poitiers to study law-; 
 soon after he became acquainted with Ronsard and joined Daurat's band. 
 The same year as the Defense et Illustration dc la Langue Franfaise (1549) 
 he published a collection of sonnets in honour of Mile de Viole, under 
 the anagram "Olive". In 1551 he accompanied, as intendant, his cousin 
 Cardinal Du Bellay to Rome, but a diplomatic career proved uncongenial 
 to him. Abandoned by the cardinal and his friends his health grew 
 rapidly worse, and he died in 1560. 
 
 Du Bellay's Sonnets h Olive, written in the style of Petrarch, 
 are, with a few exceptions, strained and affected, falling far 
 short of their model. Later, Du Bellay recanted, and went so 
 far as to write a satire against the Petrarchists. At Rome for 
 the first time the poet found his true self : he is no longer a pure 
 imitator, but translates into verse his most intimate feelings. 
 In the AntiquiUs de Rome 1 he expresses the sentiment of ruins 
 for the first time in French literature. Du Bellay had started 
 for Rome full of enthusiastic hopes, which his first impressions 
 did not belie. He was soon undeceived : the cynical intrigues 
 of the Pontifical court, the corruption of Roman society, in- 
 
 1 Translated by Spenser under the title of the Ruins of Rome.
 
 POETRY 65 
 
 different health, the torments of an unhappy love, and a long- 
 ing for his "sweet" province of Anjou all this tended to 
 embitter his natural melancholy and to depress his spirits. A 
 reflection of this mood is found in the Sonnets of his Regrets, 
 partly satirical, which appeared in 1559, and are indisputably 
 his best work. About the same time Du Bellay, by the publi- 
 cation of the Jeux Rustiques, charming rural poems, of which 
 the best are the well-known Vanneur de BU 1 and V6nus, 
 showed that his poetic genius was not one-sided. These were 
 followed by the Poete Courtisan, a regular satire against court 
 poetasters. 
 
 Du Bellay is the most original and personal of the poets of 
 the PUiade. Though he was the enthusiastic spokesman of the 
 new school, his lyrical inspiration often triumphed over the 
 somewhat narrowing spirit of his associates. This struggle 
 between originality and theory explains a certain number of 
 contradictions in his poetical productions as well as in the 
 Defense. 
 
 The other members of the Pleiade are of comparatively 
 little importance, with the exception of Jodelle (vide Drama). 
 They offer nothing which cannot be found in Ronsard and 
 Du Bellay, and much which is only a caricature of their 
 genius. 
 
 Thus Antoine de Bai'f (1 532-1 589) strove to revive the 
 quantitative metrical system of classical verse. He wrote 
 several volumes of vers mesure"s, as they were then called. 
 Most of the poets of the 16th century tried their hand at 
 such verse, but soon abandoned the attempt as contrary to 
 the genius of the language. Baif has been blamed for having 
 tried to forge comparatives and superlatives after the Latin 
 pattern : doctior, doctisme, &c. This he did, but only jestingly. 
 
 Remi Belleau's (1528-1577) poetry is purely of the descriptive kind, 
 but occasionally redeemed by a delicate feeling for nature. His most 
 interesting production is the Pierres Prdcieuses, an adaptation of the 
 medieval lapidary to the taste of the Renaissance. 
 
 Ronsard and the Pleiade inaugurated the French classical 
 
 1 Translated by Andrew Lang in Ballads and Lyrics of Old France, 
 (11643) B
 
 66 SIXTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 school. Their work was continued by Malherbc, and brought 
 to perfection later by Boileau. They maintained that the 
 true poet could not do without study and art; that nature 
 unassisted does not produce masterpieces, and that the ancients 
 .alone must be our guides. What they often failed to perceive 
 was the link which unites antiquity and truth, imitation and 
 originality; the masterpieces of Greece and Rome are admir- 
 able not because they belong to antiquity, but because they 
 are founded on the imitation of nature and on the reason. 
 The second great fault of the school, due to its intellectual 
 and aristocratic spirit, is that they dried up for two centuries 
 the spring of popular and spontaneous poetry. Yet they did 
 not suppose, like some of the writers of the 17th century, that 
 the total play of emotion must be rationalized by the under- 
 standing; occasionally a poem is the outcome- of personal and 
 sincere feeling. 
 
 The Reformation, too, had its poets: Guillaume Salluste, 
 Seigneur du Bartas, a contemporary of Ronsard, and Theodore 
 Agrippa d'Aubigne, whose capital work only appeared in the 
 17th century, but who in spirit is wholly of the 16th cen- 
 tury. 
 
 Guillaume Salluste du Bartas (1544-1590) began by the 
 publication of Judith (1573), an epic poem, in which the Catho- 
 lics saw an apology for regicide. This was followed up by 
 his chief work, La Premiere Semaine (1579), and its continuation 
 La Seconde Semaine (1584). The first Semaine is a long epic 
 poem on the creation of the world, an adoration of the Al- 
 mighty in the marvels of nature, while the second Semaine is 
 a kind of universal history. The popularity of this epic was 
 immense, and in a few years it had passed through thirty 
 editions. Although its conception is not without grandeur, 
 and a few passages of real beauty are to be found in the midst 
 of much laboured and rhetorical description, it is difficult for 
 us now to account for this contemporary enthusiasm, confined, 
 as it may largely have been, to the followers of the Reforma- 
 tion who wished to oppose Du Bartas to Ronsard. The style 
 and language of Du Bartas are absolutely devoid of art rough
 
 POETRY 67 
 
 and barbarous. His rimes, too, are often provincial. He is 
 a kind of caricature of Ronsard, and, together with Baif, is 
 responsible for the discredit into which the chief of the Ple"iade 
 fell. He makes an especial abuse of the Homeric compounds < 
 introduced by the Pleiade ("Le feu donne-darU, porte-chaud, 
 jette-flamme", "Mercure eschelle-ciel, invente-art, aime-lyre", &c.). 
 A list of more than 300 such compounds has been compiled from 
 his works. To gain effect he also affects the repetition, in 
 nursery wise, of the first syllable of a word ("les flo-flottantes 
 et bou-bourdonnantes ondes "). In spite of Milton's, Byron's, and 
 Goethe's admiration for Du Bartas, he is but a very mediocre 
 poet, always copious, rarely majestic, and nearly always turgid. 
 His works as a whole are unreadable now, in spite of a few 
 fine passages scattered over the body of the Semaine. 
 
 Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne (1550-1630) was a greater 
 poet. In his early verse, Le Printemps, Hdcatombe a Diane, &c., 
 he is nothing but a belated Ronsardist, lacking in taste, while 
 in the Creation, closely modelled on Du Bartas, he is even more 
 flat and frigid than his master. But these were only initiatory 
 efforts. The passions of the Reformation period awoke him to 
 his true poetic vocation, and from a poet of the court and of 
 love, transformed D'Aubigne into an angry satirist. The 
 Tragiques is the first notable work in French after the manner 
 of Juvenal. It was begun in 1577, after the battle of Castel- 
 Jaloux, and continued on different occasions till 1594, but did 
 not appear as a whole till 1616. It presents a picture of the 
 ills which afflicted France during the religious struggles. In 
 the first three cantos, entitled Miseres, Princes, La Chambre 
 Dore~e, D'Aubigne describes the civil wars, the corruption of 
 the court, and the infamy of the tribunals, ready to sell Justice 
 to the highest bidder. The last four cantos, Feux, Fers, Ven- 
 geance, Jugement, show the martyrs of the new faith dying at 
 the stake or in the dungeon, butchered on St. Bartholomew's 
 night; and in spite of those persecutions the steady growth of 
 the Reformed Church, the executioners struck by divine ven- 
 geance on this earth or condemned to eternal torture by the 
 tribunal of God.
 
 68 SIXTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 The Tragiques as a whole is wearisome reading. Force, 
 imagination, abundance of images, a few fine verses. 1 occur side 
 by side with obscurity of diction, superfluity of detail, repe- 
 tition, and painful effort. 
 
 Victor Hugo was well acquainted with the Tragiques, and 
 many a passage in his Chdtiments recalls the influence of 
 D'Aubigne. 
 
 Other works of D'Aubigne^ are: Sa Vie a ses Enfants, which 
 covers the period between 1557 and 1618; L'Hisloire Univer- 
 selle, an apology of militant Calvinism (1550-1601); a reli- 
 gious pamphlet called La Confession de Sancy, which has been 
 called, and not without justice ; the first of the Provindales. 
 In it D'Aubigne^ supposes a good Huguenot nobleman, who has 
 become converted to the Catholic religion and confesses his 
 past errors. It is a model of ironical satire. After the Tra- 
 giques, D'Aubignes best-known production is the satirical tale 
 Les Aventures du Baron de Fceneste. De Fceneste (derived from 
 <JMivetrOai) relates in half-Gascon French, and in boastful and 
 partly ironical language, his experiences during his travels, 
 on the field and chiefly at court, to the Huguenot M. D'Enay 
 (from efvai). D'Aubigne contrasts the man who appears the 
 sponging and penniless courtly Panurge, whose whole existence 
 is founded on show, and who with his last penny purchases a 
 tooth-pick, instead of bread, to show that he has dined copi- 
 ously with the man that is, the man who lives upon his estate, 
 among his rustic neighbours, tilling his fields and serving his 
 people and his native land. 
 
 Ronsard's influence lasted till the end of the 16th century; 
 but the poets of that period, instead of imitating the classics 
 and attempting higher themes, preferred the antitheses and 
 hyperboles of the lighter and softer Italian lyrics. They were 
 absolutely devoid of originality and creative power; often the 
 prettiest passages in their poetry are only plagiarisms from 
 beyond the Alps. Form is their chief merit 
 
 1 Cp. Les corbeaux noircissant les jMvittons du Louvre; Us sont vStus de 
 Uanc et laves de pardon; L'air nest plus que rayons, tant il est sem d'anges; 
 A I'heure que le del fume de sang et d 'times.
 
 DRAMA 69 
 
 These remarks apply especially to Philippe Desportes (1546-1606), 
 the type of the court poet. He composed sonnets, odes, elegies, mas- 
 carades, and translated parts of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, and also the 
 Psalms. His verse is elegant and graceful, but not unfrequently spoiled 
 by conceits and affectation. 
 
 Jean Bertaut (1522-1611) wrote gallant and religious lyrics in imi- 
 tation of Desportes. He is less artificial, but still more affected than his 
 master. 
 
 Jean Vauquelin de la Fresnaye (1535-1606) deserves notice as the 
 author of the first collection of regular satires, which, however, were 
 largely borrowed from the Italian Sansovino. To him we also owe an 
 Art Poetique (1575), in which the tenets of the Ple"iade are formulated. 
 
 More interesting than these is Jean Passerat (1534-1602), a poet of 
 the Gallic tendency of Villon and Marot. His works (1606), consisting 
 of sonnets, elegies, epigrams, eclogues, and light verse, are witty and 
 in good taste. The eclogue Cat in, and the vilanette, J'ai perdu ma 
 tourterdle, will always appeal to the reader of French literature. 
 
 CHAPTER 'II 
 
 DEAMA 
 
 The blow dealt to the medieval drama by the Decree of 
 the Parliament of Paris (1548) was followed up the year after 
 by an appeal in Du Bellay's Defense et Illustration, inviting 
 future playwrights to turn to antiquity for their models, and 
 to replace the medieval plays (miracles, mysteries, moralities, 
 farces, and sotties) by regular comedy and tragedy based on 
 classical models: "Quant avx comedies et tragedies, si les roys et 
 les republiques les voulaient restituer en leur ancienne dignitd qu'ont 
 usurpe'e les farces et moralitez, je seroys Men d' opinion que tu t'y 
 employasses ". 
 
 Jodelle responded to this invitation, and three years after 
 the Defense he inaugurated the modern drama with the tragedy 
 of CUopatre and the comedy of Eugene, which were both per- 
 formed on the same day by Jodelle himself and some of his 
 friends in the College de Boncourt, in presence of the court. 
 As Ronsard says, Jodelle 
 
 " . . . le premier d'une plainte hardie 
 Franfoisement sonna la grecque trage'die,
 
 70 SIXTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 Puys, en chanr/eant de ton, chanta devant nos roia 
 Lajeune comddie en langage franqois ". 
 
 Nevertheless, the new drama triumphed but gradually. Pro- 
 fane mysteries perpetuated the traditions of the Middle Ages ; 
 the exclusive privilege which the Guild de la Passion enjoyed 
 prevented the formation of actors capable of interpreting the 
 new art, and the school of Jodelle was reduced to having its 
 plays performed by students or the nobility in colleges or at 
 court it was purely academic and learned, whereas the popu- 
 lar drama of the Middle Ages held the stage, and could alone 
 be used as a vehicle for satire or polemic. Moreover, as the 
 Decree of 1548 only applied to Paris, plays of a sacred char- 
 acter (mysteries) continued to be composed arid acted in the 
 provinces, together with the older repertoire, or were dubbed 
 by the name of tragedy and tragi-comedy, probably with the 
 idea of balking the authorities. Such plays are Les Enfants 
 dans la Fournaise (1561), Le Triomphe de J6sus Christ (1562), 
 L'Holopherne (1580), Le Cain (1580), and La MacchaUe (1596), 
 which are nothing but mysteries; while Philanire (1560), 
 L'Amour d'un Serviteur (1571), Lucille (1576), and Akoubar 
 (1586) bear close relationship to the morality. 
 
 Thus, while the old medieval repertoire continued to be 
 served up anew on the popular stage, fresh plays on the same 
 lines, though in gradually decreasing numbers, were added 
 to it till quite the end of the century. 
 
 Finally, the force of circumstances induced the Confrdrie de 
 la Passion to make a compromise with the new school, and 
 towards 1588 they hired their privilege and their hall (Hotel 
 de Bourgogne) to a troop of comedians who, thanks to the 
 reign of Henry IV and the return of peace (1593), were able 
 regularly to play tragedy and comedy. The medieval drama 
 took refuge in the provinces, and languished till it was finally 
 eclipsed by the splendours of the drama of the 17th century. 
 
 (1) Tragedy. The way for a reform in dramatic poetry, in 
 comedy as well as tragedy, had been to some extent prepared 
 by plays written in Latin, the work of Buchanan, Muret, and 
 others, and also by translations from Sophocles and Euripides.
 
 DRAMA 71 
 
 The first tragedy in French representing the new school was, 
 as we have seen, Jodelle's CUop&tre (1552). His example was 
 soon followed by a number of other poets, whose tragedies 
 can be grouped according to subject into classical and religious 
 plays; while a third group, which can be called political, owes 
 its birth to the desire of the Protestants or their adversaries to 
 use the stage for polemical purposes. Such are, e.g., the Guisade 
 (1589), Le Guysien (1592), and Chantelouve's Coligny (1575), 
 in which he celebrates the murderer of the illustrious admiral. 
 
 Lastly, the Protestant reformer De Beze, in his Sacrifice 
 d' Abraham, and Loys Desmasures, in three tragedies on the 
 life of David, attempted a kind of reconciliation between the 
 medieval mystery and classical tragedy. 
 
 The chief representatives of French tragedy based on classi- 
 cal models in the 16th century are: Etienne Jodelle, Jacques 
 Grevin, Jean de la Taille, Robert Gamier, Antoine de Mont- 
 chretien. 
 
 The CUop&tre of Etienne Jodelle (1532-1573) was the first 
 French "regular" tragedy. The theme was borrowed from 
 Plutarch. The play is divided into five acts with choruses. 
 In acts ii, iii, and v the decasyllabic line is used, but the 
 alexandrine appears in acts i and iv. There is hardly any 
 dramatic action, and the play is scarcely more than a succes- 
 sion of declamations. These faults, though in a lesser degree, 
 are shared by all Jodelle's successors in the 16th century. 
 They are due to the influence of Seneca, whose works were 
 copied in preference to those of the great tragedians of 
 Greece, firstly, because the scholars of the time had a better 
 knowledge of Latin than of Greek, and secondly, because the 
 perfection and admirable simplicity of Greek models were 
 much more difficult to imitate than Seneca's declamatory pro- 
 ductions it was easier to versify awe-inspiring catastrophes 
 than to draw real characters and passions. Seneca's influence, 
 too, was reinforced by Scaliger's Latin commentary on 
 Aristotle's Poetics (1561), which is wholly founded on the 
 tragedies of the Roman poet. 
 
 Lack of action in Cldopdtre . is not atoned for by the style,
 
 72 SIXTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 which is loose, emphatic, and pompous. For the first time 
 unity of time makes its appearance. The play, like its suc- 
 cessors, is oratorical and lyrical, but not dramatic. The 
 date of Jodelle's second tragedy, Didon se sacrifiant, is un- 
 certain. It is still more devoid of action than CUopatre, but 
 superior in point of style. The alexandrine measure is used 
 throughout, and since then it has ranked as the standard 
 dramatic line. Whatever the merit of Jodelle's two plays 
 may be, they are important as initiatory works: the choice of 
 subjects, the small number of characters, the simplicity of 
 action, a tendency to observe the unities, mere narrative in 
 lieu of dramatic action, and a sustained effort to attain le style 
 noble all announce classical tragedy. 
 
 The Mart de Cesar (1558) of Jacques Grevin (1540 C.-1570) 
 shows some improvement on his predecessor, especially as 
 regards the style, which is less obscure and ponderous. 
 
 Jean de la Taille (1540 C.-1611) was the first to treat 
 biblical subjects in accordance with the precepts of the new 
 school. He chose King Saul as the hero of a tragedy, "faite 
 selon I'art et a la mode des vieux auteurs tragiques: Saul Furieux" 
 (before 1572). In 1573 he composed Les Gabeonites, a con- 
 tinuation of Saul. Both those plays, in the midst of much 
 that is purely oratorical and declamatory, offer certain scenes 
 that are not without dramatic life. 
 
 Gamier and Montchretien represent the height of French 
 tragedy in the 16th century. 
 
 Robert Gamier (1534-1590) wrote eight plays, of which 
 the first six (Porcie, Corndlie, Marc Antoine, Hippolyte, La 
 Troade, and Antigone}, closely modelled on Seneca, show little 
 improvement on the methods of his predecessors. After his 
 Latin or Greek tragedies he composed a sacred tragedy, 
 Se'decie or Les Juives (1583), his masterpiece. The play, 
 which takes its name from the choruses, composed of Jewish 
 maidens, exhibits the revolt of the Jewish king and his 
 punishment by Nabuchodonosor. We notice in it a marked 
 improvement in action, and a genuine feeling for the spirit of 
 the Bible has enabled the poet to trace real characters in the
 
 DRAMA 73 
 
 persons of Nabuchodonosor and Amital. His heroic and 
 majestic style, which in places recalls Corneille, was much 
 admired by his contemporaries; in one of his sonnets Ronsard 
 
 exclaims : 
 
 " Qud son masle et hardy ! quelle bouche hdro'ique 
 Et quel supcrbe vers entens-je icy sonner?" 
 
 while the lyrical utterances in the plaintive songs of the 
 chorus prove that Gamier was assuredly a poet if not a 
 dramatist. Unity of time is observed in Garnier's plays, but 
 unity of place is neglected. 
 
 The year before Les Juives he wrote Bradamente, an example 
 of the new form of tragi-comedy, or tragedy with a happy 
 ending. The subject is romantic, and borrowed from cantos 
 44-46 of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. Riidiger, after surmounting 
 endless dangers, wins his love, Bradamente, sister of the four 
 sons of Hemon. Both place and time are freely treated. The 
 dialogue is free from sententious maxims; comic and tragic 
 scenes are interwoven, and no choruses appear. 
 
 Of the six tragedies left by Montchretien ( + 1621), by far 
 the best is L'ficossaise ou Le Ddsastre, in which he depicts the 
 sad fate of Mary Queen of Scots. As far as dramatic action 
 is concerned, L'Ecossaise is a retrograde step on Gamier. The 
 first two acts are filled with sententious political tirades, in 
 which Elizabeth and her councillors debate as to whether 
 Mary shall die or not; in acts iii and iv the prayers and 
 lamentations of the unhappy queen leave room for nothing 
 else, while the last act is devoted to a minute account of her 
 execution. The two rivals do not even meet. The charm of 
 the play lies in the beautiful lyrical passages, superior even 
 to those in Gamier, the elegiac softness of which has won 
 for Montchretien the name of the Racine of the 16th century. 
 His tragedies connect the 16th century with the classical 
 school of the 17th century. 
 
 (2) Comedy in the 16th century, in spite of translations and 
 imitations from Aristophanes, Plautus, and Terence, is neither 
 Greek nor Latin. It is derived mainly from the medieval farce 
 and Italian comedy.
 
 74 SIXTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 As in tragedy, Jodelle was the first to open the way, his 
 Eugene appearing in 1552. In spite of the fact that it is 
 called a comedy, and of its polemical prologue, it is little more 
 than an old farce decked out in more regular and rhetorical 
 language. 
 
 The year after, Grevin wrote La Maubertine (the woman 
 from the Place Maubert) or La Trdsorikre, in which Jodelle's 
 influence is obvious; this was followed by Les Esbahis, freely 
 modelled on a translation from the Italian of Ch. Etienne. 
 In each of these three plays the octosyllabic line is used, as in 
 the medieval farce. 
 
 In imitation of his Italian models Jean de la Taille em- 
 ploys prose for the first time in the Corrivaux (1576). Odet de 
 Turnebe (1553-1581) also used prose in Les Contents (1584). 
 
 The most remarkable name in the history of 16th-century 
 comedy is that of Larivey (1540 C.-1615 c.). He was of Italian 
 origin, but gallicized his name (il Giunto = V arrive'). He 
 adapted from the works of contemporary Italian dramatists 
 with great tact and discretion. To suit the requirements of 
 French readers he changed the locality of the scenes, the 
 names of the characters, suppressed or added passages and 
 parts with so much judgment that his translations are nearly 
 always superior to the originals. But his chief title to fame 
 consists in his style, teeming with popular and proverbial 
 expressions, which did so much to advance the art of dia- 
 logue. Of the dozen plays due to the pen of Larivey nine 
 have come down to us, of which the best by far is Les Espiits 
 (the Ghosts), imitated from the Aridosio of Lorenzino de 
 Medici. 
 
 In general the comedy of the 16th century in its intrigue 
 bears a close similarity to the imbroglio of Italian comedy ; its 
 types of character are purely conventional (merchants, panders, 
 ruffians, bullies, parasites, and bourgeois), while the language 
 is even more grossly indecent than that of medieval farce.
 
 75 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 PROSE 
 
 Among prose-translators we find such well-known names as 
 Eonsard, Du Bellay, Belleau, Baif, Du Vair, &c., but none 
 of these can compare with Jacques Amyot of Melun (1513- 
 1573), professor of Greek and Latin at the University of 
 Bourges, and afterwards tutor to the sons of Henry II, and 
 finally Bishop of Auxerre. His first translation, TMagkne et 
 CharicUe, appeared in 1547, and was destined to have great 
 influence on the development of the French novel. In 1559 
 followed Les Amours Pastorales de Daphnis et Chlod, from Longus; 
 and the same year he completed for his princely pupils the 
 translation of Plutarch, which he had previously begun at the 
 request of Francis I. To Henry II he dedicated the trans- 
 lation of the Vies des Homines Illustres de Plutarque, and to 
 Charles IX the CEuvres Morales (1572). 
 
 Amyot's translations from Plutarch had an enormous suc- 
 cess, opening up a source of moral and historical culture for 
 which his fellow-countrymen had long thirsted: "Plutarch", 
 says Montaigne, "is my favourite book since it has become 
 French ", and he always quotes according to Amyot's version ; 
 in another passage of his Essays (ii. 4) he adds: "Nous autres 
 ignorants (du Grec) estions perdus, si ce lime, ne nous eust relevd du 
 bourbier: sa mercy (thanks to it), nous osons a cett' heure et parler 
 et escrire; les dames en regentent (teach) les maistres d'eschok; c'est 
 noire breviaire". Montaigne's words show the importance of 
 the Plutarch translations in helping to spread the knowledge 
 of antiquity and as a book for ladies. From the time of 
 Amyot's translation Plutarch is known in French literature 
 as Amyot. But such success was impossible without excel- 
 lence in the execution; Amyot gives the sum of Plutarch's 
 ideas, and penetrated so deeply into the Greek author's 
 thought that he may be said to have made it his own, in fact he 
 not unfrequently surpasses the original in clearness and pre- 
 cision. There may be mistranslations in his version, but he is
 
 76 SIXTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 no philologist, he only wished the ideas and life of the ancient 
 world to become the possession of all French readers, and to 
 enrich the literature of his country, 
 
 " Afin fjue sans danger, 
 Le Franqais ftlt vainqucur du savoir Stranger ", 
 
 as Ronsard says. Amyot went out to conquer fresh fields, 
 but conquistadors are apt to be violent, and he did not scruple 
 to gallicize the antique conditions of life to suit his readers, 
 translating vestal maidens by religieuses, and providing Alex- 
 ander the Great with huissiers & verge and gentilshommes de la 
 chambre. Local colour, however, is after all only a poetical 
 ornament, and this slight blemish is amply atoned for by the 
 fact that Amyot, anticipating Montaigne, helped to found 
 French literature on a moral and psychological basis. 
 
 Beginning with the reign of Henry II (1548) memoirs and 
 biographies abound. We shall proceed to discuss the most 
 important. 
 
 For fifty-five years Blaise de Monluc (1502-1577) held a 
 command in the army of the king of this his scars remind 
 him, which cover his whole body with the exception of his 
 right arm. Finally a gun-shot tore off half his face, and com- 
 pelled him to wear a mask. Retiring from the service in 
 1574 as Marshal of France, he decided " d employer le temps qui 
 me reste h descrire les combatz auxquels je me suis trouvd pendant 
 dnquante et deux arts que fai command^, m'asseurant que les 
 capitaines qui liront ma vie, y verront des choses desquelles Us se 
 pourront aider, se trouvans en semblables occasions, et desquelles Us 
 pourront aussi faire profit et acquerir honneur et reputation ". The 
 outcome of this resolution were the Commentaires (printed in 
 1592), which Henry TV is said to have called the "soldier's 
 Bible". 
 
 Monluc was a faithful and brave servant of his master, his 
 watchword being to gain honour in the service of the king. 
 He laments the victims of war, and feels that their curses are 
 weighing down upon him . . but the king commanded. He 
 could unfortunately, he says, only enforce obedience by means
 
 PROSE. 77 
 
 of cannon. He would have done still more harm to the 
 Huguenots if he had been able, for they are the king's 
 enemies; yet he is no fanatical Catholic, and would have no 
 objection to becoming a Huguenot "if the king first of all 
 changed his faith " his religion, too, is " au service du roi ". 
 
 Monluc's directness of speech, and the raw soldierly humour 
 of the narrative, enlivens the Commentaires with what has been 
 described as the poetry of war. 
 
 The "r&o&rendf&re en Dieu", as Brantome (1540-1614), the 
 secular possessor of ecclesiastical benefices, styled himself, was 
 also a soldier like Monluc, but more of a courtier. He was as 
 fickle and unsteady as Monluc was true and constant; he was, 
 he tells us himself, " du naturel des tabourineurs (drum-players), 
 qui aiment mieux la maison d'autrui que la leur ", a condotliere, 
 who roamed all over the East, and crossed over to Scotland on 
 the same ship as Mary Queen of Scots when she left France 
 for the last time. In 1584 a fall from a horse maimed him for 
 life, and, confining him to his estates, prompted him to write 
 his experiences feats of war, love stories, scandals, duels, &c. 
 
 Brantome's works, which did not appear till 1668, include 
 
 (a) Vies des Homines Illustres et des Grands Capitaines Etr angers; 
 
 (b) Vies des Hommes Illustres et des Grands Capitaines Francais; 
 
 (c) Vies des Dames Illustres, des Dames Gallantes; and (d) 
 Anecdotes touchant les Duels. 
 
 His style is pleasant and chatty, but his vision is neither 
 wide nor profound; he only feels interest for what clatters, 
 shines, or amuses, and shows a striking incapacity for dis- 
 tinguishing between vice and virtue: in his eyes the court of 
 Charles IX "est une ecole de toute honnetete". The fact that the 
 whole of 1 6th-century society parades before us in his works 
 gives them a historical importance far in excess of their 
 mediocre literary value, which is only occasionally redeemed 
 by a fine portrait like that of Mary of Scots, of De 1'Hopital, 
 or of Marguerite de Valois. 
 
 Here, as in other branches of literature, the Protestants did 
 not lag behind. The chief literary contributions of the Hugue- 
 not leader Francois de la Noue (1531-1591) are the Discours
 
 78 SIXTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 Politiques d Militoifes (1587), written during his captivity in 
 the castle of Limburg. These twenty-five discourses treat 
 in almost equal proportion of political, moral, and military 
 matters. The military discourses describe the wars of the 
 years 1562-1570, those of Conde" and Coligny, which the 
 author relates with the greatest modesty and impartiality. 
 
 La Noue's Discours were one of the sources used by De Thou 
 (1553-1615) in the great Historia, mei Temporis, an important 
 work written in Latin. La Noue was a man of fervent belief, 
 but tolerant, a true and good man. The opponents whom 
 he combated with sword or pen, the wild Monluc and the 
 humanist Montaigne, are unanimous in their praise of his 
 character and conduct. 
 
 He was also a moralist, and wrote a Discours contre les Amadis, 
 a protest against the excessive vogue of these romances, and 
 also against the imitation of Spanish manners. 
 
 Among the political writers of the 16th century, the great- 
 est and most impartial is Jean Bodin (1529-1596), the author 
 of the Republique. It is a book of political philosophy, a sub- 
 ject whose "holy mysteries" have been profaned by writers 
 like Machiavelli and other " courtiers des tyrans ". Bodin chose 
 his title obviously in direct opposition to that of Machiavelli's 
 Prince. The work, written in a clear and concise style, sets up 
 the conditions of a form of government equally distant from 
 the two poles of anarchy and tyranny. Bodin comes to the 
 conclusion that " une monarchic royale et Ugitime ", in which he 
 sees a picture of the family, can alone fulfil these conditions. 
 He had in his mind the material and moral welfare of the 
 people; was no advocate of tyranny, condemned slavery, and 
 held that religious persecution can only lead to a dissolution 
 of religious belief. Like Montesquieu in the 18th century, 
 he devotes attention to the adaptation of government to the 
 varied conditions of race and climate. 
 
 Etienne de la Boetie (1530-1563), the friend of Montaigne, 
 under the influence of the current of revolutionary ideas which 
 developed during the first part of the century composed the 
 Discours de la Servitude Volontaire, or the Contr'un, a youthful
 
 PROSE 79 
 
 and ardent attack on tyranny. After La Beetle's death, 
 Montaigne attempted to protect the memory of his friend, 
 in a well-known passage of the Essays, as a good and peace- 
 loving citizen, although he could not help confessing that La 
 Boetie "eust mieux aymt estre nay a Venise qu'a Sarlat", thereby 
 implying that he was a republican at heart. 
 
 Francois Hotman (1524-1590), the eminent Protestant 
 jurist, is famous for his political treatise, the Franco-Gallia 
 (1573, translated 1574), in which he represents the institutions 
 that the Huguenot party demand as being those which for a 
 long time governed France, and alone can help her to retrieve 
 her prosperity. According to Hotman these ideal institutions 
 can be found in the history of Gaul and of the early Prankish 
 monarchy: in Caesar's time the peoples of Gaul formed a 
 federation of free states, at the head of which was a general 
 assembly of deputies elected by the whole of the country. 
 After the Roman conquest and the conquest of Gaul by the 
 Franks, this federation was replaced by an elective monarchy, 
 beginning with Childeric, in which the king could be deposed 
 by the States-General composed of the nobles, the magistracy, 
 the merchants, and artisans. The clergy formed no order and 
 exercised no power. The sensation caused by the Franco- 
 Gallia has been compared to that produced by the Contrat 
 Social in the 18th century. 
 
 Other political writers are Michel de 1'Hopital (1504-1573), the 
 advocate of tolerance, in the But de la Guerre et de la Paix, addressed 
 to Charles IX. 
 
 Also Henri Etienne and D' Aubigne, both noticed elsewhere. 
 
 Here belongs likewise the famous pamphlet, La Satire 
 Menippee (published in 1594), so called after the Satira Men- 
 ippea of the Roman satiric poet Varro, who in his turn h?d 
 taken as his model the Greek Menippus, the pupil of Diogenes. 
 The Satire M6nipp6e is a striking answer to the intrigues of the 
 fanatical League against Henry IV of Navarre, the lawful heir 
 to the throne of France, and at the same time a literary 
 annihilation of all hostile pamphleteers. The authors of the 
 Mdnippde, of whom there were half a dozen, were not Hugue-
 
 80 SIXTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 nots, but peace-loving Catholics, who feared that in the end 
 civil war would ruin France and deliver her up to Spain; but 
 as the partisans of the League opposed Henry IV chiefly 
 because he belonged then to the Reformed Church, they were 
 compelled to turn their satire and irony against the Pope and 
 his party. The political situation in France just before the 
 birth of this famous satiric pamphlet was as folloAvs: Henry 
 III had been murdered by the fanatical monk Clement; Henry 
 of Navarre (Henry IV ) and the Due de Guise were competitors 
 for the succession, which had been refused to Henry IV as 
 professing the Protestant faith. Philip II of Spain was also 
 scheming to buy the French crown for his daughter, the Infanta 
 of Spain, and was backed up by the Pope. A convocation of 
 the fitats Gdne'raux remained without any result. It is the 
 proceedings of this assembly that the authors of the Mfaiippde 
 took as the object of their satire. 
 
 The first part consists of a prologue by Pierre Leroy, canon 
 of Rouen, introducing two quacks, one of Spain, the other of 
 Lorraine (the Guises were of Lorraine), who vaunt the virtues 
 of the Catholicon of Spain, a divine electuary for which all is 
 possible. The following lines will give an idea of the miracles 
 which it can at need accomplish. There are a score such 
 miracles. We quote numbers three and sixteen, as being brief. 
 
 III. " Qu'un Roy casannier (Philip II) s'armtse a affiiur (refine) 
 ceste drogue en son Escurial, qu'il escrire un mot en Flandres au 
 pere Ignace, cachete" de Catholicon, il luy trourera homme, leqiid 
 (salva conscientia) assassinera son ennemy (Prince of Orange), qu'il 
 n'avoit pen (pu) vaincre par armes en vingt ans." 
 
 XVI. " Voulez-vous bientost estre Cardinal? Frottez une des 
 comes de wstre bonnet de Higuiero ( = fig-tree, another expression 
 for Catholicon) ; il diviendra rouge, et serez fait Cardinal, fussiez- 
 wus le plus incestueux et ambitieux Primat du monde." 
 
 Then follows the opening of the States-General and the 
 speeches begin, speeches in which each of the speakers of 
 the League, the Lieutenant, the Legate, Cardinal de Pelv6, 
 Monsieur de Lyon, the Rector Roze, and others, expose their
 
 PROSE 81 
 
 ambitions, greeds, egoism, and hypocrisy. Finally, Monsieur 
 d'Aubray, the representative of the bourgeois class, closes the 
 sitting with a long speech in which he demands order, toler- 
 ation, the lawful king, and at the same time unmasks the 
 dark schemes of the nobility and their foreign allies. 
 
 Although the civil war was not quelled till 1598, what the 
 Menippde demands was already an accomplished fact when that 
 pamphlet appeared in 1594, but at the same time it did a 
 great deal to strengthen Henry IVs newly-acquired position 
 and authority. 
 
 The authors apart from Leroy were Nicolas Rapin, a French 
 and Latin poet, who contributed to the speeches and epigrams 
 interspersed in the body of the work; Jean Passerat, who 
 wrote part of the French and Latin epigrams ; Florent Chretien, 
 a speech in macaronic Latin ; Pierre Pithou, the author of the 
 Harangue de M. d'Aubray, and Gilles Durant of certain verses. 
 
 During this period a great number of treatises on language 
 and grammar appeared, either proposing reforms, combating 
 foreign influence, or setting forth new ideas. 
 
 The disorder reigning in the French language at this period, 
 and more especially in spelling, which by false etymology was 
 made to resemble Latin more closely by the introduction of 
 superfluous letters, 1 prompted Louis Meigret of Lyons to pub- 
 lish a Trett& de la Grammere fransoese (1550), in which he advo- 
 cates phonetic spelling, regardless of supposed etymological 
 derivation, that "grande superstition", as he calls it. Although 
 Meigret found a few ardent supporters, such as Ramus, Baif 
 was the only one of the important writers of the 16th century 
 to follow his recommendation. Eonsard and Du Bellay sym- 
 pathized, but preferred to follow tradition, while Pasquier, 
 Montaigne, and others, could see no good in such an innovation. 
 This lack of unanimity, and also the opposition of publishers, 
 made success impossible. 
 
 Among philologists three names deserve special mention: 
 H. Etienne, Pasquier, and Fauchet. Resistance to the italian- 
 
 1 Instead of tcrire, sais, fait, recevoir, &c., they wrote escribre, sfais, faict, 
 recepvoir, &c. 
 
 (M643) V
 
 82 SIXTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 izing of the language called forth the linguistic works of 
 Henri Etienne (1531-1598). 
 
 Italian elements had been introduced wholesale during the 
 first half of the 16th century. The French expeditions to 
 Italy (1483-1547); the migration of Italian architects, actors, 
 painters, &c., and the influence of Catherine of Medici, the 
 wife of Henry II, were all responsible for this foreign mania, 
 so much affected by the court. The innovations were chiefly 
 terms referring to court life (altesse, grandesse, disgrdce, carrosse, 
 carnaval, courtisan, escorte, &c.); terms of art and amusements 
 (baldaquin, fresque, feston, concert, sonnet, &c.); or of war (soldat, 
 cavalerie, Jantassin, escadron, &c.); but courtiers did not stop 
 there, and to be in fashion made it a point to introduce as 
 many Italian words as possible into their conversation. 
 
 Henri Etienne determined to check this abuse. In 1565 
 he published the TraiU de la ConformiU du Francois avec le Grec, 
 which, while admitting in the main that French is derived 
 from Latin, shows that it stands in close spiritual relationship 
 to Greek, and is thus deserving of equal consideration, and 
 from that very fact superior to other modern languages, and 
 especially Italian, that being the point that he really wants to 
 bring home. Etienne's ideas in this respect are identical with 
 those of the PUiade. 
 
 In the Prdcellence de la Langue Fran$oise (1579) he affirms 
 the inferiority of Italian once more, and in the Nouveaux 
 Dialogues du Langage Francois Italianise (published anonymously 
 at Geneva in 1578) he derides the " gdte-Jranfais" in the person 
 of Philausone, "gentilhomme Cburtisanopolitois", who in the pre- 
 face addresses his readers in the following terms : " Messieurs, 
 U n'y a pas longtemps qu'ayant quelque martel en tete (ce qui 
 m'advient souvent pendant que je fais ma stanse en la cour) et a 
 cause de ce etant sorti aprh le past pour oiler un peu spaceger, je 
 trouvai par la strade un mien ami, nomine 1 Celtophile ". 
 
 A long dialogue of over 600 pages takes place between 
 Philausone and his opponent Celtophile, in which Italian 
 imitation, not only in language but in manner, is severely 
 criticised.
 
 PROSE 83 
 
 Etienne also hates the Italians as a Protestant, and thinks 
 that the only neologisms which Italy can furnish are names 
 for things which France did not know till she came into con- 
 tact with her, such as poltronnerie, charlatan, intriguant, &c. 
 Party feeling comes out strongly in his Apologie pour Htrodote 
 (1566), which, under the pretence of establishing the veracity 
 of the Greek historian by comparing his tales to the events 
 of the civil war, is really a covert attack on the Catholics. 
 
 Claude Fauchet (1530-1601) is the creator of political his- 
 tory and of the history of literature. The Antiquitez Gauloises 
 et Francoises (1579-1601) are remarkable for their great erudi- 
 tion and for their originality. They consist of two books, of 
 which the first is devoted to the history of the Gauls and to 
 that of the Franks down to 751, and the second to the history 
 of Pepin and his successors from 751 to 840. The Recueil 
 de I'Origine de la Langue et Podsie Framboise, by the same author, 
 establishes for the first time the Latin origin of French: 
 " La longue seigneurie que les Remains eurent en ce pais, y planta 
 leur langue". Fauchet is wrong, however, in assuming that 
 French is the outcome of a mixture of Gallic and Latin, but 
 he should not be measured according to present-day standards; 
 by the mere fact of proclaiming that French had nothing in 
 common with Greek he was far in advance of his contem- 
 poraries. The second part of the Recue.il is taken up with 
 critical notices of 127 old French poets and quotations from 
 their works. 
 
 Unfortunately the learned and original researches of Claude 
 Fauchet passed almost unnoticed, a fate which also befell the 
 works of iStienne Pasquier (1529-1615), the author of the 
 Recherches de la France (begun in 1560), dealing in ten volumes 
 with the political, literary, and administrative history of the 
 country. 
 
 In Book I Pasquier gives a picture of the Gauls and Franks, whose 
 supposed Trojan origin he rejects, as had done Fauchet. 
 
 In Book II he studies the social organization of the early Gauls. 
 In Book III the relations of the court of Rome with the state. 
 In Book IV questions referring to ancient legislation.
 
 84 SIXTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 Books V and VI discuss certain points in French history: the trial 
 of Jeanne d'Arc, the revolt of the Connetable de Bourbon, &c. 
 
 Books VII and VIII contain studies on the origin of the language, 
 the literary history of the 16th century, and on versification. 
 
 Book IX treats of French universities, especially of that of Paris. 
 
 Book X describes the rivalry between Fr&legonde and Brunehaut. 
 
 Books VII and VIII are by far the most important from 
 a modern point of view, and still indispensable to the student 
 of 16th-century literature. Pasquier's productions are almost 
 equal to those of Fauchet scientifically, and far superior from 
 a literary point of view. 
 
 Among the moralists of the 16th century none is so cele- 
 brated as Michel de Montaigne, the author of the Essays, 
 than which few books have exercised a greater and more 
 lasting influence on the writings and thought of the world. 
 Montaigne was a favourite with Bacon, and especially with 
 Shakespeare, who made numerous borrowings from the Essays. 
 
 Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne, was born in 1533 at the 
 Chateau de Montaigne, in Perigord. His grandfather was a merchant 
 of Bordeaux. His father, after serving in the army for some time, 
 became mayor of Bordeaux. Montaigne himself tells us much of his 
 youth and the original ideas of his father on education: how he had 
 him put out to nurse in one of the villages of his estate, roused him 
 from sleep to the sound of music, and made him learn Latin exclusively 
 till the age of six. Montaigne's mother was Antoinette de Loupes 
 (Lopez), of a Jewish family which had emigrated from Spain. From 
 six to fourteen (1539-1546) young Montaigne was a pupil of the College 
 de Guyenne, the best school in France, the head of which was the 
 famous scholar Andre de Govea. He tells us that his masters there 
 were Buchanan and Muret, who wrote Latin plays for the scholars, and 
 how he took part in them. Neither does he hide the fact that he was 
 careless, lazy, and read on the whole merely as his fancy dictated. 
 
 From 1546-1554 his course is doubtful, but he probably studied law 
 at Bordeaux or Toulouse. At the age of twenty-one he became a 
 member of the Cour des Aides at Pe'rigueux, and three years later he was 
 appointed Counsellor of Parliament at Bordeaux. There ttienne de la 
 Boetie was his fellow-member, and a close friendship sprang up between 
 them, which lasted till La Boetie's early death in 1563. 
 
 At thirty-three Montaigne married Frangoise de la Chassaigne, the 
 daughter of a Counsellor of the Parliament of Bordeaux, and in 1568, 
 on the death of his father, he became the head of the family. The year
 
 PROSE 85 
 
 after he translated the Theologia Naturalis of the Spaniard Raymond 
 de Sebond, and in 1571 he resigned his post and retired to his Chateau 
 de Montaigne. In 1572 he commenced to write essays, and published 
 two books in 1580. From June to November of that year we find him 
 travelling in Switzerland, South Germany, Tyrol, and Italy; and while 
 near Lucca he was elected mayor of Bordeaux, and though he at first 
 refused the dignity, he gave way on receiving a letter from Henry III 
 commanding him to accept. On the whole, he seems to have filled the 
 duties of the post with great tact, in spite of a somewhat hurried depar- 
 ture just at the time when the plague broke out with renewed vigour. 
 In 1588 Montaigne went to Paris to arrange for the publication of the 
 Essays, and there made the acquaintance of Mile de Gournay, his 
 adopted daughter. He died in 1592, leaving to his wife and Mile de 
 Gournay the task of issuing the definitive edition of his essays which 
 appeared in 1595. 
 
 Montaigne's Essays consist of three books, on the most 
 varied subjects, whose titles frequently afford no clue what- 
 soever to their contents, and are only mere pegs to hang ideas 
 upon; 1 he chatters on in a disconnected way on a thousand 
 topics, and often completely loses sight of his original theme, 
 yet he does so with an object in view; he avoids all systematic 
 exposition for fear of appearing pedantic. 
 
 The Essays are the effort of a man to make the knowledge 
 of himself the basis of a knowledge of the human race, and to 
 deduce a rule of conduct from this knowledge. If we bear 
 this in mind we shall not blame Montaigne for continually 
 talking about himself. He takes himself as a representative 
 of "la moyenne humaniU", and by exposing himself to view 
 he exposes all of us, because a single person can, as it were, 
 resume the species, and, according to Montaigne, "porter la 
 forme entiere de I'humaine condition". This he did gradually 
 at first, but in time he got over any timidity he may have felt 
 of continually speaking of himself: " J'ose non settlement parler 
 de moi, mais parler seulement de moi ". 
 
 In other words, Montaigne is the first French writer who 
 made moral and psychological observation the true basis of 
 literature. 
 
 1 We quote a few at hap-hazard : A Trick of certain A mbassadors, Of 
 Cannibals, Of Smells and Odours, Of Books, Of Thumbs, A Custom of the 
 Isle of Cea, How a Man should not Pretend to be Sick, &c.
 
 86 SIXTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 The foundation and essence of Montaigne's ideas are con- 
 tained in the ironical Apologie de Raymond Sebond, a 15th- 
 century professor of Toulouse, whose Theologia Naturalis Mon- 
 taigne had translated in 1569. In this famous essay, the 
 twelfth chapter of the second book, he wrote an eloquent 
 tirade against the worth of human understanding and reason, 
 in so far as metaphysical and scientific knowledge is concerned. 
 
 It cannot be denied that our natural reason gives us a kind 
 of animal knowledge (" brute connaissance ") of the existence of 
 God (Deism), but no more. 
 
 Of scientific knowledge, of the "dneries de I'humaine sapi- 
 ence ", he speaks with sovereign disdain. Lately, he says, 
 Copernicus has proved that the earth moves, although we had 
 been taught for thousands of years that it is the sun that 
 does so "who knows if in another thousand years a third 
 doctrine will not be established, and overthrow the two 
 others ? What else shall we have to learn by that fact except 
 that it is indifferent to us who is right?" Montaigne even 
 deprecates the value of scientific endeavour and research, and 
 denies that knowledge increases either our happiness or use- 
 fulness in this life. We do not know that the two most learned 
 men- of antiquity, Aristotle and Varro, had "aucune parti- 
 culiere excellence en leur vie". The sum of this excellence is 
 not to be found among the learned, but among the ignorant 
 and lowly ("ignorance abdcddaire"), or among those men who are 
 really wise, who after long striving see that they know nothing 
 and cannot know anything (" I'ignorance gui se sail, qui sejuge"). 
 Those two classes, in their modesty, are good citizens and 
 good Christians, but the men of the third class, the so-called 
 cultured men, are the bastards ("metis") of society, dangerous 
 and discontented disturbers of the peace, who pretend they 
 know everything, and want to improve on all things: "Esprits 
 surveillants et pedagogues des causes divines et humaines ". The 
 desire to know everything is the ruin of mankind : " Du cuider 
 nait tout pe'che'". Thus "il nous Jaut abetir pour nous assagir" 
 famous words which will be taken up later by Pascal. 
 
 The human mind is a "dangerous vagabond", in whose
 
 PROSE 87 
 
 footsteps misfortune is bound to follow if it is not held in 
 check and prevented from forming personal opinions danger- 
 ous to tradition ("opinions communes"). This is the doctrine 
 of a peace-loving man scared by the excesses of the civil and 
 religious wars. How far removed from the spirit of the 
 Kenaissance! With Montaigne begins the reaction of the 
 17th century, in which free enquiry is replaced by the opinions 
 gdndrales, by authority. 
 
 For the same reason, because he had been so brought up 
 and because he was an enemy of all innovations which only 
 engender unrest, Montaigne lived and died a Catholic, and 
 condemned the Reformation as a presumptuous revolution. 
 But Montaigne's scepticism is not universal. If he denies the 
 possibility of attaining certitude in metaphysical and scientific 
 matters, no man was ever more persuaded of the worth of life 
 on this earth, of the art of " enjoying his being loyally ", 
 which he held to be the "fundamental and most illustrious 
 of our occupations ". This task is difficult indeed, for nothing 
 is constant here below ("le monde n'est qu'une branloire per- 
 pttuelle"); the safest and most pleasant plan is to follow nature, 
 in whose goodness and excellence Montaigne, like Rabelais, 
 was an ardent believer. Virtue consists in a life true to 
 nature and is thus " une qualiU plaisante et gaie ". 
 
 Notwithstanding, Montaigne admires those who, like So- 
 crates, find strength enough in their natural reason to check 
 their passions by means of their will. The discipline of our 
 natural impulses, but not the violent asceticism of the Middle 
 Ages, which he hates, is his ideal, although he owns that he 
 did not come up to it himself: "Je n'ai pas cwrigi par la, farce 
 de la raison mes complexions (disposition) naturelles ". 
 
 Whosoever, like Montaigne, considers practical morals as 
 the sole object worthy of occupying us, must necessarily feel 
 particularly interested in the great problem of education, and 
 to it he has devoted a large amount of space in the Essays. 
 To us, especially as compared with Rabelais, his views on 
 education are perhaps the most attractive part of his book. 
 
 In matters of education (see i. 23, 24, and 25, and ii. 17),
 
 88 SIXTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 Montaigne is too much predisposed in favour of that facile 
 and smiling virtue to which " des routes ombrageuses, gazonntes 
 et doux-fleurantes " lead, but we can only approve when he has 
 a hit at those " ushers who pillage science in books and lodge 
 it at the tip of their lips only to disgorge it and scatter it 
 to the winds", or "who fill the memory of their pupils, but 
 leave their understanding and conscience void and empty ". 
 
 The pupil should be taught to do " ce qu'il doit /aire estant 
 homme"; his faculties, reason, and judgment must first be 
 developed ; in a word, we must educate and not merely instruct. 
 If the pupil's judgment is not healthy, and if he does not make 
 knowledge really his own, let him rather play tennis, says 
 Montaigne, his body at all events will be the better for it. 
 
 As for the method to be pursued, the master should not 
 confine himself to books; every place and occasion should be 
 utilized. Montaigne also recommends the learning of modern 
 foreign languages, and protests against the great amount of 
 time wasted on Latin and Greek. Travelling and intercourse 
 with others are not forgotten, while corporal punishment and 
 the brutality of schoolmasters are mercilessly attacked. 
 
 The chief faults of Montaigne's system are that individual 
 effort plays too small a part, and that athletic training is too 
 much neglected. In practice his theories lead to the method 
 of the Jesuits, the developing of social and worldly qualities, 
 in substance the honntte homme or gentleman of the 17th 
 century. 
 
 Montaigne's style is original and personal, short and broken, 
 with sharp and sudden sallies, full of vivid imagery, un- 
 expected turns and word-combinations, quite different from 
 the solid and monotonous style of his contemporaries. His 
 is the style of a merry and animated conversation : " Le parler 
 que j'aime, c'est un parler simple et naif, id sur le papier qu'a la 
 louche ". 
 
 His language is not so original; he invented little in 
 vocabulary and syntax, and he uses Latinisms freely like most 
 of his contemporaries. He reintroduced old words, and used 
 Gascon words if they suited his purpose better than French
 
 PROSE 89 
 
 words, but in those two things he only did what the PUiade 
 had recommended, and what Ronsard actually did. He did 
 not pretend to invent, and considered the French language 
 quite rich enough if properly handled. 
 
 To sum up, it can be said of Montaigne that in scientific 
 and metaphysical affairs he demands absolute submission 
 under the tutelage of ecclesiastic guidance a doctrine of 
 servitude. All his curiosity and attention were bestowed 
 upon questions of practical morals, in the indefatigable dis- 
 cussion of which he placed himself under the guidance of 
 antiquity as opposed to medievalism a doctrine of freedom. 
 
 During the last years of his life Montaigne enjoyed the 
 friendship of a disciple who was already famous for his 
 eloquence as a preacher. This man was Pierre Charron (1541- 
 1603), the author of two noted contributions to the literature 
 of the latter years of the century. In 1593 he published the 
 TraiM des trois V&riUs confre les Athdes, Idoldtres, Juifs, Hdrttiques 
 et Schismatiques. The three truths that Charron tried to prove 
 are that there is a God; that He is only known to the 
 Christians; and thirdly that He is only worshipped as he 
 should be by the Eoman Catholics. This was followed in 
 1601 by the Traitt de la Sagesse, in which most critics have 
 only seen a systematic exposition of Montaigne's scepticism, 
 but which is really an attempt to establish the authority of 
 religion on a rational basis, and the scepticism of which is 
 explained by the fact that Charron wished to show that the 
 most reasonable thing for man to do is to despair of ever 
 being able to attain to truth through reason. 
 
 Very few of the ideas contained in the Sagesse belong to 
 Charron. Three contemporaries, Bodin (Sagesse), Montaigne 
 and Du Vair, are unscrupulously copied. The book is " quM 
 par ci par la ", as the author tells us, and intentionally so, for 
 his object was to give a synthesis of the ideas of his time and 
 not to write an original work. This is proved by the atten- 
 tion Charron pays to composition, a preoccupation which is 
 the chief originality of the book. 
 
 The Traite" de la Sagesse met with great success. The
 
 90 SIXTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 Sorbonne condemned it, and Charron began to smooth down 
 the passages that had been censured, "pour fermer la bouche 
 aux nudicieux et contenter les simples", but died in 1603, while 
 still engaged on the task. 
 
 Much was learnt from Charron by one of the best prose 
 writers of the 16th century, Guillaume Du Vair (1556-1621), 
 orator and moralist, who for some unexplained reason has 
 fallen into unmerited oblivion. No man before him did so 
 much to further French eloquence, partly by the publication 
 of his works on that subject (Actions et Trails Oratoires and 
 De I' Eloquence Fran$aise), and partly by his translations of 
 ^Eschines, Demosthenes, and Cicero. His works bearing on 
 philosophy are the Philosophic des Stoiques, and the TraM de la 
 Sainte Philosophic, in which he gives up as hopeless the idea of 
 secularizing moral philosophy, and seeing no way of remedying 
 coiTUption but by a return to Christian morality, proclaims its 
 necessity, thereby anticipating Pascal
 
 BOOK III 
 
 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 GENERAL VIEW 
 
 The 17th century is the Classical 1 period proper of French 
 literature. At no time, except perhaps during the middle 
 portion of the 19th century, has such a galaxy of talent 
 appeared, and certainly none at any time has so admirably 
 represented what are the leading characteristics of French 
 genius. As the result of causes which will be discussed in 
 their place, the 17th century may be said to be almost devoid 
 of poetry, if by that we understand imagination, sensibility, 
 and individuality; but in compensation it has produced the 
 three greatest French dramatists that have ever lived 
 Corneille, Moliere, and Racine, the second of whom is gene- 
 rally looked upon as unsurpassed in comic art; the father of 
 modern philosophy Descartes; the greatest fabulist and the 
 greatest pulpit-orator in the world's literature in La Fontaine 
 and Bossuet, not to mention a host of other names of the 
 highest rank, such as Pascal, Boileau, La Kochefoucauld, La 
 Bruyere, Fenelon, St. Simon. 
 
 The literature of the 17th century falls naturally into three 
 periods : 
 
 (a) From 1605 to 1659, a period of preparation and of 
 struggle between old traditions and new ideals. 
 
 (b) From 1659 to 1689, the golden age of French Classicism, 
 in which these ideals were realized in a series of great 
 masterpieces. 
 
 1 The wider acceptation of the term includes the 18th as well as the 17th 
 century.
 
 02 SEVENTEENTH CENTUIIT 
 
 (e) From 1689 to 1715, a period of transition, during which 
 the classical ideal gradually wanes, and is replaced by the 
 appearance of new ideas that announce the critical and 
 scientific spirit of the 18th century. 
 
 The literature of the 16th century had been revolutionary 
 and individualistic. That of the 17th is social, and all its 
 characteristics can be deduced from its identification with the 
 social ideal. 
 
 During the first period public opinion completed the sub- 
 mission of the spirit of individualism, lack of discipline, and 
 license which had already begun under the reign of Henry IV. 
 But this result was not reached without a hard struggle; 
 writers like Regnier, De Viau, and other belated representa- 
 tives of a past age, fought stoutly against the new spirit and in 
 favour of the prerogatives of the Gallic spirit, and we know 
 that they had no inconsiderable following. The honour of 
 having turned the tide in favour of the new ideal is generally 
 attributed to Francois Malherbe. This opinion is no doubt 
 due to the hackneyed lines in Boileau's Art Pottique 
 
 " Enfin Malherbe vint, et, le premier en France ", &c. ; 
 
 but we think it more reasonable to ascribe the transforma- 
 tion which took place between the years 1610 and 1630 to 
 the influence of the salons, or social and literary gatherings, 
 of certain society ladies known afterwards as Precieuses. 
 Though the Precieuses were responsible for certain faults 
 which will be noticed in due course, yet from the very fact of 
 their being no longer a negligible quantity in literature, they 
 made ample amends. They delivered literature from pedan- 
 try, polished language and manners, and moreover assured 
 the victory of the social ideal, which made it obligatory on 
 writers to give expression to common or general ideas rather 
 than to particular opinions. In this way they established the 
 vogue of those branches of literature known as universal, the 
 essential characteristic of which is that their very existence 
 depends upon the existence of a public to encourage them. 
 In 1635 the Academy was founded, and although it took
 
 GENERAL VIEW 93 
 
 the direction of the language out of the hands of the Prdcieuses, 
 it had little effect upon their social influence, and acted in the 
 same direction, as did also the works of Vaugelas and of 
 Balzac. In time, however, the influence for good of the 
 Prddeuses was more than counterbalanced by their affectation, 
 reinforced by Italian concetti, or later by Spanish pomposity. 
 A masterpiece became necessary to bring back literature to 
 the right path. In 1656 Pascal's Lettres Provinciates appeared, 
 and not only was the language fixed, to use Voltaire's words, 
 but, what is more, the characteristics of French classical litera- 
 ture and of the classical ideal, as illustrated by the masterpieces 
 of Moliere, La Fontaine, and Eacine, the representatives of 
 the golden age of French literature, for whom nature became 
 the model, the aim and end of art. 
 
 ere it is necessary to examine the restrictions to which 
 this rule of rules was subjected, and we shall see that the 
 literature of the Bcole du Naturel was a faithful imitation of 
 nature, but only of a part and not the whole. Nature is the 
 model, but the fidelity of the artistic imitation can only be 
 discerned by good sense and reason. Thus it was not the 
 study of nature in all her forms and aspects that they strove 
 to imitate, but only la nature raisonnante, that is to say, the 
 essential and the general, and from this it follows that the 
 lower attributes, the accidental, the ephemeral, and the local, 
 must be eliminated as not being conformable to the general 
 plan of nature. And, in order to make sure that their imita- 
 tion was faithful, and that they might not fail to distinguish 
 the constant from the variable and the principal from the 
 accessory, all the writers of this age went to the great poets 
 of antiquity for their models, not because they had any 
 pedantic preference for them as ancients, but because the fact 
 of their having stood the test of time for so long, in spite of 
 wars, revolutions, and the changes of modern civilization, 
 proved conclusively that their works must be founded on 
 truth to the constant and universal in human nature. 1 
 
 1 This point is brought out clearly in several passages of Boileau's 
 Reflexions Critiques sur Lonyin : " II riy a en effct que I 'approbation de la
 
 94 SEVENTEENTH CENTURT 
 
 Another characteristic of the literature of this period is 
 that, in its aims, and generally in regard to its modes of 
 expression, it is moral, but only in so far as morality is indis- 
 pensable to the existence of society. 
 
 Lastly, as the poet was solely concerned with common ideas, 
 he could only excel in the manner in which he expressed them, 
 and this naturally led to the perfection of form in poetry; 
 while, on the other hand, the strict domination of reason was 
 accompanied by many drawbacks, such as the elimination of 
 external nature, 1 of individuality, and even of imagination and 
 sensibility, which are generally considered the prerogatives of 
 poetry. 
 
 To us who are accustomed to a more complex conception of 
 nature, or who consider that the height of genius is the com- 
 bination of the typical and the individual, it may seem at first 
 sight that the great writers of this period have represented 
 psychological abstractions rather than real living characters. 
 As a rule this charge is not applicable to the greatest among 
 them, and though their conception of art and truth may differ 
 from ours it is identical with that of the ancients, and if 
 we admire Sophocles we ought not to grudge our praise to 
 Racine. One cause of our comparative lack of appreciation is 
 that they failed in local colour, though at bottom an artist 
 can only successfully represent what he sees; but perhaps the 
 main reason is that we miss in them that wonderful admixture 
 of poetry and reality which makes the greatness of Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 Hardly had the literature of the 17th century reached its 
 height when it began to decline. France lost her political pre- 
 
 posterite qui puisse ttoblir le vrai merite des ouvrages"; or again, "L'anti- 
 quitt d'un ecrivain n'est pas un titre certain de son mdrite, mais I'antique et 
 constante admiration qu'on a toujours cue pour ses ouvrages est une preuve 
 sure et infaittible qu'on le doit admirer ". 
 
 1 No doubt that the domination of reason was furthered by Descartes' 
 philosophy, although we do not think that his mechanical view of nature 
 can be made wholly accountable for the absence of external nature in 17th 
 century literature, seeing that it is already absent in the literature of the 
 Middle Ages and of the 16th century, and only appeared for the first time 
 in the 18th century.
 
 GENERAL VIEW 
 
 dominance, manners grew coarser, cliques reappeared, and the 
 atheists or libertins of the early years of the century could no 
 longer be kept down even by the eloquent diatribes of Bossuet. 
 The ideas of Descartes, too, were distorted and used as a 
 weapon against religious belief, while Bayle in his first work, 
 Les Penstes sur la Comete (1682), by opposing the "evidences of 
 reason" to the truths of religion, drove the attack home, and 
 dealt a fatal blow to tradition and authority, on which litera- 
 ture had hitherto rested. A few years later Fontenelle, the 
 bulk of whose work belongs to the 18th century, by the 
 publication of the Entretiens sur la Plurality des Mondes (1686), 
 acting as an intermediary between science and the world of 
 fashion, suggested that science is our best way to truth. 
 Finally, Charles Perrault, by championing the Moderns in the 
 famous Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, defended the idea 
 of human progress, and instead of depicting man in general as 
 found in the ancient classics, writers now strove to depict the 
 manners and ideas of their time. 
 
 Language. Modern French proper dates from the 17th 
 century. Henceforth the French language may be considered 
 as fixed in its main outlines, although such a term is of course 
 only relatively correct. The individualistic and independent 
 spirit of the 16th century had rendered a standard language 
 impossible; each writer followed his own fancy, "le langage 
 escouloit tmijours des mains", as Montaigne tells us. Here as 
 elsewhere the 17th ctentury replaced anarchy and disorder by 
 regularity and uniformity. The language spoken by the better 
 part of the court and authors was adopted as the model; a 
 kind of aristocracy in words was established, a large number 
 being excluded as lacking in elegance or nobility, while the 
 creation of new words was strictly prohibited. In this way 
 the language lost in force and picturesqueness, but gained in 
 clearness and precision : " La phrase ", says a famous scholar, 
 "a une noblesse failures, une majesU toute naturelle; une tendance 
 g6ntrale des esprits & I' analyse psychologique, un gout prononce pour 
 les abstractions, rendent cette langue capable d'exprimer nettement et 
 fortement les idfas ge"ne"rales les plus ubstraites et les nuances les plus
 
 96 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 fines de V analyse, et de soutenir sans effort le poids des conceptions 
 les plus profondes. La penste la plus puissante ou la plus subtile 
 trouve en elle un instrument d' expression d'une delicatesse sans fgale. 
 Elle est devenue le vetement le plus souple gui puisse dessiner les 
 formes de I'idde sans la voiler." 
 
 FIRST PERIOD (1605-1659) 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 POETRY 
 
 The literary reformation which took place at the beginning 
 of the 17th century is generally put down to the credit of 
 Francois de Malherbe (1555-1628). This is incorrect in the 
 main. All he did was to apply to poetry, better than anyone 
 before him, a new literary ideal in conformity with the desire 
 for peace, order, and discipline, which was then making itself 
 felt throughout France, as opposed to the individualistic ten- 
 dencies of the 16th century. This reformation, as we shall 
 see, was the work not of a single man, but of the salons, or 
 literary and social gatherings of the time. Moreover, we know 
 that Malherbe's finest poems, which during his lifetime were 
 scattered through, and to some extent lost in, the anthologies 
 of the day, did not appear in collected form till 1630, two 
 years after his death, and that he did not leave any disciples, 
 rightly so called. Thus we are led to the conclusion that 
 Malherbe experienced the consequences of this transformation 
 far more than he brought it about or even conceived it. 
 As exemplified in his works it bears on two points language 
 and versification. 
 
 In language he "selected" from the vocabulary of the 
 PUiade, rejecting all base, dialectical, technical, and archaic 
 words, all Latinisms and compounds, urging that writers should 
 employ the standard 1 French only as accepted by the people 
 
 1 It is in this sense that we are to understand Racan's famous words in 
 bis life of Malherbe: "Quand on lui demandoit son avis de qudque mat
 
 POETRY 97 
 
 of Paris. At the same time, and in spite of the disdain he 
 affected for the past, he did not break with it so much as 
 some have pretended. His general conception of poetry is 
 that of Ronsard; like him he made points, and drew too 
 largely upon mythology, while his sentiments are also purely 
 pagan. In matters of versification he was more drastic: he 
 insisted on rich and exact rime; he rejected rime between a 
 simple word and its compound (jour : sejour; mettre : permettre, 
 &c.); between words too easy to couple, such as montagne and 
 campagne, or between short and long syllables. Other pre- 
 cepts on this score are to be found in a copy of Desportes' 
 poems, to which Malherbe added marginal critical notes. 
 There he forbids enjambement or overflow, inversion, hiatus, 
 cacophony, and absence of caesura. 
 
 Of verse-combinations he only accepted a few of those 
 bequeathed by Ronsard; but all he wrote he wrote with the 
 greatest care, and never allowed his muse to infringe the 
 "rules of duty"; he polished and repolished his verses till 
 every trace of dissonance had disappeared. Two or three 
 stanzas would often cost him reams of paper, and his friend 
 Racan, in the Vie de Malherbe, tells us that he used to say that 
 "apres avoir fait un poeme de cent vers ou un discours de trois 
 feuilles, il fallait se reposer dix ans tout entiers". 
 
 Malherbe's merit and his originality lie in his excellence as 
 an artisan in versification. He was the first to add to the 
 classical doctrine of Ronsard that polish, harmony, and cor- 
 rectness which are among the leading characteristics of the 
 literature of the 17th century, and without which no master- 
 piece is possible. On the other hand, Malherbe lacks the 
 qualities which make the poet. It would be almost impossible 
 to be more deficient than he is in enthusiasm, imagination, 
 sensibility, and naturalness. His ideal, as was the case with 
 Ronsard as he grew older, tended towards the entire elimi- 
 nation of the personal element from poetry, and its trans- 
 
 iK, il renvoyoit ordinairement aux crochcteurs duport au Foin et disoit 
 que c'estoient ses maistres pour le lanyage." By that Malherbe did not 
 mean to enjoin that authors should write like market-porters, but that they 
 should use no word or turn that would be unintelligible to them. 
 
 (M043) G
 
 98 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 formation into oratory. This change responded exactly to 
 the taste of the time, and proved salutary in some branches of 
 literature, but was naturally the death-knell of lyrical poetry 
 proper, which did not reappear till the beginning of the 19th 
 century with the "Romantic Movement". 
 
 As can be easily imagined, Malherbe's methods did not 
 lead to great and rapid production. His works consist, (a) of 
 his Poems, in all 125 pieces, the first of which, Les Larmes de 
 Saint Pierre, appeared in 1587, and the last, Les Vers Funtlres 
 sur la Mort d' Henri le Grand, not until the edition of 1630; 
 (b) of his Commentaire sur Desportes ; (c) of a few translations 
 from the Latin, and of his Correspondance. 
 
 Just as a new ideal was about to rise on the ruins of the 
 old, the latter suddenly threw out a sudden and brilliant 
 light. In 1608 a collection of nineteen satires appeared, which 
 placed Mathurin Rtgnier (1573-1613), their author, in the 
 first rank of French poets. 
 
 When Regnier began to write he was only a belated disciple 
 of the 16th century, who strove to retain the license of the 
 manners of a past age. This is why Boileau, while granting 
 that no poet before Moliere was so well acquainted with the 
 manners and characters of men, blames Regnier for his rimes 
 cyniques (ribald rimes), although a satirist cannot always be 
 expected to avoid calling a spade a spade. In his Satires, 
 imitated or remodelled from Horace, Pliny, Juvenal, or the 
 Italians Berni and Delia Costa, he attacks courtiers, parasites, 
 hypocrites, and braggarts. The two best are Macette, the por- 
 trait of a pious hypocrite, no unworthy ancestor of the family 
 of Tartufe, and the one (Satire IX) directed against the over- 
 weening criticism of Malherbe, in defence of the PUiade, which 
 had been attacked by Malherbe in the person of Desportes, 
 Re"gnier's uncle. 
 
 If Regnier stood up for Ronsard and Desportes, it was more 
 out of opposition to Malherbe than because he himself followed 
 the precepts of the PUiade or of its later followers. In fact, 
 Ronsa,rd's literary ideal was more like that of Malherbe than 
 that of Regnier; the PUiade fought for art and form like
 
 POETRY 99 
 
 Malherbe, though less consciously, while Regnier continued 
 the Gallic spirit of Villon and Marot, abandoning the artificial 
 and aristocratic idiom of the PUiade for a more popular, col- 
 oured, and picturesque style. 
 
 The real antagonism between Malherbe and Regnier is to 
 be found in the fundamental conception they each formed of 
 poetry. The former was guided solely by reason and discipline; 
 the latter by native genius and imagination, as is sufficiently 
 attested by the following lines of Regnier's ninth satire, La 
 Defense des Anciens Poetes: 
 
 " Cependant leur savoir ne s'dtend seulement 
 Qu'a regratter un mot douteux au jugement, 
 Prendre garde qu'un ' qui' ne heurte une diphtongue 
 Epier si des vers la rime est breve ou longue, 
 Ou bien si la voyelle & I'autre s'unissant 
 Ne rend point d Voreitte un vers trop languissant; 
 Et laissent sur le vert (abandon) le noble de I'ouvrage." 
 
 Or by another passage in the same piece, where Malherbe's 
 weak point is severely censured : 
 
 " Nul aiguillon divin rieUve leur courage; 
 Us rampent basscment, faibles d' inventions, 
 Et n'osent, pen hardis, tenter les fictions, 
 Froids a Vimaginer; car s'ils font quelque chose 
 CTest proser de la rime et rimer de la prose, 
 Que I' art lime et relime, et polit dc fafon 
 Qu'elle rende a I'oreille un agr&Me son." 
 
 Yet to some extent Re'gnier rendered the same service to 
 French poetry as Malherbe ; like him he turned away from the 
 languid elegance and mawkishness of the degenerate disciples 
 of Ronsard to observation of life. For that reason the later 
 classical school felt that they could not reject the work of him 
 who is the first great French satirist before Boileau. 
 
 Another opponent of Malherbe was Theophile de Viau 
 (1590-1626), like Regnier, a liberlin 1 or upholder of the literary 
 and philosophic ideas of the century of Montaigne. As a poet 
 his contemporaries esteemed him too highly, but on the other 
 
 1 In the 17th century the term libertin applied as much, if not more, to 
 freedom of thinking as to license of morals.
 
 100 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 hand, Malherbe, and afterwards Boileau, unjustly depreciated 
 him. Some of his pieces, such as La Solitude, show considerable 
 lyrical gifts, and charm the ear by their free and musical 
 movement, while others, although often marred by the most 
 offensive vulgarity, evince a keen feeling for nature (cp. Lettre 
 & son Frere, in verse). 
 
 His judgments in literary matters were sound and original, 
 and in his fragmentary Histoire Comique he appears as an early 
 partisan of the Moderns against the Classicists: 
 
 "Ces larcins qu'on appelle ' imitation des auteurs anciens', se 
 devraient dire: des ornements qui ne sont point a noire mode. II 
 faut ecrire & la moderne: Ddmosthene et Virgile n'ont point e"crit en 
 noire temps et nous ne saurions forire en lew si&cle; leurs limes 
 quand Us les firent ttaient nouveaux, et nous en faisons tous les 
 jours de vieux. L' invocation des Muses a I'exemple de ces paiens 
 est profane pour nous et ridicule" 
 
 One of Theophile's (for thus was he called by his contem- 
 poraries) most beautiful pieces is the Eltgie a une Dame, 1 in 
 which, siding with Regnier against Malherbe, he vindicates 
 the rights of free poetic inspiration: 
 
 . " Man dme imaginant n'a point la patience 
 De bien pdir les vers, et ranger la science; 
 I/a regie me dtplaU; j'dcris confustment; 
 Jamais un bon esprit ne fait rien qu'aise"ment ", && 
 
 The Hotel de Rambouillet and the Precieuses. Peace and 
 social order had returned to France with the monarchy, but 
 the individualistic, unruly, and licentious spirit of a former age 
 had not been entirely subdued, and still left traces in the court 
 of Henry the IVth, which to many still appeared very much 
 lacking in polish. In 1608 a distinguished lady, Catherine 
 de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet, the daughter of a great 
 Roman lady, and whose father had been French ambassador at 
 Rome, decided to retire from the rude Gascon court of Henry, 
 and to throw open her mansion for literary and social gather- 
 ings, where lords and ladies, on a footing of temporary equality 
 
 1 Would now be called an " epistle".
 
 POETRT 101 
 
 with men of letters, might exchange ideas on literature, refine- 
 ment, and good taste. Such is the origin of the Hotel de 
 Rambouillet, the first of those literary and social salons, as they 
 were called, which were destined to have so great an influence 
 on French literature, and which lasted on and off till the 
 outbreak of the French Revolution. 
 
 Although gatherings seem to have taken place as early as 
 1613, the real importance of the Hotel de fiambmdllet, and its 
 famous diambre bleue, where the marchioness used to receive 
 her friends, dates from 1618. The idea of the marquise and 
 her circle was to realize the ideal of refined and polite society, 
 which D'Urfe had depicted in his romance of Astre'e. No one 
 could have been better fitted for this task than Catherine de 
 Vivonne, in praise of whose accomplishments, beauty, and 
 nobility of character all contemporaries are unanimous. 
 
 The history of the Hotel de Eambouillct falls into three periods. 
 From 1620 c.-l 630 the circle takes in recruits and prospers. 
 The hosts include Richelieu, the famous Mile Paulet, who 
 dances, sings, and plays the lute to admiration for such 
 worldly diversions were not debarred; and among authors 
 Malherbe, Racan his friend, Chapelain, Vaugelas, and Balzac. 
 The second and most brilliant period extends from 1630 to 
 the death of Voiture in 1648. Only a few gaps had taken 
 place among the lords and ladies of the circle, and these were 
 quickly filled up and fresh hosts added La Rochefoucauld, 
 the Duke de Montau'sier, the Marquise de Sable, the future 
 Duchesse de Longueville; and among literary lights, Corneille, 
 Menage the grammarian, but above all the plebeian Vincent 
 Voiture (1598-1648), the soul of the circle, who held his place 
 on the tacit understanding that he should always be witty. 
 Voiture may be looked upon as the living incarnation of the 
 aspirations of the Hotel. He wrote poems, most of which are 
 insipid, but he is more famous for his letters addressed to 
 the marchioness and the lords and ladies of her entourage, 
 which, though occasionally far-fetched and over-ingenious, are 
 always vivacious and witty. Thanks to the personal influence 
 of the marchioness herself, who seems to have been a person
 
 102 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 of good sense, till about 1640 the talk of her salon remained 
 free from exaggerated affectation. Balzac writes in 1638: 
 " On n'y parle point savamment, mais on y parle raisonnablement, 
 et il n'y a lieu au monde ou il y ait plus de bon sens et moins de 
 pddanterie". But soon after, the epidemic broke out; some 
 voted for the conjunction car, and others against; heated 
 discussions took place which should be the approved spelling, 
 mnscardin or muscadin, sarge or serge, while words which ap- 
 peared insufficiently " noble " were ruthlessly rejected. When 
 Julie and Angelique became of age to share their mother's 
 authority in the salon, these faults were aggravated Cor- 
 neille's Polyeucte was censured, and after a reading of Chape- 
 Iain's inane epic on the Maid of Orleans, the Duchess of 
 Longueville could not help remarking " that it was perfectly 
 beautiful, but extremely tiresome". Then it was that Mon- 
 tausier, who had sighed twelve long years for Julie's hand, 
 offered her the famous Guirlande de Julie, in which every 
 flower represented in a drawing had its appropriate poem, 
 and all conspired to the praise of Julia. Things became 
 still worse in the third period (1648 to 1665, the date 
 of the death of the Marquise de Eambouillet), though a 
 few more additions were made, and Mme de Sevigne", Mme 
 de la Fayette, and Flechier joined the fashionable assembly. 
 The quarrel of the Uranistes and Jobelins (1649) split the 
 society into two factions some for Voiture's sonnet on 
 Urania, and others for Benserade's on Job and introduced 
 a spirit of coterie and rivalry. It was then that the terms 
 prtcieux and pi'dcieuse were first applied to the frequenters of 
 the Hotel, and similar literary salons formed on its model. 
 Of these the most famous is that of Mile de Scudery (les 
 samedis), the originality of which consisted in having adapted 
 preciosity to the requirements of the middle classes, and that 
 of Mile de Sable, where maxims especially were the fashion. 
 
 In time the salons of Paris were copied and their faults 
 exaggerated by provincial coteries. Chapelle, writing from 
 Montpellier in 1656, says: "A lews petites mignardises, a leur 
 parler gras et leurs discours extraordinaires, nous vimes lientot gue
 
 POETRY 103 
 
 une assemble de prdcieuses". It was these later imitations 
 that chiefly contributed to render preciosity ridiculous. In 
 1659 Moliere dealt the prdcieuses, or rather their degenerate 
 followers, a severe blow in his satiric comedy of the Prdcieuses 
 Ridicules, but it was not a death-blow, for he felt obliged to 
 deliver a second thirteen years later in the Femmes Savantes 
 (1672); in fact, the spirit of preciosity did not die out, and its 
 tradition continued with interruptions during the whole of the 
 17th century. The cabal against Racine's Phedre was, as it 
 were, a revenge for the Precieuses Ridicules, yet, with the 
 advent of the classical ideal, preciosity was confined more and 
 more to mere cliques. All that is remembered usually of the 
 prfaieuses is the characteristics by which they lend themselves 
 to ridicule, and it must be owned that they had many such. 
 They strove by the introduction of points, conceits, and forced 
 metaphors to express all they said in a language comprehen- 
 sible to the initiated alone, and unintelligible to the people. 
 It is interesting to read in this connection the two comedies 
 of Moliere, or the Grand Dictionnaire des Precieuses of Somaize 
 (1661), that clumsy advocate of their cause. There we learn 
 that "la belle mouvante" is the hand; that by "ks commodiUs 
 de la conversation" is meant an arm-chair; that "le supplement 
 du soleil" stands for the moon; and "se ddlabyrinther les 
 cheveux " for to comb one's hair. Nevertheless, all their meta- 
 phors have not disappeared, and a few picturesque and graceful 
 ones have resisted the onslaughts of time. Such are : " travestir 
 sa pens<*e", "avoir I'abord peu avenant", "des cheveux d'un blond 
 hardi ", &c. 
 
 But these faults were more than outweighed by the real 
 services which preciosity rendered to French literature during 
 the first three decades of the century. It refined the language 
 by clearing it of a certain pedantic overgrowth, and also of 
 a coarseness that disgraced it; it enriched it by determining 
 the exact meaning of words, by adopting, inventing, or creating 
 new turns of expression, and above all by teaching the force 
 a word acquires when put in its right place; lastly, it elevated 
 it, although it is quite true that in so doing it drew too deep
 
 104 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 a dividing line between the speech of the vulgar and that of 
 polite society. 
 
 Noticeable about this time is a sudden, and, in quantity at 
 any rate, considerable outburst of epic verse. Greece had 
 had its Homer, Italy its Virgil and its Tasso, whose Jerusalem 
 Delivered had but lately achieved European success, and 
 men began to ask why France should not also have her great 
 epic poet. The outcome was six huge epics in the space of 
 fifteen years, which only deserve mention from the fact that 
 they passed for some time as masterpieces, and a few years 
 later afforded excellent material for Boileau's satiric bent. 
 
 The chief are Georges de Scudery's Alaric (1651), Chapelain's La 
 Pucette (1656), and Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlm's C'lovis (1657), 
 which indirectly gave rise to the famous Quarrel of the Ancients and 
 Moderns at the end of the century. 
 
 The vogue of these pseudo-epics called forth parodies, of 
 which the most famous are the Typhon, or La Gigantomachie 
 (1644), by Paul Scarron (1610-1660), and the Virgile Travesli 
 (1648-1653), by the same author, which was considered the 
 model of its kind. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 DRAMA 
 
 The academic, classical, and Italian drama of the 16th 
 century from Jodelle to Montchretien was purely literary, 
 oratorical, and lyrical. It only appealed to a small chosen 
 class of learned readers, and was never produced on the 
 popular stage. 
 
 From 1600 to 1630 Alexandra Hardy (1570-1631), the 
 chief playwright and provider of the Hdtel de Bourgogne, and 
 a few followers, established a new dramatic ideal, in which 
 their one and only guide was the requirements of a popular 
 audience. Of the 600-700 plays which this French Lope de 
 Vega is said to have composed, he only published 40, namely, 
 11 tragedies, 24 tragi-comedies, and 5 pastorals.
 
 DRAMA 105 
 
 The tragedies (Marianne, Dido, Mort d'Akxandre, &c.), 
 Hardy shaped according to the necessities of the stage. The 
 choruses which he had at first introduced were afterwards 
 dropped as injurious to dramatic action. The taste of the 
 public was decisive for him. In the same way as he curtailed 
 the lyricism of tragedy, so did he curtail eloquence and 
 rhetoric in favour of action. His characters, too, are more 
 numerous. His heroes meet and die on the stage, and he 
 seldom makes use of messengers. Tragic action with Hardy 
 can last for days and even months, and several places are 
 often represented concurrently on the stage, as in the old 
 mysteries. He inclines more and more to tragi-comedy, which, 
 together with the pastoral, crowded out regular comedy during 
 the first thirty years of the century. 
 
 Hardy's tragi- comedies proper are a regular medley of 
 tragedy and comedy, in which the action lasts for years. 
 In eight of them Heliodorus' novel of Theagenes and Clariclea 
 is dramatized, and in five others we have adaptations of 
 Spanish novels of Cervantes, Montemayor, and Agreda. 
 
 The pastoral plays are mostly love stories, the heroes of 
 which are burgesses or peasants dressed in shepherd's garb. 
 The scene is transferred to Arcadia, and in the action miracles 
 and witchcraft find a place. Doubtless Hardy was influenced, 
 as he tells us, by Tasso's Aminta and Guarini's Pastor Fido, 
 strengthened by Montemayor's Diana and D'Urf^'s Astrfe. 
 In the Pastorale he uses the decasyllabic line. 
 
 Hardy is probably the worst writer who ever composed a 
 play, but he was the first to make a true appeal to the people, 
 and by showing a genuine appreciation of theatrical effects he 
 transformed an academic pastime into a public action. 
 
 Another representative of this popular and irregular drama 
 is Jean de Schelandre (1585-1635), whose real name was 
 Daniel d'Ancheres. His play of Tyr et Sidon, a vast drama 
 in two parts, which shows all the freedom of the mysteries 
 in varying its scene and mingling heroic matter and buf- 
 foonery, is chiefly known for its preface by the famous scholar 
 and ecclesiast, Francois Ogier. This curious example of
 
 106 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY- - FIRST PEK10D 
 
 literary criticism is a furious onslaught upon the "Three 
 Rules ", which critics were then striving to impose upon 
 the drama, and which prevailed so imperiously a few years 
 later. Ogier congratulates De Schelandre on having refused 
 to accept such trammels; rises vigorously against a servile 
 imitation of antiquity, and urges poets to look in new 
 paths for new beauties, more in conformity with the genius 
 of the time and of their race. But Ogier's preface passed 
 unnoticed, and was forgotten to such an extent that the same 
 ideas appeared entirely new and audacious when they made 
 their second appearance, exactly two hundred years later, in 
 Victor Hugo's preface to Cromwell and in the other manifestoes 
 of the "Romantic School". Nobody in 1827 suspected that 
 Ogier had already loudly proclaimed that dramatic truth con- 
 sists in a blending of heroism and buffoonery, of tragedy and 
 comedy. 
 
 The following are Ogier's exact words: "Dire qu'il est 
 malstant de faire paraitre en une meme piece les memes personnes 
 traitant tantot d'affaires sfrieuses, importantes et tragiques, et incon- 
 tinent (immediately) apres de choses communes, vaines et comiques, 
 c'est ignorer la condition de la vie des hommes, de qui les jours et . 
 les heures sont bien souvent entrecoupts de ris et de larmes, de con- 
 tentement et d? affliction selon qu'ils sont agites de la bonne et de la 
 mauvaise fortune ". 
 
 Jean de Schelandre was not a great enough poet to make 
 the Shakespearian drama triumph in France, in spite of one 
 or two beautiful speeches in the tragic part of the play, such 
 as that of Abdolomin, king of Sidon, bending under the 
 double burden of long years and a heavy crown. 
 
 Theophile de Viau, the lyric poet, is the author of the 
 tragedy of Pyramt et Tisbe" (1617), which appeared with great 
 success, and which Boileau has rendered immortal by his ridi- 
 cule of two very absurd lines in it: 
 
 'Ahf void le poignard qui du sang de son mattre 
 S'est souiUA Idchementt II en rougit, le trattrel" 
 
 "Toutes les ghees du Nord ensemble", says Boileau, " ne sont
 
 DRAMA 107 
 
 pas a mon sens plus froides que cette pensfo" and he was right; 
 yet Pyrame et Tisb6 contains many lines of striking lyrical 
 beauty, while the dialogue in parts recalls the great name of 
 Corneille. 
 
 Lastly, Les Bergeries of Racan (1589-1670) deserves notice 
 as perhaps the best pastoral-play in French literature. 
 
 The chief characteristics of the popular drama of the early 
 part of the 17th century are: contempt of rule and regularity, 
 neglect of reason and truth, free play of fancy and imagination, 
 increased mixture of tragedy and comedy, no regard for pro- 
 priety of speech and action, and mingling of all styles. 
 
 The spirit of license and irregularity displayed by Hardy 
 and his school could not but displease a public whose ideal 
 now lay in order and regularity. 
 
 In the preface to Sylvanire (1629), a tragi-comedy, Jean 
 Mairet (1604-1686), at first an adherent of Hardy, formu- 
 lated the doctrine of the "Three Unities". In 1634, two 
 years before Corneille's Cid, the first tragic masterpiece 
 in French literature, Mairet applied the rules in his tragedy 
 of Sophonisbe, which inaugurated the classical tragedy of 
 France on the popular stage, and which marks the begin- 
 ning of a new era in French dramatic literature. A noted 
 French theatrical critic has said of the play: "La tragedie 
 de Mairet est loin d'etre un chef-d'oeuvre; mais elle a mtriU d'etre 
 regardte toujours comme notre plus ancienne tragedie classique. 
 Avec cette piece ttait fondd ce genre dramatique destine a une 
 carriere illustre, quoique courte. Les traits essentiels du genre 
 etaient trouve"s; la noblesse du style, V exclusion absolue du comique, 
 le raffinement dans I' analyse et I 'expression des sentiments; la 
 tendance oratoire dans le langage, la simplification et I'arrangement 
 logique de I' intrigue; la conception dbstraite et puissante des carac- 
 teres. Les regies Maient observes, un peu moins rigoureuses, mais 
 telles au fond que Chapelain allait les imposer bientdt a Corneille" 
 
 The Rules of the Three Unities. Before passing on, it is 
 necessary to discuss fully those three famous Eules which, 
 from Mairet's day up to the beginning of the present century, 
 came to be regarded in France as the laws of a literary
 
 108 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 species. The so-called three Rules of Unity are those of 
 Action, Time, and Place. 
 
 Briefly stated, these rules enjoined that there should be 
 only one action or plot in a play, that the action should take 
 place entirely within the space of twenty-four hours, and that 
 the scene of the action should be the same throughout the 
 play. 1 According to the critics of the 16th and of the 17th 
 century, these Rules found their justification in the Poetics of 
 Aristotle, a pretension which is absolutely false. The Unity 
 of Action, without which it would be impossible to write a 
 good play, is the only one of the three which is formulated in 
 the Poetics. Of the Unity of Time all Aristotle says is, when 
 comparing Epic poetry with Tragedy, that the latter "en- 
 deavours as far as possible to confine itself to a single revolu- 
 tion of the sun, or but slightly to exceed this limit; whereas 
 the Epic action has no limits of time". Thus Aristotle, far 
 from laying down a hard-and-fast rule, only gives a piece of 
 information; and in addition to this, it should not be forgotten 
 that the action in Greek plays was naturally much simpler, 
 and that the Greeks themselves often did not observe the 
 twenty -four hours' limit. / As for the Unity of Place, it is a 
 pure invention, about which we find not a word either in 
 Horace or Aristotle, and which only took equal importance 
 with the other two at a much later date, and seems at first to 
 have been neglected. 
 
 A considerable controversy arose during the 16th and at the 
 beginning of the 17th century over these rules, the classicists 
 upholding them and the romanticists opposing them. Finally 
 the classicists triumphed, owing largely to the influence of 
 Richelieu, and Chapelain, his right-hand man in literary matters. 
 
 The most important data to be observed in the history of 
 the struggle are the following: 
 
 1549. The Pl&ade adopted the precepts of Aristotle. These precepts 
 
 replaced the previous theories of Fabri's PMtorique (1544) and of Sibilet's 
 
 1 Cp. Boileau, Art Po&ique (iii. 45 and 46): 
 
 " Qu'en un lieu, qu'en un jovr, un seul fait accompli, 
 Tienne jusqu'a la fin le thi&trc rempli".
 
 DRAMA 109 
 
 Art Poetique (1548), which give little more than the rules of old French 
 poetry (ballads, rondeaux, virelais, &c.). 
 
 1561. Scaliger in his Latin Poctices supplied a full commentary on 
 Aristotle's Poetics, and in consequence all 16th-century writers knew 
 Aristotle largely. 
 
 Scaliger says that music is not essential, but he is inconsistent, for he 
 did not recommend the dropping of the choruses. He declares further 
 that the style must be sublime, that tragedy must represent the higher 
 ranks of life, and have incidents more important than those of comedy; 
 that the action must be completed in six or eight hours, and that a play 
 must be divided into five acts. He gives no definite rule about the Unity 
 of Place, although he does not find it reasonable that a person should be 
 made to go from Thebes to Athens in a few minutes. Like all the par- 
 tisans of the Unities, he treated them as a question of verisimilitude. 
 
 1562. GreVin, in the preface to the Mart de Cesar, recommends that 
 music should be banished, and that ^Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles 
 should be taken as models. 
 
 1572. Jean de la Taille, in the preface to Saul, was the first rigorously 
 to formulate the three Rules of the Unities: " II faut toujours reprl- 
 senter I'histoire ou le jeu en un mime jour, en un meme temps, et un mme 
 lieu". 
 
 1573. Ronsard, in the preface to the Franciade, recommends that 
 the action of a tragedy or comedy should take place within the space 
 of twenty-four hours. 
 
 Among those who wrote against or did not observe the Rules are: 
 
 1582. Jean de Beaubreuil, who in the preface to Regulus objects to 
 the Unity of Time. 
 
 1598. Pierre de Laudun Daigaliers, who, in his Art Po&ique Fran- 
 qais, rejects the Unity of Time on the ground that if it is observed we 
 only get incredible actions and no better tragedies. 
 
 1628. Francis Ogier, in the preface to Jean de Schelandre's Tyr 
 et Sidon, where he defends his friend for having rejected the rules, and 
 blended together tragedy and comedy. 
 
 Every nation, says Ogier, has its own particular taste, and it is the 
 duty of poets to adapt themselves to it ; the French are impatient, desire 
 novelty and variety, and are wearied by long reports of messengers and 
 long tirades. The Greeks had special reasons for keeping their style, the 
 chief being that it formed part of their religion, although it cannot be 
 denied that they crowded into one day more than is reasonable. There- 
 fore the modern dramatist should give up the Unities, replace reports 
 by action, and mix tragedy and comedy, since real life is made up of 
 laughter and tears. 
 
 We have already noticed that none of the authors of the popular 
 drama, which flourished during the first thirty years of the 17th century,
 
 110 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 observed the Rules. To their excessive irregularity was due the victory 
 of the Rules, Racan, for example, giving actions which last for years. 
 
 After 1625 they were acted upon by some dramatists; in 1629 they 
 were formulated by Mairet in the preface to Sylvanire, and applied five 
 years after by the same poet in the tragedy of Sophonisbc (1634). In 
 1635 Richelieu was converted. Thanks to his influence and the advo- 
 cacy of Chapelain the Rules finally prevailed, and afterwards came to 
 be looked upon as essential in every tragedy or comedy worthy of the 
 name. 
 
 Pierre Corneille is the father of French classical tragedy as 
 it occupied the stage for two centuries. If not the greatest 
 he is the first in time of the galaxy that make the literary 
 glory of the age of Louis XIV, though his best work was done 
 before the advent of that monarch. 
 
 *JL Pierre Corneille was born in 1606 at Rouen. The history of his life, 
 if one separates it from the history of his plays, is of little importance. 
 He was the eldest son of Pierre Corneille, maitre dcs eaux ct forets at 
 Rouen. From 1615 he frequented the Jesuit college of his native town, 
 where he distinguished himself by skill in Latin verse composition. 
 * After leaving the college he studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 
 1624, though it is doubtful whether he ever pleaded, and accident co- 
 operated with genius to turn him to dramatic work. His first play was 
 the comedy of MAlte, acted at Paris in 1629, which proved a great 
 success. For a time Corneille belonged to the band of poets (La Societd 
 dcs Cinq Auteurs) employed by Cardinal Richelieu to work out his 
 dramatic plans, but not possessing the esprit de suite which the cardinal 
 required of his poets he soon withdrew from his service, and with only 
 one long interruption devoted the whole of his life to dramatic art. 
 
 After the failure of his last play, Surdna (1674), he retired from the 
 stage for good, and died at Paris in 1684, a poor man, " saoul de gloire et 
 affatni d' argent", as he one day said to Boileau. A dramatist, however 
 prolific, could not live in those days on the proceeds of his plays; patrons, 
 too, were stingy, and the grants allowed him by Louis XIV were small 
 and spasmodic. He might have added to his incomings, as all his 
 brother-playwrights did, by writing flattering dedications and nicely 
 turned occasional verse, but he was not gifted in that direction, and his 
 upright character spurned such means. 
 
 The plays of Corneille fall naturally into three periods. 
 
 (a) During the first (1629-1636) he wrote almost nothing 
 but comedies. Apart from Mclite (1629) he composed Clitandre 
 (1632), La Veuve (1633), La, Galerie du Palais (1633), La Sui-
 
 
 DRAMA 
 
 (1634), ia PZace Hoy ale (1634), and L' Illusion Comique 
 (1636). All these early comedies owe nothing to foreign 
 writers; they consist of incidents taken from everyday life 
 and but slightly romanced, written in a language which is a 
 perfect imitation of that of the prfcieuses. To this period 
 belongs also Medee (1635), taken from Seneca and Euripides, 
 the best tragedy up to that time. 
 
 (b) The second period (1636-1651), consisting mainly of 
 tragedies, opens with Le Cid (1636), which placed Corneille at 
 once above all his predecessors and contemporaries. This was 
 followed by four tragedies of great beauty: Horace (1640), 
 Cinna (1640), Polyeucte (1640), and Pompde (1641), which along 
 with the Cid may be accounted Corneille's masterpieces. Then 
 came Le Menteur (1642), the best comedy previous to Moliere, 
 the first French comedy of character, and the first French 
 comedy written in polite language, without low wit or inde- 
 cency. The next year (1643) appeared La Suite du Menteur, 
 the same high standard hardly being maintained. Then Cor- 
 neille's productions become weaker. In 1644 Rodogune ap- 
 peared, and, although it was preferred b} 7 the author himself 
 to any of his plays, much of the pleasure we experience in 
 reading it is spoiled by the highly improbable, at times almost 
 ridiculous, situations it contains. Yet it deserves special men- 
 tion on account of the fifth scene, one of the finest in French 
 drama. Rodogune was followed by Theodore (1645), a story of 
 Christian martyrdom much inferior to Polyeucte; Htraclius 
 (1647), containing much fine poetry, but marred by a still 
 greater complication of argument than in Bodogunt, and by the 
 blustering part of Pulcherie; the operatic play Andromkde 
 (1650), based on Ovid; and the two tragi-comedies, Don Sanche 
 (1650) and Nicomede (1651), the last two superior pieces of 
 the dramatist. 
 
 (c) The third period (1652-1674) comprises the plays of his 
 old age and decadence. The first is Pertharite (1652), the 
 failure of which caused Corneille to abandon dramatic poetry 
 for six years, and devote himself to a translation into French 
 verse of the Imitatio Christi. In 1659 Fouquet, the Maecenas
 
 112 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 of the time, persuaded him to alter his resolution, and (Edipe, 
 a play which became a great favourite with Louis XIV, was 
 the result. Then came in rapid succession the Toison d'Or 
 (1660), Sertorius (1662), Sophonisbe (1663), and Othon (1664), 
 plays of little merit; Agtsilas (1666) and Attila (1667), killed 
 and buried by Boileau's cruel epigram 
 
 " Apres Agdsttas, 
 
 Mais apres V Attila, 
 Hold/" 
 
 Tile d Btrtnice (1672), written in competition with Racine's 
 Btrtnice, although unknowingly; PulcMrie (1672) and Surtna 
 (1674), two signal failures. 
 
 We will now pass on to consider Corneille's masterpieces 
 at greater length. 
 
 The first great play of Corneille, and indeed of the whole 
 theatre of France, is Le Cid (1636), a skilful adaptation of a 
 play by the Spanish poet Guillem de Castro. 
 
 St The plot is briefly as follows : Don Roderigo (surnamed the " Cid " 
 or " Lord " by the Moors he has conquered) is in love with Chimene, 
 the daughter of Don Gomez, Count de Gormas, and has been accepted 
 as her suitor. The aged Don Diego Roderigo's father, who has just 
 been appointed governor to the king's son, asks Don Gomez to give 
 his daughter's hand to his son. Don Gomez, jealous of the honour won 
 by Don Diego, refuses his consent and openly insults the old man. 
 Roderigo's father, in his powerlessness, appeals to his son for revenge: 
 " Venge-moi," he cries, " venge mon honneur et le tien, va provoquer le pere 
 de Chimene". 
 
 Roderigo obeys his aged father's bidding, defies Don Gomez and kills 
 him. Thereupon Chimene, in spite of her love for Roderigo, appeals to 
 the king to avenge her father's death. In the meantime Roderigo has 
 saved Sevilla, threatened by the Moors, and the king can no longer 
 punish the hero who has rendered him such signal service. Then Chi- 
 mene appeals to the king's courtiers, and promises her hand to the knight 
 who will bring back to her Roderigo's head. Don Sancho, Roderigo's 
 rival, accepts the offer, but is vanquished and spared by his generous foe. 
 Presently Don Sancho appears and lays his sword at the feet of Chimene, 
 who, believing that he has conquered, curses him and openly declares her 
 love for Roderigo. Finally she learns the truth, but is still doubtful 
 whether she ought to accept the hand of a man who had so lately killed
 
 DRAMA 113 
 
 her father. After some debating the king advises her to take a year to 
 consider the matter, and as she makes no objection to this proposal we 
 may take it for granted that in the end the two lovers are united. 
 
 The success of Le Cid was so great that all dramatic 
 authors, save the honest Rotrou, rose against Corneille. The 
 obscure Claveret accused him of plagiarism, and Scudery 
 launched his Observations sur le Cid, in which he tried to 
 demonstrate that the play was worthless. No principle, no 
 doctrine of art, was at stake. It was purely a case of jealousy, 
 and among the jealous was Cardinal Eichelieu, who posed as 
 an author. He was also angry with Corneille for having 
 introduced duelling into the play at a time when he was 
 striving hard to repress it, and for glorifying Spain at an 
 inopportune moment. He consequently determined to put 
 an end to the quarrel concerning the Cid, by pressing the 
 Academy to draw up its Sentiments sur la Tragi-Comtdie du 
 Cid. Chapelain was approved as a fit person to do so. The 
 Academy found fault with the violation of dramatic proprie- 
 ties, but could not deny the author's genius, while public 
 opinion was too strong for the cardinal and his friends, and 
 maintained its original verdict. To quote the hackneyed lines 
 of Boileau: 
 
 " En vain contre le Cid un ministre se ligue; 
 Tout Paris pour Chim&ne a les yeux de Rodrigue ". 
 
 Nevertheless Corneille, who had shown a tendency towards a 
 freer dramatic system and a return to Spain, seems to have 
 been very much impressed by the Sentiments de V Acad&mie, 
 and after a retirement of several years, we see him return to 
 regular tragedy and antique subjects. In Horace (1640), 
 based on Livy's account of the combat between the Horatii 
 and Curiatii, Corneille's main object was to depict the sub- 
 limity of Roman patriotism, and its triumph over the passion 
 of love, which the poet henceforth will always sacrifice to 
 honour or to duty. In Le Cid, Chimene had finally pardoned 
 after a struggle, and love had gained the upper hand. In 
 Horace, Camille, the betrothed of Curiatius, curses her brother 
 
 (M643) H
 
 114 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 Horace, the conqueror of her lover; s>he is stabbed to death by 
 Horace, and Horace is absolved. 
 
 In Cinna (1640), Corneille dramatized the conspiracy against 
 the emperor Augustus as related by Seneca. 
 
 it Cinna, grandson of Pompey, is enamoured of Emilie, but she will only 
 consent to marry him if he takes revenge on Augustus, her father's mur- 
 derer. Cinna agrees, and forms a plot to kill the emperor and restore 
 the republic. Presently Maxime, who also loves Emilie, reveals the 
 conspiracy through motives of jealousy. Cinna, summoned before the 
 emperor, seeing all is lost, prepares to meet his doom, but finally the 
 emperor, after an inward struggle, resolves to extend his pardon to all 
 the conspirators. Cinna and Emilie, touched by so much magnanimity, 
 melt into tears and swear eternal friendship to the emperor. 
 
 The subject of Pompte (1641) is taken from the Pharsalia of 
 Lucan. Despite several impressive scenes, such as the one 
 where Cornelia, Pompey's widow, reveals to Caesar, her enemy, 
 the plot hatched against him, the play is not free from the 
 excessive declamation and bombast of Corneille's model. But 
 of all Corneille's plays the one in which he followed most 
 closely the classical dramatic system is Polyeude, performed 
 at the end of 1642 or early in 1643. A story of Christian 
 martyrdom was a bold venture, and when the play was read 
 at the Hotel de Rambouillet, "the Christianity was found 
 extremely displeasing " to people who thought heathenism 
 good enough for literature, a view which, as we shall see, was 
 also shared by Boileau. 
 
 ^ The scene of Polycuctc is laid in Melitene, the capital of Armenia, in 
 ' the palace of Felix the Roman governor. The events are supposed to 
 take place in the year 250 A.D. Christianity has penetrated into the 
 Roman empire, but is still persecuted. Felix has given his daughter 
 Pauline in marriage to a rich nobleman of the name of Polyeuctes, after 
 having refused her hand to Severus, a man of small fortune and of no 
 position. In the meantime Polyeuctes has become a convert to the 
 Christian faith, and in the midst of a solemn sacrifice in the temple, 
 along with his friend Nearchus, pulls down the altars of the false gods. 
 Nearchus is condemned to death, and meets his fate without a murmur. 
 Polyeuctes is thrown into chains, and all means are used to make him 
 repent his rash deed ; but the prayers of Felix and the supplications of 
 Pauline are all in vain. Pauline, who loves Severus in the bottom of her
 
 DRAMA 115 
 
 heart, is none the less devoted to her husband ; she urges Severus, who 
 has meanwhile risen to high honours, to intercede in favour of Poly- 
 euctes, telling him that were she to become a widow, she will never 
 consent to become his wife. Severus does as he is bid, but all his efforts 
 prove useless ; Polyeuctes by order of Felix is led out to meet his doom, 
 and by his glorious end wins Pauline for God : 
 
 " Mon epoux en mourant m'a laisse" ses lumieres, 
 Son sang dont tes bourreaux viennent de me couvrir 
 M'a dessilU les yeux, et me les vient d'ouvrir. 
 Je vois, je sais, je crois, je suis desabusee, 
 Je suis chrttienne enftn . . ." 
 
 Corneille's imagination was distinguisned by a leaning 
 towards the extraordinary which was natural to him, and 
 at the same time encouraged by the agitated period in which 
 he lived. His characters are not ordinary men and women 
 but heroes and heroines, who, sacrificing their natural im- 
 pulses, find the expression of their heroism in the triumph of 
 the will over all obstacles that interfere with its development : 
 
 11 Je suis matfre de moi comme de Vunivers. 
 
 Je le suis, je veux Vetre " ( Auguste in Cinna). 
 " Qu'importe de mon cceur, si je sais mon devoir " 
 
 (Aristie in Sertorius). 
 " . . . Je suis fort peu de chose, 
 Mais enfin de mon cceur moi-mUme je dispose " 
 
 (Dirce in (Edipe). 
 
 Or the characteristic lines in Agdsilas: 
 
 ' Un roi nt pour l'e"clat des grandes actions 
 
 Dompte jusqu'a ses passions, 
 Et ne se croit point roi, s'il ne fait sur lui-me'me 
 Le plus illustre essai de son pouvoir supreme ". 
 
 Hence Corneille's fondness for improbable and complicated 
 situations, on the ground that the greater the difficulties to 
 surmount, the more heroic the character will be; hence the 
 comparative absence of psychology, due to the fact that he 
 often invented or adapted a situation and afterwards created 
 his characters to suit it, instead of leaving them to develop 
 naturally ; and hence also his contempt for the passion of love, 
 which he regarded as unworthy of occupying the first place in
 
 116 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 a tragedy: " J'ai cru jusqu'ici", Corneille writes to his friend 
 St. Evremont, " que I'amour Mail une passion trop chargte de fai- 
 blesse pour Ure la dominanle dans une pikce tragique ". 
 
 In his old age these peculiarities became more marked, and 
 to such an extent as to become serious defects. His heroes' 
 will is glorified for its own sake; formerly they had triumphed 
 over their passions after a struggle, now they cannot fail or 
 falter. Love after having been banished from his tragedies 
 is reintroduced in the guise of the most frigid gallantry; his 
 nobility and elevation degenerate into affectation and bombast, 
 and the bent of his imagination takes the altered shape of a 
 mania for unreasoned inventions, innovations, and complica- 
 tions. 
 
 In his best tragedies, Corneille's characters have the sim- 
 plicity and grandeur of magnificent statues, but also some- 
 thing of their immobility. From their very conception they 
 arouse admiration rather than pity or fear; but, although the 
 inflexible self-reliance with which they meet their doom is at 
 times apt to pall, yet all praise is due to the author for having 
 proposed to humanity so sublime and noble an ideal. 
 
 When at his best, nobody, perhaps, has ever written in 
 verse better than Corneille ; the virile eloquence of his verse 
 is unsurpassed, as are his swift replies line by line, but he was 
 not always inspired, and Moliere was right when he said: 
 " My friend Corneille has a familiar spirit, who inspires him 
 with the finest verse in the world; but sometimes the spirit 
 deserts him, and then it fares ill with him". 
 
 Second only to Corneille as a playwright stands Jean 
 Rotrou (1609-1650), his friend and one of the "five authors" 
 employed by Eichelieu. In his youth, impatient of restraint 
 and unwilling to submit to the rules of classical tragedy, he 
 squandered his talent in comedies and extravagant tragi- 
 comedies, but with years he learnt much from his great con- 
 temporary, and before his death he had written four pieces, 
 two of which, Saint Genest (1646) and Venceslas (1647), are at 
 least equal to Corneille's tragedies of the second class. Saint 
 Genest, imitated, but in no servile manner, from the Spaniard
 
 PROSE 117 
 
 Lope de Vega, is one of the most striking plays of the 17th 
 century. It is the story of an actor who, playing the part of 
 a Christian martyr before the emperor Diocletian, is suddenly 
 penetrated by divine grace, proclaims himself a Christian, and 
 suffers martyrdom. Interwoven with the story is some amus- 
 ing by-play depicting contemporary theatrical life. Venceslas, 
 his masterpiece, represents in true Corneillian style the inward 
 struggle of a king constrained to choose between duty and 
 parental affection. 
 
 Other plays of Eotrou that will repay the reader are : Lame 
 Persecute (1637); Don Bernard de Calrere (1647), his best 
 tragi-comedy; and Cosroes (1649). 
 
 Rotrou is an unequal and careless writer, but when in his 
 happiest mood, he has a lyrical note, absent in all the drama- 
 tists of the 17th century, which faintly recalls Shakespeare. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PROSE 
 
 Might not spiritual truth be made more attractive to mun- 
 dane society if presented in its most gracious and pleasing 
 aspect? Such was the question that Francois de Sales 
 (1567-1622), Bishop of Geneva, proposed to answer in the 
 affirmative when, at the king's request, he published a collec- 
 tion of spiritual letters addressed to a relative, under the title 
 of L? Introduction a la Fie Dfoote (1609). De Sales saw that it 
 would be futile to require from people "qui vivent parmi le 
 monde et les covrs " the sum of Christian renunciation and self- 
 denial ; imperfection is man's lot, " et nous ne pouvons oiler sans 
 toucher terre", yet, though he may have strewn the path to 
 heaven with roses, under the angelic bishop's docility and 
 sweetness there lay strength. "Suaviter in modo, fortiter in 
 re " might have been his motto. Never was style more in 
 keeping with the man flowery and mystical, yet insinuating. 
 
 The long reign of the pi-ecieuses had been prepared, as we
 
 118 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 have noticed, by a novel which for a long time enjoyed a 
 success as prodigious as almost any in literary history. This 
 famous book was the pastoral romance of Astrde, by Honor e 
 d'Urfe (1568-1625), composed of five volumes, published at 
 different times from 1610 to 1627, and comprising over five 
 thousand pages. Even at a time when the Astrtfe had lost 
 its popularity Mme de Sevign^ did not hesitate to acknow- 
 ledge her weakness for it, and the great La Fontaine could 
 
 write: 
 
 " EtwnJt, petit gc.rfon je lisais son roman, 
 Et je le Us encore ayant la barbe grise ". 
 
 D'Urfd's immediate model was the Diana (1542) of the 
 Spaniard Montemayor, who himself had imitated largely the 
 Italians Sannazaro (Arcadia), Tasso (Aminta), and Guarini 
 (Pastor Fido). 
 
 The scene of the A&tri.e is laid in the fields of D'Urfe's native Forez 
 on the banks of the Lignon, in Merovingian antiquity. The shepherd 
 Celadon, banished by his beloved Astre"e on suspicion of faithlessness, in 
 his despair throws himself into the waters of the Lignon ; saved by the 
 nymphs he resists the love of the Princess Galatea, but does not dare to 
 appear before Astree as long as she has not revoked her order of banish- 
 ment, which she finally consents to do, but only at the end of the fifth 
 volume. The two lovers are united in marriage, and the banks of the 
 Lignon become a scene of universal joy. 
 
 But the main plot is often only an excuse for numerous 
 historical episodes, contemporary allusions, and gallant con- 
 versations, in which the different varieties of love are depicted 
 and discussed after the manner of the amorous casuistry of the 
 fashionable ladies of the time. 
 
 The influence of preciosity, combined with that of Spain and 
 of the political events of the time, gave rise to the heroic- 
 gallant novel, the tradition of D'Urfe's Astrte combining with 
 that of the older Amadis. The shepherds and shepherdesses 
 were replaced by heroes and heroines, clad in antique garb; 
 romantic episodes and high deeds were blended with disser- 
 tations and gallant conversations reflecting the social ideal. 
 
 Marin le Roy de Gomberville (1599-1674) in Pdexandre (1629-1637) 
 unites the kind of motive found in the A madis with geographical interest.
 
 PROSE 119 
 
 The hero wanders over the whole world in pursuit of those who dare to 
 sigh for the love of the fair Alcidiane, and also to discover the mysterious 
 island on which the princess dwells. In that way we are taken to 
 Morocco, the Canary Islands, the West Indies, &c. 
 
 Gautier de Costes de la Calprenede (1609-1663), in Cassandre (1642), 
 Clfopdtre (1647), and Faramond (1661), exhibits a kind of universal his- 
 tory, the dissolution of the Macedonian empire, the decline of Rome's 
 power, or the foundation of the French monarchy, but this is only the 
 background, his heroes and heroines being mere idealizations of the lords 
 and ladies he had met in the salons of Paris. Like all these prolix 
 romances those of De la Calprenede are unreadable now, although his 
 reputation was not so ephemeral as that of his contemporaries, and 
 lasted till the 18th century. 
 
 Madeleine de Scudery's (1607-1701) two chief novels are 
 Artamene,ouLe GrandCyrus (1649-1653), and Cfe7te(1654-1661). 
 Her originality consists in having done openly and knowingly 
 what her predecessors had done unconsciously. To the adven- 
 tures in Polexandre and to the historical details in CUopatre 
 she added allusions to arid portraits of the men and women 
 of the prfoieux society of the day. Cyrus is none other than 
 Conde; Lydiane is Francoise d'Aubigne, the future Mme de 
 Main tenon; Mandane is the Duchess of Longueville; and so 
 forth. By attempting to study the curiosities and shades of 
 the passion of love Mile de Scudery occasionally succeeds in 
 analysis of character, in fact her novels, especially CUlie, may 
 be said to foreshadow the psychological novels in French 
 literature. 
 
 The insipid gallantry and the high-pitched emotions of 
 courtly shepherdesses and pastoral cavaliers produced a natural 
 reaction. In 1622 Charles Sorel (1599-1674) published the 
 Histoire Comique de Francion, and five years later the Berger 
 Extravagant, the Don Quixote of France, which recounts the 
 pastoral follies of a young Parisian bourgeois, whose head has 
 been turned by the fashionable novels of the day. Another 
 burlesque of the heroic novels is the Roman Comique (1651) of 
 Paul Scarron, the master of the school of realism in the 17th 
 century. 
 
 The greatest of the literary societies of France, the French 
 Academy, sprang from a private society of men of letters at
 
 120 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 Paris, which about the year 1629 used to meet at the house 
 of one Conrart, a wit and scholar of the time, for the discussion 
 of literary questions. At first they were but nine, but fresh 
 members were added by degrees, among others the poet 
 Boisrobert, a favourite of Richelieu, who was kept informed 
 by him of these gatherings. The cardinal, pleased with the 
 account of the society, offered his protection and official 
 recognition. After some hesitation they accepted, and under 
 the title of Acadtmie Franqaise they held their first sitting on 
 March 13th, 1634; but the Parliament of Paris only registered 
 the letters patent in July, 1637, and that only on an express 
 order of the king, and on the condition that the Academy 
 should meddle with nothing but the embellishment and im- 
 provement of the French language. From the outset the 
 number of members was raised to the forty at which it has 
 ever since remained, and each week one of the members was 
 appointed to read a paper. Their chief occupation, however, 
 was the compilation of a dictionary, which has become famous 
 under the name of Didionnaire de VAcadlmie, and of which 
 the first edition appeared in 1694. 
 
 The Academy by undertaking its dictionary, and projecting 
 a grammar, took away from polite society the direction of the 
 language, although its object was the same as that of the 
 prdcieuses and their followers. The efforts of both tended to 
 make the language gain in dignity and precision, but im- 
 poverished it by the elimination of its picturesque and forceful 
 elements. 
 
 That the Academy has not always been impartial in the 
 election of -its members will be evident when it is remembered 
 that neither Descartes, Pascal, Moliere, J. J. Rousseau, Beau- 
 marchais, H. de Balzac, Michelet, nor Beranger ever belonged 
 to it. 
 
 It received much help from Vaugelas (1585-1650), one of 
 its early members, who had the reputation at the time of 
 knowing his own language better than any man, and whose 
 decisions were looked upon as laws: "Si feliciU n'est pas fran- 
 $ais," wrote Chapelain, " il le sera I'anrite prochaine. M. Vaugelas
 
 PROSE 121 
 
 m'a promis de ne pas lui lire contraire, quand nous sotticiterons 
 pour lui" 
 
 In 1647 he published his Remargues sur la Langue Franpiise, 
 which served as a guide to his fellow-members in their literary 
 labours. He proposed first of all to make the French language 
 " vraiment maitresse chez die, et de la nettoyer des ordures qu'elle 
 avail contracts" ' ; secondly, he asserted that the test of correct 
 language is the manner of speaking of the best part of the 
 court. But although he established the sovereignty of court 
 usage he never dreamt of shutting the door upon all change; 
 he knew and declared that this was impossible. His object 
 was to regulate the language, to give it stability as far as 
 essentials only are concerned: "Je pose des principes, qui 
 n'auront pas moins de durde que noire langue et noire empire", 
 
 One of the most famous of the academicians was Jean Louis 
 Guez de Balzac (1594-1654), who was the first to apply to 
 prose the principles which had guided Malherbe in verse. 
 That the latter was a poet alone explains the fact that his 
 reputation survived that of Balzac. 
 
 Balzac's letters and political treatises were admired for the 
 pureness of their eloquence and the harmonious cadence of 
 their periods. He foreshadowed to a great extent the limpid, 
 if somewhat colourless, prose of the classicists, and also taught 
 his countrymen the art of being eloquent without having any- 
 thing to say. If Balzac was devoid of ideas no man ever had 
 more than his great contemporary and friend Rene Descartes, 
 the founder of modern philosophy, as opposed to scholastic 
 disputes and subtleties, from whom all systematic thinking is 
 professedly derived. 
 
 Jf'Descartes was born at La Haye, near Tours, on the 31st March, 
 1596, of a family of noble rank. When eight years of age he was sent 
 to the Jesuit college at La Fleche, where he remained for eight years. 
 Dissatisfied with scholasticism, and eager to learn from life and the close 
 observation of men what he had been unable to find in books, he deter- 
 mined at the age of twenty-one to enlist as a volunteer. The outbreak of 
 the Thirty Years' War soon gave him plenty of employment. First he 
 served for two years in Holland, then he passed into the Catholic army 
 of the Duke of Bavaria. On the approach of winter the army was
 
 122 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 obliged to take winter quarters at Neuburg on the Canute. It was 
 there that he conceived for the first time the principles of a new philo- 
 sophical method : " N'ayant par bonhcur aucuns soins ni passions qui me 
 troublasscnt, je dcmeurais tout le jour cnfermd seul dans un poele (room 
 heated by a stove) ou favais tout loisir de m'entretenir de mes pens&s ". 
 In consequence he left the army in 1621, travelling, with occasional 
 residences in Paris, till 1629, when he returned to Holland, where for 
 twenty years he meditated and wrote, often shifting his residence, but 
 little disturbed save by the controversies of philosophy and the orthodox 
 zeal of Dutch theologians. An invitation from the Queen of Sweden, 
 who desired to learn his philosophy from his own lips, was accepted in 
 1649. The rigour of a northern temperature, combined with change of 
 habits, proved fatal to his health, and he died at Stockholm of inflamma- 
 tion of the lungs in 1650. 
 
 His chief works consist (a) of the Discours de la Mtthode 
 (1637), the first philosophical work of importance written 
 in the French language; (b) of the posthumous Traitt des 
 Passions (1650), also in the vernacular; (c) of the Meditationes 
 (1641) and Prindpia (1044), written in Latin. 
 
 The key to Descartes' philosophical method is contained 
 in the famous Discours de la Mtthode, which must have been 
 elaborated between the dates 1619 (Neuburg) and 1637 
 (publication). His philosophy has its starting-point in uni- 
 versal doubt. Everything being abandoned, is there any 
 possibility of finding any new and clear foundation from 
 which to build up our knowledge? Evidently in the fact of 
 doubt alone. What is doubt? Doubt is an act of thinking. 
 Thinking is inconceivable without a person to think. Thus, 
 doubt implies the mental existence of a doubter, and the famous 
 Cartesian proposition Cogito, ergo sum, "I think, therefore I 
 exist", naturally follows. But how and why have we attained 
 this certainty ? Simply because we perceive it so clearly and 
 distinctly that its denial is impossible. Hence follows the first 
 and fundamental rule of Descartes' philosophy to accept as 
 true what we perceive clearly and distinctly, and nothing 
 beyond. One of these clear and distinct perceptions is the 
 idea of God as the absolutely Perfect Being. God the Perfect 
 Being cannot deceive, and therefore whatever our consciousness 
 clearly testifies may be implicitly believed. Mind or spirit is
 
 PROSE 123 
 
 pure consciousness, and matter is mere extension; these attri- 
 butes are mutually exclusive, and can be united (as in man) 
 only through the intervention of God. Animals in which the 
 rational soul is absent are mere automata. 
 
 The influence of Descartes' ideas, which were in harmony 
 with those of his time, reacted upon the literature of the whole 
 of the 17th century, although their full force was not felt till 
 about thirty years after the publication of the Discours de la 
 Methode. The orators and poets of the second half of the cen- 
 tury show little taste for the picturesque in nature, and devote 
 themselves wholly to the study of man. This is partly attrib- 
 utable to the strictly mechanical view of nature taught by 
 Descartes. Like him, too, the writers of this period sought 
 for general truths, and subordinated imagination to reason. 
 In point of style Descartes, unlike his contemporaries, is 
 heedless of form. He has made little progress on the writers 
 of the beginning of the century, yet he possesses great qualities 
 as a writer vigorous precision, clearness, and certain flights 
 of the imagination, which produce all the more effect amid the 
 severe lines of his abstract reasoning. 
 
 By far the greatest writer of this period was Blaise Pascal. 
 A consideration of his works is inseparable from the history of 
 Port-Royal and of Jansenism. 
 
 Port-Royal was a convent of Cistercian nuns, about eight 
 miles from Versailles. It was founded in the 13th century for 
 nuns only, but soon after its establishment obtained from the 
 Pope the privilege of receiving such members of the laity as 
 should desire to live in religious retirement without being 
 compelled to take monastic vows. The community was re- 
 moved to Paris in 1626; and from this time the old establish- 
 ment of "Port-Royal des Champs", as the convent near Ver- 
 sailles was called, was exclusively devoted to the use of a lay 
 community. This community soon numbered among its per- 
 manent inmates some of the most distinguished scholars of the 
 age, Antoine Arnauld (1612-1694), Le Maistre, Nicole, Lance- 
 lot, and others. Their life was divided between study, instruc- 
 tion, and manual labour. One of their greatest public services
 
 124 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 was the foundation of a famous school, for which they prepared 
 well-known educational books. 
 
 Port-Royal, however, is best known for its adhesion to 
 the Jansenist Movement. In 1640 appeared the Avgustinus 
 by Cornelius Jansen, bishop of Ypres, in which, resuming 
 the doctrines of St. Augustine against the Pelagians and 
 Semi-Pelagians, he repudiated the ordinary Catholic dogma 
 of the freedom of the will, and affirmed that man was pre- 
 destined either to eternal life or everlasting damnation, and 
 that he could only be saved if possessed of divine grace. 
 This austere doctrine, which is practically identical with that 
 of Calvin, and directly opposed to the more worldly and 
 accommodating system of the Jesuits, was introduced into 
 Port-Royal by the Abb de St. Cyran, a friend of Jansen. 
 From that time the abbey of Port-Royal became the fortress 
 of Jansenism in France, and in the great controversy which 
 soon afterwards broke out, the doctrines of the famous Dutch 
 theologian found their staunchest adherents and supporters 
 in Antome Arnauld and Pascal. 
 
 \{ Blaise Pascal was born at Clermont-Ferrand in 1623. His precocity 
 ^ as a boy was extraordinary; at the age of sixteen he had written a 
 Treatise on Conic Sections, which excited the admiration of Descartes. 
 But the intensity of study, preying upon a nervous constitution, con- 
 sumed his health and strength; at an early age he suffered from tempo- 
 rary paralysis. When about twenty-three he fell under the religious 
 influence of St. Cyran, read eagerly in the writings of Jansen, and re- 
 solved to live for God alone. But to restore his health he was urged to 
 seek recreation, and by degrees the interests and pleasures of the world 
 took hold upon him; from 1649-1653 he lived not only in the world, but 
 in a style beyond his means. However, the religious spirit was still 
 alive in his heart, and needed only to be reawakened. The reawakening 
 came in 1654 through his sister Jacqueline, who had abandoned the 
 world two years previously and entered the community of "Port-Royal". 
 From this time he subjected himself to the most rigid mortification, 
 self-denial, and absolute obedience to his spiritual director. He joined 
 "Port-Royal", and henceforth till his death in 1662 he threw himself 
 with passionate devotion into its cause. 
 
 Apart from Pascal's works as a mathematician and a physi- 
 cist, his two great works are the Lettres Provinciates (1656-57) 
 and the posthumous Pensdes.
 
 PROSE 125 
 
 Although the Augustinus had not been avowedly written as 
 a work of controversy, but simply to set forth the doctrine of 
 St. Augustine, the Jesuits had long marked Jansen and St. 
 Cyran as theological foes, opposed to their doctrines. As soon 
 as Jansen 's book appeared it was received with loud clamour, 
 and prohibited by a decree of the Inquisition in 1641; in the 
 following year it was condemned in general terms by Urban 
 VIII in the bull In Eminenti. On the other side, Arnauld, the 
 great theologian of the Port-Eoyalists, wrote an apology of 
 Jansen (1644), and a second apology appeared from his pen 
 the following year. The Jesuits determined that they would 
 not be beaten. In 1653 five propositions, professedly extracted 
 from Jansen's Augustinus, were condemned by a papal bull. 
 A great blow had been struck, and the insulting triumph of 
 the Jesuits knew no bounds. They refused absolution to the 
 Due de Liancourt, for no other reason but that he was on 
 friendly terms with Port-Royal, and had refused to withdraw, 
 at their demand, his granddaughter from its protection. In- 
 dignant at such an outrage, Arnauld rushed anew into the 
 controversy; and on a question concerning divine grace he 
 was condemned in 1656 by the Sorbonne. "You who are 
 young, clever, and inquiring," said Arnauld to Pascal, "you 
 ought to do something." The words were not lost, and the 
 next day he produced "A Letter written to a Provincial by 
 one of his Friends". A second was issued a few days later. 
 These flew from hand to hand, and the fury of the Jesuits 
 was boundless. Never before had been seen such delicate and 
 scathing irony, such incisive argument wedded to such perfect 
 felicity of phrase and rare distinction of style. 
 
 Of the eighteen letters which make up the Provinciates, the 
 first three and the last three, which deal with the affairs of 
 Arnauld and the Sorbonne, are of little importance as compared 
 to the twelve intervening letters, in which Pascal by a change 
 of tactics set up the real and fundamental question : the ques- 
 tion which of the two parties, Jesuits or Jansenists, would in 
 the future direct public opinion, and more generally, which of 
 the two moral ideals, the worldly or the intransigent, would
 
 126 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 triumph. These letters discuss at length the whole subject oi 
 the moral theology of the Jesuits, with all its subtle equivo- 
 cations and casuistries invented for the extenuation of sin. 
 They constitute the most powerful blow ever directed against 
 their order, a blow from which it has never fully recovered. 
 
 The Provinciates occupied Pascal till the spring of 1657, and 
 during the following year he began to busy himself with a 
 scheme for a great Apology of the Christian Religion. Of 
 this projected apology Pascal only left fragments, known as 
 the Pensles. A garbled edition appeared in 1670, but it was not 
 till 1844 that an authentic text was issued. Several attempts 
 to reconstruct the plan of Pascal's Apology have been made 
 in vain, but the main outlines of his thought can be clearly 
 discerned : Man is so constituted that he can never be satisfied 
 until he rests in knowledge of the truth. But man is a compli- 
 cated being, an incomprehensible monster made up of good 
 and evil. How then is this duplicity of human nature to be 
 solved so that man may find happiness 1 It cannot be solved 
 by the two great opposing systems of philosophy at all times 
 the rational, dogmatic, or stoical on the one hand, and the 
 sceptical or epicurean on the other. The riddle of human 
 nature, according to Pascal, can only be solved in one way 
 by a recognition of the truth taught by religion, that human 
 nature is fallen from its true estate, that man is a dethroned 
 king; and this dissonance in man's nature can only be overcome 
 in one way through union with God made man with Jesus 
 Christ, the centre in which alone we find our weakness and the 
 divine strength. In Him all contradictions are reconciled. 
 
 Pascal is the creator of French classical prose, just as Cor- 
 neille is of French classical verse. With the Provinciates a 
 standard was set up which has in all essentials remained un- 
 changed ever since.
 
 POETRY 127 
 
 SECOND PEEIOD (1659-1689) 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 'Jr POETRY 
 
 The recognized critic of the classical school, the " Legislator 
 of the French Parnassus", is Nicolas Boileau, surnamed 
 Despreaux. 
 
 Boileau was born in Paris of an old stock of lawyers on the 1st of 
 Nov., 1636. He received his early education at the College d'Harcourt, 
 and later at that of Beauvais. At first he studied law and theology, but, 
 inheriting a competence, devoted himself to literature. His first publi- 
 cations were Satires (1660-1665), in which he waged successful war 
 against all that seemed to him false and despicable in art. He became 
 the champion of a new school, the friend and upholder of the great 
 writers of the age of Louis XIV, of La Fontaine, Moliere, -and Racine 
 especially. The Satires were followed by the first JSpttres, by the Art 
 Pottique (1674), by the first cantos of the clever serio-comic poem Le Lu- 
 trin. In 1677 Boileau was appointed, together with Racine, to write the 
 history of the king, and renounced for the time the profession of poetry. 
 The last period of his life, down to his death in 1711, was taken up with 
 his polemics with the Moderns. To this period belong the Reflexions 
 Critiques sur Longin (1694), the Ode sur la Prise de Namur (1693), the 
 three last Epitres (1695), and the three last Satires (1694, 1698, 1705) 
 
 All Boileau's most important contributions to literature, 
 both in verse and prose, fall under the head of literary criti- 
 cism. His work in that direction was at first purely militant 
 and destructive. In the Satires he delivered relentless attacks 
 on the dangerous tendencies that were at work in French 
 literature the conceits of the prfoieuses, the insipid jargon of 
 the heroic-gallant novels, and the mawkishness of dramatists 
 such as Quinault. Once this task accomplished, Boileau felt 
 bound to replace the negative criticism of the Satires by formal 
 precepts on literature. This he did in the Art Pottique (1674), 
 his capital work, though he was too much of a satirist at heart 
 to forgo the opportunity of once again attacking the worth- 
 less poets in whose faults he found the justification of his new
 
 128 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 rules. Thus the criticism of the Art Potiique falls into two 
 distinct categories the statement of his poetic doctrine, and 
 the estimate of the poetry of his time, which is practically the 
 same as in the Satires. Boileau's Art Pottique, which owes 
 much of its doctrine and many of its details to Horace, and\j 
 a lesser degree to Aristotle, consists of four cantos. 
 
 Canto I contains general precepts on the art of poetry, with a short 
 digression on the history of French versification conspicuous for the 
 ignorance Boileau displays of earlier French poetry. 
 
 Canto II defines 1 he special laws of the shorter poems, the Idyll, the 
 Elegy, the Ode, the Sonnet, the Epigram, the Ballad, &c. 
 
 Canto III is entirely devoted to the history and laws of tragedy, epic, 
 and comedy. 
 
 Canto IV, like the first, contains general precepts, and ends with the 
 praises of Louis XIV. 
 
 The Art Podtique is essentially dogmatic. In order properly 
 to understand Boileau's literary doctrine it is necessary to 
 consult the Epitres and the Etylexions sur Longin, in which his 
 theories are explained at length. 
 
 What, then, are the leading principles of this doctrine? 
 
 Its starting-point is the imitation of nature : 
 
 "Jamdis de la nature U nefaut s'lcarter " (iii. 414). 
 
 Truth to nature is the real test for all poetry. But this rule 
 of rules calls for restrictions. The poet must not imitate all 
 that is to be found in nature, but only what conforms to the 
 strict rule of reason and good sense : 
 
 " Tout doit tendre au Ion sens " (i. 45). 
 
 A consequence of this was that the lower attributes of human 
 nature were refused poetic treatment, for what we have in 
 common with all animals is just the opposite of reason. In 
 the same way the accidental, the ephemeral, and local must 
 be eliminated, as only falsifying the true nature they disguise, 
 and the author must avoid anything that is of a peculiarly 
 personal character, and deal only with those ideas and senti- 
 ments which he has in common with everyone. 
 
 Finally, Boileau's third tenet recommends the imitation of
 
 POETRY 129 
 
 the ancients, not because they are the ancients, but because 
 no one since has imitated nature with the same fidelity as they 
 did. They will serve as a touchstone. 1 
 
 By referring art to reason and truth Boileau was an emanci- 
 pator; but the strict domination of reason in his doctrine led 
 to the exclusion of external nature (plants, the stars, the sky, 
 the elements, &c.), and to the belief that the only study for 
 man was man. It also tended to proscribe imagination and 
 sensibility, although it is too often overlooked that in the very 
 first lines of the Art Pottique Boileau lays stress on genius as 
 the one essential without which all is in vain. Lastly, it led 
 to the perfection of form in poetry, for as the poet was con- 
 cerned only with general ideas, he could excel only by the 
 manner in which he expressed them. 
 
 Boileau's influence as a critic was immense, and lasted till 
 the rise of the "Romantic School" at the beginning of the 
 19th century. The study of foreign literatures, of archaeology, 
 and of the Middle Ages was necessary to complete his doctrine, 
 and show its one-sidedness. It was in the hands of the writers 
 of the 18th century, who interpreted it to their own tastes, 
 that it became deadening and sterilizing. In this way Boileau 
 was made to answer for the faults of degenerate disciples 
 whom he would have been the first to repudiate. 
 
 Modern critics may differ in their judgment of Boileau, but 
 none have ever disputed the genius of Jean de la Fontaine, 
 the greatest fabulist in the literature of the world. 
 
 %r /x La Fontaine was born on the 7th of July, 1621, at Chateau-Thierry, 
 where his father was mattre des eaux et forets. He does not seem 
 to have exerted himself overmuch at school. At nineteen he entered 
 the Oratory, thinking that he had a vocation for the Church. But he 
 soon gave up this idea and married a pretty girl of fifteen, Marie Heri- 
 cart, of whom he soon got tired. In 1659 he agreed to a division of 
 property and left his wife. He came to Paris, where, under the protec- 
 tion of different patrons belonging to the nobility (La Duchesse de 
 
 1 Cp. Pope in a passage on Virgil in his Essay on Criticism, directly 
 inspired by Boileau 
 
 Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem; 
 To copy Nature is to copy them". 
 
 I
 
 130 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 Bouillon, Prince do Conde, Mme de la Fayette, and Mme de k Sabliere), 
 and following his natural bent, he drifted into that careless and easy- 
 going existence which lasted till his conversion, just before his death 
 in 1695. 
 
 Besides his Fables, of which we shall speak last of all, La 
 Fontaine is the author of (a) five books of G'ontes, whose gau- 
 loiserie or riskiness connect him with the tradition of the 
 fableaux; (b) five larger poems of mediocre value, of which 
 the best are Adonis (1658) and Philemon et Baucis (1685); 
 (c) various smaller poems, including six "elegies", nine "odes", 
 thirteen "ballads", and twenty -five "epistles"; (d) a tedious 
 paraphrase of Psycht; and (e) twelve plays which prove that 
 La Fontaine was destitute of dramatic genius. 
 
 The Fables, which consist of tAvelve books, were published 
 and written at different times the early ones in 1 668, and the 
 last book not till 1694. 
 
 To assign his correct position to La Fontaine in the liter- 
 ature of his epoch is no easy task. His ideal of life, his 
 Epicurean morals, connect him with the libertine group of 
 the beginning of the century,- and with the older irreverent 
 and Gallic writers, such as Rabelais and Des Periers. His 
 language, too, and his verse are hampered by none of the 
 conventionalities of the time. The speech of the "honneies 
 gens" suffices not to render the manifold echoes of his universal 
 sympathy. His is a personal, energetic, and picturesque lan- 
 guage; he introduces old words if they suit his purpose better 
 (cuider, engeigner, d^duit, liesse, chevance, &c.), or popular phrases 
 (tirant sur le grison, il avail du comptant, tout cousu d'or), nor 
 does he draw the line at words of any class (bique, goujat, here, 
 racaille, ripaille, &c.). In versification his lines and rhythms 
 vary according to the sentiment he is depicting, and he does 
 not shrink from employing enjambement, or overflow, if the 
 effect is heightened. 
 
 What distinguishes him above all things from most of his 
 illustrious companions is the fact that he is a poet, in the sense 
 that we can always recognize the unobtrusive but perpetual 
 intervention of his own personality in his work
 
 POETRY 131 
 
 While these qualities make of him a man unique of his kind 
 at the time at which he lived, it does not sever all connection 
 between him and the literature of his time. His artistic ideal 
 is in close conformity with that of Boileau, Moliere, and Racine. 
 Speaking of Moliere 's Fdcheux, La Fontaine says: 
 
 " Nous avons change" de me"thode, 
 Jodelet n'est plus & la mode, 
 Et maintenant il ne faut pas 
 Quitter la nature d'un pas". 
 
 But instead of depicting man only he made animals his special 
 study, and, what is more, he is the only writer of his century 
 who introduced external nature into his works. In his Fables 
 La Fontaine invented nothing. He took his subjects on all 
 sides, from the ancients (Esop, Phedrus, Babrius, &c.), or from 
 16th-century writers (Marot, Des Periers, Rabelais, &c.): 
 
 " J'en lis qui sont du Nord et qui sont du Midi ", 
 
 transforming his models by his wonderful gifts as a poet and 
 a psychologist: 
 
 " Mon imitation n'est point un esclavage 
 Je ne prcnds que l'ide"e et les tours et Ics lots 
 Que nos mattres suivaient eux-memes autrcfois". 
 
 And this is why he has so much enlarged and extended this 
 branch of literature, some of his Fables being contes or fableaux 
 (Le Cure" et le Mart, La Laiti&re et le Pot au Lait, La Jeune Veuve, 
 &c.), others idylls (Tucis et Amarante), others elegies or epistles. 
 Each of them is a little drama in itself, and together they 
 form, as he has himself said, 
 
 " Une ample come'die A cent actes divers 
 Et dont la scene est I'univers". 
 
 On this scene, under the disguise of animals, the foibles of his 
 contemporaries and of humanity at large are exposed with a 
 quiet and unobtrusive moral : 
 
 ' En ces sortcs de feinte il faut instruire et plaire, 
 Et confer pour center me semUe pen d' affaire ".
 
 132 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 DRAMA 
 
 The two greatest names in the whole of French dramatic 
 poetry fall within this period Moliere in comedy, and Racine 
 in tragedy. 
 
 During the interval between Corneille and those two great writers, 
 the most popular playwright was Philippe Quinault (1635-1688), the 
 author of seventeen plays, both tragedies and comedies, in which he 
 followed the taste set by the novels of La Calprenede and Mile de 
 ScudeYy. 
 
 The affected and insipid gallantry 1 of Quinault 's plays is unbearable 
 now, but he is still remembered for he graceful and harmonious verse 
 of the librettos (1671-1686) written for Lulli's operas. 
 
 It is quite refreshing to turn from the languid graces of 
 Quinault to the robust good sense of Moliere, the greatest 
 name in the whole of French literature. 
 
 X* 
 
 / bora 
 
 Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name of Moliere, was 
 Corn at Paris in January, 1662. He was the son of a wealthy uphol- 
 S sterer, who held the office of tapissier valet de chambre to the king. 
 From 1636 to 1641 he was a pupil of the College de Clermont (now 
 Zotm le Grand). Before leaving school he had inherited his father's 
 charge, but his bent did not lie that way. In 1643 he gave up his post, 
 and in spite of his father's opposition he organized a theatrical company 
 with the help of the Bejarts. They called it L'lUustre Thddtre, but in 
 spite of its pompous title its success was not great, and Moliere was 
 imprisoned for debt. Soon after he and his companions determined to 
 try their fortune in the provinces. They departed at the end of 1646 
 or the beginning of 1647, and stayed away from Paris during twelve 
 years. At Lyons Moliere published in 1655 L'Etourdi, his first regular 
 five-act comedy. Success began to smile, and he resolved to return to 
 the capital; on the 24th of October of the year -1658 he played for the 
 first time in the presence of the king, the pieces represented being 
 Corneille's Nicomede and the Docteur Amoureux, one of Moliere's lost 
 farces. Louis XIV was so much pleased that he gave Moliere the 
 permission to set up in Paris as the Troupe de Monsieur, and to play 
 
 1 Cp. Boileau's famous lines : 
 
 " Lcs Ji^ros chez Quinault parlent tout autrement, 
 Etjusqu'ti 'je vous hais ' tout se dit tejidrement".
 
 DRAMA 133 
 
 alternately with the Italian actors in the Petit Bourbon theatre. In 
 1659 he played Les Precieuses Ridicules, which inaugurates the series 
 of those famous plays which Moliere was to produce with little inter- 
 ruption for fourteen years. In 1662 he married Armande Bejart. His 
 last play was the Malade Imaginaire (1673), during the representation 
 of which he was seized with a violent fit of coughing, which burst one 
 of the vessels of his lungs. There was just time to take him home, 
 where he died one hour after the accident. 
 
 The most important plays of Moliere can be classed as 
 follows : 
 
 () Character comedy: Tartuffe (1664), Don Juan (1665), 
 Le Misanthrope (1666), L'Avare (1668). 
 
 (b) Comedy of manners: Les Precieuses Eidicules (1659), 
 UEcole des Marts (1661), L'Ecole des Femmes (1662), Georges 
 Dandin (1668), Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670), Les Femmes 
 Savantes (1672). 
 
 (c) Heroic comedy: Dom Garde de Navarre (1661). 
 
 (d) Pastoral comedy : Melicerte (1666). 
 
 (e) Farces: Sganarelle (1660), Le Mtdecin malgre lui (1666), 
 Les Fourberies de Scapin (1671), Le Malade Imaginaire (1673). 
 
 (/) Come'die-ballet: La Princesse d' Elide (1664), L' Amour Mtde- 
 cin (1665), Le Sicilien (1667), PsycM (1671), with the assistance 
 of Pierre Corneille, Quinault, and the composer Lulli. 
 
 (g) Critical comedies: La Critique de I' E cole des Femmes 
 (1663), L' Impromptu de Versailles (1663). 
 
 Of his plays, of which about one half are in prose and 
 the other half in verse, the best are Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope, 
 L'Avare, Les Femmes Savantes, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Georges 
 Dandin, and L'ficole des Femmes, while the first three will 
 generally be esteemed his masterpieces. 
 
 Along with these, the Prfoieuses Ridicules (1659) deserves 
 more than passing attention, as being his first really great 
 play, and the first dramatic satire on cultured society in 
 France. The shaft was aimed at the ridiculous only among 
 the pre"cieuses, the imitators of the Hdtel de Rambouillet, who 
 abounded in Paris, but more especially in the provinces; at 
 least so said Moliere in his preface, and the pre"cieuses evidently
 
 134 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 took him at his word, for we know that the marchioness and 
 her set were present at the first representation. Whatever 
 may have been Moliere's limitations, it dealt the class as a 
 whole a severe blow. 
 
 The play ends with the confusion and exposure of the two 
 prdcieuses, Cathos and Madelon, and a healthy moral on the 
 part of Gorgibus, their father and uncle. Its success was 
 immediate and universal, and even to-day it has lost little of 
 its comic force. 
 
 Moliere was above all a believer in the goodness of nature. 
 All those he attacks in his works are those who disfigure or 
 tamper with it. Of these not the least dangerous is the religi- 
 ous hypocrite, the Tartuffe of his next play, of which the first 
 three acts appeared in 1664, and were played before the court 
 at Versailles. Immediately an explosion of devotion followed, 
 to which the king yielded by prohibiting the play, but Moliere 
 finished his work, and read or performed it at the houses of 
 several of the great noblemen of the time. In 1667, on the 
 authority of a verbal promise from the king, and having 
 softened down a few of the bolder passages, Moliere performed 
 the piece under the title of the Imposteur. After the first repre- 
 sentation, M. de Lamoignon, President of the Parliament of 
 Paris, ordered the theatre to be closed. Moliere, however, 
 was not to be beaten ; he sent a second placet to the king, who 
 was then besieging Lille. The king was well-disposed, but the 
 Archbishop of Paris threatened with excommunication anyone 
 who should even read the play. It was not till 1669, when 
 circumstances were more favourable, that Louis XIV granted 
 the desired permission. 
 
 The reason for the storm of indignation roused by the play 
 on its first appearances was the opinion held by his accusers 
 that Moliere had attacked religion itself. They were not 
 altogether wrong, in so far as religion is conceived as a 
 restraining principle. Moliere belonged to the Ibth century 
 in these matters. Like Rabelais and Montaigne, he thought 
 that nature and good sense were sufficient as guides of conduct 
 just the opposite of the original form of Christian morality,
 
 which is resistance to nature. This explains the indignation 
 of the high ecclesiastics of the time, and the naive fright of 
 the Jansenist Baillet, who, in his Jugements des Savants, begins 
 his article on Moliere with the following words: "M. de 
 Molihe est un des plus dangereux ennemis que le siccle ou le monde 
 ait suscites a VEglise de Jesus-Christ ". 
 
 The following is the main outline of the story of Tartuffe : 
 
 nder the cloak of sham devotion. the hypocrite Tartuffe has managed 
 to introduce himself into the house of Orgon, a wealthy Parisian bour- 
 geois, who in his blindness welcomes him as a pattern of virtue, and in 
 spite of the warnings of Cleante, his brother-in-law, goes so far as to 
 entrust him with the management of his house, and entreats his wife 
 and family to conform and submit cheerfully to all his orders ; not only 
 making over his fortune to him, but even offering him his daughter's 
 hand in marriage. In vain does Cle"ante attempt once more to expose 
 the base impostor's hidden baseness and wickedness. Encouraged by 
 his patron's protection, Tartuffe next begins to make love to Orgon's 
 wife ; on being informed of this, Orgon declares that he will only believe 
 what he sees with his own eyes. Hiding one day under the table, he 
 sees for himself Tartuffe's perfidy and wickedness; and on wishing to 
 turn him out of the house, Tartuffe declares that it is he who is master 
 of the house, and that it is for Orgon to quit. Suddenly an officer puts 
 in an appearance, bearing a sealed letter from the king; but, to every 
 one's surprise, the letter is a warrant for the apprehension of Tartuffe 
 instead of Orgon, whose arrest was hourly expected, owing to an incrimi- 
 nating report. 
 
 The great manner of Moliere was continued in the Misan- 
 thrope (1666): Alceste is a cynic, but honourable, and with 
 a real disdain for vice in his misanthropy. Rousseau on this 
 account, and others after him, have treated the play as a vin- 
 dication of insincerity against truth, and as making virtue 
 itself ridiculous on the stage. This charge, however, seems 
 uncandid ; neither the rudeness of Alceste nor the misanthropy 
 from which it springs are to be called virtues. Alceste is not 
 ridiculous because he censures vice, but because he is a maniac. 
 
 The next play, L'Avare (1668), is Moliere's best piece in 
 prose. Here he borrowed from Les Esprits of Larivey, the 
 Belle Plaideuse of Boisrobert, and especially from Plautus' 
 Aulularia, carrying out his saying, "Je prends mon Men oil,
 
 136 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 fe le trouve" if, indeed, the words are authentic and sur- 
 passing them all in his wonderful psychic picture of the Miser 
 in whom avarice destroys all family bonds. 
 A short analysis of the play follows : 
 
 llnfclise, the daughter of the miser Harpagon, is in love with Valere, who 
 one day saved her life, and has introduced himself into the house in the 
 guise of a steward, while Cle"ante, her brother, is enamoured of Marianne, 
 a charming young neighbour. But Harpagon is thinking of marrying 
 Marianne himself, and decides that Cle"ante shall marry "a certain 
 widow", and his daughter M. Anselme, an old gentleman, who is ready 
 to take her without a dowry. Cleante, who is refused by his father the 
 supplies of money necessary for his maintenance, is obliged to borrow 
 at an exorbitant interest from a usurer, who turns out to be his father. 
 Lively scenes ensue now between father and son about the projected 
 marriage, the miser finally turning his son out of doors. In the mean- 
 time La Fleche, Cleante's servant, has stolen a casket full of gold which 
 the miser had hidden in his garden, and will only restore it on certain 
 conditions. Craving to get back his money, Harpagon is obliged to 
 forgo his own marriage, and to consent to the union of Marianne with 
 Cle'ante, and of Kliso with Valere. M. Anselme, who proves to be the 
 father of Valfere and Marianne, promises to give the couples a large 
 dowry, and to pay all expenses ; while the old miser expresses perfect 
 satisfaction with the arrangement, on condition that he is not asked to 
 disburse a penny, and that he will be presented with a new coat for the 
 wedding day. 
 
 As the aim -of this play has sometimes been misunderstood, 
 it is interesting to note what was the opinion expressed by 
 Goethe in his Conversations with Eckermann: "Moliere is so 
 great that one is astonished anew every time one reads him. 
 He is a man by himself his pieces border on tragedy . . . 
 no man has the courage to imitate him. His Miser, where 
 vice destroys all the natural piety between father and son, 
 is especially great, and in a high sense tragic." 
 
 The Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670) and Georges Dandin (1668) 
 have the same object of moral satire; on the one hand, a vain- 
 glorious bourgeois eager to ape the aristocracy, on the other, 
 the pride and meanness of the nobility themselves. In the 
 Femmes Savantes (1672) Moliere returned to the subject of the 
 Frfaieuses Ridicules, but with maturer powers and greater art.
 
 DRAMA 137 
 
 It was the same folly which he attacked under a different 
 form; science was the fashion, and the pedantic ladies of the 
 time were patronesses of physics, astronomy, and anatomy. 
 
 Following up the lesson of the Ecole des Marts (1661) in 
 the Ecole des Femmes (1662), Moliere shows that woman ought 
 to be withdrawn from the inferior intellectual and moral con- 
 dition in which she is kept by the tyrannical egotism of man. 
 
 Moliere is a purely French and Gallic genius. His ancestors 
 are not the ancients, as in the case of Corneille and Racine, 
 but the old authors of fableaux and farces, as well as the 16th- 
 century writers, Rabelais and Regnier. All his comedies, 
 from the early farces to the Misanthrope, represent different 
 stages of the same spirit of independence, so characteristic 
 of the literature of the 16th century. This explains why he 
 cared so little about the famous "Rules of Unity": "Je 
 voiulrais bien savoir", he says in the Fdchcux, "si la grande 
 regie de toutes Us regies riest pas de plaire ". His belief in tho 
 goodness of nature, and his persistent refusal to comply with 
 any restraint or discipline, are also typical of the Gallic genius. 
 
 By his indifference to conventional processes, by his con- 
 tinual and indefatigable production in spite of all obstacles, 
 by the plenitude of his art, unhampered by any of the slow 
 and studied methods of a Boileau or a Pope, he deserves to 
 take rank among such universal geniuses as Homer, Plautus, 
 Shakespeare, and Rabelais. 
 
 The French have claimed for him a superiority over all 
 earlier and later writers of comedy. On the whole, there is 
 no reason to gainsay the universal suffrage of the nation. 
 Shakespeare was a greater genius because he excelled in 
 tragedy as well as comedy, and also because, apart from being 
 a good dramatist, he is one of the greatest poets of the world, 
 while Moliere was hardly a poet at all. The influence of 
 Moliere in comedy has been immense, greater by far than that 
 of any other writer belonging to that particular branch. All 
 succeeding French writers of comedy derive directly from him, 
 neither was his influence less in England (cp. Fielding and 
 Sheridan) in fact, one might almost say that for two hundred
 
 138 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 years Moliere's comedy has determined the form of European 
 comedy. 
 
 Moliere has at all times been taken to task for his style; 
 but it is too often forgotten that his verse as well as his prose 
 are meant to be spoken on the stage, and not to be read. 
 Thus it is not fair to judge his comedies as books; a great 
 many of the so-called faults of his style being due to the fact 
 that such and such a phrase or expression is meant for the ear 
 and not for the eye. 
 
 The typical representative of the literary ideal of the grand 
 sic-cle, or rather of its golden age, is Jean Racine. 
 
 ^ Racine was born on December 22, 1639, at La Ferte" Milon. After 
 'ne had passed through the town school of Beauvais, he was sent to 
 that of Port-Royal. Here he studied hard, especially at Greek, which he 
 knew better than any of his fellow-writers. At nineteen he came to Paris 
 to complete his studies, and an ode in honour of the king's marriage, La 
 Nymphe de la Seine, made his name widely known. In 1661 he went to 
 Uzes in Languedoc, hoping in vain to obtain a benefice from his uncle, 
 the vicar -general of the diocese. He returned to Paris early in 1663, 
 and soon after composed a second ode, which brought him a gratification 
 of 800 livres. In the meantime he had made the acquaintance of 
 Boileau, Moliere, and La Fontaine. His principal efforts were now 
 directed to the stage. Assisted by Moliere, he gained some recognition 
 for his first tragedy, La Thtbaide or Lea Freres Ennemis (1664). This 
 was followed by Alexandre (1665), which after the sixth performance 
 was withdrawn from Molifere's theatre and entrusted to the rival actors 
 at the II6td de Bouryognc. This incident, added to the fact that Racine 
 persuaded Mile du Pare, Moliere's best actress, to leave him, led to an 
 estrangement between the two great poets. In 1666 appeared Nicole's 
 Visionnaires, condemning the dramatist as an " empoisonncur public ", 
 and Racine, believing that he had been personally aimed at, issued a reply 
 in which he mercilessly ridiculed the men who had been his teachers at 
 Port-Royal. During the next ten years Racine produced his dramatic 
 masterpieces. Moved by religious scruples, and mortified at the con- 
 tinual cabals formed against his plays, he turned from dramatic work 
 (1677), made his peace with Port-Royal, and married in June of the 
 same year. It was only in 1689, at the request of Mme de Main tenon, 
 that he wrote Esther, his first biblical play, which was followed in 1691 
 by Athalie, also a scriptural drama. In his later years he lost the king's 
 favour, chiefly on account of his Jansenist tendencies, and died in 1699. 
 
 Apart from his two initiatory efforts, La Thtldide (1663), a
 
 DRAMA 139 
 
 poor imitation of Corneille's manner, and Alexandre (1665), in 
 which he closely followed Quinault, Racine's dramas consist of 
 Andromaque (1667), Les Plaideurs (1688), his only comedy; 
 Britannicus (1669), Berenice (1670), Bajazet (1672), Mithridate 
 (1673), Iphigtnie (1675), Phedre (1677), and the two biblical 
 plays, Esther (1689) and Athalie (1691). 
 
 The series of Racine's masterpieces was opened by Andro- 
 maque (1667), which had as great a success as Corneille's Cid 
 thirty years previously. The plot of Andromaque was taken 
 partly from Book II of the ^Eneid and partly from the 
 Andromaque of Euripides, though some points of importance, 
 mainly with regard to the character of the heroine, have been 
 essentially altered. It marked the advent of a new tragic 
 ideal, the very opposite of that of Corneille, the substitution 
 of human passion, and especially love, for the heroic crises 
 of the will, and for that reason it was but coldly received 
 by the partisans of the older dramatists, who found the hero 
 Pyrrhus "too violent". Racine retorted in the preface that 
 " tons les htros ne sont pas fails pour etre des Celadons "; x while 
 Subligny, an obscure author of the time, took advantage of 
 the occasion to write a parody, La Folle Querdle, which he 
 took to Moliere, who did not refuse it. Since the " plot " of 
 Alexandre he thought he had a right to reprisals. 
 
 Racine's next play, Les Plaideurs (1688), gave a new proof 
 of his brilliant talent for satire, which he had already dis- 
 played in his letters against the Port -Royalists. It is a 
 caricature of lawyers written by Racine to avenge himself for 
 the loss of a law-suit concerning the priory of Epinay. In the 
 preface Racine tells us that he received some help from " his 
 friends". These friends were the little group who were in 
 the habit of meeting at the inn of the Mouton Blanc, namely 
 Boileau, La Fontaine, Furetiere, and a few others. The 
 matter of the Plaideurs may be due to several hands, but the 
 form obviously belongs to Racine alone. The play was coolly 
 received. People insisted, says the author, on examining 
 
 1 It will be remembered that Celadon is the sentimental hero of D'Urf e's 
 
 Astree.
 
 140 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 " mon amusement comme on aurait fail tine tragtdie ", hut the 
 play being performed at court a month later, the king laughed 
 loudly and the courtiers followed suit. 
 
 Till now the enemies of Racine had maintained that he 
 could only depict the passion of love. To prove the contrary 
 he borrowed from Tacitus the subject of his next play, Britan- 
 nicus 1 (1669), a masterly exposition of Nero's adolescence in 
 crime and of his struggle against his ambitious mother Agrip- 
 pina. The first preface to Britannicus, together with that of 
 Berenice (1670), Racine's next tragedy, is especially important 
 as containing the declaration of his poetical system. 
 
 The subject of Btrtnice, Titus sacrificing his love for the 
 Jewish queen to political considerations, had been proposed at 
 the same time to Racine and Corneille by Louis the Four- 
 teenth's sister-in-law, the sprightly Henrietta of England. 
 Bdrdnice is not one of Racine's best plays, but, needless to say, 
 is far superior to that of Corneille, whose powers were fast 
 waning. 
 
 In his next play, Bajazet (1672), Racine brought on the 
 stage an almost contemporary event of Turkish history, related 
 to him by Count de Cezy, French ambassador at the Porte. 
 
 His enemies had this time to lower their flag, yet Mme 
 de Sevigne could not grant that Racine had equalled her 
 darling Corneille, and put down most of the success of Bajazet 
 to the marvellous acting of Mile Champmesl6, a famous 
 actress of the time : " Bajazet est au-dessous (d' Andromaque) . . . 
 Racine fait des comedies (plays) pour la Champmesle"; ce n'est pas 
 pour les siecles a venir. Si jamais il n'est plus jeune, et qdil cesse 
 d'etre amoureux, ce ne sera plus la meme chose. Vive done notre 
 vieil ami Corneille! Pardonnons-lui de me"chants vers en faveur des 
 divines et sublimes beautts qui nous transported." 
 
 The year after (1673) Mithridate appeared. In this play 
 Racine freely availed himself of the historical traditions con- 
 tained in Appian, Plutarch, Florus, and Don Cassius. 
 
 1 Cp. Boileau's allusion in the Epitre vii : 
 
 " Et peut-itre ta plume aux ccnseurs de Pyrrhus 
 Doit les plus nobles trait? dont tu peignis Burrhus ",
 
 DRAMA 141 
 
 It could not be said that he had equalled Corneille on 
 his own ground in Britannicus, but in Mithridate, together 
 with the figure of Monimia, that emblem of feminine grace 
 and delicacy, he exhibits a picture of large political interests 
 in a manner hardly surpassed by his rival. Racine shows 
 his hero Mithridate unhappy in love and in policy, his son 
 Xiphares being his rival in the former and his other son 
 Pharnace in the latter. When Mithridate sees himself be- 
 trayed by Pharnace, who has joined the Romans his mortal 
 enemies, he kills himself, but dies reconciled with Xiphares 
 and Monimia, the princess they both loved. 
 
 This play, which is said to have been the favourite tragedy 
 of Louis XIV and Charles XII of Sweden, was followed by 
 Iphigtnie en Aulide, first performed at Versailles before the 
 court (Aug., 1674), and half a year later at Paris. Racine for 
 the most part imitated the Iphigenia of Euripides; but instead 
 of adopting the ddnotiment of the Attic tragedian, he followed 
 another ancient tradition. In his version Eriphile, jealous of 
 Iphigenia, who gains the love of Achilles, denounces her rival 
 to the Greeks in order to see her sacrificed, but kills herself 
 when it appears that she is herself the victim demanded by 
 the gods. 
 
 It was not till January, 1677, that Racine produced his 
 next tragedy, Phbdre, which he preferred to all his other 
 plays : " Je suis pour Phedre et M. le prince de Condd est pour 
 Athalie ", he replied to Boileau, when he asked him which of 
 his tragedies he liked best. The plot was again borrowed 
 from one of Euripides' plays, Hippolytus, although with impor- 
 tant changes in the action and characters, partly suggested 
 by the Phaedra of Seneca: 
 
 \f Phedra, the wife of King Theseus, is in love with her step-son Hippo- 
 lytus. In her despair she resolves to die, but learning that her husband 
 has died, she declares her love to Hippolytus, who repels her advances. 
 Suddenly the report spreads that Theseus is safe and on his way home. 
 Phedra to exonerate herself gets her nurse CEnone to persuade the king, 
 who has now arrived, that Hippolytus has wished to obtrude his love 
 upon her. Theseus in his wrath banishes his son, and calls upon 
 Neptune to punish him. The suicide of CEnone, whom Phedra has
 
 142 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 cursed in her remorse for her criminal suggestion, opens the king's eyes, 
 but it is too late. Hippolytus has been dragged to death by his runaway 
 steeds. Phedra takes poison, and as she dies confesses the crime of which 
 (Enone was the instigator. 
 
 If not the most perfect of Eacine's tragedies, Phedre is 
 generally acknowledged to be the most powerful. Never 
 before had such a marvellous representation of human agony 
 been exhibited on the French stage, but tragic passion repre- 
 sented in all its force and horror shocked the precieux, fol- 
 lowers of Quinault and of the heroic-gallant novel. The 
 Duchess de Bouillon and her brother the Due de Nevers 
 made up their minds that the play of Racine should fail; and 
 ordered a rival play on the same subject from Pradon, a feeble 
 playwright of the time, and by engaging the front seats in 
 the two theatres for six successive nights, and leaving them 
 empty in the one where Racine's play was being performed, 
 made it appear as if it was a failure. Immediately a violent 
 literary quarrel followed, and on both sides insulting sonnets 
 were exchanged. The Due de Nevers threatened to horse- 
 whip Racine, and Boileau who had sided with him, and would 
 probably have carried out his threat had not the Prince de 
 Cond^ intervened and put a stop to the dispute. 
 
 The cabal had been baffled, but Racine, who was in the 
 highest degree sensitive, irritated by the endless intrigues 
 of his adversaries, and troubled in his conscience by religious 
 scruples, determined to quit the stage. The Jansenists were 
 regaining their ascendency over him, and already in the pre- 
 face of Phkdre we notice that he is very eager "de rdconcilier 
 la tragtdie avec quantity de personnes cdUbres par lew piett el par 
 leur doctrine, qui I'ont condamnde dans ces derniers temps", a direct 
 allusion to his old master's words that playwrights were. 
 " public poisoners ". 
 
 Racine did not return to dramatic work till twelve years 
 after (1689), when he accepted an invitation from Mme de 
 Maintenon to compose a biblical drama for her pupils, the 
 young ladies of the educational establishment of St. Cyr. 
 The result was the play of Estlier 0689). So great was the
 
 DRAMA 143 
 
 success that the same lady asked the poet for a second drama 
 of a religious character, and he produced what is generally 
 recognized as his most perfect play, Athalie (1691), a unique 
 blending of grace and majesty. 
 
 He took the plot from 2 Chron. xxii and xxiii, and called 
 the play Athalie, partly because Athaliah is the central figure, 
 partly because her name appeared to him better known than 
 that of Joas: 
 
 }t Athaliah has caused her grandchildren to be murdered in order to 
 reign in their stead, and introduce the cult of idols. One of these 
 children, Joas, has escaped, and been brought up in the temple in the 
 fear of God by the high-priest, Joad, and his wife, Josabet. Athaliah 
 comes to the temple, followed by Mathan, who has renounced his true 
 God to become a priest of Baal. She relates to Mathan and Abner, one 
 of the officers of the King of Judah, a terrible dream, in which a child 
 stabbed her to the heart. She recognizes -that child in the person of 
 young Joas ; orders him to be led into her presence, and requests that 
 the boy shall be delivered up to her. Joad refuses, and Athaliah leaves 
 the temple with threats. The high-priest sees that no time must be lost, 
 and crowns Joas king. Presently Abner arrives with an order from 
 Athaliah to Joad to yield up the child, and also a treasure concealed in 
 the temple. He feigns to yield, and lures Athaliah into the temple, 
 where she falls a victim to the Levites armed against her by the high- 
 priest. 
 
 Racine is the creator of character-tragedy, of tragedy true 
 to life, as opposed to the tragedy of Corneille, whose inventive 
 powers were applied to the creating of situations to which he 
 afterwards accommodated his characters. A consequence of 
 this principle is that the exceptional, extraordinary, and 
 'complex" action of Corneille's plays is replaced by "une 
 action simple, ch'arg^e de peu de matikre ", turning upon everyday 
 experience. Compare, e.g., Corneille's Cinna, a conspirator 
 when the curtain rises, and at the end of the play the minister 
 of the prince he wished to murder, with Mithridate, a father 
 the rival of his son; or Rodrigue, obliged by his honour to 
 kill his mistress's father, and the same day betrothed to the 
 daughter of his victim, with the subject of Britannicus, the 
 struggle between a son and his ambitious mother. Another 
 consequence of Racine's poetical system was the unprecedented
 
 144 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 importance given in his tragedies to the passion of love, as 
 being the most general of all, the most natural, and perhaps 
 the most tragic, and finally as being the passion which, while 
 it remains identical in its essence, best displays the diversity 
 of human characters. Here again Racine was doing the oppo- 
 site of what Corneille recommended and actually did. 
 
 Racine has been blamed for having depicted under ancient 
 names courtiers of the time of Louis XIV, but no drama can 
 escape the reflection of contemporary manners, however careful 
 the author may be of local colour a consideration which, like 
 historical accuracy, only concerned him in so far as they 
 were needful with his courtly audience for verisimilitude. 
 Local colour at best is only an outward ornament, and may 
 help the writer to add poetry to truth; but the object of the 
 drama is to depict human passions, and not to restore forgotten 
 epochs of civilization by an effort of erudition. Racine's 
 characters only belong to antiquity by name; outwardly they 
 are noblemen of the time when one man was the state, and 
 inwardly real and lasting types of humanity. 
 
 Although it cannot be denied that occasionally his heroes 
 4o talk the jargon of gallantry a la Quinault, it is false to 
 make a prfcieux of Racine. His contemporaries on more than 
 one occasion found that he invested his characters with too 
 much inborn ferocity, and it was his abhorrence of his own 
 fictions which was the inward cause of his conversion. If any 
 fault can be found with his characters it is that they sometimes 
 tend in their generality to become psychological abstractions 
 rather than real living beings. 
 
 His style, except as regards the invariable elegance of 
 its form, has been described as " bordering on prose ". This 
 simplicity makes it an incomparable vehicle for psychological 
 analysis: 
 
 "faimaisjusqu'd, ces pleurs que je faisais coulcr" (Brit.). 
 " Prends soin d'ette, ma haine a besoin de sa vie " (Baj.), &c. 
 
 This mode of writing is exactly the contrary of that of the 
 yyrtdcux, who express very simple things in very complicated 
 language.
 
 PROSE 145 
 
 Of the contemporaries of Racine the only one who is not entirely 
 forgotten is Thomas Corneille (1625-1709), a younger brother of the 
 grand Corneille. He began by writing comedies mostly imitated from 
 Spanish models, and in 1656 produced Timocrate, an insipid tragedy in 
 the manner of Quinault, the greatest dramatic success of the century. 
 Later he imitated Racine in Ariane (1672), and his brother in the Comte 
 d' Essex (1678). 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PROSE 
 
 In this period prose developed considerably in the direction 
 of memoirs. Of these the most remarkable are the Mdmoires 
 (1662-1679) of Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz (1613-1679), 
 in which he relates the events of the Fronde l and the part he 
 played in it. 
 
 Too passionate to be impartial, his Memoirs nevertheless 
 present a living picture of his time as a whole. They abound 
 in portraits, which were then coming into fashion, and in 
 political considerations. 
 
 The same period is also covered by the Mtmoires of the Due 
 de la Rochefoucauld, the author of the more famous Maximes. 
 
 The life of Francois de la Rochefoucauld, Prince de Mar- 
 sillac (1613-1680), naturally falls into two parts: one active 
 and adventurous, when he threw himself ardently into the 
 struggle of the Fronde; the other of bitter disillusion amid 
 a chosen circle of devoted friends, of whom not the least 
 important was Mme de Sable, a later prfcieuse, at whose salon 
 he was an assiduous visitor. It was there, with the help of 
 the hostess and a few of her friends, that he elaborated those 
 maxims which are the quintessence of preciosity. Their value 
 must not be overrated in spite of the wonderful conciseness 
 
 1 Fronde is the name (taken from the sling used by the boys of Paris in 
 their mimic fights) given to certain civil dissensions from 1648 to 1654. 
 The Old Fronde was a protest of the people against increasing taxation 
 and the usurpation of their parliamentary rights. The New Fronde, which 
 developed from it, was a struggle between the discontented nobility and 
 the prime minister, Mazarin whom they wished to overthrow. 
 
 ( M 043 ) K.
 
 146 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 and polish of their lapidarian style. The central idea that 
 runs through them all is, briefly, that every virtue is the 
 product of vices, while these are resolvable into selfishness, 
 " in which all virtues are lost like rivers in the sea ". A few 
 quotations will bring this out more clearly : 
 
 " We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others." 
 
 " In the adversity of our friends we always find something which does 
 not displease us." 
 
 "People sometimes think that we hate flattery, but we hate only the 
 way they flatter." 
 
 " Our passions are the only orators that always convince." 
 
 Such are the moral comments on life of one who was unable 
 to gaze on the world with an impartial mind. Although it is 
 impossible to deny the partial truth of La Rochefoucauld's 
 charges, we cannot admit that his maxims are universal; they 
 are purely the reflection of his mood, after a bitter experience 
 of life, or, at most, of the society with which he was conversant. 
 On that account they were very popular with his contempor- 
 aries; Boileau, La Fontaine, and especially Mme de Sevigne", 
 all admired them. 
 
 The character and influence of La Eochefoucauld's style has 
 been happily characterized by Voltaire in the following pas- 
 sage: "Un des outrages qui contribuerent le plus a former le gout 
 de la nation et a lui donner un esprit de justesse et de precision est 
 le Lime des Maximes de Francois, Due de La Rochefoucauld. On 
 lut avec avidite ce petit recueil. II accoutuma a penser et a ren- 
 fermer des idees dans un tour vif, precis et de"licat." 
 
 Epistolary art also finds many a notable representative in 
 this age; in fact, it may be said to have reached perfection in 
 the letters of Mme de Sevigne (1627-1696). 
 
 Being left a widow at the age of twenty-five, she devoted 
 herself entirely to the education of her two children, especially 
 of her daughter; and when the latter, who had meanwhile 
 married M. de Grignan, left her to follow her husband into 
 Provence, of which he had been appointed governor, she began 
 with her daughter that famous correspondence which continued 
 till her death, and which has earned for her so high a place
 
 PROSE 147 
 
 in the literature of her country. Her letters are not rhetorical 
 studied exercises decked out for the public like those of Balzac, 
 but a delightfully natural and graceful exchange of thought, 
 in which she allows her imagination to run away with her pen, 
 but is never false to her solid understanding and strong good 
 sense. Mme de Sevigne's twenty-five years of letters to her 
 daughter are also valuable as revealing in detail the court and 
 fashionable world in the reign of Louis XIV. 
 
 A letter-writer also, and a faithful friend of Mme de Se- 
 vigne, was Marie Madeleine, Comtesse de la Fayette (1634- 
 1693), the founder of the modern novel. Her first work of 
 fiction, Zayde (1670), already marks an advance on the long- 
 winded and insipid productions of Mile de Scude"ry, while 
 La Princesse de Clkves (1677), her masterpiece, represents real 
 and natural sentiments in precise language. It is the starting- 
 point of the modern psychological novel. 
 
 The realistic novel was continued by Antoine Furetiere 
 (1620-1688), also the compiler of a Dictionnaire (1690) of the 
 French language, for which he was unjustly expelled from the 
 Academy as a plagiarist. His Boman Bourgeois (1666) is a 
 pessimistic and satirical narrative of middle-class life in Paris, 
 with a second part directly aimed at Sorel, his forerunner in 
 this branch of literature. 
 
 At no period of French literature has pulpit oratory been 
 represented by a series of more famous names. The greatest 
 pulpit orator of all times, and perhaps the greatest French 
 prose writer of the 17th century, was Jacques Benigne Bossuet. 
 
 Bossuet was born at Dijon on the 27th of Sept., 1627. At an early 
 age he was sent to the school of his native town; and when fifteen 
 years of age he proceeded to Paris, where he finished his studies. He 
 was ordained in 1652, and placed at the head of a mission sent to 
 Lorraine to convert the Protestants of that province. Here it was that 
 he composed his first polemical work against the Protestants. In 1659 
 he was summoned to Paris, where he preached for ten years with im- 
 mense success. In 1669 he pronounced the funeral oration of Henrietta 
 of France, being rewarded with the bishopric of Condom, and soon 
 afterwards (1670) was appointed tutor to the Dauphin, the king's son. 
 From that date he devoted himself entirely to the education of his royal
 
 148 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 pupil, and with that object wrote some of his most important works. 
 The remaining portion of his life, save that he delivered a few funeral 
 discourses between 1683 and 1687, was wholly devoted to controversial 
 works in defence of the Catholic faith. Despite this he did not neglect 
 the duties of his diocese; "faisant honte", says Saint-Simon, "dans une 
 vieillesse si avancte, A I'dge moyen et robuste des Mques et des docteurs 
 les plus instruits et les plus laborieux ". He died on the 12th of April, 
 1704. 
 
 The chief works of Bossuet may be classed under the follow- 
 ing headings : 
 
 (a) Works of Edification and Piety, which include sermons, 
 panegyrics, and funeral orations; the Elevations sur les Mys- 
 teres and the Meditations sur I'Evangile. Of these only six of the 
 funeral orations and one sermon appeared during his lifetime. 
 
 (6) The works composed in connection with the education of 
 the Dauphin, which are : the Discours sur I'Histoire Universelle 
 (1681), the Politique tirde des Propres Paroles de V Venture Sainte, 
 the Trait^ de la Connaissance de Dieu et de soi-meme, the Abrtge 
 de I'Histoire de France, which only appeared in 1747. 
 
 (c) The Controversial Works, which include: (1) The works 
 against the Protestants, the principal being L'Exposition de la 
 Doctrine de I'Eglise Catholique (1671), and L'Histoire des Variations 
 des Eglises Protestantes (1688). (2) The works relating to the 
 "Quietists" or "new mystics", of which the most important 
 is the Relation du Quittisme (1698). (3) The works written 
 against Eichard Simon, the first man to apply scientific learn- 
 ing to the explanation of the Scriptures. These include 
 the Defense de la Tradition et des Saints Peres, which only 
 appeared in 1753. 
 
 (d) Miscellaneous writings, of which the principal are the 
 Maximes sur la Come'die (1693). 
 
 We shall consider his most important works in the order 
 named. 
 
 Bossuet pronounced some famous funeral orations, of which 
 the best are those on Henrietta, queen of England (1669); on 
 her daughter Henrietta of England, duchess of Orleans (1670); 
 on Marie-Therese of Austria, queen of France (1683); on 
 Anne de Gonzague de Cleves, princesse Palatine, in which the
 
 PROSE 149 
 
 libertins or freethinkers of the time are mercilessly attacked 
 (1685); on Michel le Tellier, chancellor of France (1686), in 
 which the revocation of the Edict of Nantes is glorified; and 
 on Louis de Bourbon, prince de Conde (1687). 
 
 Before Bossuet, the chief aim in the funeral discourse had 
 been to please the audience much more than to instruct and 
 edify. We know what ideas the preachers who preceded 
 him had on that subject, from one of the most famous of 
 them under Louis XIII, the eloquent Francois Ogier. He 
 acknowledges that funeral orations are merely meant for osten- 
 tation, diversion, and pomp; that since the pleasure is for the 
 rich, "exquisite viands" are required. A funeral oration is 
 like a tournament or a review, and the orator must display 
 all his art and "all the floAvers of his eloquence". Such was 
 the ideal before Bossuet. He changed it completely by apply- 
 ing to the funeral oration the same method as to his sermons 
 and panegyrics; instead of considering life, he only considered 
 death, which furnishes the lesson and acts as a foundation 
 for it. 
 
 Bossuet has sometimes been accused of flattery and insin- 
 cerity in his orations. No doubt he respected all the conven- 
 tionalities which the audience and the occasion imposed upon 
 him, but at the same time he spoke or hinted at all the truth 
 which he was capable of conceiving. His views on the revo- 
 cation of the Edict of Nantes, and on the revolution in England, 
 were those of all his contemporaries in France. He said what 
 he thought, and these events are judged in the same way in 
 his other writings. 
 
 Of the works composed for the Dauphin the most important 
 is the Discours sur I'Histoire Universelle (1681), which is made 
 up of three parts: Les fipoques, La Suite de la Religion, and 
 Les Empires. The first part is a rapid and masterly resume" 
 of the world's history from the creation to the reign of 
 Charlemagne. In the third part Bossuet follows the fate of 
 the large empires of antiquity, showing that human affairs in 
 general depend on providence, but at the same time attributing 
 a large part in them to will and genius: "A tout prendre, il en
 
 150 SEVENTEENTH CENTURT- -SECOND PERIOD 
 
 arrive a pen prh comme dans le jeu, oil le plus habik Vemporte & 
 la longue". In the second part we have a kind of apology of 
 religion, or rather of the Catholic religion, the truth of which 
 is proved, according to Bossuet, by the perpetuity of the same 
 tradition. It contains the essence, as it were, of the great 
 prelate's thought. 
 
 In the Politique tirde de I'Ecriture Sainte he teaches that 
 kings are absolute, but nevertheless bound to respect the rights 
 and laws of the nation, and also that they are answerable to 
 God for their actions. Lover of tradition as he was, he prefers 
 a monarchy to any other form of government, yet he admits 
 other forms, provided they are enduring and likely to afford 
 protection to the subjects: " Je respecte dans chaque peuple, le 
 gouvernement que V usage y a consacrd et que V experience fait trouver 
 le mcilleur". 
 
 Bossuet's polemic against Protestantism is best represented 
 by the Histoire des Variations des Eglises Protestantes (1688), a 
 complement of the second part of the Discours and of the Expo- 
 sition de la Foi Catholique (1671). The title sufficiently indi- 
 cates, that the author's aim was to prove that the Protestant 
 Church did not possess the visibility, the infallibility, or the 
 immutability of the Catholic Church, and that therefore it 
 must be false. In order to drive home his argument he ex- 
 hibits Luther, Zwingle, Calvin, Wicliffe, Huss, and their differ- 
 ent doctrines in a series of striking pictures, couched in sober 
 and vigorous language. The fifteenth and last book terminates 
 with a prayer that God may bring back these rebel sects to 
 the flock of the faithful, although Bossuet is careful not to 
 explain why they left it. 
 
 The Maximes sur la Come"die (1693) are the development of 
 a letter that Bossuet had addressed to Father Caffaro, an 
 ecclesiast who, in a dissertation prefixed to the comedies of 
 Boursault, had declared that a good Christian could without 
 any scruples visit the theatre. He refutes this view in this 
 little masterpiece of serried argument and passionate eloquence, 
 which will always remain famous for the cruel anathema of 
 Moliere: " La posterity saura peut-etre la Jin de ce potte comddien,
 
 PROSE 151 
 
 qui en jouant son Malade Imaginaire ou son Medecin par Force, 
 re<*ut la derniere alteinte de la maladie dont il mourut pen d'Jieures 
 apres, et passa des plaisanteries du theatre, parmi lesquelles il rendit 
 presque le dernier soupir, au tribunal de Celui qui dit: ' Mallieur a 
 vous qui riez, car wus plenrerez 1 ". 
 
 His severity might lead us to believe that he inclined to 
 Jansenism, but this was not the case, although he is equally 
 distant from the casuists and Jesuits : " Deux maladies danger- 
 euses out afflige" de nos jours le corps de Vfiglise; il a pris a qudques 
 docteurs une malheureuse et inhumaine complaisance, une pitie 1 
 meurtricre, qui leur a fait porter des coussins sous les coudes des 
 pdcJieurs. . . . Quelques autres, non mains extremes, ont tenu les 
 consciences captives sous des rigueurs tres injustes; il ne peuvent 
 supporter aucune faiblesse; Us trainent toujours I'enfer apres eux et 
 ne fulminent que des anathcmes." 
 
 Pompousness has become the traditional term to apply to 
 Bossuet's style, but^s a matter of fact, with the exception of 
 a few passages in the funeral orations, it is simple and rapid, 
 and always in perfect conformity with his thought. 
 
 The Jesuit Louis de Bourdaloue (1632-1704) was preferred 
 in his time to Bossuet as a pulpit orator. The only event of 
 importance in his life was a mission undertaken after the 
 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, with the purpose of con- 
 verting the Protestants of the south of France to the Catholic 
 Church. His whole life was devoted to preaching, confessing, 
 and consoling. 
 
 His prodigious success as a preacher has been attributed to 
 the allusions his sermons may contain, but the primary cause 
 of his popularity lay in the sustained clearness and simplicity 
 of his style, which, while disclaiming all the artifices of 
 rhetoric, occasionally borders on dryness. So severe and out- 
 spoken was the moral teaching of the Jesuit that he may well 
 be called " the living refutation of the Provinciales ". Besides 
 his numerous sermons, he pronounced two funeral orations. 
 
 Around Bossuet and Bourdaloue a group of sacred orators 
 gather, but all, with the exception of Fenelon, are inferior. 
 Contemporary testimony speaks of the grace and seductive
 
 152 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 tenderness of Fenelon's homilies, which were improvised and 
 never set down on paper. 
 
 Esprit Fleshier (1632-1710), the fashionable bishop of Nlmes, and 
 the haunter of the salons, introduced the mannered prettiness of tho 
 pricieux into his sermons and funeral orations, of which the best is 
 that on the famous general Turenne. 
 
 Among the Protestants, Jacques Saurin (1677-1730), who preached 
 in England and Holland, took Bossuet as his model. His language is 
 energetic, but often negligent in style. 
 
 THIRD PERIOD (1689-1715) 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 POETRY 
 
 In this period of transition poetry practically ceases; versi- 
 fiers are plentiful, but real poets are conspicuous by their 
 absence. Literature develops in other directions, affording 
 larger scope for that critical and scientific spirit which was to 
 come to full bloom in the following century. 
 
 With the exception of Eegnard, the same may be said of 
 the drama. 
 
 One only of the tragic poets of this period deserves even a 
 passing notice. 
 
 Antoine de la Fosse (1653-1708) composed one tolerable play, Mardius 
 (1698), imitated from the Venice Preserved of the English dramatist 
 Thomas Otway, who in turn had taken his plot from the Conjuration 
 des Espagnds contre Venise (1674) of the abbot of St. Real. 
 
 Moliere certainly found more talented followers than Cor- 
 neille or Racine. The most important of these is Francois 
 Eegnard (1655-1709), who, in his autobiographical romance
 
 PROSE 153 
 
 La Provenqale, describes the vicissitudes of his early adven- 
 turous life. There we read of his capture and sale as a slave 
 by Algerian corsairs, his bondage in Constantinople, and his 
 ransom. After wanderings which extended even to Lapland, 
 he found his vocation in the success of Le Divorce at the 
 Theatre Italien in 1688. From 1696 to 1708 he continued to 
 issue comedies, of which the best are: Le Joueur (1696), Le 
 Distrait (1697), and Le Legataire Universel (1708). 
 
 Next to Moliere, Regnard is the greatest comic writer of 
 his age. He lacks the depth of characterization of his illus- 
 trious predecessor, but makes up largely for this by his inex- 
 haustible wit and gaiety. Someone telling old Boileau one 
 day that Regnard was mediocre, he answered: "// n'est pas 
 mddiocrement gai ". 
 
 His style is the perfection of comic versification. 
 
 Florent Carton Dancourt (1661-1725) composed forty-seven comedies, 
 in prose, exhibiting the world of finance (La Fcmme d' Intrigues, 1692, 
 and Les Agioteurs, 1710), or the world of shady morality (Le Chevalier 
 A la Mode, 1687, and Les Bourgeoises a la Mode, 1692). His plays are 
 merely topical, but witty, and valuable from a sociological point of view. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PROSE 
 
 The life of Jean de la Bruyere, born in Paris, 1645, is 
 most uneventful. After having been chosen to aid Bossuet 
 in educating the Dauphin, he became tutor to the Due de 
 Bourbon, grandson of the great Conde, and received a pension 
 from the Condes until his death, in 1696. 
 
 Apart from the unimportant Dialogues sur le Qutitisme (1699), 
 his only work is the Caractcres ou ks Moeurs de ce Siecle (1688), 
 appended to a translation of the Characters of the Greek writer 
 Theophrastus. 
 
 The book was revised and enlarged till it reached its definite 
 form, which consists of sixteen chapters dealing with literature, 
 personal merit, women, the heart, society and conversation,
 
 154 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY THIRD PERIOD 
 
 the gifts of fortune, the town, the court, men in high stations, 
 the king and commonwealth, man, judgments, fashion, customs, 
 the pulpit, and in a closing chapter with the esprits forts or 
 freethinkers of his time. The Caractcres consists of maxims and 
 portraits, the latter increasing rapidly as the editions were 
 multiplied, in which the manners and certain individualized 
 types of his time are depicted: "I give back to the public 
 what it has lent me ", said La Bruyere. He was taken at his 
 word, and forthwith the public appeared, key in hand. He 
 protested, but it must be acknowledged that in the majority 
 of cases the keys fitted; Cydias, the wit, is none other than 
 Fontenelle; Emile masks his protector Conde"; Mme de 
 Montespan sat for Irene; and Theodecte is easily identified 
 as Mme de Maintenon's brother. 
 
 La Bruyere's insight into character is shrewd rather than 
 profound; he notes every outward betrayal or indication of 
 the heart with infinite minuteness, but he rarely succeeds in 
 divining its hidden mechanism. He was above all things a 
 stylist, replacing the classical style by a short and broken 
 style, which at its best recalls Voltaire, to whose judgment 
 nothing need be added: "Un style rapide, concis, nerveux, des 
 expressions pittoresques, un usage tout nouveau de la langue, mais 
 qui n'en blesse point les regies ". 
 
 A herald of the sceptical infidelity and varied learning of 
 the "philosophers" of the 18th century was the Dictionnaire 
 Hislorique et Critique (1697) of Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), 
 professor of philosophy at Rotterdam, of whom Diderot could 
 say : " Nous avons eu des contemporains des le regne de Louis XIV". 
 
 The dictionary was originally intended to be one of pure 
 erudition, having for its sole objects to trace and rectify the 
 errors in other dictionaries of the same class; but his searching 
 study of systems of philosophy and of history had engendered 
 in Bayle a sort of scepticism, and thus his work became the 
 arsenal of rationalism. 
 
 It consists of articles on famous men representing mytho- 
 logy, ancient history, and geography, the history of religions, 
 philosophy, and European history and literature during the
 
 PROSE 155 
 
 16th and 17th centuries, with copious notes not infrequently 
 taking up three-quarters of the page, and containing the most 
 interesting and original matter. It should be noted that 
 Bayle was completely ignorant of the sciences, and that they 
 find no place in his book. In this point he differs essentially 
 from his successors, who found in them a consolation for all 
 they had helped to overthrow. 
 
 Bayle's doctrine aims at shaking the very foundation of 
 religion by dint of confronting its teaching with that of reason, 
 and by showing that morality can stand without its aid. But 
 he did not attack his adversaries or put forth his ideas openly; 
 his method is one of insinuation, practised generally by a 
 system of references to other articles or notes, which contain 
 the absolute negation of the question he has just been dis- 
 cussing with apparent impartiality, or left undecided. 
 
 The leading idea of the eighteenth century, the idea of 
 human progress, first emerged in the famous Quarrel of the 
 Ancients and Moderns, which had its origin in an academic 
 disputation as to whether Christian heroism and Christian faith 
 afforded more suitable material for a Christian poet than the 
 history and fables of antiquity. As early as 1657 the poet Des- 
 marets de Saint-Sorlin had composed the epic of Clovis, in which 
 none of the gods of classical mythology took any part, and all 
 the supernatural work was accomplished by the Deity and the 
 angels and devils of the Christian religion. Desmarets, con- 
 scious that he was going against all hitherto accepted canons, 
 attempted to defend his rejection of the gods of mythology 
 in a number of prefaces and treatises (1670-1674), in which 
 he did not scruple to deal the ancients more than one blow. 
 He thus tended to generalize the question, and by putting the 
 whole of antiquity on trial, he became the chief upholder of 
 the Moderns in the early days of the famous quarrel. On the 
 other side stood Boileau, who replied in the third canto of the 
 Art Pottique (1674) that the mysteries of the Christian religion 
 could not be decked out with the ornaments of poetry without 
 loss to that simple faith and reverence with which they should 
 be regarded.
 
 156 SKVKNTEENTH CENTURY THIRD PERIOD 
 
 Shortly before his death Desmarets, addressing the following 
 lines to his friend Charles Perrault (1628-1703), bequeathed 
 his cause to him : 
 
 " Viena dtfendre Perrault, la France qvi t'appelle, 
 Viens combattre avec moi cette troupe rcbclle, 
 Ce ramas d'ennemis qui, faibles et mutins, 
 Preferent a nos chants les ouvrages latins ", &c. 
 
 For some time only slight skirmishes took place. Finally, 
 in 1687 the battle opened in earnest, and the quarrel assumed 
 a new importance with Charles Perrault's poem on the Siecle 
 de Louis le Grand, which he read before the Academy, and in 
 which, partly to flatter the king, the modern French poets 
 were placed above the ancients. After the affirmation of his 
 thesis Perrault attempted to prove the truth of it in the 
 famous Parallcles des Anciens et des Modernes (1688-1697), ad- 
 ducing six principal reasons for the superiority of the moderns : 
 The fact that they came later; the greater exactness of their 
 psychology; their more perfect method of reasoning; the art 
 of printing; Christianity; and, finally, the protection of the 
 king. 
 
 From the first Fontenelle had sided with Perrault, and 
 backed him up with his Digression sur les Anciens et Modernes 
 (1688). 
 
 The partisans of antiquity protested, La Fontaine in the 
 fipilre a Huet, La Bruyere in the Caracteres, and Boileau in 
 the Reflexions sur Longin (1694), which, in the midst of much 
 worthless matter, contains the most profound reason for the 
 veneration in which the ancients are held: " L'antiquite" d'un 
 e'crivain n'est pas un litre certain de son mdrite, mais I 'antique et 
 constante admiration qu'on a toujours cue pour ses outrages est une 
 preuve sure et infaillible qu'on les doit admirer ". But at bottom 
 Boileau was in a false position; he was a modern himself, and 
 felt the impossibility of maintaining the inferiority of the 
 moderns. He finally became reconciled to Perrault, and 
 accepted his thesis, though in a modified form, in the famous 
 letter of 1700. There Boileau grants that the century of
 
 PROSE 157 
 
 Louis XIV, the grand siecle, is equal not to the whole of anti- 
 quity, but to any single century of antiquity. 
 
 The quarrel, which seemed appeased, broke out again at 
 the beginning of the 18th century, between Houdar de la 
 Motte, who had refashioned the Iliad to suit the taste of his 
 time (1714), and the learned Mme Dacier, furious at this 
 travestying of Homer. 
 
 Respect for religion and antiquity connect the great divine 
 Francois de la Motte Fenelon with the 17th century, but his 
 political opinions, his intellectual curiosity, and the sensitive- 
 ness of his temperament betray the immediate precursor of 
 the 18th century. 
 
 Fenelon. was born August 6, 1651, at the castle of Fenelon, in Peri- 
 gord. At twenty he entered the seminary of St. Sulpice in Paris, being 
 admitted to holy orders in 1675. Three years later he was appointed 
 director of an institution for women converts to the Catholic faith, and 
 soon after placed at the head of a mission sent to preach among the 
 Protestants of Poitou. In 1689 he was appointed tutor to the young 
 Duke of Burgundy, grandson of Louis XIV, a position which he held 
 for the next six years. Fenelon was a born teacher, who combined the 
 manners of a grand seigneur with all the refinements of an accomplished 
 churchman; gentle, but also hard and inflexible if the case required it. 
 This subtlety and complexity of character explains the ascendency he 
 exercised over his royal pupil, and all those who came in contact with 
 him: "II fattait faire effort pour cesser de le regarder", says Saint- 
 Simon. In 1695 the king, displeased with his views on religion and 
 politics, presented him with the bishopric of Cambrai, more to get rid of 
 him than to reward him. From 1695 to 1699 he was engaged with 
 Bossuet, his former friend and patron, in the unhappy quarrel concerning 
 the "Quietists". After 1699 he lived almost exclusively for his flock; 
 but in the revived Jansenist dispute he engaged earnestly on the side of 
 orthodoxy. He died in 1715. 
 
 The varied character of Fenelon's works is a proof of the 
 originality and flexibility of his intellect. They include 
 
 (a) Theological and controversial works, of which the chief 
 are: the TraiU de V Existence de Dieu (1712), and the Maximes 
 des Saints (1697). (b) Educational and moral works: the TraiU 
 de V Education des Filles (written 1681, published 1687), besides 
 the Fables, the Dialogue des Morts, and the Aventures de T616- 
 maque (1699), all composed for his pupil, (c) Political writings,
 
 158 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY THIRD PERIOD 
 
 of which the most notable are: the Plans de Gouvernement, and 
 the Direction pour la, Conscience d'un Roi (1711). (d) Critical 
 works: the Dialogues sur V Eloquence (1718), and the Lettre & 
 I'Acadfmie (1716). 
 
 Of Fenelon's polemical works the most noteworthy are the 
 Maximes des Saints, which led to his dispute with Bossuet. 
 
 In 1687 Fenelon had made the acquaintance of Madame 
 Guyon, the celebrated Quietist mystic ; and, convinced of the 
 unfairness of the outcry which made her responsible for the 
 grosser mysticism of other sects, he advised her to submit her 
 book on that subject to Bossuet. In the condemnation of 
 Madame Guyon's book by Bossuet, Fenelon acquiesced; but 
 when he received the manuscript of that prelate's Instruction 
 sur les Etats d'Oraison, in which the points at issue were more 
 fully set forth, he suddenly changed front and forestalled 
 Bossuet by the publication of the Maximes des Saints, in which 
 he defended certain doctrines of the Quietists, a sect whose 
 doctrine inculcated complete abnegation of the will, and its 
 replacement by absolute surrender to the Divine love. 
 
 Bossuet was not slow to perceive the dangerous tendencies 
 of a doctrine which in theology leads to indifference towards 
 dogma by rendering the priest superfluous as an intermediary 
 between God and man, and in morals abandons the mind and 
 body to the instincts. Hence the fury and bitterness of his 
 attack, for according to him the whole Church was at stake. 
 He replied to Fenelon in his Relation sur le Quie"tisme (1698), 
 caused his book to be censured by the French bishops, and 
 won the king over to his side. Finally the matter was referred 
 to the Pope, who issued a brief in which twenty-three propo- 
 sitions chosen from the Maximes des Saints were condemned, 
 and Fe'nelon submitted immediately. 
 
 The Traite" de I' Education des Filles (1681), written for the 
 daughters of the Duchess of Beauvillier, makes of Fe'nelon one 
 of the founders of feminine education. It rests on two general 
 principles : the role which woman will be called upon to play 
 in the family and in the world, and on the development of 
 natural gifts.
 
 PROSE 159 
 
 The leading idea of the Dialogue des Marts (1699) is that 
 politics must be guided by moral principles. 
 
 The Aventures de Tdemaque (1699) is a pedagogic romance, 
 combining moral teaching with instruction in Greek mythology 
 and antiquities. It narrates the wanderings of Telemachus in 
 search of his father Ulysses, under the guardianship of Mentor. 
 Fenelon's pupil, for whom it was written, is advised to avoid 
 an excessive love of pleasure, war, and pomp, the very faults 
 of the French monarchy at the end of Louis XIV's reign. 
 The king perceived that the satire was meant for him, and 
 hence his anger when T&dmaque was published surreptitiously 
 in 1699. The politics of TeUmaque are more or less Utopian, 
 and meant to be so. Fenelon's ideas, ideas which he thought 
 realizable, are to be found in the Plans de Gouvernement a 
 limited monarchy in which the king can only demand of his 
 subjects what is necessary for the good of the state, and in 
 which power would be shared with a powerful and Christian 
 nobility mediating between the crown and the people. Here, 
 too, he was having a quiet hit at Louis XIV, under whose reign 
 the French monarchy had become despotic, whereas Fenelon's 
 ideal form of government is aristocratic and parliamentarian. 
 
 The Lettre a I'Acaddmie (1716) deserves special notice, as 
 being the most important critical work of the century next 
 to Boileau's Art Poetique. 
 
 Like Boileau, Fenelon is an admirer of the ancients, but 
 instead of formulating rules he merely gives impressions, some 
 of which are strikingly original. The French Academy, just 
 as its famous Dictionary was approaching completion, 'wondered 
 what it could do next. Each of its forty members was con- 
 sulted, and Fenelon gave his opinions in the Lettre h I'Acaddmie, 
 proposing a grammar, treatises on rhetoric, poetics, tragedy, 
 comedy, and history, and at the same time imparting his views 
 on language and literature. In the opening chapter he com- 
 plains of the poverty of the language; speaks with admiration 
 and regret of the coloured and suggestive language of the 
 16th century, and if it were possible would go back to the 
 processes of the Pttiade for enriching it. He also condemns
 
 160 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY THIRD PERIOD 
 
 the use of rime. In tragedy he finds too much pomp, and a 
 monotonous abuse of the passion of love ; in comedy he attacks 
 the moral teaching of Moliere, but cannot help admiring his 
 genius. In the ninth chapter, on history, he recommends the 
 resuscitation of the past, the exposition of the life of peoples 
 and of the progress of civilization. A last chapter is devoted 
 to the Ancients and Moderns. Both sides appealed to Fe"nelon, 
 but he was careful not to commit himself, although his works 
 as a whole point clearly enough to his preference for the 
 disciples of antiquity. 
 
 The line of the great pulpit orators of the 17th century is 
 closed by 
 
 Jean Baptiste Massillon (1663-1742), who, by ignoring dogma, ruined 
 a branch of literature which depends upon it for its very existence. 
 Massillon was a rhetorician and not an orator; an adept at suiting religion 
 to an audience of fine ladies and gentlemen, facile and abundant, but 
 lacking in force and fire. His works comprise over sixty sermons, ten 
 panegyrics, and six funeral orations, including that on Louis XIV, 
 famous for the noble simplicity of its opening words: "God alone is 
 great, my brethren ". 
 
 Louis de Eouvray, Due de Saint-Simon, was born at Ver- 
 sailles in 1675, and lived till 1755, but his work belongs both 
 in spirit and subject to the 17th century. 
 
 The Memoir es, which cover the period from 1691 to 1723, 
 rank him as the greatest memoir writer in a literature which 
 has never been surpassed in that branch. They were probably 
 begun in 1694, and reached their final form in 1752. On his 
 death they were impounded by the Foreign Office, and although 
 several garbled abstracts and extracts were in circulation 
 during the 18th century, it was not till 1830 that the first 
 authentic edition appeared. All his life SaintrSimon was a 
 disappointed and dissatisfied man, an irreconciled noble who 
 dreamed of the time when the high nobility, and especially 
 the peers (he was one himself), shared the power with the 
 king. Hence his hatred for Louis XV and his court, " ce long 
 rtgne de vile bourgeoisie", hence his likes, and especially his dis- 
 likes, which make it impossible for him to be impartial. But
 
 PROSE 161 
 
 if his defects blind his judgment, they render his power of 
 
 vision all the keener, and no writer has ever surpassed him 
 
 in making a vanished past live again. 
 
 His style, too, is equal to the intensity of his imagination; 
 
 often confused and irregular, but always living and the exact 
 
 reproduction of his sensations. 
 We quote a few examples : 
 "Je m'entendis appeler comme de main en main" 
 " Une fumde de fausseU qui sortait malgre" lui de loutes ses pores." 
 " II fait le vide dans le rayon oil sa vanity/ait la roue." 
 " C'ftait une idle de cour et un petit fumet d'affaires pour qui ne 
 
 s'en pouvait passer" 
 
 (11643)
 
 GENERAL VIEW 
 
 The history of French literature in the 18th century is the 
 history of the revolution which took place in social and politi- 
 cal theories and ideas,, and in general modes of thought, from 
 the close of the reign of Louis XIV with the death of that 
 monarch in 1715, to the outbreak of the great Revolution in 
 1789. Never was a period more important for the evolution 
 and development of human ideas, and never was a literature 
 more closely bound up with the ideas of its own day and 
 generation than that of France during the epoch of which we 
 speak. The literature of the whole century busied itself in 
 fact with, comparatively speaking, little else than those great 
 problems of human life which were stirring France to its 
 depths, and which the Revolution was shortly to blazon forth 
 to the whole civilized world. The great men of letters of the 
 period were the teachers and preachers of their day. They 
 did not, like those of other ages, busy themselves with ques- 
 tions of abstruse philosophy, nor with questions of aesthetics, 
 nor with ideals of purely literary achievement. Their watch- 
 word was no cry of " art for art ". Living in a time of transi- 
 tion, when old ideals were being ruthlessly swept away, the 
 only man who could get a general hearing was the one who 
 had a new gospel to preach. 
 
 By far the greatest names are those of Voltaire and 
 Rousseau- and if Voltaire is called the teacher of the age, 
 Rousseau may well be called its preacher. As Voltaire was 
 the schoolmaster of the 18th century, so Rousseau was its
 
 GENERAL VIEW 163 
 
 priest the expounder of its esoteric mysteries. Thus, while 
 Voltaire taught to all, and was the acknowledged sovereign, 
 the followers of Rousseau were inspired by him with a greater 
 enthusiasm and a deeper conviction. 
 
 Voltaire's influence was the wider, Rousseau's the more 
 profound; and while Voltaire's name is written large on the 
 whole century, it was Rousseau who was the direct forerunner 
 of the Revolution, and whose writings contain in germ the 
 doctrines of the men of '90. 
 
 The history of Poetry pure and simple in the century is not 
 a long one, and if little is to be recorded, still less can be said 
 to attain the highest rank. That such would be the case is 
 only to be expected from the general tendencies of the century, 
 for the philosophical and didactic spirit is directly opposed to 
 the highest achievement in the field of pure poetry. Great 
 verse-makers we should expect, and do actually find in num- 
 bers one of them, indeed, among the greatest masters of the 
 art the world has ever seen. The "poetry of reason" was the 
 poetry that appealed to most, and La Motte in his declaration 
 in its favour was supported by many of the greatest writers 
 of the day, and among them Montesquieu and Buffon, who 
 looked upon prose as the ideal vehicle of thought, and poetry 
 as excellent in so far as it shared its obviousness and direct- 
 ness. Prose, they argued, is best, because it says what is to 
 be said in the briefest and clearest way ; and rime, and rhythm, 
 and all figures of speech, are bad in so far as they tend to 
 obscure and confuse. It must be admitted that these extrem- 
 ists were opposed in form by the majority of their contem- 
 poraries, who, however, while contesting their views, were 
 nearly allied to them in spirit, and who, while calling them- 
 selves poets and championing the cause of poetry, were com- 
 pletely unable to appreciate its inner meaning. 
 
 But in all those forms of verse-writing for which the only 
 requirements are great technical skill, wit, reason, and lucidity 
 of thought and conception, many of these 18th-century poets 
 excelled. They have never been surpassed in the writing of 
 epistles, satires, criticism, verse-pamphlets, and all the lighter
 
 164 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 occasional forms; while in one characteristic branch, the epi- 
 gram, they have perhaps never been equalled. But in all 
 that higher part of poetry which lies above and beyond mere 
 correctness of versification, and clearness, and even brilliance 
 of wit, the century, with one notable exception at the very 
 end of the period, is entirely wanting. More and more as the 
 century advanced imitation took the place of nature, the bor- 
 rowing of ready-made metaphors that of direct inspiration, 
 mere words and paraphrase that of figures and ideas. And 
 this is the explanation of the astonishing fact that the critics 
 of the day thought they had at last found their greatest epic 
 writer in Voltaire, their greatest lyric poet in Lebrun, and 
 last and most wonderful of all, their greatest descriptive poet 
 in that paraphrase personified, Delille. 
 
 The Dramatic work of the century reached, on the whole, 
 a far higher standard of merit than its poetry. The traditions 
 of the brilliant 17th century were still living and powerful, 
 and dramatists were stimulated both by the prestige and the 
 material advantages to be won by success in their art. Accord- 
 ingly not only were the two old-established genres of tragedy 
 and comedy still cultivated, but an entirely new type arose 
 in the so-called drame. 
 
 The Tragedy was a pure imitation of that of the preceding 
 century, and rapidly tended to become stereotyped. The 
 model of Racine and the theory of Boileau were enforced with 
 relentless rigour, one man only, La Motte, making a bold and 
 praiseworthy but . unsuccessful attempt to break these con- 
 ventional shackles. Voltaire alone, in spite of unfavourable 
 conditions, succeeded by his wonderful cleverness and mar- 
 vellous technique in giving life to the dry bones, and in 
 writing tragedies of real merit. 
 
 Of Comedy much better things are to be said. Not only 
 was that of the last century continued, but two men have to 
 be noticed, each of whom introduced a distinct and original 
 development. Marivaux was responsible for a style which 
 was called after him marivaudage, the main characteristics of 
 which are that love is placed at the centre of interest; love,
 
 GENERAL VIEW 165 
 
 casuistry, and a certain sentimental introspection taking to a 
 great extent the place of external action. Beaumarchais, in 
 works of supreme merit, introduced upon the stage an original 
 type of political and social satire. Lastly, there arose an 
 entirely new kind of dramatic writing, called somewhat vaguely 
 drame, and sometimes divided into the two classes of tragddie 
 baurgeoise and come"die larmoyante, though this distinction was 
 neither very clearly marked nor very rigorously observed. 
 The great characteristic of this new genre, which was intro- 
 duced by La Chaussee, was a mixture of tragic and comic 
 elements, rendering possible a closer reproduction of the con- 
 ditions of actual life than could be attained under the old 
 division of all dramatic writing into pure tragedy and pure 
 comedy. Thus very considerable activity prevailed in dra- 
 matic composition in the 18th century, and though tragedy 
 had lost its vital force, and was in a state of decadence, 
 comedy had not only enough vigour to proceed with energy 
 along the old lines, but such vitality as to develop fresh and 
 original phases, and even to give birth to a new genus of 
 dramatic art. 
 
 The Novel occupies a very important place in the literature 
 of the century. Not only did the "Encyclopedists" make 
 use of it as an instrument for the propagation of their views 
 and philosophy, but there were three writers who initiated 
 new types of fiction. Le Sage, the immortal author of Gil 
 Bias, was the creator of the roman de mceurs, the novel of 
 manners and social conditions rather than of characters. 
 Marivaux invented a peculiar type of love story, treating of 
 the delicate traffic and casuistry of love in somewhat over- 
 refined and elegant language; while the Abbe PrCvost, famous 
 as the author of Manon Lescaut, identified his name with pathetic 
 and often dolefully sentimental stories of love and adventure. 
 
 But the really important novels of the period were the 
 didactic ones, the "novels with a purpose". Each of the 
 three most prominent writers of the century wrote such, and 
 no literary form could have been better fitted for the purpose, 
 or more successful in their hands. Voltaire in his many
 
 166 EIGHTEENTH CENTTTRT 
 
 short prose conies expressed his views on all the subjects which 
 were of deepest interest to himself and his contemporaries; 
 Diderot in his novels, and especially in Le Neveu de Eameau, 
 produced deep and searching criticism of human nature and 
 social life. Rousseau, most important of all the writers of 
 fiction of the age, was not only the first writer of didactic 
 novels of absolutely first-rate importance, but had the most 
 far-reaching influence on the literature of France and of the 
 whole of Europe by the introduction into literature of senti- 
 ment and description of nature. His fervid passionate language 
 was entirely new to his contemporaries, and had no small 
 share in the wonderful success and influence of his works. 
 La Nauvelle Hdl&ise was the first novel which aimed at exer- 
 cising direct influence on men's minds, and it was a sermon 
 to which all listened, and which thousands obeyed. Lastly, 
 Bernardin de St. Pierre, the disciple of Rousseau in the 
 painting of nature, did for tropical and exotic scenery what 
 Rousseau had done for the better -known landscapes of the 
 Alps. Thus in range, in quantity, and in excellence of indi- 
 vidual work, the fiction of the period is of very great value 
 and significance. 
 
 The Prose writing other than fiction shows the same ten- 
 dency that has been remarked in all other branches, only that 
 the purpose is here open and avowed, and not veiled by the 
 exigencies of any form of art. Already with Fontenelle the 
 doctrinal spirit begins to appear, and its characteristics become 
 more and more accentuated with the growth of the numbers 
 and power of the philosophes, to culminate eventually in the 
 Encyclopedic. 
 
 As in the 17th century the great subject had been man 
 and the study of the human heart, the great interest of the 
 18th century is society and its different conditions and varia- 
 tions. The 17th century had regarded literature as an art, 
 the 18th regards it as an instrument for the propagation of 
 its views and the furtherance of its aims. Those aims com- 
 prised a twofold revolt in political and social matters a revolt 
 against merely traditional and established authority, and in
 
 POETRY 167 
 
 religious matters, in which they were under the influence of 
 the English philosophers, known as the Deists, a revolt against 
 established religion and revelation. Last of all, in the Ency- 
 clopedia we see in a pronounced form most of the tendencies 
 of the earlier part of the century; while it is not only a store- 
 house of information on the learning and interests of its age, 
 and a guide to the spirit by \vhich that age was animated, but 
 also a great monument in the history of human thought, and 
 one of the most striking phenomena in the whole history of 
 literature. 
 
 The change which took place in the language from the 
 17th to the 18th century corresponds to the change which 
 took place in the literature. The long period of the 17th 
 century is replaced by a short, quick, broken phrase, more 
 easy to handle and more suitable for the rapid treatment of 
 the manifold and various topics which engaged the attention 
 of the great propagandists of the time. 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 POETRY 
 
 First in point of time of the poets of the century comes 
 Jean Baptiste Rousseau (1669-1741), a man of little import- 
 ance apart from his literary work. He was at one time a great 
 friend of Voltaire, but they afterwards quarrelled, and Eousseau 
 became the object of the bitter onslaughts of his former friend. 
 Throughout the 18th century he had a very great reputation 
 as a lyricist, and no man was more reprinted than he. Apart 
 from his numerous Odes, which were mostly panegyrical and 
 in the rhetorical style of his master Boileau, his work was 
 a curious mixture of the sacred and the profane paraphrases 
 of the psalms and cantatas in startling contrast to light epistles, 
 and not uncommonly licentious epigrams. Eousseau was a 
 disciple of the Art Pottique, and tried to make up by style for 
 want of personal feeling. He is always artificial and imper-
 
 1G8 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 sonal, and his generalizations and abstractions are opposed 
 to the very spirit of lyric poetry. Yet his verses are neat, 
 sonorous, and of considerable technical skill, and this sufficed 
 to give and assure him a great reputation with his own 
 century. 
 
 Alexis Piron (1689-1773), though he did not write much, must be 
 mentioned here on account of his epigrams, which are among the most 
 brilliant of that brilliant century. Many of them are directed against 
 his fellow-authors. They are whimsical, full of charming fancy, droll 
 and comical, little gems of language, as polished and sparkling as human 
 speech is capable of being made. 
 
 In this as in all subsequent chapters of this Book the name 
 of Voltaire is written large. 
 
 ^ Francois Arouet was born at Paris in 1694, the son of Maitre Arouet, 
 a rich notary. The name of Voltaire he did not take till 1718. He 
 was educated by the Jesuits at the Cottkge Lends le Grand, where he 
 made some influential friends, and on leaving school was early intro- 
 duced into the society of wits and aristocratic freethinkers. Soon 
 malicious and satirical verses began to circulate in his name, and one of 
 these he had to thank for a residence of eleven months in the Bastille in 
 1717. This steadied him, and turned his thoughts to more serious 
 matters, and at the end of six years' hard work he had made already the 
 reputation of the greatest poet of France^ In 1725 he was again thrown 
 
 into the Bastille for having shown, in a 
 
 nobles, a manly independence not toleral ed in those days in men of his 
 
 class, and only left it at the end of five 
 ferring his abode to England. There he 
 enjoying the acquaintance of many of tl 
 of letters, and studying English literatur 
 sophy and science. These years were of 
 
 months on condition of trans- 
 
 character and development, and, more 
 
 respect for letters finally formed and esta 
 
 During the four years following his 
 
 quarrel with one of the great 
 
 pent the three years 1726-28, 
 greatest politicians and men 
 politics, and above all philo- 
 
 ery great importance for his 
 
 han all, English liberty and 
 ished his ideas and ambitions, 
 iturn he displayed wonderful 
 
 literary activity and work followed work., 
 
 In 1734 an order of arrest was issued against him on account of his 
 Lettres Philosophiques, giving his impressions of England, and he fled 
 from Paris, never permanently to settle there again. For the next ten 
 years he lived at Cirey orf the Swiss frontier with Madame du Chatelet. 
 At the end of that time he once more returned to Paris, where he was 
 loaded with honour after honour, and made in turn Academician, Royal 
 Historiographer, Gentleman of the Chamber, with other offices. How- 
 ever, after a time he quarrelled with Mme de Pompadour, and left the
 
 POETRY 160 
 
 court. In 1750 he went on the invitation of Frederic the Great to 
 Berlin, where for a time he was feted like a king, and presented with 
 a magnificent establishment. The glamour, however, soon wore off, 
 Voltaire's sensitive vanity was wounded, and in 1753 he left Prussia 
 in a way that contrasted painfully with his triumphal entry three years 
 before. After some wanderings he settled in 1755 near Geneva in a 
 house which he called Les Delices. Soon after he bought on the frontier, 
 but in France, an estate at Ferney, and there passed the last twenty 
 years of his life in peace, as the grand seigneur presiding over the 
 affairs of his village, and as the sovereign of European letters receiving 
 at his court pilgrims from far and wide, keeping up a correspondence 
 with the learned and distinguished of all the civilized world, and the 
 object of the sentimental idolatry of his own countrymen. 
 
 In 1778, at the age of eighty-four, he went on a visit to Paris, was 
 received there with indescribable enthusiasm, idolized alike by high and 
 low, and in the midst of this reign of triumph died after three months, 
 his end being probably accelerated by the undue strain and excitement 
 at his great age. 
 
 Voltaire is typical of the poets of his century, and the fact 
 that he was considered a great poet at all is a comment on the 
 poetical taste of his time. Of the highest poetry, that inde- 
 finable power of imaginative suggestion which lies outside 
 mere correctness of form and brilliance of wit, he knew 
 nothing. In all kinds for which a light and pleasing fancy, 
 a keen intellect, and reasonableness are sufficient, he was a 
 master. He has never been surpassed, and rarely equalled, 
 in the verse of gallantry, in the writing of epistles, and in all 
 branches of what are known as vers de socie'tt. In all such 
 forms his wonderful wit is apparent; he always finds the word 
 that tells, the mot propre. In all these genres the vivacity and 
 naturalness, which make his prose so excellent, are virtues. 
 Yet all these qualities fail to make a great poet, and when 
 Voltaire attempts a serious work it seems as though his very 
 clearness and limpidity of thought and his very mechanical 
 perfection of form are against him. The subtle charm of 
 poetry cannot live in the white light of this intellectual glare. 
 Thus the Henriade (1723), his most ambitious poetic venture, 
 in spite of the wonderful cleverness of many of its parts, is 
 lacking in spontaneity, is too artificial, and as poetry a com- 
 plete failure. It was a praiseworthy attempt on the part of
 
 170 . EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 Voltaire to give his country a great epic, and was hailed by 
 his contemporaries as a complete success. It deals with the 
 times of the three Henries, Henry III, Henry IV, and the 
 Duke of Guise, and ends with the battle of Ivry in 1590. 
 
 It is a mere military narrative, amplified by various rhetorical 
 devices, dreams, love stories, and though all the devices of epic 
 poetry are utilized, the epic spirit is absent. After a brief 
 success, it has come to be esteemed at its true worth. His 
 other great epic attempt, the burlesque La Pucelle (1730), is 
 less uninteresting merely because the serious and pretentious 
 character has not to be kept up, and he can give free play to 
 his ever-ready wit. His miscellaneous verse-writings are too 
 numerous to mention, and all, whether contes, epistles, satires, 
 epigrams, or didactic poems, are marked throughout by the 
 highest skill in the manipulation of verse and perfection in all 
 the externals of poetry, together with the almost complete 
 absence of the poetic spirit itself. 
 
 Houdart de la Mott6 (1672-1731) deserves to be mentioned in con- 
 nection with his poetical criticism and theories, and his verse-translation 
 or rather adaptation of Homer, in which he left out some half, and 
 reduced the rest to a dead level of conventionality to meet the false 
 and artificial taste of his day. In his Reflexions sur la Critique, an 
 answer to the attacks on his Homer, he made some valuable and sug- 
 gestive remarks on the dispute of the "Ancients and Moderns", in 
 which he was on the side of the latter. As a critic he exercised a con- 
 siderable, and on the whole far from beneficial, influence on his age. 
 He wrote, in addition, Odes, mostly on abstract and moral subjects, dull 
 methodical discourses more of the nature of sermons than poems. 
 
 IScouchard Lebrun (1729-1807), absurdly called by his 
 contemporaries "Lebrun Pindare", wrote artificial and com- 
 monplace odes and lyrics in the manner of his day. In these 
 forms he was not particularly different from numbers of 
 others. In his epigrams, however, he represents the highest 
 point to which the art was carried even in that age of brilliant 
 epigrammatists. He frequently used the epigram as a vehicle 
 of literary criticism. His best are wonderful in their inevit- 
 able felicity of expression, absolute perfection of form, and 
 condensation of thought without obscurity.
 
 POETRY 171 
 
 The most famous exponent of the art of writing poems without poetry 
 is Jacques Delille (1738-1813), who is almost unreadable now, but 
 interesting as typifying a whole period. He was born in Auvergne, 
 but v/ent early to Paris, where he was educated at the College de Lisieux. 
 Thence he proceeded to the University, where his course was a most 
 brilliant one, and where he gained a reputation as an elegant classical 
 scholar. After some translation and occasional verse, he made his name 
 in 1769 by the translation of the Georgics. Voltaire was delighted with 
 it, and christened the author " Virgilius Delille". The translation, which 
 polished out of Virgil all the bolder and more poetic features, and re- 
 duced him to a poet after the heart of the 18th century, exactly met the 
 taste of the time, and had a wonderful reception. A certain theoretical 
 love of the country and of nature, as seen from the windows of a boudoir, 
 was the fashionable craze of the time. This success settled Delille's 
 poetic career, and he devoted the rest of his life to didactic and de- 
 scriptive poetry, holding from the death of Voltaire in 1778 to the end 
 of his life the undisputed position of the "prince of poets" of his time. 
 Delille's best -known work is the Jardins (1782), while others which 
 had considerable vogue, in addition to the translation of the Georyics, 
 were his Eneide and Paradis Perdu. All these show the characteristics 
 seen in the Georgics. He is entirely lacking in the imagination which 
 sees nature at first hand, and he knows it only through the medium of 
 literary commonplaces. Instead of the thing itself, he gives us an 
 abstract idea; instead of a real description, an elegant combination of 
 conventional expressions usually applied to the object. Hence his 
 characteristic feature is artificiality, his characteristic method para- 
 phrase. Two of his best-known "definitions" are perhaps those of 
 glass, which becomes under his system, " le sable, dissous par des feux 
 devorants (qui) pour les palais des rois britte en murs transparents", and 
 sugar, "le mid americain, que du sue des roseaux exprime I'Africain". 
 Instead of a real and vivid picture, he gives us a dull didactic recipe for 
 the manufacture of the article in question. And this dealer in the 
 commonplaces of literature, this compiler of verse compendiums, was for 
 more than a quarter of a century regarded as a poetical genius, and the 
 unchallenged laureate of France ! 
 
 A poet who gave great promise, but whose career was cut 
 short at the early age of twenty-nine, was Nicolas Gilbert 
 (1751-1780). The struggles and hardships with which his 
 life was embittered find an echo in his poems, which have 
 everywhere a strong undertone of melancholy. Of the little 
 that he left the best is contained in the mournful elegy written 
 on his death-bed, Adieux h la Vie, and in the verses entitled
 
 172 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 Ode imitte de Plusieurs Psaumes. He has been to many, and 
 especially to the Romanticists, a sympathetic figure, typifying, 
 like the English Chatterton, youthful genius early succumbing 
 in the pitiless struggle with fate. 
 
 Evariste de Parny (1753-1814) was a poet of the same school as 
 Delille, and could boast of the friendship of the aged Voltaire. He was, 
 like his master, deficient in pure imagination, and suffered like him from 
 the artificial poetic taste of his day. Yet some of his early works have 
 a severe and simple grace, and are of very considerable merit. At his 
 best he is distinctly superior to Delille at his best. In his later years he 
 wrote long didactic Voltairian poems, airing his philosophical and politi- 
 cal views dull and of no poetic value. 
 
 The only truly great poet of the period, Andre Marie de 
 Chenier, does not appear till its very close. 
 
 Chenier was born in the year 1762 at Constantinople, where his father 
 was French consul and commercial envoy. His mother was a Greek. 
 In 1765, when Andre was two and a half years old, his father left 
 Constantinople and returned to France, taking with him the boy, who 
 was never to see again the country of his birth. The mere place of his 
 birth cannot then be reckoned among the influences which produced 
 his so-called Hellenism, except in so far as it gave him his mother, and, 
 through her, Hellenic blood and tastes. She was a learned and cultured 
 woman, of a romantic disposition, and was doubtless of great importance 
 for Andre's early training and development. On their return the Che"nier 
 family settled in Paris, and there, with the exception of a short visit, 
 Andre spent the years of his boyhood. In 1773 he was sent by his 
 father to the "Cottage de Navarre", and there made many friendships, 
 of which several lasted throughout the remainder of his short life, 
 while several of these school friends afterwards made some reputation 
 as poets. It was while at school that he made his first essay in verse, 
 with imitations of Homer and Virgil. After leaving school he served 
 for six months in the army at Strasburg, but the life was very distasteful 
 to him, and he soon left it. 
 
 In 1787 he went to London, where he was attached to the French 
 embassy. He spent four years in England, and during this time studied 
 carefully the great English poets, especially Milton, of whom he speaks 
 with the greatest admiration. With his return in 1790 began his 
 political career, and he threw himself, like all his family, with ardour 
 into the Revolutionary movement, but the excesses committed by the 
 extremists terrified him, and he quickly identified himself with the 
 moderate party, in the chief organ of which, the Journal de Paris, most 
 of Che'nier's political writings appeared. Of these the most important
 
 POETRY 173 
 
 was the article of February 26, 1792, entitled "De la cause des dtsordres 
 qui troublcnt la France, et arrfaent I 'tiablisserncnt dc la libertt". This 
 was practically a manifesto of the moderate Royalists, and attacked 
 the Jacobins unmercifully. From this time Chenier was completely 
 committed to his party, and when that party was defeated, and the 
 king, Louis XVI, executed, his fate at the hands of the Jacobins was 
 merely a matter of time. 
 
 On March 7th, 1794, he was suddenly arrested and imprisoned in St. 
 Lazare, and four months later fell beneath the guillotine, two days only 
 before the death of Robespierre, which would have saved him. 
 
 Chenier is incontestably the greatest French poet of the 1 8th 
 century, and the only poet of real worth. During his lifetime 
 the only poems of his which appeared were his political ones, 
 and it was not till 1819, long after his death, that anything 
 like a representative edition appeared. Though coming at the 
 very end of his century, he was more closely allied in spirit 
 with the previous age than with the one about to dawn. He 
 was a classic, and differed only from the great classicists whose 
 line he ended in being more of an Hellene than they a feature 
 which he owed to his mother's nationality and influence. Yet 
 at the same time it must not be supposed that he stood en- 
 tirely apart from his own century and its materialistic and 
 didactic tendencies. On the contrary, the only long works he 
 planned were fully in the spirit of the 18th century and of 
 the encyclopedic movement. 
 
 His poetic work falls naturally into three divisions : 
 
 (a) The short poems of classical form, style, and subject, 
 which constitute the great bulk of his work. 
 
 (V) The long poems, planned and partly written, but all 
 unfinished, conceived in the manner and spirit of the Encyclo- 
 pedists. 
 
 (c) The poems on political subjects, which occupied the last 
 four years of his life. 
 
 It is the first of these divisions which contains Chenier's 
 characteristic work. These short poems all bear classical 
 names Eclogues, Bucolics, Idylls, Elegies and Epistles, and 
 are classical in spirit, imagination, and language. The laii-
 
 174 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 guage is throughout graceful and elegant, and often rises to 
 great beauty, while characterized by the harmony and sim- 
 plicity of Greek art. 
 
 Among the best known of these classical pieces are La Jeune 
 Tarentine; L'Aveugle, the legend of Homer wandering blind and 
 a beggar from land to land; and Le Jeune Malade. 
 
 The second division comprises works in the spirit of Voltaire 
 and the Encyclopedists, and we find Chenier treating the great 
 scientific questions and problems of the day as they appealed 
 to his poetic imagination. Principal of these were L'Ame'rique, 
 which was to be a poetic geography of the whole known world ; 
 L'Hermbs, a poetic universal philosophy; L 'Astronomic and La 
 Superstition. In all this part of his poetic work he was riot 
 far superior to the many didactic poets of his age. 
 
 Lastly, we have to speak of his poems of the third period 
 those of his political career, when his attention was directed 
 solely to the present. These are the Odes and lambes, in which 
 he expressed in nervous and often glowing language his 
 earnest warnings to his countrymen, or passionate indignation 
 at the excesses that were being committed in the name of 
 liberty. 
 
 Of the Odes the best known are the Pindaric Jeu de Paume, 
 and the eloquent one addressed to Charlotte Corday, under 
 whose dagger Marat had fallen, expressing bitter indignation 
 at her death. 
 
 The lambes 1 , which contain some of his best verse, were all 
 written during the four months of his imprisonment at St. 
 Lazare, and show us the bitter disappointment, the horror, 
 revolt, and proud defiance which filled his mind during this 
 last sad period of his life. 
 
 From the point of view of style, Chenier's great importance 
 is his frequent and bold use of enjambement, which, though 
 not unknown before, was used by him much more frequently 
 and in a more pronounced manner. He was the first since 
 the Pldiade, with which he has many points in common, who 
 
 1 lambes are poems of indeterminate length, with verses of alternately 
 eight and twelve syllables, and with irregular rimes.
 
 DRAMA 175 
 
 in this way systematically broke the somewhat monotonous 
 uniformity of the alexandrine, and gave it greater lightness 
 and movement. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 DRAMA 
 
 First of the dramatists of importance in the century is 
 Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon (Crebillon Pere), born at Dijon 
 in 1674. He began life as a lawyer's clerk, and his want of 
 sound education and culture is traceable all through his work. 
 Throughout the first half of the century he produced plays, 
 and in his old age was set up as a rival to Voltaire, to the 
 great .annoyance of the latter. He died in 1762. 
 
 His best-known plays are: Atrte (1707), filedre (1708), 
 and Rhadamiste et Ztnobie (1711), the most famous and most 
 characteristic of all. 
 
 Cre'billon's' work is rather melodrama than genuine tragedy, 
 and is founded in very great part on the usual melodramatic 
 devices of incognitos, misunderstandings, mistakes, and recog- 
 nitions. His general scheme was to take some horrible and 
 even atrocious subject, and by skilful manipulation of these 
 devices to place it in such a setting as would satisfy the pro- 
 prieties. So in presenting to us in Oreste a matricide, by 
 making the son ignorant of the fact that it is his mother he 
 is killing, he robs the act of its extraordinary atrociousness, 
 while leaving the audience conscious of the double nature of 
 the crime. On such complications Crebillon builds up most of 
 his plays, and manages to extract from the scheme numberless 
 telling effects and situations. Yet he is always artificial and 
 conventional, never going direct to nature itself, and so never 
 attains to real dramatic truth. His style is affected, bombastic, 
 and pretentious. 
 
 A writer who is of considerable importance for the history of the 
 theatre in the 18th century, on account of the part he played in the 
 revived dispute of the " Ancients and Moderns ", is Houdart de la Motte,
 
 176 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 previously mentioned. Taking his stand boldly on the side of the latter, 
 he refused to admit the so generally assumed superiority of the ancients, 
 and called in question the accepted theories of the three unities of time, 
 place, and action, and the necessity of verse in tragedy. He wrote 
 himself one tragedy, Inks de Castro (1723), which had a very consider- 
 able success, though that success ia no argument in favour of his views, 
 as he was inconsistent enough not to follow them in his own work. He 
 was the great light of the salon 1 of the Marquise de Lambert, the 
 successor of the H6tel de Jlambouillet, which supported him in his 
 championship of the moderns against the ancients. 
 
 Voltaire, who comes next, was the only writer of tragedy 
 of real merit the century produced. He wrote altogether 
 more than fifty plays, many of which were acted with great 
 success, and not in France alone, and of which the best can 
 still be read and seen with pleasure. Although he is not en- 
 tirely free from the conventionality and melodramatic devices 
 that we noticed in Crebillon, he is far more original, and 
 made some innovations which were entirely for good. During 
 his three years' stay in England, he learnt to know Shake- 
 speare, and was much influenced by him, and it is to this influ- 
 ence that we owe the chief improvements which he attempted 
 in French tragedy. The principal of these were increased 
 psychological observation, greater life and action, and greater 
 diversity in technique and local colour. Thus the scene is 
 not confined to Greece and Eome, but we are transported to 
 America (in Alzire), to Palestine (in Zaire), to China (in L'Or- 
 phelin de la Chine). Yet Voltaire, in spite of his passion for 
 the theatre and the excellence of his theory in many respects, 
 had unfortunately very little real dramatic genius. His know- 
 ledge of the human heart was slight and superficial, and a 
 greater fault still in a dramatist he was almost entirely in- 
 capable of objective treatment, that is to say, of laying aside 
 his own personality and entering into the life and feelings of 
 the characters he portrays. We are rarely allowed to forget 
 that it is Voltaire who speaks, while often indeed his plays are 
 but instruments for the propagation of his rationalistic philos- 
 
 1 Fontenelle and La Motte reigned in this salon, while it was there that 
 Marivaux made his debut. 
 
 .'
 
 DRAMA 177 
 
 ophy and ideas, and the characters the mouthpieces that voice 
 his words. As these theories and ideas were at that day 
 matters of burning interest to all, they gave living significance 
 to his plays, but now only serve to make them appear flat and 
 lifeless. What gives his plays their undoubted value is the 
 excellence of their workmanship, and the wonderful cleverness 
 with which Voltaire, as an experienced playwright, was able 
 to adapt them to the requirements of the stage. Conse- 
 quently they give a much better impression when seen than 
 when read. 
 
 The two plays which are universally admitted to be his best 
 are Zaire (1732) and Mtrope (1743). Zaire is noteworthy as 
 being obviously inspired by the Othello of Shakespeare, with 
 the rugged and terrible force of the English play toned down 
 by methods and devices worthy of Crebillon himself; Mtrope 
 as a play in which the love interest is excluded. 
 
 Among the other best-known plays of Voltaire are (Edipe 
 (1719), his first, an imitation of Sophocles; La Mort de Cesar 
 (1732), another Shakespearian adaptation, and remarkable as 
 being entirely without female characters; Mahom,et ou le Fana- 
 tisme (1742), of which the secondary title sufficiently indicates 
 the tendency of the play. 
 
 With comedy we come to much more important and 
 original work, not least so being that of Pierre Chamblain 
 de Marivaux, born at Paris in 1688. He received a very 
 moderate education, and early began to write, his first 
 attempt, a tragedy, being a complete failure. Admitted into 
 the salons of the day, notably that of Madame de Lambert, 
 he quickly found his true bent in comedies reflecting the tone 
 of this side of Parisian life, most of which were produced 
 at the Comedie Italienne. He was in somewhat straitened 
 circumstances all his life, and lived principally by prose 
 contributions to different papers or by ephemeral journals of 
 his own. He died in 1763. 
 
 His best-known plays are: La Surprise de I' Amour (1722), 
 his first great success; Le Jen de V Amour et du Hasard (1730), 
 Le Legs (1736), Les Fausses Confidences (1737), I'fipreuve (1740), 
 
 (M643) M
 
 178 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 most of which were written and produced by the Comtdie 
 Italienne. 1 
 
 Marivaux's avowed intention from the first was to belong 
 to no school and to imitate nobody, and this originality he 
 succeeded in achieving. His method consisted in taking love 
 for the staple interest, as Racine had practically done in 
 the 17th century, and in building up his plays around it. 
 But as it was not tragedy at which he aimed, this love could 
 not be the absolute and unconditional surrender which must 
 inevitably lead to tragic issues, but the light and playful 
 barter which was more suited to comedy. It is in this barter, 
 in the first beginnings of the passion, in the reserve and caution, 
 the gradual advances and prudent withdrawals, that his chief 
 motives are found. Hence the action is almost exclusively 
 interior. He represents the youth, beauty, and freshness of 
 life, the young ideal, and in the presentation of this phase of 
 existence Marivaux is quite a poet. To the graceful, elegant, 
 refined, and somewhat affected prose style in which these 
 delicate plays were written was given the name of " marivau- 
 dage". That the invention of this term was justified by his 
 creation of an individual style there is no doubt. 
 
 The name of Alain Rene Le Sage is one of very great 
 importance in another connection, but by no means incon- 
 siderable here. He was born in Brittany in 1668, went to 
 Paris to study law, and became an advocate there. He 
 gained his living by writing for the Thddtre de la Foire and 
 the Come'die Italienne, and by composing novels, &c., being the 
 first really great writer to depend on his pen for a regular 
 livelihood. He spent the last years of his life in retirement 
 at Boulogne-sur-Mer, and died in 1747. 
 
 His reputation as a writer of comedy depends upon two 
 pieces, Crispin Pdval de son Maitre (1707), a farcical and 
 extravagant but lively and most uncommonly witty play; and 
 Turcaret (1709), his masterpiece, which is of much more solid 
 and serious merit. It appeared in the middle of the war of 
 
 1 Comedie Italienne, an Italian company which appeared in France 
 during the second quarter of the century.
 
 DRAMA 179 
 
 the Spanish Succession, and gives a pitiless and scathing pic- 
 ture of the terrible corruption which prevailed in the world of 
 finance at the time. Turcaret is a traitant and financier who 
 is preying upon society, while he in turn is preyed upon by 
 others, till we have a perfect cycle of plunder and peculation. 
 Turcaret is historical, in that it represents in this way a con- 
 dition rather than individual characters. In keenness of 
 observation and realism of presentation it is a dramatic master- 
 piece. 
 
 Philippe Destouches (1680-1754) aimed at producing plays which 
 should be serious and edifying, and only succeeded in being dull. His 
 best are Le Glorieux (1732) and La Fausse Agnes (1736). His import- 
 ance lies in the fact that in substituting the sentimental for the humorous 
 interest in comedy he was the immediate precursor of La Chaussee and 
 the c&mtdie larmoyante. 
 
 A man celebrated more for his wit than for his dramatic production 
 is Alexis Piron (1689-1773), whose Metromanie (1738), aimed at poet- 
 asters, is an excellent example of satiric comedy, full of spirit and wit, 
 and containing many lines that have passed into proverbs. 
 
 Another writer who has earned a reputation as the author of one good 
 play is Jean Gresset (1709-1777), to whom is due Le Mdchant, which 
 possesses much the same qualities as Piron 's satire against poets. His 
 best-known work, however, is the humorous epic Vert-Vert (1734), on 
 a parrot's life. 
 
 Pierre Claude Nivelle de la Chaussee (1692-1754) went 
 further than Destouches, and wrote plays in which the interest 
 was exclusively pathetical and tragic. In his earliest comedies 
 there was a certain mixture of the comic and pathetic, as in 
 Le Prfjugd & la Mode (1735), but this comic element gradually 
 disappeared, and in 1741 he produced in Melanide a play in 
 which the pathetic reigned alone, and the comddie larmoyante 
 was fully established. La Chaussee's comedy takes its subjects 
 from ordinary domestic life, with its little tragedies and trials, 
 and is really nearer to tragedy than comedy a tragedy on 
 a lower plane, a trage'die bourgeoise. His principal dramas are: 
 La Fausse Antipathie (1733), Le Prejugd a la Mode (1735), 
 Mflanide (1741), La Gauvernante (1747). 
 
 Diderot, of whom we shall have to speak at far greater 
 length elsewhere, partly carrying on the work of La Chaussee,
 
 180 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 established the theory of the drome as a genre of dramatic 
 writing intermediary between tragedy and. comedy. He ap- 
 pealed for a closer following of the conditions of actual life, 
 and greater realism in the externals of theatrical representa- 
 tion. Unfortunately, his theory was better than his practice, 
 and his two dramas, Le Fils Naturel (1757) and Le Pkre de 
 Famille (1758), are dull and declamatory, and without dramatic 
 force. 
 
 Most famous among the writers of comedy of the century 
 is Beaumarchais. a man whose importance in his own day 
 was by no means solely literary. 
 
 Pierre Augustin Caron was born at Paris in 1732, the son of a 
 watchmaker, and he at first followed his father's trade. Soon, how- 
 ever, he transferred his energies to a larger sphere, managed to gain a 
 footing in the world of finance, married a wife of noble family, became 
 ennobled himself, and took the name of Beaumarchais. Into the many 
 vicissitudes of his wonderful life more wonderful than one of his own 
 plays it is impossible to enter. It is sufficient to mention the famous 
 lawsuits which indirectly led him to fame through the four Menwircs, 
 written in 1774-1775, in which he ridiculed his judges in such frequent 
 and witty satire as to raise himself at once to a pinnacle of literary 
 celebrity. To the end of his life he continued his madcap existence, 
 now up, now down, now making fortunes, and now losing them a 
 wonderful instance of a man who preserved up to old age the buoyancy 
 of spirits and recklessness of youth. He died in 1799. 
 
 Beaumarchais' dramatic work is of a piece with his life, and 
 his great creation, the character of Figaro, we might almost 
 call a dramatization of himself. The valet, capable, scheming, 
 restlessly active, feeling his own ability and embittered by 
 the want of recognition which he receives at the hands of 
 society, is Beaumarchais himself, the man of humble birth 
 whose life was a struggle to place himself on a level with men 
 whom he felt were not his equals, and even then with but half 
 success. In the Barbier de Seville (1775) we have Beaumarchais' 
 bold satire of politics and society in its earlier stage, already 
 keen and biting, but not yet so embittered as it later becomes. 
 The subject is old as Moliere himself, and may be said to be 
 the stock cast of the Comddie Italienne the guardian, the \vard,
 
 DRAMA 181 
 
 the lover, and the valet. All the characters are of the Moliere 
 school of comedy, and have nothing very original, if we except 
 that of Figaro. 
 
 The Manage de Figaro is the Barbier de Seville carried to 
 a higher plane. What in the earlier play was scattered satire 
 on social evils is here bold and open derision of the whole state 
 of society. The leading character Figaro has grown, is bolder, 
 more determined, and also more bitter. In the former, Figaro 
 was not dangerous, so long as he could live and laugh at the 
 expense of society, now he is a malcontent embittered against 
 the society which has not recognized his merits at their true 
 worth. It is often merely the voice of Beaumarchais himself 
 that we hear, as in the most famous passage of all: "Parce 
 que vous Ues un grand seigneur, vous vous croyez un grand gtnie 
 vous vous etes seulement donnd la peine de nattre tandis que moi, 
 parbleu!" 
 
 The Manage de Figaro was finished and ready for the stage 
 in 1781, but permission for it to be acted was refused again 
 and again, and it was only in 1784 that Beaumarchais secured 
 the license by irrepressible pertinacity and impudence. These 
 three years of delay and intrigue had raised public interest to 
 fever heat, and the play had a perfect storm of success, running 
 to the then unparalleled length of a hundred representations. 
 Its wonderful cleverness and brilliant wit were only in very 
 small part responsible for this phenomenal reception, the real 
 cause lying in the fact that it voiced the burning questions 
 of the day, and expressed for every man his own thoughts in 
 vivid and telling form. It is this aspect of the Figaro plays 
 which makes them not merely dramatic successes, but epoch- 
 making works in the literature and history of France. 
 
 Many of the men who greeted with frantic applause Figaro's 
 tirades against privilege and the privileged, his contrast of the 
 solid virtues of the bourgeois and the arrogant assumption and 
 selfish vices of the grands seigneurs, were to take part before 
 many years were over in that terrible upheaval which was the 
 necessary and inevitable result of the bitter ferment of hate 
 and anger which underlay the fair exterior of society.
 
 182 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PROSE 
 
 First in order of the novelists of the 18th century, and on 
 the whole first in importance, is Le Sage, of whose comedies 
 e have already spoken. While most of his contemporaries 
 turned towards England, he turned to Spain, and it is to 
 the picaroon romance of Spain, a kind of belated romance of 
 chivalry, that the inspiration of his two most famous works, 
 Le Diable Boiteux and Gil Bias, is to be traced. But while the 
 setting and many of the incidents are borrowed in this way, 
 it is the originality of his novels which constitutes their im- 
 portance, and it is as initiator of the roman de mceurs that he 
 ranks as the leading novelist of his century. 
 
 Le Diable Boiteux (1707), of which both title and framework 
 were borrowed from a Spanish romancer Guevara, is a long 
 string of adventures, in which a number of characters are 
 brought before us in romantic and often whimsical, but always 
 realistic fashion. This realism in the painting of the condi- 
 tions of life is the original and characteristic feature of Le 
 Sage's novels, and in his next and greatest work, Gil Bias, is 
 much more strongly marked. Here Gil Bias in his many 
 qualities and positions serves to paint so many conditions of 
 human life. This attempt to represent universal humanity in 
 the one novel is the cause of its greatest fault diffuseness 
 and want of plan and uniformity. Gil Bias himself really is 
 a number of different characters, which have little in common 
 but their name, while many of the minor characters have 
 nothing whatever to do with the action, and are merely 
 dragged in in order to contribute by the story of their own 
 experiences another phase of the great comedy of life. 
 
 The first instalment of Gil Bias appeared in 1715, the last 
 in 1735, so that it contains indirectly the reflections of the 
 author during twenty years of his life. It is the story of how 
 the hero Gil Bias left home a self-satisfied simpleton, with 
 great ideas of what he was to accomplish, and a remarkably
 
 PROSE 183 
 
 optimistic idea of life in general, and gradually came, through 
 many ups and downs of fortune and the buffeting of fate, to 
 realize his own want of importance, and to change his early 
 optimism for the discretion and savoir faire of a man of thtf 
 world. The great merits of Le Sage's novels, apart from 
 their realism, the result of his wonderful observation of life 
 and society, are their universality, their painting of human 
 nature in general rather than of the men of any particular 
 time and country, and the simple natural style in which they 
 are written. 
 
 Marivaux, whose comedies have also been discussed in the 
 preceding chapter, wrote novels which exhibit the same general 
 characteristics as his plays, a light and subtle analysis of 
 love and that combination of matter and manner to which 
 the name of marivaudage was given. His two most important 
 novels are Marianne (1731-1741) and the Paysan Parvenu 
 (1735-1736). Marianne is of the highest importance in the 
 history of French fiction as being the first novel in which 
 psychological analysis, the painting of the emotions and 
 workings of the mind, really forms the main interest. It is 
 remarkable also for the exact and realistic portrayal of actual 
 life, and that mostly of the life of the bourgeois class, or even 
 the class below it. 
 
 A writer whose lasting fame depends almost entirely on a 
 single book is the Abbe Prevost, the author of Manon Lescaut. 
 Antoine Fran9ois Prevost d'Exiles, born in Picardy in 1697, 
 and usually known as the Abbe Prevost, was brought up by 
 the Jesuits. He afterwards became a soldier, then a Bene- 
 dictine, left that order irregularly, and having in consequence 
 to quit the country, spent several unsettled and adventurous 
 years abroad. He was for many years a laborious writer, pro- 
 ducing many novels, besides doing much translation, especially 
 from English, and much mere hack-work. He died in 1763. 
 
 Prevost's novels show signs of his unsettled and adventur- 
 ous life, and also of the haste in which they were written. 
 They are for the most part long and diffuse stories of adven- 
 ture, in which love constitutes the main interest. This love,
 
 184 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 however, is not the light and playful philandering of Marivaux, 
 but a serious and sometimes sombre passion, which is often 
 meant to draw our tears, and occasionally is worthy of doing 
 so. His masterpiece, and the only one of his many stories 
 which is still famous, is Manon Lescaut, which appeared in 
 1731 as the seventh part of the Mdmoires d'un Homme de 
 Qualitd, of which the first part appeared in 1728. It is the 
 story of a young girl, Manon Lescaut, and the chevalier Des 
 Grieux, who love one another with a passion which overcomes 
 all obstacles, and outlives all the miseries into which it leads 
 them. In this one story Prevost has laid aside all his usual 
 diffuseness and sentimentality, and with absolute simplicity 
 and unpretentious truth to nature carries on the touching and 
 pathetic story to its sombre and tragic close. 
 
 His only other novels we need mention are Cleveland (1731) 
 and Le Doyen de KilUrine (1735-1740). 
 
 As a mediator between English and French literature, and 
 especially as the translator of Richardson's Pamela and Clarissa 
 Harlowe, Prevost exercised a great influence on the literature 
 of his day. 
 
 Voltaire tried his hand at novel writing as at all other 
 branches of literary composition, and with great success, some 
 of his short contes being, regarded purely as literature, among 
 his very best work. 
 
 Like the other great leaders of the philosophic movement 
 he made use of the novel as a vehicle for the propagation of 
 his philosophic tenets, and found the form admirably adapted 
 to carry the persiflage, innuendo and insinuation of satire 
 which constituted his critical method. 
 
 Most famous of all his short stories is Candide (1758), really 
 inspired by the terrible earthquake which destroyed Lisbon in 
 1755. Candide, who has always been told by his preceptor 
 that everything is for the best in this best of all possible 
 worlds, is disillusioned by the misfortunes of his life, and the 
 story develops into a comprehensive mockery of all existing 
 institutions of society, and all the weaknesses and failings of 
 mankind a regular manifesto of pessimism.
 
 PROSE 185 
 
 Other well-known short contes of Voltaire are Micromegas, a 
 satire on scientists, Zadig, and L'Homme aux Quarante Ecus. 
 
 Diderot, of Encyclopedic fame, also attempted prose fiction, 
 like all the leading men of letters of the time, and like theirs 
 his novels all had "a purpose". Three are deserving of mention 
 La Religieuse, an attack on the convents ; Jacques le Fataliste, 
 inspired by Sterne, the adventures of the valet Jacques and his 
 master, with a running fire of stories told by 'Jacques, his 
 master, and others; and last of all, and most significant, Le 
 Neveu de Rameau, the most consistent and even of all his works. 
 It takes the form of a dialogue between himself and the 
 Bohemian who gives the piece its title, in which human nature 
 is dissected and laid bare with a cynical frankness and total 
 lack of ordinary conventional morality. 
 
 f Rousseau's work is dominated throughout by so complete 
 
 ' a unity of purpose, and his novels are so entirely concerned 
 
 with the expression of his philosophy and views, that they will 
 
 be most fitly treated in connection with his philosophic work, 
 
 of which they form an integral part. 
 
 His most important disciple, however, Jacques Henri 
 Bernardin de St. Pierre naturally falls in this chapter. 
 
 Bernardin de St. Pierre was born at Le Havre in 1737. He early 
 showed a passionate love of nature and animals, a famous story of his 
 childhood well illustrating the turn of mind which afterwards declared 
 itself in his work. His father had taken him to Rouen, and was 
 pointing out the towers of the cathedral. All the boy saw, however, 
 was the swallows flying round the lofty spires, and he broke silence 
 with the exclamation, " Mon Dieut comme dies volent hautl" After 
 studying at the Ecole des Fonts et Chaussees, he travelled as a kind 
 of irregular engineer in many countries, visiting Germany, Holland, 
 Poland, and Russia. In 1768 he was sent as inginicur dcs colonies to 
 L'lle de France (Mauritius), but returned to France in 1771, where he 
 made the acquaintance of Rousseau the most important event of his life. 
 His literary works brought him fame, wealth, and favour, and under 
 Louis XVI, the Republic, and the Empire in turn he held different 
 posts and enjoyed great consideration. He died in 1814. 
 
 The importance of Bernardin de St. Pierre in literature 
 is due above all to his painting of nature, in which, though
 
 186 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 inspired by Rousseau, he is nevertheless original. He repre- 
 sents the Tropics as Rousseau the Alps. His nature-painting 
 is warmer, more sensuous, more passionate. His other liter- 
 ary characteristics, in which still he is more or less under the 
 influence of Rousseau, are his revival of sentiment and passion 
 in opposition to the rationalism of the "philosophe school"; 
 his picturesque, highly -coloured, and passionate style; his love 
 of nature, and decrying of society and civilization, in which he 
 almost outdid Jean Jacques himself. 
 
 His vocabulary has always great local colour, due to the 
 large number of words he borrowed from the arts and sciences, 
 navigation, botany, and, in short, the technical expressions 
 belonging to all the different subjects he was treating. Yet 
 for all this his style is easy, clear, and harmonious. 
 
 His chief works are the Voyage a Vile de France (1773) and 
 the Etudes de la Nature (1784), at the end of which appeared 
 as extra volume Paul et Virginie (1787), while the Cltaumiere 
 Indienne was likewise introduced into it in 1791. 
 
 By far the most famous is Paul et Virginie. It is the story, 
 told in a direct and simple narrative, in clear and harmonious 
 style, yet with all the warmth and colour of the tropical land 
 in which it is placed, of the growth of love between a boy and 
 girl, its simple course, and tragic close through the drowning 
 of Virginie by shipwreck under the eyes of Paul. Into this 
 simple lyric story is woven a picturesque description of the 
 tropical scenery and nature of the He Bourbon, with its 
 exotic wealth and warmth, forming altogether a setting which 
 accounted in great part for its wonderful success and popularity. 
 
 Such then was Bernardin de St. Pierre, a disciple of Rous- 
 seau in the painting of nature, an innovator himself in intro- 
 ducing to his countrymen pictures of nature in distant and 
 unknown lands, and lastly the man who handed on the tradi- 
 tion from Rousseau his master to his disciple Chateaubriand. 
 
 The prose writing, other than fiction, of the period is so 
 uniform in spirit that any sub-divisions would tend rather 
 to confusion than to simplicity. The same scientific and philo- 
 sophic spirit animated the early writers oC the period which
 
 PROSE 187 
 
 was so pronounced in the philosophes proper and Encyclopedists 
 of the latter half of the century. 
 
 Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, half of whose life falls 
 in the preceding age, and whose early work is in the spirit 
 of the 17th century, with the Entretien sur la PlumliU des 
 Mondes (1686) entered upon the philosophic and scientific part 
 of his literary career, and gave the first indications of the 
 spirit which was to dominate the whole of the 18th century. 
 His name then naturally comes at the head of this chapter as 
 the precursor of the philosophic and encyclopedic literature 
 of the 18th century. 
 
 Fontenelle was born at Rouen in 1657. He was a nephew of Cor- 
 neille, his mother being Corneille's sister. He was educated by the 
 Jesuits, became a lawyer, bat gave up his profession, and went to Paris 
 with a tragedy which turned out a complete failure. However, he soon 
 achieved literary success, and with the Entretien sur la Pluralite des 
 Mondes firmly established his reputation and position. He entered the 
 Academy in 1691, and in 1699 was made life secretary of the Academy 
 of Sciences. He was a frequenter of all the most famous salons, and 
 among the most brilliant and distinguished members of the intellectual 
 society of the capital. He was a polished man of the world, and a bril- 
 liant conversationalist, and as a drawing-room philosopher and scientist 
 had great influence on his age in popularizing branches of learning 
 which had not before penetrated to the salons of the fashionable world. 
 He lived to be nearly a hundred, universally esteemed, and recognized 
 as a great man and leader of science and letters. He died in 1757. 
 
 Fontenelle began his literary work by writing plays, 
 poetry, pastorals, and other compositions in the style of a 
 17th-century precieux. All this work was of little value, and 
 he was severely handled, and with good reason, by the satirists 
 of the time. J. B. Rousseau directed against him some of his 
 most pointed epigrams, while he figured in one of La Bruyere's 
 best-known Caracteres as Cydias, the personification of the lei 
 esprit and prtcieux. 
 
 However, with his Entretien sur la Pluralitt des Mondes (1686) 
 he found his true field, and entered upon the successful and 
 useful part of his career. This work, in the form of conversa- 
 tions with a lady of quality, innocent hitherto of all scientific
 
 188 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 knowledge "une femme qite Von instruit, el qui n'a jamais oui 
 parler de ces choses-lk" presents in easy form the entire system 
 of the universe as understood in his day. It had the effect of 
 spreading enormously the interest in scientific matters, and 
 is epoch-making as the first great work of popular science. 
 His other important works are the Histoire des Oracles (1687), 
 a work showing by the examples of ancient oracles the easy 
 credulity of mankind and the necessity for closer investigation 
 before belief; the Histoire de I'Acad^mie, and the filoges des Acade"- 
 miciens, the latter his most important and solid production. 
 Taking advantage of the Eloges pronounced over the members 
 of the Academy of Science at their death, he exposed in clear 
 and lucid language the scientific discoveries they had made, 
 and made them a medium for expounding all the scientific 
 theories and knowledge of his day. 
 
 Fontenelle's influence was very great on his contemporaries, 
 partly owing to the length of his literary life, which left him 
 at the beginning of the 18th century, and till the rise of 
 Voltaire's star, the unrivalled sovereign of letters. 
 
 In spite of his universality, and the elegance and clearness 
 of his style, he was a man without true passion either for art 
 or science ; and by his want of warmth furthered the tendency 
 towards artificiality from which the language and literature 
 already suffered His true importance is as a precursor of the 
 scientific and philosophic spirit of the 18th century, not only 
 as a popularizer of science, but also as the initiator of scientific 
 doubt and destructive criticism. In his cold, dispassionate 
 style and fear of over-credulity we see the first signs of the 
 spirit which animated Voltaire and the Encyclopedists. 
 / Next in order of the great prose writers of the century is 
 Charles de Secondat de Montesquieu, the founder of the philo- 
 sophy of history and the father of modern scientific history. 
 In his scientific investigation and universal questioning of all 
 phenomena and institutions we can see the workings of the 
 whole philosophe movement in its early stages. 
 
 Montesquieu was born at the Chateau de la Brede, near Bordeaux, 
 in 1689. His family was of the noblesse de robe, with a descent trace-
 
 PROSE 189 
 
 able for two and a half centuries, and he was from the first destined 
 for the profession of the law. In 1714 he became a counsellor of the 
 parliament of Bordeaux, and in 1716 president. In 1722, the year after 
 the appearance of his Lettres Persanes, he came to Paris. In 1728 he 
 was elected to the Academy. He had already given up the presidency 
 of the Bordeaux parliament, and soon after set out on a series of travels, 
 in order to gain the knowledge of the constitutions and conditions of the 
 principal civilized countries which would be necessary for the great work 
 on jurisprudence which he already contemplated. He visited in this 
 way Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and last of all 
 England, where he spent the years 1729-1731. The English constitution 
 and English liberty made a profound impression upon him, and had very 
 considerable influence on his great work. After his return to France 
 he lived principally at La Brede, engaged in the composition of those 
 books which formed the serious work of his life. He died at Paris in 
 1755. 
 
 Montesquieu's life has been happily compared to that of 
 Montaigne, and a comparison of the two will show an inter- 
 esting parallel in many respects. 
 
 His early studies were directed to natural science, and in 
 1721 he published a Discours sur les Causes de la Transparence 
 des Corps, and also Observations sur I'Histoire Naturelle. There 
 was nothing remarkable in this part of his work, but in the 
 same year (1721) appeared a book by him called Lettres 
 Persanes, which achieved an immediate and very great success, 
 and decided definitely his literary career. 
 
 The framework of the story is by no means original. A 
 Persian, living in Paris from 1713 to 1720, writes letters to 
 his friends describing French society in all its aspects, while 
 his friends keep him posted in the news of his own household 
 and seraglio. Thus there are two distinct parts the letters 
 of the Persian, of which the interest consists in the picture 
 of the social life of France at the period ; and the letters of his 
 friends, through which runs the thread of an intrigue of gal- 
 lantry, to which was due in a considerable measure the success 
 of the book with the idle crowd. The essential part, however, 
 is the criticism of French institutions, which in the person 
 of the Persian he is able to make with great freedom, and 
 from an independent and original point of view. Montesquieu
 
 100 EIGHTEENTH CENTtTRT 
 
 ill ways expressed the whole of his thought in all his books, 
 and in the wide social and political satire and reflections on 
 government and jurisprudence we already see the germs of 
 the Esprit des Lois. The description of Parisian society, though 
 bright and clever, is more superficial 
 
 Lastly, the style brilliant, witty, and in quick, short sen- 
 tences marks the transition from the long rhetorical period 
 of the 17th century to the short, chopped phrase of the 18th, 
 of which we have already noticed the beginnings in La Bruyere. 
 Both from the point of view of style and also as the introduc- 
 tion to the famous Esprit des Lois, the light, witty, jesting 
 Lettres Persanes, half-novel and half-treatise, mark a date to be 
 remembered. 
 
 From 1728 Montesquieu turned to wholly serious work, and 
 he may be said to have passed the next twenty years in the 
 preparation and writing of his life's work, the Esprit des Lois 
 (1748), the Considerations sur la Grandeur et Decadence des 
 Itomains, which appeared in 1734, being only a preparation for 
 the larger work a part which occupied all his interest and 
 attention for a time, and developed to too great a length to be 
 included in the general frame. In this work we get the wide 
 and philosophic view of history, the drawing of broad gene- 
 ralizations, which forms the great importance and originality 
 of his method. His endeavour was to explain everything, not 
 merely to state, and even where he went wrong he showed 
 marvellous ingenuity in inventing theories with which the 
 facts could be made more or less convincingly to harmonize. 
 He does not believe in blind chance. To quote his own words : 
 " Ce n'est pas la fortune qui domine k monde. II y a des causes 
 ge'ne'mles." And to give a typical case: "Si le hasard d'une 
 bataille, c'est a dire, une cause particuliere, a ruin6 un Mat, il y 
 avail une cause ge'ne'rale qui faisait que cet Etat devait pdrir par une 
 seule bataille". 
 
 Montesquieu owed much to Bossuet's Discours sur I'Histoire 
 Universelle, especially in the important sixth chapter, enumer- 
 ating the causes of Roman greatness. These characteristics 
 are: Love of liberty and fatherland, constancy in difficulties,
 
 PROSE 191 
 
 the feeling of honour, loyalty to leaders and to the state. The 
 causes of the decadence: The cumbrous overgrowth of the 
 empire, distant wars, and the luxury which led to the general 
 corruption of manners. 
 
 In style there is a great change from the lively maliciousness 
 of the Lettres Persanes here all is grave and dignified simplicity, 
 relieved occasionally by a striking image or an unexpected turn. 
 
 Fourteen years later, in 1748, appeared the Espiit des Lois, 
 one of the most considerable books of the whole century. It 
 is his life's work, the sum total of his observations and re- 
 flections, with the deductions he had drawn from the different 
 facts and phenomena, historic, political, economic, and social, 
 noted during a long life. 
 
 We shall easily understand the want of uniformity of the 
 whole when we remember that it shows the work of a long 
 life, and reflects the many phases through which his character 
 and development passed. It is necessary first of all to get a 
 clear idea of the exact meaning of the title, and the sense in 
 which the author here uses the word loi, and with this object 
 we cannot do better than to quote his own definition : " Les lois 
 dans la signification la plus etendue sont les rayyporls ndcessaires qwi 
 ddrivent de la nature des choses", the necessary relations existing 
 between different things resulting from the nature of the 
 things themselves. Taking the word loi, then, in this sense, 
 the title is broad enough to cover even the book for which it 
 serves, and which in general terms we can best describe as a 
 consideration of the different social and political conditions 
 under which men have ever lived, and the effect on them of 
 all the influences, moral or physical, which are capable of 
 affecting them in any way. 
 
 The work consists of thirty-one books. It begins with the formal 
 division of governments into the three types republic, monarchy, des- 
 potism to each of which he attributes a typical principle virtue, honour, 
 and fear respectively. It then goes on to consider liberty in relation to 
 government, and the way it is assured by the proper balance and adjust- 
 ment of the legislative and executive power. In this connection he 
 speaks in Book XI of the English constitution and English liberty, which 
 he greatly admired.
 
 192 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 He next speaks in Book XII of the influence of external conditions, 
 such as climate and nature of soil, on constitution and forms of society, 
 this being one of the best and most original parts of the whole; after 
 which he treats in turn the questions of commerce, finance, population, 
 and religion. 
 
 The last, Books XXVI-XXXI, are purely legal history, dealing with 
 the Roman laws of succession, French law, and the feudal system. 
 
 Thus it will be seen that the work is no less stupendous in 
 range than wanting in uniformity of plan. The fact is, that 
 Montesquieu had no definite design for the whole, but put 
 into it, as into an encyclopedia, all' the thoughts, reflections, 
 and deductions of the greater part of his life, without troubling 
 about the systematic arrangement and logical sequence of the 
 whole. That he had himself but a vague general idea of the 
 lesson he wished to convey is seen by the indefinite title he 
 gave to the heterogeneous mass. It was this very discursive- 
 ness, together with the inventiveness and stimulating origin- 
 ality, the happy and piquant if often misguided generalizations, 
 the mixture of philosophy and wit, which gave the book its 
 enormous popularity in the 18th century. As Fontenelle had 
 brought science, so Montesquieu brought history, and philo- 
 sophic history too, into the life of ladies and men of fashion. 
 Madame du Deffand hit off the popular appreciation when she 
 called the Esprit des Lois " de V esprit sur les lois". 
 
 Still, the book was an epoch-making one, desultory though 
 it was, for it established the theory of the " continuity of his- 
 tory", and founded the philosophy of history. It deserved its 
 credit in its day, and its subsequent loss of repute is easily to 
 be understood, and is due not so much to any fault of its own, 
 as to the advance of the science which it founded, and which 
 has made of one half of its theories and generalizations mere 
 platitudes, while the other half it has discovered to be false. 
 
 Taken all in all, then, we must look upon Montesquieu as 
 one of the weightiest and most considerable French authors, 
 not only of his own but of any century. 
 
 X Next in order comes Voltaire, the most typical of the 
 writers of the century, and most important of all for his 
 prose.
 
 PROSE 193 
 
 Fontenelle and Montesquieu may have been the precursors 
 of the philosdphe movement, and shown its earliest workings, 
 but it was Voltaire who brought it to maturity, and with 
 whose name it is identified. We will speak here of all his 
 prose writings, and this can the more fitly be done owing to 
 the uniformity of spirit by which they are pervaded. 
 
 In the first rank among his serious prose must be placed 
 his historical works. The first to appear was the Histoire de 
 CJuirles XII (1731), a lively and brilliant narration, of which 
 the interest consists not in any philosophical or political 
 teaching or views, but in the stir of adventures and battles, 
 and the romantic events amid which the life of the Swedish 
 king was passed. It is the first instance of historical work 
 which is not merely history but literature. It is as interesting 
 as a novel. Yet he did not knowingly sacrifice historical 
 truth to narrative interest, but carefully examined all the 
 documents and manuscripts obtainable which bore on the 
 subject. 
 
 This effort to obtain historical accuracy by going at first 
 hand to the sources of information we see carried still further 
 in his next work, the Siecle de Louis XIV (1751), his historical 
 masterpiece. His admiration for the monarch and his reign, 
 the memory of its literary glories and the favour then shown 
 to men of letters, made it for him a work of love. Looking 
 upon the period with such sympathy as the climax of French 
 glory, and as a golden age of ideal splendour and prosperity, 
 he wished to give a full account of this society and civilization 
 in all its many sides. So he says in the introduction: "Ce 
 n'est pas seulement la vie de Louis XIV qu'on pretend ictire; on 
 se propose un plus grand objet. On veut essayer de peindre a la 
 posttrite, non les actions d'un seul homme, mais Vesprit des hommes 
 dans le siecle le plus eclair^, qui fut jamais." And again : " On 
 ne s'attachera, dans cette-histoire, qu'a ce qui mdrite V attention de 
 tous les temps . . . a ce qui peut servir d 'instruction, et conseiller 
 V amour de la vertu, des arts et de la patrie ". 
 
 Such being his ambition he spared no pains in acquiring the 
 necessary knowledge of the period. In his youth he had met 
 
 ( II 643 ) K
 
 194 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 men who could give him first-hand information on the subject, 
 and this he supplemented by all the mdmoires and manu- 
 scripts accessible, as well as the state archives to which as 
 historiographer royal he had full access. 
 
 So we find a wonderful mass of information carefully sifted 
 and arranged with great clearness and lucidity, an admirable 
 adjustment of light and shade, and a careful distinction between 
 the important and unimportant. 
 
 As a clear conception of details and particulars the work 
 could not be surpassed. But and this qualification is an 
 important one it is almost entirely lacking in a conception 
 of the unity of history, and the connection and relation of all 
 the different forms of human activity. He follows the false 
 and unnatural plan of isolating the different parts of what 
 should be a complete and complex picture. So he announces 
 himself in his introduction: " Le gouvernement inMrieur sera 
 traiU & part. La vie privee de Louis XIV . . . tiendra une 
 grande place. D'autres articles . . . seront pour les arts, pour les 
 sciences, pour les progres de I'esprit humain dans ce siecle. Enfin 
 on parlera de I'Eglise." 
 
 As might be expected from this artificial separation of 
 things which have no such division in nature, the whole work 
 is formal and dry; admirably clear, lucid, and definite in par- 
 ticular, but wanting in life and reality. One of its most im- 
 portant features is that it set the example of treating the arts, 
 sciences, and letters as a corporate part of the history of a period. 
 
 The third important historical work of Voltaire is the Essai 
 sur les Moeurs (1756), a Universal History of Europe from 
 Charlemagne to Louis XIV. It takes up the subject where 
 Bossuet leaves it in his Discours sur I'Histoire Universelle jusqu'a 
 I' Empire de Charlemagne, but the spirit is entirely different. 
 For Bossuet all things in the final issue were ordained by the 
 hand of Providence; Voltaire eliminates the direct interven- 
 tion of Providence as a factor in history, and sets himself the 
 much harder task of finding the causes of things in the natural 
 course of progress. So while Bossuet wrote theological, Vol- ' 
 taire wrote philosophical history.
 
 PROSE 195 
 
 Voltaire's great interest in the work is to show the progress 
 of reason and the advance of civilization, while representing 
 Christianity rather as the obstacle in their way. It is this 
 one-sidedness and prejudice which forms the weakness of the 
 book, since it was impossible for anyone starting as the enemy 
 of Christianity to write a just and sympathetic history of a 
 period of which that religion formed the chief motive power. 
 
 It is this want of sympathy, this inability to place himself 
 at the point of view of the times with which he deals, which 
 makes Voltaire fall short of being a great historian. The 
 same consideration accounts for the fact that the Siecle de 
 Louis XIV, which is nearer in point of time, and which had 
 his full interest, is his best historical work. 
 
 All Voltaire's prose works were written with a didactic 
 purpose, and many with this object avowed and with philo- 
 sophical titles. None of these were, however, of very great 
 weight, and it is rather in his countless pamphlets and flying 
 literature, in which he is, as it were, the journalist of the 
 philosophe movement, that his importance as a philosopher lies. 
 In Switzerland, during the latter years of his life, he devoted 
 himself principally to philosophy, and as leader of the Ency- 
 clopedic movement, which he joined, and of which he became 
 virtual chief, exercised enormous influence. 
 
 It is impossible to mention the countless works of this kind 
 which he produced during the last twenty years of his life 
 the list would be too long, and they are of too little con- 
 sequence individually. We can only name the most important. 
 Immediately after his return from England appeared the 
 Lettres Philosophiques (1733), giving his reflections on English 
 institutions and eulogies of English liberty. The Didionnaire 
 Philosophique ou la Raison par Alphabet (1764) explains itself 
 and its purpose clearly enough ; while his Questions sur VEncy- 
 dopidie (1770-1772) contains much of his best and most char- 
 acteristic philosophical writing. Lastly, we may mention, as 
 typical of his antichristian propaganda, such works as Dieu 
 et les Homines (1769), La Bible enftn expligue"e (1776), Traite" 
 sur la ToUrance (1763).
 
 196 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 The central point of Voltaire's philosophy is always the fight 
 against intolerance I'infdme, the infamous thing. He docs 
 not deny the existence of a God or decry religion, but he 
 repudiates all revealed religion. Christianity he treats without 
 respect, submitting all things to the test of reason, and it is 
 with this hard and unyielding criticism of religious matters 
 that the name of Voltaire has come to be before all, and not 
 without reason, identified. Yet it must always be remembered 
 that Voltaire Avas not an atheist, and in this differed from 
 most of the Encyclopedists. What he claimed was the right 
 to examine all things independently of tradition and authority; 
 to submit all things to the test of pure reason, and reject 
 ever}>thing which did not satisfy its demands. 
 
 It is in this constitutional hatred of all merely traditional 
 or hereditary authority, whether of church or state, and in 
 this demand for the right of free and universal inquiry and 
 examination, that he is typical of the whole age. 
 
 Lastly, and not least important, we have to treat of 
 Voltaire's enormous correspondence. We have no less than 
 12,000 letters of his, while others are still gradually coming 
 to light, and many have been irretrievably lost. 
 
 As a great man of letters for half a century, and sovereign 
 of European literature for half that time, as the correspondent 
 of reigning monarchs, princes, and the most famous writers 
 and intellectual leaders of every country in Europe, he built 
 up in his letters an enormous compendium of the ideas of 
 his day a picture of the life and thought of the age draAvn 
 directly and at first-hand by one in whose capacious mind 
 every current of the time was reflected. In every conceivable 
 style, addressed to people of almost every conceivable type, 
 dealing with almost every kind of human condition, they show 
 as nothing else could the ever-ready wit, the inexhaustible 
 fertility of ideas, the wonderful adaptability and unparalleled 
 many-sidedness of this phenomenon of versatility. 
 
 So we take leave at length of Voltaire, after meeting him 
 in every division of the literature of the century. Poetry, 
 drama, fiction, history, philosophy, at all he tried his hand, his
 
 PROSE 197 
 
 insatiable ambition making him aspire to rule in all domains. 
 In all he produced work that was very high above the average, 
 and in none did he produce anything of supreme merit. If 
 he deserves a name among the first of French writers, it is not 
 on account of any great original contribution to literature, but 
 on account of his supreme genius as a popularizer of the results 
 and thoughts of others. In this he has never been surpassed, 
 and this it is which makes his name the most widely known 
 in connection with the literature of his century. Though not 
 a creator, he had a wonderful gift of assimilating the ideas 
 of others and making them his own, and this clearness of con- 
 ception being associated with an equal clearness of style, made 
 him the universal spirit of his age. 
 
 In him the transition of style from 17th to 18th century is 
 completed, and we have at its best the short, clear, lucid 
 phrase; while in two respects, elegant simplicity and natural- 
 ness, he has probably never been equalled, even in that land 
 where the writing of prose is a cult with every man of educa- 
 tion. 
 
 One more name must be mentioned before we come to the 
 Encyclopedic movement proper that of Luc de Clapiers de 
 Vauvenargues (1715-1747), of a poor but noble family of 
 Provence. He entered the army, served in Italy and Ger- 
 many, and in Bohemia, where his health was so far ruined as 
 to necessitate his leaving the service in 1743. Debarred by 
 ill health from an active career, he turned his energies to 
 literature, spending his last years in Paris, where he died at 
 the early age of thirty -two. 
 
 His works are : the Introduction h la Connaissance de F Esprit 
 Humain (1746), Edflexions sur Divers Sujets, Conseils a un Jeune 
 Homme, and Discours et Caractkres, in the manner of La Bruyere. 
 Of these the only one finished was the Introduction. 
 
 All Vauvenargues' work breathes the passion of action, 
 which he had been debarred from satisfying in the ordinary 
 way, and to which he strove to give vent in his literary work. 
 His interest lies in the social institutions of man, and the play 
 and development of human forces. He places sentiment and
 
 198 EIGHTEENTH CENTUKT 
 
 passion, as active forces, above reason, and in this is nearer 
 akin to Rousseau than to the speculative philosophes. In spite 
 of his own unhappy fate, he was an optimist and fired by the 
 enthusiasm for humanity a cheerful, honest, upright charac- 
 ter, with something of the simplicity of all men of action, and 
 a wholesomeness of views that might have exercised the best 
 of influences on his century had he lived long enough to 
 establish his literary position. As it was, he was almost un- 
 known, and it was not till half a century later that he became 
 fully appreciated. From his central doctrine, to which he 
 loses no opportunity of giving prominence, the superiority of 
 passion to reason, he may be regarded, in a sense, as the 
 Rousseau of the first half of the century. 
 
 The Encyclopedia. The work in which all the philosophic 
 tendencies of the century culminate is the Encyclope"die, the 
 great literary monument of the second half of the century. 
 
 In 1740 a French bookseller, Le Breton, was offered a trans- 
 lation of the English Cyclopedia of Ephraim Chambers, which 
 had appeared in 1728. He, however, conceived the idea of 
 making of it something more than a mere translation, and 
 eventually got Diderot and D'Alembert to undertake, as joint 
 editors, the production of an encyclopedia which, while on the 
 lines of the English one, should be an original and inde- 
 pendent compendium of the letters, arts, and sciences of the 
 day. The editors, and more especially Diderot, set to work 
 to get together a set of contributors truly representative, 
 and succeeded eventually in enrolling most of the famous 
 names in all the different branches of letters. Among the 
 regular contributors were Condillac, Helvetius, D'Holbach, 
 Grimm, Turgot, and Condorcet, while articles were received 
 from Voltaire, Buffon, and Montesquieu; and even Rousseau, 
 though standing aloof on the whole, was represented in a 
 certain degree. 
 
 A prospectus was written by Diderot explaining its scheme 
 and pointing out its twofold object, namely, as Encyclopedia, 
 to give an ordered and systematized account of all human 
 learning; secondly, as Dictionnaire raisonne" des Arts, des Sciences,
 
 PROSE 199 
 
 ei des Metiers, to give the principles and essentials of all arts 
 and sciences. This was repeated in the Discours preliminaire 
 of D'Alembert, an introduction to the whole, and an excellent 
 resumd of the state of the arts, science, and philosophy of the 
 day. 
 
 The first two volumes appeared in 1751, but though at last 
 under weigh its difficulties were by no means over. Into the 
 intrigues which led to its frequent suppression, and the oppo- 
 sition it met from many quarters, it is impossible to enter. 
 D'Alembert lost heart or patience, and in 1759 resigned his 
 post as joint editor, but Diderot toiled manfully on, and carried 
 the work to completion. 
 
 The last and 28th volume appeared in 1772. 
 
 In spite of the many hands which took part in its composi- 
 tion, the Encyclopedia has a certain unity of spirit, due partly 
 to the similarity of philosophic creed of its contributors, and 
 partly to the vigilant supervision and direction exercised by 
 Diderot as editor. It was to be, to quote the words of Diderot's 
 prospectus, a " Tableau general des Efforts de I' Esprit Humain 
 dans tous les Genres et dans tons les Sibcles", and it was to show 
 the progress of reason, the advance of civilization, and the 
 growth of material prosperity and advantages. 
 
 Eationalism, then, was its watchword, and the authorities 
 were not far wrong, from their point of view, in their repeated 
 attempts to suppress it, for its essential principle was destruc- 
 tive criticism of all established authority and traditional 
 institutions. In religion its tendency was still more destruc- 
 tive, as, even where frank atheism was not avowed, Christianity 
 and revealed religion were ruthlessly set aside. 
 
 Its great importance lies in the fact that, taken as a whole, 
 it shows the tendency of the period, forming a kind of mani- 
 festo or rather code of philosophism, while in form, matter, 
 and manner it is exactly typical of the age in which it was 
 produced. 
 
 First and foremost among the " encyclopedistes " comes 
 Denis Diderot. 
 
 Diderot was born at Langres in Champagne in 1713, the son of a
 
 200 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 cutler. He was at first educated by the Jesuits of his native town, 
 but finished his studies in Paris at the College d'Harcourt. Destined 
 originally for the church, and afterwards for medicine and the law, his 
 love of letters made the adoption of any profession distasteful to him, 
 and he finally settled down to support himself by literature, supplement- 
 ing the scanty income this afforded by giving lessons and doing hack- 
 work of every description. In 1745 he was charged with the editing of 
 the Encyclopedia, and this, in spite of the miserable pay, preserved him 
 from actual want. Still, he was always in needy circumstances, and 
 towards the end of his life was reduced to the necessity of selling even 
 his library. From this calamity he was, however, preserved in an 
 unexpected and pleasant way, for Catherine II, empress of Russia, 
 bought it, left him full and free enjoyment of it, and in addition gave 
 him a salary as librarian. He died at Paris in 1784. 
 
 Diderot's works consist, in addition to the already-mentioned 
 novels La fieligieuse, Jacques le Fataliste, Le Neveu de Eameau 
 of the Essai sur le M6rite et la Vertu (1745), Pensdes Philosophiques 
 (1746), Lettre sur les Aveugles a V Usage de ceux qui voient (1749), 
 and the Salons (1764-1767); a large and varied Correspon- 
 dance, a thousand and one fugitive and often unfinished 
 writings; and last, and most important of all, his share of the 
 Encyclope"die. 
 
 The Essai sur le Mfaiie et la Vertu still professes a kind of 
 theism, but by the time the Lettres sur les Aveugles appeared in 
 1749, Diderot had become openly and avowedly an atheist. 
 In this part of his work he is, in spite of some originality of 
 ideas, a man of his age, expressing, though with greater insight 
 than most, the thoughts with which the atmosphere of his day 
 was charged. 
 
 The Salons, descriptions of the exhibitions of the years 1764- 
 1767, form some of his best work, and gave considerable 
 impulse to art criticism in general, by establishing relations 
 between art and literature, which had hitherto been almost 
 entirely dissociated. Their fault is that they are too literary, 
 laying too great stress on the subject, the story and idea of 
 the picture, and taking too little account of the plastic art. 
 Yet his great gift of feeling and sympathy enabled him, in spite 
 of his lack of technical knowledge, to appreciate the spirit of
 
 PROSE 201 
 
 the art with which he was dealing. The key-note of all his 
 artistic creed was strict truth to nature. 
 
 His Correspondance, and especially that with Mile de Voland, 
 in which he speaks without reserve of the society of the time, 
 the doings and circumstances of his own personal friends, shows 
 us the real Diderot, and enables us to learn and understand 
 perfectly his true character. 
 
 But it is in the countless short fugitive pieces, which 
 appeared in the Encydoptdie or otherwise, as pamphlets, dia- 
 logues, or in any other form which the thought might assume 
 in his plastic imagination under the impulse of the moment, 
 that we see the real literary turn and typical literary work of 
 Diderot. In them we find the universal sympathy and in- 
 terest, and the rarely equalled versatility both of conception 
 and style, which made him the great journalist and worthy 
 editor of that great eighteenth-century magazine, the Ency- 
 doptdie. 
 
 Of these shorter writings, many of which remained un- 
 finished, while still more never received really literary shape 
 and scarcely any literary finish, it is impossible to give a list. 
 The two best-known, however, are probably the Entretien d'un 
 Philosophe avec la MarMiale de*** and Le Ileve de D'Al&rribert. 
 
 Of his importance as first joint and later sole editor of the 
 Encydoptdie an account has already been given in connection 
 with the Encyclopedia itself, with which he was indissolubly 
 bound up, and which was to a great extent identified with his 
 name. 
 
 Diderot's literary importance does not then depend on any 
 single great work or works, but upon his versatility and 
 universality as a writer. Above all, as editor of the Encydo- 
 p^die for many years as the man who carried on the arduous 
 task in spite of all difficulties and even when forsaken by his 
 discouraged partner, and as the man who gave to that epoch- 
 making production such unity as it possessed, Diderot is 
 of supreme importance for the history of 18th-century litera- 
 ture. On account of the unfinished and somewhat formless 
 nature of much of his work, it is not easy to understand
 
 202 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 the nature of his literary genius. The main features of that 
 genius were firstly, a fiery and enthusiastic imagination, 
 which impelled him to espouse all causes and interest him- 
 self in all matters that fell under his notice; and secondly, a 
 peculiar literary impatience which made him indifferent to 
 the form in which he clothed the thoughts and ideas of 
 which he felt at the time such an irresistible necessity to 
 disburden himself. 
 
 Such is Diderot in all his work a brilliant extemporizer, a 
 journalist of genius, but rarely an artist. 
 
 Next to Diderot the most important representative of the 
 philosophical movement is Jean le Bond d'Alembert. 
 
 D'Alembert, born in 1717, was a foundling exposed by his parents on 
 the steps of the church of St. Jean le Rond in Paris. He was brought up 
 by the wife of a poor glazier, and this foster-mother he honoured and 
 respected as a mother till her death. He was sent to the College 
 Mazarin, where he soon gave evidence of his great mathematical ability. 
 At the age of twenty-four he was already a member of the Academy 
 of Sciences. He was at first joint editor with Diderot of the 
 Encyclope'die, but resigned official connection with the work in dis- 
 couragement at the troubles and annoyances to which it was subjected. 
 An invitation of Frederic II in 1752 to go to Berlin as president of the 
 Berlin Academy, and that of Catherine II to go to Russia as tutor of her 
 son, he refused. He, however, accepted a pension from Frederic. In 
 1772 he became secretary of the Academy. He died in 1783. 
 
 An important part of his work consists of his contributions 
 to the Encyclopidie. He wrote the famous Discours Prilimi- 
 naire, which is, both as literature and philosophy, a work of 
 very high merit. Besides editing the mathematical part and 
 contributing mathematical articles, he furnished articles on 
 general subjects, one, the article on Geneva, rendered famous 
 by the reply of Rousseau, the Lettre & M. D'Alembert sur les 
 Spectacles. 
 
 Apart from his many purely scientific and mathematical 
 works, his most important are the Elements de Philosophic and 
 the Eloges des Membres de VAcadtmie Francaise, lives of all the 
 members who had died since the beginning of the century, 
 written in his capacity of secretary, the best-known and most
 
 PROSE 203 
 
 readable of his works. As literature, however, all he produced 
 is open to the charge of dryness. It is too intellectual and 
 formal. Indisputably great as a man of science and thinker, 
 D'Alembert has few of the qualities that go to make literary 
 greatness, and his importance in the literature of his century 
 is due rather to a conjunction of unusual circumstances, and 
 to the esteem in which the sciences were held by the men of 
 letters of his day, than to any purely literary merits of his 
 own. 
 
 Among the remaining more important Encyclopedists, the 
 most noticeable are Condillac, Helvetius, D'Holbach, and 
 Grimm. 
 
 Etienne Bonnot de Mably de Condillac (1715-1780) was 
 born of a noble family at Grenoble, was an Abbe, and lived for 
 the most part quietly on his benefice, taking little part in the 
 life of the great world of his day. His principal works are: 
 Essai sur I'Origine des Connaissances Humaines (1746) and 
 Traitd des Sensations (1754). 
 
 He was the greatest metaphysician of the century, the 
 greatest philosopher among the philosophes. He took up the 
 system of Locke, and carried it boldly to its logical extreme, 
 deriving all ideas from the sensations directly. He was a 
 man of strong, clear intellect, a great logician, the possessor 
 of a lucid polished style, and so in every way fitted to be, as 
 he was, the representative in France of this " philosophy of the 
 senses ". 
 
 This philosophy, which eliminates concrete facts, and deals 
 only with sensations and ideas, was indeed the very philosophy 
 of the 18th century. 
 
 Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771) was born at Paris, became in 
 1738 farmer-general, and later chamberlain to the queen's household. 
 He was very rich, and also very liberal, and kept open house for the 
 philosophes. His reputation depends on his two books, Del' Esprit (1758) 
 and De VHommc (1772). The former caused a great scandal, owing to 
 the uncompromising frankness with which it professed materialism, pro- 
 claiming all thoughts and ideas to be due to different sensations, and so 
 making all progress, civilization, and spiritual life merely the outcome 
 of our physical conformation. It was condemned as immoral, and ordered
 
 204 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 to be publicly burnt by the common hangman. His second book, De 
 I'l/ommc, was much inferior in power and merit, though it was no less 
 fiercely assailed on its appearance. 
 
 The Baron D'Holbach (1723-1789) was born in the Palatinate. 
 Coming to Paris, he became the intimate friend not only of the Ency- 
 clopedists, but also of Rousseau and Buffon and the other intellectual 
 leaders of the day. He was very hospitable and generous, kept open 
 house for the Encyclopedists, and was otherwise very beneficent. 
 
 His one work is the Systeme de la Nature (1770), an exposition of the 
 egoistic philosophy, which establishes self-interest as the motive power 
 of all actions, and does not admit the existence of a divine being. 
 
 As a bold proclamation of pure atheism and materialism it was of 
 considerable importance, and not only attracted much attention, but was 
 the object of very bitter attacks. 
 
 Frederic Melchior Grimm (1723-1807) was a German, educated at 
 Leipzig, who came to Paris, made there the acquaintance of Rousseau 
 in 1749, and later of most of the Encyclopedists. This wide circle of 
 literary acquaintances, coupled with his own great talents, gave its value 
 to his famous Correspondance, which for a third of a century spread over 
 a great part of Europe information and enlightened criticism on the state 
 of contemporary French literature. The letters, which appeared once 
 a fortnight, and were distributed to the different subscribers, among 
 whom were Frederic the Great, Catherine II, the King of Poland, and 
 other princes, were in reality more like the literary periodicals of to-day 
 than letters, the only considerable difference being that these remarkable 
 productions were not printed, but appeared in manuscript. 
 
 Other less considerable members of the same group are : 
 
 Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727-1781), appointed by Louis XVI 
 comptroller-general of finance, much more famous as the man who 
 attempted financial reforms which, if carried out, might have prevented 
 the great Revolution, than as a man of letters. After the end of his 
 political career Turgot devoted himself to literature and science. 
 
 His best-known contribution is the Reflexions sur la Formation et la 
 Distribution des Richesses (1766). His work shows no great literary 
 qualities, and it is more as a thinker and phUosophe than a litterateur 
 proper that his name deserves mention here. 
 
 Marie Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794), a dis- 
 tinguished mathematician, a great leader of the Revolution in its early 
 stages, and president of the Legislative Assembly, but afterwards as a 
 moderate, pursued, imprisoned, and probably done to death, wrote during 
 his flight and concealment his Esquisse dcs Proyres de I 'Esprit Humain
 
 PROSE 205 
 
 (1794). This notable work, which is a summary and rtsumt of the philo- 
 sophic ideas of the age, claims universal equality of privilege and rights, 
 and with an optimism remarkable in a man in his position, traces the 
 progress of humanity in face of tyranny and superstition, and argues the 
 ultimate perfectibility of the human species. 
 
 Although Jean Jacques Rousseau had frequent relations 
 with the Encyclopedists, both hostile and friendly, he cannot 
 be classed as an Encyclopedist, but, on the contrary, stands 
 alone and independent an original, and in many ways the 
 most striking figure of the century. 
 
 Rousseau (1712-1778) was born at Geneva of a French Protestant 
 family. His mother died while he was still an infant, and he was left 
 to the care of his father, a watchmaker, and the intermittent attentions 
 of two aunts. His father was an idle, irregular character, whose one 
 passion in life was reading, and that principally fiction and romance, 
 a taste with which he early imbued his son. 
 
 In 1722 the father was compelled to move from Geneva, leaving his son 
 behind in the care of an uncle. Thus began for Jean Jacques the restless 
 and ever-changing life which continued for the rest of his days. His uncle 
 first placed him with a notary, but he was found utterly unfitted for his 
 work ; then he was apprenticed to an engraver, who ill-treated him, and 
 Jean Jacques, being very unhappy, in 1728 ran away, the manner of his 
 flight being truly characteristic. He had rambled all day among the 
 beauties of nature, which he already loved passionately, and on returning 
 to the city in the evening found the gates shut. This he accepted as an 
 omen, and resolved to return no more to the engraver and his uncle. 
 After some wanderings, he attracted the interest of a Savoy priest, who 
 sent him to Annecy to Madame de Warens, a Catholic convert who had 
 in turn become a passionate proselytizer for her new-found religion. 
 This was the beginning of a patronage which lasted for thirteen years, 
 during which time Rousseau received oft-repeated assistance and kind- 
 ness from his benefactress. By her he was first placed in a Romanist 
 hospice at Turin, but his hopes of advancement from this quarter were 
 vain, for he was baptized, and almost immediately afterwards discharged. 
 He then for three years led a wandering and almost vagabond existence, 
 gaining his livelihood in the most varied capacities as footman, secre- 
 tary, lackey, or by any other employment that came to hand. In 1731 
 he returned to Madame de Warens. The next ten years (1731-1741) 
 were spent principally with his patroness, for whom he performed various 
 services, becoming eventually a kind of factotum. At the same time he 
 had various other employments, among others being the teaching of 
 music. More important still, he continued his communion with nature
 
 206 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 and her beauties, and on this account this period of his life was of the 
 greatest importance for his further development. 
 
 In 1741 he went to Paris, taking with him a comedy, Narcisse, and 
 also a new system of musical notation, neither of which, however, brought 
 him either fame or profit. Still, he made the acquaintance of several 
 people of mark, and managed to keep himself above actual want, princi- 
 pally by the copying of music ; though it was not till 1749 that he became 
 known with his Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts, which won the prize 
 of the Dijon Academy, while in 1753 another essay for the prize of the 
 same academy, the Discours sur I'lnegaliti, finally established his inde- 
 pendent position in literature. 
 
 The years 1756-1762 he passed at Montmorency in houses lent him by 
 Madame d'Epinay and the Due de Montmorency successively, and in 
 spite of the annoyances which he created for himself wherever he went, 
 these were among the happiest and most productive years of his life. 
 In 1762, owing to the storm raised by the publication of the Contrat 
 Social, he fled to Neuchatel, but was driven from there in turn by the 
 peasants, and took refuge on the little lie de St. Pierre in the Lac 
 de Bienne. When the government of Berne made that asylum, too, 
 impossible for him, he accepted, in 1766, the invitation of David Hume, 
 with whom he stayed for eighteen months, at the end of which time the 
 inevitable quarrels reached a climax, and he left England and returned 
 to France. In 1770 he was once more in Paris, keeping himself by 
 copying music, all through his life his only stable means of subsistence. 
 The gloominess which had been growing for many years was becoming 
 now a veritable madness, and he looked upon himself as the victim of an 
 universal plot to decry and dishonour him. Restless, suspicious, melan- 
 choly, and more than half mad, he led during the last years of his life a 
 wretched existence. In 1778 he retired to a cottage in the park of 
 Ermonville, lent him by the Marquis de Girardin, and there he died 
 in July of that year, with a suddenness and under such suspicious 
 circumstances as to lend probability to the belief that he took his own 
 life. 
 
 Eousseau's principal works are: Discours sur les Sciences 
 et les Arts (1750), Discours sur VOrigine et les Fondements de 
 Vlnfyalitt parmi les Hommes (1755), Lettre & M. D'Alembert sur 
 les Spectacles (1758), Julie ou la Nouvelle Heloise (1761), Emile 
 ou I' Education (1762), Le Contrat Social (1762), and the Con- 
 fessions (first six books in 1782, and the last six in 1790). 
 
 It was not till he was thirty-eight years of age that Rous- 
 seau's important literary work began with the Discmirs sur 
 les Arts et les Sciences (1750), a prose essay crowned by the
 
 PROSE 207 
 
 Dijon Academy as the best work presented on the theme 
 proposed: "Si Vetablissement des sciences et des arts a contribut 
 a tpurer les mceurs ". In it the tendency of Eousseau's thought 
 is already plainly seen, and though Diderot asserts that he 
 suggested to Rousseau a negative answer, it appears as if the 
 mind of Rousseau would require no impulse to make it decide 
 upon that line of argument. He argues that civilization is 
 an evil because it leads man away from nature, and that all 
 the so-called progress of the human mind, its arts, sciences, 
 and philosophies, have been in reality harmful, as sapping the 
 original and primitive virtue of man. 
 
 In 1755 he carried on and still further developed the same 
 theme, in his Discours sur I'Origine et les Fondements de I'lnfya- 
 litt parmi les Hommes, which finally established his position as 
 a writer. In it he attributes to the institution of property 
 all the ills which he argues to be the result of civilization. 
 He says: " Le premier qui, ay ant enclos un terrain, s'avisa de dire: 
 Ceci est a moi . . . fut le vrai fondateur de la sociitt civile". From 
 the resulting inequality came tyranny and slavery, vice and 
 unhappiness. And as the natural sequence of all this he goes 
 on to assert his favourite doctrine of the perfection of the 
 savage state, and the evils of civilization as leading man away 
 from the condition of primitive simplicity. 
 
 In Emile ou I' Education (1762) we have this same teaching 
 still further developed and elaborated, with an imaginary 
 pupil Emile as the text of the lesson. The whole is divided 
 into five books, the contents of which are briefly given below. 
 
 Emile is a rich orphan whose education Rousseau undertakes, devoting 
 himself exclusively to the training of his body and mind. The funda- 
 mental idea of the book is that man is naturally good when leaving the 
 hands of his Maker, and only becomes corrupted through the evil influ- 
 ences of civilization and society. Accordingly, all that has to be done is 
 to let nature work its own salvation in freedom, while warding off the 
 evils of an artificial society. Hence he establishes the principle of a 
 negative education as "la meilleure ou pluttit la scute bonne", not as 
 teaching virtue, but as warding off error. 
 
 Book I speaks of the plan of education proposed, the early life of the 
 child chosen for the experiment, attacks many traditional practices, such 
 as the use of swaddling-clothes, the putting out of children to nurse, &c.
 
 208 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 With Book II the child can already talk and his education is begin- 
 ning. This, however, will not consist in the furnishing of any positive 
 information, but in the preserving from error and from the danger of 
 evil examples and counsels, the corruption of towns, and the harmful 
 intercourse with unreliable servants, fimile is brought up in the 
 country. 
 
 Book III finds 1-Smile at the age of twelve, but as yet unable to read 
 books which " n'apprennent qu'a parler de ce qu'on ne sait pas". He 
 does not learn by heart, he draws from nature, and all he acquires is at 
 first-hand. Also, though rich, he learns a trade that of a carpenter 
 and we get the very significant words, " nous approchons de l'6tat de crise 
 et du siecle des revolutions ". Thus up to the present all his lessons have 
 been drawn from experience and from the necessary relations of things, 
 not ideas. He does not know the meaning of such abstract things as 
 history and metaphysics. 
 
 Book IV finds him in his fifteenth year. Up to the present he has 
 heard nothing of God, but here Rousseau places the famous Profession 
 de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard. One summer morning the vicaire leads the 
 boy to the top of a hill overlooking the valley of the Po, and there before 
 this magnificent scene reveals to him the all-powerful will which created 
 and governs the world he sees and knows. Yet no word is said of 
 . revelation the religion is only natural, not revealed. As fimile ap- 
 proaches manhood his guardian at length leads him into the world and 
 finds for him a wife. Only after his marriage does he relax his paternal 
 cares. 
 
 Book V is devoted to the education of women. 
 
 Such was the book which had an enormous practical influ- 
 ence on its day and age, and an influence which on the whole 
 was one for good. It performed a needful function in in- 
 teresting men in the education of the young; it made it once 
 more the fashion for mothers to rear and nurse their children. 
 It is in fact marvellous how very much that is good and sen- 
 sible the book contains, when we remember that the whole 
 system on which it is built the assumption of a human 
 nature which is naturally perfect is entirely false and un- 
 warranted. 
 
 We have followed without interruption Rousseau's expo- 
 sition of his theories on man and society their development 
 and education. Before fimile, however, had appeared two 
 works of first-rate importance, Julie and the Contrat Social. 
 
 Julie ou la Nouvelle Htloise (1760) is a novel in the form of
 
 PROSE 209 
 
 letters, telling of the love of Julie and Saint-Preux. The 
 whole, form and plot, shows clearly the influence of Richard- 
 son. Compelled by her father to renounce her lover, Julie 
 marries a man whom she esteems without loving. The novel 
 is of the highest importance, as the first example of Rousseau's 
 peculiar sentimentality and descriptive power. The word- 
 painting of the book has a wonderful charm, and warmth, 
 vigour, and colour, much of it being inspired by the scenery 
 of the Lake of Geneva and its neighbourhood. 
 
 Most important of all Rousseau's works in its after-effects 
 was, however, the Contrat Social, which appeared in 1762, a 
 few months before Emile, and was published in Amsterdam to 
 avoid the censorship of the French press. Here again the 
 fundamental idea is that of the original natural liberty of man, 
 in contrast to the fetters with which society has bound him: 
 " L'homme est n6 libre et partout il est dans les fers". He pro- 
 ceeds from the premise that in forming the first political 
 society each surrendered his own individual will for the sake 
 of mutual protection, and that consequently they did not 
 renounce their primitive liberty, and now remain as free as 
 before. Thus sovereignty rests with the people, which has 
 never renounced it. Obviously this theory demands a Repub- 
 lic with universal franchise, and it was his theory of such a 
 social contract, and his assertion of the sovereignty of the 
 people, which worked on men's minds and bore practical 
 results in the Revolution, with its watchword of Equality, 
 Liberty, and Fraternity. 
 
 Yet his supposition of this contract in which the primitive 
 state originated is pure hypothesis, and many of his arguments, 
 brilliant and specious as they are, are philosophically untenable. 
 
 Last of all his important works we must mention the Con- 
 fessions, in which he claims to have painted himself without 
 reserve, and which certainly speak with brutal frankness of 
 very much that was low and shameful in his life. 
 
 He seems to glory in the tale of his meannesses, and in the 
 recording of things which most men would have preferred as 
 far as possible to forget, rather than to rake them from the 
 
 ( M 643 ) O
 
 210 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 ashes of the past and expose them to the public gaze. But 
 Rousseau boasts that he is doing what was never done before, 
 showing his very inmost life naked and entire to his fellow- 
 men, and claims insolently that, bad as the story is, he would 
 yet dare to appear before his Maker, and challenge any of his 
 fellows to unfold a better tale. We can only in charity hope 
 that his love of pose has betrayed him into attributing to 
 himself things for which he was not actually responsible. 
 
 Among his less important writings were some articles for 
 the Encydope'die; an opera, the Devin du Village, containing 
 some airs, such as "Rousseau's Dream", still popular to-day; 
 and lastly, one which is worthy of separate mention. The 
 Lettre b, M. D'Alembert sur les Spectacles (1758) is a reply to a 
 paper of D'Alembert in the Encyclopedic, advocating the estab- 
 lishment of a theatre at Geneva; and Jean Jacques raises a 
 vigorous protest against the introduction into the quiet town 
 of Geneva of any such corrupting influence of civilization. 
 
 Taken altogether, the influence of Rousseau on literature in 
 general was the greatest of the century. His solemn note, 
 almost that of the preacher, was at the opposite pole from 
 the flippant cynicism of many of the Encyclopedists, and his 
 own passionate conviction carried persuasion to the hearts 
 of the readers. He had something of the wide declamatory 
 eloquence of the 17th century, which we see also in the vehement 
 oratory of Danton and other Revolutionists. His influence 
 on his own time, and indeed not his own time alone, was two- 
 fold the influence on literature itself, and the practical influ- 
 ence on life and manners. In literature he virtually introduced 
 two new features the painting of nature and sentimentalism. 
 Love of nature was throughout his life his great passion, and 
 lay at the root of all his characteristic views and philosophy. 
 
 In his peculiar kind of sentimentality, again, Rousseau was 
 an innovator. Psychological analysis had already long ago 
 invaded literature, it is true, but Rousseau's peculiar intro- 
 spection, his brooding sentimentality, his lyricism and subjec- 
 tivity, were quite new. It was the first appearance in literature 
 of that subtle evil known as "le mal du stick", which ran
 
 PROSE 211 
 
 through all European literature, becoming later in turn Wer- 
 therism in Germany and Byronism in England. 
 
 Among the practical results of Rousseau's work must be 
 reckoned the revival of the family feeling in France, the re- 
 vival of religious feeling, and an increased taste for simplicity 
 of, life and country pleasures. And lastly, in the great Revo- 
 lution is seen the immediate and practical outcome of ideas 
 which largely owed their birth to his teaching, conveyed more 
 or less indirectly in all his work, and directly in the Contrat 
 Social. 
 
 Such was Rousseau, a writer who not only set on foot a 
 literary movement which deeply influenced in turn the liter- 
 ature of the chief cultured peoples of Europe, but also by his 
 practical teaching was the immediate forerunner of the 
 greatest political and national upheaval the world has ever seen. 
 
 We now come, with George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, 
 to a writer of a different type, one who was before all a 
 scientist. 
 
 Buffon (1707-1788) was born in Burgundy, son of a counsellor of the 
 Parliament of Bordeaux; studied at the Jesuit College of Dijon, travelled 
 afterwards with a young Englishman, Lord Kingston, in Italy, Switzer- 
 land, and England, and subsequently settled in Paris in order to continue 
 his mathematical and scientific studies. He became a member of the 
 Academy of Sciences in 1733, and in 1739 was made Intendant of the 
 "Jardin des Plantes". Then it was that he conceived the plan of his 
 great work, at which he laboured steadily for nearly half a century, 
 making it, although he went into the world and was by no means a 
 hermit, his one serious interest in life. He received many distinctions 
 and honours, and was made Comte de Buffon by Louis XV, while his 
 fame spread over the civilized world. 
 
 Buffon's life-work was his Histoire Naturelle, in 15 volumes, 
 of which the first three appeared in 1749. The scheme which 
 he proposed to himself was stupendous, for the work was to be 
 an encyclopedia of all existing scientific knowledge concerning 
 the earth and its vegetable and animal life. The whole of this 
 colossal undertaking Buffon himself superintended, although 
 he had collaborators who did much of the hack-work, while 
 he himself wrote the more striking and rhetorical parts.
 
 212 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 By placing man at the centre of creation, and judging 
 everything from his point of view and the way it affected 
 him, Buffon gives his work an unnatural and unscientific 
 position, yet by the very breadth of scheme he widened 
 the scientific horizon, and led the way to larger and more 
 comprehensive views. At present, however, we are not so 
 much concerned with Buffon's scientific as with his literary 
 importance. This consists in his having won a new field for 
 literature. He attached himself a very great importance to 
 style, as is expressed in his so well known, but often misquoted 
 saying, " Le style est Vhomme meme". He wished to equal the 
 dignity of his subject by the grandeur of his style, and even 
 if this style is often inflated and bombastic, yet it has great 
 merits, and showed for the first time the possibility of treating 
 scientific subjects in clear and even eloquent language. 
 
 Before taking leave of the 18th century we must say a few 
 words of the various women who exercised a great influence 
 on literature during the period. 
 
 In an age when the human interest was predominant, and 
 the greatest importance was attached to matters of form and 
 taste, it was only natural that ladies of refinement and cul- 
 ture should play an important part in the intellectual life 
 of the day. Such was the case; and we find many women, 
 not so much by their own writings as by the stimulating 
 society which identified itself with their salons, playing a 
 leading rdle in the world of letters. 
 
 Madame du Deffand (1697-1780) may be taken first as being the most 
 important, not only on account of the famous men she gathered in her 
 salon, but also on account of the correspondence she maintained with 
 some of the greatest of her day, such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, D'Alem- 
 bert, and the Englishman Horace Walpole. By her wonderful wit, 
 shrewd and piercing if narrow criticism of life and art, she won and 
 maintained a position among thinkers and writers, for whom she fur- 
 nished during many years, in her famous mansion of the Rue Saint- 
 Dominique, a common meeting-ground. 
 
 Madame Geoffrin's (1699-1777) salon formed a centre for the philo- 
 sophes and Encyclopedists, among its frequenters being Diderot, D'Alem- 
 bert, and D'Holbach. She was very rich, and not only entertained her
 
 PROSE 213 
 
 proteges, but provided many of them with the very means of subsist- 
 ence. While Madame du Deffand was a grandc dame, Madame Geoffrin 
 belonged to the bourgeoisie, and a somewhat analogous difference is to 
 be traced in the characters of their entourage, the literary and aesthetic 
 tone of the former being in marked contrast to the serious and business- 
 like spirit by which the latter was on the whole animated. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Lespinasse (1732-1776), last but not least famous of 
 those we have singled out for special remark, began as the friend and 
 adviser of Madame du Deffand, and ended as her rival, taking away with 
 her, after their quarrel in 1764, D'Alembert and not a few of the Ency- 
 clopedists. In addition to the importance of her salon, her name is 
 remembered for the collection of love letters addressed to the Comte 
 de Guibert, which form one of the rare expressions of genuine passion 
 of the time, and in their warmth and fervour of feeling and glowing 
 passionate language are not unworthy of being compared with the work 
 of Rousseau himself. 
 
 Last of all may be mentioned the birth of a new genre. 
 which was the direct outcome of political events Political 
 Eloquence. 
 
 Up till now the pulpit had been the only place from which 
 a direct appeal could be made, and it had produced very con- 
 siderable oratorical eloquence, notably in the 17th century, 
 with its long list of famous preachers. Now, however, a direct 
 appeal had to be made to the people on other grounds, and 
 the political tribune gave birth to a remarkable outburst of 
 oratorical talent. 
 
 The list of famous speakers produced by the great national 
 drama, and the stirring events of social upheaval and transition, 
 is a long one, and we can speak only of the most conspicuous. 
 
 Gabriel Honore De Biquetti, Comte de Mirabeau (1749- 
 1791), is a man so well known for other than literary reasons 
 that it would be superfluous to give details of his life. Suffice 
 it to say, that during the vicissitudes of a stormy career he 
 had learnt much not only from men but also from books, and 
 the latter especially during the periods of imprisonment for 
 which he had to thank his various irregularities of conduct. 
 All his reading and experience served to develop his natural 
 gift of eloquence. In the numerous speeches which he de- 
 livered before the Assemble Constituante he displayed a won-
 
 214 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 derful power of improvisation, a fire and impetuosity of word 
 and imagery exactly suited to carry away the audience to 
 which they were addressed. He has been accused of over- 
 emphasis, of bombast even, of want of polish in style, and of 
 theatrical and commonplace metaphors and imagery, and from 
 such faults he certainly was not free. Yet at the same time 
 it must be remembered that such things were in the taste of 
 the day, and that in oratory at any rate, where the object is 
 to create a direct and immediate impression, the means must 
 be at all costs adapted to the ends. Correctness of form and 
 literary polish would have been poor substitutes for that 
 powerful rush and impetus which carried the listeners away, 
 and of which even to-day we can feel the power. 
 
 Besides his speeches we possess many letters, among them 
 the Leitres Originates denies du Donjon de Vincennes, and the 
 Lett re de Mirabeau a un de ses Amis en Allemagne. 
 
 A collection of his CEuvres Oratoires was published in 1819. 
 
 Another famous orator of the Revolutionary epoch was Robespierre 
 (1758-1794), who, in striking contrast to Mirabeau, delivered his most 
 violent tirades in a phlegmatic and pedantic style that had more of the 
 sermon than the popular oration a style in which the ever-present 
 striving after edification contrasts terribly with the undercurrent of 
 relentless hatred of all those who in any way opposed him. 
 
 Lesser lights in the same field are Danton, Saint-Just, and Hebert, 
 while a dozen more could be named, each of whom would stand out 
 conspicuous at any other time, and who collectively illustrate the wonder- 
 ful ferment produced in men's minds by the terrible events of the days 
 in which they lived.
 
 BOOK V 
 THE TRANSITION (1789-1820) 
 
 GENERAL VIEW. 
 
 The period of the Revolution and the Empire was a time 
 of transition between the 18th and 19th centuries, belonging 
 entirely to neither, but on the whole more akin in spirit to 
 the latter than to the former. It marks the great change 
 which came over literature from the time when the Encydoptdie 
 still voiced the prevailing modes of thought and intellectual 
 ideals, to the full outburst of the new genius in the Romantic 
 movement. 
 
 The distance traversed in this short time was great, and 
 such rapid ripening and development of the germs of change 
 would only have been possible in a time when the foundations 
 of all institutions, and of society itself, were shaken, and men's 
 minds correspondingly loosened from the bonds of old tradi- 
 tion and prejudice, and open for the reception of new ideas. 
 
 We have seen that the philosophes and Encyclopedists of the 
 18th century, while questioning all merely traditional autho- 
 rity in religion and politics, remained on the whole fairly 
 conventional in matters of literature. It was the work of the 
 writers of the transition period of which we now speak to 
 point out new ideals more in keeping with the times, and to 
 pave the way for the great literary revolution which was to 
 follow, while going a considerable part of the way themselves. 
 
 The two great names are those of Madame de Stael and 
 Chateaubriand, who, while working along different lines, had 
 very much in common, and both in their different ways fur- 
 thered the same tendency.
 
 216 THE TRANSITION 
 
 Madame do Stael, by directing the attention of her country- 
 men to the literatures of other lands, and above all to that 
 of Germany, suggested wider ideals, and struck the first 
 note of that cosmopolitanism which was one of the proudest 
 boasts of the Romantic school. She first drew attention 
 to the Northern literatures as being especially worthy of 
 consideration, and pointed out the romanticism which is their 
 essential characteristic. It is, moreover, noteworthy that she 
 was the first to use the word Komantic in its literary sense, 
 as the opposite of Classic. Romanticism she declared to be 
 the natural and only really living spirit of the time, classicism 
 having no longer anything but a transplanted and unnatural 
 existence. In this the revolt from 18th-century classicism 
 and the declaration of the coming movement are very clearly 
 and directly expressed. 
 
 Chateaubriand's work in the transition was the necessary 
 complement of that of Madame de Stael; for as she defined 
 the characteristics of the change and established its theory, 
 so he furnished it with ideals, and gave inspiration to the 
 youthful reformers who were to carry the movement to its 
 final realization. Like her he attached the greatest import- 
 ance to the literature of other countries, while his own writings 
 range over the widest variety of subjects and scenes. He has 
 been called the "father of romanticism", and the title is 
 applicable both in the general and in the particular, for he 
 both promoted by his general influence the tendency of the 
 rising literature, and furnished the sources of the many dif- 
 ferent currents which that tendency later developed. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 POETRY 
 
 Whatever may be the intrinsic merits of Jean Pierre de 
 Beranger as a poet, he deserves special notice as the champion 
 of the popular and middle-class sentiment of his day. He was
 
 POETRY 217 
 
 born at Paris in 1780. Despite the noble particle, he belonged 
 to the lower middle class, a fact which he never attempted to 
 conceal. After various experiences he occupied, during the 
 years 1807-1821, the unpretentious office of commis expedition- 
 naire at the university, and his daily bread being now assured, 
 he devoted himself whole-heartedly to the writing of his 
 famous songs. The first collection was published in 1815. 
 The second volume, which appeared in 1821, contained poli- 
 tical allusions for which he was punished by the loss of his 
 post, a fine, and three months' imprisonment; while the fourth 
 volume, in 1825, was taken still more seriously by the author- 
 ities. These punishments naturally only increased his credit 
 with the people, and his popularity became truly immense; 
 but though he received repeated offers of advancement during 
 the remainder of his life, he chose to remain a private citizen. 
 His last years were spent in retirement, and he died at Paris 
 in 1857. 
 
 With the exception of Ma Biographic, published posthum- 
 ously, Beranger's work consists exclusively of Chansons (1815- 
 1833). Among the best known are: Le Eoi d'Yvetot, Eager 
 Bontemps, Ma location, Mon Habit, Le Dieu des Bonnes Gens, 
 Waterloo, Le Vieux Drapeau, Les Deux Grenadiers. 
 
 These songs range over a wide variety of subjects and 
 tones, from the merely gay and jovial, through the amatory 
 and convivial to the chanson of political satire, and even to a 
 kind of half-philosophical ballad. 
 
 In all, the ideas and philosophy, if such it can be called, are 
 of the cheapest and most clap-trap order the philosophy of 
 the popular orator or the tap-room politician. Even such as 
 they are, his ideas have no stability or consistence, his politics 
 being an incongruous mixture of imperialism and republican- 
 ism, his religious belief (if the expression may be pardoned) 
 for the most part a curious mixture of paganism and Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 Yet though not an ideal teacher, Be*ranger had all the quali- 
 ties that go to make a popular poet a ready wit, a lively 
 fancy, force and directness of expression, and a happy knack
 
 218 THE TRANSITION 
 
 of verse and rime which, while being in fact the work of very 
 great art and no little labour, had an air of perfect naturalness 
 and spontaneity. Moreover, he expressed directly, if not the 
 people itself, the great bourgeois majority of France, with its 
 love for the petite pointe even at the expense of the idea, its 
 essentially commonplace thought, its malicious fun, and lack 
 of all real reverence a characteristic feature of the esprti, 
 gaulois. 
 
 In a way he deserved his popularity, and in his day he was 
 more popular even than the great leader of the Eomantic 
 school himself, for he was an artist in his kind. No one 
 has . ever understood better than he how to get the full value 
 out of the refrain, no one better the secret of giving to each 
 stanza its own individuality within the whole, no one better 
 how to write the chanson of dramatic action. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 DRAMA 
 
 The only dramatist of any importance in this period is 
 Casimir Delavigne (1793-1843), who enjoyed considerable 
 reputation in his day, but who has not been kindly treated 
 by time, his work appearing to us to-day unnatural and of 
 little merit. As a poet he made himself famous with his 
 Messdniennes, published in 1818, verse satires upon the Restora- 
 tion, in which he celebrates liberty, and bewails the degrada- 
 tion and misfortunes of France. The best of his many plays 
 are the Fepres Siciliennes (1819), Marino Faliero (1829), Louis 
 XI, produced in 1832, and Les Enfants d'Edouard (1833). 
 
 Delavigne was a writer of little originality, but of consider- 
 able technical skill, who wavered between classicism and 
 romanticism, and possessed none of the best qualities of either. 
 He was incapable of appreciating the sobriety and simplicity 
 of the former, while for the warmth and colour of the latter 
 he substituted commonplace rhetorical devices and exaggerated 
 declamation.
 
 PROSE 219 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 PROSE 
 
 First in tie list of great names of the period stands that of 
 a famous woman-writer, Madame de Stael. 
 
 Anne Louise Germaine Necker (Madame de Stael) was born at Paris 
 in 1766, the only child of a rich banker. She early gave proof of won- 
 derful gifts, and at the age of eleven made the acquaintance in her 
 mother's salon of some of the most distinguished men of the day. She 
 showed marvellous precocity, while still a mere child reading many 
 English and French works, but devoting herself above all to Rousseau, 
 with a critical work upon whom she made her literary debut. 
 
 At the age of twenty she married the Baron de Stael Holstein, the 
 Swedish ambassador at Versailles, but the marriage, which lasted sixteen 
 years, was not a happy one. She sympathized with the Revolution in 
 its beginnings, but after the massacres of 1792, fled to her father's castle 
 at Coppet, on the banks of the Lake of Geneva. Under the Directory 
 she returned, but became suspected, and in 1803 received the order to 
 leave Paris. She set off for Germany, and arrived at Weimar, where 
 she charmed and was charmed by the brilliant literary society there, 
 only leaving Weimar for Coppet to attend the deathbed of her father. 
 In 1807 she paid a second visit to Germany, and it was after this that 
 she wrote the greatest of her books, De I'Allemagne, published in 1813 
 by John Murray in England, where she was temporarily seeking.a refuge. 
 After the fall of Napoleon in 1814 she returned to Paris, and received 
 a hearty welcome. The return of Napoleon again drove her from Paris, 
 but she once more returned, and died there in 1817. 
 
 Her principal works are: De la Literature considdrde dans ses 
 Rapports avec les Constitutions Sociales (1800), Delphine (1802), 
 Corinne (1807), De I'Allemagne (1810), and the unfinished 
 Considerations sur la Revolution Fran$aise (1818). 
 
 In the Literature she lays down principles of literary 
 criticism in its relation to the laws and institutions of society. 
 Literature, being intimately bound up with society, must 
 change with it, and hence the great masterpieces of the past, 
 however much we may admire them and she expresses the 
 warmest admiration for Racine and Corneille are no longer 
 suitable or possible models for the writers of to-day. Among 
 the first, too, she points to the Northern and Germanic peoples
 
 220 THE TRANSITION 
 
 as a source of inspiration for the present day a message taken 
 up and developed later in her greater work, De VAllemagne. 
 
 Her two novels, Delphine (1802) and C&rinne (1807), both 
 present the author herself in different guises and situations, 
 and both show the liberty of the individual in conflict with 
 the fetters and restraints of society. 
 
 Delphine loves Le"once, who, though he returns her love, 
 yet, under the pressure of convention and the persuasion of 
 his family, marries Mathilde, to whom he is betrothed, but 
 for whom he has no love. The novel develops the various 
 miseries which are the consequences of this loveless marriage, 
 and of the true and genuine passion thwarted by the conven- 
 tionalities of civilization. 
 
 The subject of Corinne is very much of the same nature, 
 and treats of the barrier raised by false convention between 
 the gifted and great-souled Corinne and the young Scottish 
 noble, Lord Nelvil, whom she loves and who loves her in 
 return, but who from prudence and worldly motives contracts 
 a marriage of convenience with another woman. Fame is 
 powerless to console the brilliant Corinne for her loss, and she 
 dies of a broken heart. 
 
 The great and lasting work, however, on which her repu- 
 tation depends is De VAllemagne (1810). It consists of four 
 parts, namely: De VAllemagne et des mceurs des Allemands, De 
 la litUrature et des arts, La philosophic et la morale, La religion 
 el I'enthousiasme. 
 
 The first part bears in a more direct and concrete way on 
 the nature of the country and the manners and habits of its 
 people, showing the relation between the national character 
 and literature, while in the second this direct consideration 
 of the literature is carried still further. The third and fourth 
 books treat of more abstract matters, pointing out the general 
 principles and the great currents of German literature and 
 thought, and establishing the essential characteristics of the 
 Romanticism which it represents. Here, for the first time, the 
 word Romantic was employed in a literary sense in opposition 
 to Classic, and in the famous passage in which she expresses
 
 PROSE 221 
 
 this we see formulated for the first time also the ideas which 
 were eventually to result in the great Romantic movement 
 in France. She says: "La literature romantique est la seule 
 qui puisse croitre et se vivifier de nouveau: elle exprime notre 
 religion, elle rappelle notre histoire: son origine est'andenne mais 
 non antique. Les poesies d'apres ^antique sont rarement populaires, 
 parcequ'elles ne tiennent dans le temps actuel a rien de national . . . 
 La literature des anciens chez les modernes est une liiUrature trans- 
 plant^, la litUrature romantique ou chevaleresque est chez nous 
 indigene, et c'est notre religion et nos institutions qui I'ont fait 
 folore." 
 
 In thus substituting a new ideal for the old classical one 
 Madame de Stae'l breaks away completely from the 18th 
 century, and prepares the way for that wider cosmopolitan 
 idea of literature which was the ideal of the Romantic school, 
 and in the birth and first beginnings of which lies the import- 
 ance of the writers of the transition period. By thus widening 
 the literary horizon, and creating the feeling of a larger 
 intellectual fellowship, Madame de Stae'l rendered incalculable 
 service to the literature of her country. 
 
 The Considerations sur la Revolution (1818), which was left 
 unfinished at her death, is more directly concerned with the 
 political than with the literary side of her activity. Though 
 with the best and most humane of intentions, Madame de 
 Stae'l is so hampered by class prejudice, and a kind of legis- 
 lative liberalism, which sees in the application of a suitable 
 constitution the only thing needful for the curing of all social 
 ills, that she fails to appreciate duly the Revolution with its 
 deep underlying currents and workings. Yet the book has 
 many merits, and is still to-day of value for students of that 
 eventful period. 
 
 It may safely be said that Madame de Stae'l is one of the 
 most important women -writers the world has ever seen. 
 Gifted as she was with an unbounded and many-sided en- 
 thusiasm, it was her mission to convince others of the things 
 which she herself apprehended with such clearness and con- 
 viction. Endowed with a wonderful personality and great
 
 222 THE TRANSITION 
 
 conversational powers, she exercised no less influence through 
 the many men of distinction with whom she came in personal 
 contact than by her writings. In opening up the wonderful 
 wealth of German literature and thought, she conferred a 
 great and lasting benefit on her country. 
 
 The new ideas and the theory of art defined by Mme de 
 Stael were realized by Francois Rene de Chateaubriand. 
 
 Chateaubriand was born in 1768 at St. Malo in Brittany^ as the tenth 
 
 ild of one of the most ancient families of the country. He was allowed 
 grow up, without much supervision or education, among the rude 
 fisher-folk of his native place, and this free natural life had not a little 
 VT;o do with the character of his future work. For a short time he served 
 as an ensign; in 1791 he went to America, but returned to France on 
 hearing of the flight of Louis XVI, and joined the 6migr6s. 
 
 After being wounded at the siege of Thionville, he passed over to 
 England, where in 1797 he published his Essai sur les Revolutions. He 
 returned to France in 1800, and in 1801 published Atala, which estab- 
 lished once for all his literary position. In 1806 and 1807 he travelled 
 in Greece, Palestine, and Egypt. 
 
 For a time he had been an admirer of Napoleon, and Napoleon would 
 have been only too glad of his help in his endeavours to reinstate 
 Christianity, but Chateaubriand definitively left him after the judicial 
 murder of the Due d'Enghien. With the Restoration he became 'a warm 
 supporter of the monarchy, and was raised to high honour. Into the 
 many vicissitudes of his later political career it is impossible to enter. 
 That his rapid and rather puzzling changes were due to change of 
 conviction rather than to mere time-serving is, however, probable. He 
 said of himself that he was " Bourbonien par honneur, royaliste par 
 raison et par conviction, rtfpublicain par gofit et par caractere". He 
 died in 1848, and was buried at his jjreton birthplace of St. Malo. 
 
 His principal works are: The Essai sur les Revolutions 
 (1797), Atala (1801), Le Gtnie du Christianisme (1802), Hen/ 
 (1805), Les Martyrs (1809), Itindraire de Paris a Jerusalem 
 (1811), Les Natchez (1826), and the Memoires d 'Outre- Tonibe, 
 which appeared partly before and partly after his death. 
 
 Chateaubriand's first literary venture, the Essai sur les Revo- 
 lutions, published in England in 1797, is curious from the fact 
 that the ideas it contains are the exact opposite of his later 
 creed. The work is impregnated with pessimism and scep- 
 ticism a fact which is not so much to be wondered at when
 
 PROSE 223 
 
 one reflects that the book was written when the author was 
 a fugitive in London, poor, ill, disappointed, and well-nigh 
 desperate. However, hardly was the work published when 
 he turned round, principally owing to letters from a dead 
 mother and sister: "Les deux wix sorties du tombeau m'ont frappd: 
 je suis devenu chrdtien, fai pleurd et fai cru ". This sentiment 
 of religion, rather a sweet dream than a belief founded upon 
 or requiring proofs, was for the rest of his life, with the 
 royalism with which it was so closely connected, his faith and 
 profession. 
 
 Moreover, hardly had he published his Essai than he set 
 about its refutation in the Genie du Christianisme. From this 
 he detached and published in 1801 A tola, a kind of prose 
 poem, an episode from the mass of his American impressions 
 and reminiscences, which had a great and immediate success, 
 and established his literary reputation. He himself describes 
 it as "une sorte de poeme moitid descriptif, moitid dramatique. 
 fai essay e" de donner a cet ouvrage les formes les plus antiques" 
 The story tells how a young Indian, Chactas, who had fallen 
 into the hands of a hostile tribe, is saved by an Indian girl, 
 Atala. Each conceives for the other a passionate love, and 
 Atala, feeling herself incapable of accomplishing the vow she 
 made to her dying mother to devote herself to the service 
 of the Virgin, poisons herself. The scenes which describe the 
 wanderings of the pair through the forests, and their adven- 
 tures and dangers, show very great narrative skill and descrip- 
 tive beauty. 
 
 The Gdnie du Christianisme ou Beautds de la Religion Chrdtienne 
 (1802) was intended before all to prove to quote once more 
 the author's own words that "de toutes les religions gui ont 
 jamais existd, la religion chrdtienne est la plus podtique, la plus 
 humaine, la plus favorable a la libertd, aux arts et aux lettres; 
 que le monde moderne lui doit tout, depuis I agriculture jusqu'aux 
 sciences abstraites, depuis les hospices pour les malheureux jusqu'aux 
 temples bdtis par Micliel-Ange et ddcords par Raphael . . . qu'elle 
 favorise le gdnie, offre des formes nobles a Vdcrivain, et des moules 
 parfaits a V artiste . . .". Such is the vast design which the
 
 224 THE TRANSITION 
 
 author proposes to himself, and we shall see how he carries 
 it out. The work is divided into four parts: Des Doymes et de 
 la Doctrine, Poetique du Christianisme, Beaux Arts et Literature, 
 Culte. 
 
 The first part reviews the dogmas of a number of religions. 
 In the second and third parts he compares Christianity with 
 other religions from the artistic and poetic point of view, 
 showing how sentiments and emotions have been raised by it 
 to a higher plane; poetry, science, and art ennobled how 
 superior the Bible is to Homer, the characters of the biblical 
 patriarchs to those of the pagan heroes. 
 
 In the last part, Culte, he points out the beautiful and poetic 
 character of the ceremonies of the Christian religion its 
 prayers, masses, processions, and the beauty of many of the 
 buildings, churches and tombs, which are directly due to its 
 influence. 
 
 What then was the value of this Christianity of Chateau- 
 briand? Plainly he puts his main defence on no very high 
 religious grounds, laying, as he does, more stress on its value 
 as a poetic instrument than as a religion in the true sense. 
 Sentiment plays too great, and reasoned argument too small 
 a part. A contemporary well describes it in the words: "Le 
 Genie du Christianisme est un mattre livre, mais par le sentiment 
 qui y est fort, non par les raisons qui y sont faibles ". The defence 
 is, that such an apology, which may be too sentimental and 
 too little reasoned for our critical days, was the best and only 
 suitable one under the circumstances in which it was written. 
 
 But whatever its value in other respects may be, the Genie 
 du Christianisme will always mark an important date in the 
 history of letters. 
 
 Rent, was first published with the Gtnie du Christianisme 
 in 1802, but afterwards appeared separately in 1805. It is 
 the portrait not of a character but of a temperament, of the 
 vague melancholy known as "le mal du siecle", which had 
 been already portrayed by Goethe in Werther, by Byron, and 
 by Rousseau. As well as being a manifestation of a mode of 
 thought of the period, Rent, is a history of Chateaubriand's
 
 PROSE 225 
 
 own inner life, of the indefinite fears and aspirations, and 
 unmotived melancholy of the man who said that he had 
 " bailU sa vie ", 
 
 The story of Rene and his sister Amelie is in the essential 
 the story of Chateaubriand's own youth, when he roamed the 
 forests of his native country with his sister Lucile. Rene 
 never knew his mother, and early loses his father. The only 
 human being with whom he is happy is his sister. She saves 
 him from many dangers, and even from suicide; but when she 
 at length retires into a convent he seeks to forget his grief in 
 the forests of the New World, where he joins a tribe of Indians, 
 the Natchez. An old man, Chactas, becomes a father and con- 
 fessor to him, and relates the story of his life, including the 
 part we have already known in Atala. 
 
 In the Natchez Chateaubriand later recounts the death of 
 Rene. 
 
 Les Natchez, which did not appear till 1826, but of which 
 we will speak in this connection, is divided into two parts, of 
 which the first is a prose epic in twelve cantos, the second a 
 prose novel. 
 
 The historical background is the destruction of a French 
 colony in Louisiana by Indians in 1727, and the punishment 
 of the Indians by the French. In the first part he introduces 
 all kinds of personages of heaven and hell, the guardian angel 
 of America, Satan, and even allegorical figures, Renown, &c. 
 The work is full of weird and grotesque traits and unnatural 
 imagery, and on the whole is somewhat of a failure, being only 
 redeemed by an air of savage beauty and simplicity, and by 
 the wonderful truth and picturesqueness of many of its descrip- 
 tive parts. 
 
 Les Martyrs (1809) is important as being an attempt on the 
 author's part to carry into execution the literary principles 
 which he had laid down in the G4nie. Les Martyrs ou Triomplie 
 de la Religion Chrttienne is a large prose epic in twenty-four 
 cantos. 
 
 The subject is the persecution of the Christians in the time 
 of Diocletian, in the beginning of the 4th century A.D. Eudore, 
 
 (M643) P
 
 226 THE TRANSITION 
 
 a noble Greek, loves Cymodocee, the daughter of a priest of 
 Homer, and she is converted in order to marry him. Eudore, 
 who after his return to Rome has made himself conspicuous 
 by his Christian zeal, is condemned to die in the arena, where 
 at the last moment Cymodocee joins him, and they die to- 
 gether. A cross of light and thunder announce that the 
 persecutions are at an end. 
 
 The work, which was written with the purpose of demon- 
 strating a theory a fact which we are in no danger of forget- 
 ting contains, along with the beauties of style and of natural 
 description which are always to be associated with the author's 
 name, much that is merely formal and insipid, much that is 
 exaggerated and unnatural. The influence of Milton is 
 strongly marked we are given views of heaven and hell, of 
 God and Satan, angels and demons. On the whole it is a 
 failure as an epic; there is too much that is merely conventional, 
 and more that is not true to the epic spirit, faults which 
 cannot be fully atoned for by the beauties of description and 
 the excellence of individual parts. 
 
 L'ltinSraire de Paris h Jerusalem (1811) gives the story of 
 Chateaubriand's journey to the Holy Land by way of Greece, 
 and the return through Egypt, Barbary, and Spain, undertaken 
 after he had broken with Napoleon in disgust at the murder 
 of the Due d'Enghien. In this we see the author at his best, 
 .the varied and interesting countries which he visited, the old- 
 world customs of the peoples, the legends and historical asso- 
 ciations of the different places seen, having inspired him with 
 some of his most eloquent writing and most beautiful natural 
 description. 
 
 Lastly, we must speak of the Mdmoires d'Outre-Tombe, which 
 were not to appear till after' his death, but of which he was 
 compelled by pecuniary difficulties to sell the property during 
 his lifetime, or, as he put it, to " hypothdquer sa tombe ", in con- 
 sequence of which a part actually appeared before his death. 
 They were written in the last period of his life, during which 
 he remained aloof from politics and loyal to the legitimate 
 monarchy. They abound in eloquent and touching passages,
 
 PROSE 227 
 
 but are dominated and spoiled by his excessive self-appreciation 
 and sensitive, almost morbid, pride. 
 
 Chateaubriand exercised on the literature of the beginning 
 of the 19th century an influence only paralleled by that of 
 Madame de Stael. He has been justly called " the last of the 
 classics and the first of the romanticists ". Like Madame de 
 Stael he drew the attention of his fellow-countrymen to foreign 
 literatures, and so anticipated what was, if not the practice, 
 at any rate the profession of the Romantic school. By the 
 importance which he attached to the ego, by his sentimentalism 
 and self-questioning, he showed the path which modern lyricism 
 was to pursue. 
 
 He wrote three works each of which formed a school a 
 thing which could be said of few writers, and which of itself 
 shows his great influence and power even apart from the 
 question of the value of those works. To quote the words of 
 Theophile Gautier: "Dans le Genie du Christianisme, il re- 
 staura la cathedrale gothique ; dans les Natchez, il roumii lagrande 
 nature ferme'e; dans Rene", il inventa la mdlancolie et la passion 
 moderne". 
 
 It is not as a thinker that he is of such importance for the 
 student of French literature, as he deals too much in sentiment, 
 and that not infrequently false, and abounds in absurdities 
 and exaggerations, to which he was led by his fervid imagi- 
 nation. Where his characteristic genius is to be seen is in 
 the glowing diction of his descriptive writings, in which he 
 surpassed even his masters, Rousseau and Bernardin de St. 
 Pierre, in the majestic language in which he speaks of some 
 of the great and noble enthusiasms of life, and which acted 
 like a trumpet call and an inspiration to the young and 
 impressionable leaders of the Romantic school. On them 
 Chateaubriand's influence can be traced, not in one style or in 
 one direction alone, but in the most comprehensive fashion. 
 
 The influence of Rousseau and of Chateaubriand combined in the 
 writings of Etieune de Senancour (1770-1846), whose fame rests 
 securely on Obermann (1804), a romance in epistolary form, in which 
 the hero expresses so effectively the desolating maladie du sieclc, that
 
 228 THE TRANSITION 
 
 disgust of life before having lived, of which Rousseau may be called the 
 creator. 
 
 A writer who made up in quality for lack of quantity is 
 Joseph Joubert (1754-1824), who had a most peculiar literary 
 career, if the term may be used of one whose literary labours 
 were not known till after his death. He was born in Perigord, 
 but at the age of twenty -two came to Paris, and went through 
 all the terrors of the Revolution. At Paris he spent most 
 of the remainder of his life, in correspondence and personal 
 intercourse with many men of letters, and well known for his 
 criticisms of the writings of others, though he put forward 
 nothing of his own. 
 
 It was not till 1838, fourteen years after his death, that his 
 friend Chateaubriand issued a volume of Penstes, collected 
 from the papers he had left behind, which at once established 
 his reputation as one of the greatest penste writers of the 
 world, and worthy to rank beside even Pascal and La Roche- 
 foucauld. They are remarkable for their wide range, embracing 
 theology, politics, social questions, and ethics, as well as litera- 
 ture; and still more for their wonderful condensation of 
 thought, which is attained without obscurity or any sacrifice 
 of style. His Pensdes are the product of a cultured mind 
 which was happily capable of matching the refinement and 
 delicacy of its thought with an equal refinement and delicacy 
 of expression. 
 
 A hatred of all new ideas, and of the institutions called forth 
 by the Revolution, is the key-note of the works of Joseph de 
 Maistre (1754-1821), born at Chambe'ry, a son of the President 
 of the Senate of Savoy. When Savoy became French in 1792 
 he withdrew to Lausanne, and there wrote his first work of 
 importance, the Considerations sur la France. From 1802 to 
 1817 he lived at St. Petersburg as minister of the King of 
 Sardinia. In 1817 he returned to Turin, and died there in 
 1821. 
 
 His chief writings are Considerations sur la France (1796), 
 Du Pape (1819), De Vfiglise Gallicane (1821), and the incom- 
 pleted Soirees de St. Petersbourg, in the same year. All his
 
 PROSE 229 
 
 writings are dominated by one guiding idea the most absolute 
 ultramontanism, that is to say, the theory which sees in the 
 pope the only final arid supreme source of all earthly power, 
 while temporal princes only hold a certain degree of authority 
 as his deputies. In this logical uniformity he sought the 
 remedy for all the disputes and complexities of civilized 
 life, and for what the idea was worth he supported it with 
 exceptional argumentative powers. Paradoxical he was in a 
 great degree, and few will agree with his fundamental principle, 
 but none can deny him very remarkable powers of close and 
 consistent reasoning, which remind one of the best traditions 
 of the 18th century in this its finest quality. 
 
 The same doctrines, though in a different way, were set forth by the 
 Vicomte de Bonald (1754-1840), to whom Joseph de Maistre could 
 write : " Je n'ai rien pens6 que vous ne I'ayez 6crit; je n'ai rien fcrit que 
 vous ne I'ayez pense" ". 
 
 His principal writings, composed in a firm and vigorous style, are : La 
 Theorie du Pouvoir Civil et Religieux (1796), and La Legislation Primi- 
 tive (1802), in which his views are summed up. 
 
 Another polemical writer of note is Benjamin Constant (1767-1830), 
 who led the liberals in politics and religion. His ideal was a government 
 strong enough to protect the individual, yet sufficiently limited not to be 
 able to oppress him. But his fame, in literature at all events, rests on 
 Adolphc (1806), the only great psychological novel of the century before 
 Stendhal, in which the hero is none other than Constant himself, and 
 the heroine, Ell^nore, is easily identified as his friend Mme de Stael. 
 
 Joseph's brother, Xavier de Maistre (1763-1852), a soldier who served 
 in his youth in the Piedmontese, and later in the Russian army, wrote 
 simple tales and sketches which attained, and still hold, a very high 
 reputation. The Voyage autour de ma Chambre (1794), most charming of 
 all, written when the author, then a young officer, was confined to his 
 room during six weeks for some trifling offence, tells how he whiled away 
 the monotony by making the tour of his room, looking at every object 
 with new eyes, and making the most commonplace and familiar things 
 serve as the theme for remarks and reflections of the most delicate and 
 charming fancy. His other best-known novels are La Jcune Sibirienne 
 and Le Le"preux de la Cite d'Aoste, in both of which a simple and touching 
 story is told in a delightfully naive way. 
 
 For brilliancy and scathing irony the first place among 
 French pamphleteers is occupied by Paul Louis Courier (1772-
 
 230 THE TRANSITION 
 
 1825), born in Paris, the son of a wealthy bourgeois, and 
 educated at the College de France and a military academy. He 
 was a passionate student of Greek literature, to which he 
 devoted himself both at school and at the academy to which 
 he afterwards passed. He had a great distaste for business, 
 and as his father would not hear of letters as a profession, he 
 entered the army in 1792, and served on and off for seventeen 
 years. After the battle of Wagram, in which he was severely 
 wounded, he finally abandoned the service, and devoted him- 
 self entirely to literature, which had been all through his life 
 his only real interest. For a time he lived in Florence, 
 where the accidental blotting of a page in a manuscript of 
 Longus led to the Lettre <i M. Renouard, which first revealed 
 his literary powers. In 1814 he settled on his small estate 
 in Touraine, occupying himself with its management and 
 with vine culture, and there lived, with frequent visits to 
 Paris, for the remainder of his life. In 1825 he was shot by 
 an assassin, probably a former gamekeeper whom he had 
 turned away. 
 
 Courier's best-known writings are : The Lettre h M. Renouard, 
 already mentioned; Petition aux deux Chambres (1816), in which 
 he describes the wrongs and grievances of the peasants; Lettre 
 & Messieurs de VAcademie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, the 
 wittiest and most brilliant of all his writings, in which he 
 castigates that learned body for having preferred to him in 
 their last election a man whose only merit was noble birth; a 
 series of Pamphlets addressed to his fellow villagers, and signed 
 "Paul Louis Vigneron", among which the most famous is his 
 Simple Discours, published in 1821, protesting against the sub- 
 scription raised to present the castle of Chambord to the Due 
 de Bordeaux, and which brought him a couple of months' 
 imprisonment. His private letters are delightful. 
 
 Thus it will be seen that all his writings were in short 
 pamphlet form. He neither wrote nor attempted a greater 
 work in any of the more serious forms of literary composition. 
 The man who started life as a pure beUelettrist, as a passionate 
 lover of Greek literature, was turned by force of circumstances
 
 and by the chicaneries of politics into a journalist, and the 
 most considerable of his time. Beginning with a strong fund 
 of Voltairianism, as a liberal bourgeois of the old school, he 
 became after the Eestoration what we might call a professional 
 oppositionist. 
 
 Brought up on the beauty and simplicity of his beloved 
 Greek, and steeped in the great writings of the older litera- 
 ture of his own land, this journalist was, however, something 
 more. His thought is narrow, his ideas are one-sided and 
 never far-reaching, but in finish of expression and striking 
 power he has rarely been surpassed. He excels in staging his 
 effects; he understands perfectly how to put each thought 
 in its most telling form. Add to this, that in irony he has 
 had few superiors and not many equals, that he is a master 
 of the sly comic spirit which delights in sudden and unex- 
 pected turns, and that over all is shed a certain subtle sugges- 
 tion of archaism which is not without its charm, and we shall 
 understand the delight Avith which he was read by his contem- 
 poraries and may still be read to-day. 
 
 One of the most original writers of the day was Felicite de 
 Lamennais, a poet in prose, and the earliest preacher of what 
 has since been called " Christian socialism ". Born at St. Malo 
 in 1783, after an irregular education he became first of all a 
 schoolmaster, arid later a priest. In 1817 there appeared his 
 Essai sur V Indifference, which at once made him a marked man. 
 In 1830 along with two others he started a paper, L'dvenir, to 
 represent liberal Catholicism, but it was censured by Gregory 
 XVI, and suspended in the following year. Starting as an 
 Ultramontane, he gradually drifted farther and farther away, 
 disgusted to find material interests preponderating even in 
 Rome itself, and eventually rejected orthodoxy completely. 
 He died, without being reconciled to the Church, in 1854. 
 
 Lamennais is even more important for the history of religious 
 thought than for the history of literature, but at the same 
 time his two most important works, the Essai sur T 'Indifference 
 en Matiere de Religion (1817-1823) and the Paroles d'un Croyant 
 (1834), are of great literary merit,
 
 232 THE TRANSITION 
 
 He began his career very much as Joseph De Maistre had 
 done, but with the difference that while De Maistre lays 
 greater stress on the temporal power of the Papacy, seeking 
 social and political uniformity in complete submission to its 
 authority, Lamennais seeks from the same unquestioned 
 supremacy religious uniformity and peace. This is the subject 
 of the Essai, in which he argues the necessity, for the sake 
 of unity, of renouncing private opinion and judgment, and 
 regarding the one will as infallible. 
 
 Profoundly disappointed in his high conception of papal 
 aims and methods, he renounced all authority in his embitter- 
 ment, and in the Paroles d'un Croyant proclaimed in impassioned 
 and eloquent words, and in a wonderful scriptural diction, 
 nearer akin to poetry than prose, a kind of natural religion 
 outside all formulas and creeds. 
 
 Lamennais was an enthusiast, and for that very reason apt 
 to rush to extremes. He demanded perfection from those 
 who were for the time being the object of his passionate 
 devotion, and when the inevitable disappointment followed, 
 was equally impassioned in his disgust and condemnation. 
 He made the mistake of judging causes by their representa- 
 tives, of confounding persons and ideas. Yet most of his 
 faults were connected with true nobility of purpose, and 
 there is much that is great in this enthusiast, this dreamer of 
 dreams.
 
 BOOK VI 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 GENERAL VIEW 
 
 The 19th century is the time of a great revival in French 
 literature, known as the Romantic Movement, a kind of second 
 Renaissance, in which, after a period of preparation, there 
 appeared a number of men of great and varied genius, 
 whose united labours resulted in the production of a body of 
 literature phenomenal alike in qualit}', quantity, and range. 
 After this new school had held undisputed sway during the 
 first part of the century, there arose in the latter half a second 
 movement, the school of Realism, which in its later and 
 exaggerated phase was styled Naturalism. 
 
 And thirdly, Naturalism in its turn is dying or dead, and 
 there has appeared in the last years of the century a third 
 tendency in literature, which, while possessing features that 
 distinguish it from the preceding schools, is as yet somewhat 
 vague and undecided in character. 
 
 (a) First Period (1820 C.-1850 c.). Romanticism, of which 
 the first germs are to be traced back to the 18th century, and 
 which during the period of transition had been slowly gaining 
 ground, declared itself in the third decade of the nineteenth 
 century, and by 1830 was firmly established. 
 
 We must examine what was the nature of this revolution 
 and what is understood by the term romantic literature. To 
 give a short comprehensive definition is impossible, for it 
 possesses many more negative than positive properties, and 
 was by no means understood by all its adherents in one clearly 
 defined and indisputable sense. We shall then have to speak
 
 234 NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 of its general properties and also of its negations, rather than 
 to lay down a hard and logical definition. 
 
 Romanticism was, as has been already said, largely nega- 
 tive, consisting in the rejection of the classical creed and 
 a breaking up of the bonds under which classical literature 
 laboured. It demanded greater freedom in all branches, a 
 greater recognition of the personal element, more play for the 
 individual imagination, a more lyrical spirit in general. Its 
 reforms bore on all branches of the literary art subject, lan- 
 guage, and form. . 
 
 In subject it demanded the right to represent not only the 
 beautiful, which was solely admissible under the strictly classi- 
 cal theory, but also the ugly and even the repulsive, claiming 
 by the contrast, by this duality in art, to obtain a closer re- 
 presentation of the many-sidedness of actual life. 
 
 So in the preface to Cromwell, the great manifesto of the 
 Romanticists, which appeared in 1827, Victor Hugo says: 
 " Tout dans la creation n'est pas humainement beau, le laid y existe 
 a cM6 du beau, le difforme pres du gmcieux, le grotesque au revers 
 du sublime, le mal avec le bien, V ombre avec la lumikre" ; and he 
 goes on to say. that romantic poetry "se mettra a faire comme 
 la nature, a meler dans ses creations . . . I'ombre a la lumiere, le 
 grotesque au sublime". 
 
 Not only did they claim the right of taking up any subjects, 
 but they also chose their subjects from the most varied sources, 
 looking upon the whole universe as their legitimate field. 
 They took by preference unfamiliar places and people for their 
 themes, and endeavoured at the same time to preserve to them 
 their own peculiar individuality. On local colour they laid 
 the greatest stress : " On commence a comprendre de nos jours que 
 la localit^ exacte est un des premiers eUments de la rtalile. . . . Le 
 lieu oil telle catastrophe s'est passed en devient un Umoin terrible el 
 inseparable . . ."- 1 
 
 On the importance of foreign literatures stress had already 
 been laid by the two great authors of the Transition, Madame 
 de Stael and Chateaubriand, and the lesson they had taught; 
 1 Victor Hugo, Preface to Cromwell.
 
 GENERAL VIEW 235 
 
 was taken to heart by the Romanticists, who prided them- 
 selves on their acquaintance not only with the great names 
 of the great literatures, not only with Shakespeare, Goethe, 
 Schiller, and Byron, but also with less famous names and with 
 the literatures of obscurer peoples. In keeping with this 
 great importance attached to modern foreign literatures at 
 the expense of the classics was the substitution of medieval 
 and Christian art for pagan mythology. This tendency had 
 received a great impulse from the numerous translations from 
 foreign authors, and from the collections of popular songs and 
 studies on medieval literature and manners, which had ap- 
 peared during the first thirty years of the century. 1 
 
 In language the reformation aimed at was also considerable; 
 in place of the classical formality and simplicity they sought 
 to obtain the highest possible degree of colour and brilliancy, 
 using every freedom in treatment, daring contrast and anti- 
 thesis, and startling turns of expression. Not least revolu- 
 tionary was their vocabulary itself; the classical preciosity 
 and selectness disappeared, words of every sort and description 
 being employed with the most supreme and joyous indiffer- 
 ence. Of this side of the reform Victor Hugo speaks in the 
 R6ponse h un Acte d 'Accusation:* 
 
 " Les mots, bien ou mal ne"s, vivaient parque"s en castes; 
 Les uns, nobles, hantant Ics Phedres, les Jocastcs, 
 Les Meropes, ayant le decorum, pour lot, 
 Et montant d Versailles aux carrosses du roi; 
 Les autres, tas de gueux, droles patibulaires, 
 Habitant les patois; quelques-uns aux galercs, 
 Dans I'arfjot; devours d tous les yenres basf 
 Dechire's en haillons, dans les holies; san$ bas, 
 
 1 The following is a list in chronological order of the most important of 
 these works: (1809) Schiller's Wallcnstein, translated by B. Constant; 
 (1816-21) Raynouard, Choix de Patsies Originates des Troubadours; 
 (1821) translation of Shakespeare by Guizot; (1822-25) translation of 
 Byron by Pichot; (1823) translation of Manzoni's tragedies by Fauriel; 
 (1825) Lceve^Veimars, Ballades, Lfyendes et Chants Populaires de VAnylc- 
 terre et de VEcosse; (1828) Sainte-Beuve, Tableau de la Poteie Fran^aise au 
 XVI? siecle; (1828) translations of Faust by Nodier and Gerard de Nerval ; 
 (1829) La Divine Comedie de Dante by A. Deschamps. 
 Contemplations, vol. i. 7.
 
 236 NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 Sans pcrruque; crees pour la prose ou la farce; 
 Populace du style, au fond de I' ombre Sparse; 
 Vilains, rustres, croquants, que Vaugelas Icur chef 
 Dans le bagne Lexique avail marquis d'une F; 
 
 Alors, brigand, je vins; je m'dcriai: "Pourquoi 
 
 Ceux-ci toujours devant, ceux-la toujours derrUref" 
 
 Et sur Vacademie, a'ieule et douairiere, 
 
 Cachant sous ses jupons les tropes effaris 
 
 Et sur les bataillons d'alexandrins Carre's, 
 
 Jefis souffler un vent rfvolutionnaire, 
 
 Je mis un bonnet rouge au vieux dictionnaire." 
 
 Though the change in this respect was not wholly bene- 
 ficial, and although this liberty was rather apt to be carried to 
 excess and to lead to a motley confusion in vocabulary, yet in 
 so far as it drove out conventionality and meaningless para- 
 phrase by the use of the mot propre it conferred a priceless 
 boon on the language. 
 
 This use of the mot propre 1 was one of the things on which 
 the Romanticists prided themselves, and V. Hugo boasts of it 
 in the already -mentioned poem: 
 
 . . . " Le mot propre ce rustre 
 N'ttait que caporal, je Vai fait colonel. 
 
 Je nommai le cochon par son nom; pourquoi pas? 
 On entendit un roi dire: Quette heure est-tt?" 
 
 To form they devoted no less attention. In Drama the 
 Unities were severely examined, those of Time and Place 
 being rejected emphatically: "Croiser VuniU de temps & VunM 
 de lieu comme les'barreaux d'une cage, et y faire pedantesquement 
 
 1 In order to avoid the hated mot propre, writers, and more especially the 
 pseudo-classicists of the 18th century, had resorted to the most absurd cir- 
 cumlocutions : Belloy in the tragedy Le Siege de Calais (1765), wishing to 
 inform the audience that the besieged had been reduced to eating rats and 
 dogs, expresses himself as follows : 
 
 " Le plus vil aliment, rebut de la misere, 
 Mais, aux derniers abois, ressource horrible et cMre, 
 De la fidelitt respectable souticn, 
 Manque a I'or prodigue du riche citoyen ".
 
 GENERAL VIEW 237 
 
 entrer, de par Aristote, tons ces fails, tons ces peuples, toutes ces 
 figures que la providence dtroule a si grandes masses dans la 
 r6alM! c'est mutiler hommes et choses, c'est faire grimacer I'his- 
 toire/" 1 The third, the unity of Action, is as important as 
 the others are harmful : " Celle-la est aussi ndcessaire que les 
 deux autres sont inutiles, C'est elle qui marque le point de vue 
 du drame." 1 
 
 In the structure of the verse the tendency is all towards 
 a free and more supple versification. The greatest changes 
 were the freer and more daring use of enjamfoement, not only 
 between line and line, but also between one stanza and the 
 next, and the more varied treatment of the cesura, which, 
 instead of being placed uniformly in the middle of the alex- 
 andrine, was variously shifted in such a way as to break the 
 monotonous pendulum-like action of the classical standard 
 verse, one pronounced type being the employment of the 
 double cesura in such a way as to get the frankly ternary 
 line. As Victor Hugo says: 2 
 
 " Nous faisons basculer la balance he"mistiche. 
 
 Le vers, qui sur son front 
 
 Jadis portait toujours douze plumes en rond, 
 Et sans cease sautait sur sa double raquette, 
 Qu'on nomme prosodie et qu'on nomme etiquette 
 Rompt desormais la regie et trompe le ciseau, 
 Et s'echappe, volant qui se change en oiseau 
 De la cage ensure . . ." 
 
 The rime, " cette esclave-reine, cette supreme grace de noire potsie, 
 ce ge'ne'rateur de notre metre" t s they endeavoured to render full 
 and rich while giving it importance by making it the bearer 
 of a significant word in the verse. 
 
 The real opening of the Eomantic campaign dates from 
 1820, in which year appeared the Meditations of Lamartine, 
 followed in 1822 by the Odes of Victor Hugo. About the 
 time of the appearance of the latter was formed the society 
 of young authors known as the Cenacle, the members of which 
 
 1 V. Hugo, Preface to Cromwell. 
 
 z l&ponse a un Acte d' Accusation. 8 Preface to Cromwell.
 
 238 NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 had, however, as yet no definitely polemical purpose. At 
 length in 1827 Victor Hugo, in the famous Preface to Cromwell, 
 flung down the Romantic challenge, and established himself 
 as the natural leader of the movement. The Orientales (1829) 
 furnished a brilliant justification of the theories of the Preface, 
 and with the representation of Hernani on the stage of the 
 Comddie Franptise in 1830 the important vantage-ground of the 
 theatre was gained and the reformation accomplished. 
 
 Beginning with the belles leltres, romanticism was extended 
 first of all to the drama, and from that to the other literary 
 forms. Still its strongest point was the lyric, while the pre- 
 dominant characteristic of the whole movement was through- 
 out lyrical. 
 
 The Poetry of the Romantic period shows a wonderful 
 wealth, an unrivalled lyrical outburst of song. One man, 
 Theophile Gautier, with his motto of " art for art " and exces- 
 sive attention to form, gives the earliest indication of the chief 
 poetic school of the coming period. The Drama is on the 
 whole the weakest part of its work. The Novel develops a 
 wonderful fertility and originality, while in three writers, and 
 particularly in Balzac, we find the forerunners of that literary 
 tendency which has dominated the greater part of the latter 
 half of the century. In History a wonderful revival takes 
 place, which in quantity, quality, artd solid worth so far sur- 
 passes all that had preceded, that French history may be prac- 
 tically dated from its achievements. Of Scientific Criticism 
 the period furnishes the founder and greatest exponent in 
 Sainte-Beuve. 
 
 (b) Second Period (1850 C.-1885 c.). Realism, Naturalism. 
 The literature of the second half of the century shows a double 
 reaction that against Romanticism in the so-called Realism, 
 followed in turn by a reaction against exaggerated Realism. 
 The same tendency appears towards the middle of the century 
 in all parts of the literature in different forms, its general 
 characteristics being a change from lyricism to positivism, 
 from subjectivity to objectivity, from idealism to realism. 
 
 The personal note becomes less apparent, and in lieu of the
 
 GENERAL VIEW 239 
 
 romantic ideals truth and nature are removed to the centre 
 of interest, and more importance is attached to facts. In 
 short, the direction followed is one that leads, on the whole, 
 to a more prosaic conception of literature. 
 
 In Poetry the reaction is represented by the group of poets 
 known as the Parnassiens, after the collection of poems issued 
 by them in 1866 under the title of Parnasse Contemporain. 
 Inspired by Theophile Gautier, in whose poetry the transition 
 from the personal to the impersonal is already seen, the 
 Parnassiens took up the cry of " art for art ", and while pre- 
 serving the impersonal and realistic character, strove after 
 perfection of artistic form and wonderful effects of diction 
 and rime. Almost from the beginning they branched off, 
 however, in different directions, noticeable among them being 
 the delicate analysis of emotion, and a sympathetic interest 
 in all forms of human life, and especially the simple and 
 unheroic lives of average humanity. 
 
 In the Novel, the most important literary branch of the 
 period, realism pursued the course already marked out in the 
 previous period by Stendhal, Merimee, and especially Balzac, 
 its characteristics becoming more and more marked. The 
 great novelist of this stage is Flaubert. 
 
 Towards 1870 another phase is entered upon with the 
 so-called Naturalism, an exaggerated Realism, the chief char- 
 acteristics of which are a linking of science and fiction and the 
 painstaking and professedly scientific analysis of gruesome and 
 unwholesome subjects. The name with which this school is 
 identified is that of Zola. 
 
 (c) Third Period (beginning 1885 c.). Finally, in the last 
 years of the century there has set in a reaction against Natu- 
 ralism itself. The positive aims of this movement are, how- 
 ever, very difficult to determine. 
 
 In Poetry, the new group is known as the Decadents or 
 Symbolistes, and as far as their tendencies can be definitely 
 stated at all, they are of a twofold nature, affecting both 
 matter and form. 
 
 In matter they react against the unemotionalism, the impas-
 
 240 NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 sibilitt of the Parnassiens, and the scientific spirit of naturalism, 
 and endeavour to substitute for it vast but vague ideas on the 
 emotions of the soul in contact with the unfathomable problems 
 of life and being. The direction is, however, very undefined, 
 and the prevailing characteristics are vagueness, obscurity, and 
 eccentricity. 
 
 In form they react against the plastic art of Gautier and the 
 Parnassiens, with its preciseness of outline and sculptural hard- 
 ness of form. They strive to bring poetry more into affinity 
 with music 1 than painting, and so leave more room for the 
 vague, the dreamy, and the mystical. The word by them is 
 often treated as a symbol, which may suggest some idea to 
 the esoteric enthusiast, but gives little direct impression to the 
 uninitiated. At the same time they continue the breaking up 
 of the line which Victor Hugo had begun. In the alexandrine 
 the last traces of regularity in the use of the cesura vanish, 
 new combinations are attempted, sometimes long swinging 
 rhythmical lines with very irregular rimes, or no rimes at all, 
 a sort of half-way form between poetry and prose. 
 
 Incomparably the greatest among them was Verlaine, who 
 was a true poet in spite of himself, and on the whole remained 
 free from the extravagances of the school which claimed him 
 as its chief. 
 
 In the Novel, Eealism and Naturalism are both exhausted, 
 and the only positive result that can be chronicled is the 
 liberty in which each writer is left to pursue his own idea 
 in his own way. The only definite tendencies that can be 
 observed are certain symptoms of neo-christianity and religious 
 mysticism, and at the same time an interest in the supernatural 
 and transcendental, the most important influence during the 
 last two decades having been that received from foreign litera- 
 tures, and above all from George Eliot, Tolstoi, arid the Scan- 
 dinavians Ibsen and Bjcernson. 
 
 In the Theatre the day of Naturalism is no less over. The 
 Theatre Libre, founded to champion Realistic art, wearied its 
 public with dreary pessimism, and conscientious but mono- 
 z Cp. Verlaine's Art Po&ique: " De la musique avant toute cliose".
 
 GENERAL VIEW 241 
 
 tonous exactitude of brutal detail, its only merits being that 
 it set the fashion of truthfulness of representation and general 
 mise en scene, and brought forward in De Curel a dramatist of 
 real power. Together with Lemaitre he represents the positive 
 achievements of the theatre in the last years, and shows that 
 the vitality of the drama has not passed away with that of 
 dramatic Realism. 
 
 Thus, after many movements and counter-movements in the 
 course of the century, we find the literature of France at its 
 close, as it was at its beginning, in a state of transition. We 
 can look back after a hundred years and see in that period 
 many elements of greatness and abundant promise. In 1800 
 appeared Madame de Stael's epoch-making De la Literature, in 
 \vhich the new aspirations were first clearly voiced. In 1900, 
 though certain tendencies are discernible, it would be a hard 
 matter to point out as clearly whither the new ideals are leading. 
 
 FIRST PERIOD (1820-1850) 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 POETRY 
 
 The first decided note of the new movement was struck by 
 Alphonse de Lamartine. 
 
 Lamartine was born at Macon, in Burgundy, in 1790, at the family 
 seat of Milly, whither his father, an officer and an ardent royalist, had 
 retired after the Terror, to which he nearly fell a victim. There, in a 
 united family circle and in close touch with nature, he grew up amid 
 influences which had much to do with forming his future poetical char- 
 acteristics. He was first under the charge of a priest, and afterwards 
 sent to different schools, none of them of the first quality, but left at 
 fifteen, and for some years continued his own education both at home 
 and on his travels in Italy and France, by a course of the most wide and 
 varied reading. Like his father an enthusiastic royalist, he joined the 
 Garde Royale on the fall of Napoleon, but soon left the service again. 
 In 1820 he published the Meditations, which not only announced the 
 new school, but won him very great fame and popularity. In 1821 
 (H643) Q
 
 242 NINETEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 lie joined the diplomatic service, which took him in turn to Naples 
 and Florence. In 1829 appeared his Harmonies, which led to his unani- 
 mous election to the Academy. Naturally Lamartine disapproved of 
 the July Revolution, 1 and refusing to recognize the new order, set out 
 on a tour to the East, visiting Greece, Syria, Palestine, and Arabia, 
 the result being the production on his return of the Voyage en Orient. 
 However, political life had irresistible attractions for him, and in 1833 
 he entered the Chamber. His Histoire des Girondins (1847) contri- 
 buted greatly to the downfall of the July Monarchy, but after the 
 outbreak of the revolution of 1848 he did much, as a member of 
 provisional government, to prevent excesses and preserve order. With 1 
 the establishment of the Empire under Napoleon III he retired froi; 
 public life and devoted himself entirely to literary work. During the\ 
 last part of his life he was much troubled by money difficulties, whicl 
 compelled him to do much that was little better than literary hack-work. ' 
 Even thus, however, he could not meet his obligations, and had to b 
 relieved by the charities of the nation and government. He died in 1869. 
 
 His principal works are: Meditations Pottiques (1820), Nou- 
 velles Meditations (1823), Harmonies Pottiques et Religieuses 
 (1829), Voyage en Orient (1835), Jocelyn (1836), La Chute 
 (Pun Ange (1838), Recueillements Poetiques (1839), Histoire des 
 Girondins (1847), Confidences (1849), and Nouvelles Confidences 
 (1851). 
 
 The first to appear of Lamartine's works, and the most 
 important for the history of literature, was the Meditations 
 in 1820, which alone would suffice to give him a leading 
 position in the literature of the century. These poems were 
 the spontaneous expression of his most intimate thoughts and 
 emotions, composed not with a view to literary effect, but 
 under the necessity of giving shape and form to his own 
 spiritual experiences, and it was this very spontaneity, this 
 pure lyricism, which made them appeal so forcibly to their 
 first readers. Their success and popularity was enormous; they 
 came like a revelation to those who found here voiced what 
 had so long been unconsciously present in their own hearts. 
 It was the first step towards the literary revolution, and with 
 
 1 The Revolution by which, in 1830, the Bourbon dynasty was overthrown, 
 Charles X forced to abdicate, and the Orleanist Louis Philippe, eldest son 
 of the Due d'Orleans, known as Philippe Egalite", or the citizen king, 
 raised to the throne.
 
 POETRY 243 
 
 it the lyrical character of Romanticism was once and for all 
 defined. But not only did the poet speak of the workings of 
 his own soul, he touched also on nature, religion, and all the 
 themes which are the natural domain of lyric art. Among 
 the best known of these poems are Le Lac, L'Automne, La 
 Priere, ImmortaliU. But true and admirable as is the inspira- 
 tion of the Meditations, the language and form are by no means 
 perfect. An amateur in poetry, as he called himself, he cared 
 less for the manner than the matter of his lyrics, and the 
 consequence is that we find many surface flaws repetitions, 
 technical faults and imperfections. And these failings unfor- 
 tunately grow more pronounced in his later works. The 
 Nouvelles Meditations (1823) and the Harmonies (1829) are a 
 continuation of the same strain, only that, owing to the want 
 of novelty as compared with the first outburst, the inferior 
 spontaneity, and an increased faultiness of workmanship and 
 manner, they produced, and still produce, a weaker and less 
 favourable impression. Yet this modified praise must not be 
 misunderstood, for they possess still the great and original 
 merits of the first Meditations if in a lesser degree, the Har- 
 monies ranking after them as the author's second-best work. 
 Jocelyn (1836), a kind of epic idyll written in alexandrines, 
 passes from the purely personal to the symbolic and human 
 note. It is, like the Chute d'un Ange which followed it, a 
 fragment, as it were, of a great epic on the spiritual destinies 
 of mankind; but though the poet may have had vaguely the 
 conception of such a work it was never carried into execution. 
 Jocelyn is the story of a man who sacrifices his vocation, his 
 ambitions, his heart's desires, whose whole life is a sacrifice, 
 and who in this renunciation finds peace and rest. In the 
 Chute d'un Ange (1838), renunciation is once more the theme. 
 In Jocelyn we have the peasant's son who gives up his inherit- 
 ance to provide his sister's dowry, and sacrifices his love to 
 a sense of duty; while in the former poem the angel Cedar is 
 represented as renouncing heaven itself, and consenting to live 
 on earth for the love of Daidha, a daughter of the giants. But 
 the subject was not suited to Lamartine's genius, and the
 
 244 NINETEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 work, in spite of the merits of individual parts, is on the 
 whole a failure often exaggerated and unreal and in great 
 part tedious. With the Recueillements (1839) he returns to 
 the manner of his first works, but they have nothing of 
 importance to add and can claim no striking merit. 
 
 As a prose writer Lamartine is of little importance com- 
 paratively, although a few words may be said of three out of 
 his numerous prose writings. 
 
 The Foyage en Orient (1835) shows the same character of 
 improvisation that is apparent throughout his work, and along 
 with many striking passages of description contains much that 
 is trivial. 
 
 The Histoire des Girondins (1847), his most important work 
 in prose, which exercised great influence in its day, has little 
 purely historical value, but contains some admirable examples 
 of dramatic narrative, and is an eloquent expression of the 
 democratic ideas of the time. 
 
 Lastly, the Confidences (1849-1851) necessarily contain very 
 much that is interesting, but suffer from the fault of being too 
 confidential, the trivial and the important being confounded 
 with a strange want of discrimination. 
 
 Lamartine is a striking instance of a man who with his 
 first literary venture produced his best and most important 
 work. In the spontaneity of these first lyrics, their simple 
 communion with nature, the gentle, mildly-melancholy out- 
 pourings that come straight from the heart, in a word, in their 
 personal note and their pure lyricism the true significance of 
 Lamartine is to be found. God in nature and the whole of 
 nature in man's soul such is the theme which inspires him 
 and which in his verses inspired others. So he says himself: 
 " Quelle qu'ait tU, quelle que-puisse etre encore la diversiU de ces 
 impressions jettes par la nature dans mon time, et par mon dme dans 
 mes vers, le fond en fut toujours un profond instinct de la DiviniU 
 dans toutes choses ". 
 
 Such was the one true and original message he had to tell, 
 and which in its first naive telling was so admirable, but 
 which in the conscious and voluntary repetitions that followed
 
 POETRY 245 
 
 gained nothing and had much to lose. In spite of the irregu- 
 larities that were the natural accompaniment of his rapid and 
 unlaboured composition, his verse has a delicate harmonious 
 beauty hitherto unknown in French poetry, and which in its 
 own style has never been surpassed. 
 
 In striking opposition to Lamartine stands another great 
 Romantic poet, Alfred de Vigny, born at Loches in Touraine 
 in 1797. In 1814 he became a sub-lieutenant of the Guards, 
 and remained in the army for fourteen years, leaving it at 
 the age of thirty-one in order to devote himself exclusively 
 to literature. The latter part of his life he spent mostly in 
 seclusion, his natural melancholy being embittered by the 
 want of recognition which he suffered at the hands of his 
 contemporaries. He died in 1863. 
 
 The works of De Vigny comprise (a) his poetical works, 
 which consist of the Pocmes Antiques et Modernes (1822-1826), 
 and the collection known as Destinies, not published under this 
 title till 1863; (b) his prose works, consisting of plays, the best 
 being Chatterton (1835), and novels Cinq-Mars (1826), Stello 
 (1832), Grandeur et Servitude Militaires (1835). 
 
 Among the Pocmes Antiques et Modernes (1822-1826) the 
 finest are Moise, which describes the last moments of the great 
 lawgiver, weary of the isolation which has been the necessary 
 condition of his greatness the moral being that genius pre- 
 destines to sorrow; Moa, a mystic story of a sister of the 
 angels, sprung from a tear of Christ, who is seized with pity 
 and sympathy for the fallen archangel, and descends with him 
 to his place of torture; and Le Dduge, which tells in beautiful 
 and touching language how a shepherd and a maiden, after 
 watching from the top of Mount Ararat the rising of the 
 waters, are eventually swallowed up in them. 
 
 In this first volume the author's gloomy pessimism and 
 melancholy are already strongly marked. In each of them 
 some one idea is taken and treated from the philosophical 
 point of view. 
 
 Of the same nature was the collection entitled Destinies, his 
 only other considerable poetic production. In this the note of
 
 246 NINETEENTH CENTURY FIIIST PERIOD 
 
 melancholy and pessimism, and the necessity for stoicism and 
 resignation, are even more strongly emphasized, 
 
 The subject of the prose drama Cliatterton (1835) is the sad 
 life of the wonderful boy-poet. The miseries to which he 
 was subjected by his sensitive pride, and the want of appre- 
 ciation of the material world around him, are very sympa- 
 thetically treated by one who had much in common with his 
 hero. 
 
 Cinq-Mars (1826) is a historical novel, somewhat in the style 
 of Scott. Cinq-Mars, a brilliant young nobleman, is brought 
 to court by Richelieu, but leaves him for the king, and on 
 the failure of a plot to overthrow the cardinal, is executed. 
 It is valuable as containing a lively and reliable picture of the 
 life of the period it treats. 
 
 Alfred De Vigny was before all a thinker, nearly every 
 one of his works being guided by some clearly conceived 
 idea, while the direction which his thought took was a very 
 pronounced one. All life seemed to him to be an evil, all our 
 noblest feelings and faculties only instruments of our suffering. 
 A reasoned pessimism was his doctrine, and his remedy for 
 it, or rather the attitude he recommended towards it, haughty 
 resignation. 
 
 The whole of his philosophy is eloquently summed up by 
 himself in these four lines of La Mart du Loup, one of his finest 
 shorter poems : 
 
 " Gtmir, pleurcr, prier est fyalement Idche. 
 Fais energiquement to longue et lourde tdcke 
 Dans la voie oil le sort a voulu t'appder. 
 Puis, apres, comme moi, souffre et meurs sans parler." 
 
 His style is sober and of severe simplicity, delicate and at 
 the same time strong; yet though with him the thought was 
 the first consideration, he laboured to give it its proper setting, 
 and the artistic value of much of his work is very consider- 
 able. 
 
 We now come to the leader, the embodiment of the Ro- 
 mantic school, Victor Hugo, the greatest of all French poets, 
 and one of the greatest in the world's literature. For con-
 
 POETRY 247 
 
 venience sake we shall take the whole of his work together 
 poetry, drama, and fiction. 
 
 Marie Victor Hugo was born at Besan^n in 1802, the son of a dis- 
 tinguished officer of the Empire, while his mother was a Vendean and of 
 royalist sympathies. During his childhood he was taken with the rest of 
 the family to Italy and Spain, seeing in this way Rome, Florence, Naples, 
 and Madrid. However, he was educated principally at Paris, though 
 the formal education he received was not very considerable. Already 
 when very young he competed and won prizes in literary competitions, 
 notably those of the Academy and the Jeux Floraux of Toulouse. In 
 1822 appeared his first Odes et Ballades, when he was only twenty years 
 of age, which at once made him famous and won for him the protec- 
 tion of Chateaubriand and the favour of Louis XVIII. Of the part 
 this collection played in the rise of the Romantic party, and how Hugo, 
 though standing somewhat aloof from the earlier Cdnacle, became by 
 right of genius the avowed leader of the movement on the appearance 
 of the second Odes ct Ballades (1826), Cromwell (1827), and, above all, the 
 Orientates (1829) and Hernani (1830), we have already spoken elsewhere. 
 
 Meantime his political creed had been undergoing a transformation. 
 From being an ardent Royalist he became an enthusiastic admirer of 
 Napoleon, while in 1845, under the July monarchy, he entered the 
 Chamber as a Peer of France, and in 1849 was sent to the Chambre 
 Constituante as a representative of the capital. There he sat till 1851, 
 his sympathies more and more inclining to the extreme Republicans. 
 Being included in the proscription which followed the coup d'etat, he fled 
 to Brussels, and thence to Jersey and afterwards to Guernsey, where 
 he spent the next eighteen years. On the fall of the Empire he returned 
 to Paris, from which time till his death he played a very considerable 
 political part as member of the National Assembly and later as senator. 
 He died on May 22, 1885, and was buried amid funeral ceremonies that 
 were a veritable apotheosis. 
 
 The following is a classified list of the principal works of 
 Victor Hugo: 
 
 (a) Poetry: Odes et Ballades (1822-1828), Orientate (1829), 
 Les Feuilles d'Automm (1831), Les Chants du Crtpuscule (1835), 
 Les Voix Intdrieures (1837), Les Rayons et les Ombres (1840), 
 Les Chdtiments (1852), Les Contemplations (1856), Ltgende des 
 Sticks (first two volumes, 1859), Chansons des Hues et des Bois 
 (1865), L'Annte Terrible (1872), Legende des Sticks (2nd part, 
 1876), L'Art d'etre Grand-phe (1877), Les Quatre Vents de 
 VEsprit (1881).
 
 248 NINETEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 (b) Drama: 1 Cromwell (1827), Ifernani (1830), Marion De- 
 lorme (1831), Le Roi s 'amuse (1832), Lucrece B&rgia and Marie 
 Tudor (1833), Ruy Bias (1838), Les Burgraves (1843). 
 
 (c) Prose Writings: Han d'Islande (1823), Bug Jar gal 
 (1825), Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), NapdUm le Petit (1852), 
 Les Mise'rables (1862), William Shakespeare (1864), Les Travai- 
 lleurs de la Mer (1866), L'Homme qui rit (1869), Quatre-vingt- 
 treize (1874), Histoire d'un Crime (1877). 
 
 (a) It is as a Poet that Victor Hugo is most important, and 
 the quantity as well as quality of his poetic production is 
 remarkable. Already at the age of twenty he produced, in 
 the first Odes et Ballades, a collection of verse which, if it did 
 not show the power and originality of his later work, displayed 
 a wonderful fertility of imagination, adaptability of form, and 
 command of rime and rhythm. The second collection in 
 1826 showed a marked advance in every branch of the poetic 
 art, and won the warmest praise from the already aged 
 Chateaubriand, still the acknowledged sovereign of letters. 
 With the Orientales, which followed three years later, he stepped 
 right to the very forefront, and was hailed as the greatest poet 
 of the day, while by their wealth of imagination, glow of 
 colour, and brilliance of form these poems revealed clearly the 
 true aspirations of the rising romantic school. 
 
 The four following collections, which all appeared in the 
 decade from 1830 to 1840, the Feuilles d'Automne, Chants du 
 Crdpuscule, Voix Intdrieures, and Rayons et Ombres, show the poet 
 arriving at the full command of his poetic powers, with both 
 his characteristic virtues, and also his faults and mannerisms, 
 growing more pronounced. They evince a closer sympathy 
 with human joys and sufferings than had been revealed in the 
 previous volumes, and strike on the whole a deeper and truer 
 note. , 
 
 Les Chdtiments, which appeared from Guernsey in 1853, after 
 Hugo's forced departure from Paris, were launched against 
 Napoleon III, the cause of his exile. In spite of their ex- 
 aggerated tone, and the somewhat unconvincing mass of 
 ' Le Roi s'amuse, Lucrece Borgia, Marie Tudor, are in prose.
 
 POETRY 249 
 
 unflattering epithets with which he fairly overwhelms the 
 unfortunate object of his attack, who becomes in his heated 
 imagination a living example of every conceivable vice, they 
 are in the main very brilliant satire, and attain at times to 
 true eloquence. Speaking of his resolution still to defy the 
 tyrant in spite of exile and persecution, and even though 
 abandoned by his fellows, he makes a fine point in the lines : 
 
 "Si Von nest plus que mille, eh liie.nl fen suis. Si mJ&ine, 
 Us ne sont plus que cent, jc brave encore Sylla; 
 S'tt en demeure dix, je serai le dixieme; 
 Et s'il n'en reste qu'un, je serai celui-la" 
 
 Les Contemplations, of which both volumes appeared in 1856, 
 contains poems of more or less personal character, dealing with 
 the years from 1830 to 1856. Those of the first period, down 
 to 1843, bear the title of Autrefois; those of the second, that of 
 Aujourd'hui. The author himself calls them Les Mdmoires d'une 
 Ame, and tells us that "une destinee est farite la jour a jour". The 
 year of division is the date of the drowning of his daughter 
 Leopoldine, with her husband M. Vacquerie, during a pleasure 
 trip on the Seine : " La joie . . . s'effeuille page & page dans le 
 tome premier qui est I'espe'rance, et disparait dans le tome second, qui 
 est le deuil. , . . Autrefois, Aujourd'hui Un aUme les stpare, le 
 tombeau." The first volume contains the famous Expanse & un 
 Ade d 'Accusation, while in both volumes are found pieces of 
 remarkable beauty. 
 
 In 1859 appeared the first two volumes of the Lfyende des 
 Siecles, the third not till seventeen years later. In these 
 wonderful collections of poems the poet brings before our eyes 
 typical scenes from the history of the world down to the 
 present time, their purpose being to set forth in striking and 
 dramatic pictures scenes illustrative of the great epochs of 
 human life on earth. They display fully his marvellous narra- 
 tive power, and in their variety of music, range of theme, and 
 alternate dignity and tenderness have seldom been rivalled. 
 Among the most famous and the best is the one called Ruth et 
 Booz, a poem which gives contradiction to the often-repeated 
 statement that Victor Hugo was incapable of simplicity. Ex-
 
 250 NINETEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 quisitely sober and delicate are the words in which we are told 
 how Ruth, lying at the feet of Boaz, 
 
 " e demandait, 
 
 Immobile, ouvrant I'ceil d moitti sous scs voiles, 
 Quel dieu, quel moissonneur de I'tterncl 6t6 
 Avait, en s'en attant, n^gligemmcnt jet6 
 Cette faucilie d'or dans le cJvamp des Moilcs". 
 
 None of the remaining verse shows any strikingly original 
 qualities or advance on his previous work 
 
 L'Annde Terrible gives a series of stirring pictures of the war; 
 L'Art d'etre Grand-pere shows in a very human way the sympa- 
 thetic interest he took in all the pursuits and in the society 
 of his two little grandchildren; Les Quatre Vents de I' Esprit, 
 written in 1881, when he was verging on his eightieth year, 
 shows at times his wonderful powers still undiminished. It is 
 in four books satiric, dramatic, lyric, and epic. 
 
 (b) We will next speak of the Dramas, all the best of which 
 were written in the fourth decade of the century, and which, 
 even the most successful, are not to be compared in intrinsic 
 worth with his poetic achievement. The most successful, the 
 only real survivors on the stage at any rate and the best are 
 Hernani (1830) and Buy Bias (1838). The first of the series, 
 Cromwell (1827), was less remarkable for the play itself than for 
 the Preface, the importance of which in connection with the 
 early Romantic movement has been already discussed. Crom- 
 well was never acted, and it is almost incapable of production, 
 being in fact less a play than a romance in dramatic form. 
 Already in Cromwell, however, Hugo's great dramatic principle 
 is apparent the blending of two opposite principles for the 
 attainment of what he considered a higher dramatic truth. 
 Thus we have Cromwell the stern Puritan and strong leader 
 of men, who is at the same time a buffoon in his moments of 
 privacy; or, to quote the author's own words: " C'est un etre 
 complexe . . . compose' de tons les contraires . . . plein de gdnie et 
 de petitesse . . . hypocrite et fanatique . . . grotesque et sublime". 
 This dramatic procedure is seen in all his later plays, and is 
 the rcot-idea of all his dramatic creation. So Hernani is both
 
 POETRY 251 
 
 bandit and hero; Ruy Bias, lackey, and a model of greatness 
 and virtue the highest moral worth in the lowest social 
 station ; Marion Delorme, the noble passion of love in the heart 
 of a courtesan; Le Eoi s' amuse presents in the court fool, 
 Triboulet, the most degraded of human natures, redeemed by 
 paternal love ; Lucrkce Borgia, all the vices, and a great example 
 of maternal devotion; or, in Victor Hugo's own words: "La 
 materniU purifiant la difformiU morale". As already said, the 
 two most famous and the best are Hernani and Ruy Bias. 
 
 Hernani, who is an outlaw and bandit, and at the same time a duke 
 and grandee of Spain, is the successful rival of Ruy Gomez for the hand 
 of his niece and ward, Dona Sol. Pressed by the officers of the king, 
 Hernani is successfully concealed by Ruy Gomez in his castle and saved. 
 The latter, however, has discovered his love for his niece, and Hernani is 
 only allowed to depart with his life on vowing by the head of his father 
 to take the life so spared with his own hand whenever he shall hear the 
 sound of the horn, which he detaches from his waist and hands to Ruy 
 Gomez. Hernani is restored to favour and regains his estates, and with 
 his betrothal to Dona Sol the cup of his happiness seems to be full, when 
 at the masquerade which follows their betrothal a sinister figure appears. 
 Hernani hears the fatal horn, and in the presence of Ruy Gomez both 
 he and Dona Sol poison themselves. 
 
 Ruy Bias is a lackey who is introduced to court by a grandee, Don 
 Salluste, in the name of his cousin, Don Cesar, with the object of en- 
 tangling and ruining the queen. Ruy Bias, well educated and possessed 
 of great talents, rapidly rises, and under his assumed name and quality 
 becomes minister. He is madly in love with the queen, and the falseness 
 and hopelessness of his position, together with the pitiless humiliations 
 to which Don Salluste subjects him, at last exhaust his endurance, and 
 he first slays his persecutor and afterwards poisons himself. 
 
 Les Bur graves (1843), the last, was more extravagantly anti- 
 thetical and full of surprises than all the others, and with 
 its lavish use of the most ordinary stage tricks, meetings, 
 recognitions and coincidences, is the purest melodrama as far 
 as its merely dramatic side is concerned, though even the 
 worst of Victor Hugo's dramas abounds in fine lyrical passages. 
 
 (c) Of his Prose writings by far the most important is the 
 novel Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), a historical romance of Paris 
 in the time of Louis XI, in which the ancient capital of the 
 15th century, with all the different classes of its inhabitants,
 
 252 NINETEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 nobility, clergy, citizens, and people, are brought in a very 
 graphic way before our eyes. Naturally it is full of the 
 characteristic antitheses and startling contrasts, with a gro- 
 tesqueness which at times makes it more like a phantasmagoria 
 than living reality. The personages themselves have little 
 individuality. More real are the city itself and its teeming 
 population ; while the central figure of the whole is the sombre 
 cathedral, which looms vast, mysterious, and incommensurable, 
 like a personification of the middle ages themselves. 
 
 Already before Notre-Dame had appeared the two wildly 
 romantic novels Han d'Islande (1823) and Bug Jargal (1818- 
 1826). Napotton le Petit (1852) was the prose equivalent of 
 the Chdtiments in the castigation of his enemy. But after 
 Notre-Dame the most important of Victor Hugo's romances is 
 Les Misdrables, of which the ten volumes appeared in 1862. 
 It is a comprehensive picture of the life of the day, into 
 which the author, no longer fettered by the limitations of the 
 stage, poured the most varied elements, with little care to fit 
 them suitably into the framework of the story, the result 
 being a mass of digressions and irrelevancies which at times 
 is almost chaotic. 
 
 The story woven through the whole is briefly as follows: 
 
 Jean Valjean, a released convict, repents, and under the name of 
 M. Madeleine becomes a rich and respectable member of society. To 
 save another from suspicion he denounces himself, and is once more 
 imprisoned, but escapes. He rescues and adopts a young girl, Cosette, 
 whom he marries to Marius, confessing to the latter who he is, but not 
 making any mention of his good deeds. Leaving them he withdraws 
 from the world, but before he dies learns that his nobility is recognized 
 and appreciated by those he loves. 
 
 Along with the inevitable improbabilities and exaggerations 
 this enormous work has many purely admirable passages, the 
 struggles in the soul of the hero as he is fighting his way 
 back to virtue being told with a delicacy and psychological 
 insight which the author has nowhere else attained. 
 
 Les Travailleurs de la Mer (1866) is an exquisite little idyll 
 of passion and adventure; L'Homme qui Hit (1869), an ex-
 
 POETRY 253 
 
 travagant but powerful romance, which purports to be histori- 
 cal; Quatre-vingt-treize (1874), another historical romance; and 
 the Histoire d'un Crime (1877) has been described as the 
 " apotheosis of the Special Correspondent ". 
 
 Much as Victor Hugo liked to pose as the penseur, and 
 though no doubt he was of the opinion that therein lay his 
 strength and his importance for the human race, there is 
 nothing very remarkable in his thought or ideas. Though 
 his constant endeavour is to teach and enlighten, his idea not 
 that of "Tart pour I'art", but rather of "I'ari pour VhumaniU", 
 he has nothing very new or original to say, and what messages 
 he has to deliver are obscured and disfigured from the teacher's 
 point of view by his characteristic tendency to antithesis and 
 exaggeration. His mind does not work by the logical pro- 
 cesses of thought habitual to a philosopher, but by the intuitive 
 methods of the poet he thinks not in ideas but in images. 
 
 Moreover, with rare exceptions, he shows very little power 
 of reading the workings of the human heart little psycho- 
 logical insight. Where his great and surpassing merit lies 
 is in his command of form, and there he shows not merely 
 skill but genius. He had one of the largest vocabularies that 
 ever mortal employed, and his mastery of it is always supreme 
 and unerring. For " the word " he had a special sense, feeling 
 it as an entity with laws and properties of its own, possessing 
 not only meaning and sound, but as it were colour and indi- 
 viduality. The gift of personifying imagination and imagery 
 he possessed in the highest degree, being often indeed tempted 
 by them to the excesses of exaggeration and meaningless anti- 
 thesis. All contrasts and reliefs of light and shade appealed 
 forcibly to his nature, and such, both in the literal and figura- 
 tive, are everywhere found throughout his work. 
 
 He is a master of rime and rhythm, while of his innovations 
 in versification mention has already been made elsewhere. 
 He has an inexhaustible power of inventing new rhythms as 
 displayed throughout his poetic work, and his gift of adapting 
 sound to sense, poetic form to the subject, reveals the true 
 artist.
 
 254 NINETEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 His prose is on the whole far inferior to his verse, and 
 naturally so, as some of his greatest qualities those of the 
 harmonist and rersifier are not brought into play; his drama, 
 apart from the beautiful lyrical passages with which it abounds, 
 is of no exceptional merit, and is only too apt to be suggestive 
 of melodrama. Where he is really great, probably greater 
 than any other Frenchman, and certainly surpassed by none, 
 is in lyric poetry, where the range and variety of subjects, 
 the music and grace of form and versification, the warmth 
 and colour of style, and the spontaneity of the emotions, form 
 a body of qualities that could only be found in a supreme 
 master of the art. 
 
 In spite of his faults he has left behind a body of work 
 wonderful .in its quantity and in many of its qualities, in the 
 universality of its interests, the variety of its music, and above 
 all in its rare lyrical beauties. His is a figure which looms 
 large not only in the literature of France but of the world. 
 
 Probably the greatest lyric poet of France, in the narrower 
 sense, is Alfred de Musset. 
 
 De Musset was born at Paris in 1810. In 1828 he was already at the 
 age of eighteen introduced into the Cdnacle, and in ] 830, with the Contes 
 d'Espagne et d' Italic, became famous, and one of the recognized Romantic 
 leaders. However, his enthusiasm for the new creed did not last, and 
 except at the outset of his career he was only a half-hearted Romanticist, 
 avowing his admiration for their Mte-noire Racine, and mildly poking 
 fun at some of their extravagances. In 1833 took place his meeting 
 with George Sand, and during the years 1833 and 1834 they were to- 
 gether in Italy, but in the latter year De Musset left her and returned 
 to Paris, and in the following year, 1835, the final rupture occurred. 
 This episode left indelible traces in his life and writings. Most of his 
 best work was done before the age of thirty, after which, with energies 
 and strength exhausted by the irregularities of his life, he produced com- 
 paratively little. He died in Paris in 1857, at the early age of forty-six. 
 
 His principal works are: Contes d'Espagne et d'ltalie (1830), 
 Spectacle dans un Fauteuil (1832), Rolla (1835), Les Nuits (1835- 
 1837), Confession d'un Enfant du Sttcle (1836), in prose; and 
 among his theatrical pieces, which he collected in 1856 under 
 the title of Comedies et Proverbes, Lorenzaccio, Carmoisine, On ne
 
 POETRY 255 
 
 badine pas avec I 'amour, and II ne faut jurer de rien should be 
 especially mentioned. 
 
 The Conies d'Espagne et d'ltalie, which were written in the 
 ardour of his early romantic enthusiasm, are lyrics and verse 
 tales glowing with all the warmth and colour of the South, 
 in which, at the same time, licence and extravagance run 
 riot. 
 
 The Spectacle dans un Fauteuil is remarkable for one of its 
 two dramatic pieces, La Coupe et les Levres, a Faust-like theme, 
 the conception of which is unfortunately far superior to its 
 execution. 
 
 The four NuitsDe Mai et de Decembre (1835), d'Aout ,(1836), 
 and d'Octobre (1837) reflect the bitterness of soul and dis- 
 illusionment which followed his rupture with George Sand, 
 and the ending of those romantic dreams of ideal leve which 
 they had founded on that relationship. The personal allusions 
 with which they abound make them often obscure, but there 
 is no mistaking their delicate analysis and fine insight into 
 the human heart. They contain much that is purely ad- 
 mirable as lyricism of the passion and sufferings of love. 
 
 In the Confession d'un Enfant du Siecle the story of a young 
 man who has exhausted before his prime all the pleasures 
 the world has to offer and his own power of enjoyment, and, 
 young in years, finds himself old at heart, without ambition, 
 faith, or hope we cannot but trace the picture of De Musset 
 himself. 
 
 Of his comedies some few are among his very best work. 
 They have, on the whole, comparatively little action, their 
 interest lying more in the delicate analysis of human feel- 
 ings and emotions, while he often shows himself a master 
 of dramatic dialogue, and his wit is lively and never-failing. 
 Some of the pieces, remarkable for their intensity and graceful 
 fantasy, as, for instance, On ne badine pas avec Vamour and // ne 
 faut jurer de rien, still maintain their hold on the stage. 
 
 Alfred de Musset was before all a great lyricist, whose 
 source of inspiration was the human heart with its inner 
 workings and most subtle feelings and emotions. All his
 
 250 NINETEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 work is strongly subjective; nowhere do we long forget the 
 personality of the author. Beginning life as an enthusiast, 
 fired with ambition and hope, he early underwent a sad dis- 
 illusionment, owing principally to his unhappy relations with 
 George Sand, and all his later work is inspired by a melan- 
 choly which broods upon the darker problems of life, and 
 ends by caressing a despair which sees in its very regrets and 
 bitter-sweet remembrances the only thing worth having lived 
 for. 
 
 His style is on the whole careless and wanting in artistic 
 finish, showing imperfections and faults which he had not the 
 patience or inclination to avoid, but attaining at times, when 
 inspired by genuine passion, a simple directness and force 
 which make it a perfect medium of expression. 
 
 A comparison with Byron is one which will naturally suggest 
 itself to the student of comparative literature. 
 
 In contrast to De Musset, detachment from self is the key- 
 note of the poetry of Theophile Gautier (1811-1872), who 
 began by the study of art, to become later an artist in liter- 
 ature. He was the youngest of the Romanticists, and the 
 most noisy in his enthusiasm, making himself conspicuous 
 for his eccentricity in manner and dress, although it should 
 not be overlooked that at bottom he was a conscientious and 
 indefatigable worker. 
 
 Gautier's chief works comprise : (a) his poetry, published in 
 1845 under the title of Podsies Completes, and which include 
 the Pofaies (1830), La Come'die de la Mori (1838) and Espana; 
 also the later collection Emaux et Canutes (1852); (i) his fiction, 
 the principal works being Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835), Le 
 Roman de la Momie (1858), Le Capitaine Fracasse (1863), and 
 a number of short stories second only to those of Merimee; 
 
 (c) his account of his travels, the best of which are Tra los 
 Monies (his journey to Spain) and the Voyage en Russie (1867); 
 
 (d) his critical works, including Les Grotesques (1853) and 
 L'Histoire du Romantisme (1874). 
 
 Already, with his first poems in 1830, the cult of form and 
 colour which he brought over from painting to the sister art
 
 POETRY 257 
 
 were apparent, 1 and announced the great colourist and artist 
 in style of the Romantic school. In his greatest book, the 
 collection which he published in 1852 under the characteristic 
 title of fimaux et Came'es, this feature is pronounced, and we 
 find everything regarded from the point of view of the 
 painter. The centre of interest is removed from the subjec- 
 tive sentimentality of the Romanticists to that of objective 
 beauty, while in the field of ethics we have the corresponding 
 change from the consciously moral or immoral, to the neither 
 moral nor immoral, the neutral, with its cry of " art for art ". 
 This theory and creed of the all -importance of form in art 
 at the expense both of sentiment and ideas, was the side of 
 Gautier's work which inspired those who were later known as 
 the Parnassiens. 
 
 That this doctrine was essentially false, as confounding the 
 relative spheres of two complementary but not interchange- 
 able arts, is beyond dispute, and in this respect Gautier had 
 a harmful influence in lending the weight of his example to 
 an unsound tendency. At the same time he exerted a very 
 wholesome influence on literature in liberating Romanticism 
 from what was rapidly tending to become an over-subtle 
 and morbidly introspective sentimentalism. Of the Emaux et 
 Carries he says himself: " Ce litre exprime le dessein de trailer 
 sous forme restreinte de petits sujets, tantot sur plague d'or ou de 
 cuivre avec les vives couleurs de I'dmail, tantot avec la roue du 
 graveur de pierres fines sur I 'agate, la cornaline ou Vonyx ". 
 
 The same qualities of style are seen in his prose writings, 
 the same firmly chiselled reproduction of the objects which 
 struck the painter's eye, everywhere the point of view of the 
 man "pour qui le monde exttrieur existe", to quote the definition 
 of himself. The best of them, apart from the travels, are 
 Mademoiselle de Maupin, which, with its defiant polemical pre- 
 face, marks the transition to realism in fiction: Le Capitaine 
 
 1 Cf. his own words : 
 
 " Laisse-moi faire, 6 grand vicillard, 
 Changeant mon luth pour to palette 
 Une transposition d'art ". 
 (1(643) B
 
 258 NINETEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 Fracasse, a kind of romantic adaptation of Scarron's Roman 
 Comique; Les Grotesques, on the minor poets of the reign of 
 Louis XIII, in M'hom, with surer instinct than Sainte-Beuve, he 
 recognized the ancestors of Romanticism; and L'Hisloire du 
 Itomantisme, still indispensable for a detailed and anecdotic 
 knowledge of that movement. 
 
 For good or for bad, Gautier has to be reckoned with as a 
 very important element in the literature of the middle decade 
 of this century. With him ends the line of the great masters 
 of the poetic movement, but a few words might be said of 
 the minor Romantic poets. 
 
 Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786-1859), one of the greatest of 
 French women-poets, whose verse is remarkable for its sincerity and 
 poignancy, if occasionally marred by vagueness and prolixity. 
 
 Auguste Brizeux (1803-1855), a graceful idyllist who, in Marie (1831) 
 and Les Bretons (1845), has sung the praises of Breton wilds and ways. 
 
 Auguste Barbier (1805-1882), inspired by the July Revolution, 
 wrote a series of nineteen satires, published under the title of fambes 
 (1831). They are somewhat violent in tone, but several, and especially 
 La Curie, are masterpieces of spirited satire. 
 
 His other poems, II Pianto, on the misfortunes of Italy, and Lazare, 
 a picture of the misery among the working- classes in England, are far 
 inferior to the lambes. 
 
 Hegesippe Moreau (1810-1838), whose sad death in a hospital at the 
 early age of twenty-eight has lent additional interest to a collection of 
 his poetry published after his death, under the title of Le Myosotis. 
 Moreau's range is not wide, but his verse is always the result of a true 
 passion felt. A few of his best pieces, like the charming elegy La Voulzie, 
 or the famous lines written at Racine's tomb, are unique of their kind in 
 the French language. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 DRAMA 
 
 The dramatic work of Victor Hugo having been already 
 discussed, the name of Alexandra Dumas pere, the second 
 dramatist in merit among the Romanticists, naturally opens 
 this chapter.
 
 DRAMA 259 
 
 Alexandra Dumas was born in 1803 at Villers-Cotterets, a little 
 Picardy town, and was the son of a general of the Revolution, and grand- 
 son of a Creole. He received a very scanty and irregular education, and 
 came to Paris at twenty to make his fortune. The future novelist began 
 with verse, and then being seized with a passion for the theatre, entered 
 upon his serious literary career with the writing of several dramas, with 
 which he achieved a fair success, though nothing like that later obtained 
 when he had found in the novel his true sphere. Henri III et sa Oour, 
 his first important play, was produced at the Thtdtre Franqais shortly 
 before Hernani. About 1840 Dumas went over to the novel, and partly 
 alone and partly in collaboration with a number of others, who helped 
 to make up the Maison Dumas et Cie, turned out an incredible number 
 during the remaining thirty years of his life. Nor was his literary 
 activity confined to novel-writing ; he wrote memoirs, travels, and any 
 other form of saleable composition, adapted his novels for the stage, 
 lectured both in France and abroad, and in fact turned his facile pen 
 to any labour which could raise the sums necessary to meet the ex- 
 penses into which he was led by his reckless extravagance. In the 
 midst of these untiring labours he died in Normandy in 1870. 
 
 His principal plays are: Henri III (1829), Antony (1831), 
 La Tour de Nesle (1832), Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle (1839). 
 
 Though not possessing any great power of character-drawing, 
 and wanting in psychological insight, they are remarkable as 
 introducing on the stage the treatment of historical subjects, 
 afterwards taken up with such avidity by other Romanticists. 
 At the same time Dumas possesses in a high degree the 
 dramatic instinct; all is action, and the characters fitly explain 
 themselves by their deeds and not their words. He fully 
 understood the requirements and conventions of the stage, 
 and to his power of adapting himself to its conditions is to 
 be ascribed the success of his plays, in spite of their lack of 
 all the highest dramatic qualities. 
 
 Of his novels we shall speak in the next chapter. 
 
 The greatest name of the period in comedy is that of 
 Augustin Eugene Scribe (1791-1861), an author whose pro- 
 ductivity was phenomenal. 
 
 Beginning his work as a dramatist when hardly out of his 
 teens, he had at first little success, but gradually came to the 
 front, and for some fifty years figured largely in the " reper- 
 toire" of several theatres, beginning with the Gymnase from
 
 
 ri |\|I_,| I J|> ^dyr"!*' Y" *.. T^*""^i^^^"<t^^^ / I 
 
 its opfenmg iw 1820,*and being admitted some seven or eight 
 ears later to the stage of the TlifMre Fran$ais. ^SCUi^Lfi^ 
 
 Among his best-known pieces are: Le Manage de JRaison 
 (1820), one of the earlier pieces written for the Gymnase; 
 JBertrand et Raton (1833), a story of revolutions and intrigues; 
 La Camaraderie (1837), a satire on the coteries of the bourgeoisie; 
 and possibly best-known of all, Le Verre d'Eau (1840), the 
 historical setting of which is the series of intrigues which led 
 to the fall of the Duchess of Maryborough. 
 
 Scribe is a remarkable instance of a writer who was a play- 
 wright before everything. His comedies have no purely literary 
 qualities, and their thought is insignificant. All the interest 
 is centred in the intrigue; he takes any situations and any 
 characters, and, setting them in movement with the greatest 
 -skill, manipulates them with unerring instinct for dramatic 
 effect. Without genius or originality, he was possessed of 
 . great shrewdness, and exactly hit the tastes of the public for 
 -~T-- which he wrote the great well-to-do middle class of Parisian 
 society. Alone and in collaboration he wrote some hundreds 
 of plays; and, unlike Dumas, with whom he may be compared 
 
 point of fertility and productiveness, not only made but 
 
 kept a very considerable fortune, 
 ^r-f * 
 
 '*' Among his many collaborators might be mentioned Ernest Legouve 
 
 JP (T784-181I2), in conjunction with whom he wrote La Bataille des Dames, 
 j "^ one of the best, if not the best, of all his comedies. 
 
 The only other dramatist of importance in this first half of 
 ' the century is Francois Ponsard (1814-1867), who, after the 
 "* appearance of Lucrece (1843), was hailed as the founder of the 
 ecole du ban sens, which, though showing traces of romanticism 
 in picturesqueness and colour, as also in versification, had much 
 of the regularity of the old classical tragedy. However, he 
 did not keep to this style which he had himself originated, but 
 in Charlotte Corday (1850) wrote what was to all intents a 
 romantic drama, while in 1853 he passed over to social comedy 
 with L'ffonneur et L' Argent, and in his last piece, in 1866, Le 
 Lion Amoureux, (produced another comedy of the same kind. 
 In spite of the considerable reputation he enjoyed in his day,
 
 \t Ponsard has not left any great work in any one of his different 
 styles. His plays are written in verse, but contain no real 
 poetry, and their psychological interest is very small. 
 
 His historical plays, of which the principal are Charlotte 
 Corday and Le Lion Amoureux, have an air of actuality which J\f v J. 
 ,~ is due to their coldness and .want of imagination. His one v 
 ^ "'merit is that he introduced, by the solidarity of his style 
 ^ the regularity of his well-turned couplets, an influence which, 
 - was in healthy contrast to the extravagances pf some of 
 Romanticists. 
 
 3, 
 
 ^ . ^TC^Av^twJ- 
 
 AfteV poetay, fict'!6h vl 1S^ ll flfi&{Vnost important brancnvot^ Q 
 Romantic literature. Of the novels of Victor Hugo we have 
 already spoken in conjunction with the rest of his work, but 
 it may be again remarked in this connection how important 
 they were in directing the Romanticists to this form, while 
 the greatest of all, Notre- Dame de Paris, was the first great 
 example of the historical novel, which flourished in France 
 during the early part of this period, owing in large measure 
 to the fame which Sir Walter Scott had since 1814 achieved 
 with his historical romances. 
 
 The most remarkable writer of novels of this kind was 
 Alexandra Dumas, who turned from the theatre to fiction in 
 1840, and during the next decade composed his best stories. 
 Among the enormous number which he wrote, either with or 
 without the help of collaborators, the most famous perhaps 
 are: Le Comte de Monte Cristo (1841-1845), Les trois Mousque- 
 taires (1845), Vingt Am Aprh (1846), La Reine Margot (1846). 
 
 Dumas' novels have no great literary qualities, and little art 
 in arrangement and development of plot, while they show that 
 want of finish which is only to be expected from the haste 
 with which they were written, and the little labour that was 
 bestowed upon them. Nevertheless they reveal a wonderful
 
 262 NINETEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 wealth of imagination, a never-failing faculty of invention, 
 and their unrivalled narrative -power carries the reader irre- 
 sistibly along through the endless series of interesting scenes 
 and situations, which are rather strung together than subordi- 
 nated to any general plot. 
 
 The main developments of the Romantic novel are often 
 divided into two currents Idealism and Realism, and although 
 the distinction might be misguiding if interpreted too literally, 
 it contains a great deal of truth, and may be a helpful general- 
 ization if supplemented by a closer examination of the facts of 
 the case. 
 
 With such qualifications we may describe George Sand as a 
 representative of idealism. 
 
 Lucile Aurore Dupin, Baronne Dudevant, was born at Paris in the year 
 1804. Her father was a grandson of the Marechal de Saxe, her mother 
 a Parisian bourgeoise, and on her father's death she lived principally 
 with her grandmother on her estate at Nohant in Berry. At eighteen 
 she married M. Dudevant, and after living with him nine years she 
 separated from him, abandoning her fortune, and went to Paris to make 
 her living by literature. She began by collaborating with Jules Sandeau 
 under the pseudonym of Jules Sand, from which, by the change of Jules 
 to George, was derived her famous nom de plume. For some twenty 
 years she lived in the Bohemian society of the capital, under the influ- 
 ence, during the first part of the time, of various distinguished artists 
 and men of letters, notably Alfred de Musset and Chopin ; during the 
 later part, more especially of the philosophers, socialists, and politicians. 
 In the years 1833 and 1834 she made, in the company of Alfred de 
 Musset, the journey to Italy, which is reflected in the work of both, and 
 left so deep a mark on his life. 
 
 In 1848 she withdrew from the life of the capital to her beloved Berry, 
 where as chatelaine of Nohant she passed the rest of her days, engaged 
 with but short intervals in steady and untiring literary toil. She died 
 in 1876. 
 
 Her work may be divided into four periods, and the principal 
 writings of each are respectively the following: (a) Indiana 
 (1831), Valentine (1832), Lelm (1833), Jacques (1834), Elk et 
 Lui (1858); (b) Spiridion (1839), Conswlo (1842-1843), La Com- 
 tesse de Rudolstadt (1844); (c) La Mare au Diable (1846), La 
 Petite Fadette (1849), Francois k Champi (1850); (d) Jean de la
 
 PROSE 263 
 
 Roche (1860), Le Marquis de Fillcmer (1861), Les Beau:: Mes- 
 sieurs de Bois Dor6 (1868). 
 
 The novels of the first period show largely the Semantic 
 tendencies of the day, together with a very strong influence of 
 Rousseau, while they get their distinctive character from the 
 prominence they give to the marriage question, the unsatisfied 
 yearnings of the femme incomprise, and the sacredness of true 
 love, which is superior to all obligations. 
 
 Elle et Lui (1858) deals with the Musset episode. 
 
 In the second period the influence of her philosophic 
 friends, the most important of whom was Lamennais, is 
 apparent, and she produced novels which were mainly rhap- 
 sodies on social questions, treating largely of the relations 
 between the classes, and drawing wonderfully idealized pic- 
 tures of fusion between the different ranks effected by the 
 all-potent influence of love. 
 
 The best book of this period, and one of the best she wrote, 
 is Consuelo (1842). 
 
 In the third period, inspired by her beloved province, she 
 returns to scenes of rural simplicity and simple faith, and 
 creates some idylls that are pure masterpieces, and in which, 
 though both scenes and personages are largely idealized, yet 
 the whole is inspired by the highest degree of poetic truth. 
 Many regard the works of this period as her greatest, and we 
 are inclined to agree with them. 
 
 Lastly, towards the close of her life she turns to story- 
 telling pure and simple, and leaves Berry for other scenes, 
 which she uses as the background for charming idylls of life 
 told with the calm and smiling serenity of her own placid old 
 age. 
 
 Only a small part of George Sand's novels even have been 
 mentioned, and to them has to be added a considerable quan- 
 tity of dramatic work, in addition to a voluminous Histoire 
 de ma Vie, Lettres, and much miscellaneous work. 
 
 George Sand is one of the most considerable of woman 
 writers of any age and country. Gifted with a wonderfully 
 ready and fertile imagination, and a no less marvellous facility
 
 264 NINETEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 of composition, she seemed to produce her works with little 
 or no effort. Nor did the quality suffer as much as might 
 have been expected from this free and unlaboured method, for 
 what she gave to the world in this way, as the spontaneous 
 emanation of her genius, has qualities both of matter and style. 
 Moreover, though she no more makes an effort to excel in 
 psychological analysis than in any other direction, her insight 
 into human nature is very considerable, and not to be con- 
 cealed by the halo of idealism which she throws around her 
 characters. Thus it would be wrong to call her an idealist 
 if using the term implied the total exclusion of realism. The 
 work of George Sand might best be described as a fusion of 
 the two, her conception and mental vision being in the highest 
 degree true to nature, while her optimistic woman's nature 
 leads her to bestow on all rather more of poetry and romance 
 than is justified by the hard facts of actual life. 
 
 Among the Eealists, three men stand out conspicuously. 
 We will speak first of Stendhal (1783-1842), the originator 
 of the school, and the first in point of time. 
 
 Marie Henri Beyle, who wrote under the name of Stendhal, 
 was a man who saw much active life, trying his hand at more 
 than one profession, and among other things taking part in 
 the Eussian campaign. He lived for several years in Italy, 
 for which country he had a passionate preference. 
 
 His name depends upon two novels: Le Rouge et le Noir 
 (1831), and La Chartreuse de Parme (1839). 
 
 The former takes for its hero a man of unscrupulous ambi- 
 tion, Julien Sorel, who in the troublous times which followed 
 the Revolution resolved by his own energies and abilities to 
 carve for himself a position, but whose career of vice is cut 
 short on the scaffold. 
 
 The latter is almost entirely occupied with the painting of 
 Italian life, but is best known for the description of Waterloo, 
 given in realistic fashion from the point of view of a conscript 
 who takes part in it. In its cold, unimpassioned detail it is 
 a model of realism, no less by what it omits than by what 
 it tells.
 
 PROSE 265 
 
 In both, Stendhal shows his two main characteristics, the love 
 of action and energy, and the observation of the human heart, 
 which makes him the first in point of time of the great modern 
 psychological novelists. His influence was very considerable, 
 especially on Balzac and Merimee, his two immediate suc- 
 cessors in the earlier part of the century. 
 
 Prosper Merimee was born at Paris in 1803, and began by 
 studying law. Abandoning this occupation, he held various 
 government posts, and became finally Inspector of Historical 
 Monuments. Under Napoleon III he was made a senator, 
 and was a great favourite both of the emperor and of the 
 Empress Eugenie. 
 
 His chief writings are: The&tre de Clara Gazul {1825), 
 Chronique du Regne de Charles IX (1829), and among his short 
 stories La Ve"nus d'llle (1837), Colomba (1840), Tamango, Car- 
 men (1845), Matteo Falcone, L'Enlfoement de la Redoute. 
 
 Beginning his literary career at twenty-two with some dra- 
 matic pieces professing to be from the Spanish of an imaginary 
 Clara Gazul, he followed in 1830 with another mystification 
 in the form of a collection of pretended Illyrian folk-songs, 
 signed with an anagram of the previous name, La Guzla. Up 
 to this time his work had borne a decided romantic imprint 
 both in matter and form, but he then turned to the writing 
 of those stories on which his lasting fame depends. 
 
 Though still in keeping with romantic traditions in their 
 predilection for strange and less civilized countries, and the 
 interest they display in foreign languages and literatures, they 
 are in the best sense of the word realistic in their exact and 
 picturesque portrayal of the local setting, and in the truth of 
 their artistic, historical, and archaeological descriptions. 
 
 He fitly stands midway between Stendhal and Balzac in the 
 history of the realistic novel, having many points in common 
 with both, though he is a greater artist than either. The 
 influence of Stendhal he himself acknowledges: "Les idees de 
 Stendhal sur les hommes et sur les choses out singulierement dtteint 
 sur les miennes ", he says, and that influence is clearly to be 
 seen in his preference for lands whose primitive force and
 
 2C6 NINETEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 energy has not been affected by the influences of civilization, 
 while he resembles Balzac in the importance he attaches to 
 the painting of externals, and the connection he establishes 
 between the mind and its surroundings. 
 
 Most remarkable in his method is the striking objectivity 
 of treatment; he seeks to efface himself, concealing his own 
 personality behind his work, and letting the latter speak for 
 itself. His style is clear and polished, and even when he is 
 recounting the horrors and mysteries in which he takes delight, 
 the tone never loses its elegance and urbanity. Me'rimee is, 
 in short, an artist, and one whose reputation will gain much 
 more than it will lose with the progress of time. 
 
 Lastly, we must speak of the third of these men, Honore de 
 Balzac, the founder proper of the modern social realistic novel, 
 and one of the greatest names in French literature. 
 
 Balzac was born at Tours in 1799, studied law for three years at the 
 Sorbonne, his father wishing him to become a notary. In 1819 he left 
 his native town to try his fortune in Paris, where his life for the first 
 ten years was a long struggle in which he contracted debts which 
 hampered him for the rest of his life. He wrote during this period 
 several novels of little worth, and it was not till the publication of Les 
 Chouans (1829) that he achieved his first real success. Soon after 
 appeared La Peau de Chagrin, the first of his great works, and his 
 reputation was established. From that time till his death he brought 
 out a continuous stream of novels, working with phenomenal industry 
 and endurance, his hours varying, according to his own account, from 
 fifteen to eighteen a day, turning night into day, and often shutting 
 himself up from the world for weeks at a time. This unnatural labour, 
 to which he devoted himself partly under the pressure of his load of 
 debts, and partly from the necessity which he felt of realizing his artistic 
 conceptions, exhausted his forces, and he died in 1850 at the early age 
 of fifty-one. 
 
 In 1836, when he had already written several of his best 
 works, Balzac conceived the idea of a gigantic gallery of 
 novels representing contemporary life, into the framework of 
 which he fitted many of those he had already written, and 
 which was to be completed by a great number of others of 
 which some were actually written and some never got beyond 
 their conception in the author's brain. To this unique work
 
 PROSE 267 
 
 he gave the title of La Comfclie Humaine, and divided it into 
 six groups: (a) Scenes de la Fie Privfe, comprising among 
 others La Femme de Trente Ans (1832), Le Colonel Chabert, Le 
 Pere Goriot (1835); (b) Scenes de la Vie de Province: Le Lys dans 
 la Vallee (1835), Eugtnie Grandet (1833), Le Curt, de Tours, 
 Illusions Per dues (1837); (c) Scenes de la Vie Parisienne: Char 
 Birotteau (1837), La Cousine Bette (1847); (d) Scenes de la 
 Vie Politique: Une Ttnebreuse Affaire (1841); (e) Scenes de la 
 Vie Militaire: Les Chouans (1827-1829); (/) Scenes de la Vie de 
 Campagne: Les Paysans (1845), Le Medecin de Campagne (1833), 
 Le Curede Village (1839). He wrote also Philosophical studies: 
 La, Recherche de VAbsolu (1834); and Analytical studies. 
 
 This great creation in which society is approached from so 
 many sides, from the point of view of so many ranks, pro- 
 fessions, and situations, in which the characters are connected 
 and their relations with one another and with the rest of their 
 imaginary society fully and minutely portrayed, places Balzac 
 by the side of the great creative geniuses, the Shakespeares 
 and Molieres who have produced from their own consciousness 
 a world as actual and living as the world which they reflect. 
 
 The society that Balzac places before us is essentially that 
 of the France of Louis Philippe, and more particularly the 
 bourgeoisie, with its ignoble striving after wealth and position, 
 its intrigues and egoisms, its trivialities and low ideals. 
 Doubtless that society was not one of the most encouraging 
 to the student of sociology, yet we have every reason to 
 believe that it was not as bad as Balzac paints it, for as he 
 himself declared, he occupied himself by preference with the 
 mean and sordid in human life and character. "Les etres 
 imlgaires rriinttressent plus qu'ils ne wus inUressent, he said to 
 George Sand. "Je les grandis, je les idealise, en sens inverse, dans 
 leur laideur ou dans leur betise. 
 
 Accordingly he is best in his pictures of doubtful and more 
 than doubtful characters. He cannot paint a gentleman, an 
 honest man, or a virtuous woman, but he is excellent in his 
 villains and victims of human folly and vice. His favourite 
 method is to take one character who has become, through
 
 268 NINETEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 addiction to some besetting sin, a human monster, and trace 
 in all its ramifications the ravages effected in him and in the 
 society that is dependent upon him or exposed to his influ- 
 ence. His own peculiar types of character he draws with a 
 marvellous realism, and with a command of detail which has 
 rarely been equalled. Externals and material surroundings 
 form a characteristic part of his process, and are regarded as 
 an index to character and an important element in its forma- 
 tion. Yet he is no thinker much less so than Victor Hugo 
 and not infrequently his endless descriptions, as well as his 
 pseudo-philosophical dissertations, tend to make his novels 
 wearisome. Although Balzac showed a marked preference for 
 the baser side of nature, the fact must not be lost sight of that 
 he is in part a Romanticist, a Realist haunted by phantasms 
 of romance, as is well illustrated by such of his works as Sdra- 
 phita and Le Lys dans la Vallfe. 
 
 Both in its qualities and failings his influence is everywhere 
 traceable in the fiction of the latter half of the century. 
 
 Among the numerous lesser novelists and writers of stories 
 the most noticeable in this period are: 
 
 Charles Nodier (1780-1844), whose literary importance lies in the 
 fact that he was the centre around which, in the library of the Arsenal, 
 gathered the advanced guard of the young Romantic revolters De 
 Vigny, Sainte-Beuve, 6mile Deschamps (1791-1871), who translated 
 from Shakespeare, his brother Antoine Deschamps (1800-1869), who 
 turned Dante into French in fact, all those who are known as the first 
 Ctnade. Nodier's output was considerable, but the only portion of it 
 likely to live are a few admirable short stories, such as Trilby (1822), 
 and perhaps Le Peintre de Salzbourg (1803), in the German sentimental 
 manner. 
 
 Eugene Sue (1804-1857), the author of a number of novels, most of 
 which teem with absurdities and various objectionable qualities, but of 
 which at any rate two, the Mysteres de Paris (1842) and the Juif 
 ,Errant (1845), achieved great success. 
 
 Emile Souvestre (1806-1854) to whom we owe some charming stories 
 of Breton life, the best known being Les Dernier s Bretons, Les Derniers 
 Paysans, and Foyer Breton. Another book of his which has gained a 
 certain reputation is Le Philosophe sous les Toils, the reflections of a 
 young man on the every-day events of his life, mingled with some
 
 PROSE 269 
 
 unobtrusive moralizing thereupon, the whole written in an easy and 
 graceful style that makes it not without interest. 
 
 Alphonse Karr (1808-1890), who made his reputation with Sous les 
 TUleuls (1832), followed by a long series of novels, the best being 
 Genevieve (1838), though none equalled either the merit or popularity 
 of his first work. His characteristics are a strong feeling for the pic- 
 turesque, blended with a wit and irony which possess a distinct attrac- 
 tion of their own. 
 
 Henri Murger (1822-1861), whose reputation rests on the Scenes de 
 la Vie de Boheme (1845), humorous descriptions of the life of the needy 
 student population of Parisian Bohemia, in which the fantastic and the 
 real are Delightfully blended. He wrote -also many other novels dealing 
 with the vagabond life of the Quartier Latin, the romance of which he 
 did more than anyone else to create. 
 
 Not least important of the literary branches of the period is 
 history, which can point to half a dozen famous names, and 
 such a revolution of methods that the modern science only 
 dates from its first years. 
 
 The father of modern French history is Augustin Thierry, 
 who, with the Lettres sur VHistoire de France, gave the first 
 indication of the new movement. 
 
 Born at Blois in 1795, he became in 1815 the secretary of Saint- 
 Simon; but from 1817 turned to political writing. In 1821 he pub- 
 lished in the Courrier Franfais the first ten Lettres sur VHistoire de 
 France, to which fifteen more were afterwards added. Although defec- 
 tive sight, aggravated by excessive application, ended in blindness, he 
 continued his labours and researches with a fine courage and perseverance, 
 till his death in 1856. 
 
 His works comprise, in addition to the already mentioned 
 Lettres, the Histoire de la Conquete de VAngleterre par les Nw- 
 mands (1825), Dix Ans tf Etudes Eistorigues (1835), and the 
 Redts des Temps Merovingiens (1840). 
 
 In all his works Thierry seeks by the aid of a vivid imagi- 
 nation to make history live again before our eyes in a series of 
 pictures that shall be full of animation and colour, and yet 
 possess the fidelity and truth which can only be founded on 
 patient and careful investigation. His aims can best be given 
 in his own words: "J'avais V ambition de faire de I'art en meme
 
 270 NINETEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 temps que de la science, de faire du drame & I'aide de mate'riaux 
 fournis par une Erudition sincere el scrupuleuse ". 
 
 The main influences by which he was inspired were the 
 writings of Chateaubriand, whose Martyrs gave him the first 
 impulse in the direction of his future career, and Walter Scott, 
 for whom he entertained a no less ardent admiration. 
 
 His best works are the Conquete de VAngleterre and the 
 R<!dts des Temps Merovingiens, in the latter of which especially 
 he brings before us, with striking force and picturesqueness, 
 the sturdy semi-barbarous princes, warriors, and people of 
 those turbulent times. It is the masterpiece of the new pic- 
 turesque romantic school of history initiated by its author. 
 
 As Thierry was the leader of the Descriptive school, 
 Francois Guizot is the undoubted chief of the Philosophic 
 group of historians. 
 
 Guizot was born at Nimes, in 1787, of a Protestant family, and after 
 being brought up at Geneva, came to Paris, studied law, and became a 
 professor at the Sorbonne, forming in the last years of the Restoration, with 
 Villemain and Cousin, a kind of intellectual triumvirate. His lectures, 
 which were mainly on French institutions, were suspended in 1822, and 
 were not resumed till 1828. Under Louis Philippe he was twice Minister 
 of Public Instruction ; in 1840 he was sent as French Ambassador to 
 London, but after the fall of Thiers, returned and became President of 
 the Council and chief adviser of Louis. By his steady opposition to all 
 reasonable reforms he was largely instrumental in bringing about the 
 Revolution of 1848. After that event he was for a short time in exile in 
 England, but returned to France, and after 1851 devoted himself entirely 
 to his literary labours. He died in 1874. > 
 
 His four principal works are the Histoire de la Revolution 
 VAngleterre (1826), Histoire G6nemle de la, Civilisation en Europe 
 (1828), Histoire Ge'ne'rale de la Civilisation en France (1830), 
 Mtmoires pour servir ft V Histoire de mon Temps (1858-1867). 
 
 Guizot's leading ideas are the superiority of constitutional 
 government to even a legitimate and enlightened monarchy, 
 and the necessity of religious faith, not only from the moral, 
 but also from the social point of view. His method sacrifices 
 the narrative and picturesque interest to a cold unimaginative 
 exposition of facts. His works are models of order, system,
 
 PROSE 271 
 
 and clearness, but not great examples of literary composition 
 and style, and rather interesting to the student of history than 
 to the general reader. His merits are those of the thinker and 
 logician; events and characters are of secondary importance, 
 while the main interest everywhere centres in the ideas of 
 which outward events and circumstances are, as it were, the 
 symbol and expression. 
 
 Realism in history is represented by Louis Adolphe Thiers 
 (1797-1877), who began by the study of law, but afterwards 
 came to Paris and busied himself with literature and jour- 
 nalism. In 1823 appeared the first two volumes of his Histoire 
 de la Revolution Franqaise. Both under Louis Philippe and 
 Napoleon III he played an important political role, while from 
 1871 to 1873 he was President of the Republic. 
 
 He wrote two great historical works, the already mentioned 
 Histoire de la Revolution Franqaise (1823-1827), and the Histoire 
 du Consulat et de I'Empire (1843-1863). 
 
 Thiers is neither a painter like Thierry nor a philosopher 
 like Guizot, but before all a patient and reliable dealer in facts. 
 Of his own untiring investigation he speaks himself : " Je n'ai 
 aucun repos que je n'aie ddcouvert la preuve du fait . . . et je ne 
 m'arrete que lorsque je Tai trouve'e ou que j'ai acguis la certitude 
 qu'elle n'existe pas ". 
 
 He was gifted with an excellent fund of sense and a mar- 
 vellous facility of comprehension, coupled with a rare faculty 
 for expounding and elucidating. Even the most difficult 
 subjects give the impression of simplicity and ease under his 
 treatment. He has been accused of cynical indifference to- 
 wards the merits of the events or actions which he relates, but 
 this is due rather to his desire to give a faithful reproduction 
 of reality, without philosophical deductions or bias of any kind, 
 than to any want of moral sympathy. Through the promi- 
 nence he gave to his admiration for Napoleon, he was one of 
 those who helped to build up the Napoleonic legend, and 
 indirectly collaborated in bringing about the Second Empire. 
 
 A friend and intimate of Thiers was Francois Auguste 
 Mignet (1796-1884), whose fame rests on the Histoire de la
 
 272 NINETEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 Involution Fran$aise, which appeared in 1824. He represents 
 the Revolution as the natural outgrowth of the different con- 
 ditions of time, place, climate, and national temperament. 
 This endeavour to explain all effects as the necessary and in- 
 evitable result of their respective causes has led to the charge 
 of fatalism being laid against him a charge which is partly 
 justified, though he by no means fails to recognize the power 
 of human will and energy to modify the course of events. At 
 the same time, he ascribes to them a limited role, or, as he 
 himself says: " Ce sont moins les hommes gui ont men6 les choses, 
 qite les choses qui ont mend les hommes ". 
 
 His French Revolution is a concise but admirably clear account 
 of the great events of which it treats, giving a vivid picture, 
 and at the same time sober and philosophic deductions, the 
 value of the whole being heightened by the excellence of the 
 form. His style is a model of conciseness and concentration 
 without obscurity. 
 
 The greatest of all French historians, and unrivalled as an 
 evocator of the past, is Jules Michelet. 
 
 Michelet (1798-1874) was born in Paris, the son of a printer, and was 
 brought up amid scenes of poverty and privation. In 1833 he became 
 assistant professor of history under Guizot at the Sorbonne ; in 1837 
 professor at the College de France. Refusing to swear allegiance to 
 Napoleon, he was deprived of his chair in 1851, and henceforward 
 devoted himself entirely to his literary labours. During the last twenty 
 years of his life he did not confine himself to history, but wrote many 
 works in which philosophy, the love of nature, and poetry are delight- 
 fully blended. 
 
 His principal historical works are the great Histoire de 
 France, begun in 1833, in ten years brought up to the Middle 
 Ages, and continued later, after the appearance of the Histoire 
 de la Revolution (1847-1853), and the Des Jdsuites (1843), 
 written in collaboration with Quinet. Of his other works, 
 among the best known are: Le Pretre, la Femme, et la Famille 
 (1845), L'Oiseau (1856), L'Insecte (1857), La Bible de VHumanite 
 (1864), La Montagne (1868). 
 
 Of his historical work the best is the part of his Histoire de 
 France which deals with the Middle Ages, in which his gift
 
 PROSE 273 
 
 of imagination and picturesque and vivid description have full 
 play, while he is not led astray by the party feelings and pre- 
 judices which make him so partial in his treatment of periods 
 nearer to his own day. 
 
 The Histoire de la Revolution, in spite of its brilliant pictures 
 and literary merits, has little value as history. The writer is 
 too much influenced by his passionate democratic sympathies 
 to give a cool and impartial account of the period of which he 
 treats. The Jtsuites shows the same failing from the historical 
 point of view, being written in a pronounced party spirit 
 that of hostility to Jesuitical tendencies. 
 
 Michelet's great merit as a historian lies in his picturesque 
 revival of the past, in which he resembles Augustin Thierry, 
 but far surpasses him in imaginative power, brilliance, and 
 colour. In his later works, when he turns from history to the 
 innate lyricism and poetry which had always been his passion, 
 his faults of partisanship disappear, and his gifts of imagi- 
 nation and style get their full value. For glow and colour of 
 form he is second only to Victor Hugo in the century, and the 
 best of his wonderful prose poetry has permanent qualities 
 that will only gain in reputation when time has allowed them 
 to be placed at the right perspective. 
 
 Of the disciples of Guizot in the historical field the most 
 conspicuous is, without contention, Alexis de Tocqueville 
 (1805-1859), the author of two historical works which 
 achieved a merited reputation the Ddmocratie en Amdrique 
 (1835) and L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution (1850). 
 
 Both are excellent as philosophic history, and show great 
 impartiality and freedom from prejudice and prepossession. 
 De Tocqueville is a deep, original, and logical thinker, and 
 performed a real service by his cool and unimpassioned ex- 
 amination of democracy. 
 
 With the growth of the new spirit in literature went hand 
 in hand, as the necessary counterpart, a new spirit of criti- 
 cism, which found complete expression in Charles Augustin 
 Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869), the great critic of the Romantic 
 school. 
 
 (1(643) 9
 
 274 NINETEENTH CEJJT0RT FIRST PERIOD 
 
 Born at Boulogne-sur-Mer, he began life by the study of 
 medicine, but, renouncing that profession, made his literary 
 appearance by articles in the Globe on Victor Hugo, and 
 regularly joined the Romanticists, becoming one of the inner 
 Cdnacle. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve's works comprise (a) his poems, Joseph De- 
 lorme (1829), the Consolations (1830), and the Pensees d'Aotit 
 (1837); (b) one novel, VolupU (1834); and (c) his critical 
 works, of which the most important are the Tableau de la 
 Po&ie Francaise an XVI e Siecle (1828), the Portraits Littiraires 
 (1829), the Causeries du Lundi, begun in the Constitutionnel 
 (1850), and continued as Nouveaux Lundis in the Moniteur, and 
 his great work L'Histoire de Port-Royal (1840-1860). 
 
 Apart from the intrinsic merit of his verse, which is not 
 great, his real importance as a poet lies in the fact that he 
 was the first to teach the Romanticists the value and impor- 
 tance of form, and especially of rime, in French poetry: 
 
 " Rime, qui donnes leurs sons 
 
 Aux chansons; 
 Jtime, I'unique harmonic 
 Du vers, qui sans tes accents 
 
 Fremissants, 
 Serait muet au gtnie," &c. 
 
 ft was Sainte-Beuve, too, in the Pensfas d'Aotit, who first 
 struck the popular note afterwards carried to such perfection 
 by Manuel and Coppee. 
 
 Nevertheless his fame will always rest on his achievements 
 as a critic, for here he was a reformer and an innovator, and 
 opened up a new era in the science of criticism. Instead of 
 estimating all literary productions according to certain pre- 
 conceived standards, he showed that they should be judged 
 on their own merits, and that those merits depend not on their 
 resemblance to some famous previous example of their own 
 literary kind, but on the value of the ideas expressed, and the 
 way in which form and expression are adapted to the render- 
 ing of those ideas. In order to fully appreciate the concep- 
 tion from which the work has arisen, he proceeds from the
 
 PROSE 275 
 
 work to the man, tries to get insight into his personality and 
 the different influences to which he has been subjected, and 
 thus as it were to trace back the work under consideration 
 through every process of its genesis. The purely human 
 plays a very great part in his system, and his delicate and 
 subtle appreciation of character, and wide, almost universal, 
 sympathies, give a breadth and stability to his generaliza- 
 tions which make them of the very highest worth. 
 
 The gap between the old school and Sainte-Beuve's system 
 had been partly bridged by Abel Francois Villemain (1790- 
 1870), professor of rhetoric at the Sorbonne, afterwards 
 Ministre de 1'Instruction Publique under Louis Philippe. 
 His best-known work is the Tableau de la Literature Fran$aise 
 au XVIII* siecle (1828). 
 
 Basing Ms literary judgments on a knowledge both of 
 ancient and modern languages and literatures, he wrote much 
 comparative criticism that was both valuable and interesting, 
 while his main importance lies in the fact that, by identifying 
 literature with history, he represents the first step from that 
 criticism which judged merely from a comparison of previous 
 recognized models to the modern scientific school. 
 
 Edgar Quinet (1803-1875), Michelet's collaborator in his attack on 
 the Jesuits, and like him a violent anti-clerical though imbued with 
 deep religious feeling, tried his hand at many subjects, but was a com- 
 plete master of none. Of his early works the most remarkable is 
 Ahasverus (1833), a kind of wildly romantic spiritual imitation of the 
 ancient mysteries, in which the Creation, the birth of our Lord, the Day 
 of Judgment, the Leviathan, the stars, sphinxes, &c., are represented in 
 a strange medley. This was followed by Promethe'e (1838), and subse- 
 quently by Merlin I'Enchanteur (1860), a vast allegory. His prose is far 
 superior to his poetry; in fact his studies on German literature and 
 philosophy, and on medieval French literature Idies sur la Philosophic 
 de I'ffistoire de Herder, 1827 ; Les Epoptes Franqaises, 1831 ; Allemagne 
 et Italic, 1839 can still be read with profit, as also his letters to 
 Michelet, and indeed all his various volumes of Correspondance. 
 
 From a literary point of view, undoubtedly the most con- 
 siderable of philosophers must be accounted Victor Cousin 
 (1792-1867), born at Paris, the son of a jeweller. Educated at
 
 276 NINETEENTH CENTURY FIRST PERIOD 
 
 the Ecole Normale, he became a professor of Greek at the age of 
 twenty, but early turned his attention to philosophy. He first 
 studied the Scottish metaphysicians, and afterwards devoted 
 himself to the great German philosophers Kant, Fichte, 
 Schelling, and Hegel, visiting Germany in 1817. His lectures 
 at the Swboniie were only rivalled in popularity by those of 
 Guizot. 
 
 He was the founder of philosophical eclecticism, which binds 
 itself unreservedly to the tenets of no particular school, but 
 chooses the best from all, and compounds therefrom a philo- 
 sophy of its own. 
 
 His principal philosophical writings are: Sur le Fondement 
 des Idfas Absolues, Cours d'Histoire de la, Philosophic Moderne 
 (1827), Du Frai, du Beau, et du Bien (1836), and Histoire Gtntrale 
 de la Philosophic. With the last work Cousin was the initiator 
 of the history of philosophy. He also wrote literary studies 
 and criticism, principally on the early part of the 17th century 
 in France, the best known of these being the Etudes sur Pascal 
 (1842-44) and La SocUte" Fran$aise au XFII" Siecle d'apres le 
 Grand Cyrus (1858). 
 
 By his brilliant lectures and wonderful personal inflence he 
 did more than anyone to revive the study of philosophy in 
 France. 
 
 Lastly, pulpit oratory found a worthy representative in 
 L'Abbe Lacordaire (1802-1861), who revived religious elo- 
 quence, and introduced romanticism into the pulpit. He was 
 a born orator, full of fire, and gifted with a poetic utterance 
 that won and carried away his auditors. During the years 
 1835 and 1836, and again from 1843 to 1851, he delivered the 
 series of sermons famous as the Conferences de Notre-Dame.
 
 277 
 
 SECOND PERIOD (1*850-1900) 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 POETRY 
 
 All the chief poets of the opening years of this period 
 belonged to the group known as the Parnassiens. Among 
 them the first to come forward was Theodore de Banville 
 (1823-1891), the most direct and obvious disciple of the 
 founder of the school, Theophile Gautier. 
 
 Already before 1850 he had published two volumes of verse: 
 Cariatides (1842) and Stalactites (1846); which were followed 
 by Odelettes and Odes Funambulesques (both in 1857), Les Exile's 
 (1874), and Les Princesses in the same year. He also composed 
 numerous plays: Gringoire (1866), Socrate et sa Femme (1886), 
 Le Baiser (1888) all of no great merit. 
 
 The names that De Banville gives to the majority of his 
 collections show plainly the characteristics of his verse. He 
 carries still further the principles of Gautier, reducing the 
 cult of art for art's sake to that of art for the sake of artifi- 
 ciality. With Gautier the idea had after all counted for some- 
 thing, but with De Banville all traces of it vanish before his 
 excessive worship of poetic form, arid more especially of rime, 1 
 on which, according to him, the value of verse solely depends. 
 " La rime ", he informs us in his curious Petit TraiU de Potsie 
 Fran$aise, "est I' unique harmonie du vers et elle- est tout le vers. 
 . . . Dans la podsie franchise, la rime est le moyen supreme 
 ^expression et ^imagination de la rime est le maitre-outil. . . . 
 C'est une loi absolve, comme les lois physiques; tant que le poete 
 exprime vdritablement sa pense'e, il rime bien; des que sa pense'e 
 s'embarrasse, sa rime aussi s'embarrasse, dement faible, trainante 
 et vulgaire" He is even prepared to uphold the use of the 
 cheville, or padding in the body of the line, although it should 
 be stated that in nearly every case it is impossible to detect 
 it in De Banville's verse, so great is his metrical skill, 
 1 Cp. Sainte-Beuve,
 
 278 NINETEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 Such a conception of verse explains his fondness for the 
 most complicated old French poetic forms, such as the rondeau, 
 the ballade, and the triolet, which afforded excellent oppor- 
 tunities for the special display of his virtuosity. From its 
 very nature De Banville's poetry excites surprise rather than 
 admiration, and he shows a true appreciation of his talent 
 when he ingenuously confesses that his ambition was to ally 
 the buffoon element to the lyric, by curious combinations of 
 rimes or peculiar effects of sounds. 
 
 To sum up, we cannot do better than to quote Jules 
 Lemaitre's witty definition of Theodore de Banville: "Uhpoi'te 
 lyrique hypnotist par la rime, le dernier venu, le plus amust et dans 
 ses bons jours le plus amusant des romantiques, un clown en pofaie 
 qui a eu dans sa vie plusieurs idees, dont la plus persistante a eti 
 de riexprimer aucune idee dans ses vers ". 
 
 In spite of these restrictions, some of his trifling odeleltes, 
 or mocking vers de sodete, where verbal and metrical skill are 
 a help and not a hindrance, are unsurpassed in their kind. 
 
 In the Exile's and Princesses, his later collections, De Banville 
 showed that he was capable of writing stately descriptions 
 in the manner of the later Parnassiens (cp. Le Sanglier, Andro- 
 mede, N6m,ee, &c.). 
 
 The morbid and decadent tendency found an early and 
 intense expositor in Banville's unfortunate friend Charles 
 Baudelaire (1821-1867), whose works, in addition to the 
 translations of Edgar Poe and of the prose Paradis Artificiels, 
 consist of the poems published in 1857 under the title of 
 Fleurs du Mai. In this collection he gives form to his para- 
 doxical theory that everything in nature is evil, and all that 
 is natural is hateful, although it should not be overlooked that 
 much of his so-called satanisme is pure pose; in fact, Baudelaire 
 himself warns us that "a little of the charlatan is always per- 
 missible to genius ". 
 
 His principal idea is that of death, and death not as a 
 symbolic conception, but in its sensations of decay and cor- 
 ruption. As an artist he is painstaking and powerful, and 
 amid the fungous growths or noxious bacilli of his Flowers oj
 
 POETRY 279 
 
 Evil, can be found curiously idealistic or symbolical poems, 
 such as Uldtal du PoUe, Correspondances, and Harmonie du Soir, 
 which for compactness and finish are unsurpassed in the 
 French language. 
 
 The greatest poet of the second half of the 19th century is 
 probably Charles Marie Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894), the 
 acknowledged leader of the Parnassiens, the second clearly- 
 defined poetic school of the century. He was born in the 
 island colony of Reunion, and did not remove permanently to 
 France till 1847. After his political hopes had been dashed 
 by the coup d'dtat, he settled down in Paris to a life of literary 
 work. 
 
 Apart from his translations from Homer, Hesiod, and ^Eschy- 
 lus, Leconte de Lisle's poetry consists of the Poemes Antiques 
 (1853), the Poemes Barbares (1859), and the Poemes Tragiques, 
 besides a volume of posthumous work, Derniers Poemes, pub- 
 lished in 1895. 
 
 Like all the school of which he was the undisputed chief, 
 Leconte de Lisle attaches very great importance to the poetic 
 art itself, and his form is wholly admirable in its flawless 
 plasticity, while his language exhibits wonderful precision, 
 enhanced by a never-failing instinct for the telling word, and 
 enriched by fine, expressive imagery. 
 
 His poetry is characterized by a well-marked and avowed 
 disinclination to make a show of his personal feelings; he 
 always protested against the professional use of tears, the cry 
 of the heart, or other such like Romantic devices, which to 
 him appeared a cheapening and corruption of art. In that 
 respect the piece entitled Les Montreurs might serve as an 
 epigraph to the whole of his poems : 
 
 " Td qu'un morne animal, meurtri, plein de poussiere 
 La chaine au cou, hurlant au chaud soleil d'tie", 
 Promene qui voudra son cosur ensanglantd 
 Sur ton pavi cynique, 6 plebe carnassitre I 
 
 Je ne livrerai pas ma vie d tes huees, 
 
 Je ne danserai pas sur ton tn'tcau banal," &c. 
 
 Yet in -spite of the lack of subjectivity in his work, he is by
 
 280 NINETEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 no means the " impassible " that is sometimes imagined. He 
 has felt only too deeply, but instead of indulging in the ever- 
 lasting self-contemplation of a Lamartine or a Musset, he 
 thought it was a nobler task for the poet to give expression to 
 the more general and less ephemeral sufferings of humanity. 
 Behind his apparent cold callousness the careful reader can 
 divine the most disenchanted sadness, the most profound aspira- 
 tion after the nihility of the Buddhistic nirvana, that impass- 
 able barrier beyond which the mind of man can conceive 
 nothing. Nothing exists, all is illusion and dream; such, in 
 short, is the basis of Leconte de Lisle's philosophy, as reflected 
 not only in the poems imitated from Hindoo subjects (Vision 
 de Brahma, Baghavat, Qunacepa), but also in La Ravine Saint- 
 Gilles, La Derniere Vision, Fiat Nox, and more especially in the 
 last twelve verses of the Poemes Tragiques, where it is so 
 eloquently summed up : 
 
 "Maya! Maya I torrent des mobiles chimeres, 
 Tu fais jaittir du cceur de I'homme universd 
 Les breves voluptes et les haines ameres, 
 Le monde obscur des sens et la splendeur du del. 
 Mais qu'est-ce que le cceur des hommes epMmeres, 
 Maya! sinon toi, le mirage immortel? 
 Les siecles ecoules, les minutes prochaines, 
 S'abiment dans ton ombre en un m&me moment, 
 Avec nos cris, nos plcurs et le sang de nos veincs; 
 Eclair, reve sinistrc, eternite qui mcnt, 
 La Vie antique est faite inepuisablement 
 Du tourbillon sans Jin des apparences vaines." 
 
 The philosopher of the Parnassiens is Rene Sully-Prudhomme, 
 born at Paris in 1839, who, with his Stances et Poemes (1865), 
 won a warm eulogy from Sainte-Beuve. 
 
 Other volumes which followed were entitled Les Solitudes 
 (1869), Vaines Tendresses (1875), La Justice (1878), and Le 
 Bonheur (1888). 
 
 He begins with a fine and delicate analysis of the inner life, 
 the prevailing tone of which is a deep-seated but serene melan- 
 choly. In La Justice and Le Bonheur ; the two greatest French 
 philosophic poems of this century, he attempted a larger
 
 POETRT 281 
 
 manner. The former, which speaks of the search for justice, 
 finds that it is only to be attained in the human conscience; 
 the latter, that happiness can only be reached through self- 
 renunciation and love. Though he attaches more importance 
 to the moral import of his work than some other of the 
 Parnassiens, he attains very great precision and finish of form. 
 
 Altogether his poetry, with its union of subtlety and exact- 
 ness, delicate psychology and science, has very great originality 
 and merit. 
 
 Following in the footsteps of Sainte-Beuve, Eugene Manuel 
 (born in 1823) has acquired great popularity for some charming 
 pictures of the everyday life of the lower classes in Paris. 
 His insight and sympathy have enabled him to idealize in a 
 wonderful manner the details of humble life. 
 
 His principal poetic works are: Pages Intimes (1866), Poemes 
 Populaires (1871), Pendant la Guerre (1872), and En Voyage 
 (1882). 
 
 The same conditions of life form the favourite theme of 
 Francois Coppee, born in 1842 at Paris, the most popular 
 poet of the day. With the Eeliquaire (1866) and Les IntimiUs 
 (1867) he made himself a distinguished place among the 
 Parnassiens. There have followed La Greve des Forgerons 
 (1869), Les Humbles (1872), Promenades et Inte'rieurs (1872), 
 Conies en Fers (1881 and 1887). 
 
 He has also written some delightful lyrical dramas, full of 
 irony and graceful fancy, which are accounted by many his 
 best work. Of these Le Passant (1869) had a very consider- 
 able success, largely owing to the acting of Madame Sarah 
 Bernhardt, while among a number of other pieces the most 
 successful was Le Luthier de Crimone (1876). 
 
 Though without any great original power, Francois Coppee 
 displays a delicate skill and a fund of graceful sentiment in the 
 treatment of those subjects which he has made peculiarly his 
 own. His style has an easy simplicity, due to his perfect 
 mastery of all the artifices of rime and rhythm, although it 
 cannot be said that he always succeeds in avoiding the prosaic 
 and trivial in his treatment of popular subjects.
 
 282 NINETEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 Among the living adherents of Leconte de Lisle none can 
 compare to Jose Maria de Heredia, born in Cuba near Sant- 
 iago, in the year 1842, but partly brought up and educated in 
 France. In 1893 he published a collection of sonnets, Les 
 Trophies, all of which are unrivalled for skilful workmanship 
 and brilliance of imagery. 
 
 De Heredia's conception of verse is derived from Leconte 
 de Lisle, his master, whose conciseness and plasticity of form 
 he has carried to a still higher degree, while at the same time 
 making it, if anything, more hard and metallic in outline. 
 The triumph of De Heredia is colour, as the fajnous critic 
 M. Brunetiere expresses it, and no verse has ever so faithfully 
 rendered the diversity of races or of place. Nothing could be 
 more Roman, for example, than La Trebbia, more Venetian 
 than La Dogaresse, more Japanese than Daimio, or more French 
 than the Belle Viole, with its delicate allusion to Du Bellay's 
 "sweet Anjou". But his real originality consists more espe- 
 cially in having enlarged the horizon of the idea in the con- 
 cluding lines of the sonnet, instead of compressing it. Take, 
 for instance, the last? lines of Antoine et CUop&tre, where the 
 Eoman imperator, bending over the Egyptian queen, 
 
 " Vit dans ses larges yeux etoiles de points d'or 
 Toute une mer immense ou fuyaient des galeres ". 
 
 Or again, the wide vistas opened up in the last tercet of Les 
 Conquer ants : 
 
 " Chaque soir, espe"rant dcs lendemains ^piques, 
 L'azur phosphorescent de la mer des Tropiques 
 Enchantait leur sommeil d'un mirage dore; 
 
 Ou, penches a I'avant des blanches caravettes, 
 Us regardaicnt monter dans un del ignore^ 
 Dufond dc I' Ocean dcs etoiles nouveUes ". 
 
 Of the new school known as Decadents and Symbolistes 
 the greatest by far is Paul Verlaine, that second Villon, born 
 in 1844, who, after a vagabond life spent between workhouses, 
 cafes, and hospitals, died in January, 1896. He made his
 
 POETRY 283 
 
 literary d&yvA already in 1866 with a volume entitled Pocmes 
 Saturniens, followed by La Bonne Chanson (1870). Then, after 
 ten years' silence, appeared Sagesse, verses of sincere penitence, 
 unsurpassed in the French language, and which have been 
 called by a great contemporary critic "the first in French 
 poetry that express truly the love of God". Other collections 
 were Jadis et Nagub-e (1885), Bonheur (1889), Parallclement 
 (1890), the latter a strange conception, in which the theme 
 is alternately sin and repentance. 
 
 Verlaine's position and the character of his poetry have 
 been frequently misunderstood, even by those who call them- 
 selves his disciples. As a matter of fact, he was a consider- 
 able innovator. At bottom Verlaine's idea, stripped of its 
 antic garb, was to replace the rhetoric and well-defined rimo 
 and rhythm of French poetry, which the Romantic school, 
 in spite of its innovations, had not succeeded in destroying, 
 by the dreamy suggestiveness which English or German 
 poetry so admirably conveys. Although the inherent lim- 
 pidity of the French language, that makes of it an incom- 
 parable vehicle for prose or certain kinds of poetry, renders 
 rivalry with the Germanic languages almost impossible in this 
 respect, yet Verlaine showed that partial success was possible, 
 and thus rendered a great service to French lyric poetry. 
 This will be readily realized by a comparison of the following 
 little gem with Victor Hugo's characteristic verse, or still 
 better with that of Leconte de Lisle : 
 
 " II pleure dans mon cceur 
 Comme il pleut sur la vitte, 
 Quelle cst cette langeur 
 Qui ptnbtre mon cceur? 
 
 bruit doux de la plute 
 Par terre et sur Ics toils! 
 Pour un cceur qui s'ennuie 
 le chant de la pluie 1 
 
 II pleure sans raison 
 Dans ce cceur qui s'tcceure. 
 Quoif nulle trahison? 
 Ce deuil cst sans raison.
 
 284 NINETEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 C'cst bien la pire peine 
 De ne savoir pourquoi, 
 Sans amour et sans haine 
 Mon cceur a tant de peine" 
 
 In this connection Verlaine's Art Podtique, a short poem of 
 thirty-six lines, should be carefully read. We quote the two 
 stanzas which best illustrate our meaning: 
 
 u II faut que tu n'ailles point 
 
 Choisir tes mots sans quelque mtprise; 
 Ricn de plus cher que la chanson grise 
 Oit I'Inde'cis au Precis se joint... 
 
 De la musique encore et toujours I 
 Que ton vers soit la chose envolee 
 Qu'on sent quifuit d'une dme en aJJtte 
 
 Vers d'autres deux, a d'autres amours." 
 
 In versification his reforms were likewise aimed at the 
 directness and excessive cult of rime of his predecessors. 
 Hence his fondness for uneven metres, such as lines of nine, 
 eleven, or thirteen syllables : 
 
 " De la musique avant toute chose, 
 Et pour cela pre"fere V Impair 
 Plus vague et plus soluble dans I'air, 
 Sans rien qui pese ou qui pose." Art Poe"tique. 
 
 He also used the cesura with great freedom, and restored 
 the hiatus of old French poetry. 
 
 In spite of the unevenness of his work, Verlaine is in 
 reality a great poet, in turn simple and complex, strong and 
 yet capable of unexpected depths of tenderness. He has left 
 some poems which are masterpieces of mystic fervour and 
 deep human sympathy. 
 
 He is a decadent in the super-sensitiveness and morbid 
 sentimentality of a portion of his verse, but it is erroneous to 
 imagine that his work consists mainly of symbolical oddities. 
 That he did write a few such poems, thus giving the sym- 
 bolical school the opportunity of claiming him for their leader, 
 is undeniable, but he wrote his best poetry when recreant to 
 the theories of the Symbolistes, whose endeavour it was, while
 
 POETRY 285 
 
 accepting Verlaine's teaching, to manifest physically by means 
 of symbols what is spiritually accessible only to the few. 
 Unfortunately some of the less gifted and more eccentric 
 innovators, under the pretext of symbolical profundity, and 
 partly to mystify the public, have only succeeded in being un- 
 intelligible, while others have lapsed into mere shallow ver- 
 biage or indulged in metrical tricks, thus earning for them- 
 selves the title, not of Symbolists, but of Cymbalists. 
 
 One of the most obscure is Stephane Mallarme (1842- 
 1898), the theorist of the Symbolists, who may be called their 
 leader with much more right than Verlaine. 
 
 He first attracted attention by a translation of Poe's Raven, 
 followed in 1896 by Divagations. 
 
 Mallarme exhibits in full force all the "Decadent" eccen- 
 tricities, talking a kind of sibylline jargon, much of which is 
 pure mystification or charlatanry. 
 
 Take, for example, the passage in which he exposes his 
 theory of art: " L'idte qui seule importe, en la vie est Sparse. 
 Aux ordinaires et mille visions (pour elles-memes a ne'gliger) oil 
 V Immortelle se dissdmine, le logique et mttditant poete les lignes 
 ravisse, desquelles il composer a la vision seule digne: le rdel et 
 suggestif symbole d'oii, palpitante pour le reve, en son inUgrite" nue 
 se levera l'ide"e premiere et derniere ou vtrite" Or again, the 
 following famous sonnet of Mallarme, which will, we feel sure, 
 be more eloquent than words, and afford an excellent example 
 of his hermetical language: 
 
 " Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui 
 Va-t-il nous d&hirer avec un coup d'aile ivre 
 Ce lac dur oublit que hante sous le givre 
 Le transparent glacier des vols qui n'ont pas full 
 
 Un cygne d'autrefois se souvient que c'est lui, 
 Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se delivre 
 Pour ri avoir pas chante la region ou vivre 
 Quand du sterile hiver a resplendi I'ennui. 
 
 Tout son col secouera cette blanche agonie 
 Par Vespace infligee a Voiseau qui le nie, 
 Mais non Vhorreur du sol ou le plumage est pris.
 
 286 NINETEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 fant6me quit, ce lieu son pur tclat assiyne, 
 11 s'immobilise au songe froid de m&pris 
 Que v&t parmi Uexil inutile le t'ygne." 
 
 The most talented of the group is without doubt Henri de 
 Regnier, born in 1864 at Honfieur. To him the symbolical 
 conception of poetic themes is natural, and for that reason he 
 is comparatively easy to follow. The dreamy indefiniteness 
 of his verse best realizes Verlaine's ideal, as will be apparent 
 to the reader of the sonnet we quote from Les Sites (187): 
 
 " J'avais marchd longtemps, et dans la nuit venue, 
 Je sentais defaillir mes rives du matin; 
 Ne m'as-tu pas itiene vers le Palais lointain 
 Dont I'enchantement dort au fond de V avenue, 
 
 Sous la lune qui veille unique ct singuliere 
 Sur V assoupissement des jardins d'autrefois 
 Oil se dressent, avec des clochettes aux toits, 
 Dans les massifs fleur is, pagodes et volierel 
 
 Les beaux oiseaux pourpres dormcnt sur leurs perchoirs, 
 Les poissons d'or font ombre au fond des reservoirs, 
 Et les jets d'eau baisses expirent en murmurcs; 
 
 Ton pas est un frisson de robe sur les mousses, 
 
 Et tu m'as pris les mains entre tes deux mains douces 
 
 Qui savent le secret des secretes serrures." 
 
 His other poems are: Episodes (1888), Pokmes Romanesques 
 et Anciens (1890), and ArMhuse (1895). 
 
 Among the lesser lights of the Symbolical school are : 
 
 Jean More* as (born at Athens in 1856), who gradually drifted from 
 symbolism, and by a curious evolution, which his Hellenic origin explains 
 in part, became the leader of the so-called icole romane, whose ambition 
 it was to rival the 16th-century Pleiade: 
 
 "Moi que la noble Athene a rtourri, 
 Moi Vein des Nymphes de la Seine, 
 Je ne suis pas un ignorant dont les Muses ont ri. 
 
 L'integre dement de ma voix 
 Suscite le harpeur, honneur du Vendomois; 
 Et le comte Thibaut n'eut pas de plainte plus douce 
 
 'Que les lays amoureux qui naissent sous mon pouce. 
 L ' Hymne et la PartMnie, en mon dme sereine, 
 Seront les chars vainqueurs qui courent dans Varene;
 
 POETRY 287 
 
 Etjeferai que la Chanson 
 
 Soupire d'un tant courtois son, 
 Et pareille au ramier quand la saison Ic prcsse. 
 
 Car par le rite que je sais, 
 Sur de nouvettes fleurs, les abeittes de Grece 
 
 Butineront un mid franqais. " 
 
 These verses are a poetic declaration of Moreas' aspirations, and a good 
 example of his style, which, as will be seen, is not without a charm of 
 its own. His chief works are : Les Syrtes (1883-1884), Les Cantilenes 
 (1884-1886), and Le Pelerin Passionne (1891), 
 
 Emile Verhaeren (born in 1855), a Belgian, or rather a Fleming, 
 whose best verses are Les Soirs (1888) a"nd Les Villages lUusoires (1895), 
 in which he makes a happy use of the vers libres. This kind of verse, 
 though not unknown to classical writers (cp. especially La Fontaine and 
 Corneille), was first erected into a system by Gustave Kahn (born in 
 1859), one of the most extravagant of the young revolutionists. The 
 lines of the vcrs libre can vary from one to fourteen or more feet, mixed 
 in any order, according to the promptings of poetic inspiration or the 
 changing aspects of the subject in hand. Under a skilful hand curious 
 effects of " poetic orchestration ", to talk the jargon of the initiated, 
 are sometimes attained, but not unfrequently these vers polymorphes, 
 especially when deprived of rime, are very little different from harmoni- 
 ous prose. The following lines from the poem entitled Le Feu, in 
 Kahn's Livre d' Images (1897), will bear out our contention: 
 
 "Lefeu trille; 
 
 des dotgts longs montent conime des vrtiles 
 subites, en I'air noir; 
 
 le feu danse, 
 
 dans sa nappe large se creusent comme des anses. 
 L'azur et Vor se poursuircnt et se tcrrasscnt 
 dans une course vive. 
 
 Le feu rit 
 
 <un large gre"sillement dans la poutre qu'U ronge 
 longtemps, puis triomphe d'un dan. 
 
 Lefeu rougeoie, 
 
 fete des feux de joie sur I'amas blane 
 de neige des plaisirs de songe. 
 Le feu brille, le feu crie 
 
 parmi des debris. 
 (Test un collier d'orjete" dans I'air noir." 
 
 Francis Viel^-Griffin (born in 1864), a gallicized native of the United 
 States, passes as one of the most skilful of the younger poets in handling
 
 288 NINETEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 the vers librc. Of his verse the best-known, perhaps, are Les Cyynes 
 (1887), Joies (1889), and La Chevauchee d'Yeldis. 
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck (born in 1862), the Belgian dramatist, repre- 
 sents, as a lyric poet, the most eccentric and absurd side of symbolism 
 in Serres Chaudes (1889), Le Trtior da Humbles, and Douze Cliansons 
 (1896). 
 
 His first collection of poems one critic satirically describes as " a volume 
 of verse that should be found on the shelves of every mental specialist "; 
 and we own that he is right. In Maeterlinck's poetical productions 
 we get all the sham jewels of decadence and symbolism strung together, 
 while the absence of all ordinary meaning that perfection of art in the 
 eyes of the school is carried to a point that no rival can hope to surpass. 
 
 Finally, a few poets who do not belong to any peculiar 
 school deserve passing recognition. 
 
 Jean Labor (born in 1840), whose real name is Cazalis, continues the 
 philosophy of Leconte de Lisle in his Buddhistic poetry (L' 'Illusion, 1888, 
 and enlarged 1893), but differs from him in that his verse is more truly 
 lyrical. 
 
 Maurice Bollinat (born in 1846) commenced by composing poems 
 under the influence of George Sand's rustic novels (Dans les Brandes 
 1877), but afterwards fell under the spell of the morbid Baudelaire 
 (Les Ntvroses, 1883), though his last collection, La Nature (1892), tes- 
 tifies to a serener frame of mind. 
 
 Jean Bichepin, born in 1849 in Algeria, had experiences 
 during his youth of the realities of life as a franc-tireur and as 
 a sailor, which are reflected in his early poems. 
 
 He began by an attempt to introduce the baser side of 
 Naturalism into poetry, in his Chansons des Gueux (1876), and 
 in Les Blasphemes (1884). Abandoning this, he wrote descrip- 
 tions of sailor life and remarkable seascapes in La Mer (1886), 
 which display to the full his wonderful verbal invention and 
 metrical skill, though not always free from eccentricities. His 
 later poems, Mes Paradis (1894), share the clearly-marked 
 tendency of recent literature towards an idealistic reaction.
 
 DRAMA 289 
 
 CHAPTER H 
 
 DRAMA 
 
 The second half of the 19th century is one of the most 
 brilliant periods of the French theatre, the prevailing dramatic 
 type being the realistic comedie de moeurs, of which the imme- 
 diate forerunner is to be found in Scribe. The principal 
 representative of the type is Alexandra Dumas fils, son of 
 the novelist, who was born in Paris in 1824, and after a good 
 education, early turned to literature, publishing in 1848 his 
 novel La Dame aux Camillas, which he dramatized in the 
 following year. In addition to novels, with which he began 
 his literary career, and dramas, which form the bulk of his 
 work, he wrote a large number of essays, letters, prefaces, and 
 pamphlets. He died in 1895. 
 
 Of his sixteen plays among the best-known are: La Dame 
 aux CamMias (1849), Le Demi^Monde (1855), La Question d' Argent 
 (1857), Le Fils Naturel (1858), Le Pere Prodigue (1859), Les 
 Idfas de Madame Aubray (1867), Une Visile de Noces (1871), 
 Denise (1885). 
 
 In the first of his plays, La Dame aux Camelias, Dumas both 
 displayed the moral tendency which inspired all his dramatic 
 work, and gave the first intimation of the kind of moral 
 problems with which he was to occupy himself. The subject 
 is the same as that of Victor Hugo's Marion Delorme the 
 rehabilitation of a fallen woman through pure love. In the 
 Demi- Monde he likewise treats the social problem arising 
 through the existence in society of this class, handling the 
 subject with the greatest realism and outspokenness, though 
 it is doubtful if his crusade had much practical effect The 
 same note of warning to the youth of France is the burden in 
 L'Ami des Femmes, Une Visile de Noces, La Princesse Georges, 
 and L'fitrangfae, while other social or legal reforms are also 
 advocated in Le Fils Naturel, Les Idees de Mme Aulray, and 
 M. Alphonse. 
 
 (MG43) T
 
 290 NINETEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 Everywhere, in fact, he insists on the moral significance of 
 the stage, maintaining that it is the duty of the dramatist to 
 expose the burning social evils of his day, using his position 
 for the improvement and edification, and not merely for the 
 amusement of society. Yet commendable as is this theory, 
 it has its dangers, from which, moreover, Dumas does not 
 escape, and the pibce a thhe, the problem play, is only too apt 
 to acquire an air of premeditation, and lose in life and move- 
 ment what it gains in moral worth. 
 
 Nevertheless, although the didactic purpose is sometimes too 
 prominent, his plays are, without exception, worthy of being 
 ranked as literature, while they reveal everywhere a perfect 
 understanding of the requirements of the stage. Dumas is a 
 born dramatist, and knows how to give the action the highest 
 degree of movement and life, and to keep the interest of the 
 public rooted to the dramatic business in hand. 
 
 His style is vigorous and often brilliant, while in the art of 
 sustained dramatic dialogue he is, thanks to his inexhaustible 
 wit and verve, successful in a rare degree. 
 
 In short, his work has many qualities of real greatness, and 
 was not unworthy of its success, and of the influence it exer- 
 cised. The only pity is that in the inculcation of the particular 
 moral lessons to which he devoted his gifts and energies he 
 should not have chosen a less paradoxical method, and one 
 less apt to defeat the very ends he was seeking to attain. 
 
 The second in importance of the dramatists of the period is 
 Emile Augier (1820-1889), who after some pleasant and not 
 unsuccessful comedies and verse pieces, was directed by the 
 appearance of the Dame aitx Camillas to his true field, the 
 representation of contemporary manners the comddie de moeurs. 
 In 1854 appeared Le Gendre de M. Poirier, written in collabor- 
 ation with Sandeau, one of the masterpieces of the French 
 stage. It treats the familiar theme of the evils resulting from 
 unions between needy aristocrat and wealthy bourgeois. His 
 other most famous pieces are: La Ceinture Dorfe (1855), Le 
 Mariage d'Olympe (1855), a sort of counterpart of La Dame aitx 
 Camdlias, showing the disasters which result from the attempted
 
 DRAMA 291 
 
 rehabilitation of Olympe; Les Lionnes Pauvres (1858), Mattre 
 Gufrin (1864), Le Fils de Giboyer (1862), and his last piece, 
 certainly one of his best, Les Fourchambault (1878), a powerful 
 picture of the miseries which arise from marriages of money 
 or convenience. 
 
 It was Augier's boast that his life had been one free from 
 events, and his type of mind is just what would be expected 
 from a regular successful life solid healthy good sense and 
 mental balance. It is from an eminently sensible and practical 
 point of view that he regards that society of his own day which 
 forms the subject-matter of his drama, and though he too, like 
 Dumas, has a moral lesson to convey, it is no revolutionary or 
 paradoxical one. He is before all the painter of the bourgeoisie, 
 both of Paris and the provinces, and both in that respect, and 
 also on account of many similarities of style and treatment, 
 has been compared to Balzac. He treats nearly all the ques- 
 tions which were agitating the particular society of his choice, 
 and without display of didactic purpose, honestly strives by 
 the ridicule of its weaknesses and vices to bring about its 
 moral improvement. 
 
 Eugene Labiche (1815-1888) produced between 1850 and 
 1870 a number of vaudevilles, in which a wonderful gift of 
 invention and the most fertile fancy and wit were combined 
 with a certain reasonableness even in the wildest farce. His 
 best comedies contain profound observation, and even behind 
 his caricatures is to be discerned great delicacy of tone and 
 accuracy of expression. 
 
 The best-known are Le Chapeau de Paille d'ltalie (1851) 
 and Le Voyage de M. Perrichon (1860). 
 
 The above-mentioned are the great dramatists of the latter 
 half of the century, but one or two others must be mentioned 
 who have achieved a more or less merited reputation, and 
 among them especially Victorien Sardou, the most popular 
 of living dramatists, born at Paris in 1831, who, after some 
 preliminary failures, has won immense success in all branches 
 of the dramatic art. Among the best of his numberless 
 pieces may be accounted Nos Intimes (1861), La Famille Benoi-
 
 292 NINETEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 ton (1865), Nos Bans Fillageois (1866), Patrie (1869), La Ilaine 
 (1874), Rabagas (1872), TModara (1884), La Tosca (1887), 
 Madame Sans- Gene (1893), the last in collaboration with 
 Moreau. 
 
 Sardou has attempted the serious historical play more than 
 once, and notably in Patrie, but serious drama is not his 
 strong point. His strength lies in the light and satirical repre- 
 sentation of the society of his day, in which he is a disciple 
 of Scribe, whom he even surpasses in his perfect mastery of 
 all the processes of scenic art. Yet he has not produced, or 
 apparently attempted to produce, any plays which are great 
 as literature, but satisfies himself with the exploitation of his 
 clever ideas in such a way as to make them telling on the 
 stage, seasoning them with the effects and sensations likely to 
 amuse and thrill, if not to elevate the spectator. His purpose 
 is to fill the theatre, and, measured by merely commercial 
 standards, their success has rarely, if ever, been surpassed. 
 Their chief merit lies in the brilliant, lively, and at the same 
 time natural dialogue, the never-failing wit, and the clever 
 creation and manipulation of the intrigue. 
 
 ^clouard Pailleron (born in 1834) has written satiric verse 
 and verse comedies, but his lasting fame depends on his 
 comedies in prose, and mainly upon one of them, Le Monde ou 
 Von s'ennuie (1881), probably the best comedy of the last 
 twenty years. The world is that of Moliere's Femmes Savantes 
 with the necessary differences of time and circumstance, while 
 spirit and treatment equally recall his famous model. Among 
 his other pieces the most noteworthy are Le Monde oil Von 
 s'amuse (1868) and Les Cabotins (1894). 
 
 Henri Becque (born in 1837), who, together with the other authors 
 of the TMdtre Libre, has attempted to introduce the methods of the 
 naturalistic novel on the stage. His two best plays are Les Corbeaux 
 (1882) and La Parisienne (1885). 
 
 De Curel, whose four plays, L'Envers d'une Sainte (1892), Les Fossiles, 
 L' Invitee, and L Amour Erode, show a tendency towards symbolism, and 
 considerable originality in the analysis of character. 
 
 Jules Lemaitre, the famous critic (born in 1853), has
 
 PROSE 293 
 
 written four pieces of great merit: RfooUle (1889), Le D6put6 
 Leveau (1891), Le Manage Blanc (1891), and Le Pardon (1895), 
 which reveal an exceptionally subtle psychology, and a power 
 of portraying simply and without ostentation the more delicate 
 emotions of the human heart. 
 
 Quite modern, in fact the latest craze in decadence and 
 symbolism, are the misty and mystifying dramas of the 
 Belgian dramatist Maurice Maeterlinck La Princesse Maleine 
 (1889), L'lntruse (1890), PelUas et Melisande (1892) in the 
 second of which he has once at any rate succeeded in writing 
 a temperament play of genuine merit. In the mystical 
 symbolism with which the theme is set before us, the feeling 
 of the presence of Death is weirdly but successfully evoked. 
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck is somewhat of a problem, perhaps, 
 for the critic of to-day, but in all probability the critic of the 
 future will find this "Belgian Shakespeare" less difficult to 
 dispose of. 
 
 Last of all, with a fame that only dates from yesterday, 
 comes Edmond Kostand (born at Marseilles in 1868), the 
 author of Les Romanesques (1894), La Princesse Lointaine (1895), 
 and La Samaritaine (1896), which cannot be said in any way 
 to adumbrate the wonderful success achieved by his play of 
 Cyrano de Bergerac in 1897, at once acclaimed by all the 
 critics as a masterpiece. The opinion, however, that Rostand 
 has inaugurated a new era in dramatic poetry is in the main 
 incorrect. His play, on the contrary, is an admirable fusion 
 of all anterior French dramatic elements, including Victor 
 Hugo, Banville, Gautier, Corneille, Scarron, and the prdcieuses. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PROSE 
 
 The novel is the most important and characteristic form of 
 the Realistic period, both the quantity and quality of writers 
 being truly remarkable.
 
 294 NINETEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 The greatest of these, and probably the greatest French 
 novelist next to Balzac, is Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), the 
 initiator of Naturalism, which, as we have already noticed, is 
 merely Realism exaggerated, and striving, or rather pretend- 
 ing, to adopt the processes of science. 
 
 His principal works are: Madame Bovary (1857), Salammbo 
 (1862), L' Education Sentimentale (1870), and La Tentation de 
 Saint Antoine (1874). 
 
 Madame Bovary is the story of an unhappily married wife, 
 who is driven by the tedium of her existence and the reading 
 of unhealthy sentimental novels into vice, followed by despair 
 and suicide. It is a painful story, but the penetrating analysis 
 of morbid mental conditions, and the vigour and at the same 
 time reality of the descriptions, have strength and genius. 
 The subject of Salammbd is the final struggle of Rome and 
 Carthage, the scene being placed in Carthage, in which, \vith 
 the help of a mass of historical and archaeological detail, the 
 life of far-off times and strange and savage peoples is painted 
 with astonishing life and realism. Where his history and 
 archaeology fail, Flaubert draws on his artistic imagination, 
 and whatever may be the judgment of men of learning on the 
 scientific aspect of the work, there is no mistaking the extra- 
 ordinary artistic sympathy which, hand in hand with a rare 
 creative power, makes this strange and distant humanity live 
 and move before our eyes. 
 
 The Tentation de St. Antoine is an extraordinary combination 
 of the realistic and fantastic, a masterpiece in its kind. 
 
 Flaubert combines the qualities of Romanticism and Real- 
 ism, and in that consists his great individuality. He was a 
 fervent admirer of the great romantic leaders and an idolizer 
 of Victor Hugo, and romantic influences are strongly marked 
 on all his work. But with the verve of sentiment and 
 imagination of the romanticists he combined the realist's 
 conception of art in the order and solidarity of his work, and 
 great patience and faithfulness in the reproduction of nature. 
 In glow and colour of style and in wealth of word and imagery 
 he is purely romantic, but he is before all things a realist in
 
 PROSE 295 
 
 his studied elimination of self, and purely objective impersonal 
 presentment of life. 
 
 Flaubert's production was not great, but he took the pains 
 to give a lasting shape to his work, and he has left behind 
 one or two masterpieces of fiction unsurpassed and probably 
 unrivalled in the century. 
 
 The same tendencies are represented by the brothers 
 Edmond de Goncourt (1822-1896) and Jules de Goncourt 
 (1830-1870), one of the rare examples in the history of litera- 
 ture of successful collaboration. They began by appreciative 
 studies of the art and manners of the 18th century, but 
 afterwards turned to fiction, writing together Charles Demailly 
 (1860), Sceur Philomene (1861), Rente Mauperin (1864), Germinie 
 Lucerteux (1865), Manette Salomon (1867), and Mme Gervaisais 
 (1869). After Jules' death Edmond continued to write novels, 
 of which the most noticeable are Les Freres Zemganno (1879) 
 and La Faustin (1882), and also published the Journal des 
 Goncourt (1887-1894), invaluable for a study of the two 
 brothers and their literary entourage. 
 
 The De Goncourts lay great stress on the minute and 
 accurate description of the environment of their characters, 
 seeking reality in the introduction of a weight of detail, in 
 which they show a marked preference of the odd to the 
 typical in life, which is equivalent to saying that they replaced 
 real psychology by the processes of reporting. Secondly, they 
 endeavoured in Germinie Lacerteux to set up the principle that 
 the coarser the matter the more realistic the work, thus establish- 
 ing a precedent which unfortunately was destined to find too 
 many adherents even among the more gifted of their followers. 
 
 Their chief originality, however, lies in their impressionist 
 style, which attempts by a capricious use of the word and a 
 subtle, irregular, arbitrary language, to give rather the sug- 
 gestion of the idea than its direct expression. Although fre- 
 quently overwrought and finical, their style is always graceful, 
 and admirably fitted for rendering certain very delicate shades. 
 
 The processes of Naturalism have been erected into a 
 system and carried to extremes by Emile Zola, the acknow-
 
 296 NINETEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 Jedged leader of the Naturalistic school of fiction, horn at 
 Paris in 1840 of an Italian family. After trying his hand 
 without success at journalism and the drama, he turned to the 
 writing of fiction. Of his earlier work the best is found in 
 some of his short stories, and especially the charming Contes 
 & Ninon (1864), which demonstrate that he could have ex- 
 celled in this branch of literature if he had chosen to lay 
 aside his theories and his rather ponderous style. 1 After 1870 
 he entered upon an enormous gallery of novels, conceived on 
 the plan of Balzac's Comedie Humaine, entitled Les Rougon- 
 Macquart (1871-1893), the chief being La Faute de I' Abbe" 
 Mouret, Le Venire de Paris, La Curee, L'Assommoir (1877); Ger- 
 minal (1885), La DeUde (1892). 
 
 Lastly must be mentioned his trilogy of three cities, Lourdes 
 (1894), Rome (1896), Paris (1898), which are rather critical 
 studies than real novels. 
 
 Les Rougon-Macquart, Histoire Naturelle et Sociale d'une Famille 
 sous le Second Empire, to give it its full title, comprises in all 
 some score of volumes, to which Zola pretends to give a sort 
 of unity by means of the appearance and reappearance of 
 members of the same family, but between which the connection 
 is not very real or essential. They treat of life on all its sides 
 and in all its phases, and show how thoroughly the author has 
 carried out his own "Naturalist" theory of the study of the 
 "document humain". For not only is Zola the principal ex- 
 ponent of the Naturalist school, but he is also its theorist and 
 doctrinaire, the chief of the principles which he lays down for 
 the writer of Naturalist fiction being the necessity of that 
 preliminary study of life and humanity which consists in 
 noting down at first hand characteristic and individual phases 
 and details of existence, building up from them a sort of note- 
 book on life for future use. This, with its pretensions to 
 science, in which for Zola there is one question of supreme 
 interest, that of heredity, are the characteristic features of the 
 school, and are fully illustrated in its chief. 
 
 1 Another proof is the delightful Attaque du Moulin in the Soirees de 
 M6dan, a collection by a group of Naturalists.
 
 PROSE 297 
 
 Zola's work shows great power and vigour of treatment 
 applied to the most trivial or unworthy subjects. He has a 
 rare gift of evoking the life of humanity in the mass, and a 
 wealth ef description which reminds one of the best days of 
 Romanticism; but at the same time we get the most brutal 
 and sordid conception of life, and a fulness of ugly and re- 
 volting detail which, though it may have its counterpart in 
 life, does not represent the experience of the normal man, but 
 the results of a search undertaken with the express purpose 
 of its discovery. Intentionally or not, his work is of the most 
 gloomy and dispiriting pessimism, and it is likely to leave 
 behind upon the reader, if not a demoralizing, at any rate 
 an unwholesome and discouraging impression. 
 
 Among the Realists must be counted Alphonse Daudet 
 (1840-1898), although he offers many points of divergence. 
 He was born at Nimes, and at the age of seventeen set out 
 for Paris, where he became a secretary of the Due de Morny. 
 His travels in Corsica and Algeria are worthy of mention on 
 account of the influence they had on his literary work. 
 
 His fiction falls naturally into three divisions: 
 
 (a) Novels, dealing especially with Parisian life: Fromont 
 Jeune et Eider Aine (1874), Jack (1876), Le Nabob (1878), Les 
 Piois en Exil (1879), Numa Eoumestan (1880), Sapho (1884). 
 
 (b) Short Stories: Lettres de mon Moulin (1869), delightful 
 sketches of the life of Provence; Conies du Lundi (1872), mostly 
 reminiscences of the Franco-Prussian war. 
 
 (c) Humorous Novels, the Tartarin series: Tartarin de Tar- 
 ascon (1872), Tartarin sur les Alpes (1886), and Port Tarascon 
 (1890), the amusing story of the typical Meridional, loquacious, 
 good-humoured, and boastful, full of enthusiasms and illusions, 
 who has only to recount some imaginary adventure of his own 
 in order to believe it the next moment, and which for its quiet, 
 half-satirical humour and caricatured reality, as it were, has 
 been not without reason compared to the manner of Dickens. 
 
 Daudet reveals the influence of the school in his preference 
 for subjects taken from low life, while he often shows a fond- 
 ness for treating life's failures and bankrupts. Yet though
 
 298 NINETEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 low and depraved characters are found in his works in plenty, 
 they are placed at the right perspective, while he by nature 
 avoids all that is merely disgusting and repulsive. His main 
 characteristics are to be found in a delicate, and on the whole 
 optimistic sentiment, which is mingled with a gentle irony, and 
 treated in a charmingly light, vivacious, and graceful style. 
 
 His novels are among the most wholesome, purely pleasing, 
 and at the same time artistic that the last half-century has 
 produced, a characteristic feature being a skilful and telling 
 admixture of humour and pathos, which is found in no other 
 French writer to the same degree. 
 
 Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), a godson of Flaubert, 
 fought in the Franco-Prussian war, and after writing verse, 
 some of which possessed admirable lyrical qualities, turned to 
 the writing of short stories and novels. The most famous 
 of the 
 
 (a) Conies are the collections: Le Horla (1887), La Maison 
 Tellier (1881), M. Parent (1886), and Mile Fiji (1882); of the 
 
 (6) Novels: Une Vie (1883), Bel Ami (1885), La Petite Rogue 
 (1886), Pierre et Jean (1888), and Fort comme la Mart (1889). 
 
 The merit of Maupassant's novels is great, and some of 
 them, especially the later ones, are among the most powerful 
 that French narrative art has produced, but it is as the greatest 
 representative of the short story that he occupies a unique 
 position in French literature. It is no exaggeration to assert 
 that it is to his influence that is due the great spread of this 
 genre both in England and Germany. He has written in all 
 over a hundred of these conies, dealing with the most varied 
 themes, and covering a wide range of tone, but all showing 
 the keen insight and analysis of a master. His command of 
 language is no less remarkable, and his concise and yet vivid 
 expression places him high among the great French stylists. 
 Of his choice of subject a less favourable story is to be told, 
 and he not infrequently represents Naturalism in its most 
 material form, while the springs of human action he generally 
 finds in the requirements of the different physical satisfactions. 
 
 Outside the ranks of Naturalism fiction has also found
 
 PROSE 299 
 
 many famous representatives. The novel of romantic ideal- 
 ism, inaugurated by George Sand, was continued by Octave 
 Feuillet (1821-1890), who was born in Normandy, but early 
 went to Paris, where, after beginning as one of" Dumas' assist- 
 ants, he started his independent literary career with comedies 
 and other dramatic pieces, and later gained popularity with 
 the idealistic novel Le Roman d'ur Jeune Homme Pauwe (1858). 
 The best of those which followed are M. de Camors (1867), 
 Julia de Trfcceur (1872), and La Mwte (1886). 
 
 In his later novels Feuillet shows traces of the prevailing 
 spirit of realism, and paints often enough with a very vigorous 
 and daring touch, though what he gains in force he loses in 
 that elegance which is one of his best qualities. He is distin- 
 guished above all for his delicate charm of sentiment, the placid 
 optimism of his conception of human nature, and especially hia 
 painting of the manners of aristocratic society, in which at the 
 same time he is doubtless guilty of a certain degree of ideal' 
 ization, and is not innocent of the charge of insipidity. 
 
 Edmond About (1828-1885), born in Lorraine, followed up 
 a brilliant career at the Lycee Charlemagne and the Ecole 
 Normale by studying archaeology in Athens, and on his return 
 to Paris made his reputation by the publication of the study 
 La Grece Contemporaine (1855). His novels include: Tolla 
 (1855), Les Mariages de Paris (1856), Le Em des Montagues (1856), 
 Trente et Quarante (1858), Le Roman d'un Brave Homme (1880). 
 
 Without any particular depth, the novels of About show 
 abundant wit and an amount of light and charming satire 
 which, combined with a lively power of description, has given 
 them a very considerable and not unmerited popularity. 
 
 Victor Cherbuliez was born at Geneva in 1829, educated at 
 Paris and in Germany, and in 1864 was called to Paris to 
 join the staff of the Revue des Deux Mondes. Among his many 
 novels might be mentioned the Roman d'une Honnete Femme 
 (1866), Mtta Holddnis (1873), L'IfUe de Jean Teterol (1878). He 
 died in 1899. 
 
 His novels are clever, and show great taste and wide and 
 varied knowledge. By their mixture of narrative and philo-
 
 300 NINETEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 sophic reflection, and their amusing if somewhat eccentric 
 originality, they have appealed to a large class of readers, 
 though they are not calculated to attain universal popularity. 
 To them is due the introduction of a certain type of fantastic 
 novel into French literature. 
 
 Anatole France, whose real name is Thibaut, born at Paris 
 in 1844, in addition to poetry and criticism, has written a 
 number of novels Le Crime de Silvestre Bonnard (1881), Le 
 Livre de Mon Ami (1885), Le Lys Rouge (1894) charming 
 stories, which deal in a playful way with various philosophic 
 and scientific mysteries and curiosities, and in which there is 
 much delicate fancy and very little striving after realism. 
 He is one of the most versatile of novelists, and one of the 
 most delightful conteurs in French literature. 
 
 Pierre Loti, who in real life is Julien Viaud and a naval 
 officer, was born at Rochefort in 1850. His first novel of 
 mark, Le Manage de Loti (1880), from which his pseudonym is 
 taken, has been followed by a number of others, of which the 
 most famous are: Le Roman dun Spahi (1881), Mon Frkre Yves 
 (1883), Pecheur d'Islande (1886), Madame ChrysantMme (1887), 
 Ramuntcho (1897). 
 
 Loti's distinctive place in contemporary literature is due to 
 his brilliant and original pictures of natural scenery, in which 
 he is the successor of Bernardin de St. Pierre and Chateau- 
 briand. He manages to convey a wonderful impression of 
 sensuous and emotional sympathy with nature in all the 
 forms in which he has learnt to know her in his long years of 
 travel on' many seas and in many lands. There is something 
 elemental in the way in which he interprets the significance 
 of the misty rainy coast of Brittany in its melancholy and 
 gray monotony, or the dead expanse of a wide unbounded 
 plain of waters. 
 
 Loti by his gift of imagination, his power of poetic sugges- 
 tion, and his charm of manner and style, is one of the most 
 prominent figures of contemporary literature, while he is 
 one of the greatest word-painters in the whole of French 
 literature.
 
 PROSE 301 
 
 Another author who takes a high position among contem- 
 porary writers of fiction is Paul Bourget (born in 1852), the 
 recognized head of the so-called Psychological School, and the 
 greatest master of the novel of mental and moral analysis 
 since Stendhal. His principal works are: Cruelle Enigme 
 (1885), Crime d'Amour (1886), Mensonges (1887), Le Disciple 
 (1889), Cosmopolis (1892). 
 
 Instead of limiting his observation to the externals of life, 
 like Zola and his followers, he applies the methods of natural- 
 ism to purely psychological subjects, arid laboriously and 
 carefully, with a mass of detail, builds up the history of human 
 souls. Although his minute dissection of character is apt at 
 times to become tedious, he has rendered no small service in 
 dragging the novel from the bog of animalism. 
 
 Bourget's work deals almost exclusively with Parisian high 
 life and cosmopolitan types studied during his travels. 
 
 The enormous output in the field of contemporary French 
 fiction has been increased by a number of less considerable 
 writers : 
 
 Emile Erckmann (1822-1899) and Alexandra Chatrian 
 (1826-1890), two natives of Lorraine, entered in 1847 upon a 
 collaboration which met with no considerable success till the 
 publication of Dlllustre Docteur Mathdus (1859). Among their 
 many stories may be mentioned: Histoire d'un Consent (1864), 
 Waterloo (1865), Le Blocus (1867), L'Ami Fritz (1876), La 
 Guerre (1885). The reputation of their stories is due to the 
 simple and truthful painting of the homely conditions of life 
 in Lorraine, in which they are unique in French literature. 
 
 Ferdinand Fabre (born 1830) deserves a greater reputation among 
 modern French novelists for his profound studies of clerical life and his 
 delicate delineations of peasant character. His best-known novels are : 
 L'Abbt Tigrainc (1873), L'Oncle BarnaU (1875), and Ma Vocation (1879). 
 
 Gustave Droz (1832-1895) achieved a great success with his first book, 
 Monsieur, Madame, et Bebe (1866), which gives a charmingly naive and 
 humorous sketch of the pleasures of domestic life. He has written other 
 novels, but none have had the fortune of his first venture. 
 
 Andre Theuriet, born in 1833 in Lorraine, but who migrated in 1857 
 to Paris, where he held a post under the minister of finance, made his
 
 302 NINETEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 reputation by poems, notably Le Chcmin des Bois (1867), Le Bleu et le 
 Noir (1874) ; and has written a number of novels, Raymonde (1877), La 
 Princesse Verte, Mon Oncle Scipion, La t'hanoinesse, &c. He paints in 
 bold strokes, and with a realism which is at the same time free from 
 objectionable elements, the life of the country and small towns. The 
 impression Theuriet's charming books leave in one's mind is ably summed 
 up by the critic, M. Andre Lemoyne : " Ce qui ressort surtout dcs livres 
 d' Andre Theuriet, c'est I 'amour de la nature forestiere, Vintime souvenir 
 de la vie campagnarde, et en mSme temps une pitii profonde pour les souf- 
 frants, les desheritds de ce monde ". As a poet he is chiefly remarkable 
 as being the most sincere and original of that group of rustic poets which 
 the Parnassian school includes in its ranks. 
 
 Joris Karl Huysmans was born at Paris in 1848, but is of 
 Flemish origin. Starting life as an ultra-realist, to which early 
 period belong Les Soeurs Vaiard, Marthe, and En Manage, he 
 afterwards passed over with A liebours and La-bas to a com- 
 bination of this exaggerated Naturalism with something of the 
 morose Satanism of Baudelaire. Finally, with En Route, he 
 Abandons his master Zola, and by an intelligible reaction passes 
 over to a kind of esoteric mysticism. 
 
 In spite of his eccentric choice of subjects, Huysmans is 
 undoubtedly highly gifted, and we must regret the perversion 
 of talent which most of his work reveals. 
 
 Georges Ohnet, born at Paris in 1848, has written a large number of 
 novels, which command a surprising sale. Among his stories, to which 
 he has given the general title of Les Batailles de la Vie, the most read of 
 all is Le Mattre de Forges (1882) ; while others are: Serge Panine (1881), 
 La Grande Marniere (1885), Nimrod et Cie (1893), and La Femme en 
 Gris (1895). All are compounded of the commonplace, with set expres- 
 sions and stock situations, while over the whole is shed a cheap bourgeois 
 morality. Regarded from a mercantile point of view they must be highly 
 satisfactory to all concerned. 
 
 Edouard Rod, a Swiss, born in 1857, who, after studying at 
 Lausanne and in Germany, settled in Paris, has written a large 
 number of works, including some novels, of which the best- 
 known are Michel Teissier (1892) and La Seconde Vie de Michel 
 Teissier (1893). Looking at life with the cosmopolitanism of 
 the Swiss, he treats the problems of the day with depth and
 
 PROSE 303 
 
 insight in novels which may be somewhat overweighted, but 
 are certainly not lacking in solid interest. 
 
 Paul Margueritte (born 1860) is among those who have deserted the 
 flag of Naturalism. His later novels, of which the best are Pascal Gavosse 
 (1889), La Force des Chases (1891), and Fors I'Honneur (1895), strike a 
 hopeful note of healthy morality. 
 
 A rigid application of the modern scientific spirit to the 
 history of religion is the key-note of the most remarkable 
 among the works of Ernest Renan, born at Treguier, in Brit- 
 tany, in 1823. He was intended for the church, and educated 
 accordingly, first in his native town, and later at the seminary 
 of Saint-Sulpice. Gradually, however, his naturally critical 
 spirit, strengthened by the study of ancient and modern 
 philosophy, undermined his religious beliefs, and he renounced 
 the idea of the priesthood. Continuing, however, his critical 
 study of Christianity, and aided in his methods by a mission 
 to the East in 1860, during which he visited Syria and the 
 Holy Land, he began the publication of his works, the first of 
 his important books being the Vie de Jesus in 1862. He died 
 in 1892. 
 
 His principal work is contained in the Origines du Christian- 
 isme, which comprises the Vie de Jesus (1862), Les Ap6tres 
 (1866), Saint Paul (1869), L' Antichrist (1873), Les Evangiles 
 (1877), L'Eglise Chretienne (1870), and Marc Aurele (1883). 
 This had been preceded by the Histoire Gtntrale des Langues 
 SSmiliques (1854), Etudes d 'Histoire Religieuse (1856), and was 
 followed by the important Histoire du Peuple d' Israel (1888- 
 1894). 
 
 Kenan's importance does not lie in any great originality 
 either in the results of his research or in his religious doubt, 
 but in the way in which he established the relativity of 
 religion, and in the fact that he may be almost said to have 
 created the history of religion. He has once for all settled 
 the question of revelation, giving to all the choice between an 
 acceptation of revealed religion as a pure act of voluntarily 
 unreasoning faith, and its rejection on philosophic and scientific 
 grounds. Keligion which is permanent and eternal in humanity,
 
 304 NINETEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 although its symbols are ever changing, is for him the imper- 
 ishable ideal, the highest beauty in the moral world. 
 
 Renan has made of this science of the history of religion 
 a true literary branch. He is capable both of eloquent pas- 
 sages of appeal and of glowing description. His style has the 
 indescribable quality of charm, while in its quiet irony and 
 simple pliability it is perfectly adapted to his subtle treatment 
 of a difficult subject. He is incontestably one of the greatest, 
 if not the greatest, prose writer of the 19th century. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve's method of criticism was reduced to mathe- 
 matical precision by Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893), born at 
 Vouziers, in the Ardennes, and educated at the ficole Normale. 
 Li 1853 he entered upon his important literary career with 
 the brilliant study, La Fontaine et ses Fables. Apart from his 
 two great works, the Histoire de la Literature Anglaise (1863- 
 1864), and the Origines de la France Contemporaine comprising 
 L'Ancien Regime (1875), La Involution (1878-1885), and Le 
 Regime Moderne (1890-1894) his remaining works include 
 the Voyage aux Pyrenees (1855), Les Philosophes Fran$ais du 
 XIX e Sihle (1856), ' Essais de Critique et d'Histoire (1857), 
 Nouveaux Essais (1865), Voyage en Italic (1866). 
 
 Although he made a great reputation both as a historian 
 and a philosopher, Taine is most notable as a critic. The 
 originality of his critical theories, as first expounded in his 
 preface to the Histoire de la Literature Anglaise in 1863, con- 
 sists in the application of the scientific and naturalistic method 
 to literature, following which he regards all literary works 
 as the necessary products of certain general causes capable of 
 being traced by proper method and investigation. These are : 
 Nationality; Conditions in general, such as climate, political, 
 social, and historical circumstances; the Psychological Moment. 
 These principles he notably applies to English literature, and 
 in such a way as to reveal the element of weakness in the 
 theory, which consists in the want of allowance made for the 
 individual and the deviation from the type, and its tendency 
 to regard literary genius too much as the mechanical resulta-nt 
 of certain known and clearly-defined productive, forces. He
 
 PROSE 305 
 
 urdoubtedly gave considerable impetus to the Naturalistic 
 movement, but it is entirely unfair to make him responsible 
 for its exaggerations and excesses. 
 
 Taine applies the same methods of deduction and system- 
 atization to history, and falls, as in literature, into the faults 
 of mechanical symmetry and artificial unity, which are inevi- 
 table consequences of the system. 
 
 He possesses a vigorous and pregnant style, which, though 
 capable of great concentration of thought, is saved by his 
 imaginative faculty from dryness. In some of his descriptive 
 passages, and especially in the Voyage aux Pyrdndes, he shows 
 the power of writing with admirable colour and relief. 
 
 Among the number of noteworthy names by which criticism 
 since Taine has been represented the most famous is that of 
 Ferdinand Brunetiere (born in 1849), whose importance for 
 French literature is twofold. Firstly, as the champion of the 
 classical tradition he attacked Naturalism, especially in Le 
 Roman Naturaliste (1883), and was largely instrumental in 
 hastening its end. Secondly, pursuing but at the same time 
 modifying the system of Taine, he applied the theory of evolu- 
 tion to literary criticism, showing how, as in living organisms, 
 the different types in turn spring from one another, develop, 
 compete, and die. Where he improves on Taine is in making 
 more allowance for the personal element, the phenomenon of 
 individual genius. Beside the already-mentioned Roman Natu- 
 raliste, his principal works are: Etudes Critiques (1880), Histoire 
 el Literature (1884-1886), L' Evolution des Genres (1890-1894). 
 
 The most brilliant of the younger critics is Jules Lemaitre, 
 who thinks more of enjoying, and helping others to enjoy, than 
 of classifying, weighing, and comparing, to paraphrase some 
 words of his own. He has no system or theory to expound, 
 but treats literature from the subjective stand-point. He 
 describes criticism as a representation of the world, like other 
 branches of literature, and hence by its nature as relative, as 
 vain, and therefore as interesting as they, and consequently, 
 instead of deducing literary productions, he contents himself 
 with defining them, and giving the impressions they produce 
 
 (11643) V
 
 306 NINETEENTH CENTURY SECOND PERIOD 
 
 upon himself. He has devoted himself especially to modern 
 literature, on which he has written a series of remarkable 
 essays, Les Contemporains (1886, 1899), in a terse, subtle, and 
 wittily ironical style which frequently recalls Kenan. His 
 Imjrressions de Thd&tre appeared from 1888 to 1896, while of 
 his dramatic work mention has already been made. 
 
 We have already spoken of the poetry and fiction of Anatole 
 France, but it is as a critic that he finds his true individu- 
 ality. The critical spirit pervades the whole of his thought, 
 so much so that his novels are almost as much of criticism as 
 romance. Moreover, the converse is equally true, for he re- 
 gards criticism as only another kind of novel of a more purely 
 analytical and introspective nature. The bond of connection 
 between the two, as he conceived them, is their purely sub- 
 jective character, and he can no more conceive of objective 
 criticism than of objective art. In the blending of sympathy 
 and delicate irony he also strongly reminds us of Renan. His 
 style, which, as Lemaitre says, contains elements of Racine, 
 Voltaire, Flaubert, and Renan, represents in its perfection 
 of grace the Latin genius in fullest bloom. His only critical 
 work which has been published in book form is the two 
 volumes of the Fie LitMraire (1888, 1890). 
 
 Finally, Melchior de Vogiie (born in 1850) has exercised a 
 great influence on recent literature; the Neo-Christian move- 
 ment, a return to evangelical Christianity, being due in great 
 measure to his critical studies on the great Russian novel- 
 ists. 
 
 His chief works are: Le Roman Eusse (1886), Souvenirs et 
 Visions (1887), Spectacles Contemporains (1896). 
 
 Amid the poverty of historical production which has fol- 
 lowed the remarkable outburst of the earlier part of the cen- 
 tury, one man has with good cause been hailed as a great 
 historian and a great writer. 
 
 Fustel de Coulanges (1830-1889) has left two works of 
 note, the Citt Antique (1864), an attempt at a full and profound 
 investigation of ancient states of society, and the Histoire des 
 Institutions Politiques de VAncienne France (1875-1889), his
 
 PROSE 307 
 
 masterpiece, which was unfortunately left unfinished at his 
 death. 
 
 The characteristics of his method are to be found in the 
 honesty with which he examines all documents and texts that 
 bear on the epochs with which he is concerned, and the resolute 
 attempt he makes to lay aside all preconceptions and modern 
 prejudices before approaching them. For him history is one 
 of the exact sciences, and scrupulous analysis the essential 
 method to be employed. 
 
 His main interest lies in the growth and development of 
 states of society, and his two already-mentioned works treat 
 of the great changes which prepared the way for the rise of 
 the society of to-day, namely, the transformation of ancient 
 forms of belief and the growth of feudalism. 
 
 His style is severe and concise, and while unembarrassed by 
 any mere ornament, capable of obtaining great effects by 
 simple means.
 
 INDEX 
 
 NOTE. The article and its compounds are treated as integral parts of 
 names, but not the preposition "de ". 
 
 About, Edmond, 299. 
 
 Academy, The French, 92, 119-120. 
 
 Adam, Jeu ef, 22. 
 
 Adam de la Halle, 20, 25. 
 
 Aimeri de Narbonne, 12. 
 
 Alberic de Briangon, 13. 
 
 Alembert (D') ( 198, 199, 202-203. 
 
 Alexandre de Bernai, 14. 
 
 Alienor of Aquitaine. See Eleanor. 
 
 Aliscans, n. 
 
 Amis et Amiles, n. 
 
 Amyot, 44, 75-76. 
 
 Ancients and Moderns, Quarrel of the, 
 
 I55-I57- 
 
 Andre de Coutances, 31. 
 Arnauld, Antoine, 123, 124, 125. 
 Aubanel, 4. 
 Aubigne (D 1 ), 67-68. 
 A ucassin et Nicolette, 36. 
 Augier, Emile, 290-291. 
 
 Bai'f, Antoine de, 59, 65. 
 
 Balzac, Guez de, 93, 121. 
 
 Balzac, Honore de, 238, 266-268. 
 
 Banville, Theodore de, 277-278. 
 
 Barbier, Auguste, 258. 
 
 Basoche (La), 26. 
 
 Baudelaire, Charles, 278-279. 
 
 Bayle, 95, I54-'5S- 
 
 Beaubreuil, Jean de, 109. 
 
 Beaumarchais, 165, 180-181 
 
 Becque, Henri, 292. 
 
 Bedel, Jean, 29. 
 
 Belleau, Remi, 65. 
 
 Benoit de Sainte-More, 14, 34. 
 
 Beranger, 216-218. 
 
 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, 166, 185-186. 
 
 Bernier, 29. 
 
 Be'roul, 16. 
 
 Bertaut, 69. 
 
 Berte aux Grands Pits, 12. 
 
 Berze, Hugues de, 30. 
 
 Beyle. See Stendhal. 
 Beze (De), 71. 
 Bodel, Jean, 20, 22. 
 Bodin, Jean, 78. 
 Boileau, 127-129, 155, 156. 
 Boisrobert (De), 135. 
 Bonald (De), 229. 
 Boron, Robert de, 17. 
 Bossuet, 147-151. 
 Bourdaloue, 151-152. 
 Bourget, Paul, 301. 
 Brant6me, 77. 
 Brizeux, 258. 
 Brunetiere, 305. 
 Brunetto Latino, 37. 
 Buffon, 211-212. 
 
 Calvin, Jean, 43, 56-58. 
 
 Ctnacle (Lt), 237-238, 268. 
 
 Chantelouve, 71. 
 
 Chapelain, 104, no. 
 
 Charles d'Orleans, 37-38. 
 
 Charroi de Ntntes, n. 
 
 Charron, Pierre, 89. 
 
 Charte aux Anglais, 31. 
 
 Chartier, Alain, 21. 
 
 Chateaubriand, 215-216, 222-227. 
 
 Chatelain de Coucy. See Gui de Coucy. 
 
 Chatrian, 301. 
 
 Che'nier, Andre", 172-175. 
 
 Cherbuliez, Victor, 299300 
 
 Chesnaye, Nicole de la, 50. 
 
 Chretien, Florent, 81. 
 
 Chretien de Troie, 16. 
 
 Christine de Pisan, 21. 
 
 Chronique de Du Guesclin, 10. 
 
 Combat des Trente, 10. 
 
 Commines, 6, 35-36, 42. 
 
 Condillac, 203. 
 
 Condorcet, 204-205. 
 
 Confrfrie de la Passion, 24-25, 70. 
 
 Conon de Belhune, 19.
 
 310 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Conrart, Valentin, 120. 
 Constant, Benjamin, 229. 
 Coppe"e, Fra^ois, 281. 
 Corneille, Pierre, 110-116. 
 Corneille, Thomas, 145. 
 Courier, Paul Louis, 229-231. 
 Courtebarbe, 29. 
 Cousin, Victor, 275-276. 
 Covenant Vivien, n. 
 Cre"billon pere, 175. 
 Cretin, 40. 
 Curel (De), 241, 292. 
 
 Dacier (Mme), 157. 
 
 Daigaliers, Pierre de Laudun, 109. 
 
 Dancourt, 153. 
 
 Danton, 214. 
 
 Daudet, Alphonse, 297-298. 
 
 Daurat (or Dorat), 59. 
 
 Decadents (Les), 239-240, 282. 
 
 Delavigne, Casimir, 218. 
 
 Delille, 164, 171. 
 
 Desbordes-Valmore (Mme), 258. 
 
 Descartes, 121-123. 
 
 Deschamps, Antony, 268. 
 
 Deschamps, Emile, 268. 
 
 Deschamps, Eustache, 21, 26. 
 
 Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, 104, 155-156. 
 
 Desmasures, Loys, 71. 
 
 Des Periers, Bonaventure, 55-56. 
 
 Desportes, 69. 
 
 Destouches, 179. 
 
 Diderot, 166, 185, 198, 199-202. 
 
 Dit de la Rebellion d' Angleterre, 31. 
 
 Doon de Mayence, 12. 
 
 Droz, 301. 
 
 Du Bartas, 66-67. 
 
 Du Bellay, Joachim, 60, 64-65, 69. 
 
 Du Deffand (Mme), 212. 
 
 Dumas fils, Alexandre, 289-290. 
 
 Dumas pere, Alexandre, 258-259, 261-262 
 
 Durant, Gilles, 81. 
 
 Du Vair, 90. 
 
 Eleanor, Queen, 14, 18. 
 Encycloptdie (L'}, 166, 198-199. 
 Krckmann, 301. 
 Etienne, Henri, 81-83. 
 Evangile des Femmes, 30. 
 
 Fabre, 301. 
 Fabri, 108. 
 Fastoul, Baude, 20. 
 Fauchet, 83. 
 F^nelon, 157-160. 
 Feuillet, Octave, 299, 
 
 Flaubert, Gustave, 239, 294-295. 
 
 Fl^chier, 152. 
 
 Fontenelle, 95, 156, 166, 187-188. 
 
 Fougeres, Etienne de, 30. 
 
 Fournival, Richard de, 31. 
 
 Franc A rctier de Bagnolet (Lc), 26. 
 
 France, Anatole, 300, 306. 
 
 I'roissart, 7, 21, 35. 
 
 Furetiere, 147. 
 
 Fustel de Coulanges, 306-307. 
 
 Gace Brule, 19. 
 
 Garin de Monglane, 12. 
 
 Garin le Loherain, n. 
 
 Gamier, Robert, 72-73. 
 
 Gamier de Pont Sainte-Maxence, 34. 
 
 Gautier, Th^ophile, 238, 256-258. 
 
 Gautier le Long, 29. 
 
 Geoffrei Gaimar, 33. 
 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 15. 
 
 Geoflfrin (Mme), 212-213. 
 
 Gerson, 36-37. 
 
 Gilbert, 171-172. 
 
 Gomberville, 118-119. 
 
 Goncourt, Edmond de, 295. 
 
 Goncourt, Jules de, 295. 
 
 Greban, Arnoul, 23. 
 
 Greban, Simon, 23. 
 
 Cresset, 179. 
 
 Grevin, 72, 74, 109. 
 
 Grimm, Melchior, 204. 
 
 Gringoire, 27. 
 
 Griselidis, Histoire de, 23. 
 
 Gui de Coucy, 19. 
 
 Guillaume le Marfchal, 34, 
 
 Guiot de Provins, 30. 
 
 Guizot, 270-271. 
 
 Guyon (Mme), 158. 
 
 Hardy, 104-105. 
 
 Hubert, 214. 
 
 Helveiius, 203. 
 
 Herberay des Essarts, 58. 
 
 Heredia (De), 282. 
 
 Heroet, 49. 
 
 Holbach (D 1 ), 204. 
 
 Hotman, 79. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, 234, 246-254, 261. 
 
 ffuon de Bordeaux, n. 
 
 Huon le Roi, 29. 
 
 Huysmans, 302. 
 
 Jacot de Forest, 14. 
 Jacquemart, Gele, 28. 
 Jansen, 124. 
 Jansenist Movement ( The), 124.
 
 INDEX 
 
 311 
 
 Jasmin, 4. 
 Jean de Tuin, 14. 
 Jodelle, 69, 71-72, 74. 
 Joinville, 34-35. 
 Joubert, 228. 
 
 Kahn, Gustave, 287. 
 Karr, 269. 
 
 Labe, Louise, 50. 
 
 Labiche, 291. 
 
 La Botie, 78-79. 
 
 La Bruyere, 153-154, 156. 
 
 La Calprenede, 119. 
 
 La Chaussee, 165, 179-180. 
 
 Lacordaire, 276. 
 
 La Fayette, Comtesse de, 147. 
 
 La Fontaine, 129-131, 156. 
 
 La Fosse, Antoine de, 152. 
 
 Lahor, Jean, 288. 
 
 Lamartine, 237, 241-245. 
 
 Lambert le Tort, 14. 
 
 Lamennais, 231-232. 
 
 La Motte, Houdart de, 157, 170, 175-176. 
 
 Lancelot, 123. 
 
 La Noue, 77-78. 
 
 Larivey, 74, 135. 
 
 La Rochefoucauld, 145-146. 
 
 La Salle, Antoine de la, 36. 
 
 La Taille, Jean de, 72, 74, 109. 
 
 Lebrun, 164, 170. 
 
 Leconte de Lisle, 279-280. 
 
 Legouve, 260. 
 
 Le Maire de Beiges, Jean, 45. 
 
 Lemaitre, Jules, 241, 293, 305-306. 
 
 Le Maitre, 123. 
 
 Leroy, Pierre, 80. 
 
 Le Sage, 165, 178-179, 182-183. 
 
 Lespinasse (Mile de), 213. 
 
 L'Hopital, Michel de, 79. 
 
 Lorris, Guillaume de, 32. 
 
 Loti, Pierre, 300. 
 
 Louis, Le Rot, 9. 
 
 Machaut, 20-21. 
 Maeterlinck, 288, 293. 
 Maillart, 37. 
 Mairet, 107, no. 
 Maistre, Joseph de, 228-229, 
 Maistre, Xavier de, 229. 
 Malherbe, 92, 96-98. 
 Mallarme, 285-286. 
 Manuel, Eugene, 281. 
 Marguerite de Navarre, 48, 55. 
 Margueritte, Paul, 303. 
 Marie de France, 15, 28. 
 
 Marivaux, 164, 177-178, 183. 
 
 Marot, Clement, 42, 45-48. 
 
 Massillon, 160. 
 
 Maupassant, Guy de, 298. 
 
 Meigret, 81. 
 
 Menippee, La Satire, 79-81. 
 
 Menot, 37. 
 
 Merimee, 265-266. 
 
 Meschinot, 40. 
 
 Meung, Jean de, 6, 32-33. 
 
 Michelet, 272, 273. 
 
 Mignet, 271-272. 
 
 Mirabeau, 213-214. 
 
 Mistral, 4. 
 
 Moliere, 91, 132-138. 
 
 Molinet, 40. 
 
 Monluc, Blaise de, 76-77. 
 
 Montaigne, 44, 84-89. 
 
 Montchretien, 73. 
 
 Montesquieu, 188-192. 
 
 Moreas, 286-287. 
 
 Moreau, Hegesippe, 258. 
 
 Murger, 269. 
 
 Mussel, Alfred de, 254-256. 
 
 Nennius, 15. 
 Nicole, 123. 
 Nodier, Charles, 268. 
 
 Ogier, Frangois, 105-106, 109. 
 Ohnet, 302. 
 Orleans, Siege d", 24. 
 
 Pailleron, 292. 
 
 Paix aux Anglais (La), 31. 
 
 Parnassiens (Les), 239, 277. 
 
 Parny, 172. 
 
 Pascal, Blaise, 93, 123-126. 
 
 Pasquier, Etienne, 83-84. 
 
 Passerat, 69, 81. 
 
 Pathelin, 26-27. 
 
 Pelerinage de Charlemagne, 9. 
 
 Perrault, Charles, 95, 156. 
 
 Philippe de Thaon, 31. 
 
 Piron, 168, 179. 
 
 Pithou, 81. 
 
 Pleiade (La], 43, 59-62, 65-66 
 
 Ponsard, 260-261. 
 
 Pontus de Thyard, 59. 
 
 Port-Royal, 123. 
 
 Pourtalis, Jean de, 50. 
 
 Pradon, 142. 
 
 Prtcienses (Les], 92, 100-104. 
 
 Prevost d'Exiles, 165, 183-184. 
 
 Qutte tfu Saint-Graal (La), 17. 
 Quietists (The], 158.
 
 312 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Quinault, 133. 
 Quinet, Edgar, 975. 
 
 Rabelais, 42, 51-55. 
 
 Racan, 107. 
 
 Racine, Jean, 91, 94, 138-144. 
 
 Rantbouillet, Hotel de, loo-ioa. 
 
 Rambouillet, Marquise de, 100-101. 
 
 Ramus (or Ramie), 81. 
 
 Raoul de Cambrai, 10. 
 
 Rapin, Nicolas, 81. 
 
 Reformation (The), 43-44. 
 
 Regnard, 152-153. 
 
 Regnier, Henri de, 286. 
 
 Regnier, Mathurin, 92, 98-99. 
 
 Renaissance (The], 41-42. 
 
 Renan, 303-304. 
 
 Renard, Roman de, 28. 
 
 Retz, Cardinal de, 145. 
 
 Richelieu, no, 120. 
 
 Richepin, 288. 
 
 Robespierre, 214. 
 
 Rod, 302-303. 
 
 Roland, Chanson de, 12-13. 
 
 Rolinat, 288. 
 
 Romanticism, 233, 237-238. 
 
 Ronsard, 43, 59, 62-64, 66, 68, 109. 
 
 Rostand, Edmond, 393. 
 
 Rotrou, 116-117. 
 
 Roumanille, 4. 
 
 Round Table [The], 16-17. 
 
 Rousseau, Jean Baptiste, 167-168. 
 
 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 162, 185, 205-211. 
 
 Rutebeuf, 23, 29-30. 
 
 Sable (Mile de), 102. 
 Saint- Augustine, 124. 
 Saint-Cloud, Pierre de, 14. 
 Saint-Cyran, 124. 
 Saint- Evremond, 116. 
 Saint-Gelais, Melin de, 49. 
 Saint-Just, 214. 
 Saint-Pierre. See Bernardin. 
 Saint-Simon, Due de, 160-161 
 Saint-Sorlin. See Desmarets. 
 Sainte-Beuve, 238, 273-275. 
 Sales, Saint Francois de, 117. 
 Sand, George, 262-264. 
 Sardou, Victorien, 291-293. 
 Saurin, 153. 
 Scaliger, 71, 109. 
 Scarron, 104. 
 Scfeve, Maurice, 49. 
 
 Schelandre, 105-106. 
 
 Scribe, 259-260. 
 
 Scudery, Georges de, 104. 
 
 Scudery, Madeleine de, 1 19, 
 
 Sebond, Raimond de, 86. 
 
 Senancour, 227-228. 
 
 Sevigne (Mme de), 146-147. 
 
 Sibilet, 108. 
 
 Simon, Richard, 148. 
 
 Sorel, 119. 
 
 Souvestre, 268-269. 
 
 Sponsus, 33. 
 
 Stael (Mme de), 215, 319-222. 
 
 Stendhal, 264-265. 
 
 Sue, Eugene, 268. 
 
 Sully, Maurice de, 36. 
 
 Sully-Prudhomme, 280-281. 
 
 Symbolistes (Les), 239-240, 284-285. 
 
 Taine, 304-305. 
 Theuriet, 301-302. 
 Thibaut de Champagne, 19. 
 Thierry, Augustin, 269-270. 
 Thiers, 271. 
 Thomas, 16. 
 Thou (De), 78. 
 Tocqueville (De), 273. 
 Troie, Destntction de, 24. 
 Turgot, 204. 
 Turnebe, Odet de, 74. 
 
 Unities, Rules of the Three, 107-110. 
 Urfe (D 1 ), 118. 
 
 Valerius, Julius, 13. 
 Vaugelas, 93, 120-121. 
 Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, 69. 
 Vauvenargues, 197-198. 
 Verhaeren, 287. 
 Verlaine, 240, 282-285. 
 Viau, Theophile de, 92, 99-100, 106-107. 
 Viele-Griffin, 287-288. 
 Vigny, Alfred de, 245-246. 
 Villehardouin, 34, 
 Villemain, 275. 
 Villon, 6, 38-40, 42. 
 Vogu6 (De), 306. 
 Voiture, 101. 
 
 Voltaire, 162, 164, 168-170, 176-177, 184- 
 185, 193-197. 
 
 Wace, Robert, 33. 
 Zola, 239, 295-297.
 
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